I haven’t done a link sharing post in a while, and I have a few links kicking around, so what the heck.

I have had this in my browser for weeks waiting to use it, and tonight’s the night.

The Haunted House

Police in Gary, Indiana (great, now that tune is stuck in my head) say that they believe the stories about a certain rental property being haunted.

That is to say, they believe the people who got the hell out of there when things started started getting freaky. How freaky? Let me quote the article.

Levitating children, swarms of flies in wintertime, mysterious footprints, invisible friends, another child
“walking backward up a wall in the presence of a family case manager and hospital nurse”

That freaky enough for you? Fucking A. That is some prime cut scary shit right there.

Local psychics claim that the house is haunted by over 200 demons, making it a sort of demonic frat house. (More demonic than the usual frat house, that is. )

Now as my faithful readers know, I do not believe in the supernatural. Something either exists, and is therefore subject to all the normal physical limits that everything else does, or it doesn’t exist at all. There is no category in between.

However, when it comes to what is normally called “supernatural phenomena”, I try to keep an open mind. After all, our inability to explain something does not mean it does not exist. We used fire for thousands of years before we had any idea how it actually worked.

Besides, whether or not these demons, ghosts, and goblins are “real” or not, the phenomena in question are still fascinating and well worth serious scientific inquiry. What causes people to have these experiences? Why do people who have never even seen each other have similar experiences in the same locations? What is it about certain places that makes people see ghosts or be overcome with a terrible dread, and so on?

The most promising theory that I have had encountered is that certain places have a certain kind of electromagnetic activity that activates certain parts of the brain that lead to this kind of phenomena. It is a proven scientific fact that exposure to certain kinds of magnetic fields can cause human beings to hallucinate, experience strong emotions, and even have what to them feels like a religious experience.

For a while, they thought that the source of the phenomena-inducing electromagnetic activity might well be geomagnetic. That would have neatly explained why it seems to be tied to location. Same place, same geomagnetic activity.

Sadly, nobody has been able to find sufficient supporting evidence for that claim. The amount of electromagnetic activity we experience from pretty much everything with a current flowing through it washes out whatever geomagnetic background there might be, and so it is impossible to get definitive evidence that place A has geomagnetic signature B which leads to phenomenon C.

Still, it seems quite plausible to me. I think there is a lot we do not know about how the electromagnetic soup in which we all live affects our central nervous system. We may have senses we do not even know about.

Next up, video time.

I love the point this video is trying to make, but it makes it really confusingly.

The idea is that our American protagonist can only live like a Swede because he’s the son of a rich father. An American would have to be rich to live like a Swede of any income.

In other words, being a Swede is quite awesome. Suck it, Americans!

Oh, but it’s great to have a shitty life that is more expensive because FREEDOM.

I have asked conservative Americans what it would cost them to get health insurance with zero deductibles, absolutely no limitations as to what hospital you go to or what doctor you can have, with unlimited coverage no matter what.

If they are honest, they will either say “a hell of a lot” or “you just can’t get that here”.

But I have it standard because I am a Canadian. No matter how poor I am (and that’s plenty poor), I have something that most Americans can only dream of.

And you know what? It makes me feel free. I have zero bureaucrats standing between me and my doctor. Nobody decides what I do and do not get. I get what I need to be healthy, period.

Americans, on the other hand, pay through the nose to be fucked around by profit oriented megacorps who like the part where people give them money, but the part where they have to pay money to actually provide the service they were paid for?

Not so much.

Maybe I should do a Like A Canuck video.

Finally, we have this utterly epic commercial.

If I was surfing late night TV and I saw an ad like that, I would mark like a bitch, because that kicked ass.

This is supposedly a totally real place, although unless they also have a laser tattoo removal service, I can’t see how they could fix some of those tats.

I suppose if the artists are kung fu masters at tattoing, they could figure out how to turn your bad tat into something else. Turn that lame eagle into an awesome firebird. Turn that last girlfriend’s name into your new girlfriend’s name.

That kinda thing.

Anyhow, if I lived in that area and wanted to get inked, I would go there in a heartbeat, because they totally seem like my kind of people.

Odds are, I will never get inked, because tattooing is both painful and a huge commitment. Maybe something small, like a rosette or a symbol of some sort.

But probably not. Not until they come up with a way to give someone a tattoo that is both painless and reversible.

And realistically speaking, I could never actually decide what I wanted. I have a hard enough time picking a deodorant, and there’s only a couple dozen those.

Tattoo shops have hundreds of designs.

I would be there for DAYS.

That’s all the links for today, folks. Talk to you later!