Monthly Archives: April 2007

Early in the twentieth century, the medical community was practically helpless in its battle against syphilis. The crippling affliction was spreading at an alarming rate in certain areas, particularly among the poorer segments of the world population. Even for those who could afford medical care, the only known treatments rivaled the disease itself in the harm they did to sufferers.

In 1932, Dr. Taliaferro Clark from the United States Public Health Service (PHS) launched a study in Macon County, Alabama in order to document the progression of this troublesome sexually-transmitted disease. The region was home to hundreds of poor and mostly illiterate black farmers, and cases of syphilis had reached alarming proportions. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was undertaken in the hopes that a deeper understanding of syphilis would provide new insights on potential treatments, and possibly justify a government-funded treatment program. But from these noble beginnings, a lack of funds and a shortage of ethics led to one of the most shameful clinical mishaps in US history.

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1973 police photo of the hostages at the Kreditbanken, Stockholm, Sweden. The captor appears at right.There are few things as thrilling as the story of a dramatic escape, especially one with a happy ending. It is understandable, therefore, that the public is often disappointed and critical when a kidnapping victim found alive is revealed to have had seemingly enough contact with the outside world to make such an escape. Stories of survival can feel ruined when there turns out to have been what looks like an ‘easy way out’.

One well-publicized example was that of Elizabeth Smart, the Utah teenager who was abducted at knifepoint from her bedroom in 2002. Nine months later she and her captors were stopped by police not far from her home. Elizabeth was in disguise, and lied about her identity. It was not until some time after being handcuffed and separated from the abductors that she began to cooperate. More recently, Missouri teenager Shawn Hornbeck was found in early 2007 after having been kidnapped and held for more than four years outside St. Louis, only 50 miles from home. Unlike Smart, Hornbeck was able to tell police officers who he was; it was revealed, though, that Hornbeck had been allowed Internet access and a fair degree of autonomy.

In such cases, it is extremely easy to blame the victims; it seems very plausible that the kidnapped individuals were simply not clever, resourceful, or courageous enough to flee their respective abductors. However, this disturbing tendency has little to do with any supposed weakness on the part of the victim. Given the right conditions, abductors are able to exert an astonishing amount of influence over their victims – to the point at which the captive has full loyalty to his or her captor while believing that this was his or her own choice. It is a cognitive phenomenon related to brainwashing and known as Stockholm syndrome.

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In the late 1960s, a young Israeli man named Uri Geller gained a substantial amount of attention and fame following a collection of remarkable demonstrations on US and British television. In full view of astonished audiences, Uri was seemingly able to manipulate metal with his mind. Spoons softened in his hands, keys curled at the gentle stroke of his fingers, and he was able to cause compasses to wobble at his cajoling. He was also known to restart stopped wristwatches by merely holding them in his hands. According to Geller, these feats were the products of sheer will, a phenomenon known as psychokinesis.

In addition to his mental metallurgy and magnetism, the dashing young Israeli demonstrated potent psychic abilities, most notably in his ability to reproduce drawings which he had never seen. A volunteer would draw a picture while Uri was not watching, and Geller would use his gifts to attempt to reproduce the image. Although his recreations were not always completely accurate, they were sufficiently similar as to provoke astonishment from onlookers.

Geller’s high-profile exploits in the 1970s significantly raised awareness of “paranormal science” worldwide, and since that time many have gone on to mimic his feats. Though there are throngs of skeptics who have reproduced his handiwork under the harsh light of reality, there are still a handful of yet-to-be-explained effects exhibited by Geller and his spoon-bending contemporaries.

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If you live in the Miami area and you own one of those fancy new AM radio receiver sets, you’re in luck. I’ll be doing a short interview on Sports Talk 790 AM The Ticket today at about 6:15pm Eastern Time. It’s guaranteed to modulate your amplitude.

For those lacking in Miami proximity and/or AM radios, I hope to get my mitts on an MP3 copy of the interview to post here. Update: Here’s the MP3. I’m a scientist!

The articles that came up:
The Great Taste of Human Flesh, Without the Guilt
Alien Hand Syndrome
Giant Carnivorous Centipedes
The Terrifying Toothpick Fish

There was a time that I could fly. I jutted my right fist into the air, and launched into the sky. My stomach dropped with the sensation of breaking gravity’s bond, and the summer air cooled as I reached higher. When the roads were so far below as to be an indistinct ashen blur, I halted and curled my legs under me as I was pelted by icy crystals of clouds, and surveyed all below. There was a moment of idle indecision, but in the end it mattered not at all. I picked a direction and dove.

The experience was one of my many brushes with Lucid Dreaming. It is a phenomenon that many discredit, naming it a hoax and naturalist mythology despite the fact that it has strong scientific evidence supporting it as a real occurrence. With a devoted training regimen, most anyone can learn to harness their own subconscious to experience surrealistic events and places. In a controlled dream, one can pursue anything from the cessation of nightmares, to investigating problems, to engaging in sexual fantasies, to my personal choice—jetting around the skies like Superman.

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