Psychology goes quantum

SERIALLY reading New Scientist and The Psychologist led Jonathan Rowles to the notion of quantum psychology. In this, he writes, "it becomes possible to perceive oneself as both a great thinker and a feckless nobody, comfortably and at the same time." He wonders "whether I am unique or is this a well-known aspect of the postmodern mediated zeitgeist?"

One click on the "Find" button, and lo! the results come back to us through a wormhole in information space - 68,700 references to quantum psychology on altavista.com. The presence of the q-word hinted that we were quite possibly on a path pell-mell to fruitloopery, and our expectations, if not necessarily our inner being, were fulfilled.

So, sorry, Jonathan: you may not, in this respect, be unique. At quantumpsychologyservices.com you will find a video in which Ron Dalrymple promises that his quantum field psychology course "integrates all prior theories of psychology under a new umbrella and makes it easy for you to tap into the true powers of your mind". He also plugs his book The Inner Manager. Shyly, he doesn't seem to give the price of his seminars.

And then there is quantumpsychology.com, which explains: "The Quantum Psychology Project originated with Eddie Oshins' reconciliation of arguments in the psychological literature concerning the nature of schizophrenia as a logical phenomenon."

Then, sounding rather tired, at www.inner-realms.com/quantum.htm Jennifer Buergermeister says she studied "Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Hypnosis, Psychodrama, Yoga, Transpersonal Psychology, Angel Therapy Certification and much, much more, and explored many different methods of stress management" (her emphasis) before settling on her quantum healing practice. It's a mere $2995 for a 14-day course that includes a new one on us: "quantum linguistics".

Perhaps most alarming is Quantum Psychology: How brain software programs you and your world by Robert Anton Wilson. That would be the co-author of the Illuminatus trilogy, sold as "a fairy tale for paranoids", but often taken as gospel by... er, paranoid people. Please remember, folks, it's a satire on conspiracy theorists - not a manual.

So Wilson must be playing it very, very deadpan when he promotes his flavour of quantum psychology as a language devoid of the verb "to be". Mustn't he?

Each of these people clearly conceives of themselves as a great thinker. Whether they conform to the second part of Jonathan's hypothesis is not for us to say.

Going for a mere £66,881,987.65

BIG pricing mistakes aren't limited to big business. A colleague in the US went searching for a new sensor for a malfunctioning carbon monoxide detector and found a replacement for a mere $66,881,987.65 at the website of McLendon Hardware, a small chain in Washington state (bit.ly/bigprice). They normally sell for about $23. Feedback wonders how many of these mistakes are out there on the net.

CERN relocates to the Czech Republic

INVESTIGATING the peregrinations of Dublin Ferry Port (12 September and 31 October), a colleague came across another bizarre mapping phenomenon. Some kind of mental crosstalk led to him typing "Feedback" into the search bar of a well-known online map service - which revealed our location as being close to the central railway station in Sydney, Australia. We are glad to say that whatever glitch led to that has now been ironed out.

On a whim, we decided to try another name that might boggle the mappers. Every incarnation of the same famous online map service that we've tried - in the UK, US, Australia, France, Belgium, Germany and indeed Switzerland - insists that CERN is not the European Organization for Nuclear Research, outside the Swiss city of Geneva, but is located deep in the Moravian countryside at the crossroads in the settlement of Cernov in the Czech Republic. We cannot think of a better institution to have such a quantumly indeterminate location.

When the sun sets in the east

ROCK band Slade enlivened the 1970s with the exuberant "noize" of their many hits. Reader Jayne Hunt believes they were "perhaps the hardest-working rock group of all time" - and one of the most widely travelled. In the song Far Far Away, singer Noddy Holder describes the homesick feelings he had when on tour, despite the exotic locations he visited. "I've seen the morning in the mountains of Alaska," he warbles, "I've seen the sunset in the East and in the West."

Jayne is puzzled. She wonders if Slade's tour schedule included Venus.

Minimum quantity of 1

FINALLY, wanting to know more about the energy-saving possibilities of LED domestic lighting, Ian Cargill checked online at Lemnis Lighting (bit.ly/LEDbulb) and was reassured to read that the "minimum order quantity is 1 piece".

To be sure, half an LED light bulb would not be as messy as half a traditional bulb, but what would Health and Safety have to say?

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