mooeypoo

Anything we could do to control or prevent this?

The term "paranormal" is something that I thought about for a long time. It seems that this is a changing expression; something we THINK is paranormal tends to get either proven by physics (and gets to be 'scientific explained', therefore no longer paranormal) or disproven by physics (and therefore not paranormal anymore). It seems to me that this happens to most of our "paranormal" activities and sightings over the years. Some take more time to be either proved or disproved, but aventually, most end up on either side of the scale. This got me thinking about the term itself. If you are a scientific-thinking person (and you don't have to be an atheist for that), then you must come from the BASIC point that all the rules that govern our world and universe originate in nature. If we understand those phenomenas or can explain them (or theorize about them), they fit into the scientific theories, but those we can't explain, are concidered "paranormal" -- which in my opinion, is a flawed term to use. We might not understand all about nature, but history of science proved that we end up explaining many of our unexplained phenomenas. The second you claim there is something "ABOVE" nature, you disconnect yourself from science. If there ARE ghosts (which I personally doubt there are in the usual sense people use), then their existance is WITHIN nature. It might be that we will change or re-discover some of nature's RULES out of that "ghost discovery", but it will simply say that nature works differently than we thought. Ghosts, therefore, if exist, are WITHIN nature. There is, therefore, in my opinion, no such thing as Paranormal. "Above" (or "outside of") nature is just a flawed term. This is why, in my opinion at least, a lot of people started offering weird suggestions for you to have your "paranormal experience" - from UFO sightings, to dying and coming back (hope you didnt take THAT one seriously ;-) ). That said, you now need to explain what TYPE of experience you want. Saying "Paranormal" doesn't cut it. Tell us "I want to be able to have an experience that influences my senses" would be a good way to go, or "I want to see UFOs" would be another. But "Paranormal Experience" is flawed, since the SECOND YOU HAVE IT, it is no longer above nature.. it is WITHIN the natural rules (with us might not knowing the explanation. Yet) Hope I managed to bring my point through hehe.. ~moo

I have a serious flashback to "The Net" I wonder - could our computers ALREADY have this in them? not much we could do to overcome this, if we do... ~moo

Sadly, you're right. I believe she meant a different thing though ;-) But that, in my opinion, sums up the biggest problem with the war against fundamentalist muslim terrorism. ~moo

Here's something I recieved by mail. To those of you who don't know, Golda Meir was Israel's prime minister on 1973, when Yom Kippur war took place. (one of the more horrible wars in Israel's history, three front war started symultaneously by Syria, Jordan and Egypt, forcing Israel into a war in their most holiest day - Yom Kippur, where the jews fast, stores are closed, and radios are shut down throughout most of the country.) And yet, here's what Golda is saying: Food for thought. ~moo

Right.. okay, which history books are you reading exactly? Never, ever, everever, did Israel attack Iran. We had a lovely relationship with them actually, from the days of the shah, and in fact, something probably not many of you knew, Israel companies helped build most of the roads in Iran. Israel, in fact, never had a war with iran. Or a battle. Or any of this sort. If you are talking about Iraq, then you got things wrong too, since in 91 in the gulf war, Israel was attacked by missiles from Iraq, while not going into an active war. We supported America in their fight, since for Israel, going to a war with Iraq is just unrealistic; Iraq is too far away, and Israel cannot send its troops so far when it is being threatenned constantly from within. So please, get your facts straight.. ~moo

True, phi, but I don't really understand how this emphesized the effect..? If I was moving, would I be able to notice the trick? oh, and about the spirit level -- my grandpa actually figured that one out -- they could've shaved off the tip of it, so that when they put it on a non-leveled surface, it is in face tilted in relation to the surface, giving us the impression the surface is straight. Pretty ingenious thinking on their behalf, concidering the fact they probably know their own tilt-degree quite precisely. ~moo

For the "levelled" part they used to show how people appear shorter and then higher when arranged differently. This one I thought about though, and it can be explained with the way the human body is tilted when standing on a steep hill -- so that if u put the lowest on the "top" and the highest on the bottom (but cause people to miss the fact its tilted) then you get the effect that they are all the same height. ~moo

insane_alien, that's the only thing i can't figure out how they did. It was flat. I saw it myself. ~moo

Oh, hehe another thing, the funniest thing is that they're selling a book (which i purchased for the sake of hilarious-content hehe) that shows how "freaky" the place is, and what kind of experiments their "freaky scientist" pulled out in order to show the 'mystery spot' powers and such. quite amusing, and yet.. seriously freaky. I am betting people actually believe there's something more to the area.. the theories they put there are idiotic at best too, but i overheard people talking about which ones they believe.. i think the popular one (quite amusingly) was that there's a hole in the ozone layer above the place, causing the rays of sunlight to bend and show us weird images. People can be so silly. I was one of 'em, believing there's gotta be more than illusion to it. but heck, at least I couldn't rest 'till i checked !! ~moo

There's one thing I just don't get how they managed to do: The guide seemed to have a tool that shows the degree of the hill/bench (I don't know what it is called, help me out here, uhm.. this bubble inside a tube of liquid..?) When she put it on the bench where the ball rolled "uphill", the bubble was dead-center. Seriously.. if this was all optical illusion (which it MUST have been), how did THAT work?? This is one of the coolest optical illusion places I've ever seen, they put a lot of work into confusing the visitors, it was really awsome. ~moo

Dude.. it felt so REAL.. I SAW it was an uphill thing, but they certainly arranged it amazingly, since it felt like it is going the OPPOSITE way of the "uphill" angle.. amazing.. I actually thought there was more to it than an optical illusion... wow .. how silly am I? Thanks hehe ~moo

Guys, you have GOT to help me out here. Today, I went with my grandparents and my little cousin to Santa Cruz, California, where we passed through (and entered) the "Mystery Point" - a place where they claimed the laws of physics are different. Obviously, I was sure everything is an optical illusion, but it sounded like a nice detour and a great experience, so we stopped by and got in. I am still slightly confused. There is no doubt that optical illusions were part of what we experiences, but it is DEFINATELY wasn't all it was. The forces active in that point were clearly felt and visible, and I have GOT to figure out what the heck it is that happened there. I need your help! First, let me give out some sites that try to explain and show what was there: http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa120301a.htm http://www.mysteryspot.com/ (btw, look at the people's feet. The pictures weren't taken "diagonally", they were taken relatively straight, even though the door to the cabin is crooked. The people are extremely tilted. WEIRD.) Let me tell you this: The cabin at the hillside is indeed crooked, and something's definately up with its optical-illusion building, BUT, the way people are completely tilted is amazing. We did a little experiment: We stood with our BACK to the bottom of the hill, our feet close together, and we looked down on them; regularly, you would notice you stand relatively straight, only your feet are pointing up. This wasn't the case; our feet were BEHIND us, visibly, about 70 inch. When we turned, and the hill top was to our right, we looked down on our feet and they were visibly to our LEFT. We were completely leaning, as if the gravity of the earth was in the center of the "circle" that they reffer to as the mystery spot. I have to understand what the heck it was in there. Yes, optical illusions sound like a good way to go, but I am telling you - I was there. The optical illusions (lke the crooked cabin) made the entire experience more noticeable, but it was there regardless. One of the things you could obviously see, and these had to be explained, is that in quite a visible circle (around what they call the mystery spot) the trees OUTSIDE of the circle are tall and straight, the trees inside it (even if they are right NEXT to the straight ones) are leaning. As closer you go to the center of the mystery spot, the "worse" of a lean the trees have. One tree even goes on a cork-screw as if it was "confused" with the forces of nature. I am not sure if it was the psychological effect or the optical illusion, or the forces themselves in there (perhaps extemely strong electro magnetic interference.. the magnetic poles are completely reversed in there) but people started feeling weird as close as we got into the phenomena. Some felt slightly light headed. It was very very weird.. Many experiments there show extremely weird results. On one experiment, the guide put a group of people on a ledge after SHOWING US (with a measuring tool showing the angle -- bubble in a fluid thing (i am sorry, I dont know its english name) it was going slightly uphill though it LOOKED like it went downhill. She ordered the people from the tallest one (on the bottom part of the ledge) to the shortest one (on the top part of the ledge). We clearly saw height differences. They each looked directly at their sides, and saw the height difference aswell. As they switched sides, though, exactly going the opposite way - tallest being in the high point, and smallest being in the low point -- what we SHOULD have seen was them having even a GREATER difference, but no.. they appeared to be having the same height. They were looking sideways and each was looking at each other's eyes, which meant that regardless of outside optical illusions that may have affected US - who viewed them from a distance - they also noticed the huge difference. It was quite baffling. I noticed that people were visibly leaning towards their left, which would explain why the heights APPEARED to change when they switched places (the lean made them look same height) but i don't get WHY they were all leaning. Visibly. And about 17 degrees. Guys, I need answers. This is freaking me out! Could it be that there was a huge effect from some very stroing electromagnetic field? what would be causing it? how the heck could something like this happen?? or am I the victim of a complete optical illusion hoax? If I am, please provide the ocmplete WAY of this to happen. I tried to disprove everything as I was there, I tried to take pictures and look at them fro different angles, I tried to lean myself back to "straight" position, and I measured the sights I've seen with a scale. I couldnt find any solution to that in the optical illusion section. If i was just fooled, it was one of the BEST ways to optically-fool someone. I need to see exactly how. Thanks in advance, and I recommend everyone to go there, whether it is a trick or not, it's a really awsome experience. ~moo

Other than perhaps one or two Hammas leaders that actually DID go to trial, like Sheikh Yassin, who was responsible for hundreds of civilian dead in terrorist attacks (was braught to trial and stayed in jail, and actually was released aventually in a deal), I can't remember any kidnapping of this sort. Can you supply sources?

It isn't saying the exact location, just that Israeli Military is going to attack the vecinity. And yes, it is slightly counterproductive, but it is something Israel was willing to pay in order to try and avoid more civilian killing.. Try is the key word here, Hizbullah uses civilians as human shields all the time. ~moo

ooh.. google helps. Here's a version of the same site with Google's Translation Mudule: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.libanoscopie.com%2Ffulldoc.asp%3Fdoccode%3D994%26cat%3D2&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools Thankyou Google. ~moo

There's something I recieved recently in mail that I thought you guys should see. My knowledge in french is quite limited, though I can understand most of it. My mother (fluent in french) sent me a brief translation, to hebrew, so my own translation will be from hers (and it might not be accurate); so if anyone here speaks or reads fluent french and wants to translate straight from the source, please do. http://www.libanoscopie.com/fulldoc.asp?doccode=994&cat=2 This is from a LEBANESE news website in french. Basically, the article claims that Hizbullah was the one responsible for the kids killed in a building explosion in "Kfar Kana" (Kana Village). In this explosion about 60 people died. The main baffling points to the Israeli military (who initially took responsibility for the bombing of this building, but stated that they warned the occupants beforehand) was that they bombed precise locations in the village, but NOT this specific building. The building collapsed about 4 hours after the attack. Israeli military took responsibility, saying it MAY BE that the attacks hit major struts or something of this sort. However, the site claims (from Lebanese Christian Anti-Syrian sources) that Hizbullah, knowing the Israeli military will bomb any location of missile-fire, braught a massive amount of kids and elderly to the building, to be killed as Shahids, and support their claim of Israeli Mass-Murder. The children, it is being claimed in the article, were handicapped, and were braught into the building on purpose. The site goes on to claim that the Kana Village was chosen specifically since it has already been portrayed as a location of Innocent Civilian Murder, so having more kids killed there will strengthen the public view against Israeli Attacks. Now.. I'm not sure if this is true, but it sure gets my mind working. It is a known fact that in war, sadly, there are collateral damage - something the israeli military TRIES to avoid by dropping warning leaflets, warning the civilians ahead of time before an attack and such. But if this was premeditated, it seems to be getting into a whole new level with Fundamentalist-Muslims cruelty. I would love to see someone translating this article better btw.. I didn't translate all of it. ~moo

PHP can do those things, and not too difficult to handle, but you will have to learn a bit of the basics first. I would suggest getting into Databases if you want to have "bookkeeping" applet.. much more comfortable and useful with DB than with email sending, where you manually add to your own database.. ~moo

I actually think VB (NOT .net!) is an excellent teaching tool, since you have your results visually on the fly. I started my programming knowledge from a simple line in VB: One form, inside it one picture and a button. in the button_click routine, this line: picture1.visible = false This led to testing other properties instead of .visible, and other experiments, and snippet-reading and manipulation, and today I can program a full scale IRC program, or a DB program, and I moved on to PHP and C. it's true that it has its downfalls, like not using ; at the end of lines, like case sensitivity, like not encapsulating (like { and }) loops and such, but after you have general knowledge on how loops and conditions and a languge works in theory and practics, getting used to different type of syntax later on - in my opinion - is not that hard, and actually helps out in moving to harder and better programming languages. but that's my own 2 cents, and I also started out when VB was in its peak which it is far from being today. ~moo

Haha! But nah, Phi, it's a lot better when you can control it and bounce it in style Silkworm, actually I do smoke.. err.. but I smoked before this started happenning.. a WHILE before .. any connection? Anyone knows if it has anyhting to do with the fact that I'm a very bad slob? Perhaps excercise has anything to do with it? ~moo

Hope you're right, but sadly, I don't believe that. I think that Hizbullah will be replaced by something else, like El Qaeda or Hammas. Beirut is a stronghold to the Meditterenean (Egypt is harsh on terrorism and smuggling, which is why terrorists use it less), I think that Hizbullah out of the picture, without the lebanese government being very strong (which it is doubtedly will be, because of the fragile state of affairs of the state, a constant near-civil-war), another organization will take over. Syria was a permanent presence there, and Iran slowly took root too.. Hizbullah is just a "messenger" to the Iranians now. ~moo

It's also not true to say things deteriorated "down there".. First off, the Israeli thought is that when we deal with terrorists, we don't deal with a COUNTRY - hence, the agreements are still signed with countries - or, well, hoped to be signed. We still have and had agreements with countries and even with the PLO (which was a terrorist organization before it names itself the Palestinian Government). You can look up "israel peace proposals" or just start out here, if you don't believe me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Middle_East_peace_proposals . Anyways, the Israeli way of dealing with terrorist-demands is very controversial, even inside israel. The notion of giving out prisoners in return for our kidnapped soldiers is very problematic. The basic notion that governs almost all (and presents a huge problem since the arab terrorists got that and kidnap soldiers and civilians KNOWING this notion) is that Israel will never leave one of its civilians or soldiers behind. The life (and sometimes after death aswell) of an Israeli Citizen is worth fighting for almost anything. Israel was known to let out prisoners for the body of a dead soldier, too. In Israel, one of the heated debates at the moment is wheather or not should we release prisoners that will rejoin their terrorist cells to continue and hurt more civilians, for the kidnapped soldiers, seeing as this - again - will serve as another example that these kidnappings are "worthwhile" for terrorists.. It's unfortunately not an easy question to deal with, since it sadly deals with human lives. It's not as easy as to say "we will not handle terrorist demands" knowing that you condemn a person (or persons) to death, and sometimes a lot more.. Also, terrorism is not only the fight itself, terrorism is the fight to scare a nation, and the fact that there are soldiers and civilians being kept hostages (even if they are dead, which we cannot say for sure) and Israel government will claim that they "mourn them and moves on", it serves as a death blow to the nation's sense of pride and security.. and this is a terrorism goal. So sometimes, it is quite hard to fight the bottom-line-goal of terrorism when dealing with hostages. Release prisoners and they've "won", leave a person behind in their hands, and the population's mood and sense of security dies and they've "won".. agh, life's not simple. So I have no answer to this thread.. I would say it is a matter of specific cases. One should TRY not to negotiate, and get the people out alive with a specific targetted action, but if that is not an option, then condemning human life seems quite a problematic thing.. as I kept saying in other posts, life in those issues are never "black and white", and gray is something very very difficult to fight. ~moo

Hi guys Lately I've been having a very weird thing happening to my arm muscles; every now and then (and quite often) it starts spasming and "bouncing" visibly. It doesn't hurt, it's just extremely uncomfortable. Like when you have your eyelid bounce up and down due to stress (or I was told its due to stress..). I've tried to figure out if there's something that might get me stressful, but there shouldn't be anything majorly stressing now in comparison to last month, say. I've tried to rub them, stretch them, work them out a bit, and it keeps coming back, whenever i put my arm to rest. Anyone knows why this happens? Is it stress or should I stretch my muscle in a different way? Help, this is bothering the heck out of me, and plus people at work start noticing it (it's actually bouncing up and down! aa!!) and laugh at me constantly. I have to admit it does look funny.. but.. yeah. It's not. help. ~moo

As someone who actually did her service for her country, I would say you have no idea what it means, if you welcome it with such enthusiasm.. I'm not saying you are wrong with the part about youth having no patriotism, since I haven't lived in America all that long, but even if it is true, there are other - more productive and less distructive ways - to make that happen, than to draft young kids to fight a war, specifically one that is thousands of miles away. War is not what you see in movies, sorry to use such a clear cliche' of a sentence.. I'm just not all that pro-militaries when these are unnecessary. The U.S.A military is big enough as it is today to fight at any upcoming war. A Draft should not be needed. And even if it is, I would be far from hoping for one.. ~moo

Not solely. But yes' date=' above the religious ideas, it is also a social act now. I am not religious, but this is part of my heritage, and since I strongly believe that not only it does not HURT a baby, but it actually benefits him, I will probably perform this on my child. This is what I meant by my words; People don't do it because the doctor perscribes this. They do it because of social standards and the fact that they believe it benefits their babies, either religiously or hygienically. I've seen your question marks as to my "we're not hurting children" comment, and allow me to explain this: If I view this procedure as BENEFIT to my child's HEALTH, I am not hurting my child, I am doing a goog thing to my child. If I would've cut off my child's arm for religious reasons, this debate would look completely different, since the cutting of one's arm is dangerous, utterly proven to be HARMFUL, and is hurting the child's growth and motor skills. But we are talking about a procedure that MAY ASWELL BE HELPFUL. It's not the same thing, which is why I said we are not hurting children. Also, take a look at these sites: [b']American Task Force on Circumcision, AAP, stating the procedure has "potential benefits":[/b] http://www.cirp.org/library/statements/aap/#a1989 Discovery Channel Writer's Personal View: http://health.discovery.com/centers/sex/sexpedia/circumcision2.html CBS News Article: Circumcision may prevent HIV http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/11/health/webmd/main1794135.shtml The ANRS 1265 Trial http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020298 I accept the correction on the RESPONSE vs. PRE-EMPTIVE procedure though. Point Taken. Not medical ones. And I am sorry if my last note about the phallic symbol sounded bad, I was joking.. no harm intended, and it wasn't meant for you, it was meant to all men around the world that hear the word "circumcision" and get a muscle spasm ~moo