HISTORY - 99 Percent Invisible: Episode 138: O-U-I-J-A

By ROMAN on October 28, 2014

The Ouija board is so simple and iconic that it looks like it comes from another time, or maybe another realm. The game is not as ancient as it was designed to look, but those two arched rows of letters have been spooking people for over 125 years. Actually, the roots of the board go back even farther, according to Ouija historian Robert Murch. To understand where Ouija boards (generically called “talking boards”) come from, you have to go back to middle of the 1800s, to three sisters in New York.

[The Fox Sisters, Credit: Wikimedia Commons]

The Fox Sisters claimed to be mediums to the spirit world. In public demonstrations, they would ask questions of the spirits and receive audible knocks back on the wall, which they would translate into letters of the alphabet. The sisters popularized the growing movement known as Spiritualism,which held that the living could contact the spirits of the dead, who had secret knowledge to impart.

During and after the Civil War, people who had lost loved ones became enchanted with the idea of communicating with the dead, and came up with all different ways to contact the spirit world. In 1886 the fledgling Associated Press ran an article in papers all over the country about these new “talking boards” coming out of the spiritualist movement in Ohio. A few years later in 1890, a businessman named Charles Kennard pulled together a small group of investors and formed the Kennard Novelty Company to exclusively make and market talking boards...

Ouija, it turned out, was also a great thing to do on a date. The original Ouija board was placed on your lap, so your knees would be touching your partner’s knees. Your fingers would be touching your partner’s on the planchette. You might be playing by candle light. However romantic Ouija may have been, it was still innocent enough for Normal Rockwell, who made a painting of a Ouija-playing  young couple that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.

As of 2013, there’s a new version of the Ouija board, which has been redesigned to look even older than the classic board. “They’ve really gone for the older look,” says Ouija historian Robert Murch, “which is cool because people assume these boards have been around for thousands of years, which we know isn’t true, but belief is important to the Ouija board.”

Belief is very important to the Ouija board, especially subconscious belief. Which brings us finally, to how these things work.  In 1852,  an English physician and researcher named William Carpenter was studying Spiritualist phenomena, and coined the term “ideomotor effect.”  The ideomotor effect describes what happens when subconscious thoughts guide muscular movements.

According to Professor Chris French, of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmith’s University of London, the ideometer effect can explain why, on the Ouija board, the planchette seems to be moving on its own. In truth, the players are guiding its movement subconsciously.

Some researchers have even tried to study the subconscious using Ouija boards.

To read the full article - http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/o-u-i-j-a/

HUMOR - if physical diseases were treated like mental illness

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY - Diet Of Defeat: Why Football Fans Mourn With High-Fat Food

Backing a losing NFL team isn't just bad for your pride.

It's bad for your waistline.

A study that links sports outcomes with the eating behavior of fans finds that backers of NFL teams eat more food and fattier food the day after a loss. Backers of winning teams, by contrast, eat lighter food, and in moderation.

After a defeat, the researchers found that saturated fat consumption went up by 16 percent, while after a victory it decreased by 9 percent. "After a victory, people eat better," says Pierre Chandon, a professor of marketing at the business school INSEAD in France. "After a defeat, people eat a lot worse."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/09/20/224148230/diet-of-defeat-why-football-fans-mourn-with-high-fat-food

HUMOR - The scary power of a late period!

SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION - Study: Belief in an angry God associated with variety of mental illnesses

People who believe in an angry, punishing God are much more likely to suffer from a variety of mental illnesses, a scientific study published in the April edition of Journal of Religion & Health finds.

The study, conducted by Marymount Manhattan College Assistant Psychology Professor Nava Silton, used data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey of US Adults to examine the links between beliefs and anxiety disorders like social dysfunction, paranoia, obsession and compulsion.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/17/study-belief-in-an-angry-god-associated-with-variety-of-mental-illnesses/

POLITICS - There is no "too much, too soon"!

From Etoile Frank on Facebook -
https://www.facebook.com/etoile.frank/posts/579496355408780

With the Supreme Court currently hearing arguments on two major marriage equality cases, we all keep hearing the media and their talking heads going on about the worry that the the court could do "too much, too soon" to advance gay rights. There's apparently fear that giving too broad and sweeping of a judgement in favor of gay rights will cause a culture war that will put the furor over Roe v Wade to shame. I have news: that war has been going on for those of us with skin in the game for a very, very long time.

I, and people like me, have been second class citizens in this country since it's creation. We're members of a minority group that has historically been persecuted, prosecuted, murdered, mutilated, and tortured since civilization began.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the punishment for being gay in this very country was death. Then we got a reprive, homosexuality moved from mortal sin to mental illness in the early part of last century. And up until around 1973, gay men and women were treated for said disease with castration, lobotomies, pudic nerve surgery, and electroshock therapy.

It took until 1983 for the first state in the union to decriminalize homosexuality. And until 2003 for all states to finally make it so gay men and women couldn't be arrested in their own homes for the crime of sharing a bed and their lives. And that only happened because of a Supreme Court decision.

In 1993, brave gay men and women fighting for the freedom of their fellow countrymen were finally acknowledged...by being told they could serve, if they never let it be known that they were part of a lesser class of people. It took until 2011 for them to finally be able to die for their country without hiding their sexual orientation.

And so we get to the point of marriage equality. The question of whether or not gay men and women everywhere deserve the right to equal protection under the law. To things like hospital visitation rights, not being subject to thousands of dollars in estate taxes on property they share with their partner should they die (which their straight, married counterparts never have to worry about), to having their employer provide their family with health insurance, and about a thousand other rights and responsibilities that come with marriage.

And to add insult to injury, we gay folks work hard and pay our share of taxes for representation in the government that has, until relatively recently, used us as pawns in a political game. Our right to marry used a scare tactic to drum up arch conservative throwback voters. We serve our country in a time of war, and still get trotted out as the circus freak show to bring out the worst and most divisive in the general population come election time.

And people whose own lives will not be changed by the decision over marriage have the audacity to ask if it's too soon.

That question is beyond insulting, it's ignorant. Ignorant of the struggle gay men and women have had through history. Ignorant of the inexcusable treatment we've received for thousands of years. Yes, we've come a long way in this country, but that's no excuse to rest on our laurels and say that second class citizenship is "good enough" because some people may not be ready to let go of their prejudice and preconceived notions. The real question isn't if it is too soon... It's what took us so long to get to this point? Gay people being treated like people is long overdue.

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY: War Of The Worlds!! Why people believed it 75 years ago. And STILL keep believing it!

This hour of Radiolab: an examination of the power of mass media to create panic.

In our very first live hour, we take a deep dive into one of the most controversial moments in broadcasting history: Orson Welles' 1938 radio play about Martians invading New Jersey. "The War of the Worlds" is believed to have fooled over a million people when it originally aired, and it's continued to fool people since--from Santiago, Chile to Buffalo, New York to a particularly disastrous evening in Quito, Ecuador.

http://www.radiolab.org/2008/mar/24/

SCIENCE: The Science of Fatherhood: Why Dads Matter

http://www.livescience.com/20997-science-fatherhood-fathers-day.html

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY: Jet-Lagged By Your Social Calendar? Better Check Your Waistline

http://m.npr.org/story/152690836?url=/blogs/thesalt/2012/05/14/152690836/social-jetlag-what-we-eat-isnt-the-only-factor-influencing-our-waistlines&sc=tw

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY: Homophobic guys are probably slightly gay says science!

I remember this study!

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/103305/homophobic-guys-are-probably-slightly-gay-says-science/

HUMOR: Good idea for OCDs!

I had an OCD person spend the weekend at my place. It hadn't been so clean since my mom helped me clean it!

ENTERTAINMENT and SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY: The power of music!

CULTURE/SOCIETY: My Fun Day Today

Started this as a Facebook post, but it got too long, so I thought it would make a good blog post. Haven't put one up for ages! - OlderMusicGeek

what a day! i went to the doctor's to discuss my hormone therapy. i was told he wasn't seeing anybody today! turns out the appointment was yesterday!

well, i was planning on doing the paperwork for my name change after i went to the doctor's. but i was thinking that the therapist appointment that i thought was tomorrow was probably today.

unfortunately, i had no way to check this out because my phone number had switched over from my old phone to my new phone. and my new phone didn't have a battery!

well, i went to the shop and the guy there didn't see any battery left behind anywhere and no message about a battery, but said the guys who were there would be there tonight.

so i went to my therapist anyway. it turns out i did have an appointment today, not tomorrow. but i was 45 minutes early so i went to eat. then when i was leaving my car had trouble starting.

it starts fine now, knock on wood. so i don't know what was the problem then. anyway, after the therapist, i was going to do the name change, but fortunately i checked my bank account to be sure i had the fees. i didn't - i must have miscalculated how much i spent on christmas presents!

so not to make my day a total loss, i'm heading to work to save some of my personal time off and will once again do the name change after my new appointment to see the doctor about my hormone therapy!

ON OLDERMUSICGEEK'S STUPID TESTS AND QUIZZES: "PERSONALITY TRAIT: The AQ (Autism-Spectrum Quotient) Test For Asperger's Syndrome" (just click)

SCIENCE: Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect

This is a report from NPR that I found pretty interesting. I edit it to make it read more quickly. Here's a link if you want to read the complete article. - OlderMusicGeek

Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect
by Alix Spiegel
Morning Edition, January 3, 2008

In a recent study, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer decided to look at whether our perception of how much exercise we are getting has any effect on how our bodies actually look.

As any casual observer of the hospitality industry knows, hotel maids spend the majority of their days lugging heavy equipment around endless hallways. Basically, almost every moment of their working lives is spent engaged in some kind of physical activity.

But Langer found that most of these women don't see themselves as physically active. She did a survey and found that 67 percent reported they didn't exercise. More than one-third of those reported they didn't get any exercise at all.

Perceptions Matter

Langer says, despite the fact all of the women in her study far exceeded the U.S. surgeon general's recommendation for daily exercise, the bodies of the women did not seem to benefit from their activity.

She and her team measured the maids' body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, blood pressure, weight and body mass index. They found that all of these indicators matched the maids' perceived amount of exercise, rather than their actual amount of exercise.

So Langer set about changing perceptions.

She divided 84 maids into two groups. With one group, researchers carefully went through each of the tasks they did each day, explaining how many calories those tasks burned. They were informed that the activity already met the surgeon general's definition of an active lifestyle.

The other group was given no information at all.

One month later, Langer and her team returned to take physical measurements of the women and were surprised by what they found. In the group that had been educated, there was a decrease in their systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio — and a 10 percent drop in blood pressure.

One possible explanation is that the process of learning about the amount of exercise they were already getting somehow changed the maids' behavior. But Langer says that her team surveyed both the women and their managers and found no indication that the maids had altered their routines in any way.

Essentially, what Langer is talking about is a placebo effect. She says that if you believe you are exercising, your body may respond as if it is. It's the same as if you believe you are getting medication when you are actually getting a sugar pill — your body can sometimes respond as if a placebo is actually working.

Placebo Effect Limited?

But Martin Binks, director of behavioral health at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in North Carolina, says, "There's a very high likelihood that [the maids] behaved differently after they received that information, and they were being more active and eating more healthfully. And that resulted in their improvements in health."

But Binks has a more substantive criticism.

"Generally what placebos work on is subjective types of findings," he says.

In other words, a placebo can help change something like your perception of pain or perhaps your sense of whether you feel depressed, but it can't do something objective like shrink a tumor or cut three pounds off your waistline.

Or can it?

Howard Brody, the director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch and the author of the book, The Placebo Response, has spent years looking at this issue. He says that a number of relatively new studies challenge the old assumption that the placebo effect alters only subjective perception.

For example, Brody notes one study where researchers gave asthmatic patients a drug that actually makes asthma worse. When they gave the drug to the patients, they told them that it relieves asthma.

"A significant number of those patients said that my asthma got better when you gave them the drug," Brody says, "and they measured better when you measured the lung findings."

Alink to the complete article

SCIENCE, CULTURE/SOCIETY and SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: Suicide: Holidays' Darkest Myth

This is an article from The L.A. Times that I found with Netvibes.com. I shortened to make it read more quickly. Here's a link to the complete article. - OlderMusicGeek

Suicide: holidays' darkest myth
Contrary to past reports, depression and suicide rates actually fall during the holidays.

By Susan Brink (susan.brink@latimes.com), Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 17, 2007

It was Christmas Eve when George Bailey stared into the black depths of the river beneath the bridge in Bedford Falls, convinced that the world would be better off without him. That scene from the 1946 movie classic "It's a Wonderful Life" could well have given birth to the media myth that Christmas is a trigger for increased suicides and episodes of depression.

It is a baseless notion, according to a body of published studies by statisticians who have examined hundreds of thousands of suicides in the United States and around the world. The number of suicides goes down, not up, over the holiday season, by as much as 40%.

In one of the most thorough examinations of what researchers call acts of deliberate self-harm, which can be an indication of depression, Helen Bergen, research scientist at the University of Oxford, found that Christmas, for most people, is protective.

Bergen and colleagues reached this conclusion after examining emergency room admission records of 19,346 people in England and looking at daily rates of self-induced injury from 1976 to 2003.

Drug or alcohol overdoses, self-poisoning with gas or other harmful substances and self-inflicted injuries-- with or without the deliberate intention to die -- all decreased from average levels during the week of Dec. 19-26, Bergen and colleagues found, and these lowered levels held through New Year's Day.

The decrease in rates of self-inflicted damage before, on and immediately after Christmas and into the New Year was found regardless of age, family connections or social isolation, the researchers reported in the September issue of the journal Social Science & Medicine.

Even people with family relationship problems were less inclined to attempt to hurt themselves during the holidays. "These findings are contrary to the popular view that Christmas is a time of stress and arguments," Bergen says. Perhaps, she says, problems within the nuclear family ease up instead of intensify when the extended family is around.

Another possible reason why depression and suicide rates fall this time of year is that the season, more than other times, is one of giving. "People tend to reach out over the holidays," says Dr. Douglas Jacobs, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. Elderly people in nursing homes might suddenly get visitors. People who haven't heard from friends all year might get a card or a phone call.

It's only in the last year that the majority of news stories reflected the fact versus the myth about seasonal suicide rates, says Romer, who since 2000 has been tracking trends in media interpretations of the link between holidays and suicide. In a national search of news stories linking the holidays with suicide, he says, 9% of news organizations supported the myth in 2006, compared with 57% in 2005 and 77% in 1999.

An extra dose of caring probably adds to the psychological protection of a season that seems to insist on happiness. No matter how bad it may seem, holiday rituals add up to more good than bad, buffering adults and children against depression and anxiety.

Barbara Fiese, chairwoman of psychology at Syracuse University, reviewed 32 studies done over 50 years and concluded that holiday family rituals may be annoying, but they're good for us. People with strong family routines and rituals at holiday time reported more marital satisfaction, better academic achievement among children and better overall health among family members, she found. Even in families in which there has been a divorce, the continuation of family rituals improves the children's ability to adapt and increases their stability.

A link to the complete article

A link to all my Christmas and holiday posts

Happy Christmas and/or Boxing Day and/or Kwanzaa and/or Hannakah and/or Bodhi Day and/or Sanghamitta Day and/or Shabe Cheleh and/or Makara Sankranti and/or Junkanoo and/or Dong Zhi and/or Toji and/or Soyal and/or Yule and/or Seva Zistane and/or Alban Arthan and/or Long Night and/or Mean Geimrech and/or Brumalia and/or Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and/or Saturnalia and/or Lenaea and/or Wren Day and/or Tekufah Tevet and/or Winter Solstice and/or ChriFSMas and/or any other December or winter solstice holidays i missed!

Oh, and Bah Humbug to those who don't celebrate the holidays! :)

CULTURE/SOCIETY: What My Superpower Should Be

Being a comic book fan in my youth, I had to take this quiz. - OlderMusicGeek.

Your Superpower Should Be Mind Reading

You are brilliant, insightful, and intuitive. You understand people better than they would like to be understood. Highly sensitive, you are good at putting together seemingly irrelevant details. You figure out what's going on before anyone knows that anything is going on! Why you would be a good superhero: You don't care what people think, and you'd do whatever needed to be done Your biggest problem as a superhero: Feeling even more isolated than you do now

What Should Your Superpower Be?

SCIENCE and CULTURE/SOCIETY: The 237 Reasons for Sex

This article for the New York Times popped up on my home page and piqued my interest. I present part of it here. - OlderMusicGeek

The Whys of Mating: 237 Reasons and Counting
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: July 31, 2007

Scholars in antiquity began counting the ways that humans have sex, but they weren’t so diligent in cataloging the reasons humans wanted to get into all those positions. Darwin and his successors offered a few explanations of mating strategies — to find better genes, to gain status and resources — but they neglected to produce a Kama Sutra of sexual motivations.

Perhaps you didn’t lament this omission. Perhaps you thought that the motivations for sex were pretty obvious. Or maybe you never really wanted to know what was going on inside other people’s minds, in which case you should stop reading immediately.

For now, thanks to psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin, we can at last count the whys. After asking nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, the researchers have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons — everything from “I wanted to feel closer to God” to “I was drunk.” They even found a few people who claimed to have been motivated by the desire to have a child.

The researchers, Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss, believe their list, published in the August issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, is the most thorough taxonomy of sexual motivation ever compiled. This seems entirely plausible.

Who knew, for instance, that a headache had any erotic significance except as an excuse for saying no? But some respondents of both sexes explained that they’d had sex “to get rid of a headache.” It’s No. 173 on the list.

Others said they did it to “help me fall asleep,” “make my partner feel powerful,” “burn calories,” “return a favor,” “keep warm,” “hurt an enemy” or “change the topic of conversation.” The lamest may have been, “It seemed like good exercise,” although there is also this: “Someone dared me.”

Dr. Buss has studied mating strategies around the world — he’s the oft-cited author of “The Evolution of Desire” and other books — but even he did not expect to find such varied and Machiavellian reasons for sex. “I was truly astonished,” he said, “by this richness of sexual psychology.”

The best news is that both men and women ranked the same reason most often: “I was attracted to the person.”

The rest of the top 10 for each gender were also almost all the same, including “I wanted to express my love for the person,” “I was sexually aroused and wanted the release” and “It’s fun.”

No matter what the reason, men were more likely to cite it than women, with a couple of notable exceptions. Women were more likely to say they had sex because, “I wanted to express my love for the person” and “I realized I was in love.” This jibes with conventional wisdom about women emphasizing the emotional aspects of sex, although it might also reflect the female respondents’ reluctance to admit to less lofty motives.

The results contradicted another stereotype about women: their supposed tendency to use sex to gain status or resources.

“Our findings suggest that men do these things more than women,” Dr. Buss said, alluding to the respondents who said they’d had sex to get things, like a promotion, a raise or a favor. Men were much more likely than women to say they’d had sex to “boost my social status” or because the partner was famous or “usually ‘out of my league.’ ”

Dr. Buss said, “Although I knew that having sex has consequences for reputation, it surprised me that people, notably men, would be motivated to have sex solely for social status and reputation enhancement.”

But then, men were also more likely than women to say they’d had sex because “I was slumming.” Or simply because “the opportunity presented itself,” or “the person demanded that I have sex.”

If nothing else, the results seem to be a robust confirmation of the hypothesis in the old joke: How can a woman get a man to take off his clothes? Ask him.

The full article for the New York Times

Where people suggest a 238th reason for sex - and where you can nominate a reason too