Were our ancestors water apes, hairless bipeds that lived an aquatic existence? Did Canadian inventor Troy Hurtubise really build an "Angel Light" that makes any object transparent when bathed in its glow? How come fish sometimes fall from the sky? Can pets actually predict earthquakes? These are some of the questions that scientists throughout history have seriously examined. For two years, Mark Pilkington, the fantastic Fortean behind
Strange Attractor Journal, explored these weird experiments, scientific failures, and downright kookiness in his column Far Out that appeared in The Guardian's science supplement. Now, he's compiled those columns into a fantastic small book, Far Out: 101 Strange Tales from Science's Outer Edge. Each short entry tackles a single anomalous report or invention from science's cabinet of curiosity: electronic voice phenomena, The Cerebrophone, the memory of water, Skinner's Box, plant sentience, just to name a few. My only complaint about this terrific text is that it's not much, much longer.
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I'm not sure I like the title or the premise of this book. It seems to imply that some ideas aren't worthy of scientific exploration just because they're strange. A lot of ideas that are taken as scientific fact these days started out as oddities. If the question is worth asking, it's worth exploration.
Actually, the book celebrates the exploration of strange ideas.
Does anyone else recognize the little devil looking logo above the title as being that of the Disinformation group? I am not making any conspiracy accusations or anything it just reminded me of that. Does anyone else see what I am talking about? The man mentioned at the beginning, Troy Hurtubise, lives in North Bay, Ontario, where I spent a few years. Troy is more famous for his bear suit (look it up on youtube, pretty funny stuff). His angel light started getting attention in the summer of 2006 but was reported on in a tongue and cheek sort of way, mainly because he claimed he could not demonstrate the light because it woudl cause serious illness to anyone exposed. Troy didn't help his credibility much by dressing like a paramilitary, wearing very strange hair styles, using his single car garage as a lab and claiming that the french government was spying on him and tryng to steal the angel light.
@KllingTimeAtWork (#2), You have in fact uncovered a deep conspiracy: this book is published by Disinformation!
Does that warrent an internship at BoingBoing or any other affiliated publications, web or otherwise? I will keep my fingers crossed and constantly refresh my email inbox waiting for the offer while holding my breath. But in all honesty I don't know how deep of a conspiracy it could be since the logo appeared on the cover. Unless of course it is one of those disinformation spirals R.A.W. used to write about.
Ahh - another book to add to my holiday wishlist. Disinformation Press releases some amazing books, and this looks like just to thing for getting through the winder doldrums.
To Doomstalk
Don't let your suspicions get the better of you. I truly love this material and think that the geniuses, mad or otherwise, behind the angel light, starlite, atmospheric whales, the 33rd harmonic and the 97 other stories that I cover are the true engines of scientific inspiration.
We don't want faceless bureaucrats in pinstripes, we want bubbling test tubes, Tesla coils and weirdly-stained white coats!
Science should be exciting and inspiring - learning how wonderful ideas were wrong (and by no means all of them are wrong!) is just a part of this process.
It's only by exploring the edges of our culture that we get a full sense of what's contained within.
Best
Mark