Unforeseen disaster

You couldn’t make this up. A psychic in Edinburgh placed his crystal ball on the windowsill of his apartment, and while he was out the light from the Sun, magnified by the crystal ball, set fire to and destroyed his own and two other apartments:

The student, who uses the ball for psychic purposes, suffered blistering to his hand when he burst into his burning top-floor flat in the city’s Marchmont area in an effort to rescue his university course work. He was removed from the building by some of the 35 firefighters who had arrived to tackle the unforeseen inferno.

Strange he didn’t see this coming. Never mind, his awesome psychic powers belatedly detected the source of the fire – a faulty computer plug:

M Vandrot, released from hospital after a night having his hand treated, denied that his crystal ball had been the cause of the blaze. “I don’t think it is capable of doing that. I think it was an electrical fault; the plug of my computer was melted.”

The Scots firefighters visualized a different reason:

Edinburgh’s firefighters disagreed, and roundly blamed the ball. “Strong sunlight through glass, particularly if the glass is filled with liquid like a goldfish bowl, concentrates the sun’s rays and acts like a magnifying glass,” a spokesman said. The fire had been started by the ball concentrating a ray of sunshine on a pile of washing, he said.

Either way, this is one psychic who won’t be doing much business for a while.  In future, perhaps he should stick to something safer. Like astrology.

Comments

[Rory Parle]

Don't those balls come with a fire hazard warning? Last year I bought a contact juggling ball, which is basically just a perspex sphere about 5cm in diameter. You'd recognise one of these if you've ever seen the movie Labrynth, where David Bowie, with the help of Michael Moschen's hands, does a lot of contact juggling.

That came with a warning to keep it out of the sun, so I keep it in my sock drawer. I did once set fire to a piece of grass by using that ball to focus sunlight onto the ground, just to see if it could be done (I stomped it out pretty quickly).

[Engineer-Poet]

The guy may have a point in his own defense; the focal length of a spherical refractor is generally VERY short, and a pile of washing some feet away (say, on the floor below the windowsill) would be too far for the image to be in focus.

The fire investigators will be able to pin down the point of ignition, and if the ball survived its focal length can be tested.

[Prometheus]

Oh, this is just too good! Of course, I've always wondered why the folks on the phone-in psychic "hotlines" need to ask your name and credit card number - you'd think they would have "seen" it with their "inner eye".

Still, even allowing for an "inner eye" with a bit of myopia (or even astigmatism), you would think that this young psychic would have "seen" a fire in his apartment. Of course, the "inner eye" seems to miss a goodly number of important and significant events, doesn't it.

I think that the fire investigators might want to consider the possibility of spontaneous combustion in a pile of washing. It may have been sitting there long enough for a significant amount of composting to have occurred. I work with university students regularly (Monday through Friday) and can attest to their indifferent laundry habits, especially the males.

Prometheus.

[HCN]

Prometheus:

That amount of laundry composting! That is very funny. ROFL (I have two teenage boys... one of whom I had to practically push into the shower during vacation, only to find out when I went to shower afterwards that neither of the hotel provided soap nor shampoo had moved from their original spot... nor had they been opened or used. Upon further inspection it was noticed that the boy's hair was still dry, apparently he had only turned on the shower to wet the tub, and then changed into his jammies... back into the shower he went).

Of course, there is also the possibility (as one who has used linseed oil, tung oil and other volatile liquids in finishing furniture and woodwork) that rags soaked in certain liquids if kept too long in large enough quantity can spontaneously combust.

They can also be helped along with a focused beam of light to increase the heat just a bit (just to add to the exothermic reactions as they dry).

Water to soak the rags in or laying them out separately on the drive-way to dry is helpful.

[TSK]

For the protocol: As Engineer-Poet rightfully
said, a glass ball with an diameter of 10 cm
(I found balls within a range of 6-18 cm)
have even under optimum circumstances (n=1.5) a focal "point" of 2.5 cm behind
the surface.
As crystal balls are most made of higher
refractive materials (n = 1.6), the distance
is even lower. The optical lines in a ball
form not a focal "point" but due to aberrations a beautiful curve called
catacaustic which slightly weakens the
ability to ignite something. So it is
for me highly unlikely that laundry is
kept in this distance.
But instead being really skeptic (knowing
that the press is more looking for
sensational stories than the truth) it
is much more convenient to pass it as a
fact and comment it with ridicule.
I wonder what Skeptico will comment if an
article states that Edinburgher Firefighters
actually saw an UFO....the loss of rational
thinking by gullible people divulged by
irresponsible reporters ?

[Skeptico]

TSK, you are an idiot. An angry idiot with an agenda. And don’t bother bleating this is “poisoning of the well” or “ad hominem” – I am just stating the obvious. This was meant to be a lighthearted piece – some humor. Still, if you can’t see that and if you would rather believe a pretend “psychic” than a professional whose job it is to determine the source of fires, then you are even more stupid than I had previously thought you were. Don’t waste any more of my time.

[TSK]

Even if I am the worlds greatest idiot a medium-sized glass ball (10cm) will *still* not ignite anything farther away than approximately an inch. So it is most probably a piece of garbage where you have switched off your "skeptical" attitude because it pleased you that a perceived enemy suffered. And it is just as "humorous" as bigots ridiculing Voltaire for crying for a priest on his deathbed (which he did not). If the story is not true, it loses its humor instantly.
You can think of me what you want or insult me, I don't care, you will only ruin your reputation quicker.
Either stick to ID, medicine or politics where I don't care or stick to the facts. Otherwise I will expose your half-baked
pseudo-skepticism.

[Skeptico]

TSK:

The experts in the fire department determined the crystal ball caused the fire. So whatever you think, your thoughts count for nothing. They are the experts and they were there.

I will write about whatever the hell I want. All you are exposing is your own half-baked pseudo-intellectualism. I only have a limited amount of patience for your continued stupid crap. Believe me when I say – knock it off. And I mean now.

[Engineer-Poet]

As I see it, all of the following could be true:

• The soi-disant seer's abilities failed him miserably.
• The fire department completely mis-attributed the cause of the blaze, or at least were terribly misquoted in the press.
• TSK is the world's greatest idiot.
• I've somehow been misled into defending at least two of the above.

We'll probably never know the full list of ironies.

[Rockstar]

I vote for option 3, Engineer-Poet:) Anyway...

TSK-
If the story is not true, it loses its humor instantly.

If you have never laughed at a joke, I pity you. I also pity you for thinking any point you have presented on my favorite blog has any merit whatsoever.

[Skeptico]

Thanks Rockstar (blushes).

[Rockstar]

No problem dude. It was either you or this guy. He soooo has a handle on stuff.

[TSK]

Skepticos first sentence: You couldn’t make this up.
Really ? So I contacted the Lothian and Border Fire Rescue Service and asked them *himself*.
You find their website at http://www.lothian.fire-uk.org/
And this is the answer of a very polite guy named John Dickie which investigated the source of the fire:
| Point Number Two "Cause of fire" this is
| still under investigation and I have not
| concluded the cause of Fire as of this
| time. At no point did Lothian And Borders
| Fire & Rescue Service(LBFRS) state that
| the cause was the Crystal Ball.
So no experts determined the crystal ball, you have been hoodwinked. How do you feel now after been embarassed and exposed ? Who is laughing now ?
Harharhar...

[Skeptico]

Well congratulations, you did what all good skeptics should do: check the source. So possibly the newspaper quoted a fireman at the site rather than the official investigator, and so perhaps the crystal ball didn’t start the fire. (Although we don’t know for sure as you say it is “still under investigation”.) Well done. But so what? As I explained before this was just meant as a humorous story – a joke. It wasn’t supposed to prove anything and it still doesn’t – no matter what caused the fire.

I know you still don’t get this; I’ll try again to explain. If you go to my About page that has been up for over six months, you’ll find this:

I aim to apply critical thinking and humor to some of the idiotic stories I see in the news and elsewhere. Some of the articles will be a little flippant; some will be more serious.

Get that? Some of the articles will be a little flippant. And that would be this one. I’m not going to hang a flag out each time I post something less serious – it’s your problem if you can’t figure it out. And as for who is laughing now? I guess you are, because people with no sense of humor always laugh at the wrong times. But the joke is on you because you really thought this was so important that you had to call from Hamburg to Edinburgh to find out if the fire department really thought this fire was caused by a crystal ball. But so what if it didn’t? Randi still has a million dollars for any real psychic, and still no one can win it. With or without a crystal ball.

[TSK]

| Well congratulations, you did what all
| good skeptics should do: check the source.

Oh, I simply couldn't give certain people a good pretense for finally blocking me...

| Well done. But so what? As I explained
| before this was just meant as a humorous
| story – a joke. It wasn’t supposed to
| prove anything and it still doesn’t – no
| matter what caused the fire.

Yes, humourless as I am, I *always* answer a joke taken seriosly with a personal attack followed by a claim and reinvestigation that the chicken REALLY crossed the street.

| I guess you are, because people with no
| sense of humor always laugh at the wrong
| times.

Certainly, all people which have at least some knowledge about the world outside their domain know that Germans have inherited a total lack of humour. So why do... Ah, yes...

| But the joke is on you because you really
| thought this was so important that you had
| to call from Hamburg to Edinburgh to find
| out if the fire department really thought
| this fire was caused by a crystal ball.

Oh, I am taking comfort in the thought that *perhaps* at least *two* people found that fact so important to recheck it. And I did not call, but wrote mail. You know, that thing with IP adresses and whois/RIPE.

Anyway, end of discussion, I must prepare some nice surprises for you in future. And now to something completely different....

[Rockstar]

Good job, TSK. You've inspired me to check into these so-called "humorous metaphors".

First, I called Sonya the animal psychic, and Professor Harold Heatwole, of the zoology department at NCSU. We garnered a chicken from the nearby farm here in Lincoln, NE, and set it to the north side of an east-west running road. After several hours of observation, the chicken, through no assistance from the observers, CROSSED THE ROAD! We debated for several more hours as to why the chicken crossed the road, but it was finally conjectured the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side!

If you'd like my further research into bears shitting in the woods and the Pope wearing a funny hat, I'd be more than happy to provide it.

Keep up the awesome skepticism of jokes man! You totally PWNED!!11!1 Skeptico l33t haxor! ROFLMAOLOLWTFBBQ!

[Prometheus]

Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't the cause of the fire irrelevant to the story? I mean, it is rather amusing if it was his crystal ball that started the fire, but the real story is that this psychic didn't forsee a fire in his own apartment.

Pretty poor psychic ability if it can't protect it's owner from diaster. Guess I won't be asking him for any advice on my love life or the ponies.

Prometheus.

[TSK]

Yes, Prometheus, you have missed something.
How do you know that it is a *real* story if your only source is a news article exposed as forged ?
Is it really a psychic, a seller of occult things, an occult hobbyist, a mediaevalist acting as fortuneteller ? All these people may have crystal balls. Who knows ? I do not know, I know that there was a fire in a flat. The firefighters must protect the private sphere of the victim so more information would be hard to acquire.

Ah, and may I ask the "just humor" fraction why the article is under the "Paranormal and New Age" section if there is a separate "Humor" section, hm ?