The Discovery Channel ran a show about ghost-hunters this afternoon; I watched for a while. Serious-looking people with a truckload of fancy gear—night-vision cameras, ultra-sensitive microphones, etc.—set up shop in a haunted house, hoping to record the spooks in action.
People who do things like this always think they're being very scientific, but they never seem to act like real scientists would:
- They never set up in a known-ghostless house, to see what sort of background noise their equipment will record when no ghosts are around.
- They don't control the measurements they do take: in the show I watched, not only were people wandering around the house during the experiment, but two cats were as well. You're not going to get clean data under those circumstances.
- They assume that every unusual blip on the screen, every unusual noise on the tape, must be evidence of ghosts, and don't even consider other possibilities. In today's show, the investigators made a big deal of capturing ‘orbs’—i.e., small moving specks of light—on videotape. Most of them looked to me like houseflies (and the rest like dust motes), but they never thought of that.
(There's no such thing as the paranormal. If it happens, it's normal; if it doesn't happen, it's fantasy, or fraud.)
A letter from Volo Broadband in today's newspaper, reminding everyone that there's a third broadband service in Champaign. According to their web site (volo.net), they provide “up to 5mbps” (i.e., usually less), plus all the usual network stuff, for a $300 setup fee and $28/month.
A faster internet connection, for only $6/month more than EarthLink? Tempting, except for the enormous setup fee.
