The Future is Google

Or rather the future of TV is Google TV:



Speaking of Google, if you happened to try Googling something today or yesterday you would have discovered that it is the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, and a click on the Google logo would have got you a free game!

A very funny man

I have mentioned in passing before that I have long been a fan of Bill Hicks. He died back in 1994 but he continues to be as popular now as when he was alive. Indeed, last week saw the release of a new biopic about him, called American: The Bill Hicks Story. It includes stories from those who knew him, interspersed with archive footage of his performances. Looks good.

Sure you can watch the clips of Bill on YouTube but going to see this movie at the cinema is going to be the closest you're ever likely to get to seeing the guy live on stage. And then some.

Derren 'n' Vyacheslav

It turns out it was Men with X-Ray Eyes (as opposed to the singular Man). Although it didn't appear as though anyone had X-Ray eyes. The focus of last night's Derren Brown Investigates was the Bronnikov Method, pioneered by a chap called Vyacheslav Bronnikov.

Among the claims made by Bronnikov is that his 'method' can help people see through blindfolds and can even help blind people to see (including those who don't have eyes!). And level 1 of the course costs only 700 Euros. All very intriguing, and all very dodgy-sounding.

The confrontation between Derren 'n' Vyacheslav ended with our man requesting that Mr Bronnikov tell him what was inside a sealed box, something that should be straightforward for a man with X-Ray eyes. Bronnikov declined. Which left us wondering what was inside the box!

My guess is that it was a small yellow plastic duck... on a chain.

The Man With X-Ray Eyes

The second of three documentaries in the Derren Brown Investigates series is broadcast tonight on Channel 4 at 10pm. I wonder if the man in the title will be watching...?

A very significant buttock

We all use psychological 'short cuts' from time to time in order to make sense of the world around us. These short cuts can affect the way we behave and interact with other people. For example, we often rely on stereotypes to to make judgements about other people. These are usually simplistic over-generalisations about members of certain groups.

You might think that suppressing our stereotypes might prevent them from influencing our behaviour. Not so. In a study by psychologists back in the 1990s, participants were shown a picture of a ‘skinhead’ and were asked to spend five minutes writing about a typical day in this man’s life. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the first condition (the control condition) they were simply allowed to write their account with no further instruction. However, in the second, experimental, condition participants were instructed to try to not allow any stereotypical preconceptions they might have to influence their account. That is, they were asked to suppress any stereotypical thoughts.

Not surprisingly, the accounts of the man’s day produced by the control group tended to be more ‘stereotypical’ in content than the accounts produced by the participants who had been asked to suppress their stereotypes. But this wasn’t what the researchers were really interested in…

After the participants had completed their task they were taken into another room to meet the man in the photograph. When they got there, the man had apparently nipped out to go to the toilet, and had left his denim jacket and bag on the end chair of a row of eight chairs. So, the experimenter asked the participant to sit and wait in one of the remaining chairs. The researchers were interested in which chair each participant chose to sit in. And guess what, they found a difference between the two conditions. The people who had been instructed to suppress any stereotypical thoughts tended, on average, to sit almost one chair further away from the man’s chair at the end of the row than did the people who had not been asked to suppress such thoughts!

Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., Milne, A. B. & Jetten, J. (1994). Out of mind but back in sight: Stereotypes on the rebound. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 808–817.

Great face for radio

Off the back of the Derren 'n' Joe show on Monday, I was asked to take part in a local BBC radio show this morning to discuss whether psychics are real or fake...


You can listen along by clicking here (it's in the first hour). I even have an impromptu go at a bit of psychometry... with interesting results!

Derren 'n' Joe

Last night's opening documentary as part of Derren Brown's new series, Derren Brown Investigates featured 'psychic medium' Joe Power, described as 'The Man Who Sees Dead People' (which just so happens to also be the title of Joe's book). One of Joe's claims includes contacting the spirit of John Lennon.

The premise of the programme was that Derren would spend five days with Joe to discover if he really does see dead people, or whether his abilities might be better explained in some other way.

None too surprisingly, Derren suspected that the latter was more likely: A combination of cold reading, warm reading, and a little bit of hot reading thrown in for good measure. Of course, Joe protested, and even accused Derren of... well, I'm not sure what he was accusing him of.

From the moment Derren entered Joe's rather humble looking flat and described it as 'gorgeous', you knew they weren't going to get on. And I suspect that Derren had already made up his mind as to Joe's authenticity. In the end, Joe came across as either deluded in his belief he could contact the dead or an outright fraud. Or a combination of the two.

The most (only?) impressive reading came when Joe seemed to give fairly accurate information to a woman as part of a one-to-one reading in her own house. Even DB seemed intrigued. It only emerged some weeks after filming that she was actually the next door neighbour of Joe's sister! What are the odds...

Update: The programme is now available at 4OD here. Oh, and we have a new Prime Minister.

Stay hungry. Stay foolish

I love it when you're searching the web for one thing and it brings you in to contact with stuff you weren't looking for. When I retrieved the James Randi talk at TED the other day, I came across another talk by Steve Jobs.

As if you didn't know, Mr Jobs is the head honcho, number one, top dog, big cheese at Apple. Below is the address he gave at the commencement ceremony at Stanford University back in 2005. 'Tis well worth a quarter of an hour of your time.

Stay lucky

Well, whaddya know... it turns out that keeping your fingers crossed does help after all!

A study to be published in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science reveals that 'activating a superstition' by for example, saying "keep your fingers crossed" can have a real effect and enhance subsequent task performance.

The German researchers had female university students engage in a 'motor dexterity task', which involved getting 36 small balls into 36 small holes by tilting a perspex cube backwards and forwards (you know the kind of thing... those infuriating little puzzles that require a delicate hand!). The students were separated into three conditions. In one condition, just as they were about to start the task, the researcher said the German equivalent of "I keep my fingers crossed!" (which in fact is apparently "I press the thumbs for you!"... but in German). The other two conditions were control conditions. The students in the experimental condition went on to complete the task significantly faster than those in either of the control conditions!

Damisch, L., Stoberock, B. & Mussweiler, T. (in press). Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance. Psychological Science.

James Randi at TED

After yesterday's brief stray into politics (don't know what happened there...), back to the important matter at hand. Below is another clip of my soon-to-be-nemesis, Mr Randi. This was filmed at TED back in 2007, but was only posted online a little over a week ago.

Who should I vote for?

With Election day looming, I thought I might actually start to pay some interest in the soon-to-be-changing political landscape. Up until 'Bigotgate' last week I was doing a fairly good job of ignoring the whole thing, but now even I am starting to pay attention.

Due to our move south, we may not get our polling cards in time, but if they do arrive before Thursday I might just get my arse (not ass) out and vote. Question is, who should I vote for? Luckily for the apolitical-minded like me there are websites like whoshouldyouvotefor.com. All you need to do is indicate whether you agree or disagree with a handful of policy-related statements to see which of the political parties you side with. As you can see from my results below, it would seem I'll be voting for the Green Party (which kinda surprised me...!).

Take the Who Should You Vote For? England quiz

Green				26
Liberal Democrat				10
UK Independence	-6
Conservative	-18
Labour	-20

Your recommendation: Green

So who will you vote for?

Update: Nice article in today's Independent about the media's response to Bigotgate, written by Armando Ianucci (the man behind The Thick of It).

Derren Brown Investigates

Been looking forward to these documentaries since the beginning of last year when I knew they were being made. The first one is to be shown on Channel 4 on May 10th.



One of the subjects under investigation is medium Joe Power. A little over a year ago, when putting these documentaries together, the producers of the show had hoped to conduct a controlled test of Joe's alleged abilities. The testing was to take place at the Psychology Department at Liverpool Hope University, so I was looking forward to meeting both Derren and Joe. Alas, it was not to be... after days of working out the logistics of the testing arrangements, Joe pulled out the night before the testing was due to be done.

Perhaps he would have been more motivated to take part if there had been a million dollars on offer?

Had a lovely day yesterday! And what a view we had... from the Little Chef. Not just any Little Chef mind, this was the one featured on the Channel 4 documentaries Big Chef Takes On Little Chef in which top chef Heston Blumenthal was brought in to revitalise the ailing Little Chef chain of roadside restaurants.

You guessed it. We didn't make it up in any balloon, we didn't even make it to Glastonbury. Our first phone call to confirm if the launch was going ahead left us hopeful of a possible take off as the recorded message instructed us to call back an hour later. Winds were a little high at the launch site but there was an outside chance these would drop by the time we were due to launch. We were already on our way, so we stopped off at the aforementioned Little Chef to sample some Heston-inspired roadside grub. Lovely.

As soon as the recorded message an hour later began with the words "I'm sorry but..." we knew it wasn't to be fourth time lucky for us. We'd need to go re-book and try again a fifth time.

Oh well. Given we had a babysitter (thank you Sandra and Keith!) we thought we would still make the most of it. We continued to drive through the countryside and discovered a beautiful little town called Bradford-on-Avon not too far from Bath and found a fantastic B&B for the night. A lovely evening stroll in the evening sunshine before a spot of tapas. Who needs a hot-air balloon?

Fourth time lucky?

For Valentine's Day Rachel booked a balloon flight for us (aaahhh...).

That was Valentine's Day 2008 and we still haven't yet been up in a balloon! Not for want of trying... so far we have booked three times but the weather has stopped us from taking off. In fact, we have not even got so far as even seeing a balloon, as the procedure involves you calling a number two hours before going to the launch site to make sure the launch is going ahead. Each time we have been told by the recorded message that it is too windy and that we should re-book. Personally, I'm not convinced Mr Branson even owns any balloons! (What about the balloon in the picture on the right I hear you ask... two words: "photo" and "shop".)

Today will be our fourth attempt. I'm a little more hopeful as the weather over the past few days has been glorious (although today is a little cloudy), and now that we are 'dahn saaf' we are due to launch from near Glastonbury. Our previous attempts were up in the Lake District (beautiful scenery but balloon-unfriendly weather).

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've heard that works.

Righteous Indignation

Ahead of Thursday's talk at the Merseyside Skeptics Society I was interviewed for this week's Righteous Indignation Podcast. The whole podcast lasts a little over an hour and includes plenty of discussion about the importance of critical thinking when it comes to making sense of the various claims that are often made about the paranormal and so on.

The interview with me is towards the end, and starts at around 45 minutes. And, no, I wasn't speaking from inside a metal box.

Skeptical Skousers

On Thursday this week, I will be returning to Liverpool to give a talk about the 'Million Dollar Psychic' project to the Merseyside Skeptics Society. In fact, it's my first public talk about the project so it's nice to be doing it in the city in which I have spent much of my adult life.

The talk begins at 8pm but earlier in the day I plan to try some psychometry. This, so the psychics tell us, where you try to pick up information about someone just from handling an object (like a ring, or a watch) that belongs to that person. I'm not making any claims about being able to do it but I need to practice at any opportunity I get!

The plan is to film my attempts and reveal how I got on as part of the talk in the evening. Nothing lik a little public scrutiny to help relax me...!

It's all happening at The Vines at 8pm on Thursday 15th April. More details here.

Are you brave enough?

Drove into London yesterday to see Ghost Stories at the Hammersmith Lyric. It was a frightening experience. Creepy, unnerving, gut-wrenching, and at times surreal. And that was just listening to Richard Madeley standing in for Simon Mayo on Radio 2 on the drive in.

The show itself was excellent. Lots of jump moments, and all brought together brilliantly. Highly recommended.

The man with the cash

A short clip of James Randi, he of the Million Dollar Challenge, courtesy of YouTube:



The clip dates from March 2008 and it is stated at the end that the challenge "...only lasts another couple of years." Fortunately (for me) the decision to withdraw the challenge in March 2010 was itself withdrawn last summer!

My Psychic Quotient

I'm currently reading Billy Roberts' 10-Step Psychic Development Programme. None-too-surprisingly, it's written by Billy Roberts (or Billy Roblets as Freya refers to him...). I met Billy for the first time a couple of weeks' ago even though he used to run a paranormal centre in Liverpool just a mile or so from the University I worked at for ten years!

I told Billy about my rather ambitious attempt to learn to become psychic (oh, and win a million dollars!) and he very kindly gave me a copy of his book on psychic development. How cool is that?

Towards the beginning of the book, in order to identify where you are on the psychic development path, your 'psychic quotient' so to speak, Billy very helpfully provides a quick test consisting of ten questions (another ten questions point to your psychic potential). I'm hoping he won't mind me copying them here so you, too, can discover your psychic quotient. All you need to do is answer 'yes' or 'no' to each question:

1. Do you feel an affinity with some people more than others?

2. Do you sometimes have strong feelings about imminent events, perhaps an inner voice telling you something is wrong?

3. Do you sometimes find yourself daydreaming in the middle of a conversation with someone, even though you are not bored?

4. Do you sometimes have vivid dreams about impending doom and disaster?

5. Do sweet or unusual fragrances sometimes remind you of someone who is dead?

6. Do you ever see images when staring at a carpet or curtains?

7. Do you sometimes think you can hear someone calling your name when you know you are alone in the house?

8. When lying in bed, do you ever feel pressure on top of the covers, as though someone were sitting on the end of the bed?

9. Have you experienced deja vu on more than one occasion?

10. When drifting off to sleep, do you see small faces passing quickly in front of you?

How many did you say 'yes' to? According to Billy, if you said 'yes' to between seven and ten of the questions above then you already have developed psychic abilities! I only said 'yes' to four of the questions, but that just means my psychic abilities simply need a little encouragement. Even if you found yourself saying 'yes' to just three or less of the questions, there is still hope... with patience and determination you'll still meet your psychic potential!

That million dollars is mine for the taking...

Spooks on stage

I am soooo looking forward to this... Rachel surprised me with tickets for Ghost Stories at the Lyric next month. Here's the trailer: