>From Leak: ...
> But, the sodium vapor lamp bit is still a great party trick. in > puberty i had such excellent control i could point at lights nearby > and put out specific ones. (not sure what causes it, but apparently > overloads of voltage in such lamps cause breakers to pop then come > back on when the light cools. the theory was that the human body's > normal electrical field, if it matched up just right, could cause it. > who knows why. But a couple years ago, i lived at a house that had a > few sodiums still on the street behind it. i would walk that street > and then around and in, about a block out of the way. my roomate knew > when i was a few minutes from home, because the backyard got dark as > the lamp went out as i walked under it every day. ) Regarding the weird phenomenon of sodium vapor lights going out in one's presence, I noticed a similar phenomenon happen to me when I drove past a certain street lamp in my neighborhood. For a while I wondered what it was I might be doing, or what it might be about me personally, my physiology, or my fantasized psychic abilities that made the lamp flicker out. I pondered this mystery, off and on, for quite a spell. One evening I decided to watch one of these intermittent sodium vapor lights that I felt I was influencing. I eventually discovered that the damned light had a tendency to go out on a regular basis regardless of whether I was passing by it or not. I had just assumed that I must somehow be responsible for the light going out because the light was in the process of performing one of its numerous off cycles, serendipitously around the time I was driving past it. On another matter, back in the 1980s, I had a first generation CD player that would act up whenever I passed my hand near the front control panel. I assumed I was carrying some kind of a static charge that might be interfering with some of the delicate electronics. Unfortunately, I never was able to confirm my suspicion. I tried everything I could think of to remove all static charge from my body. Didn't seem to matter. The CD player would still act up. Happened in the middle of a humid summer as well. Anyone know what might cause a flaky CD player to act up by a simple wave of the hand? ...or can I fantasize myself as a latent Uri Geller in training! >8-0 Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
