stereologist

iNow I think Pangloss says all I was thinking.

I like your post Gutz. Personally I think that the Joe in my story was way off base. He was the victor, but it should have been a draw. Ducky could have given a needless apology, Joe could have done the same. They could have hated or liked each other and still accomplished their jobs. Would anybody here have cared if the quotes came from the Popul Vuh?

Your claim is that government cannot in any way mention religious texts. That is not correct. The limitations are not what you claim. That is why I suggest you take the time to check what are the legal interpretations instead of redefining the concept in your personal flavor.

At this junction in the screaming let me tell you about an episode at a company where I worked. This very religious person shows up at work. That fact was unknown to my friend, call him Ducky. Call the religious fanatic Joe. So Joe is being led around the office. He comes into Ducky's office. So Ducky asks his typical cynical question, "What's your plan for this disaster we call work?" Joe politely responds, "I want to do a job pleasing to God." Ducky bursts out with a raucous laugh and says, "That's the best line yet!" Let's just say that Joe intended to roast Ducky's ass for religious discrimination. Chuck meant no harm. He was about the nicest person at the job. Joe just wanted everyone to know he was more religious than the next guy. Here we had head butting over basically nothing. Sounds like this thread. Does quoting a religious text constitute a problem. Sometimes, not always. The separation of church and state crew have some homework to do. The supporters have some homework to do as well. I still think I'm hearing more whining and cheering on this issue than is deserved.

Look bascule I knew up front that using Rush Limbaugh or another polarizing name like Nancy Pelosi would draw attention. I see this as a straw man argument. I don't see this as defending the Constitution. I do buy your arguments about inflaming Islamic viewpoints. You say non-Christian, but are you really talking about Jains, animists, Hindus, or others? Say what you mean.

Geez guys this is making a mountain out of a mole hill. Bascule et al don't take this too wrong, but you sound like Rush Limbaugh. Now don't flame me, but think about it. Is this really that important? My guess is that the info after the cover page is more interesting and worthy of debate.

I didn't waste much time reading the literature. I looked over a few slides. Are we talking thousands, dozens, or less than 10 pages here?

These two parts do not jive. How does 5% imply complete?

This is false. They do not freely move through air. Completely wrong. The key is here is getting the rods hot enough so that the atoms can align to form a magnetic. Simpler and safer to bang rods with a hammer to get the atoms to align. And the magnets so formed are not monopoles as claimed here. This has to be the dopiest part of this silly post. The correct word is builder. Coral as a building material is common in many parts of the world including East Africa and the tabby buildings of the US Southeast.

JohnB this is pretty interesting. I really like the idea of the IR camera now. I was certainly missing the point of excluding a human caught on film and that IR could be used to differentiate ghost from human. That's really nice.

I want to point out to JohnB that 2 cameras and visible and IR are getting ahead of the main point which is to define what is a ghost In the usher case you devise an experiment in which a device records an image. Your claim is that the ghost, whatever your definition is, gives off visible light. Without stating a definition you have an expectation that a ghost is visible because it gives off light so a light detector, a camera, can record that. Then you toss in an IR detector as well. Why is that? My point here is that you need to come up with a simple experiment. The simpler the less that can go wrong. It's cheaper. What you learn from the experiment is likely to be useful in further research. Are your cameras video cameras or stills? Are they human activated or activated in other ways? Do you need to test the cameras for their ability to capture low intensity images? Don't get overly complicated. Keep it simple. Make sure that the devices you use are able to detect a ghost before you proceed. You don't want to be in the embarrassing situation of claiming ghosts can't be detected by cameras when people begin to challenge with low intensity images can't be recorded. So get that definition worked out. Then get a detector. Make sure the detector is capable of doing the job, then go. Frankly, no skeptic like me is going to do the work. But if you get good data I certainly would be willing to reevaluate my position. Klaynos is correct in pointing out that efforts along these lines have not turned up positive results, but maybe you can be the first.

A water drop based rainbow is too difficult an issue. It would be difficult to illuminate and would not work in poor lighting conditions such as smog or hazy conditions, or cold or dry weather situations. Also, the rainbow would have a rather small area in which it could be properly viewed. A better option would be to illuminate a sheet of material with different lights to form a rainbow pattern. The area of viewing becomes large. Weather conditions such as cold, windy, rainy, hazy weather do not make the rainbow fail.

It's true that there have been plans for years to build devices to collect energy and beam them down to earth. This is not without peril as mentioned in I thin it was Robocop in which a satellite beaming down energy kills off huge numbers in Southern Cal including 3 ex-presidents.

The stability of the sediments is dependent on a wide range of factors from currents, to storms, to vegetation binding the soils, to land runoff to whatever. One of the issues that is dismissed by the public is that shoreline is a line in flux. The material is in motion and people that build houses on this unstable terrain do not want to hear that.

I have seen this in sleeping bags while camping. I would not call it fluorescent light, but simply light. To fluoresce is to describe a mechanism by which the light is produced. I have always thought it was due to static electricity. I usually see this in dry cool conditions. I hear the 'crackling ' sound of electrical discharge when I see the light. I would describe the sound like cellophane being crushed or crumpled rather than the snappy sound of a single spark from a static discharge.

I think some of my are being discussed here. The starting point for any experiment is to define what you are seeking and to derive a hypothesis that is testable. What is a ghost? How can a ghost be differentiated from other phenomena? Let me give an example. Suppose that a definition for ghost is a clanking chain sound in an empty room. The question now is how to determine that the sounds of clanking chains originate in the empty room and are in fact now recorded sounds being replayed. So the experiment might hypothesize that ghosts exists. An experiment is set up to detect the ghosts in an empty room where they are purported to occur. I do not buy into the notion that ghosts have to be cooperative. Lots of experiments can be done with uncooperative events such as detecting monopoles. Do they exist? Is there a definition of a monopole? How can a monopole be differentiated from other phenomena? A 'snare' is built and we wait. No idea if the monopole is going to show up. People who believe in ghosts claim that there are places where the ghosts frequent. The places are called haunts. If I were trying to detect something elusive I'd head to a haunt.

Your experiment is actually a multipart experiment: 1. the ability to transmit information after death 2. manipulate some objects 3. visual manifestation Which of these is about ghosts? I do not believe in the paranormal, but let's suppose it is possible. Experiments need to be constructed so that the outcome supports or rejects a hypothesis. Let's take experiment 1. Information transmitted after death. Let's suppose that a medium does report the information correctly. Does that mean it is possible that information can be transmitted after death?

Claiming a challenge is worthless is the same as stating that you have not taken time to consider how to create an experiment. Often it takes time to construct a well thought out experiment. If JohnB wants to prove the existence of ghosts, then the onus is on JohnB to construct the experiment. But if JohnB says such an experiment is impossible then JohnB is tossing in the towel and either admitting ghosts are not real or that the problem of constructing an experiment is beyond his understanding. I would like to give JohnB the benefit of the doubt and allow him to rethink his position and offer some suggestions on how an experiment should be done.

I thinkyoumight be interested in reading about N-rays. These were detected by a French scientist. No one else could replicate the experiemnts at first. Then other frenchmen could and no one else. It seemed that only the French had eyes capable of detecting these elusive N-rays. You might ask yourself if there a way to detect N-rays or colors in an objective manner? What is the difference between the wishful thining of N-ray observers and ghost observers?

I've seen a ghost. I've never suspected the presence of anything. I've never met anyone face to face that claimed seeing or detecting a ghost. Out of curiosity how many times do you run into ghosts Tom?

There is the old joke about a physics final: Explain the history of our universe in detail. Give 3 counter examples. I find many of ID concepts such as 'a tweak here or there and the universe doesn't work' lacking since there are no other examples to demonstrate the claim.

The R-squared value is used to decide if the two values are correlated. This is not the same as the data falling into a straight line. Suppose that the data plots into a horizontal line. The R-squared would be low. The reason is that changing the horizontal variable, the independent variable, doe snot affect the dependent variable. The two are unlikely to be related since changing one does not change the other. The R-squared value is used to tell whether or not one variable can be used to predict another variable. In your case it sounds undecided, a flip of the coin. R-squared is not the quality of the fit. The variance measures the quality of the fit. There are other statistical measures that are used to measure the quality of the fit.

Fresh cat crap is not a good idea for fertilizer. Composted crap is. Diseases called zoonotic diseases can be transferred from animals to human via crap. There are parasites such as hook worm that can be transferred. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI have been a car crash and come out unscathed. I do not think it would be wise of me to suggest to anyone that the same applies to them. Just because someone has been fortunate to avoid injury in a situation does not change the evidence that people do become ill from exposure to animal feces.

There was a nice old lady that lived across from me. One winter she placed a pile of dog poop in a paper bag and put it inside of the storm door. I carried the bag inside and forgot about it. A while later I had a foul odor in the house. I was rather curious about what had happened when I looked inside the bag. You see I did not have any pets. I never said anything to the woman. I knew she meant to well. Cat piss is horrible. We had a rotten cat that pissed in the garage. That smell is still there and it has been years. I'd call animal control and have the animal removed. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedIf you are finding difficulty in getting people from the local government to assist you in this ask them, "What if one of my friends' small kids crawling around the yard ends up putting cat crap in their mouth?" That should get someone's attention. This cat is a health hazard. I know I've had cats with horrible habits.

I once heard an anecdote that a salesman was giving his homeopathy pitch to a farmer. The sales talks about the dilutions and how the water still holds the essence and power of the drug. The farmer thinks about it for a while and asks the salesman, "Are you telling me that I could fertilize my entire farm with a fart?"