Worcester Railers

19

Déjà vu is the sensation of having experienced before something which you are actually experiencing for the first time (it comes from the French phrase for "already seen"). It is a fairly common phenomenon, with various studies determining that somewhere between one third and nineteen twentieths of the population have experienced it. If you're looking for an indication of just how imprecise social sciences can be at times, look no further than that sentence. Somewhere between one third and nineteeth twentieths of the population? You could throw darts at a dartboard while blindfolded and get a tighter cluster than that. In any case, scientists aren't much more sure what causes it than they are how many people experience it. Explanations range from encountering something that reminds you of an experience you can't quite remember for some reason to a mis-timing of signals from different parts of the body entering the temporal lobe to having previously dreamed about a similar experience. Wow, as far as explanations go, those are all over the damn place. You could throw darts at a dartboard while blindfolded and get a tighter cluster than that.

Related to déjà vu is déjà entendu, which is the sensation of having heard before something which you are hearing for the first time (déjà entendu comes from the French phrase for "already heard", while déjà vu comes from the French phrase for "already seen"). Honestly, I'm not certain why it even counts as a separate experience. After all, is hearing not an experience? Déjà vu, despite the name, is not restricted to visual experiences, so why carve out a special name for aural experiences? In any case, if you've ever heard a song which you know you couldn't possibly have heard before but it sounds familiar to you, you've experienced this. Or maybe you're just listening to the radio. Seriously, that crap gets real repetitive, real fast. You can listen to the radio on three separate days and even if you don't hear the exact same songs (which is likely), it'll still feel like it. Honestly, I'm not certain why it even counts as a separate experience.

And finally, you've got jamais vu, which is the sensation of having never before experienced something that you know you have experienced (jamais vu comes from the French phrase for "never seen", while déjà vu comes from the French phrase for "already seen"). Social scientists understand the cause of this one about as well as they've understood anything else I've mentioned so far in this review. The social scientists aren't having a good day. But social sciences are like that. The problem is that the social scientists are studying human beings, and human beings are (and I'm using the technical terminology here) subversive troublemakers. A chemist working on a new compound involving oxygen doesn't have to worry about the oxygen deciding it would be funny to bond to carbon differently from how it normally does. But social sciences are like that. A psychologist does have to worry about a human subject deciding it would be funny to respond to different to something in the experiment differently from how they normally do. And even if the human subject isn't deliberately messing with the researcher, just knowing that they're taking part in an experiment can cause them to subconsciously act differently. This is why psychologists have to go to considerable effort to devise experiments where the subjects can't figure out what's actually being tested: it keeps the subversive subconscious focused on messing up a reaction the researcher doesn't care about so that it can't mess up the reaction the research does care about that. I'm sure most social scientists wish they could deal with subjects that aren't so perverse. But social sciences are like that.

Related to déjà vu is déjà entendu, which is the sensation of having heard before something which you are hearing for the first time (déjà entendu comes from the French phrase for "already heard", while déjà vu comes from the French phrase for "already seen"). Honestly, I'm not certain why it even counts as a separate experience. After all, is hearing not an experience? Déjà vu, despite the name, is not restricted to visual experiences, so why carve out a special name for aural experiences? In any case, if you've ever heard a song which you know you couldn't possibly have heard before but it sounds familiar to you, you've experienced this. Or maybe you're just listening to the radio. Seriously, that crap gets real repetitive, real fast. You can listen to the radio on three separate days and even if you don't hear the exact same songs (which is likely), it'll still feel like it. Honestly, I'm not certain why it even counts as a separate experience.

SCORING NOTE: This team managed to worm its way out of so many penalties that I'm actually somewhat impressed. "Ers" penalty for made-up words ending in "-ers"? It turns out that railer is the term for an individual piece of train track. So I can ding them on "Irrelevance" since you can't actually see the track? No, because the "Irrelevance" penalty specifies the main feature of the logo has nothing to do with the name, and it's hard to argue that trains have nothing to do with train track. But that "HC" "at the bottom means I can at least ding them with the "Obvious" penalty, yes? No, because the "Obvious" penalty specifies the word "hockey" has to be in the logo, and it isn't. To be honest, giving them the "Ripoff" penalty and denying them the "Local" bonus are both questionable, but I did both of these things out of sheer petulance.

Final Score: 19 points.
Penalties: Name-Logo, 2 pts; Equip-Logo (doubly egregious), 13 pts; Ripoff, 4 pts.
Bonuses: None.