by Paul Wallis

Created on: January 18, 2007   Last Updated: May 18, 2007

There is usually some form of scam running about paranormal phenomena. Cults thrive on the inexplicable, the pseudo-spiritual, and the merely ridiculous. However bizarre, somebody knows all about it. It may be one of history's great mysteries, but they, mainly for being such nice people, are fully informed. They are also variously chosen by God, aliens, publicists, and other deities to tell the world about it.

So mysterious kinetic powers are the result of nepotism. Telepathy is a result of doing Prometheus' correspondence course. Astral predictions are obviously achieved by cosmic syndication. If this happens to involve a lot of money and sex, consensual or otherwise, "it is so ordained." Sances also appear to require a lot of very attentive dead people prepared to communicate with total strangers on a commercial basis. The spirit world evidently can't exist without massive promotions and special discount offers.

Drivel.

If anywhere near as much time and effort had ever been put into seriously researching the real abilities of the human mind and body as ripping off the gullible sheep every generation seems to feel obliged to produce, we'd be a lot better informed. A lot of people would definitely be financially in better shape, too.

Let's try something easy, like telepathy. The human body operates on electromagnetic energies, down to the atomic level. Muscles are driven like turbines, using very well understood neural switches. This is done at an extraordinary speed, about 700 metres a second, fast enough to go around the average human several times in that period. Anything supernatural, so far? Nah, just efficient.

Now- another debunker, of sorts. Human brains operate basically pretty much the same way. They all use the same methods to do the same things. Everyone sneezes the same way, for the same reasons, using the same neural pathways. Sounds mystic, doesn't it? Really makes you want to go join a monastery, to be where the action is.

Is it so far fetched to believe that people might pick up on the neural energies of other people? That a human brain, thousands of times more efficient than a computer, and able to use multi level analog logic, might register information from a very compatible source like another human brain?

As if, to use a totally off the wall analogy, one phone could actually communicate with another? Ah, these wild flights of speculation

Remember, human beings are only hardwired to a point. From then on, it's all mentality and perception. The

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