So,to anyone else who may have seen this or hasi nfo about it, was it for real? Of course it all could be fake thanks to technology, but then again how can we be sure it isn’t real?
Ryan:
It seems that no one here has watched the show which inpressed you so very much. Could you give us a synopsis of any part you found convincing?
My first approximation opinion is: Nothing seen on the Fox network can be considered “real”.
When was it on? I blew off WWTMAM, ignored the Smartest Ragamuffin in our Studio, and avoid shows on UFOs as best I can. But this one… well, this was one train wreck I wanted to stop at and stare at until my sides hurt with laughter. From the Promos I came to believe that Fox had out-ridiculoused themselves. Did anyone see it? What did they do? What were their ‘tests’? Let’s hear all about it!
Ah Fox, bringer of Simpsons, granter of Futurama… where is thy consistency?
From http://www.snpp.com How many of these don’t seem all that far off?
[quote]
Swipes at Fox on The Simpsons
Maintained by Brian Petersen (brian@snpp.com)
Below is a list of the numerous swipes The Simpsons have taken at the most swipeable network on this planet, and more: the Fox network. If you know of any jabs, knocks or pans I’ve failed to list, please drop me a line in e-mail.
9F07 Barney’s entrapment in an avalanche is caught on tape by a Fox film crew shooting a fixed special, “In Search of Bigfoot.” Bigfoot wears a digital watch and speaks fluent english.
9F19 Krusty the Klown points out that Luke Perry is his worthless half brother, scoffing that his show is on the Fox network.
9F20 When the Osaka Flu hits the Flanders family, Ned flashes back to what he could havepossibly done to deserve such punishment: watching Married… with Children, and of all things, laughing at it! Flashing forward to the present, Ned cries, “Oh, the network slogan is true! Watch Fox and be damned for all eternity!”
9F22 While watching the aweful “Up Late With McBain,” Lisa utters that the Fox network has sunk to a new low.
1F12 Lisa forbids watching Fox because the network owns chemical weapons plants in Syria.
1F13 A Fox satellite slams into infant Homer, encased in an amneotic sac as he drifts through space.
1F15 Mr. Blackheart’s former professions include whale hunter, seal clubber and president of the Fox network.
1F18 When the on-screen Fox “bug” appears during the couch scene, Homer yanks it off the screen and the family viciously stamps it into the carpet.
1F22
Homer ponders what’s on Fox: “something ribald, no doubt.”
2F02
Larry King insists that, though the mayoral debates are being broadcast on Fox, there’s no need for obnoxious hooting and hollering. The audience hoots and hollers.
2F04 Reverend Lovejoy throws Bart out of his home following a description of what he had seen on Fox the previous night.
2F06 The family watches “Fox Night at the Movies,” complete with on-screen bug. Tonight’s feature: “Homer S.: Portrait of an Ass-Grabber.”
2F15 Marge mentions that Fox turned into a hard-core sex channel so gradually that she didn’t even notice.
2F31 One of the airplanes has “Fox” graffitied onto the fuselage.
3F08 While Sideshow Bob lambasts the television program before him, Rupert Murdoch stepsup and lashes at him, warning that he “owns 60% of that network.”
Television’s bottomless chum bucket claims a now-corrupt Vanessa Redgrave, who is “hauling ass to Lollapalooza” in her Fox network debut.
Later, Grampa Simpson too hauls ass to Lollapalooza, followed by the 20th Century Fox
Television fanfare.
3F14 Fox is one of the drag racer sponsors, along with Amalgamated Pornography, Duff Beer, Kingpin Malt Liquor, Laramie Cigarettes and Cop Stopper Exploding Bullets.
3F15 20th Century Fox bets that Troy McClure’s pet movie project, The Contrabulous Fabtraption of Professor Horatio Hufnagel, will pay off.
3F31 Troy McClure introduces himself as the one you might remember from such Fox network specials as “Alien Nose Job” and “Five Fabulous Weeks of The Chevy Chase Show.”
3G01 Bart and Homer agree that, if they can’t acquire actual footage of the alien, they will fake it, and sell it to the Fox network.
4F20 The Fox network’s schedule appears on-screen, which, with the exception of The Simpsons, The X-Files and Melrose Place, is entirely consumed by question-marks.
Tim Conway surprises the family with his continued presence, insisting that Fox wouldn’t spring for a decent hotel room. Marge downplays his words, thanking Fox and the good people at Budget Lodge.
4F24 Homer and Bart watch “When Buildings Collapse” on Non-Stop-Fox.
5F23 The family is relieved that they are able to think for themselves again. Suddenly, the Fox logo appears on their television with an announcer stating, “you are watching Fox.” The family repeats, “We are watching Fox.”
AABF01 Snake is executed on Fox’s “World’s Deadliest Executions” show.
AABF09 The family sits through Fox’s 200 second countdown to the network’s mid-season premiers, including “World’s Funniest Tornados” and “All in the Family 1999.”
AABF10 As a reference to Fox’s dispute with The Simpsons’ voice actors, Homer remarks that networks like animation because they don’t have to pay the actors squat. Ned Flanders then appears through the window and in a falsetto voice adds, “plus, they can replace them, and no one can tell the diddily-ifference.”
Later, the family extravagantly promotes NBC’s programming when an anonymous Fox gunman suddenly forces Homer to retract the complements under his own free will.
AABF17 As Mr. Burns prepares for his radio interview with Howard Stern spin-off Jerry Rude, the host excuses Knick-Knack & Paddy Wack–a pair of siamese midgets, wishing them luck and encouraging listeners to catch their new show on Fox.
[/qutoe]
AABF20 At an internet cafe, Homer randomly invests in several companies’ sock, including Newscorp’s. But after Lisa informs him that Fox is owned by Newscorp, Homer panics and frantically slams the undo key.
Later, we hear Homer screaming “Undo” repeatedly over the closing credits’ 20th logo.
“Was it real?”
Of course it was real. However, when I say it was real I mean that you didn’t imagine it. I mean, come on, you watched it, I watched it, several other people watched it, so it has to be “real.”
I assume that you actually mean, “Was it proof that psychic phenomena exist?” To this I would have to say, “NO!”
The “psychics” on the program did put on a pretty good show though. That “perceptionist” guy was cool, and he even admitted that he was not using any psychic powers. That goofball with the pendulums was a joke. He told the audience how their pendulums were supposed to move and lo’ and behold, some people’s pendulums started moving just like that guy told them they would.
In the interest of brevity I’ll conclude that James Van Pragh, Uri Gellar, the past lives regression lady, the remote viewing guy, and the seance guy were all beyond crap.
Please post specific things that you (RyanD004) found beleivable.
Basically I was just wondering if anyone had any proof that this show was legitimate. Of course it had all your classic signs of a typical hoax. I can’t remembert he exact name oft hem ovie,but it was about one of those Faith healers(playered by steve martin) who was a big fake. Basically the show had alot in common with the movie. Personally,I’m just trying to stay open minded, but i agree that fox is a little less than… ok it’s lost all credibility.
RyanD004,
Of course you’re right to be open-minded. Also a TV show is supposed to be entertaining (at least to someone).
But if you want to claim that current scientific theory does not cover something, then you need to give a decent demonstration that new evidence exists.
Some ways not to give a decent demonstration:
-
all the evidence is being suppressed by a Government conspiracy covering several decades
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it only works in the presence of true believers
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we can’t show it to scientists or doctors because they would refuse to look
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I haven’t got the evidence, but I know someone who does
My husband and I caught a few minutes of it. Some cold reader had convinced a couple of guys that he had channeled the spirits of Marylin Monroe and Andy Kaufmann. It was boring AND stupid.
Remember what James Randi says: if they’re using paranormal powers to perform these tricks, they’re doing it the hard way.
Joe Nickell of CSICOP offers a critique of the show.
I’m certainly not defending Fox’s flakery but I can’t buy that line about how scientific theory works, ideally it would work that way but in practice its very different. Certain fields are definatly taboo, and by working in them can get one blacklisted, lose credible upstanding in the mainstream scientific community, and lose grants/jobs.
Eventually this leads to mostly quacks in fringe fields, reinforcing the prejudice that so-and-so is not feasible and the current system cannot be questioned for fear of social reprimands. Because of this interesting results from Ganzfeld experiments are tossed in with people like Geller or that mustached “I talk to dead people” charlatan. People like Joe Nickel are quick to lump them all together to preserve their one accepted view of all science.
HorseloverFat, could you offer some evidence to support that assertion?
I agree with Horselover; couln’t have said it better myself.
I’ve had too many synchronistic experiences in my life (read Sixth Sense by Naparstek) not to believe that unexplainable phenomena, while elusive, are definitely real.
I believe that a percentage of the populace have varying degrees and types of psychic ability. Several times in my life I’ve had encounters with people who LITERALLY read my mind, usually when I was either wracking my mind trying to remember a word, or else when I was experiencing pain. One of them was my little niece who couldn’t possibly have known what a certain word meant, yet she provided it for me spontaneously as the word was about to emerge to the tip of my mind. By some as-yet-unknown mechanism, psychics are capable of tapping thoughts, feelings, you name it. It’s been my observation that most of them aren’t aware of, nor in control of, the what, when, where, nor extent of accuracy. That doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
Arrogant “know-it-alls” such as Randi, or Barrett (from Quackwatch) pursue their vendetta’s to the point of ad nauseum. I’m not saying that Barrett doesn’t provide a valuable service BUT “caveat emptor”, since the guy isn’t discerning between various shades of grey.
How many is “too many”?
How many experiences have you had that could have been synchronistic but weren’t? What percentage of all your experiences that could have been synchronistic were synchronistic? What percentage would be greater than expected by chance?
Jally said:
Nice to be so sure of yourself, based on some anecdotal experiences. Let’s just throw out all of science because you say those things happened, and couldn’t possibly have happened any other way. :rolleyes:
flaming isn’t worthy of a response.
People who deliberately choose to disbelieve others’ first-hand experiences are flamers (perhaps they should join the crows - caw, caw) 
What flaming?
No, “People who deliberately choose to disbelieve others’ first-hand experiences” are not ipso facto flamers. It takes more than that to make a flame.
I did not choose, delibereately or not, to disbelieve your experiences. You did not provide enough information to validate or invalidate your claim. I sked some questions in an attempt to elicit sufficient information.
I suggest that you read some of the threads in The BBQ Pit and compare them to David’s and my response. I won’t speak for David; but my post contained nothing but polite and relevant questions.
I strongly suspect that your “flaming” claim is just a way of ducking those questions.
First off, you should try to answer those questions JonF asked, they might shed some light on this.
Second, you really find it that impossible that your niece had any idea what that word meant, or that she at least had heard whatever phrase you were using before, and knew how to complete your sentence through experience? Fill-in-the-blank questions happen in school, and that’s essentially what you provided her with. Don’t you think that there is some solution more likely than that a supernatural power came down from the spirit world and placed the correct answer in your niece’s mouth? My friends and I are able to fill in the proper word or complete a joke for each other all the time, not because we are mind-readers but because what comes next follows logically from what has come before.
As for people being able to spot pain or discomfort, there is hardly anything psychic involved here. Even if one does not say out loud, “I am in pain”, the human body still transmits discomfort or unhappiness in hundreds of ways, many of them subconscious or unintentional. Body language, inflections of the voice, or a simple frown all suggest a persons mood beter than mere words. (Note: this is why great actors are so hard to come by. Anybody can SAY that they’re suffering, but only a selct few can make the audience believe them, and even sympathize).
Anyway, give it some thought.
Ancedotes never convince anyone of anything, and they shouldn’t but as jally points out there are lots of personal experieces that cannot be explained away by the science of materialism. VarlosZ points out the obvious, which should be anyone’s first thoughts when deciding something is out of the ordinary.
I don’t know why VarlosZ assumes jally didn’t already run his experience through a rational filter, as most people do. I also don’t see how everything has to be explained away under our current scientific understanding. There will probably always be anomolies and paradoxes that show the limitation of our current thinking. Obviously our knowledge of the world isn’t perfect and the body of science 300 years from now will probably be a lot different than the accepted theories of today. Forcing other people to make the assumptions you make is a ignorant way to maintain the status quo and defend orthodoxy.
Uber-skeptic Carl Sagan, in his Demon Haunted World mentions the real research results with the psi effect measured with random number generators and ganzfeld tests. If Sagan started his career with writings like this you probably would have never heard of him, as he would have been ostracized and labeled a quack. I think its very ironic in a Copernicus-like way that this book was released shortly before his death.
Care to provide some examples? I am not aware of any experiences that cannot be explained by known science. There are many experiences in which the subject does not believe that the true explanation is a scientific one, but I think that there is a possible scientific explanation for every incident. Coincidence and faulty memory (people are terrible witnesses) are common possible explanations.
I’m willing to be proved wrong …
Horse, the point is that the more scientific knowledge we acquire, and the more experience we get testing and debunking psychics, the more the odds swing away from any claim of a personal psychic experience being completely accurate. At this point, an out-of-body experience is more likely to be due to someone spiking your coffee with acid than to a genuine psychic experience. My aunt once claimed that she was able to understand a priest who was speaking in tongues. One way to look at it would’ve been to think that she must be telling the truth. Another way would be to think that, since she has a severe borderline personality disorder, maybe she’s not the most reliable witness when it comes to these matters. Since we don’t know jally, we can’t know what personality disorders he/she has or doesn’t have. What we can do is try to point out what appear to be logical plotholes in her account. Some people REALLY want to believe in the supernatural, and will ignore some of the more obvious possible explanations for their experiences.
The best “psychics” are the ones who are very intuitive and/or know their audience very well. They have an understanding of the human psyche that allows them to extrapolate quite a bit from only a small amount of information, or at least to know how to phrase one’s words so that they can always be interpretted in at least one correct way. Impressive skills, but we hand out degrees in Psychology for things like that, not crystal balls and a set of Tarot cards.
HorseloverFat accuses myself and JonF of being close-minded (not in so many words, but I think it’s implicit). I would disagree. To witness something that one cannot or does not understand and then attribute it to [fill in supernatural entity/force] is to take the easy way out. All through human history, people have been attributing the unknown to acts of god – and, all through history, they have been constistently proven wrong. It seems more appropriate to examine the causes and circumstances of “supernatural” experiences than to take a psychic’s claims at face value.
I don’t think its fair to either build that strawman argument (I am not defending self-styled Psychics and religious zealots per se) or accusing me of calling people close-minded. If you re-read my post, you’ll see that what I am talking about is a normal progression of collective knowledge and anomolies that tend to point out our mistakes.
I am critical of those who don’t accept the fact that some, if not most, of a lot of modern assumptions will proved wrong and replaced in the future. People who call themselves harcore skeptics, or those unfamiliar with the more traditional definition of skeptic really are doing more harm than good. Especially with their ‘ignore the man behind the curtain’ routine that demands people disregard their experiences (which are intelligently analyzed for misconceptions) for the sake of not disturbing the gospel of the science of materialism. Sorry, but all things can and will be questioned.
I am also as critical, if not more so, on the claims of the obvious self-promoters (psychics) who use ignorance to push their agendas onto public.
Most eight year olds can tell me why Uri Geller is a fraud through simple reasoning of his motives and ‘abilities’ almost as well as 15 pages written by Joe Nickell. Yet, Nickell and his ilk do a great job of maintaining an orthodoxy and socialily shunning anyone doing serious research into ‘fringe’ sciences.
I think your few paragraphs on Psychics shows your prejudice in this case, as I’ve never defended any Psychic, only the real possibilities of things unknown and the way they may manifest themselves. What I’m really defending, as I’ve posted before is the PSI research done in Ganzfeld experiments and with Random Number Generators, to name a few. Not this stereotypical run-of-the-mill psychic strawman you built and destroyed in your last post. Try re-reading this thread without so much prejudice and you might see exactly what I’m summarizing.
JonF, I’m sure any theory (“scientific” or otherwise) can be conconted about any phenomenon. Whether or not its valid is really the question. I have the opinion that our collective knowledge simply isn’t at the point where everything can be explained away using 21st century science and our eventual conclusions and theories into a great deal of existence are simply wrong. This leads to a signficant number of people distrusting the cut and dry explanations of phenomena they have a firsthand accound of witnessing. Some of these people post here, sometimes they’re wackos, sometimes they’re not.