Mind Lamp
I wrote recently about robots controlled by the brains of rats. Rats have all the fun. This week, I bring you a lamp that is controlled by human thoughts. Not as cool as a robot and much more likely to be horse shit, but it is one of those things I really hope is true.
Back in the 70s, when I was just a precocious nipper, mood rings were all the rage. These were rings with a stone that could apparently sense your mood and changed colour to match. Even at the tender age of 7 I possessed a genius and sceptical mind and I conducted a series of tests on one of these. I soon discovered that it just responded to temperature. Which still made for a cool ring, but lacked any of the psychic qualities I really hoped it possessed. I really want these things to be true but can’t help feeling the need for some actual proof. It stops me believing in things like: the moon landing is a hoax, god, aliens inserting rectal probes and then not quite fully wiping your memory, psychics, and so on.
It sucks to be a sceptic. I really want to believe in psychics and mediums too, but no one has ever been able to be even slightly accurate under controlled conditions. The most convincing practitioner of these skills is Derren Brown where he explains it is all down to a set of techniques. Watch his brilliant Messiah where he proves to be the best medium and psychic the ‘experts’ have ever seen. The world must be more exciting if you believed everything.
Anyway. Mind lamp. Like the mood ring, this lamp apparently senses your mood and adjusts its colour accordingly. They’ve even used some science-like words to make it more convincing. The website www.mind-lamp.com says: ‘At the heart of the Mind Lamp is a precision device known as a random event generator (REG), which was designed by engineers at the PEAR lab for use in scientific experiments.’ Apparently no one can work out just how it does its magic. Spooky. A Random Event Generator sounds suspiciously like it just er, randomly changes colour. If it was me I would program it to start it off with a purplish colour to symbolize curiosity, then green when you are astounded that it works, then orange when you start to think that perhaps it is crap, then red when you think it is either preprogrammed or random.
If anyone has one of these lamps please let me know. I will do a follow-up story. The email address is on the home page. Don’t bother with comments. I get too many morons spamming me, so I have to disable them. If I had a mind lamp, it would turn red every time I checked the comments section. If it didn’t, then at least I could cheer myself up by smashing it.
Below is a video that practically proves it works. Apparently ‘many scientists’ now think we can control stuff with our minds. Presumably, these are some of the scientists that used the REG in their ‘scientific experiments’. It uses ‘quantum’ things to change the lamp’s colour, which sounds very convincing until you look on the website where they admit: ‘The mechanism by which this occurs is unknown, and is the subject of ongoing research.’ So scientists doing scientific experiments discovered a lamp that uses quantum mechanics and a Random Event Generator so that it can change colour according to your mood. Or your mind. (That remains unclear). The only problem is that they have no idea how.
I want this to work! I just can’t help feeling slightly doubtful. My mind is currently a greenish/bluish/orangish/ reddish/purplish colour representing hope/cynicism/doubt/belief/etc.
