What is Cosplay?

What do you mean you don't know what 'cosplay' is? Dear oh dear, you really are out of touch. Lucky for you, the country's foremost authority* on the psychology of cosplay isn't far away, as you'll see from the clip below:

*Truth be told, I'd never heard of cosplay either until the students making this short film got in touch asking for a psychologist's take on it. Hey, I didn't want to let them down, did I?

Volunteers needed for mediumship research

We're looking for people who might be interested in volunteering to take part in a research project exploring mediumship. Here's the press release:

Researchers set to explore mediumship

A team of psychologists at Buckinghamshire New University are looking for volunteers for a research study in to mediumistic readings, where a ’medium’ claims to receive information from people who have passed away.

The researchers are looking for people to come into the University to act as ‘sitters’ for a reading and then be interviewed about the reading.

Dr Matthew Smith, a Senior Lecturer in Psychology, is leading the project and said the study was looking to rule out the variety of potential ‘alternative explanations’ for the process.

He said: “We are assessing whether mediums are able to give accurate and meaningful information to individuals who are unknown to the medium and under conditions that rule out alternative explanations.

“As psychologists we want to look at this subject in an open-minded away and see what is going on. It is rare for psychologists and mediums to work together in this way, so it is a fairly unique opportunity for people to get involved in something like this.”

Dr Smith is working with fellow psychologists Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe, Wendy Whipp and Caralyn Bains. Dr Smith and Dr O’Keeffe have considerable experience examining ‘paranormal’ claims, and have both appeared on the programme Most Haunted on television channel Living as resident parapsychologists.

To find out more about taking part, contact Dr Smith at matthew.smith@bucks.ac.uk or call 01494 522141, extension 4323.

 So, there you have it... if you're interested drop me an email, and I'll send you more details!

Linking cigarettes

This is one of those effects where, even when you know the secret, the effect still looks magical. Especially in the hands of Akira Fujii. The cigarettes just 'melt' through each other...