As part of the continuing adventures of the Cast and Crew of The Skeptologists, I would like to share with you a bit of rough-edited never-before seen footage. This was shot during the Pilot of The Skeptologists and for reasons you will soon understand, it was never included in the final version of the pilot. I found the event interesting and it solidified my thoughts about how people interpret events based on their own predispositions.

Synesthesia is the phenomenon in which the stimulation of one sense modality produces a sensation in a different sense modality, for example, touching something and sensing a color. Go ahead, watch this video, and tell me if you think I have synesthesia.

Did you figure it out yet? This video was produced and edited by the amazing Josh Timonen, who produced the other videos in this series on aliens and spoon bending, and he also produced the explanation of the mystery, which we will reveal tomorrow. (We won’t make you wait a week between blog posts for the reveal.) But in the meantime, we would be interested in what you think the solution might be. If you have seen this before and know the explanation, please don’t post it.

What I’m really interested in here is how people think about such problems. Give me your thoughts.

In this video demonstration I bend spoons and forks and give you just enough information so that you can figure how how to do it yourself (without actually providing a full reveal of the trick). This video demonstration was inspired by James “the Amazing” Randi, whose miniature likeness supervises the entire process (you have to watch the video to see what I mean). As Randi likes to say, “if psychics are bending spoons with psychic power they’re doing it the hard way.”

This video demonstration was shot in the library of the Skeptics Society and was filmed, edited, and produced by Josh Timonen, the highly talented web designer and videographer for RichardDawkins.net. Josh has produced a number of excellent DVDs with Richard in conversation with a number of thinkers (e.g., “The Four Horsemen” with Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and Harris). Go to www.richarddawkins.net to check them out.

So watch this video and then go to a restaurant tonight where they use relatively cheap cutlery (i.e., easy to bend) and amaze your friends and family!

What is even more incredible than the meteor itself is that there is so much footage of it. This was a completely sudden and unexpected event. No one could have prepared for it. It lasted only a matter of seconds. And yet multiple people happened to have cameras running and were able to catch the full event with reasonably high quality video.

It reminded me of this amateur video of a tornado in Miami. Actually, there are multiple such amateur videos – all descent quality. Just follow the links from YouTube.

In fact YouTube and other similar sights are filled with amateur video of all kinds of weird things and unexpected events. There are many videos along the theme of “What is this weird thing?”

The point is – we are entering an age of nearly ubiquitous video, and the quality and ease of use is getting better at a steady rate. Any phenomenon, even rare ones that strike with little warning, will eventually be captured on video of sufficient quality to allow for meaningful analysis.

And yet, no such video exists of bigfoot, chupacabras, any alien or their spacecraft, the Loch Ness monster, or Kevin Trudeau’s ethics – probably because none of these things exist. Of course, the absence of evidence does not constitute proof that something does not exist. But, absence of evidence becomes increasingly compelling the more thoroughly something has been looked for. As our world becomes increasingly blanketed in video recorders and cameras, the absence of convincing images of a phenomenon argues more and more strongly against its existence.

There are low-quality videos of most of the things I list above, and other things like ghosts (although the argument here is complicated by the fact that ghosts are purported to be insubstantial). But never high-enough quality to have a really good look – good enough to see sufficient details to tell whether or not the bigfoot is actually a guy in a costume, or if Nessy is actually a large floating log. Videos of such thing are usually little more than good enough to spark the imagination, but not useful as evidence.

During our investigation of the Warrens – famous local Connecticut ghost hunters, Ed Warren showed us a video (he would not give us a copy) that he took of the White Lady of Union Cemetery. The video showed a human figure shrouded in flowing white walking through a graveyard at night. The figure was at that perfect “sweet spot” distance so that you could make out a walking human form, but not close enough to tell if it were a person in a sheet.

While video cameras and digital cameras become more and more common and better and better quality, I look forward to seeing compelling video of aliens dissecting a chupacabras, or bigfoot riding Nessy.

Or not.

Here Be Dragons

Since the beginning of the Skeptoid podcast, people had been asking me for a video version. Tempting indeed, but having been a college filmmaker and done my share of dabbling, I knew that a weekly video podcast would require far more than the limited time I have available for Skeptoid. So this idea stayed on the back burner for a while.

But I finally got fed up with the amount of uncritical praise and attention given to the garbage conspiracy films Loose Change and Zeitgeist on the Internet, and decided that it was time for a counterattack of reason. So I spent a few months of odd hours putting together my thoughts and writing my own garbage film for the Internet, which I called Here Be Dragons. (I wish I’d picked a different title, because that one’s so common, but heck, I was fresh out of creativity by that point.)

Here Be Dragons was conceived to be a 40 minute (classroom length) video introduction to critical thinking. It’s free of any content that would affect its appropriateness for any school. Most significantly, I wanted it to be absolutely free to everyone. I wrote a 5000 word script that was a distillation of Skeptoid’s general message.

One of the best assets that Skeptoid provides me is an incredible resource of thousands of enthusiastic skeptics eager to help out with any kind of skeptical outreach project. So I temporarily dropped a special announcement and call for help into my Skeptoid feed. I needed artwork, a composer, computer graphics artists, additional “man on the street” video footage, and still photography. Response was huge. I was overwhelmed. Talk about an embarrassment of riches: So many people wanted to help, who brought so much talent and energy to the table. I had to say “Thanks but no thanks” to 95% of everyone who threw their hat into the ring. It was like being a manager during a massive corporate layoff. But I was left with a team that I couldn’t be happier with.

I set aside a few thousand dollars and took two weeks off work. I bought a decent HDV video camera and an almost-good-enough wireless mic. I bought Final Cut Express, learned how badly it was crippled, and bought Final Cut Studio. I then spent two weeks of nonstop production: Driving around, setting up tripods, printing cue cards, replacing broken gear in panic mode, reshooting scenes that didn’t work, sneaking into my orthopod’s office on his day off, earning strange looks from people at the beach, calling in more favors than I can count, getting parking tickets, being chased away by airport security, forgetting meals, employing my whole family for all sorts of odd jobs, and generally enjoying the hell out of life.

Weeks of editing and scoring followed. A week of rendering, ripping, compressing, burning, and web site building followed that. And then, quite suddenly, at about two o’clock in the afternoon, I couldn’t find anything else to do. Here Be Dragons was done.

Like I do for all of my projects, I spend virtually no effort promoting or marketing them. I reason that if they’re good, it’s not necessary, they’ll sell themselves; and if they’re not good, marketing them would be a waste of energy. If my projects find success I want it to be because of their quality, not the quality of their marketing.

People started downloading it (it’s at HereBeDragonsMovie.com). They started making DVD’s. They made foreign language translations. They show it in schools. Two friends have donated huge amounts of time to handle technical issues and get it entered into film festivals. So far, so good.

The most fulfilling part of the experience is the number of teachers I’ve heard from who employ Here Be Dragons. I’ve heard from two different high schools who make it mandatory viewing for all students. I’ve lost count of the number of science and physics and critical thinking teachers who have written to tell me they show it in their class.

Where is Here Be Dragons going to go from here? I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what I’d like: I’d like for a proper documentary production company to look at it, find value in its message, give it a budget, and professionally remake it. Will this happen, or perhaps something completely different and unexpected? Only Heisenberg can tell.