Subtle Perception Ability

Sixth sense or subtle perception ability is our ability to perceive the subtle dimension or the unseen world of angels, ghosts, heaven, etc. It also includes our ability to understand the subtle cause and effect relationship behind many events, which is beyond the understanding of the intellect. Extrasensory perception (ESP), clairvoyance, premonition, intuition are synonymous with sixth sense or subtle perception ability.

We perceive the gross (seen) world through the five physical senses (i.e. smell, taste, sight, touch and sound), our mind (our feelings) and our intellect (decision making capacity). When it comes to the unseen world or the subtle world, we perceive it through the five subtle senses, the subtle mind and the subtle intellect - more popularly known as our sixth sense. When the sixth sense is developed or activated, it helps us to experience the subtle world or subtle dimension. This experience of the subtle world is also known as a ‘spiritual experience’.

Some gadgets change the world. Others don’t. These, however, are very effective at one thing in particular: teleporting money out of customers’ pockets. The FTC smacked down Q-Ray’s "ionized" bracelet to the tune of $87m after the makers made deceptive advertising claims. The $200 placebo trinkets are still on sale, however — the ad copy just makes vague intimations of "wellness" and the like instead of specific medical claims. Whether "ionization" even does anything, however, is a moot point. Tested by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at an electron microscopy lab, it found that the thing wasn’t ionized at all. Even for true believers, it’s a waste of wonga.

When it comes to gadgets, perpetual motion machines are bullshit’s bread and butter. Steorn, the Irish company behind Orbo, is only the latest in a long line of deluded, incompetent or fraudulent firms to claim the scalp of the laws of thermodynamics. File this one under deluded: enthusiastically setting up a public display, the inventors were humiliated when it failed to operate. But wait! Steorn gave its deal to 22 scientists who’ll "validate" the device. Don’t hold your breath, chaps.

Perhaps it’s art, a complex exploitation of media credulity and skeptics’ blood pressure. Perhaps its a clever-dick ad for Steorn’s marketing abilities. What it isn’t, however, is a free energy machine. Think it might be real? For the love of Liebniz, get a freakin’ clue: if it looks like a toy and the net gain is almost imperceptibly small, you’re selling a measurement error.

Predicting future experiences People are pretty bad at predicting future experiences, which tends to lead to disappointment. The reason, says Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, is that we base our expectations on previous experiences or possible alternatives, when those are totally irrelevant. The spook agency (CIA) did not foresee the Al Qaeda threat and 9/11. The CIA actually had the information it needed to foresee 9/11, and just didn’t realize it. How’s that? Well, the intel community’s psychics may have predicted it back in 1986. Who knew? It’s a basic question, if you think about it: who was better able to predict the devastation of 9/11? Was it the top analysts in the intelligence community, who had at their fingertips (or should’ve had) some of the best intelligence collected by technical means and human sources, or psychics (the spy-psychic connection, known formally as Remote Viewing) who, incidentally, were also in the employ of the intelligence community at the time.

Marshall McLuhan may have seen technology as an extension of the human body, but we’re not going to fall for this one: former South African cop Danie Krugel’s "quantum" box, which he claims can locate anyone on Earth, when primed with a sample of their DNA.

Science-challenged bumpkins at Britain’s Observer and Telegraph newspapers fell for it hook, line and sinker. After Krugel approached the parents of missing toddler Madeleine McCann, then told them she’d been buried on a beach, the Observer described this hogwash as "forensic DNA tests" by a "detective renowned for locating abducted children."

Ben Goldacre of Bad Science called the reportage "contemptible." Krugel’s led more than one bereaved family up the garden path, it transpires: The Daily Mirror delivered a much-needed debunking. The magical mystery box weds "complex and secret science techniques" with GPS to show exactly where the missing person is. Krugel, however, won’t let anyone examine it. If anyone gets a chance, swap it out for one of Mother Mohiam’s when he’s not looking, would you? That’ll teach him.

The Harmony Chip is so transparently useless as to be an object lesson in how drivel may be dressed up as science. Everything is just as it should be. The appropriation of scientific teminology to tout snake oil. Misrepresented research from real scientists. A website slathered in testimonials. Vague medical claims about pain relief, blood pressure and curing headaches. A long-haired, bare-chested Yorkshireman with a fake Eastern name who rambles emptily about the nature of innovation and who attributes commonplace platitudes to himself. Wait… What?

Harmony "revitalizes" blood and water, improves your golf swing, speeds recovery from injury and "personal development," and makes you "clearer" and "cleverer." It improves gas mileage, reduces tire wear, cuts emissions, reduces workplace turnover and absenteeism, cleans swimming pools, refreshes "exhausted" engine oil, and protects one from radio waves. It even does the dishes.

Described by Wired’s Katie Dean as "a watch powered by snake oil," Teslar watches contains a chip (uh oh) that purports to emit a frequency that "neutralizes the electromagnetic fields" output by cellular telephones, computers and radios. Most scientists don’t think such fields are harmful anyway, but even if they were, a feeble wristwatch wouldn’t protect you from the radio waves rattling around every human head on planet Earth. "There is not a chance in the word that [it] will do anything but lighten your wallet," says John Molder, a professor of radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Here’s the blurb, straight from the company’s website: "When a Teslar watch is worn on the left wrist, the frequency goes into the triple warmer meridian on the left wrist, and then travels throughout the body, canceling out harmful static caused by electromagnetic fields (ELF) along the way."

Clarins’ Expertise e3P "ultra-sheer screen mist" purports to offer a "Magnetic Defense Complex" with Rhodiola Rosea and Thermus Thermophillius, to protect you from all that horrible radio pollution. At about $40, this bottle of failure takes the electromagnetic biscuit.

The Guardian, for one, found its makers unwilling or unable to cite the scientific research that they said supports their claims. The main cause of premature skin aging is sunlight, for which the cure is darkness or sunscreen. If you want to get away from EM radiation, spraying water on your face is not an effective way to do so—even if it does have bits of dead Siberian weeds in it.

Done listening to the MPion’s stash of music? It won’t take long, with only 128MB of flash storage on board. The real feature of this device is is "negative ion generator," which is said to clean pores when you smudge the unit over your face. Even if this thing harmed bacteria, the effect would be more than compensated for by the torrent of them acquired by smooshing the grease from your own hands all over your chops.

With so many crackpot devices out there with alleged wellness benefits, it’s hard to pick one out. Ah, the agony of choice. Harmonic Products’s EMP Power Modulator, however, is like the Telsar Watch’s big daddy. Plug it in, and it supposedly emits "non-Hertzian frequencies" to remove "harmful" radio waves from the building and allow biological de-stressing. It also purportedly makes electrical devices safer and more efficient.

Reports of success tend to be anecdotal rather than evidential, but don’t let that stop you buying this toy. Actually, do let it stop you. The sellers of this particular device don’t like to be called on their nonsense: when one critic, Daniel Rutter, upbraided the Power Modulator online, its makers issued a series of nutty legal threats and had his website taken offline. Say "Hi" to the Streisand Effect, guys. Maybe it’ll help shift some of your junk. The thing is just an extension cord with a ghetto line filter: three aluminum plates held close to a copper conductor running the length of the device. The plates have holes in them, because Harmonic Products also sells them as pendants.

You might laugh, but it’s possible that somebody, somewhere, has bought an analog-only TV this year. If the message about the big switch-off was so badly communicated that the Obama administration delayed the throwing of that switch, it was badly communicated enough that some hillbilly might have sprung for a new set in the last few months.

In this case, though, there really is someone to blame. Sure, the cousin-marriers might be excused for not keeping on top of the tech news, but the TV stores cannot. We imagine, though, that it is very unlikely: Most of the suppliers, and even the cable companies, are lying about the digital switch to get people to upgrade to unneeded new plans and equipment.

Believe it or not, there are complaints from D3 owners that they felt cheated by Nikon’s announcement of the D3x, despite the fact that the cameras have almost completely opposite purposes. The older D3 is a dream camera for many. It has a 12-megapixel sensor which can see in the dark. If you have bought one of these, it’s likely you know a lot about cameras and have plenty of experience.

The D3x, on the other hand, is a 24.5-megapixel monster is better suited to a brightly lit fashion studio than a dark sports stadium. Two completely different cameras in purpose, and yet even smart people, people willing to pay thousands for a camera, are seduced by megapixels. Is this buyer’s remorse … or just buyer’s stupidity?

I can’t let you go without mentioning the all-time classic scam-friendly gadget. Be it two precision-engineered brass rods, dangling crystals or old hazelwood, divining is to the technology of magical thinking as the humble flintknap is to invention itself. Usually associated with the search for water, dowsers search for pretty much everything: buried gold, gemstones, hydrocarbons and murder victims are just the beginning of a practice stretching back millenia.

Generous skeptics and even some dowsers maintain that the rods serve to amplify near-imperceptible twitches caused by the suppressed wisdom of the unconscious mind. Unfortunately, such inspired ideomotoring vanishes under test conditions, like just so much fodder.

Rob Beschizza. 10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets. . November 17, 2007.

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