Does Your Phone Ring When...

You have just gone into the restroom?

Mine does!

This has been the case for years and it makes me mighty suspicious. It make me feel that I'm being watched.

An amazing phenomenon.

I wonder if it has anything to do with SLIding?

Maybe a SLIder walked by...CHEVY VOLT: The Car From Atlas Shrugged Motors

[FULL SHORT BLOG] MARCH 17, 2011

tags: Atlas Shrugged,New, Obama,Obama Motors,Politics

by MB Snow

Chevy Volt: The Car From Atlas Shrugged Motors

Patrick Michaels, 03.16.11, 06:00 PM EDT

Who is going to buy all these cars?

The Chevrolet Volt is beginning to look like it was manufactured by Atlas Shrugged Motors, where the government mandates everything politically correct, rewards its cronies and produces junk steel.

This is the car that subsidies built. General Motors lobbied for a $7,500 tax refund for all buyers, under the shaky (if not false) promise that it was producing the first all-electric mass-production vehicle.

At least that’s what we were once told. Sitting in a Volt that would not start at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, a GM engineer swore to me that the internal combustion engine in the machine only served as a generator, kicking in when the overnight-charged lithium-ion batteries began to run down. GM has continually revised downward its estimates of how far the machine would go before the gas engine fired, and now says 25 to 50 miles.

It turns out that the premium-fuel fired engine does drive the wheels–when the battery is very low or when the vehicle is at most freeway speeds. So the Volt really isn’t a pure electric car after all. I’m sure that the people who designed the car knew how it ran, and so did their managers.

Why then the need to keep this so quiet? It’s doubtful that GM would have gotten such a subsidy if it had been revealed that the car would do much of its freeway cruising with a gas engine powering the wheels. While the Volt is more complicated than the Prius, and has a longer battery-only range, a hybrid is a hybrid, and the Prius no longer qualifies for a tax credit.

via Chevy Volt: The Car From Atlas Shrugged Motors – Forbes.com.

Rutgers Rarities and Unexplained Phenomena - RU Electric SLIder or He's A Magic Man

Rutgers Rarities and Unexplained Phenomena

RU Electric SLIder or He's A Magic Man

By Jessica Teal

Do you know what a SLIder is? Until last week I had no clue- though the word brings some vague recollection of early 90’s time travelers on the Disney network or something like that. Anyway - it’s a person who affects streetlights and other electronic devices simply by walking by. In other words, a SLIder is the person who walks down, oh, say, Nichol Ave and as he/she passes under the street lights they go out. This person can also affect porch lights, house lights, appliances and other electronic stuff. There is no logical explanation for why this happens consistently to a very small portion of the population. The best and most common explanation of this “ability” is that the SLIder has some weird magnetic energy or electrical outbursts emanating from their body. SLIder stands for “street lamp interference” and now my friends, guess what? - Rutgers has its very own SLIder on campus and he very recently dazzled the RR team with his strange “effects” right on campus.

[read more of this anecdotal story at the above link.]

From Common Sense Atheism

Yeah, that about sums it up

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

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.

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.)

SLI-Frog?

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