When conversation dies
鈥淐an the dead communicate with cell phones?鈥� asks the headline of a from King鈥檚 University College, Canada.
This has nothing to do with a question commonly asked by ill-informed people: 鈥淚f a cell phone is dead, will it ring or go straight to voicemail?鈥� Answers to that query are available to anyone who does an internet search.
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The press release explains: 鈥淒r. Imants Baru拧s, Professor of Psychology, has been awarded a $44,500 BIAL Foundation Grant for Scientific Research for his study After-Death Communication with Cell Phones.鈥�
The BIAL Foundation, says its , 鈥渨as created in 1994 by the BIAL pharmaceutical company and the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities鈥�. The foundation鈥檚 stated aim is to stimulate new research that 鈥渁ttains new knowledge鈥�.
In the press release, some outstanding questions 鈥� questions for the telecommunications industry 鈥� go unmentioned. How, when and where do the dead obtain cell phones? From which carriers (T-Mobile? Vodafone? Virgin Mobile?) do the dead obtain dependable phone service? Is that service available only to people who died after mobile phones were invented? It is hard to find authoritative answers to these queries. Feedback鈥檚 initial attempts have produced predictably dead ends.
Gaming with Freud
Freudian psychotherapy, sometimes mocked as an entertaining but phantasmagorical relic from the old days, is alive and treating the unwell in the community of internet gamers.
Georgios Floros and Ioanna Mylona in Greece gave a dose of Sigmund Freud to a gamer they call 鈥淕eorge鈥�. In a report titled 鈥淎 psychoanalytic approach to internet gaming disorder鈥�, they use Freudian language to analyse him: 鈥�.鈥�
The pair also analyse their analysis: 鈥淒espite his treatment, George found himself unable to progress, having half-dropped out of his engineering studies, limiting himself to bouts of gaming, online scuffles on politics with strangers, binge-eating and smoking marijuana.鈥�
Floros and Mylona also treated a gamer they call 鈥淧aul鈥�. They reveal that: 鈥淚n an open-ended scenario Paul found himself being chased by an aggressive gorilla away from a Mayan temple, depicting his aggressive tendencies that plagued his emotional relationship, although he managed to outrun it.鈥�
Back in 2019, Michel Nogara and Alfredo Naffah Neto at the Pontifical Catholic University of S茫o Paulo, Brazil, told an audience at the 16th European Congress of Psychology in Moscow about 鈥溾��.
The researchers used a technique they call 鈥淣etnography鈥� to psychoanalytically study Brazilian compulsive gamers. What they discovered has the potential to inspire, enrage, cure, confuse or in no way affect any or all compulsive gamers, be those gamers in Brazil or elsewhere.
Nogara and Neto said: 鈥淥ur findings point to the role of the ideal ego in gaming, where the subject tries to reach the narcissistic ideal self again, as once supposed by its parents, in single or multiplayer games.鈥�
Gamers in distress, be aware that this kind of help is available to all of you.
Unseen borders
The borders between trivial superpowers, trivial non-superpowers, non-trivial superpowers and non-trivial non-superpowers can be hard to discern.
Trevor Howland gives an example for students to stop and savour as they stroll through Feedback鈥檚 growing catalogue of trivial superpowers: 鈥淢y trivial superpower is to be able to walk in a straight line with my eyes closed. I can also look at a room, and close my eyes (or turn off the light), and be able to avoid all obstacles to get out of the room.鈥�
Robert Senior, too, expresses uncertainty about the borders: 鈥淲hen I was a teenager in Glasgow, I was found to have flat feet and knock knees. I was sent to a clinic where I was given exercises to correct this. One exercise was picking up marbles with my toes. I still have flat feet and knock knees but also a remarkably useful ability to pick up things with my toes. Does this count as a superpower?鈥�
Robert鈥檚 case is of special interest to people who worry about losing their marbles. Feedback has submitted both Trevor鈥檚 and Robert鈥檚 inquiries for disposal by the Trivial Superpowers Assessment Board, which doesn鈥檛 yet exist.
Double-hander
Rosemary Firman, meanwhile, highlights a maybe not-so-trivial trivial superpower: 鈥淢y husband Roger, who has been blind from birth, has the ability to read both sides of a page (written in Braille) at the same time, one with each hand. He can also read two parts of the same page or two pages in the same book (or even two different books) at once and often does so in order to locate a particular passage quickly. How his brain manages this I cannot comprehend.鈥�
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and听co-founded听the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is听.
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