It is summer vacation. Which is awesome. Being an RA for the summer is sweet because I'm taking on responsibility and working with cool people. Only being an RA for the summer is sweet because it has left my afternoons free to enjoy day time TV.
Only being an RA for the summer is sucky because it has left my afternoons free to enjoy day time TV.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good paternity test on Maury as much as the next guy. And I'm not about to complain about being relatively stress-free and relaxed while also having a job. It's a sweet gig. I just suspect that after while I'm going to start to go crazy a little.
For now, however, I have Ghost Hunters to keep me occuppied.
If you've watched Supernatural, you may have seen the characters who call themselves "Ghostfacers." They're a mockery of those people that take their EMF readers, find the nearest dilapitated house and investigate. They're quirky and have a ridiculous theme song. "Stay in the kitchen when the kitchen gets HOT!"
I've learned from Ghosthunters that this portrayal is unfortunately not that far off. These are people who mysteriously miss getting all the sightings, sounds and actions of ghosts on camera, despite having cameras set up everywhere. These are people who take shadows as proof of the undead. These are people who dangerously pretend to be skeptical, but only to a point ("that sound was definitely the wind outside so we'll discredit it. But that sound is only explained by GHOSTS.")
Is human intelligence really this far gone? I suppose this sort of thinking has been around as long as humanity has, but when will these people get open-minded enough to the idea that they might be wrong? When will they listen to reason?
I think I need to not watch this show anymore, because the more I saw, the more frustrated I became. It's really like people have given up on science. Science cannot explain everything yet, so to some people that makes it meaningless. Maybe if we could depoliticize science, show people how much it's affecting their everyday lives, and why the scientific method (i.e. the backbone of skepticism) works, they would believe in it more. They'd take the time to hone their skepticism skills and see right through this ghost hunter crap.
Oh wait, that sounds like science class in high school.
Dammit. Arts are important, but I don't care what anyone says, science is critical to our survival. As long as people are capable of convincing other people of things that are very undeniably false (o hai Scientology) we are at risk.
In the meantime, I think I saw a two hour block of Spongebob on Nickelodeon this morning. I'll stick with that.
To be fair, science only works if you accept axioms. Scientology can be proven scientifically to be true, provided you start off with the right set of axioms, and by the very nature of them, it's impossible to prove that one set is the 'better' set of axioms.
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