I’m going to be interviewed for a University course! There’s a new online course that is being produced by the University of New Hampshire by Dr Henn, about skepticism.
Much like the course I did in Parapsychology online via the University of Edinburgh, this one features podcast interviews with people. One of which will be on me, about my studies, my travels and all the other podcasty/bloggy stuff that I get up to!
I’m very flattered -- you won’t hear many interviews of me out there, less than a handful -- the Skeptic Zone has only ever played the interviews I’ve conducted or lectures I’ve sent in (I think there’s two of those). However, you do hear me with all the lovely people that I interview for the show, on a fairly regular basis.
I’ve recently had a hand in the second ‘Best Interview I’ve Ever Done, That I Actually Didn’t Do‘! The first one, funnily enough, was conducted by the same University professor I mentioned previously, Dr Mark Henn, with Mark ‘Gravy’ Roberts. That was done for the very first Skeptic Zone podcast, recorded in New York in my hotel room -- because, as you can hear by the audio, the best person to do the interview was not me!
This second interview is pretty much the same circumstances, with Milton Mermikides as the best-qualified-and-yet-not-directly-involved-with-the-album kindly agreeing to do it for me. He certainly didn’t need any help on my part! I don’t quite know when it’s going to be released, but you can hear George Hrab refer to Milton Mermikides asking him questions about Trebuchet, in the most recent Geologic Podcast.
So -- why mention all of this now? Because I just zipped Dr Henn a question about something regarding dowsing. Daniel Loxton, as you can see in his ‘Tweet-stream’, has a bit of a challenge -- finding a good dowsing-looking stick, in the middle of a city. My first response was ‘why a stick? Why not wire?’ I remembered:
Back then I was told that it was all down to a certain twist-to-the-wire, taken from the farm where you’re looking for this hypothetical well. Not that this is the only way people dowse for water, of course.
Nor do they only dowse for water, as you might very well know! One of the interviews I did for the Token Skeptic, with Professor Bruce Hood, has still not resulted in the ADE651 or GT200 ‘bomb dowsing’ devices to be completely pulled from the market. I even remember people linking to stories about dowsing for ghosts and even an ongoing claim for the JREF million dollars about dowsing for gold. None of them, hoewever, have successfully gone past tests for their validity -- as Dr Chris French has shown in the Dawkins documentary ‘Enemies of Reason’.
Magician Derren Brown even featured a segment on the topic:
So -- I asked Dr Henn for a summary of what he has in his office, in terms of dowsing implements -- he replied:
I currently only have several sets of bent brass L-rods in the office (I have used them for water and for gold; remarkable how they always find my ring, even when my eyes are closed, so long as I know where it is). Victor probably still has the pendulums--we had a $300 set of pendulum dowsing bobs (along with their radiesthesia healing pendulums for distance or direct diagnosis and healing). Some 20-30 different pendulums, each tuned to a different substance, so I can separately dowse for gold, silver, or other stuff, or see if you have lead or arsenic poisoning, or exactly what.
We have also used maple and willow forked sticks, and I had a friend use a coat hanger to not find (well, he thought he had found it) my water pipes. A student also had a crystal pendulum her mum used to use for determining the sex of babies for pregnant women. Worked about half the time…
By the way -- YES there is someone who has created an application for the iPhone, about a year ago. “You are an excellent Dowsing master if you walk around it earnestly while you catch iPhone between a thumb and forefingers like a genuine dowsing rod easily and keep iPhone horizontally.”
And the reviews are less than… raving.
Customer Reviews:
by Johnnyerrr -- WTF is this game?
by Puppylover17 -- This is the stupidest game ever. I am so glad it didn’t cost anything don’t waste your time getting it like I did. Dumb.
by Sils213 What is this thing an how is it supposed to work?
Best of all? “I used this dowsing rod application when I was in the desert to find water. An arch nemesis left me in the middle of the desert with only a bottle of motor oil, after he threw me out of the CEO position of my multi-national corporation.”
I’ll give you more details about the online skepticism course when more news comes to hand -- thanks to all who followed this blog-post via #livetweetblogpost!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s official. There’s an app for everything.
I still remember Richard at the talent contest at TAM7, waving around a app for a ‘Level’, because he didn’t get the one with the candle to wave around like the rest of the audience was!
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