Has anyone else had enough of hearing about languages that have no word for "no"? 

You are usually told this little tidbit in some sort of pseudomotivational yes-you-can moment; but, are we really supposed to believe there is a culture out there that has developed beyond swinging from the trees, and has no way for one member to indicate to another that he is not interested in being the guinea pig for the new arrow-tips?

I also don't want to hear about how many words they have for "yes"! Anything more than a few is just unnecessary redundancy. Clearly these people are not sophisticated enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, and are just incorporating everything into their lexicon. I am not impressed by this culture. 

Finally and in closing, while we're on the subject of cultures, have you ever noticed whenever someone on the Discovery Channel or TLC claims that a culture was "advanced" or "technological", they are always referring to a group of people that no longer exist? I'm not talking about Atlantis nonsense, I'm talking about real societies. I think its to counteract the superiority complex we have as being one of the cultures that "made it". The Mayan expert or whatever he is wants to bring us down a notch, knock us off our high horse. Just because the Mayans were wiped out by heavy rains or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or whatever it was, doesn't mean they weren't an exceedingly advanced culture. 

Also, we're supposed to believe they were capable of predicting the end of the world in 2012 but not capable of spotting their own demise and avoiding it? I call bullshit. 

That, coupled with the fact that there is no reason to believe ghosts emit EMFs, makes it really implausible that these things are good for detecting anything but signs of civilization (surprise, surprise). The interesting aspect for me, though, was the realization that the K2s do not rhythmically flash on their own, so if you were to see one being used in a question-and-answer kind of scenario with a "ghost", there has to be some conscious dishonesty involved. Someone is keying their 2-way, fumbling with a cell phone or fiddling with the meter itself. I guess I had always thought the ghost-hunting programs were staffed by true believers that were just deluded in to believing they were really witnessing something paranormal. I wasn't quite jaded enough to think that they were consciously forging so much evidence. 

As I said, portions of the lecture was interesting. The speaker, Ken Biddle, was however a believer of sorts and this came through in parts of his talk. A quick look at his website will find the usual pattern for the "skeptical believer"; first he demonstrates how thorough his methods are, and he debunks a lot of fake evidence. Then, at some point, he indicates that despite his rigorous scientific methods, some things he has come across remain unexplainable (in Biddle's case, he uses the phrase "holds up to [his] scrutiny").

I really find these types of statements to be incredibly counter productive towards promoting skepticism vis-a-vis the whole paranormal movement. The ghost-hunting brigade has built their entire industry around promoting the idea of "unexplainable by us" as being "unexplainable", and furthermore, "unexplainable" as "paranormal". A statement such as that made by Biddle can, and will undoubtedly, be re-purposed and used to promote woo. It can further be used to undermine the term skeptic, the movement, and any of the precepts therein. 

A few weeks ago there was a magician at dinner that did some tricks I can't explain -- however, I don't think any of them involved the paranormal. 

Neither of us had ever been to Gettysburg before, and what struck us was the sheer size of the battlefield. On one of our side-trips to a museum, it was stated to be 10 miles square. Absolute insanity. Speaking of museums:

The museum in Harrisburg, is the National Civil War Museum, and wow. It is chock full of seriously disturbing realistic human exhibits. Additionally, it is situated on a mountain on the outskirts of Harrisburg, giving you an amazing view:

It was a really terrific trip, and a definite a must-revisit.

Hopefully Gina will post speaking of our dinner-theater experience!