Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

Everyone has an underdeveloped gift to levitate through the amazing yogic flying. According to Wikipedia:

“While sitting cross-legged or in a “lotus” position, Yogic Flyers hop about on springy mats. The TM organization says this is the first of three stages of Yogic Flying called “the perfection of leaping like a frog”. The organization emphasizes that only the first stage of Yogic Flying has been shown … Proponents of Yogic Flying claim that world peace and many other social and environmental benefits can be generated by having at least seven thousand yogic flyers around the world hopping at the same time.”

Shoko Asahara, leader of the Japanese Aum cult, allegedly gained notoriety showing his gift.

Priceless Uri quotes:

“You realize that when I talk on the mobile phone I keep it away from my head… because it radiates the brain” [see how he's telling the truth when he speaks with his lawyer on the phone].

“Let’s bend the mast now… maybe four hours, but it would bend”.

For more Uri Geller fun, watch his autobiographical, fully endorsed movie, Mindbender. It’s hilarious from beggining to end, but the best part is no doubt when he’s making out with a girl inside a car, and then lose control over his powers and goes flying on a tornado. If you don’t believe it, just go watch it.

[Hat tip to Science Humor]

Watch above excerpts from the first episode of “Crazy Rulers of the World“, an amazing series of documentaries by Jon Ronson. It’s based on his book “The Men Who Stare At Goats“, documenting the adventures of the US Army with some extremely unconventional methods of war. Those include killing goats just by staring at them. Or at least trying to do that.

I uploaded this to Youtube hoping that you will become interested in knowing more on Ronson’s work, of which I’m a huge fan. In the whole episodes you will watch actual footage of the goat experiments, and much more details and incredible interviews. Jim Channon, for instance, may have sounded lunatic in the excerpt above, but if you watch the whole series you may have a different opinion. Also, buy his book and save this author of some of the bad karma.

Majestic Doty

I also uploaded and suggest the video here because I think that’s important to better understand one of the most recent bombshells dropped in ufology, the study by Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood, “The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12” (click to download the PDF from MUFON).

Promoted on this year’s MUFON symposium, the paper essentialy deals a series of fatal blows on the Majestic12 story, in the process of uncovering the involvement and major part played by Richard C. Doty, Special Agent of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). MJ12, Sparks argues, was part of an official disinformation campaign played by the the AFOSI.

Those are 159 pages to read, and I strongly recommend anyone interested in ufology to read it. It’s free, and even if you don’t agree with all of it — I don’t — it’s clearly a very important development.

And as it has just been published, it’s currently in development, as those in favour of the MJ12 story are still going to present their answers to that.

But assuming you already thought, or was convinced by the paper, that MJ12 is indeed a hoax, the prospect advanced at the same time that it was an official disinformation campaign is possibly just as extraordinary. Doty was really an AFOSI agent when he played his role in the creation of MJ12.

Sparks gives some considerations as reasons for the disinformation, and though he is not a supporter, he hints that it could possibly be related to extraterrestrials. Co-author Greenwood, on the other hand, thinks MJ12 is more of a product of personal interest by Doty and possibly some others.

Whatever the real answer, one important aspect that must be considered is the myth, quoted by Ronson, “that our leaders are rational people”. Doty’s work in helping create the MJ12 hoax story may be more related to staring at goats (or hamsters) than one would first assume.

Star Wars is specially interesting because a magical (or “paranormal”) universe was adapted to a futuristic context which still depends on technology, and one assumes, science. The saga is not actually science fiction, it’s just a nice fantasy, but there’s a notable effort to give some logic to this universe where one can predict the future, use telekinesis and hope the “Force is with them” at the same time that they travel through hyperspace to get to Death Stars powered by giant nuclear reactors.

The most visible and curious incoherence in Star Wars is that in this high-tech world, a warrior elite represented by the Jedi use swords instead of weapons like pistols or machine guns. Granted their “swords” are über cool lightsabers, a more “civilized” weapon, but as that infamous scene in Indiana Jones taught, Indiana may not be that civilized but he ended up alive. And maybe just as cool looking.

In the end, everything is explained simply because George Lucas was largely inspired by Kurosawa’s Jidai-geki samurais for his Jedi, but delving into the Star Wars fantasy, we may find a very interesting and far reaching Jedi logic for the lightsaber preference.

It’s all because the Jedis can predict the future. Just ask yourself how would you kill someone who could predict the future. Shooting at him? He does not even need to be a skilled warrior to deflect your shot, he can just easily avoid being your target by not being in the place to start with. Or he may even shoot you first – poor Greedo obviously didn’t have precognition, maybe Han Solo did.

Think of any way to kill someone who can predict the future, it’s impossible. He would always predict his own assassination and avoid it. You can try elaborate plans and dilemmas alike involving his loved ones, ideals and so on, but the fact remains that unless the future-predicting bastard lets you kill him, you wouldn’t ever be able to do it. That’s technically suicide.

That danger avoiding bastard would be pretty boring, we could have some drama at most. But things get more interesting when these future-predicting bastards are not cowards, and if their future-predicting is not equivalent to knowing with certainty everything that will ever happen (which may well be logically impossible if he plans to interfere with that). Just like the Jedi.

In such a Star Wars Universe, where some people can predict the future with progressively less certainty, it would still be very difficult to kill one of them, but not impossible. At the same time, if they were not cowards, they could train themselves to be able to foil assassination attempts without having to be always running away from them.

For instance, if you shot at one of them, even multiple times, they may predict where the shots would be (with reasonable certainty as the moment approaches) and actually train themselves to be able to either deflect or dodge them. They would be able to do that even if the shots were quicker than their “normal” reflexes. As they are predicting in some advance where the shots will be, they can plan a sequence of possible movements that will save them.

But there’s one way to kill them in which their precognition will be almost useless. And that’s close combat. If your first attack — either by hand, sword, whatever — can be predicted, your second one will depend on his reaction. Reaction that was based on his first prediction of your attack, which has just been altered when he interfered with it. And so on.

Which is, in close combat, because the predictions are being used and interfered with many times and their consequences are being felt almost instantaneously, precognition is not worth much more than plain old martial skills. That’s even more true if both fighters are capable of predicting the near future.

And that’s the wonderful reason why the warrior elite of this universe chooses lightsabers, the ultimate martial arts weapon, over more predictable weapons like guns or even bazookas. That’s the Jedi logic.

Reality would be very different if there were indeed people capable of predicting the near future like the Jedi. The whole logic of how everything works would be different. As it is, in real life we have just plain boring so-called “psychics” who can’t even win the lottery. That’s our real world logic. May the Reason be with you.

Seen above, a very famous photograph of Janet Harper related to the alleged Poltergeist phenomena in Enfield, UK. It’s the Enfield Poltergeist.

Below, a very similar photo of a child jumping in the air, from Mighty Optical Illusions.