Merry Christmas

Wise men still seek Him....

Haunted Spaces, Haunted Places, What's Really Going On?

A paper I wrote for a class:


Have you ever thought you heard strange "things that go bump in the night"? Have you ever thought you may have even actually seen a ghost ? If so, then you are among the roughly 20% of Americans recently polled who said that they believed they had seen a ghost. (CBS). Why do some places seem to be susceptible to reports of hauntings, while other places which seem similar to haunted places do not seem to generate such reports? Why do some people say that they see ghosts, while other people in the same place at the same time seem oblivious to such things? Although it might appear that there are many ways those questions might be answered, the truth is that there are only three answers; the people who see such things may be deluded; the people may be misunderstanding something that has an identifiable scientific cause; or they may have actually seen a ghost.

When speaking of ghosts the term "haunted" means a place where people say they believe they have encountered paranormal activity. Although tales of hauntings have been reported in modern buildings; most hauntings of structures seem to occur in older buildings, but hauntings have even been reported in the outdoors also. America has numerous reputedly haunted places, but Great Britain is the first place many people think of when thinking of haunted places. The Tower of London and Hampton Court palace, both in England, are probably two of the most well known places reputed to be haunted.
The Tower of London was started by William the Conquerer in 1078 and is today considered possibly the most haunted building in Britain. Built as both a royal residence and as a jail for important prisoners, the people who have lived and died there are like a "who's who" of British history. A few of the reported hauntings seem to be based on the following tales;
A memorial on Tower Green remembers all those unfortunate souls who have been executed here over the centuries. Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey are both said to return to the vicinity, whilst the ghost of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury returns here in a dramatic and alarming fashion. At the age of 72 she became an unwitting and undeserving target for Henry the VIII's petty vengeance. Her son, Cardinal Pole, had vilified the King's claim as head of the Church of England. But he was safely in France so Henry had his mother brought to the block on 27th May 1541. When told by the executioner to kneel, the spirited old lady refused. "So should traitors do and I am none." she sneered. The executioner raised his axe, took a swing at her and then chased the screaming Countess around the scaffold where he literally hacked her to death. The shameful spectacle has been repeated several times on the anniversary of her death, as her screaming phantom continues to be chased throughout eternity by a ghostly executioner.

The Bloody Tower, the very name of which conjures up all manner of gruesome images, is home to the most poignant shades that drift through this dreadful fortress. When Edward IV died suddenly in April 1483, his twelve year old son was destined to succeed him as Edward V. However, before his coronation could take place, both he and his younger brother, Richard, had been declared illegitimate by parliament and it was their uncle, the Duke of Gloucester who ascended the throne as Richard III. The boys meanwhile, had been sent to the Tower of London, ostensibly in preparation for Edward's coronation, and were often seen playing happily around the grounds.
But then, around June 1483, they mysteriously vanished, and were never seen alive again.
It was always assumed that they had been murdered on Richard's instructions and their
bodies buried somewhere within the grounds of the Tower. When two skeletons were uncovered beneath a staircase of the White Tower in 1674, they were presumed to be the remains of the two little princes and afforded royal burial in Westminster Abbey. The whimpering wraiths of the two children, dressed in white nightgowns, and clutching each other in terror have frequently been seen in the dimly lit rooms of their imprisonment. Witnesses are moved to pity and long to reach out and console the pathetic specters. But should they do so, the troubling revenants back slowly against the wall and fade into the fabric. (Haunted- Britain)

Sometimes even the employees at the Tower report strange occurrences;

Guards passing from the chapel into the gallery containing Henry VIII's armour have spoken of a terrible crushing sensation that suddenly descends upon them, but which lifts the moment they stagger shaking from the room. One guard patrolling through here in the early hours of a stormy winter morning got a sudden and unnerving sensation that a black cloak had been flung over his head. As he struggled, the cloak was seized from behind by his phantom assailant and pulled tight around his throat. When he arrived at the guard room, after freeing himself, gasping and choking, the marks on his neck bore vivid testimony to his brush with the unseen horror. (London Walks)


Hampton Court palace was purchased and extensively remodeled by Cardinal Woolesy between 1515 and 1521 making Hampton Court into one of the most beautiful and luxurious palaces in England. The Cardinal did not get to enjoy it for long though, because King Henry VIII coveted it and to maintain the king's good will, Woolsey was orced to give it to him. During the course of Henry's ownership two things happened which are said to be the source of at least some of theparanormal phenomena reported there.

Jane Seymour, the third and favorite wife of Henry VIII, died at Hampton Court twelve days after giving birth to her son, who later became Edward VI. She is often seen along Clock Court or in the Silver Stick Gallery, wearing a white robe and carrying a candle.
The most intriguing story at Hampton Court belongs to Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII. Her infidelity exposed, Catherine attempted to plead for mercy from her husband; but before she could reach him, she was apprehended by guards and dragged screaming through what is now known as the Haunted Gallery. To this day, people still claim to hear her terrified cries and see her apparition as she runs along the gallery at Hampton Court. ( Imboden)

Perhaps one of the most interesting possibly paranormal events that has occurred at Hampton Court was in 2003 when a closed circuit television camera caught an image of someone opening and closing a door, and the staff maintained that it was not any of them. The film appears to show a robed figure opening and closing a double door. (Appendix A) But was it a ghost, or a hoax? There is no way to know.

What might be going on in the Tower of London and in Hampton Court palace to make people believe that they have seen apparitions? Why do people think they are seeing ghosts? Certainly if there are such things as ghosts, and if they are connected with unexpected or violent deaths, then the gruesome execution of Margaret Pole at the Tower of London or the plight of doomed Catherine Howard who was dragged through the gallery at Hampton Court screaming for mercy from Henry VIII certainly might engender their spirits to remain nearby.

Let's reiterate that there are only three explanations for paranormal experiences; the witness was deluded for whatever reason; the witness misinterpreted something that was an explainable phenomena, or there actually was paranormal event. First of all, how might the witnesses be deluded? Both the Tower of London and Hampton Court have reputations as being places where sightings of "ghostly" events have been reported. Many people who go to these places are to some degree expecting to see something unusual and people who are already looking for a ghost when they encounter any sort of unusual occurrence may ascribe that occurrence to a supernatural cause. This does not necessarily mean that these people are lying about what they think they have seen, although that is a possibility. Humans will attempt to see a pattern in almost any occurrence, even where no pattern exists. This is sometimes illustrated in the occasional news stories of people seeing the face of someone or the image of some thing in the light and dark pattern on their toast, on a tree or wall, or the supposed "face" seen on photographs of the surface of Mars. Some sightings of ghosts may be explained by this phenomenon; diffuse patterns of light that are erroneously perceived as being a pattern of some sort of apparition. This tendency to see some sort of pattern in what are actually random occurrences is called the perception of randomness. There is research that indicates this tendency is innate in humans. Dr. Peter Brugger, a professor of neurology at the University of Zurich, says about the perception of randomness;
The second mechanism that I will discuss is the pervasive tendency of human beings to see order in random configurations. "Randomness" is as impossible to be experienced directly as it is impossible to be proven mathematically (Chaitin, 1975). To a large extent, randomness is in the eye of the beholder, and the bias of our perceptual-cognitive system to perceive order rather than disorder can betray the layman's senses as much as it can influence scientists' interpretation of noisy data ….the continuum from creative detection of real patterns at one end, to the "hypercreative" interpretation of patterns in "noise" at the other end. The ability to associate, and especially the tendency to prefer "remote" over "close" associations, is at the heart of creative, paranormal and delusional thinking ( Brugger)

Furthermore, Dr. Brugger's work indicates that there is a difference in the brains of
people who are highly creative from the brains of people in the more creatively average population. His research seems to show that one factor which is correlated with highly
creative people appears to be present not only in those who are highly creative, but also is
present in people who say they believe in paranormal phenomena, and in people with
acute schizophrenia, as compared to the rest of the population. Brugger says;

I will discuss the role of the right hemisphere in establishing associations between distantly connected concepts and events, and briefly summarize the experimental evidence for a right hemisphere processing bias in highly creative subjects, believers in paranormal phenomena, and people with acute schizophrenia. (Brugger)

This certainly does not mean people who see paranormal things are schizophrenic, but it does mean that there seems to be some sort of a correlation between the ability to view the world in a flexible creative manner with the perception of having experienced paranormal phenomena. This immediately brings to mind the question are these people just more likely to attribute anything and everything they see to paranormal causes, or do they actually perceive paranormal things that others can not? Unfortunately, the research does not specifically address that possibility. There is no way to know how many reports of paranormal activity may be from people who are just deluded by what they have seen, as compared to those who, because of the brain difference, can actually see things most others can not..

The second category of sightings is those by people who have actually experienced something, but misunderstand the cause of their perceptions and mistakenly attribute the event to the paranormal. There are several interesting ideas currently being put forth to scientifically explain "haunted" occurrences. Variation in the electromagnetic field has been shown to have an effect on the perception of paranormal activity. According to a paper by Wiseman et al :
Measuring of the local magnetic eld activity (i.e. all fluctuations between the range 0 to 3 kHz, whether of natural or artficial origins) was carried out because a relatively large amount of research has suggested a strong relationship between alleged hauntings and magnetic elds within this range. This work dates back to the mid 1980s, when Persinger (1985) speculated that changes in geomagnetic elds (created e.g. by tectonic stresses in the earth’s crust) could stimulate the brain’s temporal lobes and produce many of the subjective experiences associated with hauntings. Others have extended these ideas to account for physical manifestations including, for example, cold spots, electrical effects, popping sounds, etc. (see e.g. Houran &
Lange, 1998). In a preliminary test of this theory, Gearhart and Persinger (1986) examined large case collections of alleged hauntings, and reported finding signicant relationships between the time of onset of unusual phenomena and sudden increases in global geomagnetic activity (for a critique of this and related work, see Rutowski (1984) and Wilkinson & Gauld (1993)). More recent support has come from several
on-site investigations of alleged hauntings that have reported unusual local magnetic activity (for an overview, see Roll & Persinger, 2001). Some of this work has noted that the effect seems to be associated with high levels of magnetic activity (Halgreen, Walter, Cherlow, & Cranall, 1978: Konig, Fraser, & Powell, 1981), whilst other researchers have related the effect more to variance in magnetic elds (see e.g. Persinger, 1985)….. the presence of certain types of local magnetic elds may impact upon a range of psychological, psycho physiological and health-related variables (Korinevskaya, Kholodov, & Korinevskii, 1993; Voustianiouk & Kaufmann, 2000). A controlled laboratory study by Stevens (2001), for instance, showed psychological
and physiological reactions to a changing magnetic eld of comparable magnitude to those measured in our two experimental venues. Even subtle psychological and physiological changes occurring in a context that might suggest paranormal events (e.g. occurring to a person who believes in ghosts, occurring in a location with a haunted reputation) may lead to that person making a ‘paranormal’ attribution to what they might otherwise interpret as an ambiguous stimulus. And it has been shown that experimentally applied weak magnetic elds can lead to more powerful and compelling experiences, such
as a sensed presence, that are directly comparable to the kinds of experiences that are sponta-
neously reported (e.g. Persinger, 2001).

Such findings suggest that magnetic elds, along with a range of other variables, together may account for some haunting experiences.

This study was conducted at two sites in England, one of them Hampton Court Palace, and this may explain many of the reputed sightings at the palace. It is noteworthy that this study indicates magnetic elds can produce sound, and cold spots, two hallmarks of paranormal activity, and factors which are repeatedly mentioned in witness accounts of sightings at Hampton Court.

There also is some fascinating research that indicates that low frequency sound may also play an integral part in many reports of hauntings. This type of sound, called infrasound, is below 20 Hz, the commonly accepted low threshold of human hearing, so it is not audible to humans. One of the most interesting examples of the effects of infrasound occurred to a design engineer named Vic Tandy in the 1990's, and was the impetus for him to further investigate the phenomena. In a paper on the subject Dr. Tandy said;
Three people worked in a laboratory made from two garages back to back and about 10ft wide and 30 ft in length. One end was closed off by doors normally kept closed and the other end had a window, the other side of which was a cleaning bay. The company’s business was in the design of anaesthetic or intensive-care, life
support equipment so there was always some piece of equipment wheezing away in a corner. When V.T. heard suggestions that the lab was haunted this was the first thing he thought could be behind it and paid little attention. One morning however none of the equipment was turned on and V.T. arrived just as the cleaner was leaving obviously distressed that she had seen something. As a hard nosed engineer V.T. put it down to the wild cats, wild other furry things, moving pressure hoses (as the pressure fluctuates, flexible hoses sometimes move) or some sort of lighting effect As time went on V.T. noticed one or two other odd events. There was a feeling of depression, occasionally a cold shiver, and on one occasion a colleague sitting at the
desk turned to say something to V.T. thinking he was by his side. The colleague was surprised when V.T. was found to be at the other end of the room. There was a growing level of discomfort but the workers were all busy and paid it little attention. That is until V.T. was working on his own one night after everyone else had left. As he sat at the desk writing he began to feel increasingly uncomfortable. He was sweating but cold and the feeling of depression was noticeable. The cats were moving around and the groans and creaks from what was now a deserted factory were "spooky", but there was also something else. It was as though something was in the room with V.T. There was no way into the lab without walking past the desk where V.T. was working. He looked around and even checked the gas bottles to be sure there was not a leak into the room. There were oxygen and carbon dioxide bottles and occasionally the staff would work with anaesthetic agents, all of which could cause all sorts of problems if handled inappropriately. All of these checked out fine so V.T. went to get a cup of coffee and returned to the desk. As he was writing he became aware that he was being watched, and a figure slowly emerged to his left. It was indistinct and on the periphery of his vision but it moved as V.T. would expect a person to. The apparition was grey and made no sound. The hair was standing up on V.T.’s neck and there was a distinct chill in the room. As V.T. recalls, "It would not be unreasonable to suggest I was terrified". V.T. was unable to see any detail and finally built up the courage to turn and face the thing. As he turned the apparition faded and disappeared. There was absolutely no evidence to support what he had seen
so he decided he must be cracking up and went home. The following day V.T. was entering a fencing competition and needed to cut a thread onto the tang of a spare foil blade so that he could attach the handle. He had all the tools necessary but it was so much easier to use the engineer’s bench vice in the lab to hold the blade that he went in early to cut the thread. It was only a five minute job so he put the blade in the vice and went in search of a drop of oil to help things along. As he returned, the free end of the blade was frantically vibrating up and down. Combining this with his experience from the previous night he once again felt an immediate twinge of fright. However, vibrating pieces of metal were more familiar to him than apparitions so he decided to experiment. If the foil blade was being vibrated it was receiving energy which must have been varying in intensity at a rate equal to the resonant frequency of the blade. Energy of the type just described is usually referred to as sound. There was a lot of background noise but there could also be low frequency sound or infrasound which V.T. could not hear. As it happens sound behaves fairly predictably in long thin tubes such as organ pipes and ex-garages joined end to end so V.T. started his experiment. He placed the foil blade in a drill vice and slid it along the floor. Interestingly the vibration got bigger until the blade was level with the desk (half way down the room) after the desk it reduced in amplitude, stopping altogether at the far end of the lab. V.T. and his colleagues were sharing their lab with a low frequency standing wave! The energy in the wave peaked in the centre of the room indicating that there was half a complete cycle. It is important to understand that what we call sound is caused by variation in the pressure of the air around us. It is represented graphically as a wave. If someone were to shout at you the sound wave will travel from them to you transmitted by the air between you both, i.e. it is a travelling wave. However the wave sharing our lab was of just the right frequency to be completely reflected back by the walls at each end, so it was not going anywhere, hence it was a standing wave. In effect the wave was folded back on itself reinforcing the peak energy in the centre of the room. ….where is the energy coming from? …that was answered very quickly when V.T. discussed the problem with the works’ foreman who told him that they had installed a new fan in the extraction system for the cleaning room at the end of the lab. We switched off the fan and the standing wave went away.

The experience of Dr Tandy (referred to as VT in the quote) is exactly what many people say they experience at places they believe are haunted, from the first feelings of unease, to feelings of growing distress and fear, through the feeling of being watched right up to seeing a figure which disappears when looked at directly; all these are the elements of a classic report of a paranormal experience. But is there is any evidence that infrasonic sound has been known to have those same effects on human beings? In his paper Dr. Tandy went on to address that question.

Tables 5-12 of Kroemer (1994) on p. 288, indicate that the resonant frequencies of body parts are; Head (2-20 Hz causing general discomfort), Eyeballs (1-100Hz mostly above 8 Hz and strongly 20-70Hz effect difficulty in seeing). However, different sources give different resonant frequencies for the eye itself. The resonant frequency is the natural frequency of an object, the one at which it needs the minimum input of energy to vibrate. As you can see from above, any frequency above 8 Hz will have an effect and some sources quote 40Hz. Most interestingly, a NASA technical report mentions a resonant frequency for the eye as 18 Hz (NASA Technical Report 19770013810). If this were the case then the eyeball would be vibrating which would cause a serious "smearing"of vision. It would not seem unreasonable to see dark shadowy forms caused by something as innocent as the corner of V.T.’s spectacles.

This indicates that it is very possible that many reports of sightings of ghostly figures may be caused by vibrations in the eyeballs of witness, causing them to see things that are not actually there. Significantly, Dr. Tandy also said "The resonant frequency of one person’s body parts would also be different from another so standing wave resonances may affect one individual but not another." This may explain why only some people perceive "haunted" or paranormal events, yet others in the very same place at the same time see nothing out of the ordinary.


Finally, there is the possibility that there may actually be something paranormal going on, andfor whatever reason some of us are better at sensing such things than others. Exactly what is being seen though, is the question. In Vancouver, British Columbia, there is an organization called Vancouver Paranormal which checks reports of paranormal happenings in the Vancouver area. This group investigates these occurrences with still pictures and video cameras. The group has placed a number of photographs on their site with what appear to be various sorts of anomalies in the pictures. There are two sets of photos from their website gallery which are particularly interesting because they seem to clearly show "something" in some of the photographs. (Appendices B and C ) In the picture taken in the cemetery it appears as if some amorphous light colored shape is in one photo, but not in another photo taken as a "control" at approximately the same time and place. In the photograph taken in the church the control photo shows some sort of a shadow behind the pulpit area, but even more surprising is that when the photo is computer brightened, several other artifacts appear in the photo. There is at present no explanation for any of the figures that appear in either photo. The photographer, Jan, who is in the group of investigators; had this to say about whether there are ghosts;

I am convinced that "something" is going on but whether or not it's a paranormalexperience is really up in the air. We have been to locations here in Vancouver that some have said were haunted. Spirits were seen to bemoving about and objects moved with no apparent cause. I have, forexample, seen a sleeping cat pushed across a kitchen counter until itwas pushed right onto the floor. At one time, believing I was talkingto a member of our group during an outdoor training, yelled at thisperson (bear in mind it was twilight and the lighting was not great)anyway I yelled at it and told it to go to the other side (meaning goto the other side of the cemetery) and this person took two steps andvanished. Three others with me saw the same thing. Technically to usethe phraseology we saw an apparition. (Jan)

If there are indeed ghosts, are they the actual spirits of people who have passed away, or are ghosts really demons or evil spirits masquerading as spirits of the departed? There is of course no way to be sure. Traditional Christian belief is that once you die, you are judged, so whatever these apparitions may be, according to Christian teaching they are not spirits of the actual deceased . If they are spirits of some sort, they may be demonic spirits for some reason taking the appearance of humans.

Of the three explanations for what people see when they report paranormal experiences; it is likely that the vast majority fall into the first two categories, either a delusion of some sort, or a mistaking of normal explainable occurrences for something paranormal. After accounting for the first two explanations though; it is those cases, however few they may be, which still remain, that will leave us wondering.


Appendix A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFf0Ntdv2Jc









Appendix B
photo by Vancouver Paranormal



Appendix C
photo by Vancouver Paranormal



Annotated Works Cited
Brugger, Peter. "From Haunted Brain To Haunted Science:
A Cognitive Neuroscience View of Paranormal and Pseudoscientific Thought". University of Southern California, San Diego. June 3 2007.
<http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:nljQo6DjGYJ:philosophy.ucsd.edu/%20%20%20%20Faculty/HauntedBrain.pdf+haunted+places>.

This site contains research by Dr. Peter Brugger, of the Dept. of Neurology at University Hospital, Zurich Switzerland, and in part describes research into the cognitive functions of the brain as regards perception of patterns in random occurrences and the correlation of degrees of creative ability with perception of paranormal phenomena and schizophrenia.


CBS News Poll: Majority Believe In Ghosts. October 30 2005 "22 Percent of Americans
Say They've Seen or Felt a Ghost." June 4, 2007.
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/29/opinion/polls/main994766.shtml >
This site is on CBS news, and discusses a 2005 poll of Americans and their
perceptions of paranormal phenomena.


Imboden, Durant. Europe for Visitors. "Revel in haunted tales at London's historic
palaces" June 3, 2007.
<http://europeforvisitors.com/europe/news/historic-royal-palaces-ghosts.htm>

This site is a travel guide for European destinations. It has a few stories of haunted palaces in London.


Haunted Britain. Haunted London. "The Tower of London" June 3, 2007
<http://www.haunted-britain.com/Haunted_London.htm >
This site discusses haunted places in Britain, specifically in London, and gives
anecdotes about reputed hauntings.

Richard Jones. London Walks. "True Ghost Stories From the Tower of London's White
Tower". June 4, 2007
<http://www.london-walks.co.uk/49/true-ghost-stories-from-t.shtml >
This site features a walking tour of places in London, and stories of those places being haunted.

Annotated Works Cited, continued


Jan. Vancouver Paranormal. Webmistress. vancouverparanormal@gmail.com.
June 9, 2007
<http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/ghosts/phantomphive/main.html>

Jan is the webmistress at Vancouver Paranormal and responded to my email asking questions about her experiences with paranormal phenomena.

Tandy, Vic, Tony Lawrence . " The Ghost in the Machine " Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research. Vol.62, No 851 April 1998. June 4, 2007.
<http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:RmG7TyBIlxQJ:www.ghostexperiment.co.uk/ghost-in-machine.pdf+infrasound+haunting>

This site contains a scholarly paper by Dr. Tandy telling of his own experience with a "haunted lab", how he determined what was really happening, and how he rectified the situation.


Vancouver Paranormal Picture Gallery. June9, 2007.
<http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/ghosts/phantomphive/pictures.html>

This site contains pictures taken by members of Vancouver Paranormal on various investigations of places reputed to be haunted.


Wiseman, Richard , Caroline Watt, Paul Stevens, Emma Greening, Ciarán O’Keeffe.
"An Investigation into Alleged ‘Hauntings" British Journal of Psychology (2003), 94, 195–211. June 6, 2007.
< http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:e-v8XO_OoTkJ:phoenix.herts.ac.uk/ghost/BJP_Wiseman_paper.pdf+%22An+Investigation+into+Alleged+%E2%80%98Hauntings%22+British+Journal+of+Psychology+(2003)

This scholarly paper discusses the results of research conducted by the writers on possible electromagnetic disturbances in places reputed to be haunted.


YouTube. " Famous Hampton Ghost". May 8, 2007. June 7, 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFf0Ntdv2Jc
This site has videos that people upload to it. This particular video of what is reputed to be a ghost came from a security camera at Hampton Court.

Beauty is Only Skin Deep, but Stupid Goes Right to the Bone...

Beauty is Only Skin Deep, But Stupid Goes Right to the Bone
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57327

Was it nerves, pressure or just a plain ol' case of "the lights are on, but no one's home"?
Many today are questioning the state of American education after Lauren Caitlin Upton, Miss Teen South Carolina, suffered an apparent and oh-so unfortunate "extreme blonde moment" during Friday night's NBC broadcast of the Miss Teen USA Pageant in Pasadena, Calif.

Miss Teen South Carolina Lauren Caitlin Upton fumbles through an answer during Friday's Miss Teen USA Pageant on NBC..
When asked about the reason why some Americans could not locate the U.S. on a world map, Upton provided an answer that some call moronic and hilarious, while others say it's painful to watch and typical for young people in America today.
The 18-year-old Upton, who hails from Lexington, S.C., made it to the final five round where she was competing against contestants from Colorado, West Virginia, North Carolina and New Jersey.
As part of the competition, Upton was asked what host Mario Lopez called a "thought-provoking final question" selected at random.
Upton selected judge Aimee Teegarden, an actress from NBC's "Friday Night Lights," who asked her this question: "Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the United States on a world map. Why do you think this is?"
The South Carolina beauty gave this strange, grammarless response:
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.
Throughout the response, host Lopez stood alongside Upton, and appeared to be stifling a chuckle, reminiscent of comedian Harvey Korman's inability to control his own laughter when appearing in skits with Tim Conway on "the Carol Burnett Show" of the 1970s.
One WND reader, Bruce Schmelz of Colorado, said, "Unless you haven't noticed, social studies classes are no longer taught in public schools. ... Any child that shows up for roll call can expect to pass the grade level he or she is in. Ability has been replaced with 'feeling good' about one's self image. Why can't many Americans find any country on a map? Could it be that they have been brainwashed by those that control the airwaves and print media? Miss South Carolina isn't the only idiot walking the streets. Have you ever watched Jay Leno's 'Jaywalking' segment on 'the Tonight Show?' Miss South Carolina? Sure she's pretty; but if she isn't a product of the No Child Left Behind doctrine, I'll eat my hat."
Upton's answer has sparked plenty of other reaction on the Internet, especially after it was posted on the video-sharing site YouTube.
Comments on messageboards range from ridicule to heartfelt empathy, including:
Wow ... what the hell was that? P.S. what's the difference between a regular American and a U.S. American?
As a U.S. American, I am offended!
She probably can't find the U.S. on a map ... such as, such as
Yay for dumb blonde Americans! It's idiots like this that make me ashamed to admit I am American, too.
All you have to do to win is talk about Iraq and starving children in Africa no matter what they ask you!
My God, I got stupider just listening to that.
I've never been more embarrassed for someone ... ouch it hurts.
Well, in her defense, she's just talking about the U.S. Americans, and not the American Americans in the United States.
You can say whatever you want, but it did answer the question. Just hear between the lines. *lack of education, lack of education*
If anyone should be embarrassed by this woman and her lack of ability to communicate in rudimentary fashion and know the difference between Americans and U.S. Americans, it would be her teachers. I would be ashamed to admit that I was one of her teachers.
All those who had any part of teaching this poor child should be called on the carpet for in her we see the failings of the public schools. If teachers were held accountable for what a student did or did not learn, perhaps then we could have hope.
OK, first of all, she's hot. So it doesn't matter how smart she is. Second of all, I would like to see all of you criticizing her get in front of millions of viewers and answer a tough question. She probably had the toughest question of them all. She'll end up making more money than most of us anyways, so I say great job, South Carolina.
Although the response did seem confusing and not thought through, maybe she is just intimidated by speaking in public. When was the last time you had to speak in public in front of an audience of thousands and broadcast live to an audience of millions? Some people can't even publicly speak in a classroom of 30 people.
I think it went something more like this:
Ditzthought: OMG I couldn't find the U.S. on a map if I tried either, so I better come up with something that sounds like I pay attention to the world outside pageants.
Ditzspeak: stammer stammer stammer SOUTH AFRICA stammer stammer UNITED STATES stammer IRAQ stammer EDUCATION stammer stammer SOUTH AFRICA UNITED STATES stammer stammer stammer stammer IRAQ!
Ditzthought: I think it worked.
Sure, she may have been nervous, but c'mon. This question was such a fluff question and could have been answered many ways. How hard is it to say SOMETHING coherent on it? She gives blondes a bad name, lol.

What can you say about this? If you watched the video you can see she is clueless. This woman could get lost on a leash and wouldn't notice!

Whatever happened to rigorous science?

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/environment/story.html?id=c6a32614-f906-4597-993d-f181196a6d71&k=0


Climate change: The Deniers
National PostPublished: Friday, February 09, 2007
The Post's series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science. Here is the series so far:
Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part IWarming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part IIThe hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part IIIPolar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IVThe original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part VThe sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VIWill the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VIIThe limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIIILook to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IXLimited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part XEnd the chill -- The Deniers Part XIClouded research -- The Deniers Part XIIAllegre's second thoughts -- The Deniers XIIIThe heat's in the sun -- The Deniers XIV



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=440869&in_page_id=1965&in_a_source=

Global warming: the bogus religion of our age by PROF. RICHARD LINDZEN -

) The world is heading for environmental catastrophe — or so we are constantly being told by the politicians and self-appointed experts.
They warn us that unless we take drastic action, the earth will soon be devastated by climate change and global warming.
Entire species will be lost, crops will be obliterated, floods and famine will sweep across the planet, and western economies will slide into depression.
Tonight, Channel 4 will broadcast The Great Global Warming Swindle, which suggests that the whole subject has become such a political hot potato that other explanations for climate change are not being properly examined.
Scroll down for more...

Polar bears cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe. But is it due to global warming?
Certainly, there have been many sweeping predictions of global ruin, few more emphatic than the report from Sir Nicholas Stern into the economics of climate change, which states with an air of unchallengeable conviction: 'The scientific evidence is now overwhelming. Climate change presents very serious global risks and it demands an urgent global response.'
His study, commissioned by the Government in July 2005 and published amid much Whitehall hype in October 2006, seemed to carry all the more weight because Stern is one of the most senior civil servants in Britain, the head of the Government's economic service.
His conclusions appeared to be based on powerful scientific authority, since his team of 20 or so officials had drawn on a wide range of published papers and data.
Tony Blair has described it as the most important document produced during his ten years as Prime Minister, and urged that the Stern blueprint, with its calls for more regulation and taxation, be adopted in full.
'The disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future, but in our lifetimes,' said Blair, who went on to claim that the 'the world faces nothing more serious, more urgent and more demanding of its leadership than climate change.'
All this has helped put the Stern report at the very forefront of the debate. The central theme of it is that there is a near universal consensus of opinion within the scientific community about the dangers of climate change. But this is not true.
There is no such unanimity among scientists.
Throughout the 550 pages of his document, Stern continually strikes a confident note, as if there were no dispute about the issues.
Completely divorced from scientific reality
Yet this self-assured stance is completely divorced from scientific reality. It is an inconvenient truth for Stern and his political allies that there is, in fact, precious little hard evidence to back up his sweeping claims.
In a revealing recent comment, Stern admitted that when he was appointed by the Government, he 'had an idea what the greenhouse effect was but wasn't really sure'.
This lack of understanding of science shines through every chapter of his report.
He is guilty of misreading the data, of distorting the evidence to suit his political masters' dogma, of throwing numbers about with reckless abandon, of promoting alarmism in place of rational discussion, and of reinventing climate history.
There are fundamental misconceptions throughout the document. He seems to think that climate prediction is a mature science stretching back to the early 19th century, hence the confident tone science stretching back to the early century, hence the confident tone of his pronouncements.
But in reality climate prediction is a relatively modern science, which has emerged only in recent decades thanks partly to the emergence of computers.
So there are no easy certainties about the past — or the future.
Stern states boldly that the scale of global warming has been unprecedented for at least the past 1,000 years, but he cannot possibly be sure on this point because data from previous centuries is unreliable.
At most, we have a 50-year span of accurate measurements. The only genuine global records of temperature come from weather balloons, since 1958, and from microwave sounding units, since 1978.
What they indicate is a very gently warming trend, nothing approaching the apocalyptic vision of Sir Nicholas.
Moreover, this minor trend could have easily have been caused by irregularities such as volcanic eruptions or El Nino events (major fluctuations in ocean temperatures in the Pacific which affect climate).
Stern's report 'ignores the evidence that does not suit his ideology'
In support of his gloomy thesis, Stern, like all global warming enthusiasts, ignores the evidence that does not suit his ideology. He glosses over the fact that, according to a host of historical accounts, Europe was far warmer in the Middle Ages than it is today, or that the 17th century was much colder, prompting what was known as 'The Little Ice Age', when the Thames was often frozen over for months at a time.
Stern also refers to 'significant melting of and an acceleration of ice floes' near the coast of Greenland because of global warming.
Yet several reputable scientific studies have shown that the mass of the Greenland ice sheet is actually expanding, while Stern also fails to note that the temperature of Greenland is now lower than it was in 1940 and little changed from the first measurements in the 1780s.
Environmentalists are fond of jerking heartstrings with pictures of polar bears struggling on supposedly melting icebergs, but it is estimated that there are now 22,000 polar bears compared with 5,000 in 1940.
Nor can we be sure that any long-term changes in our climate are due to mankind. There are any number of other possibilities and the programme tonight examines the possibility that the sun's radiation is primarily responsible for climate change.
Indeed, the climate can fluctuate without any external cause at all — something again ignored by Stern, who wants only to indulge in the fashionable notion that western capitalism is entirely to blame for every drought and disaster.
Further, Stern takes no account of the capacity of mankind to adapt to, and improve his, environment.
There can be little dispute that, more than a century after the peak of the 19th-century industrial revolution, Britain is a cleaner, healthier, less polluted country than it was in the late Victorian age, when smog, disease and slums were rife.
Genuine science is about gathering evidence and testing the veracity of theories, not cheerleading for a particular ideology.
That is what is so disturbing about the current debate on global warming. Healthy scepticism, which should be at the heart of all scientific inquiry, is treated with contempt.
Far from being the powerful masterpiece that Blair claimed, Stern's report is manifestly incompetent.
It is another dodgy dossier, where assertions are presented as facts and data is twisted to suit a political purpose.
I agree with the economist critic who noted: 'If a student of mine were to hand in this report as a masters thesis, perhaps if I were in a good mood, I would give him D for diligence, but more likely I would give him an F for fail.' We are shifting away from science and into the realm of religious fanaticism, where the followers of the creed, brimming with self-righteous fury, believe that they are in possession of a higher truth.
Like a religion, environmentalism is suffused with hatred for the material world and again, like religion, it requires devotion rather than intellectual rigour from its adherents.
It is intolerant of dissent; those who question the message of doom are regarded as heretics, or 'climate change deniers', to use green parlance.
And, just as in many religions, the route to personal salvation lies in the performance of superstitious rituals, such as changing a lightbulb or arranging for a tree to be planted after every plane journey.
What is so tragic is the way that this dubious ideology has achieved such dominance in our public life.
Politicians love the green agenda, of course, because it means more control, more regulation, more taxes, more summits, and more opportunities for displays of self-important zeal.
The tragedy is that the likes of Sir Nicholas Stern are using bogus science to push forward this agenda.
Richard Lindzen is Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I thought one of the most basic tenets of science was to consider the facts and search for the truth, regardless of where the search takes us? I thought scientists were supposed to be objective, to be able to set aside their pre-conceived notions and objectively look at the facts?

Evidently this is no longer the case, because much like the "theory" of evolution ( which is in fact no longer taught as a 'theory' but as a known and unanimously accepted fact, which it is not) global warming and the complicity of man in creating it, are taught as incontrovertible fact. And much like a religous dogma, it is "this way or the highway". There is no admission that there is some disagreement among experts on the subject. On the contrary, anyone who dares to challenge the popular belief of global warming is branded the scientific equivalent of a heretic, and suffers the scientific equivalent of The Inquisition; they and their heresy are immediately excommunicated and they are metaphorically burned at the scientific stake by having their positions terminated and their credentials belittled.

So much for 21st century scientific method....

"there was no threat"

What could happen from a man who did not appear to be a threat.


http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2007-03-06T233505Z_01_N06439574_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-LOSANGELES.xml&src=rss&rpc=22


Wired Iraqi man triggers scare at L.A. airport


Tue Mar 6, 2007 6:35pm ET


LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An Iraqi national wearing wires and concealing a magnet inside his rectum triggered a security scare at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday but officials said he posed no apparent threat.

The man, identified by law enforcement officials as Fadhel al-Maliki, 35, set off an alarm during passenger screening at the airport early on Tuesday morning.

A police bomb squad was called to examine what was deemed a suspicious item found during a body cavity search of the man. Local media reports said a magnet was found in his rectum.

"He was secreting these items in a body cavity and that was a great concern because there were also some electric wires associated with that body cavity," Larry Fetters, security director for the Transportation Security Administration at the airport, told reporters.

Maliki, 35, who lives in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was preparing to board a US Airways flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.

The flight left without Maliki but with his luggage aboard. It made an unscheduled landing in Las Vegas, where the plane was thoroughly searched but nothing was found, officials said.

Passengers were not evacuated and no flights were disrupted by the incident at Terminal One at Los Angeles airport.

"There never was a threat," Fetter said.

He said police and the FBI were called in from "an abundance of caution" because Maliki was "so bizarre in his behavior."

Maliki, who had a U.S. green card, was being questioned by immigration officials about his immigration status.


© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved


Let me get this stright, a 30 something, Middle Eastern man attempts to board a plane with electric wires attached to a magnetic device of some sort, secreted "where the sun don't shine", is acting "so bizarre in his behavior" that the F.B.I. is called, but, according to the director of Transportation Security Administration at the LA airport "There never was a threat." ???
Well, that is certainly a relief to know. Evidently this must happen all the time. Note that the plane took off on time, with the luggage of the man who "was no threat " onboard. Note also that the plane made an unscheduled stop in Las Vegas to be searched because of these actions by a man "who was no threat".

I wonder how many, if any, of the passengers on that flight were aware that the luggage of the man detained was still onboard their plane, and had they known this, how many would've stayed on that plane?

Furthermore, I wonder if the family of the security director had been scheduled to be on board that flight, would he have sent them off on that flight, because of course we know the man "was no threat"?

Stupid is as stupid does,but if we can't even acknowledge that this was some level of threat, then things are much worse than I'd thought. : (

Hate to Spoil Your Fun.....

You can put away the garlic. The principle of geometric progression has just debunked the myth of vampires (Image: iStockphoto)
Who needs ghostbusters when you've got Newton, says a scientist who has used physics and maths to poke holes in the way Hollywood depicts ghosts and vampires. In a paper, published recently on the physics website arXiv, theoretical physicist Professor Costas Efthimiou of the University of Central Florida shows that when it comes to things supernatural, the figures just don't add up.For instance, the ability to walk through walls is a common talent of celluloid ghosts.But Newton's laws of physics suggest that if a ghost can walk it shouldn't be able to pass through walls, say Efthimiou and Cornell University postgraduate student Sohan Gandhi.Newton says a body at rest will remain at rest until it's acted on by an external force and for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.So in order to walk, we apply a backward force on the floor with our feet, propelling the feet up and us forwards.But if a ghost can walk through walls, it must be "material-less", the authors argue, and incapable of exerting force.By the same token, a ghost that can walk through walls should also sink through the floor, and a ghost that can walk should be bouncing off the walls it tries to pass through."The depiction of ghosts walking contradicts the precept that ghosts are material-less," they write.Ghostly chillsSharp drops in temperature are also associated with the arrival of a ghost.But the paper says physics, which suggests that a sense of cold is correlated more to the rate at which heat is transferred from bodies to the environment than actual temperature, can provide an explanation.
What do you mean Newton says we can't walk through walls? (Image: iStockphoto)"It has become almost a Hollywood cliché that the entrance of a ghostly presence be foreshadowed by a sudden and overwhelming chill," they write."This feature of supposed ghost sightings lends itself naturally to physical explanation."Efthimiou and Gandhi say when a warm object is placed next to a cold object, energy flows from the warm body to the cooler body, cooling the warm body.In a room with a high window or a door with a gap, the cool air from outside displaces warm air inside, creating a system of heat cycles and eddies.The effect is increased because humans are more sensitive to rapid changes in temperature even if the absolute change is small.A 2001 UK investigation of the famous Haunted Gallery at Hampton Court, by the University of Hertfordshire's Dr Richard Wiseman, found that hidden doors were letting in draughts.This produced a combination of air currents that caused temperatures to plummet up to 2°C in some parts, the paper says.Blood suckers?Efthimiou and Gandhi also use the mathematical principle of geometric progression to rule out the existence of vampires.They argue it would take just two and a half years for vampires to wipe out the entire human race from the day the first one appeared, based on the myth that vampires turn their victims into other vampires by sucking their blood.If vampires feed once a month, the great grandaddy of all vampires would have killed one human and produced one vampire in the first month. So in total there would be two vampires and one less human, or a tally of vampires 2, humans -1.By the next month, the 2 vampires would kill 2 humans, and so on. After n months there would be 2 x 2 x 2 ... x 2 = 2n, or a geometric progression with ratio 2."The vampire population increases geometrically and the human population decreases geometrically," they say.Using the principle of reductio ad absurdum, they conclude that vampires can't exist as their existence contradicts the existence of humans.Professor Alan Carey, dean of the Mathematical Sciences Institute at the Australian National University, says the paper successfully debunks the depictions of the supernatural in the movies."They poke holes in the clichés and mistakes that are made, and that's not too hard to do," he says.

I hate to spoil your fun, but this article is really interesting. It brings up some very good points, and with Halloween on the way I thought it might be a good read.

Time to profile

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3890

Time to Profile Airline Passengers?
by Daniel PipesNew York SunAugust 22, 2006
[NY Sun title: "Calls for Racial Profiling Increase After London Plot"]
The debate over profiling airline passengers revived after the thwarted Islamist plot to bomb 10 airplanes in London on Aug. 10. The sad fact is, through inertia, denial, cowardice, and political correctness, Western airport security services — with the notable exception of Israel's — search primarily for the implements of terrorism, while largely ignoring passengers.
Although there has been some progress since the attacks of September 11, 2001, most involves the scrutiny of all travelers' actions. For example, in 2003, the Transportation Security Administration, charged with protecting American airplanes, launched a passenger profiling system known as Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, now operating in twelve U.S. airports.
Adopting techniques used by the U.S. Customs Service and by Israeli airport security, SPOT is "the antidote to racial profiling," TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis, said. It discerns, she said, "extremely high levels of stress, fear and deception" through "behavioral pattern recognition." SPOT agents observe passengers moving about the airport, with TSA agents looking for such physical symptoms as sweating, rigid posture, and clenched fists. A screener then engages "selectees" in conversation and asks unexpected questions, looking at body language for signs of unnatural responses. Most selectees are immediately released, but about one-fifth are interviewed by the police.
After the London plot, the British authorities instituted a crash-course in SPOT, learning directly from their American counterparts.
Building on this approach, an Israeli machine, called Cogito, uses algorithms, artificial-intelligence software, and polygraph principles to discern passengers with "hostile intent." In trial runs with control groups, the machine incorrectly fingered 8% of innocent travelers as potential threats and let 15% of the role-acting terrorists slip through.
While methods that target the whole population have general value — SPOT did discover passengers with forged visas, fake IDs, stolen airline tickets, and various forms of contraband — its utility for counterterrorism is dubious. Terrorists trained to answer questions convincingly, avoid sweating, and control stress should easily be able to evade the system.
The airport disruptions following the thwarted London plot prompted much discussion about the need to focus on the source of Islamist terrorism and to profile Muslims. In the words of a Wall Street Journal editorial, "a return to any kind of normalcy in travel is going to require that airport security do a better job of separating high-risk passengers from unlikely threats."
This argument is gaining momentum. A recent poll found that 55% of Britons support passenger profiling that takes into account "background or appearance," with only 29% against. Lord Stevens, the former chief of Scotland Yard, has endorsed focusing on young Muslim men. The Guardian reports that "some EU countries, particularly France and the Netherlands, want to … introduce explicit checks on Muslim travelers."
One politician in Wisconsin and two in New York State came out in favor of similar profiling. A Fox News anchor, Bill O'Reilly, has suggested that Muslim passengers ages 16 to 45 "all should be spoken with." Mike Gallagher, one of the most popular American radio talk-show hosts, has said he wants "a Muslim-only [passenger] line" at airports. In a column for the Evening Bulletin, Robert Sandler proposed putting "Muslims on one plane and put the rest of us on a different one."
The British Department for Transport reportedly is seeking to introduce passenger profiling that includes taking religious background into account. News from British airports indicates that this has already begun – sometimes even by fellow passengers.
Three conclusions emerge from this discussion. First, because Islamist terrorists are all Muslims, there does need to be a focus on Muslims. Second, such notions as "Muslim-only lines" at airports are infeasible; rather, intelligence must drive efforts to root out Muslims with an Islamist agenda.
Third, the chances of Muslim-focused profiling being widely implemented remain negligible. As the same Wall Street Journal editorial notes, "the fact that we may have come within a whisker of losing 3,000 lives over the Atlantic still isn't preventing political correctness from getting in the way of smarter security."
Noting the limited impact that losing 3,000 lives had in 2001 and building on my "education by murder" hypothesis — that people wake up to the problem of radical Islam only when blood is flowing in the streets — I predict that effective profiling will only come into effect when many more Western lives, say 100,000, have been lost.

I keep saying this, I do not understand why this is not approached like any other crime problem, figure out the characteristics most likely to be commonly held by the most likely suspects, and search for people who fit that profile. And the number one factor that these terrorists have in common is their religion, they are Muslim. Race, gender, those are only slightly useful profiling tools as terrorists seek to find female murderers or murderers of different races to try to escape detection. There may be Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Bahai, and Shinto terrorists, but if there are, they seem to be ineffective. The danger seems to be overwhelmingly from Muslim terrorists, and for that reason it would be wise for that factor to be the primary characteristic considered when travelers are scrutinized. Since profiling on the basis of religion is 'politically incorrect" there is little likelihood it will be done. That is, until, as Mr. Pipes has said, thousands more Westerners are dead and more blood is flowing in the streets.

If airport screening was applied to everyday life.....

The Face of Stupid

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1216282006


Ever Wonder What Stupid Looks Like? Here it is Is.














Robert McGuire still carries the marks of the adder bite on his right armPicture: Colin Templeton

A HILLWALKER who nearly died after he was bitten by an adder revealed that he picked up two of the snakes so his brother could take a photo of them with a mobile phone.
Robert McGuire was bitten last Saturday while holidaying on the Isle of Arran.
The 44-year-old suffered a severe allergic reaction to the bites and had to be taken to hospital by air ambulance from a remote area of Goat Fell. He spent six days receiving treatment.
Speaking for the first time since he was released from hospital, Mr McGuire described the moment he was bitten.
"I was out for a walk with my brother Steve and his kids. We were going off to have a picnic at a local beauty spot.
"The next minute, one of the kids ran up and said there was a snake in the grass. I just thought it was a grass snake.
"I just bent down to pick it up so my brother could take a photo with his mobile phone. Suddenly a massive black snake just appeared, so I picked that up too. It was then that the second one just sank his fangs right into my hand and then the other one did the same to my other hand."
Mr McGuire told The Scotsman that he had not been particularly concerned about picking up the reptiles as he did not believe there were venomous snakes in Scotland.
Throwing the adders away, the combined effect of their venom began to take effect almost immediately as Mr McGuire's body started to go into anaphylactic shock, a violent allergic reaction which can result in death.
"There was blood just gushing out. I screamed and my brother ran off to get help," he said. "Everyone else was screaming and panicking too.
"Within a few minutes my face started to tingle and tongue started to swell up. Twenty minutes later, I couldn't talk right and couldn't breathe, then my face started to blow up and my hands started swelling. I realised I'd been poisoned."
As the venom coursed through his body, Mr McGuire described how it 'went into revolt', and he began to vomit repeatedly and sweat copiously: "I was sick everywhere, everything in my body just left me. It was terrible.
"My legs went, I couldn't walk, they were just like rubber. I was terrified, I thought that was it, I'd never see my family again."
Adders are Britain's only venomous snakes, but severe reactions to their bites are rare. Fewer than ten people are thought to have died from an adder bite in the UK during the past 50 years.
Mr McGuire said that his final recollections before passing out were of being injected repeatedly with hypodermic needles by the paramedics.
It was the following day before he regained consciousness in hospital, where he discovered that his whole body and head were swollen almost beyond recognition.
"I woke up in hospital, and I kept biting my tongue because it was that big. My lips looked like Mick Jagger's, they were so swollen.
"I felt dead weak and all bloated. I was like Hulk Hogan, my arms were really blown up.
"I couldn't talk and I kept wanting to touch my face because it was all swollen. I couldn't use my hands, they were useless."
"The doctor said I was lucky to be alive. He had told my family while I was being treated that they should expect the worst."
Horrified by his own appearance, Mr McGuire refused to let his family see him while he was in hospital.
He is now back at his home in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, where he lives with his wife Maureen, 37, and his six children: Kerry, 19, Chris, 17, Nicole, 11, Stephanie, ten, Robert, five, and two-year-old Greg.
This article: http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1216282006
Last updated: 18-Aug-06 00:53 BST


I would say that this is the dumbest thing I have heard of in a while....I mean, this is cosmically 'uberstupid' . I don't care whether he knew, or if there are, poisonous snakes in Britain, snakes bite! Why on earth would you want to pick one up ? And for a silly picture? And the man's brother must also suffer from being in the shallow end of the gene pool since the article makes no mention of him trying to dissuade his stupid brother from doing the stunt. Fortunately the man survived, but obviously he could have died for his idiocy.

We can only hope that the children of these two idiots inherited their intelligence genes from their mothers.

Let's Get Real.....

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/15292574.htm
Posted on Thu, Aug. 17, 2006
Michael Smerconish
Skip the grannies: The case for airport profiling
FIVE YEARSremoved from 9/11, it's time to admit that profiling is not a dirty word.
Profiling is street smarts by any other name. It's the common-sensical recognition that while America is not threatened by an entire community, she is under siege by a certain element of an identifiable group, and law enforcement needs to target its resources accordingly.
The failure to profile is a dereliction of duty on the part of an administration that has otherwise been willing to incur the wrath of civil libertarians as it aggressively fights the war on terror.
Only last week, in the aftermath of the thwarted attack emanating from the U.K., did the president appear to take a step in the direction of profiling when at last, he acknowledged with specificity those who threaten our survival:
"This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom."
Hopefully now there will be a long overdue confrontation of the Emperor Has No Clothes charade whereby law enforcement is mandated to ignore the naked barbarism of radical Islam. The arrest of two dozen in connection with the latest, failed plan should change that. After all, they are the same-old, same-old. I refer to Messrs. Ali, Ali, Ali, Hussain, Hussain, Hussain, Islam, Kayani, Khan, Khan, Kha-tib, Patel, Rauf, Saddique, Sarwar, Savant, Tariq, Uddin and Zaman. To a person they are Muslim men.
Where some would highlight the slight differences among them - class, upbringing and whether they were raised Muslim or converted to Islam - I see the commonalities. Equally significant is who they are not.
They are not Americans. They are not urban blacks. They are not suburban whites. They are not Jews. They are not Hispanics. They are not members of the U.S. military, women, senior citizens or young kids. At a minimum, it is time to profile by exclusion.
Some are still standing in the way. Take Paul Stephenson, the Scotland Yard deputy commissioner, who, on the day the plot was made known, said:
"What I would want to say, and you would expect me to say about this, is this is not about communities. This is about criminals. This is about murderers, people who want to commit mass murder. This is not about anything to do with any particular community."
Wrong, Deputy Stephenson, I would not expect you to say that. And while this is not about a particular community, it most certainly is about people within a particular community.
More appropriate from London were the observations of Max Hastings in the Daily Mail. Hastings correctly noted, "In every other area of criminal activity, we accept that some people are more deserving than others of suspicion."
He pointed out that police do not question women when seeking a rapist, don't round up short West Indians when pursuing a 6-foot white burglar, and don't arrest an elderly widow for car theft when security cameras captured an Asian male.
For years I have been advocating that the United States use this kind of street smarts in the war against radical Islam. I did not begin with any particular knowledge of the subject. To the contrary, whatever understanding I've obtained sprang from a common occurrence in connection with a routine flight.
In March 2004, my family of six was heading to Florida for spring break. At a ticket counter in the Atlantic City airport, my 8-year-old son was singled out for "secondary" or random screening.
I knew it was absurd, but I didn't complain, figuring it was the small price we all have to pay post 9/11. Common sense told me it was a terrible waste of precious resources.
Soon after my son's screening, Dr. Condoleezza Rice testified in front of the 9/11 Commission. Commissioner John Lehman floored me when he asked Dr. Rice this:
"Were you aware that it was the policy, and I believe it remains the policy today, to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that is discriminatory?"
I wondered what in the world he was talking about with his quota question. So I called Secretary Lehman and asked him. He told me that airline executives had said as much in testimony before the 9/11 Commission.
Lehman faulted political correctness and said "no one approves of racial profiling. That is not the issue, but the fact is that Norwegian women are not, and 85-year-old ladies with aluminum walkers are not, the source of the terrorist threat. And the fact is, our enemy is the violent Islamic extremism. And so the overwhelming number of people that one needs to worry about are young Arab males."
Lehman was dead-on. When I reported what Secretary Lehman told me in the Daily News, I incurred the wrath of the Department of Transportation. It said I was "wildly incorrect" in my reporting, where I had simply repeated the words of a 9/11 commissioner.
Then I had a chance encounter with Herb Kelleher, the legendary, ballsy founder of Southwest Airlines. He confirmed for me some of what Lehman had raised with Dr. Rice. So I kept digging. Later I learned the specific basis for Lehman's question regarding a quota system.
Edmond Soliday, former head of security for United Airlines, testified before the 9/11 Commission that "a visitor from the Justice Department who told me that if I had more than three people of the same ethnic origin in line for additional screening, our system would be shut down as discriminatory."
Soliday clarified his comments to investigative author Paul Sperry when he said that it was actually the assistant general counsel of the DOT. Soliday said the man "told me that if I had more than three people of the same ethnic origin in line for additional screening, our system would be shut down as discriminatory."
The DOT viewed any human profiling as discriminatory, even if it is based on statistical probability. As a result, Soliday said that United "loaded up the system with randoms to make it mathematically impossible to get three ethnics in line at the same time," including "soccer moms, Girl Scouts, and even little old ladies with walkers."
And there you have it, the origin of a PC policy that has hindered our ability to protect the skies on 9/11 and through today.
What I have learned since 9/11 about the absence of profiling in America's war on Islamic fascism has filled two books that I have authored. Since 9/11 we have seen the Madrid train bombings, the Bali nightclub bombings, London bombings on 7/7 and the most recent threat of a terror attack in the U.K.
My thesis remains unchanged. We are threatened by individuals who largely have race, gender, religion, ethnicity and appearance in common. To the extent we do not take that information into account as we seek to prevent a repeat of 9/11, we are still flying blind.
The president has finally acknowledged that some in a particular community seek to kill us. Hopefully his comments will set the tone for what is to come because his administration needs a mind-set change.
I say it's nice to philosophize about American peace, love and understanding, but right now we have a more important agenda. Like winning the war against radical Islam so that we are still around to engage in such dialogue when the dust settles.
Michael Smerconish is the author of "Flying Blind: How Political Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety Post 9/11" and "Muzzled: From T-Ball to Terrorism - True Stories that Should Be Fiction."

I still can not believe that the government keeps giving the same level of scrutiny to all people. Almost a sort of comical "equal opportunity harassment" of everyone, except there is nothing comical about a failure to discover who are the terrorists among us. The absurdity of this even handed scrutiny procedure is highlighted as Mr. Smerconish suggests, by looking at the way police investigate potential criminals. Police determine a profile for whom they suspect may have committed a crime in question. That does not mean necessarily that there is no suspicion of any one else, but it does mean that based on their investigation, they suspect a person, or persons, who fit that profile is most likely to have been involved in the crime.

Why isn't this 'Criminal Justice 101' precept applied to finding terrorists? Not all Muslims are terrorists. Let me say that again, NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS! Unfortunately though, the overwhelming, vast majority of people associated with terrorism recently are Muslims. They SAY they are Muslims and are doing the terror acts for their religion, so I take them at their word on this. Therefore, shouldn't our finite resources focus on the most likely people to commit terrorism at this point, Muslim males between the ages of 17 and 40? It is foolhardy to disregard the most salient factor in common amongst most of the terrorists at this time, their religion, ( Islam) and pretend that all religious groups have an equal propensity for terrorism. Until we become less concerned about being "politically correct" in our views of religions and more concerned with discovering terrorists intent on slaughtering as many of us as they can, we are only playing at a deadly game. A game which we will, sooner or later, lose.

Fish Spears Man

http://www.theroyalgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060725/NEWS/107250168

News
Tuesday, August 8, 2006 Last modified: July 24. 2006 11:34PMSpeared fisherman recovering after surgery

By Sam Strangeways
An angler who narrowly escaped death after he was speared by a giant blue marlin and knocked out of his boat was still recovering in hospital last night – but his father said he expected him to return to sea as soon as he could.Ian Card was left with a fist-sized chest wound and underwent emergency surgery after the hooked creature struck him during an international sports fishing tournament on Saturday morning.His mother Elizabeth told The Royal Gazette yesterday that he was still very uncomfortable and was not accepting many visitors at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.His father Alan, who was captaining the boat while Ian acted as mate, said he could see no reason why the 32-year-old would stop fishing following the freak accident during the Sea Horse Anglers’ Club Bill Fish Tournament. “I would be most amazed if it had that effect,” said Mr. Card, 58, of Somerset.“It’s like falling off a horse; you get right back on. I don’t know how long it will take him to be well enough. He’s in pain and he’s a little bit groggy but other than that he seems to be okay.”The marlin – estimated to weigh 800 pounds and to measure 14 feet in length ( my emphasis) – was cut loose from angler Leslie Spanswick’s line after Ian was pulled to safety from the sea. “We have to go out there and retrieve the lure we lost,” joked Mr. Card, who operates his 40-foot charter fishing vessel Challenger with his son.Edwin Hawn, from Texas, the winner of the Sea Horse tournament – who bagged a 532-lb blue marlin and won the top prize of $78,000 on Sunday – has offered to donate some of his prize money to Ian to help him while he cannot work aboard Challenger. Meanwhile, another competitor picked up a special prize from contest organisers for rushing to help the Cards.Tournament producer Dan Jacobs said American physician Peter Watson, who was fishing on his boat, the Anita Jean, immediately offered his services when he heard the distress call on the radio.“He stopped fishing and ran in as fast as his boat would go to provide any assistance,” said Mr. Jacobs. “That’s an incredible act of sportsmanship and care for his fellow man.”Mr. Jacobs presented Dr. Watson, from North Carolina, with a marine chronometer watch and limited edition art print at the tournament prize giving at Square One, Hamilton, on Sunday evening.The tournament attracted 30 boats, many from the US. It forms part of the Bermuda Triple Crown Bill Fish Championship 2006.

Talk about a weird item....if I hadn't seen this in several news reports from reputable sources I'd have thought it was a hoax. I had no idea that these fish were so large, nor that they are capable of spearing a human. Mr. Card is lucky to have survived the attack.
And as far as I am concerned, one more good reason to stay away from the ocean.

Multicultural Mishmash Alive and Well in Britain Too

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-2292741,00.html
Schools told it's no longer necessary to teach right from wrongBy David Charter, Chief Political Correspondent
Join the debate
SCHOOLS would no longer be required to teach children the difference between right and wrong under plans to revise the core aims of the National Curriculum.
NI_MPU('middle'); Instead, under a new wording that reflects a world of relative rather than absolute values, teachers would be asked to encourage pupils to develop “secure values and beliefs”.
The draft also purges references to promoting leadership skills and deletes the requirement to teach children about Britain’s cultural heritage.
Ministers have asked for the curriculum’s aims to be slimmed down to give schools more flexibility in the way they teach pupils aged 11 to 14.
Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), set out the proposed new aims in a letter to Ruth Kelly, when she was the Education Secretary.
The present aims for Stage 3 pupils state: “The school curriculum should pass on enduring values. It should develop principles for distinguishing between right and wrong.”
The QCA’s proposals will see these phrases replaced to simply say that pupils should “have secure values and beliefs”.
The existing aims state that the curriculum should develop children’s “ability to relate to others and work for the common good”. The proposed changes would remove all references to “the common good”.
The requirement to teach Britain’s “cultural heritage” will also be removed. The present version states: “The school curriculum should contribute to the development of pupils’ sense of identity through knowledge and understanding of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages of Britain’s diverse society.”
The proposals say that individuals should be helped to “understand different cultures and traditions and have a strong sense of their own place in the world”.
References to developing leadership in pupils have also been removed. One of the present aims is to give pupils “the opportunity to become creative, innovative, enterprising and capable of leadership”. This is due to be replaced by the aim of ensuring that pupils “are enterprising”.
Professor Alan Smithers, of the University of Buckingham’s centre for education and employment research, said: “The idea that they think it is appropriate to dispense with right and wrong is a bit alarming.”
Teachers’ leaders said that they did not need to be told to teach children to distinguish between right and wrong.
A spokeswoman for the National Union of Teachers said: “Teachers always resented being told that one of the aims of the school was to teach the difference between right and wrong. That is inherent in the way teachers operate. Removing it from the National Curriculum will make no difference.”
But she insisted that it was important for children to understand about their cultural heritage. “To remove that requirement can undermine children’s feelings of security in the country where they are living,” she said.
A spokesman for the QCA said: “The proposed new wording of the curriculum aims is a draft which will be consulted on formally next year as part of the ongoing review of Key Stage 3. One aim of the review is that there should be more flexibility and personalisation that focuses on practical advice for teachers.
NI_MPU('middle'); “The new wording states clearly that young people should become ‘responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society’. It also identifies the need for young people who challenge injustice, are committed to human rights and strive to live peaceably with others.”
IN A QUANDARY
In citizenship classes, teachers ask pupils to discuss issues such as whether it is ever right to pass on information received in confidence and situations such as what they would do if they saw someone writing graffiti on a bus; heard friends talking about stealing; found a wallet full of cash; or saw people fighting
The current wording states that the curriculum should pass on enduring values, develop pupils’ ability to relate to others and to work for the common good and help them “to become creative, innovative, enterprising and capable of leadership”
The proposed changes remove references to “the common good”. Teachers should simply ensure that pupils have secure values and beliefs and a strong sense of their place in the world. Rather than develop leadership skills, the pupils should be enterprising


Oh brother, multicultural, values neutral education is in Britain too! I can not believe that anyone who spouts such nonsense would want to be quoted, much less that any society would take such idiocy seriously. " Instead, under a new wording that reflects a world of relative rather than absolute values, teachers would be asked to encourage pupils to develop “secure values and beliefs”. What? A world of relative values? In case you missed the real meaning because the carefully chosen phrase obscured it, that means there is no right and wrong. There is no intrinsic morality to life, right and wrong is only whatever each of us thinks it is. I am sure the men who planned and carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and on the London subway all felt "secure values and beliefs", problem is, their beliefs were to kill as many Western "unbelieving infidels" as they could. Under this proposed new system for teaching in British schools, how could we even have any problem with what the radical *Islamists have done, are doing, or hope to do, they have secure values and beliefs so what more could be said by us? This is not some sort of goofy "tolerance" but madness! If we do not inculcate in our children that there is a moral right and wrong that transcends what is currently fashionable or trendy, we are sowing the seeds for destruction of our society. The article goes on to say that the proposed change also "deletes the requirement to teach children about Britain’s cultural heritage". Where then are British children supposed to learn about British culture and society? Nowhere it would seem. I believe this is a plan to encourage a new trend towards equating all beliefs, cultures and societies as being equally acceptable. In some circles currently it is popular to profess that all values are equally valid, and all cultures equally valid too. No distinctions whatsoever. To deprive British children of the knowledge of their culture is to virtually insure that they will feel no need to support nor, should it come to that, defend it when it eventually comes under attack. If all cultures are equally valid and valuable, then why bother supporting Britsh culture over, say, Chinese culture, cannibal culture, or more to the point, over Islamic culture in Britain? Should there ever be a clash between cultures, why bother to stand up for British culture over another 'equally valid' culture ? There would be no reason to bother to resist should Brtish culture come under attack. Unfortunately for the West, adversarial cultures do not have that same vapid viewpoint of their cultures. They have some of those aforementioned "secure values and beliefs", and want to install their culture instead of Brtish culture, in Britain. And this proposed rule change will only make it easier for them to do so.