Daniel Haun

Unusual dissertation titles from the University Microforms International dissertation database:

• “Electrical Measurements on Cuticles of the American Cockroach”
• “Determinants of Flossing Behavior in the College Age Population”
• “Classification of Drinking Styles Using the Topographical Components of Beer Drinking”
• “”More Fun Than Anything” (about cyclopropenium salts)
• “Creep of Portland Cement Paste”
• “Garage Sales as Practice: Ideologies of Women, Work and Community in Daily Life (Volumes I and II)”
• “Finger Painting and Personality Diagnosis”
• “Communication Use in the Motorcycle Gang”
• “‘Santa Claus’: A Mime-Opera Based on The Morality by e.e. cummings”
• “Ritual Drama in American Popular Culture: The Case of Professional Wrestling”
• “Things That Are Good and Things That Are Chocolate: A Cultural Model of Weight Control as Morality”
• “Acute Indigestion of Solipeds”
• “The Making of a Hippie Self”
• “Jock and Jill: Aspects of Women’s Sports History in America, 1870-1940″
• “An Adaptive Surfing Apparatus”
• “The Function of the Couch in Stimulating Altered States of Consciousness in Hypnosis and in Psychoanalysis”
• “I Am You, You Are Me: A Philosophical Explanation of the Possibility That We Are All the Same Person”
• “You Can’t Just Plug It In: Integrating the Computer Into the Curriculum”

One dissertation’s acknowledgment page read: “Yes, Mother, I am finally done; and no, Mom, I don’t know what good a doctor’s degree is either if I can’t fix you when you’re ill.”

(From a UMI press release, quoted in The Whole Library Handbook 2, 1995.)

“Perfect Polly” is a fake bird to put in your house, to make you less lonely. No cleanup required, unless you mean the fracking done to extract the crude oil to make into plastic so that you can have a fake bird.

A sad reviewer noted “you cant hear it sing and can only hear the head turn which is just like a quiet blender.”

Tex looked up and down the street, then spit. “The coast is clear.” he called over his shoulder.

A small group of people emerged from the alley behind him. There was Daphne, a college girl of twenty-one; Mike, a grizzled-looking older man; Maria, the…

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This double umbrella looks like two umbrellas side-by-side. It’s perfect for any couple who wants to go somewhere in the rain but doesn’t want to touch each other, as they might have to do if they just used a regular umbrella.

In the control room of each of the United Kingdom’s four nuclear submarines is a safe. Inside the safe is another safe, and inside that is a handwritten letter from the prime minister to the submarine’s commander telling him what to do if a nuclear strike has destroyed the British state.

When a new prime minister takes office, his letters are destroyed unopened, so it’s not clear how extensive the instructions are. According to the 2009 BBC Radio 4 report The Human Button, they include these options:

• Retaliate with nuclear weapons.
• Do not retaliate with nuclear weapons.
• Use your own judgment.
• Place yourself under the command of the United States or Australia, if possible.

“In that letter,” wrote the Daily Mail in 2008, “Gordon Brown conveys the most awesome decision of his political career … and none of us is ever likely to know what he decided.”

(Thanks, Zach.)

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I did all the vocals on this album. It’s called “HELL ORBS: PLEASURE NEXUS” and it’s out today. Listen to the whole album here and download it if you like it.

If you have to pick just one song to listen to, make it “Piss Admiral Dildo Captain.”

In 1972 the Toronto Society for Psychical Research set out to create a ghost. They invented a character named Philip, an English nobleman from the 17th century, and tried to contact him through sittings in which they discussed his life, to see whether they could induce a “collective hallucination.”

When a year of this produced no results, they adopted the trappings of a more formal séance, introducing colored lights, singing songs, and reciting poetry while trying to conjure Philip’s spirit. After three or four of these sessions, surprisingly, “the group felt a vibration within the table top, somewhat like a knock or rap.”

Philip had, apparently, shown up. After some initial confusion, the group established a convention by which he could express himself — one rap meant yes, two meant no. And he was quite willing to talk:

‘Did you have your own regiment?’ Sid asked.

(Rap) ‘Yes.’

‘Were you wounded in the fighting?’

(Rap, rap) ‘No.’

‘I wonder which battles he fought in,’ Lorne asked. ‘Philip, did you fight at Naseby?’

(Rap, rap) ‘No.’

‘Did you fight at Marston Moor?’

(Rap) ‘Yes.’

‘I wonder what weapons they used?’ Al asked. ‘Did you use pikemen?’

(Rap) ‘Yes.’

‘Would they have had guns of any kind then?’ someone asked.

‘They would have had muskets,’ Lorne said.

(Immediate confirmatory rap) ‘Yes.’

That’s from Conjuring Up Philip, a 1976 account by Iris Owen, a member of the group. With time the rappings grew stronger, and the table would occasionally move around the room and even levitate. Owen wrote, “In addition to sliding across the floor (which incidentally was covered with a thick pile carpet), the table would tilt in various ways, lifting one, two, or three legs, and pivot, sometimes almost dancing.”

It’s hard to know what to make of this. On the one hand, most of Philip’s verbal communications were simply those that the group expected to receive. For example, he said that Charles I had loved cats but not horses or dogs; this isn’t historically accurate, but the questioner was a cat lover. Owen called Philip “a composite of [the group's] own invented imaginations … a character born of their own desire to bring him as much to actuality as they could.”

But the physical tricks are harder to understand. The simplest explanation is that some in the group were deliberately creating the “supernatural” effects, a possibility that all strongly denied. Or perhaps the group really had stumbled into some sort of collective, or wishful, hallucination. Whatever the case, the whole episode shows that even supernatural explorations that are known to be groundless can produce convincingly “otherworldly” effects for a receptive audience. To that extent, Philip was a ghost who helped to disprove his own existence.

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21 Apr 2013

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