THERE have been some fairly wacky experiments done to get an empirical handle on religion, from photographing seances to the electrically wired 鈥淕od helmet鈥� that makes people swear they feel the presence of the Almighty. But among the oddest is a series funded by the Pennsylvania-based Templeton Foundation at Baroness Susan Greenfield鈥檚 Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind in the UK.
The idea is to see if religious feelings change the perception of pain. This is, with respect, a no-brainer. Researchers have been finding profound differences in people鈥檚 perception of pain according to any number of cultural variables since the 1960s 鈥� one study found Jewish mothers to be especially resilient. But what tickles us is the way the Oxford researchers intend to test this: by burning people鈥檚 hands with chilli gel while they look at religious images. We assume the control will be images of something unreligious 鈥� we don鈥檛 know what. Suggestions on a postcard please.
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The potential spoiler here is that sensitivity to capsaicin, the active ingredient in chilli, is reduced by one鈥檚 exposure to it. People who eat lots don鈥檛 feel its burn as readily. So we predict that the best religion, as measured by the chilli test, will turn out to be Thai Buddhism. This will be followed by Ethiopian Coptic Christianity, Gujarati forms of Hinduism, and Bangladeshi (but not Afghani or Saudi) Islam.
鈥淎ccording to Kenneth Phiri, in the antenatal department at Queen鈥檚 Medical Centre in Nottingham, UK, there is a notice on one door that reads: 鈥淧lease do not enter when door is closed鈥濃��
We also predict that a number of Anglicans, especially those from the English Midlands, will be right up there in the spiritual toughness stakes. Some may say their faith is wishy-washy, but the vindaloo curries they consume on Saturday nights are anything but.
FANS of Inverclyde Council鈥檚 morally spotless website will be delighted to know that the guardians of public virtue at the Scottish local authority are still bleeping out even remotely questionable words. Although, as we reported two weeks ago, its web pages no longer describe the 鈥渕ussels and *bleep*les鈥� to be found on the Clyde estuary, it still hosts an Entertainment page that lists the pubs and clubs in the area, one of which is a bar called Norseman that offers 鈥渉alf price *bleep*tails鈥� on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Jim Randell, who gleefully discovered this, suggests visiting the page quickly before they de-censor that one too as a result of reading this item. It鈥檚 at .
Yet another *bleep*-up.
SONY鈥檚 PR people recently invited journalists to try one of the latest Walkmans, a player the size of a packet of chewing gum that manages to contain a battery, a socket for headphones and 1 gigabyte of memory that can store a stack of CDs.
The music has to be squirted into the Walkman from a PC, using Sony鈥檚 SonicStage software. So we duly installed the software on our PC and connected the Walkman to the PC鈥檚 USB socket as instructed. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Sometimes the computer crashed, sometimes not.
Then up on screen came a Microsoft error message. We can only speculate on the acrimony of the dialogue between Sony and Microsoft that produced this message, because we have never seen one like it: 鈥淓rror Caused By Sony Corporation: No Specific Solution Found鈥n analyst at Microsoft has investigated this problem and determined that an unknown error occurred in OpenMG-SonicStage Jukebox. This software was created by Sony Corporation:Microsoft has researched this problem with Sony Corporation, and they do not currently have a solution for the problem鈥�.
Little doubt there: Microsoft thinks Sony was to blame. So we contacted Sony to ask if there was a solution yet. A technical expert was delegated to talk. 鈥淲e hadn鈥檛 seen the Microsoft message,鈥� he confessed. 鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 aware of any problems and our customer information line isn鈥檛 aware of any either. And if Microsoft says there isn鈥檛 a solution, then presumably there isn鈥檛 one鈥�.
Call us technologically challenged, but we are now rather at a loss what to do next.
FINALLY a company called Westwind Energy sensibly consulted the local community over its plans to construct a wind farm on Mount Mercer in Victoria, Australia. It bussed a group of people from the area to a working wind farm in nearby Challicum Hills. The result, according to site manager Geoff Collins in the online news report Peter Woods alerted us to, was an endorsement of the company鈥檚 plans 鈥� but not, perhaps, of its command of arithmetic. 鈥淲e took 40 people down there,鈥� says Collins, 鈥渁nd 99 per cent of them were unconcerned once they鈥檇 seen a wind farm in operation.鈥�