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Friday, July 27, 2007
Given my prediliction to blog things that interest me, this certainly fills that bill. From Drudge, an article describing a cat that lives in a nursing home in Rhode Island, that has accurately 'predicted' the death of 25 patients, and has done so correctly for the last year or so.
Now, I'm a scientific, skeptical type, so I say 'balderdash' every chance I get, but this cat has merited a write-up in the New England Journal of Medicine. You know that every patient who is living in a nursing home has only one way out, typically, and it's not by the front door. A cat that can predict death, or just a lucky guesser?
Read the article.
I don't put much faith in the 'alpha wave' - 'cat as a medium' theory. There is probably a physical change that this tiny animal is sensing, using the chemical changes in scent that we humans can't smell. Now that the cat has 'alerted' us to these changes, a full-scale investigation should ensue.
There are a few 'experiments' that one can conduct. For a 'smell' test, the same platform (the Steere House Nursing And Rehabilitation Center) has to be used, because the cat has grown accustomed to the natural 'smells', and would have to 'reconsider' the smells in a new place, if he were moved. For instance, moving him to death row, where an inmate is going to be executed in 24 hours, you couldn't expect him to re-adjust to that environment quickly enough to pick up the smell of imminent death (well, there is the ' natural causes' thing too...the smell of death would'nt be put off by a convicted inmate, I wouldn't think, but this proposed 'death row' experiment would eliminate the 'alpha wave-medium' claptrap, though.)
Maybe a method of isolating a person from the atmosphere, not allowing any scents to leave a room (an enclosed, self-contained 'clean room') might work. If Oscar showed up outside the door of a sealed, 'clean' room that had an Andromeda Strain Level-5 containment system installed, then I might well start studying me some majik...
Now, I'm a scientific, skeptical type, so I say 'balderdash' every chance I get, but this cat has merited a write-up in the New England Journal of Medicine. You know that every patient who is living in a nursing home has only one way out, typically, and it's not by the front door. A cat that can predict death, or just a lucky guesser?
Read the article.
I don't put much faith in the 'alpha wave' - 'cat as a medium' theory. There is probably a physical change that this tiny animal is sensing, using the chemical changes in scent that we humans can't smell. Now that the cat has 'alerted' us to these changes, a full-scale investigation should ensue.
There are a few 'experiments' that one can conduct. For a 'smell' test, the same platform (the Steere House Nursing And Rehabilitation Center) has to be used, because the cat has grown accustomed to the natural 'smells', and would have to 'reconsider' the smells in a new place, if he were moved. For instance, moving him to death row, where an inmate is going to be executed in 24 hours, you couldn't expect him to re-adjust to that environment quickly enough to pick up the smell of imminent death (well, there is the ' natural causes' thing too...the smell of death would'nt be put off by a convicted inmate, I wouldn't think, but this proposed 'death row' experiment would eliminate the 'alpha wave-medium' claptrap, though.)
Maybe a method of isolating a person from the atmosphere, not allowing any scents to leave a room (an enclosed, self-contained 'clean room') might work. If Oscar showed up outside the door of a sealed, 'clean' room that had an Andromeda Strain Level-5 containment system installed, then I might well start studying me some majik...
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