Great Schermer quote, Brian! I'm a real fan of his writings (though his politics is a little suspect, he being a Libertarian and all). His nonsense reference ("higher energy frequencies . . . resonant vibration . . . [etc]") is great! It was the apparently nonsensical nature of the phrases I mentioned in my original post in this thread that caught my attention. John V. has since confirmed that initial suspicion (thanks John!).

Your Schermer quote, and the one I provided are very reminiscent of "The Sokal Affair." Physicist Alan Sokal, in 1996, submitted a completely bogus, pseudoscientific and nonsensical paper to a Duke University postmodern cultural studies journal, and they published it. Its title? "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." The story is worth reading, Brian, as it touches on themes of science, pseudoscience, etc. that I know you are interested in. The Wikipedia article (link below) is a good place to start.

Our favorite fields, geology/seismology, are rife with memes such as "earth changes," animal instincts, super-secret signals, and such, which appeal to people's instinctive ideas (thus, memes), but are not real. The, perhaps unfortunate, title of this board is an example of one such "unit of cultural information" (Wikipedia).

Yes - I do use more authoritative sources than Wikipedia, but I also find Wik. to be an excellent source for quick, and often well-written, references useful for getting an initial overview of a subject.

MW
93420

• Alan Sokal