Tuesday, March 1, 2011

From Common Sense Atheism

Yeah, that about sums it up

by Luke Muehlhauser on February 28, 2011 in Funny,General Atheism

Monday, February 28, 2011

How Do They Do That? "SLIDERS: The Enigma of Streetlight Interference" by Hilary Evans

How Do They Do That? A young man of Dublin walks past a row of streetlights at night--and they go out, one by one, as he passes. An engineer in Woodville, Washington, is stopped by police and his car searched to ﬁnd out what he's doing to their streetlights. An Australian in the entertainment industry parks his car in a parking lot, and the light above him goes out-until the following evening when he parks in precisely the same space and the light comes on again. And that's not all. When a guest in a restaurant in Athens, Greece, asks that the music be turned down, they refuse--whereupon she "kills" the restaurant's electricity and they eat the rest of their meal by candlelight. Other people affect trafﬁc lights, computers, railway crossings... This is Street Light Interference (SLI). Once considered to be folklore--something that happened to a friend of a friend--today it is recognized as a scientiﬁc enigma with implications for our knowledge of the universe, including ourselves. In this, the ﬁrst full-length book on SLI, we hear from some of the hundreds of SLIders who have reported their uncanny experiences, and consider the wider implications of this fascinating phenomenon.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Report your Unusual Phenomena: Streetlight Interference

This is a good site regarding explanations of the phenomena-

Report your Unusual Phenomena: Streetlight Interference

NOTE: STREET LIGHTS DO TURN OFF BY THEMSELVES

When the fluorescent bulb in a streetlight gets old, it overheats and trips a safety switch. When it cools off, it turns itself back on again. Some streetlights turn on and off by themselves every few minutes. Also, some towns install timers which cause all streetlights to turn off randomly every few minutes. This saves energy, but since the timers are not synchronized, some lights stay on while others are off.

Beware, it's easy to fool yourself into thinking that you have a mysterious effect on streetlights. If you see a streetlight turn on or off, that's not unusual. It happens all the time. It's only unusual if whole chains of street lights turn off in sequence as you pass, or if you see the streetlights only turn off but never see an equal number turn back on. It's also unusual if the streetlights often turn off NOT as you approach or leave, but instead they only turn off while you are passing directly underneath (ie. when you are closest to them.)