ZG's 5000th Post - Princeton Proves ESP, Closes Lab

[zengrifter]

From The Times
February 26, 2007


Ouija believe it? The paranormal is pretty mundane

Caitlin Moran

By and large, mankind’s beliefs about its own nature can be divided into three broad categories. We suspect that: 1) mankind is essentially good; 2) mankind is essentially evil; 3) mankind is essentially easily distracted, and has mucked it up a bit today but, hey-ho, tomorrow’s another day.

Personally, I believe the third way to be closest to the essence of Man. Much as we have an admirably camp penchant for seeing things in dramatic extremes — it’s an epic STRUGGLE between SATAN and JESUS — on the whole, behind nearly every traumatic global incident is an anxious auxiliary office worker trying to hide an incorrect piece of paperwork in the back of a filing cabinet. The bigger picture is, more often than not, quite small. Given that this is the nature of the corporeal world, it’s heartening to discover that this may well be the nature of the metaphysical world, too. This month Princeton University will close its ESP lab, after nearly 30 years of research into the paranormal. Set up in 1979 to investigate whether human consciousness could “interfere with sensitive computers and machinery”, the lab has cost a fairly reasonable $10 million, but concluded — after almost three decades — that its studies revealed only a small, yet statistically significant, effect in experiments. Richard Wise-man, a professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, summed up by saying that the lab’s work was interesting, “but ultimately difficult to make practical use of”.

Personally, I find this to be quietly revelatory news. We’ve always been given to understand that the paranormal, should it exist, is a vast, billowing mass of indefinable power, what men ought not meddle in lest they unstitch the very fabric of the Universe. But from the Princeton findings, it seems that the paranormal lacks the capacity to become the new global superpower — usurping the US — if only a few more teenagers got stoned and mucked about with a Ouija board. Instead, it seems that the powers of the paranormal are quite comfortingly mundane. ESP cannot stop a man’s heart or short-circuit a tank. It seems that all that the paranormal is actually capable of doing is to allow people to guess whether a staff member at Princeton is about to show them a picture of a circle, or a couple of wavy lines. That isn’t the tip of an iceberg of paranormal potential which, if trained, could topple governments. It is , we now know, the iceberg.

...more - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle1432276.ece

[ScottH]

5,000(!) posts! Congratulations zg! We should all have a huge celebration of some sort. Any ideas?

EDIT: You now have more posts than there are threads on this entire forum!

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by ScottH

5,000(!) posts! Congratulations zg! We should all have a huge celebration of some sort. Any ideas?

Maybe I'll insufulate some DPT and look for reptoids in my closet. zg