Re: [Phys-l] Parapsychology and AAAS

[Brian Whatcott <betwys1@sbcglobal.net>]

At 10:05 AM 6/26/2007, Faraday321@aol.com wrote:
> Does anyone know the story of how Parapsychology became recognized as
> science by the AAAS?  Apparently this is still true. Does anyone 
> know if  there are
> any efforts underway to oppose the
> continued inclusion of Parapsychology in the AAAS?
>
>
> Bob Zannelli
>
> .... ignorance and fear
> ...fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit...
> that weakness  ...credulity.... custom,
> respect and  tyranny....
> the blindness of men......
>
> D'Holback

Though the classical experiments may have shown
small if significant effects, they were in general
mind-numbingly boring.   Lately, psychologists
have made more useful contributions to direct
mind control, of mechanisms and of muscles and
via the signalling by  minor active muscle fibers
 to remote enervated muscles.

I cannot suggest that these developments constitute
obvious facets of parapsychology. Still the
mind set can be helpful, it appears.

You will recall that electroencephalic signal
responses to fleeting visual stimuli have been
connected to measures of intelligence for example.
 The helmet needed for this kind of effort is not
 what you would want to wear for every day tasks.
Still such signals can control equipment hands-off.

Even more cumbersome, positron emission tomography
(PET scanning) has been used to connect evoked
concepts directly with the brain areas which they
excite.

Lately I recall, blood vessel volume in the neck has
 been used as a simple proxy for mentally directed
unvoiced controlof equipment.

Non-contact eyeball followers using infra-red tracking
have provided interesting correspondences
between subjects' center of attention and the
 dynamic visual scan of interesting images
presented to them.
   "Look" control of some aircraft functiuonality
 in adverse conditions has been used if I recall.
 Voice control of vehicles is becoming a commercial
 reality, after a very long gestation of the inverse
 function of text to voice converters.
 It turned out that voice to
(meaningful) text was difficult.
[ "Say Yes to accept, No to decline"]
Straw-blowing is now a mainstream method by which
paraplegics may interact, e.g. with computer terminals.

Wandering even further along this thread of hands-off
effects - I browsed a paper written by bc's clock-maker
 friend, today. It was to the effect that a moderate
 west coast earthquake had shaken several of his
 pendulum clocks to a stop, and caused another to
registering a one second loss,while the same electronic clock
monitor/recording device had shown a pendulum disturbance
 at a very well-isolated distant pendulum clock on the East coast,
 after the propagation time delay from the same event.

But then, I remember that pigeons have been shown to
register sub-audible low sound frequencies emanating
from the wind over mountain ranges at distances of
hundreds of miles.

I expect that some of these effects are as unexpected
to a physics list reader  as the effects that
parapsychologists test for....


Brian Whatcott    Altus OK    Eureka!