Hypnosis in Media

Archive for September, 2011

Two such issues, actually. 

When I recent­ly installed a SEO plu­g­in, it includ­ed a log of all “404” calls. Each “404” is a serv­er response to an attempt to find a non-exis­tence page the blog. 

One of these issues involves a bla­tant attempt to fish for spe­cif­ic PHP files (the script­ing lan­guage files that serve as the back­ground for the web­site) that have a known secu­ri­ty error. This file, named “timthumb.php” is not present in the stan­dard Word­Press instal­la­tion but it is includ­ed in some themes and plu­g­ins, and is used to manip­u­late screen image files. The intent is to use access to this file to bypass the web­site secu­ri­ty by tak­ing advan­tage of this file’s abil­i­ty to write a any kind of file into the Word­Press direc­to­ry, after which the per­son can use that file to gain access to the entire direc­to­ry sys­tem, upon which they are able to mod­i­fy exist­ing PHP files or install their own soft­ware there. 

For­tu­nate­ly this web­site is not affect­ed: I don’t have or use any oth­er themes or plu­g­ins which include that spe­cif­ic file. How­ev­er, the inter­mit­tent, repeat­ed attempts to find this file does cause some load on the sys­tem and are annoy­ing, which is why I am try­ing to block them any way I can. 

The oth­er issue involves the “spi­der” robot, the web device that scans web­site sites for infor­ma­tion and changes to web­sites. All the major web search sites, like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., use them, and for the most part, they are well-behaved. But there is one that is not, and that’s the Baidu spi­der robot. Baidu is the major Chi­nese web search site. Ever since I installed the “404” mon­i­tor, I have seen dozens, if not over a hun­dred, attempts a day of the Baidu spi­der crawl­ing my blog and search­ing for a spe­cif­ic, non-exis­tent file under a com­bi­na­tion of many dif­fer­ent loca­tions. Its almost as if the spi­der robot pro­gram is bad­ly designed and does­n’t under­stand that is com­plete­ly miss­ing the pic­ture here. 

What links these two issues is the fact that I have not been able to block either using the two com­mon web­site func­tions “robots.txt” and “.htac­cess”. The Baidu sys­tem says that its spi­der robot obeys the “robots.txt” file but oth­er web com­men­tary insists that it does­n’t. The scan­ner that hunts for the “timthumb.php” file prob­a­bly does­n’t either. That said, I have set the “robots.txt” file to dis­al­low those two spi­der robots, with­out suc­cess. This is what I am using: 

User-agent: Baiduspider

Disallow: /

User-agent: Baiduspider/2.0

Disallow: /

User-Agent: PycURL/7.19.7

Disallow: /

The oth­er func­tion is to use the “.htac­cess” file, which is a sys­tem lev­el direc­tive to the serv­er to ignore these robots accord­ing to the user agent name they give when attempt­ing to access the web­site. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this tile is a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult to code. This is what I have been rec­om­mend­ed to use. 

#Block bad bots

SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "^Baidu[Ss]pider" bad_bot=1

SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "^PycURL" bad_bot=1

Order Allow,Deny

Allow from all

Deny from env=bad_bot

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it does­n’t appear to work, either. I don’t know if this is a prob­lem of cod­ing the restric­tions or if the restric­tion file is not in the cor­rect places: this is an area that I have lit­tle expe­ri­ence with. My web­site host cus­tomer ser­vice has not been much help, either. 

If any­one has a sug­ges­tion to make, feel free to respond.

[amtap book:isbn=156389338X]

All across the world, peo­ple are devel­op­ing super-pow­ers, and the estab­lished super-pow­ered beings are nowhere to be found. Called “sparks” and the phe­nom­e­non “spark­ing”, it is turn­ing the world into a super bat­tle­ground as gangs of sparks bat­tle for turf. Its a dream of some, of hav­ing super-pow­ers, that is turn­ing into a night­mare for the entire world.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““A Midsummer’s Night­mare” — Jus­tice League”

Sep­tem­ber 24^th through Octo­ber 1^st has been des­ig­nat­ed “Banned Books Week” by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion and the Amer­i­can Book­sellers Foun­da­tion for Free­dom of Expres­sion. Every year, ever since 1982, these two orga­ni­za­tions pub­lish a list of the books that account for the most attempts to some­how ban or restrict them the pre­vi­ous year. 

Now, the ques­tion is, why is that some­thing this blog should care about? 

Well, for one thing, as a writer, it behooves me to defend my fel­low writ­ers from this assault not only on their own liveli­hoods but also against the major­i­ty who either don’t care or even sup­port the ideas and issues exem­pli­fied in the books a few want banned. I feel it is a writer’s job (and any oth­er cre­ative per­son) to explore ideas that some peo­ple want kept hid­den. This is more than just pro­fes­sion­al, its per­son­al: I know many peo­ple in the writ­ing and cre­ative field (this applies not just to books but also to comics, movies, TV shows, you name it) and this affects them, as well. 

But more impor­tant­ly, what is involved is the restric­tion of the flow of infor­ma­tion, which is a major con­cern of mine and one of the rea­sons for writ­ing this blog. 

And last­ly, it is because of the sub­ject of this blog. By and large, such banned books are often occult relat­ed, whether fic­tion­al (“Twi­light”) or fac­tu­al, and in some loca­tions, even the actu­al sub­ject of the blog, hyp­no­sis, what with the stereo­types involved, is a sub­ject of the supernatural. 

And the above does­n’t even account the “unof­fi­cial” ban­ning that takes place when peo­ple check out books from the library with the intent of destroy­ing them or sim­ply keep­ing them. 

If should be not­ed that one of the peren­ni­al banned books is “Brave New World” by Aldous Hux­ley, which is about a dystopi­an future where the pop­u­la­tion is, among oth­er things, con­di­tioned from the womb into their des­ig­nat­ed roles in life. 

So: read a banned book this week! If may even some­thing from the Collection. 

Update:

The fol­low­ing books are from the 2010 list of most fre­quent­ly chal­lenged books in the Unit­ed States, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion:

1) And Tan­go Makes Three, by Peter Par­nell and Justin Richardson 

2) The Absolute­ly True Diary of a Part-Time Indi­an, by Sher­man Alexie 

3) Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley 

4) Crank, by Ellen Hopkins 

5) The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins 

6) Lush, by Natasha Friend 

7) What My Moth­er Does­n’t Know, by Sonya Sones 

8) Nick­el and Dimed, by Bar­bara Ehrenreich 

9) Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Voic­es, edit­ed by Amy Sonnie 

10) Twi­light, by Stephe­nie Meyer 

Banned Books Week is spon­sored by the Amer­i­can Book­sellers Asso­ci­a­tion; Amer­i­can Book­sellers Foun­da­tion for Free Expres­sion; the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion; Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Jour­nal­ists and Authors; Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Pub­lish­ers; the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Col­lege Stores; the Com­ic Book Legal Defense Fund; Nation­al Coali­tion Against Cen­sor­ship; Nation­al Coun­cil of Teach­ers of Eng­lish; and PEN Amer­i­can Cen­ter.

What could hap­pen if there was the facil­i­ty to share your vision, lit­er­al­ly, with every­one else in the world? How would that change the way peo­ple see each oth­er and inter­act? How could that change the world? How could some­one else use that pow­er of com­mu­ni­ca­tion not to increase com­mu­ni­ca­tion but to lim­it it?

That’s the ques­tion posed in “Vision Machine”.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““Vision Machine””

The March 27, 1938, broad­cast of “The Shad­ow” was enti­tled ‘The Hyp­no­tized Audi­ence’. The Shad­ow and his part­ner Mar­go Lane are embroiled in a plot to free a con­vict­ed mur­der­er by kid­nap­ping the state gov­er­nor and hyp­no­tiz­ing him into free­ing the prisoner.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “‘The Hyp­no­tized Audi­ence’ — “The Shadow””

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” — The Shad­ow knows!

A Maxwell Grant (aka Wal­ter B Gib­son) tale of The Shadow.

One by one, the indus­tries around the town of Hamp­st­ed have suf­fered impos­si­ble acci­dents, and each appar­ent­ly at the hands of their most trust­ed employ­ees. The toll in human lives is fright­ful, and the psy­chic toll on the cit­i­zens of Hamp­st­ed is even more oppres­sive. Such an implau­si­ble array of acci­dents draws the atten­tion of The Shad­ow, espe­cial­ly when one of his most val­ued agents, Har­ry Vin­cent, has dis­ap­peared inves­ti­gat­ing the scene.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “‘The City of Doom’ by Maxwell Grant”

Last week, web­site Io9 pub­lished not just one, but two posts deal­ing with mind con­trol themes. How­ev­er, I have to give both posts only a mediocre rating.

People Who Gained Superpowers From Being Brainwashed

Ten indi­vid­u­als from SF lit­er­a­ture, movies, tele­vi­sion, comics, etc, all of whom acquired their pow­ers from being brain­washed. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the his­to­ries of these indi­vid­u­als don’t quite match up with description.

Com­men­tary: Unfor­tu­nate­ly, out of the list giv­en, only a cou­ple actu­al­ly fit this title. The rest were indeed brain­washed (or some­thing sim­i­lar: the arti­cle’s def­i­n­i­tion of brain­wash­ing is over­ly broad) and gained super­pow­ers but those pow­ers were not direct­ly the result of the brain­wash­ing. (I’m tak­ing a more lit­er­al view of the title here than I sus­pect the author does: I still think its misleading.)

The only ones list­ed that actu­al­ly fit the descrip­tion would be Cap­tain Under­pants, an auto­crat­ic ele­men­tary school prin­ci­pal who was hyp­no­tized into becom­ing the super­hero Cap­tain Under­pants when trig­gered; the Mar­vel char­ac­ters Black Wid­ow and Win­ter Sol­dier, both Sovi­et Cold War black ops who were brain­washed into their iden­ti­fies as part of their train­ing; and Riv­er Tam, again, brain­washed as part of her phys­i­cal and psy­chic training.

Most of the oth­ers were brain­washed and giv­en pow­ers at the same time, but being brain­washed was not the cause or source of those pow­ers. Even oth­ers, such as Simon Phoenix (“Demo­li­tion Man”), already had their abil­i­ties before being brain­washed, or Max Gue­vara (“Dark Angel”), who was already being brain­washed before his train­ing (on top of genet­ic tin­ker­ing which occurred before birth.)

And at least one does­n’t even come close to fit­ting the brain­wash­ing theme: the Mar­vel char­ac­ter Cap­tain Uni­verse, the iden­ti­ty tak­en by any­one pos­sessed by the Uni-Pow­er. Although the descrip­tion says that when pos­sessed by the pow­er, they gain hero­ic atti­tudes, but this is more a case of those atti­tudes already present in the per­son selected.

Anoth­er that does­n’t fit the theme is Neo from the Matrix movies: the arti­cle tries to claim his train­ing in the mar­tial arts through mem­o­ry implants is a form of brain­wash­ing, yet the con­cept also has to include some kind of men­tal con­trol, which is not appar­ent. The arti­cle says that the brain­wash­ing includ­ed indoc­tri­na­tion about reject­ing the real­i­ty of the Matrix but I think that’s just assump­tion on the part of the author.

Rec­om­men­da­tion: Not recommended.

10 Mind Control Clichés

10 clichés that seem­ing­ly every evil mind con­troller has. Well, not every one, but a lot from the comics to have many of them, but there are as many excep­tions to the rules as there are exam­ples. A cou­ple seem to real­ly reach­ing to be includ­ed, and some of the clich­es are also woe­ful­ly incom­plete. For example:

1 ) Mind con­trollers com­pen­sate for a lack of phys­i­cal prowess: when you look at most mind con­trollers, you are struck by their phys­i­cal defor­maties: Pro­fes­sor X is wheel­chair bound, the Pup­pet Mas­ter is dwarfish with an over­sized head, Mes­mero has green skin, Hec­tor Ham­mond has an incred­i­bly enlarged head, etc. Yes, this is a valid cliche, but always for men and only for men, nev­er for women. The cliche for mind con­trol­ling women like the White Queen, Sat­urn Girl or Hyp­no­tia is that they are the oppo­site, excep­tion­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly endowed (in all sens­es of the word.)

2 ) Fin­gers on the fore­head: Pri­mar­i­ly used only by the char­ac­ters with psy­chic abil­i­ties, which is a sig­nif­i­cant but still pro­por­tion­al­ly small group of mind con­trollers. There are about as many (Vam­pirella) who use the “look into my eyes” cliche, oth­ers who use mag­i­cal ges­tures (Man­drake the Magi­cian) and then there’s the ones who use strict­ly mechan­i­cal devices (the Con­troller, Uni­ver­so) who don’t have any kind of ges­tur­ing. (Then again, Uni­ver­so, in his first incar­na­tion, did tend to grand­stand a lot.)

3 ) Psy­chic manip­u­la­tion, mind-warp­ing drugs, hyp­no­sis, and sub­lim­i­nal nudg­ing: Of course, there’s also mechan­i­cal devices (Doc­tor Drakken’s mind con­trol chip or the MKUl­tra machines), alien implants, sor­cery and, of course, don’t for­get the Orbital Mind Con­trol Lasers. (I won­der who’s con­trol­ling them this turn? If I don’t know, then prob­a­bly I’m not cleared for that infor­ma­tion. Fnord.)

4 ) Brain­wash­ing hench­men: While it may be the heroes best way to infil­trate the vil­lain’s head­quar­ters or to avoid cap­ture (“These aren’t the droids you’re look­ing for.”) its bet­ter used by the vil­lain to ensure the loy­al­ty of his underlings.

5 ) It’s poor form to mind con­trol non-vil­lains: Yet even the heroes do it, except they have episodes of angst about it: how many times did Pro­fes­sor X mind-wipe peo­ple who saw the X‑Men, or, in the first movie, men­tal­ly blank an entire mall because one of his stu­dents used his pow­ers with­out per­mis­sion? Then there’s also the famous inci­dent when Zatan­na mag­i­cal­ly erased spe­cif­ic mem­o­ries in a num­ber of Jus­tice League oppo­nents, set­ting off what would be a seri­ous­ly trag­ic event and the near-col­lapse of the League itself, many years later.

6 ) Blank stares: Blank stares are the hall­mark of mind con­trol, but they’re only part of the over­all whole pic­ture of the total blank look of some­one total­ly entranced. How­ev­er, in the Ori­ent, its a lit­tle dif­fer­ent: mind con­trol is shown by a total­ly fea­ture­less iris.

7 ) Mind con­trol­ling hats and hel­mets: Not a very preva­lent cliche here, and one that is almost strict­ly a source of con­trol­ling the one wear­ing the hat: about the only one who makes con­sid­er­able use of the cliche here is the Bat­man vil­lain the Mad Hat­ter; maybe he holds the patent on the design and does­n’t mar­ket it?

8 ) Mind con­trollers are creepy: Its one of the first things any mind con­troller learns, how to keep their pow­ers a secret (even if it takes using their pow­ers to do so.) Such pow­ers also make very good Psy­cho­log­i­cal Dis­ad­van­tages: Deep Secret for heroes to have.

9 ) Every­thing’s more awe­some on the astral plane: The Astral Plane only because the vaca­tion spot of choice for psy­chic bat­tles once Steve Ditko start­ed draw­ing Doc­tor Strange, but even then it is over­rat­ed. Most­ly the bat­tles take place in the mind of one or both of the com­bat­ants, although some­times the bat­tle is between invis­i­ble men­tal projections.

10 ) Mind con­trol bat­tles end with every­one’s brains explod­ing and faces melt­ing: The image here is so 80’s. Nowa­days such bat­tles tend to end with only a bloody nose or bleed­ing from the ears as the only sign of a struggle.

Com­men­tary: In try­ing to vio­late every one of the 10 list­ed clichés, the author actu­al­ly man­aged to cre­ate the most bor­ing mind con­trol­ling char­ac­ter ever seen.

Rec­om­men­da­tion: Only half recommended.

Its been quite a ride, Star Trek. 45 years ago, the first series aired its first episode (not the first filmed) to an unsus­pect­ing audi­ence. The result, after the three years of the “five year mis­sion” was noth­ing short of the bgin­ning of a rev­o­lu­tion in tele­vi­sion, movies and pop­u­lar cul­ture. And sprin­kled in among the five dif­fer­ent series and many movies are fre­quent sto­ries about mind con­trol­ling aliens, tele­path­ic con­trol, hyp­no­sis and even the Vul­can Mind Meld (cre­at­ed because the Stan­dards & Prac­tices depart­ment object­ed to Spock hyp­no­tiz­ing a patient, say­ing it was a med­ical pro­ce­dure and that McCoy should do it.)

And, of course, I must post a shout to Bjo Trim­ble, the lady who was most respon­si­ble for the let­ter-writ­ing cam­paign that got the orig­i­nal series’ renew­al for the third sea­son. Fail­ing that, the series might not have been run in syn­di­ca­tion (not enough episodes to mar­ket) and there­fore nev­er achieve the pop­u­lar­i­ty it did. Because of her and the thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple who del­uged NBC with let­ters, it sur­vived long enough to final­ly find its place, and now phras­es like “beam us up” and terms like “trans­porter” and “warp fac­tor 9” are part of every­day slang.

It was just anoth­er show for stage hyp­no­tist Miller Zam­bra­no Posa­da. Sev­er­al high school stu­dents were on stage, respond­ing to his sug­ges­tions just as oth­ers had in the past.

But once it was over and the audi­ence start­ed leav­ing, then it hap­pened. In what appears to be a case of mass hys­te­ria, over 40 of the stu­dents began act­ing odd­ly. First a few, then sev­er­al, then many of the stu­dents start­ed dis­play­ing abnor­mal reac­tions. They were all tak­en to a hos­pi­tal and all are report­ed to be okay. The hyp­no­tist him­self was tak­en into police cus­tody as par­ents accused him of witchcraft.

With very lit­tle to go on, its hard to come to any oth­er con­clu­sion than this being a case of mass hys­te­ria. It is known that only one of the stu­dents affect­ed were ever on stage. It does also demon­strate the pow­er of hys­te­ria as it devel­oped from just one per­son to a whole groyup. What I find inter­est­ing is the break­down: out of the 41 stu­dents, only 5 were boys while 36 were girls. The arti­cle does­n’t say which was the one who was actu­al­ly on stage but the odds are very much in favor of it being a girl.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly this sort of thing (and the report­ing that accom­pa­nied it) just fur­thers the stereo­types involved. Fur­ther­more, the stereo­types here, where the hyp­no­tist was accused of “Witch­craft”, are even worse than most here in the Us.

Ref­er­ence:

• “Columbian Magi­cian Arrest­ed After Hyp­no­tiz­ing 41 Kids” — A dou­bly-mis­lead­ing title, as he was­n’t arrest­ed, only tak­en into pro­tec­tive cus­tody, and only one of the kids was actu­al­ly hyp­no­tized by him.
• “Out-of-con­trol hyp­no­tism ruins high school fun day” — More stereotyping.

I have quite an inter­est in the Tarot, large­ly from a sym­bol­ic and pos­si­bly even a Jun­gian per­spec­tive and cer­tain­ly from an artis­tic stand­point. As an art col­lec­tor, I have sev­er­al pieces of art that are based on the Tarot, includ­ing “The Star” by Frank Kel­ly Freas ¹ that is one of the “stars” of my entire collection.

I also know that it is com­mon for Tarot enthu­si­asts to cre­ate their own Tarot deck: doing so not only per­son­al­izes it, it deep­ens the con­nec­tion with the Tarot sym­bol­o­gy and imagery for the indi­vid­ual. There­fore, its only nat­ur­al to com­bine this inter­est with my inter­est in hyp­no­sis to want to cre­ate the Hyp­not­ic Tarot deck. Of course, one caveat: every­thing sur­round­ing the Tarot is open (and quite fer­vent­ly) to dis­cus­sion and argu­ment, from the his­to­ry of the Tarot to the indi­vid­ual mean­ings of each sym­bol. What fol­lows is my own inter­pre­ta­tion which has about as much (or as lit­tle) valid­i­ty as any one else’s.

This first part will dis­cuss the basic ele­ments of the Tarot, the suits and their accom­pa­ny­ing sym­bols. The Suits order the Minor Arcana, the 52 cards that even­tu­al­ly became the play­ing cards in use today. The Suits and their sym­bols also appear reg­u­lar­ly in the Major Arcana. Sub­se­quent parts will cov­er the Major Arcana and the indi­vid­ual Suits of the Minor Arcana.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “The Hyp­not­ic Tarot — Part I: The Suits”