Are thoughts transcendant?

Actually, I would say that it would not be terribly difficult to design a social psychology study that would measure such a thing, i.e. people who are pessimists tend to perceive things as negative, thus would tend to notice and classify things as negative, and also repel positive people, and vice versa. In fact, I am willing to bet that such studies exist right now.

I have to admit that I'd never heard of James Randi before now. If I read that they have convincingly "debunked" various people I've heard of, then I'm certainly open to that. I heard a lot, for example, about a woman called Nina Kulagina who is said to have performed feats of psychokinesis in front of Russian scientists, but James Randi subjects the test conditions to quite a lot of criticism. I find myself asking, though, what James Randi's objectives are, and why they have an interest in this. It can be easy to take any sort of paranoral or religious phenomenon and dismiss it as "bunk." Granted, much of it probably is, but you risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Kulagina, Nina (1925-1990) This Russian psychic made a handsome career of reading while blindfolded, using the standard methods. She was also famous for making a compass needle move, and moving small objects like matchboxes, using a very fine nylon thread.In 1978, the USSR Academy of Sciences was so convinced of her powers that they declared her genuine, in spite of the simple and obvious solutions for her conjuring tricks.When the newspaper Pravda declared her to be a trickster, she sued the editors and won, largely on the basis of testimony given by Soviet parapsychologists.In films made in the 1950s by the parapsychologists, Kulagina can be seen standing with her back to a wall while experimenters place very large letters, numbers, and shapes on the wall. She holds her right hand up to her eyes for a while, then announces what is on the cards. See dermo-optical perception for an explanation of the trick.

dermo-optical perception (DOP; in Russia referred to as “bio-introscopy”) In the 1950s, this was a popular subject for sensational news stories and for parapsychology. It was claimed that some persons were able to “see” without using their eyes, scanning printed matter with their fingertips, with their noses, or even with their feet. At one point, in 1990, it was even claimed that some children in China were able to “read” bits of paper crumpled and placed in their armpits or their ears, or even by sitting on the paper!In Mexico, the Instituto Mas Vida (“More Life Institute”) took up teaching DOP to the children of wealthy patrons. Blindfolded, the children specialized in reading large-type books opened at their feet while they were seated. It seems no accident that this is the perfect position in which to peek down the sides of the blindfold. When a piece of blocking paper was inserted below the chin, the child was always struck blind.One famous practitioner of the art was a Russian psychic named Rosa Kuleshova, who, like the Chinese children, also read with her posterior. Another Russian, also famous for moving small objects with fine, invisible nylon threads, was Nina Kulagina, who can be seen in a black-and-white film made decades ago at a Leningrad laboratory, reading letter cards posted on the wall behind her. To a conjuror, the method is obvious: She brings her right hand up before her eyes, then it dips into her pocket, emerges and is casually shown empty. This suggests that she was peeking into a small mirror held in that hand, then the mirror was dumped when she'd had her glance. As if to verify this theory, she read off the cards””and even one two-digit number””in reverse order. Certainly there was no reason for her to have held her hand before her eyes, except to accomplish the trick as described.The Chinese children were found at one point to be using a one-ahead method with the crumpled papers, and since the controls were nonexistent in any case, they had no problem cheating, if they had wanted to, when their magical powers failed them.

Here's the promised explanation of the Moving Compass trick that I did last week on the popular ABC-TV program, "The View." After I performed this simple party trick, I was asked by the hosts to explain my modus operandi, but I declined to do so, asking that viewers think about the possibilities, and referring the curious to this web page. The well-known "psychic" Uri Geller, presently on a tour of the USA extolling his "healthy living" book, had demonstrated on that show how, when he and the hosts had commanded a compass pointer to deviate by saying "Move!" in a determined tone of voice, it had moved about three degrees! There was much astonishment at this fact.However, a sufficiently strong magnet, or even a piece of non-magnetized iron brought near to even the best magnetic compass will cause it to move. Very strong and quite small ceramic magnets are now easily available. Therefore, any trickster who wanted to mimic the demonstration that Mr. Geller did -- and that he has done on countless occasions, all over the world -- would merely have to introduce a magnet, and it would then be impossible to differentiate between the demonstration done by Mr. Geller, and a simple trick done by a magician!I take this occasion to clearly state that when I did it, it was done by means of a small concealed "rare earth" magnet which I brought near the compass to make it move. I used no special powers, no enchantments, no prayers, nor did I use such means when more than 50 years ago I did the stunt for the new campers who were in my charge at Camp Lagakelo, in the Canadian wilderness.My trick method is not of my invention; it has been around for a long, long, time. It was written up in children's books well over a hundred years ago, under titles like, "Magical Experiments, or Science in Play," by Arthur Good, 1890. At least one prominent performer of the past who claimed to have psychic powers apparently used trickery to cause compass needles to deflect, thus casting doubt on his validity. This was Henry Slade (1840-1905), a famous "psychic" who was enthusiastically endorsed by very prominent scientists in Europe and England despite several exposures of his tricks, until a British conjuror, J. N. Maskelyne, took him to court in 1876. Slade was convicted of fraud, fled to the USA, and died in a sanatorium. An exposure of Slade doing the compass trick appeared in the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, volume 5, 1921. It reads, in part:"[The investigator] also discovered, by using his handy little mirror [he had a small mirror in his lap, so as to see beneath the table], how Slade operated a `mysterious needle' which was supposed to move by spirit power. But every time it moved Slade's foot rose until it almost touched the under side of the table. Doubtless the needle was magnetized and there was iron in the make-up of the shoe. . . . [The investigator reported this and another of Slade's tricks, going to] prove yet more conclusively that the most celebrated [spiritualist] of his time was an all-round fraud."

LL writes:You may be aware of an organisation called Quakcwatch, which claims to "debunk" practitioners of alternative medicine. Anyone who is a critic of allopathic medicine seems to be fair game. I'm sure there are indeed plenty of quacks out there, but not all of them practice alternative medicine, and not all alternative medicine is "bunk."

...we're pretty boggled still as to how synapses firing...translate into consciousness, thoughts, or selfhood. About all we can say regarding religiously devout nuns in prayer is that certain areas of the brain are very active. More please?