starbug1

HA! just giving the scenarios. It doesn't work that way. Love the judge judy remark.

So...I'm assuming you don't smoke.

tabacco companies: powerful, formidable, hard-hitting, and with more 'say' that you can imagine.

Any book by Carl Sagan is highly readable and worth your time. I just finished "The Dragons of Eden" and I learned invaluable information in a relatively short book. You get the basics on evolutionary history, psychology, memes found in dreams, and the unique properties of the brain. I highly recommend it.

Socializing is a common pleasure, it has speciality: what and who you like to socialize with. Meditation is also common, it depends on what an individual considers meditation. Playing video games, maturbating, or even time alone can be called meditation. This is not true for everybody.

and where the people smoke should have posters of cancer victims all over the walls. Smoking is disgusting and where they go to smoke should be digusting as well. Nothing else is helping them quit, and this won't either, but it would keep it out of the workplace.

That would definately apply as a speed reading program. This like all the others costs money, and I havn't found one yet that is free. This shows you that the programs are for real.

You hack off all your limbs and weigh them individually. That way nothing should exceed 10 kilos. If you're conscious at the end, you just sew yourself back together.

The diameter's of both types of pencil are usually the same, and by using a shape that can fit into a circle, less wood is used and that is more economic. Also, the typeface prints better on a flat side.

I have always been a firm believer in random action. I have always despised the "if it's your time' date=' it's your time" religious meme, the deja vu reality (to a much lesser extent), fate, destiny, and the trivial small "butterfly wings" of everyday life. In the case of meeting someone who later becomes your best friend (because you sat next to him or you had the same video game), I think it's likely that you would have met sooner or later. If I happen to drop a screw on a runway and I wonder if it will cause an airplane to blow out a tire, a plane is rotating and running over the screw. The tire blows and you assume it must have been solely because of the screw. This is the main fault of "the butterfly effect;" you can only assume in the brief action/reactions like the screw blowing the plane tire. There are reasons that this has no significance. For instance, where the screw punctured the tire there may have been a thin spot. This means, although we're not certain, that the screw sped up the inevitable. It could be that the plane travels no more than 100 feet and it blows unaided, thus having no connection to the screw whatsoever. Maybe 45 flights later, the tire finally blows. But these are necessarily short-lived and "confined" examples of the butterfly effect. To be a real example, there must be a chain of events. Meeting a friend in class because you were late is not fate, and it is not an example of "the butterfly effect." To really notice the effects, a chain of events would have to occur. In the "friend" example, it is just as likely that you showed up on time, but met him at lunch instead of in the classroom. Or instead of seeing each other playing a video games, you heard each other talking about it another day. Whether your friend made new ones during this time is possible too, but if you are today really great friends, then ruling by similar interests, that path would have automatically steered you, regardless of the other friends made. Let's assume, now, that you got up on time for school and sat next to someone different in class. Meanwhile, your "friend" is going off and consorting with the wrong crowd, maybe even your enemies. This, in most cases, would mean that, although he might have been your friend for awhile, he is not your best friend today. The fact is that a friend who is also currently friends with your enemies will probably never be a "best" friend anyway. These sometime unexplainable occurances have a way of solving themselves, mostly because you have the power to choose and think ahead. In the airplane example, it's out of your hands. But let's say, hypothetically, that this screw you dropped was, by a fluke, kicked up by the tire into the engine compartment and gets jammed where it won't affect the engine. then, while in flight, this screw jarrs lose and throws off a propellor, triggering an explosion which blows off the wing. As hysteria insues in the cabin, the plane goes down right into a nuclear power plant in the middle east, therby catalysing the deaths of millions. the arab country it landed in thinks it was under attack to obtain the most possible deaths with a single target. They fire their nukes back and the US, who, thinking they are being attacked without provokation, engage their missile. blah, blah. nuclear war and nuclear winter follow, and the world's species as we know it is in grave danger of extinction. It happens all because you dropped a damn screw at an airport that was going to take you on a spring break vacation to maui. Probable? not a chance. Why don't we see this happening? Simply because it can't. There is no "butterfly effect." Stepping on a butterfly in prehistoric times will not cause the ceasation of the human species before it can originate; accidentally dropping a screw will not result in the end of the world; and meeting a friend a day late, no matter what the circumstances, will not result in the separation of the two forever. What happens is the ability for events to correct themsevles. I'm not sure what the science is, but I know it was talked about in detail in Michael Crichton's book "Timeline." In the book, a group of people are transferred back in time via parallel universes. And despite what they think, no matter what they do there, history will not be altered. No outcome in the future can be affected by their presense, including their eventual existence. Why does this happen? It's because a human life is insignificant. Think of every major scientific breakthrough. If Newton hadn't lived, someone else would have been there to forumlate the theory of gravity. In the case of Einstein, if his grandfather and grandmother never met his parents might not have met, and if they hadn't snogged one night in June, he might not have been born. It's a possibilty that we may never have come up with relativity, but you can't prove it. There is never enough information to prove the existance of this form of preprogrammed history, and there is never any proof that things might have been different because to put it short "what's done is done." There is no logic behind using deduction to map out all the variables in a series of events and take it back to something as small as dropping a screw. It can't be done. Another example: If your friend spends fifteen minutes looking for his car keys and you later find out he was killed in a car accident, you think if only he had remembered where he put his freaking keys, he might not be dead. It doesn't work that way. What about the guy who ran into him, what if he hadn't run the red light because he was pissed off it took him fifteen minutes to get his burger king. And if the guy taking his order hadn't been late for work so he was backlogged with orders. And if his car would start, he wouldn't have been late for work. If he had gotten his starter fixed last week like he should have. If he hadn't been preoccupied with his mother who was in jail. If his mother hadn't sold weed. If she had better parents that were role models. And so on and so on. There is absolutely no logic behind these events because they incorporate literally hundreds of events by literally millions of people. Everyone is always affecting each other in a convoluted web of events. There is no damn butterfly flapping its wings. Period. As well in this case, although it may look like an event you started, this man was going to jail anyway. same with the kids in my school. They had luckily (to my dissatisfaction) removed the pot from their lockers just before we had a random drug search by the drug dogs. the same people still do drugs, and they are no less precautios, and they will probably end up in jail right after they drop out of high school. personal choices have the only true effect in your life because you know you made it happen. However, there is usually an exterior influence. We are all influenced by what we see and hear from others. so the event is your responsibility but the source is not, which is flooded in an unitelligible web of events.

I agree with with Bascule. No one I've met can be considered close to admirable or influential. I'm still young though. Can it be someone we've met in a dream? (In many cases it can be real enough to say you know them personally)

It had to be the day I saw jurassic park. Wow. Dinosaurs are the coolest.

Yeah there is. You never heard about it or saw it in all but the big city theatres because it bombed at the box office. And from what I know, the director never made any great movies. I'm looking forward to seeing it nonetheless. A Sound of Thunder

That's about what I read. Mabye even 350 for an average. If you want to better learn the technique, while, most importantly, retaining or even improving comprehension, I'd think the classes are a huge benefit. Skipping over what looks boring is similar what speed readers do, although there still may be something you missed. In the case of textbooks, there is always pictures, so there is a visual guide, a checkpoint, if you will, that I use to remember what was in the vicinity of the illustration. It helps quite a bit. For getting the 'idea' presented in a textbook chapter, scanning works well, but try applying that to a novel. The effect isn't the same.

To my knowledge speed reading is an actual science that has to be learned. All of us can scan, and at least some of us can comprehend quickly leaving out 'the little voice in our head.' Scanning produces reduced rates of comprehension. Those who have learned how to speed read can increase the number of words per minute without taking away comprehension. there is a certain way to do it. There are certain words to look for and ignore. Eye movement is altered to take in more than one part of a sentense at a time. It takes practice, and I've read about people who can read entire textbooks in a day with over 95% comprehension. I know people who can read 3 or 4 paperbacks in a weekend and yet not lose any of the reading because they didn't just "scan it." In fact, it is very helpful for studying and increased concentration, as you have to devote more focus to what you are reading in a smaller amount of time. Check out the links I gave in my orignial post.

I saw the title, "...an anti-relativity" and knew it was crackpot right away. Everything's relative; anti-relativity is not. G-force does not affect the forward motion of the clock's velocity, and the down g-force is the same acting upon a stationary clock. Again, it's relative. Where did you find this? do you have any links.

Sorry, scanning doesn't count.

Not in the eighteenth century.

Did you learn this on your own or did you participate in a group? It would be interesting to know because it sounds very ...interesting. An out of body experience is something I've always criticized and strived for at the same time. Ever since I saw Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls. That whole Buddhist enlightenment thing. Also, I don't think anyone's brought it up yet, what about the effects of hypnotism. Those I've talked to after being hypnotized (for entertainment) explain it as a hallucinogenic experience. they don't say that exactly, but that's what it translates into.

Obviously. It was a pun. I read Jurassic Park. you never know.

I think it can work. I'm a bit skeptical about this experiment, however. It doesn't sound they were very convinced or enthusiastic. I might go so far as to say it was a quick news story into the recent lab experiments. Though they sound very close, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was covered more in the near future. There it is. More skepticism. Although I give them credit for experimenting, and again this was probably used to show that the sonofusion is not "sucessful" yet. And this rules out the immediate application of sonofusion. It will take more time for the research and experiments to become substantially practical. And they leave you hanging with their conclusion For the "new experiments" Hopeful? Yes Successful? Not yet

Yikes. I didn't even know he was in that movie. My image of him is totally blown. Really, I think he made it better as a musician.