Do It Yourself

I made a post to Do It Yourself if anyone has any recommendations on caulking a shower.

X-mas Lights Must Come Down

So I'll post pictures of them in memorium.

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More Questions of the Paranormal.

Let's rephrase the airplane question to try and shoot down some more tomfoolery.

1. Your child is buried somewhere under the earth. You have your choice of forensic investigators to search for your child or a team of dowsers. Who do you choose?


2. You are given $10,000 to invest in the stock market. If the value goes up by more than the median market growth, you get to keep it. If the value goes down by more than the median market growth it goes away. You can either get advice from trained and methodical economists, or you can get advice from psychics. Who do you choose?


3. You are about to have a baby, and you need to know the sex of the child. You will be awarded a free delivery and all the post-natal care you need if the child of the sex is accurately predicted. You may get your results from a team of doctors with their fancy machinery, or you can get your results from a tarot card reader. Who do you choose?


4. You are a single parent, and you have a solitary opportunity to find a loving partner to help you raise your child. You present a list of superficially chosen candidates to a trained marriage counselor and to your astrologer. Who would you trust to find the most compatible partner for you?


5. You need to know whether your house has had someone die in it before. Do you call the city officials and have them search the appropriate records, or do you ask a medium?


6. You are hired to investigate what really caused the 9/11 attacks, and you need information regarding what really happened. One offer comes from a 9/11 conspiracy group, the other comes from Scientific American. You have all the funds you need to complete the investigation and the government is 100% complicit with any request you might have. Who would you choose to advise you?


7. Israel and Palestine have agreed to have meetings to establish a peace process. You can invite 20 people to these meetings to help pave the path to peace. How many of them will be purveyors of paranormal powers?


8. Addition: You need to create a relaxing and calming home for your mentally troubled sibling. After much debating, you could offer the services of choosing the colors and layout of your home to a trained psychologist or to a feng shui "expert". Who would you choose? Would the findings of each be confirmed by someone of the same profession? Would you expect the results of each psychologist and each feng shui "expert" to contradict one another?

The truth is that very few rational people would put any degree of trust into paranormal results unless the results themselves are not inherently important. No one would put the lives or futures of their children into the hands of tarot card readers or mystics when given a choice between those and legitimate professions. BUT, when we wonder where we left our keys, the mystic seems like a magical channel to the afterworld when they make one lucky guess out of 20.

It's time for everyone to recognize that they might as well roll a die to determine the future if the alternative is a psychic. Ghosts, mediums, astrologers, ouija boards, tarot cards, and tea leaves make great fiction, but we don't need false foreshadowing in real life. Reality should be approached with reality... not superstition.