"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

Confucius said that many, many years ago, and it has always been a favorite saying of mine. So today, I take great pride in announcing that Pherotones.com has found the perfect partner with Oasysmobile.com. The long journey has finally ended. The world can now download my pherotones free and share them with each other in love! I wait eagerly for the real world results to come pouring in.

Another exciting result of my partnership is the ability for me to offer a "Research Grant" in the amount of $6900.69 to anyone who can provide video examples of my pherotones in action. If you visit my website, you can get all the rules and regulations and learn how to upload your video.

A special thank you to all the "Citizen Scientists" out there who have stood by me in this noble cause. Thank you to all of those who emailed me support or IMed me with your good wishes.

Now, I shall curl up in bed and sleep soundly knowing we have achieved something magical.

Barbarians at the gate.

I've just had 15 lectures on my college campus tour cancelled. Thousands of young open minds a little more closed.

I just keep reminding myself that all great scientists have, at one time or another, had to stand by their convictions no matter how incredibly hard the path seemed. In the process, I've become a lightening rod. I wonder how many people doubted the ability to send a voice over a wire until Watson's heart raced when he heard a sound come out of no where?

Now here I stand, alone. A little Dane, with a wild idea to spread a message of love and hope across the globe. But, I will push on. I must. We will find a distributor, and we will achieve our scientific goal. And then maybe, just maybe, even those filled with anger and criticism will find the pherotone that makes their lives a little more happy.

A girl can dream, can't she?

They call it Valentine's Day.

What a novel concept. An entire day devoted to telling and showing those that you love how you feel. How perfect for my Pherotones! I trust Elkstrom that soon we will have a distributor and will be able to provide the world with the love that it needs.

On another note, I've been able to update my Web Site with my latest University lecture. It is a strange thing to see yourself on film. Can you trust your eyes? Or do you trust the lens? Do you trust what people say about you? Or do you trust what you feel inside. I find these questions are similar. I could let the critics drown out my beautiful message to the world, or listen to my instincts and push on, sharing with the world my love on this most perfect of days. Ever the hopeless romantic, I will choose the later.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

A note from Elkstrom.

This weekend has been a blur. Between working and researching, I've hardly had a chance to myself. I've decided to let Elkstom handle the business part of this venture, and I'll focus on the research part. After a weekend of intensive "research", I awoke this morning with a message next to my pillow. Ohhhh, the back and forth of love. Is it love, or lust? Maybe it's nothing.

Exhaustion...

My research seems to consume me...with every moment squeezed for all of its seconds. Things are moving quickly now, and I must be ready for the transition. No one takes a moment off. We eat at our desks. We answer few emails and even fewer IM's. This pace can't keep up. I begin to long for the lazy summer days of my youth near the water. It is my supporters, my fans, my "Citizen Scientists" that keep me going. I look forward to soon offering them something for their smart questions, insightful comments, and constructive criticisms. If only a small token.


Perhaps I will draw a hot bath, and make some tea. It will all work out for the best.

Into the Belly of the Beast: Discussing Pherotones at a Major University.

What an amazing day! Despite mainstream science's aversion to all things Phertonal, there are still a few open minds left on University campuses.
















I found a high concentration of wide-open, eager, curious minds at a major local university on friday, and let me tell you the questions were amazing. Can Pherotones be abused? Are Phertones dangerous? Can you use a phertone on yourself? Why do you use stereotypes in your marketing. Is Gender Identity a biological fact or a social construct? Why is the establishment out to get you? Is it about love, sex, or attraction?
















Where there are questions, there is life, and where there is life, I want to be there too.I hope to speak all over the country, if your university is still open to vigorous discourse, email me, IM me, or post an invitation to this blog.
















Next to field work, the thing I love best about my research is talking to real people about the real issues that surround Pherotones. It is heartening to see so much curiosity still alive in the world. Today was a major step forward in furthering the science of Pherotones.

Your '2¢' R Invaluable 2 Me: Enjoying Vigorous Discourse.

No one loves a wild, raucous back-and-forth more than I do.

I won honorable mention in several high school debating competitions, and studied speech and debate at the college level. I learned then to respect all strong, skilled, vocal advocates as either invaluable allies or worthy foes.

Mediocrity often pervades the public conversation, but not when it comes to the Pherotones debate. Both our supporters and detractors are intelligent, witty, and doggedly devoted to their positions.

That's why I want to give shout outs to all the bloggers linking to me. If you would like, I can link to you, just say so in the comments section of this thread. Or email me. Or send me an IM.

And for our determined detractors, challenging us in every far corner of the blogoverse, we salute your due diligence. Without you, the Internets would fall into disgrace.

Instant Message Monkey Business

Promoted from the Comments: More Research from Norway.

This blogger from Norway is conducting a simple comparison study between Pherotones and his favorite rock band.

From the comments:

Ole said...

Hi. I have never had a better life before I discovered Pherotones. But you got some serious competition from The Johnny Cane Band.

The vote is on and the competition is going to be hard for shure!

27 January, 2006 04:25

A larger sample of the population will lead to more accurate results for Ole, so please participate.

He also links to a big splash on a leading Norwegian newspaper webpage.

Smokingkills. (And it looks hilarious.)

http://kingkills.blogspot.com/2006/01/viagra-for-your-ear.html

The data begins to pour in...warts and all.

OK, folks, this is huge.

Our Discovering Pherotones blog has its first major deposit of orignial research, a study conducted entirely independently of the Auditory Institute, RTP.

A brave, bold, visionary young man named Mike Schramm didn't know what to make of us at first. But rather than write us hateragemail, mock us anonymously online, or ignore us, he did what every concerned citizen-scientist should do, he decided to test our findings.

Bravo, Mike. Thank you for putting yourself on the line before dismissing us out of hand. You didn't love all the pherotones, but we love you for doing such careful, brave work.

Thank you, sir.

PS: Oh, yes, now that I read his bio, I can see I am not dealing with your average blogger.

It starts:

"Mike Schramm was born at an early age, and has lived a life of mystery and intrigue since then..."

And it gets better from there.

The Unknown vs. The Known: Which side are you on?

To respond to my critics, and to the doubting classes out there, I have a few words to say about my beliefs regarding Pherotones.

As we all know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know.

We also know, that there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,the ones we don't know.

We don't know it all...but someday, all of this will be known, and there will be a whole new batch of the unknown to sort out.

Please join me in my quest to prove the power of Pherotones. Keep the comments, and especially the healthy criticism coming!

Sometimes Research is Hard Work

Having a tough day in the lab today...been testing what we believe are new round of prototype pherotones, and that's got everyone a little tense.

We go out in the court yard every twenty minutes to "clear" our heads, but working around pherotones can be tough.

Still, in order to qualify as a pherotone, a ring tone must stimulate at least four out of five researchers at least in some way. If they turn three of us on, and one of us gets hungry, that's OK. It's not an exact science.

Today, we had many threes, but no fours. We may need to adjust our criteria. Maybe we are being a little too careful.

I have a great team, though. Brilliant researchers, every one.

Good looking too.

We're going out tonight after work. Yay!

Spreading the Pherotone Joy: Tower of Babel Edition

I have a hunch.

What if we translate the Pherotone Imperative into a lot of different languages...will we draw a lot more visitors from overseas...let's call it the Tower of Babel Experiment.

(I tweaked the phrase to make it a tad more translatable...)

Discover Pherotones. The erotic ring tone secret that attracts romance and lifts your love life high.

Now for the translations:

Chinese: 发现Pherotones 。吸引言情和举您的爱生活高的色情圆环口气秘密。

En Español: Descubra Pherotones. El secreto erótico del tono del anillo que atrae romance y levanta su colmo de la vida del amor.

Even the words sound enticing in Spanish!

And one more, Italian, the language of Rome. And because I would love to do a lecture tour in Italy. Of course the Italians proably don't need ringtone magic to make them exquisite lovers.

Italian: Scopra Pherotones. Il segreto erotic di tono dell'anello che attrae romanzesco ed alza il vostro high di vita di amore.

And here, after being translated through three languages is our Internationalized motto.

"It discovers Pherotones. The secret erotic of tone of the ring that
attracts romanzesco and raises yours high of love life."

I'm afraid it's all Esperanto to me.

I hope this works.

Pherotones - ロマンス語を引き付ける呼出し音の秘密…を検出する

Pherotones - ロマンス語を引き付ける呼出し音の秘密…を検出する

I have a great translator utility to help spread the word.

This is how you say "Discovering Pherotones, the ring tone secret that attracts." in Japanese.

This is what it says translated back:

"Pherotones - secret of the ring tone which pulls romance language. It detects that..."

Poetic almost.

Blogging assistance badly needed...

Hello, a little bit of blog business to take care of first.

If you know how to work blogger, I need your help...badly...wondering if maybe I have been hacked...


As many of you know by now, I have comments piling up in the Moderate Comments box. I can see them, and read the first line of each, see who they came from, but I can't open them to read, so I can't publish them.

I am working on a G4, with Safari 1.0.3, I've disabled the pop-up blocker, I've checked all the settings...

When I get to the moderate comments page, I even get the little hand that indicates you are on a link when I roll over the each entry.

What does not happen is nothing appears in the lower bar of the browser as it does when I roll over a hot link.

I am the only administrator...

So, anyway, I am stumped. IM or email me if you know what I am doing wrong...

And many thanks to the blogger who emailed me about my typo, proove, instead of prove. Fixed it. That was very neighborly.

Open source spell-checking. I love it.

Newton, the apple, and gravity.

The myth is that Newton was reading a math book under an apple tree. An apple fell on his head, and he discovered gravity.

That's the myth.

Of course, there was a long time and a lot of hard work between the time the apple hit him on the noggin' and the publication date and peer review of his equations quantifying this force that "pulled" the apple onto his head.

That's where I am at with the discovery of pherotones.

The apple in this case was Ekstom's mobile phone, and the raucous weekend that followed.

Now I am in the hard work phase.

In other words, I experienced something profound that made no sense to me. It raised a lot of questions about who I am and how I function. My investigation into the phenomena is only beginning.

The controversy swirling around me right now centers around one basic fact, a fact I do not dispute...I have only anecdotal evidence, and most of it is based on a lost weekend in Copenhagen.

But I think we all know there is something here...I just need help finding it.

Busy day on the IM's. Love the questions. Keep en coming. ;-}

Musica Universalis

Even the ancients used the metaphor of sound and music to explain the workings of the universe.


The more I read about The Music of the Spheres, the more I am convinced that sound, or at least elastic vibrations are what hold the universe together.

Sounds a little like string theory to my colleague Mary Catherine.

But doesn't it go to follow that if the forces holding matter together can be analogous to sound, that subsonic sound might possibly trigger something in the brain?

I know somewhere down the road, this is all going to tie together.

Sexuality+Science=Controversy

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that at the dawn of a new century, in this day and age, our culture is still so fearful of what we don't understand.

I was reminded of this a million times today, fielding questions from all over the world (literally) about Pherotones.

As a scientist, I thrive on doubt. Not knowing, and yet striving to know, that is in my DNA. (OK, I mean not literally, metaphor alert...) Anyway, I respect doubt. I welcome it. I expect it. I embrace it. I celebrate it. It fuels me.

But there are others in my field who exploit it. They take what is unknown, and use it as a club against those of us who are trying to actually discover things, and move science along. They use the language of the unknown, like "lack of evidence" or "Unsubstantiated" or "only anecdotal" to stifle creative science.

Welll you know what? An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and even one anecdote is worth exploring.

I mean are we scientists anymore? Or are we only technicians, bureaucrats, engineers, administrators of guarded, esoteric knowledge?

I pledge my life to the scientific method, but I reject the notion that scientific inquiry should be a glacial process. As some of my students would say, that's not how I roll. If my colleagues and I find an enterprising way to use the internet to conduct our research, then real scientists should celebrate that.

Apart from the cynics (not to be confused with the skeptics, whom I adore), today was wonderful. It opened my eyes even wider to the promise pherotones hold. It is a big wide world out there, and everyone has a stake in my research.

A lot of questions today were about my love life, and I understand that as well. I want to air some of this, in a tasteful way, on this blog.

For those curious about my status, I would put it as unmarried, but unavailable. I am involved at the moment, but it's complicated.

And obviously pherotones and my work play a huge role in that complexity.

Too lazy to do my links tonight, but tomorrow for sure.

What a day.

Phew.

What a crazy freaking day.

The site is generating a lot (too much?) of attention. When I wasn't in the lab or at staff meetings today, I was IM-ing and emailing and answering questions.

I am drained. I need a bubble bath.

Much to tell however...so hopefully my insomnia will kick in and I can blog the night away.