Friday, February 17, 2012

Open your wallets and repeat after me "Help yourself"


The gods are being kind to me this morning, providing a story that combines two of my favourite themes, scientific research and Stonehenge. I see now that they are almost made for one another.


Go on, have a read. Or don’t, if you have already heard from your quota of silly people today.

The essence seems to be that they humped tons of crap hundreds of miles to improve the acoustics. No, really.

It seems to be a recurring theme in scientific research – “Why did they build Stonehenge?”

I doubt whether it had anything to do with traffic calming, I suspect that it is nothing more than a poorly conceived practical joke.  I have written enough about this nonsense already.

The scientific community, however, are never short of an idea or two to demonstrate their insanity. This is a description of the experiment they conducted:

The La Mesa, California-based researcher said he had demonstrated the auditory henge effect using blindfolded subjects.
He took these people into a field where two pipers were playing and afterwards asked them to draw diagrams of the soundscape they had experienced.

It would be a useful experiment to investigate exactly what one has to do to get volunteers to participate in such bizarre activity. I would counsel against trying to find out. If you put on a white coat, ask a young lady to slip on a blindfold while you conduct an experiment, it is my experience that you finish up with a £75 fine from Bow Street magistrates.

At the age of 11, I first encountered a chemistry and biology teacher (whose name I cannot publish here, as no-one would believe that a young lady with that name would consider teaching as a profession). She was the first in a long series of people I will refer to, out of kindness, as eccentrics, who believed that the sort of activity described above would help the advancement of human knowledge. I have eschewed participation in these rituals ever since, and am sure that is one of the reasons I have survived to this great age.

4 comments:

Pearl said...

Yes, no doubt that is why you've survived.

:-)

Happy Friday,

Pearl

Ms Scarlet said...

I think they were trying to get the stones to London, but got bored on the way so dumped them opposite the pig farm in Wiltshire.
Sx

Zig said...

Sheep not pigs, poor sheep.

MarkG said...

I don't think they'd invented pipes in Neolithic times. I suspect it was mostly drumming and suchlike.