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Technology Spontaneously Combusts In Sicily
Zacronos writes "According to MSNBC, ever since mid-January, various electronic devices have been spontaneously combusting in the now evacuated town of Canneto di Caronia, Sicily; at this point, the fires are almost daily. The town has been disconnected from the larger electrical grid and was hooked to a generator, but that, too, caught fire. Even unplugged items have succumbed. Nothing seems to have burst into flame except where there is someone present to witness it, but the police no longer suspect a prankster -- after witnessing wires catch fire without cause. Scientists have yet to explain the phenomenon (although unproven theories abound), leading many people to look to supernatural causes."
Could it be that this article was first posted one week ago, on Thursday?
I find this a good example of those phenomena that science can't yet explain. I'm often amused by science types that say something is impossible because it doesn't fit any current theory.
Seems to me any true scientist should always be watching for observations that don't fit the known theory, as they are indicators of a nedd for further refinement.
Sadly, scientists, like most people, are more interested in being right, and tend to look for confirming evidence, sometimes to the detriment of their conclusions.
Before you flame me as an anti-science zealot, let me confess that I'm a science guy as much as your average geek, and I think science is responsible for most of the good changes of the last few centuries. I just think that when we hold too tight to our theories, we leave the realm of skeptical science and enter the world of blind faith.
BTW, I have no plausible explanation for the spontaneous fires. But I am confident that someone will come up wih one that doesn't invole a tinfoil hat.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."--Arthur C. Clarke
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
What is magic, if not simply something we do not (yet) understand?
Finkployd
No, an EMP just disrupts electronics, doesn't blow them up. Though I suppose blowing them up would be one hell of a way to DDoS an ISP.
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and have people think you a fool than to open it and prove them right." M. Twain
I'm italian and i followed the story with much interest. Unfortunately news lacked important details about phenomenons, when and how they happened and expecially which of them were true.
If it was an EMP so strong to burn power lines, why didn't it fry all the small electronics (including scientist's instruments) which are more susceptible to EM fields?
Please do provide references! Scepticism is a natural and healthy thing.
Or some evil, sinister military/CIA project. Do a quick Google seach on HAARP and/or weather control and you'll see.
The owls are not what they seem
It may be "magical" but it isn't "supernatural" or "paranormal". That is, just because you don't understand something should your first assumption be that "this can only be explained by rejecting all previous knowledge and making something up".
And I find the lack of citations from any of the alleged scientist disturbing. The press is in a sad state indeed.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."--Anon.
posted anonymously to avoid Slashdotters you refuse to think about things which don't fit inside their predefined universe
Don't be ridiculous. Do you seriously think there are Slashdotters who don't enjoy a tantalizing problem like this one?
But I spent all my mod points. Of course, it could easily have a natural cause instead of a military one - stranger things have happened, and we have such a complex system here that even staggeringly high amounts of sporadic interference can almost disappear in the noise.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Corollary: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced." ;-)
[TMB]
I often think about that too..
But the most amusing/annoying part is that one day one of them is going to be right. But it won't make the ones before them right.
When you call every UFO in the sky a alien spaceship, when (and if) an alien spaceship finally comes one of these loonies will be right.
One day, when the end is nigh, the dude holding the "end is nigh" sign will be right...
Magic is, by definition, what we don't understand.
That is such crap. I don't understand how international currency exchange rates work, but I don't say 'must be magic!'. Scientists don't know why the magnetic poles of the Earth reverse, but I doubt that any of them would suggest the reason is Magic until they learn something new.
-Colin
They don't. They usually assume it's god. Especially in Italy, I guarantee you the first "expert" called in was the local priest, not the local college professor. I guarantee you people have spent more time praying to god than going about finding a scientific explanation or identifying what's unique. Furthermore, the assumption of "no foul play because it happened right in front of us" is absurd- there are numerous chemicals, for example, that can be applied wet, and when they dry and crystalize, become super-sensitive to contact. Of course, they're a bitch to handle, so it's a little far-fetched...
Religion has always given the weak-minded something to pacify their consciences. Why do you think some of the most religious people are often absolute morons, and many intelligent, well-educated people often aren't highly religious? Idiots need an explanation for everything, intelligent people seek answers and do not believe in what they cannot prove to themselves.
Religion:
I think religion is probably the greatest scam ever invented.
Please help metamoderate.
Anyone else find it suspicious that Slashdot picks this up from MSNBC on the 8th of April, who ran this from Reuters on Monday the 5th. Reuters Italy then must have had it sometime around Friday the 2nd, which would put the first printing of the story on... Which day is that again?
The ______ Agenda
I realize that many wish to pump MS sites and their content partners, but could the editors filter out these and stick with less dangerous secondary sources?
Ignore it and it will go away. Reuters, AP , UPI, BBC, etc. usually provide the content reported anyway. Other sources, e.g. The Reg., often do their own reporting as well.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
According to the article:
> [...] while a van with a large, rotating antennas on top measures the radio waves.
It seems that they look for that particular cause.
And then, there is the possibility that it does have some sort of supernatural cause. I've long thought it was disturbing that in our culture we assume that everything can be explained by science. Quite simply, science can't explain everything and it is quite possible that there is some supernatural cause to these events.
The assumption that science either has or can find all the answers completely shuts down an aspect of the world which people have been studying for centuries longer than science. By doing so, it makes our world a lot more of a boring place.
This has been reported on since February at which time, Father Gabriel Amorth, the Vatican's chief expert on exorcism said demonic forces cannot be ruled out. Now, of course, he has a vested interest in maintaining job security, so his opinion needs to be taken with a half-a-grain of salt.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Supernatural does not mean "things we don't yet understand", there is a term for those, and it is "things we don't yet understand". Any scientist worth anything will readily admit there is plenty of things we don't understand.
To describe something as supernatural instantly carries very strong connotations of magic, miracle, or some paranormal force that is not just unknown science, but something other than it and beyond it
As for quacks, they are just that. By sheer chance a few will be end up being partially right about something becuase so many people have so many crazy ideas. Thing is, you can't tell the ones who are right by chance from the rest without working through it. It is as important to know why you are right as being right, those scientists "scaling the rocky face" are doing the important work.
What is magic, if not simply something we do not (yet) understand?
An excuse for not understanding something.
Rather than being bothered to actually try and understand something you just shrug your shoulders and say "magic".
It all reminds me of one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips:
Calvin: Dad, what makes the wind? Dad: Trees sneezing. Calvin: Really? Dad: No, but the real answer is a lot more complex.
Magic/Myth/Religion are all ways to explain the world to those who can't bother to be interested in the actual truth.
Life is too short to proofread.
To describe something as supernatural instantly carries very strong connotations of magic, miracle, or some paranormal force that is not just unknown science, but something other than it and beyond it
Ancient peoples called things they didn't understand, "magic." They did not say this of things they did understand. They were not lunatics calling the crops they raised, "magic." To do so would have made them nuts to their ancient brethren.
those scientists "scaling the rocky face" are doing the important work.
Of course they are doing important work. And so is the child psychologist and the policeman and every other profession not a scientist, but, of course, you didn't say a policeman isn't doing important work, yet, see, look how these things go.
We love to dis those who may be religious -- who think there's more to life than what appears to be or than what is contained in a science book, yet everyone here loves the xfiles....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Somehow it doesn't suprise me that God is a pedant.
Whenever these sorts of phenomena occur, it almost always transpires that an adolescent--for some reason, usually a girl--just happened to present nearby whenever they occurred. The people involved tend not to mention this to authorities, because there are always good reasons why the adolescent (who is usually a model of good behavior) couldn't possibly have had anything to do with it.
The scientists are wasting their time if they're using instruments and looking for an electrical or atmospheric explanation. They need to be looking for a human explanation.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
One of the alarming things about slashdot is the way it really brings out the bigots in the community.
Story about a sicilian village? Sure, they must be a bunch of superstitious peasants with a mental age of 11. Story about women? Cue for side-splitting 'jokes' about how dumb they are with computers and or crude sexual innuendo. (and then the authors wonder why they can't get a girlfriend). Story about India? Racial stereotypes alive and well.
I'm not worried so much about the existence of these posts. The attraction of
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
There's a few reasons. Firstly, there people are sitting in a hotel and tired of it, hoping daily that this isn't the day their family home (or entire town) burns to the ground. They're desperate for an answer and not in the mood to spend a few years investigating this interesting phenomenon.
Next there's the fact that to most people, technology itself IS a sort of magic. Just press that button and invisible forces spring into being to make the cup of water boil. Even if they take the nuker apart it still looks like magic. Just one moving part, and even that doesn't have to be there (but the heating will be less even without it).
If you look at the way many people without technical knowledge interact with technology, it's just a bunch of 'invocations' that they have learned will do something useful (usually they learned it from a book of a techie). For all the meaning it has to them, they might as well be burning incense and shouting arcane latin phrases. They know that when the incantations don't work, there's this 'reboot' that can restore order. That's why you see business DSL customers rebooting the router when the email doesn't work (but the web does) and rebooting their PC didn't fix it.
Sometimes, when there's no harm in it, I find it better to let people do those things while I figure out what the problem is. It lets them feel less helpless and occasionally, they stumble over the solution.
You'll also note that the local priest along with the residents did decide to let the scientists have the first crack at the problem.
'We don't know yet' is a perfectly valid answer right now, but it doesn't get them back into their homes. It doesn't help that things bursting into flames for no discernable reason is a recurring theme in movies about the supernatural.
It doesn't help that scientists aren't always all that scientific when presented with observations thay cannot explain. Too often, important phrases like "this is just a guess, but" get replaced with "I'm absolutely certain that" whenever coincidence is about to be invoked. The correct pronouncement would be "I have no idea whatsoever", but scientists don't like to say that either.
Add on top of that all of the 'scientific' pronouncements like 'eggs are bad for you', 'any wine is bad for you', 'oops, no, some wine is good for you, and so are eggs, but avoid fat at all costs', 'oops, people are getting fatter on low fat diets', etc, etc, and people start to think that the 'scientists' are just making things up too. They make the mistake of confusing various pseudoscientific nonsense from the FDA, NIH, and the AMA (or their own regional equivilants) for science. I call it pseudoscience because collectively they have a habit of stating working theory (complete with conflicting evidence) as if it were fact and flatly denying the existance of plainly observable phenomena when the correct answer is clearly "We don't know".
If we can't get scientists to abandon dogma and various forms of mysticism, how can we expect it from laymen?
So what is Weak Minded? It's this:
1. The inability to accept that other people have valid motivations, ideals or valuable knowledge that that are different from your own.
2. The inability to differentiate between what one person or one group do in the name of a cause, and the core purpose of that cause.
There are a lot of people who wrap themselves in religion who are weak minded. There are a lot more that are not. There are a lot of people who wrap themselves in science who are weak minded. There are a lot more who are not. There are a lot of people who live in many different countries, societies, cultures who are weak minded. There are a lot more who are not. And out of all of these, many among the weak minded also tend to be the most vocal, so that is a lot of what you hear from them.
Different people accept religion for different reasons. And different people abuse the name of religion for different reasons. David Koresh claimed to be Jesus. Few Christians believe or supported him. Osama claims to work in the name of Islam. Few Muslims believe or support him. Some Catholic priests have sexually assaulted children. Few Catholics support them. There have certainly been bad things done in the name of religion, but that does not mean the religion was the cause. Most often the cause was dangerious people doing bad things, and claiming religion as their cover.
As for why people believe what religion teaches them rather than "modern science". That is probably because modern science is not taught as widely as you would like. It takes money, knowledge, political support, lots of people power, and strong social support to spread new knowledge. Churches have been around for centuries. They already have the structures in place to teach their docterine. Church schools exist in almost every town and country around the world teaching religion. Modern educational institutes in remote places are few and far between. This is not the fault of the people who live there. They learn what is available to them. And for many centuries, that was from the local church.
Knowledge is relative. With all your great scientific knowledge, If you were dropped naked into the middle of the Amazon rain forest, you'd probably die of poison or starvation inside a week. All the while those stupid savages who worship their sun gods have been surviving there for generations just fine.
We all learn and accept what our society and parents teach us. If your parents and society teach you science, great for you. If you are too ignorant or weak minded to accept that other people have different educational backgrounds, different social and physical needs, or different ideas about the unknown, AND THAT THESE DIFFERENCES ARE NOT EVIL, STUPID OR WRONG, then that's too bad for you.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
> (posted anonymously to avoid Slashdotters you refuse to think about things which don't fit inside their predefined universe).
My predefined universe requires things like proof. Shall I post a list of recent Elvis sightings?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
but I'm reminded of the Daily Show that replayed footage of an Iraqi engineering student (technology witch-doctor trainee?) who surmised that the US soldiers had a top secret cooling system built into their underwear.
Truth is frequently stranger than anything people could invent.
A simple search on everyone's favorite search engine would have lead them to this CNN article dated April First. Of course, one need merely think about it really really hard to realize that spontaneous combustion and April Fools go together like baseball and apple pie. That would be cricket and guiness for our UK friends.
"Oh it must be a sign from Allah, Sedna, or the Great Spirit! They put it there for me to see. It must be a sign. They are commanding me to Kill Bill!"
It would perhaps be more correct to say that "There's lots of stuff that science hasn't yet explained". The term science doesn't refer to some fixed body of knowledge. It refers to a methodology for finding and refining explanations.
Perhaps the Seti project should start listening in the area. I'm not 100% joking, because they have a LOT of experience at identifying (and discounting) man made radio sources.
plus-good, double-plus-good
They should leave it in as a feature. If there's a problem that's hard to diagnose, and you keep getting kernel panics and strange error messages, you eventually get sick of it. I've gotten the "food fight" kernel panic another poster mentioned, and it really helped to cheer me up when my computer wasn't behaving.
So leave it in as a stress-relief feature. Who knows, it might just stop an overworked stressed-out IT guy from going postal some day.
It is interesting how a prank can take on a life of its own. When I worked for a summer camp for kids, I made up a story about a boy getting killed at camp and him returning to haunt it. I presented it as fact. (I'm a bastard, I know.)
Over the following few days I elaborated on the story as it took on a life of its own. Soon frightened teens came to me because a vending machine stalked then attacked them. Even adults were decieved. A group of three men insisted that one night the dead boy tried to climb into their canoe and tipped it over. Probably much more happened that I don't even know about since I heard people saying all sorts of strange things to eachother. They didn't say it to me, because I'd been forgotten as the originator of the story.
Anyway, I can see how a simple short circuit and some story telling could cause people to burn a city...or a city to burn people (Salem). I bet I could even start a new religion and have a million followers before I died, if I were that type. I'm sure I'm not the only one who knows this, probably explains a lot about religion and government.
It is interesting to note that some even became leaders in bringing my story to life, much like preachers...
I confessed to my lies when I deemed the situation out of control. Some thought it was funny. One guy hit me, hard. Some decided I was lying about it being a lie. These were all ordinary people--no nuts.
http://www.marxist.com/