Detecting Ghosts With My Cell Phone????

Wow!  Did you know that there is a ghost detector for your iPhone or smart cell phone?  I just had to try it.  Within minutes of downloading and opening the program I was amazed.  Not one, but two different presences were shown to be in my living room with me, a weak one and a medium strength one.  The device also spit out the words “Peter” and “British” within five minutes of each other as I sat there.  I thought about it and I can’t believe it can be so accurate!  How did it know that I once watched a movie with a British actor named Peter Sellers in that very room?  In fact, the movie is still on the shelf in the corner of the room.  How could my phone know this unless there is a paranormal force at work here? 

Of course, these were not the only words it spit out while I was using it in my living room.  It also spit out “riding”, “wave” and “want”.  I think the spirits were also telling me they know I really want to go back to Costa Rica and ride the waves on their beautiful beaches.  After all, my photo album under the coffee table shows last year’s family vacation pictures where we did just that.  Maybe the spirits were watching over me when I was there and want to go back too? The accuracy of this ghost detector is amazing! 

Can you hear the sarcasm in my writing? Almost any group of randomly generated words will trigger some kind of memory or connection to our lives in some way. Before you get upset with me let’s sit back and think about what the company who makes this application has to say about it.  It claims the application works because it measures changes to quantum flux in the environment around you. Quantum means the smallest amount of physical matter that can exist independently.  Flux means the rate of change or flow. So, quantum flux means the rate of change of the smallest amount that can exist independently.  It represents really, really tiny changes in energy.

How does the ghost radar program measure this according to the company that designed it?  By using the sensors already built into the cell phone’s other programs.  Wait?  Let’s find out what all those sensors in our cell phone do before we make a determination about how accurate the ghost detectors and ghost radar in our phones is.

·         WiFi transceiver (to send and receive information wirelessly to the internet and other devices)

·         a touch sensor (built into the screen of your phone),

·         an accelerometer (used by your GPS to measure when you are motion)

·         a phone transceiver (handles broadcast and reception of sound waves from / to cell towers)

·         microphone (to pick up audio near device)

·         magnetometer (used to show compass directions in mapping applications)

·         gyroscopes (controls the orientation and spin in games and phone applications)

Now that we know what the application is using let’s look at the claims.  The company claims the software detects paranormal activity using the various sensors above on your cell phone device.  They claim the above sensors measure electromagnetic fields, vibrations and sounds to detect the presence of ghosts and won’t be fooled like other paranormal devices that also read “mundane bursts of electromagnetic fields, vibrations and sounds in our environment”.  It also claims that “any intelligent energy should be able to influence the readouts and communicate with you”. Hmmm an interesting concept but I have a couple of concerns with their claims. 

First, none of the above sensors measures electromagnetic fields.   Also, the vibrations the gyroscopes and accelerometer sensors measure are those occurring when the device is moved not changes in the environment around the location of the device.  Also the sounds it hears are the ones picked up by the internal microphone.  So, I am not sure how it can take readings at any distance from the device unless it is WiFi signals or phone signals from cell towers that it is reading.

My second problem with this claim is that by scientific use quantum fluxuations deal with changes in energy on very small level, small like moving electrons in atoms small-that’s REALLY small changes in energy.  I know cell phones have become sophisticated but do you really believe that your cell phone sensors have the technology and data capacity to take measurements on a subatomic level?  Also, I am not a scientist or a mathematician but I don’t need to be to study the formulas involved in measuring quantum flux to know that I don’t think the memory space and sensors of my cell phone have the capacity to take and store the very complex data they claim is collected to analyze these miniscule environmental energy changes. 

My third problem with this software is the companies claim that intelligent energy should be able to influence the readouts to communicate with us.  Honestly, I cannot imagine my Uncle Fred, even in the afterlife, having enough knowledge of quantum physics to manipulate this very sensitive sounding system of multiple sensors to alter the environment in precisely the correct way to generate the proper word to come from a preprogrammed word bank into my cell phone.  Frankly, I think it would be much easier for Uncle Fred to just call me from the beyond than to use one of these programs.

My last problem is that nowhere in the programs instructions, directions or on the company’s web site does it explain what specifically is being represented by each of the sets of numbers continually changing on the screen as you use the application.  Even direct questions are answered in a very vague way.  If this data was science based, they would be readily providing this information so that users could verify and double check the data with other devices.  By the way, if you run the same program on two different devices side by side they do not generate the same words and only seldom were blips showing paranormal presences in even similar areas of the screen (only about what you would expect from random positioning on a small choice of positions) .

So, as fun as it can be to play with the ghost radar and ghost detector programs on our mobile devices, remember they are just games. Although using scientifically based sensors and equipment, the “evidence” being presented on these in not based in any type of science and should not be considered proof of hauntings, the presence of ghosts or other paranormal activity.

I Love Boobies Too....But Let's Be Honest

As you probably know October is Breast Cancer Awareness month so you will see a new wave of “I Love Boobies” bracelets and shirts and the new campaign “Boobs Are Rad”.  My mother is a breast cancer survivor and is going on 17 years cancer free this December.  My grandmother was also a breast cancer survivor for going on close to 40 years before she finally passed away of a totally unrelated illness.  I think that the efforts to make people aware of how important early detection is to the survival rate of breast cancer victims is admirable, however, I am tired of hearing how your child cannot support breast cancer awareness by wearing their I Love Boobies bracelet to school.

Remember the pink ribbon campaign to raise awareness of breast cancer?  I do. Who was wearing those ribbons?  Mostly adult women and men who knew someone with breast cancer.  Who is wearing the I Love Boobies bracelets?  Mostly children, teens and young men.  Why?   Because they want to be cool and proclaim their love of boobies in public.

You and I are not idiots so why do we pretend we are? All across America people pretend that we are fighting for our rights to freedom of speech because someone objected to the bracelets our children are wearing to school.  But I don’t agree with the rulings and I will tell you why.   I have some startling news for you: Your 14 year old son isn’t wearing his I Love Boobies bracelet to school to remind his teachers that they need to get regular breast exams to catch cancer early.  He is wearing the bracelet to tell all his friends that he really loves boobies.

If you want to fight for rights of free speech, why use lies?  Why not just say “My son loves boobies and I think he should have the right to wear this bracelet to school telling you so.”  Now, don’t go off on me yet, I TOTALLY AGREE WITH FREEDOM OF SPEECH  I am just so tired of hearing the crap about buying the bracelet and wearing it to support breast cancer.  Sorry, but if you listen to teens talk and watch some of the body language that goes along with showing their bracelets you will see what a farce this statement is.

 Don’t make a mockery of our legal system.  I agree in the rights of freedom of speech and if your son loves boobies so much he should be allowed to say he does.  Don’t pretend he is wearing that bracelet to raise our awareness of breast cancer.

Besides, in case you never bothered to check, the money you paid for that bracelet isn’t going to help breast cancer research or even to help women struggling financially with their bills while undergoing cancer treatment.   I know, the store clerk told you the proceeds were going to help breast cancer but they aren’t.  If you look at the most recent financials available for Keep A Breast, the company behind the I Love Boobies bracelets, you will find that they don’t support breast cancer research.  Their whole goal is an awareness campaign and they are raking in the funds with millions of bracelets sold. 

So, it is great that you love boobies. I have a pair I am fond of myself and want to keep.  I am even glad that you have the freedom of speech to wear these, but please stop pretending that you are wearing and buying this paraphernalia because you are supporting finding a cure for breast cancer. If all you are doing is wearing the bracelet, you aren’t doing anything except proclaiming your love of boobies.  The money from the bracelets is not going to help find that cure, or even help women undergoing breast cancer treatment with their bills. 

And yes, I agree that our teens should have freedom of speech so they should be allowed to wear their I Love Boobies bracelets to school, but don’t make a mockery of our freedoms by pretending they wear these bracelets to raise our awareness of breast cancer only.  As a nation we should not be so dumb!

And these are things we should know…..SM

The Myth of Columbus

The Myth of Columbus

It amazes me that although we claim to have one of the best education systems in the world how we can let erroneous information as large as Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America to be so long lasting and widespread.  Christopher Columbus and his crew never believed the Earth was flat.  Nor were they attempting to prove the Earth is round by sailing all the way around it!  This came from “The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus” published by Washington Irving in 1928.  Although he received much praise for his work and today is still considered one of the greatest American authors “The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus” which was presented as a biography was really more a work of fiction, a story.  His real goal for the journey was to find a newer, faster trade route to China.

Unfortunately, the myth of Columbus and trying to prove the Earth was round was included in textbooks and taught to children for generations here in the United States.  As a teacher, I have had difficulty presenting some of the material in school texts to students because of these types of myths.

It is amazing to me that more students did not question this information.  After all, don’t we also study Greek civilizations?  We know from our studies of them that they not only knew the Earth was round, but they were also able to use basic geometry to calculate approximately how large it was almost 2,000 years before Columbus was born.

Another myth about Columbus that children were taught for many generations was that Columbus discovered America.  Although this sentence can be true because “America” in this sense can mean all of this region of the World including South and Central America and the islands along its vast expanse, most teachers seemed to take it to mean “America”, the United States of America.  I know as a kid that was what I was taught by many different teachers and even parents. 

Besides, how can you discover something when it is already occupied by millions of indigenous people? Although we have no hard fast numbers on how many people occupied this previously European uncharted land, all scholarly estimates are in the millions to tens of millions.  The history books of my childhood never even came close to representing those numbers accurately.

Lastly, Columbus definitely was not the first one to land in what is now the United States because many independent tribes already inhabited this great land.  Nor was he even the first European as in the 1960’s archaeologists discovered the remains of a Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland believed to have been settled for a season around 1,000 A.D. by a group from Greenland led by Leif Ericson.

So although we all enjoy a day off to celebrate the life of Columbus, let us not continue to proliferate the myths that have developed around him.  He never thought the Earth was flat, he never landed in North America but he did have a large impact on changing the face of the Americas through jump starting exploration and colonization by Europeans of this region of the world.

These are things you should know…….S.M.