Birthday thoughts

I received lots of nice e-cards and notes today for my 14th birthday, some from friends I haven't seen in nearly 40 years, some from people I've only met on the Internet, and some from colleagues, local friends and family. Thank you all for your kind thoughts.

To celebrate this rare day, my wife and I saw the movie Jumper. The plot revolved around the question, What if some people could teleport where ever they wished, and other people really hated them because they believed only God should be able to do that? The special effects and scenery were good, but the plot was disappointing because it didn't develop beyond adolescent power fantasies. The only thing the protagonist jumper could imagine doing with his miraculous powers was to rob banks and live like a playboy. And the only thing the people chasing the jumpers could imagine was to kill them. I kept hoping that one of the characters would mature and provide a deeper story line. That didn't happen, but I still thought it was mildly entertaining.

After the movie we had a BBQ chicken and ribs dinner, followed by chocolate cake. It's been a fine day.

SF Chronicle interview

I was interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle last week. Here’s a link to the article.

The comments after the article are entirely predictable.

The Paranormal and the Politics of Truth

To gain a better understanding of the psi controversy (and topics labeled paranormal in general) from a sociological point of view, I recommend this 2007 book by Jeremy Northcote. Until I became involved in psi research, I didn't pay much attention to the sociology, politics, philosophy or history of science. I just assumed that science was as we were taught: a rational, logical enterprise, independent of all those troubling human frailties so evident in sociopolitics. But of course the way science is actually practiced is nowhere near as pristine as we were led to believe. As I encountered the irrational side of science, this led me to wonder what in the world had gone wrong with the way that science is taught. And that led me to study the human factors involved in science as a social effort towards "truth-making." As a sociological study this is fascinating, so I'm grateful to Northcote for publishing this book (and likewise to Chris Carter for his book, Parapsychology and the Skeptics), because if he hadn't done so, I would have been motivated to write a similar book myself.

Dialog with Lynne McTaggart

Click here to access a recent conversation I had with Lynne McTaggart, author of the bestselling book, The Field, and the recent followup, The Intention Experiment. This dialog is hosted by the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Three videos

This is a good video of a remote viewing trial, conducted some years ago by folks at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York City. Click here

This is an interesting video of skeptic Michael Shermer testing Vedic astrologer Jeffrey Armstrong. Click here

And here is one I recently participated in. Click here.

BBC Horizon program

Last year I was interviewed about presentiment for a BBC Horizon program on decision-making. You can see a brief clip of the show here.

Testing nonlocal observation as a source of intuitive knowledge

This paper has been published. You can find the abstract at http://www.pubmed.com/ by searching for "dean radin intuition." If you want a copy of the full paper send me an email (dean at noetic dot org).