Italian Cashier Hypnotized
Quirky news story of the week is the case of the Italian supermarket checkout operator who was hypnotized by a cunning criminal into handing over a wad of cash. Apparently she didn't realise what had happened until her till didn't balance at the end of the shift.
Interestingly I haven't see any news stories tackle the question of whether this is a plausible story. I suspect we'll hear more, but allow me to pre-empt the result with my guess...
First of all, you can't just approach someone and hypnotise them instantly to do your bidding. Many people are immune altogether, and only the most suggestive are likely to be controllable in the reported fashion. The thief would probably want to select and groom the victim before the main event, just to make sure she was going to react as needed.
Hypnotism can't make you do anything that you consider morally wrong. If the girl was genuinely hypnotized, the criminal must have been even more cunning than most people would think. Perhaps he could have suggested that the money was for a worthy cause, or that he had been given permission to take it. However it does smell fishy - the ease of the apparent hypnotism makes me suspicious.
I have no strong gut feeling either way, but if I had to put money on it, I'd bet that the cashier was an accomplice. I wouldn't convict her without hard evidence of course, but I'd certainly be looking at her closely if I was on the investigative team.
I must emphasize this: I do believe that the hypnotism reported in this story is unlikely but certainly possible. "Innocent until proven guilty" and all that. Let's see what happens.
Labels: Paranormal, Ponderblog
Is Religion a Natural Human Behaviour?
I've just noticed an interesting project being undertaken at Oxford University, attractively titled 'Empirical Expansion in Cognitive Science of Religion and Theology'.
The £1.9 million project aims to figure out whether religion is a natural human behaviour, and if so, whether this fact supports or contradicts theological and paranormal propositions.
Sounds like fun. Someone remind me about this in a couple of years - I want to know if anything useful results. More than anything I'm interested in whether they come up with an investigative methodology that would be acceptable to both scientists and religious leaders. I doubt it because, like most paranormal propositions, religion has built-in escape clauses to evade such scrutiny. Still I like to imagine some simple test that would indisputably answer the question "Does God exist or did someone just make Him up?"
Of course no such test is possible but even if it was, people like Brian Tamaki could just say it was the Devil confounding our minds. Religious people think atheists are deluded and vice versa. So shall it always be.
Here's the project details.
Labels: Paranormal, Ponderblog
Is Cruel Cool?
Yesterday I posted a
very harsh criticism of an auction being run by someone called "nottiger" at
sitepoint.com. After I posted it, I looked back and thought "Man, that is
rough. Is it really cool to diss someone's idea so brutally, no matter how silly it seems or how much it smells like a scam? What if it turns out that nottiger is a really nice person, but depressed, and this idea was his big attempt at restoring self-esteem? What if he reads my blog and it's the final straw that breaks his back - how would I live with myself if he topped himself over this whole thing?"
Unlikely, but
what if? It certainly wouldn't help my own self-esteem much.
Well it turns out nottiger did read my blog and he contacted me this morning to respond. As an aside, he's a Kiwi (like me), or at least I assume so from the content of his message.
Fortunately nottiger doesn't seem depressed and he handled my criticism well. He did stoop to having a dig at my home town but I'll let that go.
Back to the question "Is it okay to be so harsh?". It's not normally my style because I have seen the effect such criticism can have on people.
The situation is quite similar to working in TV production when you're faced with the "personal harm vs public good vs entertainment value" dilemma. Sometimes you decide to cause potential harm to a small group of people in order to benefit the wider community. If you lack ethics (which many TV producers do) you might be comfortable harming people simply to increase entertainment value. Personally I use what I think is a fair balance between public good and personal danger, but I'd never want to hurt someone just for kicks or ratings.
And that's what made me uncomfortable about yesterday's post. Was I doing it for the public good or for ratings? There is certainly a public good aspect - I feel that the product being auctioned is worthless and so falls into the consumer protection category. You could argue that no one is being forced to bid in the auction but consider this:
- It's highly unlikely that nottiger will commit suicide over my blog post but it's such a bad outcome that it's worth talking into account.
- In the same way, it's highly unlikely that a naive person would unwittingly waste $750,000 on a worthless idea, but the outcome is bad enough that it's worth trying to prevent. Just look at
Randi.org to see how plentiful suckers are.
In retrospect I could have had the same effect without being so cruel. I'd probably do it differently now but I'll stop short of an apology because the seller's auction was so public, so expensive, and so inviting of a strong response. He's certainly getting a response at the
auction and
reddit - the poor bugger is getting flayed alive.
If you're reading this nottiger, I meant what I said about calling in for a coffee or beer. I've become good friends with people who I didn't initially get on with. I like your creativity and tenacity. We might be a fiery mix but you never know - we might have some interesting conversations over a lager.
Labels: Ponderblog, WebEntrepreneur
What the hell is this?
If you're new here or you don't know me, you're probably wondering what this blog is about and whether or not I'm a nutcase. To learn the truth you'll need to give up 120 seconds of your life, so think fast about whether you want it that bad.
I like to do stuff. Mostly I prefer stuff that doesn't involve too much physical exertion but that's not really the point — I like doing anything that makes me happy and/or makes other people happy. Sometimes it does involve running around until I puff, which is fine in small doses, but usually it involves sitting and working the keyboard until I fall asleep.
I also like making money and that is at least part of the point of this blog.
I have a collection of projects that I work on, mostly involving the internet in some way. Since 1997 I've developed a bunch of websites on various topics that I'm interested in. I try to make money from all of them, although some are run as a public service and won't ever be profitable.
Although my projects exist largely to satiate my hunger for cash, in a strange way I also see them as a representation of my greater "life's work". Just about everything I think about, care for, believe in or enjoy criticising is covered in one of my sites somewhere.
But back to the money, I do like making it. Over the years my projects have slowly gathered enough momentum to feed and clothe my family, so in 2007 I quit my last part-time job and dumped most of my business clients. Even the clients that weren't much work were too demanding for the lifestyle I envisaged. My new life devoted entirely to family and fun projects was unfolding before my gleeful eyes. Since then it's continued like a good plan and I'm loving it.
So anyway, this blog serves several purposes:
- It's a good way to provide RSS feeds for people interested in my projects. For example, if you use one of my products you might want to be kept informed of upgrades etc. For various reasons it's a lot easier for me to manage all my RSS feeds from one blog. It's also a good way for me to organise my projects and remind myself what I need to work on.
- It's a case-study for the "Internet Publisher" business model. I make good money doing this and I'm happy to share my methodology. I'm also keen to promote "white hat" strategies and help fight the nasty old black-hats.
- It's a vehicle for me to ramble and pontificate, much like every other wannabe in the blogosphere.
- It's a family blog for those few people who give a toss about my personal life.
- It makes me money. Did I mention that I like money and I want more of it?
So there you have it. That's me and my blog. What's your verdict?
Labels: Ponderblog
Done
Whew, that was hard work. My shiny new blog is less than 24 hours old and I've posted nine messages. Let's see how long that lasts.
I had to publish all those posts in order to set up the label/subscription system for the different projects. Each post is a quick introduction to the relevant project. Now that it's done you can subscribe to just the topics that interest you and ignore the rest. For example, if you're only here for the
MC Media Player updates you don't need to get all the irrelevant posts.
I'm still finding my way around the blogger.com system but it looks like fun.
Labels: Ponderblog
New Blog
Yet again I find myself trying out a new blog system. Maybe it's like the old "geographic solution" - when your life isn't working out you move somewhere new in the hope that a different location will fix everything.
I've decided to give blogger.com a try, largely because it fits in well with Google Accounts that I use already. I'm going to try and consolidate my blogs from different projects into this one - maybe it will be more manageable like that. I'm setting up different topics (labels) so you can choose which topics or projects to subscribe to. I don't know how user-friendly it will be but let's give it a try.
The "Ponderblog" topic is my own personal stuff, i.e. anything not directly related to one of the projects. I don't know how this will unfold yet. It could be a continuation of my
previous blog where I commented on current events, but to be honest I'm not convinced I can be bothered with the flak I get (more about that in a later post). We'll see. I'll certainly post occasional chit-chat about me and the family, and just maybe I'll think about getting back into some meaning-of-life discussions. They are hard work though aren't they?
Labels: Ponderblog
