Thursday, January 22, 2009

SLIders (and not the dimension-shifting types)


SLI (Street lamp interference) is a very rare phenomenon where a person finds that he or she can turn off lights just by walking under them.
I have had the opportunity to talk to an actual SLIder. I will call her Joan.
"I first found out I had SLI in 2000 or 2001. At first, I had thought, 'Wow, that street lamp just turned off,' but over time, I came to notice it. It happens not only to street lamps, but indoor lamps, too. I turn them off when I'm traveling in a group; I turn them off when I'm alone; and I even turn them off in the car."
And then came the most shocking parts. "About 50% of the time I'm putting in light bulbs, they blow out as soon as they connect with the socket, right in my hand! And also, I was putting on my robe, and when I was walking, sparks started to fly! I even have my boyfriend to vouch for me!"
We shall call her boyfriend, John. " I saw it. It was like those sparklers you see at the 4th of July!" he said.
In Joan's case, the SLI seems to be triggered by her emotions. "It usually happens to me during times of stress," said Joan. "It also happens when I'm happy, but mostly during times of stress. My theory is that it's the electrons in my body. The positive and negative ions start to act up and I turn off the lights. It usually happens to me at least twice a month, if not more."
For those, like Joan, who experience SLI, parts of life seems to be a matter of sitting and watching the sparks fly (or the lamps blow out.)

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Bilbo Baggins Gets Real


It seems as if J.R.R. Tolkien hadn't been telling a lie. The skull of the so called "hobbit" that had been discovered in Indonesia in 2003 has been classified by numerous experts, like Karen Baab, Ph.D., a researcher of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University in New York as not human. The researchers can tell because the skull isn't quite like an ordinary human skull, or at least, not a healthy one. They believe that the hominid had some sort of disease that caused his brain and his skull to not grow as a normal human's should, but for now, we're all assuming that this skull, didn't belong to a human. This means that we might've shared this Earth with other hominids, which also means that there could possibly be hundreds of other cryptids out there that we just haven't found yet.