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The EarthDance event is
a global electronic music party organised each year as a
peace meditation -- through dance. It has been happening since 1997,
usually in October, though in 2004 the date is September 19. Typically
there are 100,000 people dancing in 100 cities. All
the participants connect in a synchronized "Prayer for peace", played
simultaneously at one point in time in all dance locations.
The time specification for the prayer was a little confusing
this year. The main website said Midnight GMT, but in other places the
published time was for Midnight in London (23:00 GMT), which
corresponds to 19:00 in New York and 16:00 in California.
We took the latter as the intended time, and
the formal event was specified as in 2002, from 22:50 to 23:15 GMT,
surrounding the moment set for the synchronized prayer for peace.
The following graph shows the results, which have a strong and
consistent downward trend. The Chisquare is 1414.245 on 1500 df,
corresponding to Z = -1.584 and p = 0.943.
There were other organized events on the 19th, for example 5 hours
earlier in the day. There were also some instructions for a detailed
pattern of attention in 5 minute segments. I believe this was promoted
only for a small subset of people, but it is possible to gauge the
effect by an informal look at the graph. It
shows no discernable corresponding pattern of changes in slope.
Finally, it is interesting to note that the full GMT day of the 18th
has about the same slope as the test segment shown in the graph.
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