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(More on naturalism later, when I don't have to type wearing oven mi—never you mind, never you mind.)

I can't wear battery-powered watches.  Slap one on my wrist and within two hours, it ticks no more.  Why?  I've ventured all plausible combinations of search terms, but all I've learned is that 1) there are better pedometers out there and 2) my chakras misassimilate life force energies. 

Neither answer satisfies.

I mention this tonight because everything electronic I touched today stopped working.  First, my laptop died.  Then all my remotes.  Now my digital music player.  (I'm not wearing gloves now.)  (Unless I am.)  (Which I'm not.)  I don't want anyone to get the impression I think I'm Johnny Bukowski, but I don't think this is a coincidence. 

There must be some reason this all happened today, right?  And it must be related to my power to stop watches, right?  Chad?  Shelley?  PZ? 

Anyone?

Comments

[j.s. nelson]

you're a vortex of misfortune, scott

[Rich Puchalsky]

Not only do I have an explanation, I have one from each civilizational era. Pick whichever you like!

Ancient: G-d doesn't like you, Scott Eric Kaufman.
Christian era: You're a Jew. All sorts of bad things are supposed to happen to you. That shows that G-d is good!
Modernity: Start calculating the chances of coincidence. Decide that they are well within the bounds of possibility, nay, that they are automatic once you get enough people wearing battery-powered watches. Secretly laugh at the unlucky person who is the one to personally prove the statistics.
Post-modernity: You know how it's difficult or impossible to distinguish the "real" world from being in a simulation of the real world that's being run on a computer-equivalent somewhere? Well, these kind of events are signs that we are in one. And somewhere, there is a bored computer geek type running the whole thing. And he doesn't like you, Scott Eric Kaufman.

[SEK]

Bah, I don't need no mystifying Higher Being/computer geek to explain this, just something, you know, sciencey. One doctor once said it had something to do with my body chemistry, which sounds plausible, but I've sought for years to find out exactly what that meant. It's just that yesterday I seemed, how to say it? Overcharged? Electrifying?

[JPool]

There are more things on earth and the invisible world than are dreamt of in your science, SEKatio.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Stanislaw Lem wrote a very good book about just this kind of thing, translated into English as "The Investigation." A police detective is brought in on case in which circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that dead bodies are getting up and walking around temporarily. But they assign him a statistician, not a biologist or something, to help him figure this out. The detective keeps pushing for a sciencey explanation, and by the way, someone gives him one -- possibly the statistician, I forget. But then the statistician tells him the chilling truth; sometimes these things just happen. You can plot probabilities, but "explanations", well...

As for the body chemistry / "electrifying" bit, it sounds like pseudoscience to me. You might as well say that you were leaking ectoplasm or something. I don't know, maybe you could build up enough static electricity from habitually rubbing your feet on the carpet while you sit in front of the computer to dramatically degrade the expected life of your electronic appliances. Of course determined investigation might find something. I have heard that there are rare cases e.g. of people hearing voices and it turns out to be that one of their tooth fillings is acting as a radio receiver.

[SEK]

No, JPool, I can count them all. (With my fingers!)

Rich, the watch thing is easily verifiable. Do you like your watch? No? Give it to me. Soon enough, it will stop. Sometimes, it will start again when someone else puts it on. This has doomed me to a life of mechanical and/or kinetic watches. I know it sounds like pseudoscience, but it's one of those things on earth and the invisible world that I can count with my watch-killing hands. (Er, wrists, you know what I mean.) As for everything else temporarily shutting down yesterday, well, that probably was a coincidence.

BUT!

What if it wasn't? (That's sort of what I was wondering, Misfits of Science aside.)

[Rich Puchalsky]

Well, I can't wear a watch of any kind because I don't like how the wristbands feel and will keep twisting them until they break. Even if I intend not to do this, I'll find myself doing it. Maybe you have some subconscious dislike of electronic watches and manage to slam them into things.

[JPool]

You must have a lot of fingers.

My mom, who does energy-body work as well as insurance coding policies for a major hospital (right brain-left brain fun time) claims she has a much greater capacity than anyone else she knows for turning street lights on or off by walking under them. She also claim the watch destroying power, though, if pressed, she will admit that she also has a tendency to wear them upside down and smash them on this that and the other.
Have you considered a pocket watch? Nothing says academic affectation like a pocket watch.

[Sisyphus]

Obviously you're channeling the Mystery Spot.

[SEK]

Sisyphus, I've always wanted to go there! On day, I'll have a car that can take me. (Maybe sooner than later, as I just deposited my filing fee, which means I'll be done, officially, come March. Huzzah!)

JPool, I'm not claiming sensitivity to electronics, just this ... special talent for killing watches. Seriously, it's the lamest mutant power ever:

Professor X: If only there was some way to distract Magneto!

SEK: Wait! If Nightcrawler can bamf in there and steal his watch, I can make sure he'll be late for Armageddon!

As I said, lamest mutant power ever.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Dude, what are the chances that Magneto has an electronic watch? I mean, surely if he has one it's a special non-magnetic-material mechanical one, or it would get messed up the first time he passes the salad bowl across the table at dinner. Your mutant power would be useless.

[JPool]

I don't know. That popcorn thing was pretty all flash and no substance. Other than the substance of popcorn. Which is not very substantial.

If you could use your watch killing powers remotely, then, in theory it might be possible for you to free us from the tyrany of our slave bracelets. On the pther hand, if the Man had anything to say about this, and he always does, then he'd probably just replace them with The Table (ala Zamyatin's We).

[SEK]

But, but, but, Rich! It could still have batteries! Sadly, JPool, I can't project my powers. Physical contact is required.

[Shelley Batts]

Thats a tough one. Its likely just bad luck and coincidences.

A long shot: it could be related to your galvanic skin response/skin conductance. GSR is used to tell when people are lying in a lie detector test, it measures the electrical resistance produced by the skin. It is correlated with a person's mental state (ie, lying, arousal, etc) because changes in emotional state make a person sweat, when in turn changes skin resistence. I have no idea how that might cause a battery to stop working, though. No studies I could find had looked into it.

Why not test it? Get a couple cheap watches, put in a brand new battery, and put them on. Time how long it takes for them to stop working. Then give them to someone else and time how long it takes for them to start working again.

[tomemos]

The watch thing is real, Robert Graves suffered from it as well. See Goodbye to All That. Of course, they didn't have watch batteries in those days; I think he thought it was related to his magnetic field. How that's possible is unclear to me.

[Naadir Jeewa]

Magnetism isn't an explanation. There's not enough alignment going on in the human body.

Electro-chemical effects seem possible. There could be an ickier explanation-many alloys in watches corrode in sweat...

Try avoiding nickel or chromium alloys and see what happens.

[Jon H]

"you're a vortex of misfortune, scott"

Or as I call it, he's a Misery Well, analogous to a Gravity Well.

[mom]

You should add that you are allergic to Cola - no coke or pepsi for you not after the first time you tried it as a baby and then again at a Mets game in Houston. I can verify the watch issue - I have several at home that once belonged to you that are now running with new batteries. We were never able to figure out how it happens, but your doctors thought it was funny. Maybe you are allergic to batteries and that is why you can never wear your hearing-aids. In the quiet world inwhich you live no time is needed.

[Magniloquence]

I have a similar problem! I'm mostly okay with watches (if I can keep them on for long enough for them to break...), but other electronics hate me. I can give pretty much any nearby computer a Blue Screen Of Death just by being in the same room. I've caused Kernel Panics on just-opened Macs. Certain types of lights tend to flicker and burn out around me, even if they've just been replaced.

Granted, most of the worst parts happened during late puberty. Now it mostly seems to be okay for everything that's not an external harddrive..