Got a costume party to go to but no costume? Here are some quick ideas!

Facebook – Cut eye holes in a book. Attach to face.

An Undercover Cop – Wear normal clothes. Ask a lot of probing questions.

Christmas Carolers – Travel in a group. Sing Christmas songs.

A Vegan Vampire – Wear fangs and patchouli. Carry V8.

Swine Flu – Wear a trash bag and a snout. Slip some eye drops in the punch bowl.

The Invisible Man – Don’t show up. Later, insist that you were there.

So I’ve been doing some thinking lately about Harry Potter houses (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin) and Keirsey archetypes (Artisan, Guardian, Rational, Idealist). I originally said that they lined up like this:

Gryffindor – Guardians (SJs)
Hufflepuff – Idealists (NFs)
Ravenclaw – Artisans (SPs)
Slytherin – Rationals (NTs)

Something abut the Ravenclaws and Slytherins has bugged me. Artisans are the opportunists of the bunch, which lines up more closely with what Slytherin seems to be all about. Also, Rationals are all about learning. But, as Mandy pointed out, some of the Artisans are far too positive to be Slytherins. So I think it’s a little more complicated than archetypal sorting can say.

So I came up with this list of examples from the Harry Potter universe. Maybe we can trace these characters back to their houses and get a better idea from there.

Artisans
ESTP – Fred and George Weasley
ESFP – Dean Thomas
ISTP – Victor Krum
ISFP – Horace Slughorn

Guardians
ESTJ – Ron Weasley (a little unsure on this one… Minerva McGonagal would be a good second choice)
ESFJ – Ginny Weasley
ISTJ – Hermione Granger
ISFJ – Neville Longbottom (although he’s so unsure of himself, we don’t see it until the end)

Rationals
ENTJ – Draco Malfoy
ENTP – Albus Dumbledore
INTJ – Severus Snape
INTP – Luna Lovegood

Idealists
ENFJ – Cedric Diggory
ENFP – Nymphadora Tonks
INFJ – Fleur Delacour
INFP – Remus Lupin

Where does Harry fall, you might ask? In some ways, he’s very much an ISTJ—duty-bound and constantly taking on unwanted responsibilities that he’s afraid will slip through the cracks. But in other ways, he has the introspection and tortured persona of an INFJ. I think he leans more toward the former than the latter, but he’s an interesting mix.

As for Lord Voldemort, he’s very much an INTJ.

So, by my chart, the introverted Artisans and the judging Rationals are Slytherins. The extraverted Artisans are yet more Gryffindors, and the perceiving Rationals are Ravenclaws. Of course, there are exceptions to any rule, but those are my predictions.

This would make Gryffindor the overwhelmingly largest house, meaning there’s either a flaw in my logic, or a flaw in Rowling’s. (Or maybe she wanted it that way. Who knows?)

Leave it to the Decemberists to analogize the United Nations to high school:

Sure, they rip off Rushmore. But more things should rip off Rushmore.

Also of note, Mr. Deviant Monk showed me this video a few months ago. I think it’s worth a view as well. (Embedding was disabled, so you’ll have to click the link.)

In an earlier post, I talk at length about my disdain for the Idealistic pseudoscience behind such productions as What the *Bleep* Do We Know? and The Secret. I originally tackled it from a moral/philosophical standpoint, but I thought it was time to take a look at the science behind it. Not that I’ll be able to adequately do that in one post, but I can look at one experiment in particular that has bothered me.

Here’s the gist of it: Containers of water had words taped onto them. The words portrayed emotions, such as love, gratitude, anger, and hatred. The containers were left alone with the words taped to them for a period of time, then the containers were frozen and the water crystals photographed. The “positive” emotions formed beautiful, soft-looking crystal shapes, while the “negative” emotions formed jagged, harsh-looking crystal shapes.

The philosophical significance of this is that the adult human body is roughly 60% water. If emotions can have a physical effect on water, they can have a physical effect on the human body as well.

The experiment was done by a Japanese scientist named Masaru Emoto—a man who, I’ve heard, has hinted that he is not a “real scientist.” The experiment was done only once, and documented inadequately. It has never been reproduced, by him or anyone else.

In this article on Emoto’s work, the interviewer asks whether multiple photographs were taken and how the “winners” were chosen. Emoto replies with the following:

I choose [the photographs] for their goodness and their beauty. There is a phrase in Japanese, shin zen be. Shin means truth. Zen means goodness. Be means beautiful. I select photographs of crystals with all three elements combined.

Nice and philosophical, but hardly scientific.

James Randi has publicly offered one million dollars to anyone who could reproduce Emoto’s results in a controlled, double-blind (read: scientific) lab test. To date, there are no takers.

The fact that these findings are as well-known as they are is testament to the persistent human fascination with metaphysical studies. (We’ll define religion as a metaphysical study for this article.) Religion was, for a long period of time, considered the ultimate truth. With the advent of science, people began to doubt the authority of science, but people weren’t willing to give up on the metaphysical. So now, we have scientific (or pseudoscientific) research into the validity of metaphysics.

Modern people seem to be obsessed with exhibiting some degree of control over the world around them. No one wants to believe that they are mere products of the environs around them—but we have an unfortunate tendency to overcorrect and yearn for control over mere choice. I’m no expert, but I believe this is the basis of Scientology. Now, I’m not one to belittle anyone’s beliefs. I just think that faith works best as faith, just as science works best as science.

Anyway, just some late-night ramblings from your cynical amateur philosopher friend. I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Yes, folks, I’m once again showing symptoms of… something. Here’s what I’ve got:

• Headache
• Achy joints (I feel like I have freaking arthritis)
• Congestion in the ears (sore)
• Fatigue
• Dry, persistent cough

No fever… yet, at least. And no sore throat, so I doubt it’s H1N1. The real test, I hear, is to bite a pig and see how quickly it dies. You may need to bite a bird, too, since H1N1 is technically also an avian flu. Just don’t bite any humans.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

This clip is from the session Notes and Neurons at the World Science Festival 2009, which asks the question whether responses to music are hard-wired into the human mind or culturally determined. I hope, for the sake of my ethnomusicologist friends, that there’s a good deal of the emotional response that’s culturally determined, but I wouldn’t be surprised if notes and intervals were hard-wired into us.

Without going too far into (or knowing too much of) the science behind it, groups of notes form harmonies because their wavelengths resonate together in a pleasing way. Other combinations don’t really work. Try walking up to a piano and hitting a C and an F# right in the middle of the piano (not near the top, where the wavelengths mesh more easily). You’ll see what I mean.

The pentatonic scale (used in the video above, although not explained to the audience until after the fact) contains only five notes (root, third, fourth, fifth, seventh, in Western terms), so those intervals are likely to fall on any scale worldwide. For example, in Western music, we (mostly) use an eight-note scale—but in traditional Asian music, for example, they use a thirteen-note scale. The pentatonic is the lowest common denominator of both.

If you’re wondering what this pentatonic scale is, you’ll here it in most funk bass lines and most rock guitar solos. It’s very popular in modern music.

Anyway, that’s your music lesson for the day. Next time: the blue note!

Yes, we’ve all seen YouTube videos of talking cats. But have we all seen singing cats?

I thought not!

If you don’t know, there’s this computer software called autotuner that takes noise (in most cases, human voice) and tunes it to a nearby note. The farther the original note from the autotuned note, the more noticeable it is. Virtually every pop star uses autotuner to ensure that all the right notes are hit. Some actually get very close, so the difference is barely noticeable; others are so far off that the resulting voice sounds more like a keyboard synthesizer than a real voice. I’m sure you’ve heard it.

Anyway, Joel over at rathergood.com (home of the sponge monkeys!) took an autotuner to a bunch of cat videos. The result is sheer musical brilliance.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a very vain person. I give a little too much thought to my hair, and I’m easily distracted by mirrors of any kind. I don’t do it as much anymore, but I used to take an awful lot of pictures of myself.

I dye my hair. Why? It’s more aesthetically pleasing. I don’t give a rat’s ass how girly it is. I want to make the world a more beautiful place and I’m starting with my hair.

This is not a new phenomenon. I’ve been dying my hair one color or another since I was about 15. Back in high school and college, it was colors like blue and red and green. Now, it’s colors like black and dark brown. My natural hair color is dark brown with a lot of grey.

I spend an inordinate amount of time looking at clothes. Somehow, I don’t mind the fact that I drive a Hyundai Accent that currently smells like Oktoberfest. This is probably weird.