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You had your chance to put forward the case that the claimed phenomena are extraordinary. Nobody bought it. That's why you've resorted to these whiney meta threads.

From our news today (have seen mention before), headline "The hoverboard becomes reality - finally" http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadgets/70846900/the-hoverboard-becomes-reality--finally Woo hoo, sounds all sciency and stuff. Unfortunately ... So really, just a scaled-up version of stuff we've seen before. e.g. this kind of thing:

Just a few days ago I was telling my Father about a John Oliver ("Last week tonight") item on food wastage. My Father made the comment (which from experience I had to agree with) that fruit off the ground is often the tastiest. Yeah, I don't think the average forest dwelling animal (Human or not) is too fussy about such food.

Yes and no. People will often see things they don't expect or they don't understand. To ignore possible mundane explanations and jump to the "what if it's an alien" conclusion - as you seems to be proposing - is a little bit silly. It's very clear, with your posting history, what you are trying to argue for.

An author should care that his or her readers can understand what they are reading. So far, I think everybody has found your posts (on this and other forums I read) incomprehensible gibberish. (i.e. The lack of on-point replies is not proof that no one can find fault; because the truth is that no one can find the point to start with.) If you care whether anybody understands you, you need to break down your concept into smaller pieces, and get each one understood (if not agreed with) before moving on to the next. You also need to use words in standard ways, or at least properly explain how you use them.

My hovercraft is full of eels.

You're still missing the point by miles.

Why "no"? That comment was about popularity (right or wrong), not availability. Ability to run on the same server at the same time isn't a counter point.

Organic molecules have been detected "out there", but that doesn't mean "life". No direct evidence of life has yet been found off Earth (apart from on craft we've sent up ourselves).

(Disclaimer: I'm all Windows and IE. Your mileage may vary.) You can install your own certificate as trusted (via IE or the cert snap-in for MMC), or build your own root cert, trust that, and build certs off it. I've done this using the makecert tool for my own test servers. This shouldn't be done for anything exposed to the World, as the keys generated by makecert are not strong. And in any case, if you want other people to access your servers you'd have to get them to trust your certs to avoid the warnings too). (Also, on my DEV PC at work, as a quick-and-simple I've installed the "localhost" cert built by IIS Express into (Real) IIS, and use that to access test sites with SSL and no whining from the browser - but that's of course only useful for local development use.) If this is for real world use, just get a cert from someone like godaddy. Prices vary a lot.

If there was evidence to decide on which answer was most irrational, that same evidence would give the answer to the first question.

What was missing from ACG52's post #2 of this thread?

In the news today: http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/apps/69857818/divide-zero-by-zero-dont-ask-siri

It's also very possible for apparently complex "behaviours" to be generated by very simple things. For example, the motion of a plastic bag in the wind is very complex, but not only is that not "intelligence", it isn't "life".

Rubbish: for example it's utterly trivial to write down a number that represents more "things" than there are electrons in the entire known Universe. Math is abstract, and can be used to describe reality - but doesn't have to confine itself to that reality. If you were physically drawing a line, you might (in "reality") be limited to making that line out of a finite number of atoms; but mathematically, there'd be an infinite number of points on that line. Sloppy language. Zero is defined. Division by zero isn't. And you've been shown why.

Isn't that at least part of what art is for?

I found this fascinating: http://googleresearch.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-neural.html https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPX0SCl7OzWilt9LnuQliattX4OUCj_8EP65_cTVnBmS1jnYgsGQAieQUc1VQWdgQ?key=aVBxWjhwSzg2RjJWLWRuVFBBZEN1d205bUdEMnhB

By that you seem to be defining (x / 0) = x OK, so use that: that would mean (x / (y - z)) = x, where y = z (because given y = z, then y - z = 0) By standard algebra, (x / (y - z)) = x gives (y - z) = (x / x) = 1 So now you have both (y - z) = 1 and (y - z) = 0. Which is an example of the contradictions you can get by trying to define a value for division by zero. By that definition, you provide an "answer" for some cases, but you mess up a bunch of other cases. Math needs to be consistent. Question: do you have MS Excel or similar available? (I'm going to suggest a simple "test").

Congratulations, America. Another step towards civilisation. ( ;-) ) I really don't understand why the opponents feel so strongly about it. Last Month an Australian couple (straight, married, with two kids) said they'd get divorced if same-sex marriage was made legal there, as it offended their concept of marriage so much. That's just astounding.

I'm thinking a cup of tea and a lie down.

Have you heard of Phrenology? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_mammals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapod

Nobody here is closed to new facts or ideas. But facts only become facts when shown to be correct and new ideas are not necessarily useful just because they are new, or because they were presented. You can't assume your "fact" is "reality", then simply expect everybody to accept it. (I'm skipping, here, over whether science is about "truth" or "proof", and what a "fact" is.) This sub section of the forum is full of people with threads about their idea of how Gravity works. Are any of them "reality"? Are all of them "reality"? Should we believe each one as it appears, then discard it as the next appears? That this forum and this sub section exists at all is evidence that people are open to new facts and ideas. If your own "reality" has been rejected, that's just tough.

Yes, yes, the old "they laughed at [insert name here]" claim. True, but for every scientist who was disbelieved and whose theory was later accepted, there will be plenty of "scientists" whose theories were disbelieved and which remain unbelievable. This is the "they laughed at Bozo the clown" counter-claim. Give it up, jeremyjr. Nobody here believes your "anomalies" are proof of plasma beings (or whatever). Trying to turn that into an argument about how nobody believes the revealed truthTM isn't going to get you anywhere.

Of course. Drop something off a tower, you'll see it gain speed. (I was also going to mention gravitational slingshot, as used by several space probes, but that works more by robbing a little orbital momentum from the larger body; not sure if that meets your needs.)