This week I have been the victim of street crime. I was pickpocketed in London. I lost my entire wallet: credit cards, eftpos cards, driver’s licence. Fortunately, I still have my passport, so I was able to go to the bank the next day, and prove I am the owner of that account -- yes that one -- the one with no money in it.I am never giving anyone directions again. And -- I am also never hugging anyone on the street again. And -- mark my words -- I am definitely not dancing with anyone on the street either. Here’s what happened. It was about 2am on Saturday. I was walking home, intoxicated. (If anything, this is the moral choice.) To help me find my way, I was using a compass. I bought this a week ago in Paris, to solve this problem I have, emerging from underground train stations, and not knowing which way is north. A man with an Italian accent asked me for directions. I thought, I must really look like I know my way. I told him to bear north-northwest. I admit, it pleased me to have superior geography to someone else. And then -- he hugged me. I didn’t want to reject him. I didn’t want to offend his Continental notions of personal space. The hug took quite a while. But he was not finished thanking me. I realise, as I recount this, I probably still had my wallet at that point. Because now, he beckoned me into a Greek-style man-dance, where he stood by my side, and put an arm over my shoulder. He lifted one of his legs, and implied, by demonstrating, that I do the same, and entwine one of my legs with his, in a three-legged can-can hop. Man. I thought I was drunk. This guy is wasted. Maybe it’s my open-mindedness, or my dance training, but I obliged. What can I say -- he led well. And that was that. It wasn’t til the next day I noticed my wallet was missing. I didn’t suspect the Italian guy. He was lost. Wouldn’t he have taken my compass instead? Still, better pickpocketed than being mugged. If I’d been mugged, I’d have felt traumatised. This way, I just felt over-charmed.
Psychics Psuck Pshit Part 1
Say it isn’t so. The Police actually asked two psychics for help on a murder case?Good grief. Please tell me that was just a press release from Sensing Murder. In the article, I read a cop saying he was on the fence about psychics. Please, no. Don’t be on the fence about psychics. You might as well be on the fence about violent crime. Or Nigerian emailers promising you millions. Psychics are bogus. Psychics are pscum. Psychics are full of pshit. Note to Serious Fraud Office. Please investigate Sensing Murder. Shut them down. Make that heinous TV show pass through the tunnel of white light, to the other side. If these people really could communicate with the dead, how about this: names of murderers please. Names, addresses, clues. I don’t want to get in the way of entertainers earning a crust, but it’s scummy to pretend to communicate with the dead to take advantage of grieving relatives. At best, psychics (mediums, palm readers, tarot card readers etc) employ a technique of vaguespeak called cold reading. Buy a book online called Tradecraft and learn how to do it. Derren Brown, the British entertainer who debunks the whole caravan of scammers from religious healers to alien abductees, recommends The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading by Ian Rowland. Note to Police: make all your staff read Derren Brown’s book Tricks of the Mind. If we all learn these showbiz techniques, we can put the scum out of business. Cold reading is the open-ended vagueness you see in horoscopes. The psychic throws things out there, and depending on the customer’s reaction, alters the path until something hits. “It’s your father, isn’t it?” No. “But he was like a father to you, wasn’t he?” The customer is predisposed to believe in psychic powers -- after all, they’ve shown up for an appointment. They’re often at a low point: wanting to make a decision (travel, job, relationship.) And they only remember the statements that hit, not the ones that miss. I once had a tarot card reader say to me: “I see twins.” I said I didn’t know any twins. “But two people the same age?” Well. I went to school with a classful. She continued. “I see a man in uniform.” I didn’t know one of those either. “A man who wants to conform, to fit in?” Well, that covers, hmmm, everyone. That’s cold reading. My guess - Sensing Murder is hot reading. The psychics are given information by the producers beforehand. Then, using all their powers of frowning and eyelid fluttering, the psychics return the information, in fragments, to give the illusion of extra amazingness that can only have one explanation. You watch and think: how could they know that? Yes, you, the viewer knew it: but the psychic wasn’t told. Well, here’s how the psychic knew. The producer told them. In the briefing before the shoot. You might as well ask how David Copperfield makes a woman disappear. It’s a trick. But at least with magic, we know it’s a trick.Sensing Murder wants to con you into thinking it’s real. Let’s not even tolerate it as fluff. The impression people are left with from Sensing Murder is that the police consult psychics. This suggestion in itself is a symbol of credibility. Please, Police, don’t let the snake oil salesmen use you this way. The police should onl y be involved with psychics to arrest them. If I say I can communicate with the dead, and I can’t, but I charge money for that, isn’t that fraud? The fact a psychic has yet to mention anything that, hmm, wasn’t already publicly known (surprise, surprise) never quite gets the same airing. Surely a broadcaster has a responsibility to its viewers not to dupe them? Ads have to be honest. Why can a programme pretend to be factual when it’s not? Shouldn’t Sensing Murder have a disclaimer that the show is a paid advertisement for its two psychics? Isn’t it time Fair Go took on Sensing Murder? It doesn’t surprise me the Australian producer of Sensing Murder went on to produce The Secret, an even worse mass-mugging of the gullible. And if they were better at reading people, they’d leave the psychic lark and move onto the poker tour.
Psychics Psuck Pshit Part 2
New Zealand’s Got Talent should be renamed New Zealand Needs a Better Mental Health System.The world economic meltdown will only make people more desperate to make money any which-a-way. Wheel of Fortune, which is already Wheel of Medium Income, will become Wheel of Petrol Voucher. Even Who Wants To Be A Millionaire finally has a New Zealand version. I look forward to Mike Hosking using the game show skills in current affairs. “You have no recollection of donations? Want to lock that in?” But the lowest point in TV history was reached this week when the Qantas Film and Television Awards named Sensing Murder Best Format/Reality Show. Dear God. How can they put Sensing Murder and reality in the same sentence? You’re probably thinking, Raybon, why do you have such a problem with Sensing Murder? Why indeed. Why have a problem with an infomercial posing as a TV show, which recruits the dead -- murder victims, no less -- to provide televised endorsements for psychic charlatans. Imagine you have just lost a loved one. Maybe a child, who knows. Psychics will tell the grieving relatives that they can relay messages of comfort from the dearly departed. Well. What price could you put on that? Psychics make up lies, while taking money from the grieving relatives of murder victims. Well, when you put it that way, it’s just family fun. They might as well do their trick round the casket at the funeral. Surely there’s good reception right near the corpse’s head. What makes me certain these psychics are frauds, charlatans and scoundrels? Notice how the psychics only ever rehash the victim’s final hours. (Oddly enough, precisely the timeline the show re-enacts.) The dead only ever say, “Hello, it’s me.” Never anything useful like “The butler did it.” There’s two possible explanations. One is that the murder victim is communicating with the psychic, from the dead. The other is this. The producers, who are alive, and who have the psychic’s contact details, and who employ the psychics to appear on a show called, actually called, Sensing Murder -- a show whose funding and entire reason for being, for God’s sake, depends on the illusion that psychics are genuine -- and who have researched, scripted and re-enacted the murder victim’s final hours, are communicating with the psychic. Hmmm. Let’s leave that one for the jury. If you or I or anyone independent provided a photo of a dead person, in an envelope, for these psychics Cruickshank and Webber to identify, they would fail. Consider this a challenge. We could agree, through the Consumer’s Institute, or the Commerce Commission, to a simple, fair experiment. But don’t expect the psychics to say yes. Their trick is a trick they can only pull off on shoot dates for Sensing Murder, after make-up, during their call time, when the director calls action and not a moment sooner. And certainly not during a tape change. People who marvel, “How do they do that?” might as well marvel at how Rebecca Gibney knows so much about the cases as well. Even in psychic logic, it makes no sense. The psychics make contact near a face-down photo of the murder victim. A photo? A photo is a Sky decoder for the dead? Which photo from their entire life, do ghosts choose to hang out by? How many photo albums are you in? How many wall portraits? How many wallet IDs, old passports, school photos, in how many houses, in how many cities, is your image in? Do ghosts live in hard drives nowadays? On giant servers when people put their photos on Facebook? What happens when the photo gets broadcast on TV as on Sensing Murder: does the spirit simultaneously loiter by every TV set that shows the photo? Is Elvis haunting every copy of every cover of every album? Every frame of every DVD of every movie? Is Diana haunting every souvenir fridge magnet and every paparazzi snapshot in every magazine article in every rubbish dump? Will the Queen haunt every banknote and postage stamp in every country in the Commonwealth? And if a ghost is communicating, come on, don’t tell us that middle name you had. Or that hobby you enjoyed as a child. Spit out the name of the killer! Are ghosts that dumb? Surely every ghost has seen Sensing Murder by now. Surely Sensing Murder is appointment television for ghosts. I bet even poltergeists drop everything to gather round the giant protoplasma screen. They probably say, hey, look, you’re on This Is Your Death.
raybon's video blog
bloggers' block
today in wellington it is humid and windy. who ever thought wellington would become tropical? i know that's not very interesting but blogging ain't easy.
nature v nurture
Deep down, humans believe in genetics more than upbringing. That’s why stories are full of orphans raised by cruel step-parents, yet turning out nice. Think Harry Potter, Cinderella. If we believed in cycles and good parenting, we’d expect Harry Potter to grow into an abusive father. We don’t. Luke Skywalker is the opposite: he had an evil dad, a very evil dad, but Luke turned out nice. Then again, Darth Vader was ultimately nice in Return of the Jedi. So maybe Luke Skywalker’s genes were nice deep down in the first place. Then again, Luke did have a crush on his sister, Princess Leia, for the entire first movie. But we shouldn’t blame him. Luke and Leia grew up in separate households, on different planets, and neither consummated nor procreated, so what’s the harm? Besides, we shouldn’t impose our taboos on other galaxies. Um, then again, it was all made up.
new zealand music
'Who Loves Who The Most' is a classic NZ song. As a piece of music, it’s catchy; an irresistible dancing anthem. Grammatically, though, it’s a disaster. The second ‘who’ should be ‘whom’: the direct object of loving. And we’re comparing the amount of love felt by two people, not three, so it should be ‘more’, not ‘most’. The song would have been a much bigger hit, if titled, ‘Who Loves Whom More’. I know what you’re thinking. Chill out. Hang loose. That should be ‘hang loosely.’ And ‘chill outwards.’