Virginia Hughes

With a few hours to go now before debuting my Halloween costume, I’ve been thinking about a recent holiday telephone poll that seemed, at first, laughable. Conducted last week by the AP on 1,013 adults, 34 percent of respondents said they believed in ghosts, and a whopping 48 percent said they believed in extrasensory perception (ESP). Yes, that ESP, the “paranormal abilities” that include telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance.

That’s FORTUNE TELLING, folks. Half of American adults believe in fortune telling.

There’s more. In an article originally run by This Old House last Halloween and re-run on CNN.com this Friday, a self-described ghost hunter and founder of the American Ghost Society, Troy Taylor, explains to readers how to rid their homes of ghosts. As he explains:

Once you’ve ruled out natural causes, you have a choice of what to do next. You can either learn to live with the novelty of a ghost in your house, or get in touch with a legitimate ghost researcher to help you understand what’s going on. This is not as easy as it sounds, as there are hundreds of them out there, with a varying degree of credibility.

At first, this made me laugh, and laugh, and laugh some more. Is CNN, perhaps the most trusted (or at least most popular) news agency in America, seriously assessing the varying degrees of credibility of ghost hunters? (The credibility variation, to be sure, is zero.) Calm down Ginny, you say, maybe CNN was just making a cutesy Halloween joke. Perhaps. But remember the poll. And, as James points out, even if the article was tongue-in-cheek, the reader comments posted online certainly were not:

Leah D. Lichtenberg, Sat, Oct 27, 07 at 08:32 AM
Hello! Yes! Ghosts, spirits, etc. do exists as I have seen plenty of them! I have 4 in my home and I am a paranormal investigator and a clairvoyant, which means I see dead people! We can help anyone that has spirits in there home.

My answer, Tue, Oct 09, 07 at 04:02 PM
I believe all your stories, and it’s nice to have nice ghosts in the house, the ghosts I’ve dealt with weren’t so nice. Here’s how to get rid of them - Pray to God and ask for a spiritual guide to take them where they need to be, and believe (have faith) that God has done it. No baths, no smoke, no voodoo, no nonsense. Take it from a pro, I’ve been there and done.

Ghost in HV, Tue, Oct 09, 07 at 01:46 PM
I have a ghost that resides in the Master Bedroom and Bathroom. Changes the time on the digital clock right in front of me - can see the numbers incrementing, “move something” results in a movement of something (not heavy) in the room.

jb, Tue, Oct 09, 07 at 01:40 PM
This Old Apartment ~ We have a ghost, that follows us anytime we move. Its not necessarily the place but sometimes the people that are being haunted. He makes noise, we tell him to quiet down and he does. Gotta love it.

The next question, then, is What’s the harm? Why care that so many of my contemporaries believe in nonsense? Irrational beliefs are all part of the same sinking ship. In my mind, those who believe in ghosts are not categorically different the Christian fundamentalists who are fighting to teach creationism in science classes, or the HIV/AIDS denialists who recommend “alternative” treatments to life-saving antiretroviral treatment.

And with that, I’m off to a party where rational adults dress up in fanciful costumes to celebrate the paranormal. Happy Halloween, Spooks!

(Photo Credit: piccadillywilson)

Soeren Ludvigsen is a farm worker in southern Greenland. He’s holding a potato that he harvested there in 2004. Thanks to global warming, crops like potatoes and broccoli now grow in regions where even just a decade ago they never would have made it through the frost.

Thirty years ago in the city of Qaqortoq, for example, the average temperature was 0.63 degrees Celsius. Today it’s about 1.93 degrees. That might not seem like a huge change, but it adds two extra weeks to their growing season. And with 20 hours of sunlight in each summer day, that means that global warming has given Greenland a veritable agricultural boom.

And the Arctic’s warming is only getting faster, according to research released by Danish scientists on Wednesday. They were studying Greenland ice streams—sections of ice that move quickly within the larger ice sheet, usually toward an ocean. As Dorthe Dahl-Jensen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen explained:

“In just two-three years the speed of a large ice stream nearly doubled. This means that we have underestimated the rapid changes that may ensue from the amounts of ice leaving the ice each year.”

This and other new findings about Arctic climate change were discussed this week at the “Global Environmental Change” conference in Nynäshamn, Sweden.

Go check out the rest of National Geographic’s amazing photos of climate change.

The Edge recently asked today’s most eminent thinkers, WHAT IS YOUR FORMULA? YOUR EQUATION? YOUR ALGORITHM?

The answers spanned from the political:
“EVOLUTION = TYRANNY (Mutation Without Representation)” (Drew Endy)

to the pragmatic:
“(Number of Solutions/Number of Problems) > (1.01/year) = PROGRESS” (Kevin Kelly)

to the modest:
“GREAT SUCCESS = SOME TALENT + A LOT OF LUCK (Nobel Laureate Danny Kahneman)

Here’s the one I found most thought provoking (haha, get it?), from Steven Pinker:

A peep into the most recent listings in my Gmail spam folder (currently holding 716 messages since last purged on Sept. 7) reveals some funny stuff. Some of the most bizarre (non-’enlarge your penis’) solicitations:

From “Editor Bob”:
I write to you, so we stay in touch and that I do coz I believe I’m like a raindrop. Yes, though the raindrop maybe small, somewhere a thirsty flower awaits it to drop. Here I am to quench your thirst. Let’s go shower the world with our love.

From “Diego Cunningham”:
Offering up to $500 Bonuses. 140+ games including progressive jackpot games.
“We were so close to being one of the actual victems. [sic] It makes you feel humble.” Robert Lee Bedker

But these are not the focus of today’s blog post. No, what I’d like to discuss are the emails of the “business venture” variety, such as the one copied here, verbatim, from “S. Jan Rudolf.” (Disclaimer: I am not in any way suggesting that you visit Rudolf’s links…)

Dearest One,

I am ADVOCATEN S. Jan Rudolf, A solicitor at law. I am the Personal Attorney to Engr. David Brand Roberts. On the October 5,1999, my client was involved in a trains crashed near Paddington Station,which is less than a mile north of Notting Hill. This is one of Britain’s worsttrain crashes in fifty years.You can see the web of incedent.

http://www.kidsnewsroom.org/testmember/100899/aw_100899_01.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/467919.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/10/99/london_train_crash/465
503.stm

I have contacted you to assist me,in repatriating most especially,the assast that were left behind by my late client before they get confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this deposit is lodged,valued at 12 million dollars, which hasissued me a notice to provide the Next of kin to my late client, or have the account confiscated.Since there is a government gazette/circular mandating/authorizing banks to place onhold or freeze any account containing huge sums of money that has been unserviceable for a reasonable period of time.This is geared towards forestalling capital flight from the economy.

My proposition to you, is to seek your consent to present you as the Next of kin and beneficiary of my named client,so that the proceeds of this account valued at 12 million Dollars can be paid to you,and then we can share the amount on a mutually agreed percentage.30% will be for you,50% for me,10% for a reputable charity home because the money I owned by a deceased man and 10% set aside for any expenses during the course of this transaction.

All legal documents to back up your claim as the deceased Next of Kin,will be provided.All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through. This will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law.If you are interested please do forward to this office the following.

1. YOUR AGE
2. YOUR ADDRESS
3. PHONE AND FAX.

If this business proposition offends your moral values,do accept my apology but if not,then you can contact me at my Email address: advocatjanrudolf@aim.com once to indicate your interest.

Best Regards,
ADVOCATEN S. Jan Rudolf

First, who’s with me in asking, incredulously, Who falls for this bullshit? Are these the same people who read (and trust) their horoscopes, buy into 9/11 conspiracies, or believe that vaccines cause autism?

This kind of spam letter, which tries to get unsuspecting (and, ahem, idiotic) readers to give up personal identification information, is called a “phishing attack.”

Several groups have stepped up to fight phishers. “Cyber vengers” pretend to play along with the spammers, and eventually trick them into chasing accounts that don’t exist, or photographing themselves with demeaning signs—like I AM A SHEEP SHAGGER—or even carving, in great detail, a keyboard out of wood. (For more about this, check out “How to Trick an Online Scammer into Carving a Computer Out of Wood” from June’s Atlantic Monthly.)

That tactic, though hilarious, doesn’t do much for the geriatrics who get robbed by these cons. Now a group at Carnegie Mellon is solving the problem from the other side, by sending the naive readers spam-type emails that dupe them into visiting educational websites that will teach them to watch out for the real frauds. Clever!

As the Carnegie Mellon press release explains:

In the study, three groups of 14 volunteers participated in role-playing exercises in which they processed email, which included a mix of phishing, spam and legitimate email. Those in the “embedded training” group, who were given anti-phishing educational materials after they had fallen for a phishing email, spent more than twice as much time studying the materials than those who were presented the materials without first being tricked. Those who were presented the materials without being tricked were no better at identifying phishing emails than those who received no anti-phishing educational materials. A week later, when the exercise was repeated, those in the embedded training group were significantly more successful in identifying phishing emails than those in the other two groups — 64 percent of phishing emails identified by the embedded training group versus 7 percent identified by the other two groups.

The researchers will present their results Friday, at the Anti-Phishing Working Group’s (APWG) eCrime Researchers Summit in Pittsburgh.