I think it was Franklin who said something like: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time...and them ain't bad odds!"

Bizarre as it may seem, I'm pretty sure orgasms were offered up in honor of the Solstice in pagan religions. These folks are just interested to see if this time-honored practice has a measurable effect somewhere.

The Global Consciousness Project has been ongoing since the 90s. Perhaps your dad will humor me, and tell us more about the collective unconscious, as he seems to be the resident philosophy expert.

By the way, somebody's behind on their chain mail! The Global Orgasm experiment happened last year.

Now, I'm not too sure I can grasp the concept of measuring change in randomness, and I'd like to understand what a damped transient field is, but as to whether it worked or not, it seems easy enough to write the organizer to ask how it went. If you are polite you'll probably get a reply.

For what it's worth, I had a fantastic holiday season last year, the best in at least five years. Did you?

Wups. Guess I missed the boat on that one... I just stumbled across the page a few days ago.

Re. pagan religions etc... So what? I quoted their "scientific background" because it's a great example of people with no fundamental understanding of things like the Zero Point Field using such terms indiscriminately because they sound impressive. You'll have to trust me on this one: if you have a background in physics, this thing is a hoot.

Anyway, a "change in randomness" might be measured by repeatedly performing an experiement that reliably produces a certain statistical distribution—coin flipping, say—and watching to see if the parameters of the distribution change significantly. The key word there is "significantly." The math involved here derives from the Neyman-Pearson lemma in detection theory, and will give you a probability figure that quantifies the likelihood that the hypothesis (that something happened) is true.

You can just guess how much I'd like to put this guy on the radio and make him define the Neyman-Pearson criterion without looking it up.

Regarding the damped transient, what I actually wrote was "damped transient EFFECT." Think of it this way: if six people want to move a hockey puck, they don't have to hit it all at once, because the transient momentum imparted by any individual's hockey stick is poorly damped by the slippery ice. On the other hand, if six people want to move a pickup truck with a single push, they have to work together, because the friction in the system is so great that an individual input in damped out almost immediately after the impulse.

So if the effect of a single orgasm has a long transient, then spreading out a bunch of orgasms over a whole day will have much the same effect as achieving them all at once. On the other hand, if it has a short transient, then you CAN'T spread them out over time, because any measurable effect may never rise above the threshold of detection.

But, see, it doesn't matter. By using phrases like "to effect positive change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy," these guys have completely discredited themselves from the get-go. You studied physics as an undergrad, C: you know what energy is, and what it is not.

This is nothing but pseudoscientific bullshit. Any results these guys report are suspect at best since they either (a) have no idea what they're talking about, or (b) are bullshitting deliberately in order to advance some other agenda. Considering what's on the sponsor's home page, my money's on option b.

And, to be honest, I didn't enjoy the holidays much.