mossoi

I had the same response to the blue copies from hell. I also hate to touch frosted glass. I have no problems with polystyrene regardless of what you do to it (within reason ) but I hate fingernails on on blackboard. The reason is that I imagine the feeling of my fingernails dragging along the slightly rough surface {shudder} it's not the noise it's the thought of doing it. I had a friend at school who really reacted badly to the blackboard torture. He came in one day with a pot filled with chili pepper, mustard and all sorts of other hot things. He slugged it back and the effect of the concoction of hot spices allowed him to drag his fingernails up and down the blackboard like a man possessed. So, either hot condiments are a cure or (and I think this is more likely) my friend was just a madman.

matter - that's very similar to a lot of experiences people have. The pressure on your chest is believed to come from the fact that your breathing is much slower than usual as you are in a sleep state and you concious mind is unsuccessfully trying to speed it up. The vibrations and buzzing are also commonly linked to astral travel. Interestingly I used to have a very similar dream when I was young but the faceless person was instead a flashing light. That too would come and sit on me 3 times before leaving me in peace to sleep. It became quite a ritual as it happened regularly and I would be waiting when it came. Has anybody experienced somebody close to them calling their name when they are in that state? I get that quite often and I know of other people who do. I'm finding this discussion very interesting - I'm tempted to start a discussion board dedicated to studies of sleep - do you guys think it's worth it?

I would love to believe in the mind having abilities like premonition and such like but while there is no solid evidence I am unable to do anything other than dismiss it. There is a great book called Innumeracy (can't remeber the authors name and I can't find the book at the moment) that discusses the probability of coincidence and how the human mind blows coincidence out of proportion. Two examples: Using America as an example - The probability of any adult that you stop in the street anywhere in the country knowing somebody who knows somebody that you know (ie. two people in between yourself and them) is 0.99. For there to be a 50% chance of any two people in a room having the same birthday there only needs to be 30 people in that room. Coincidence is a lot more common than we think.

Why is premonition more believable than specific coincidence?

So you had a dream and it coincided with what your brother was doing that time - coincidence. What about the thousands of other dreams that haven't come true. Do you remember those with disappointment because they didn't reflect something that was actually happening? Coincidence is more common than we think so we latch onto it and remember it as something paranormal.

I think the credibility of the enquiry system had been damaged. There is no way that the government acted entirely correctly as the result states. I want to know who's pocket Lord Hutton is in.

Are you saying that telepathy is real? Do you have a source for this fact?

I think we are too prone to look a patterns where there are none when it comes to predictive ability. How many thoughts, dreams, observations, movements etc. happen to one person in one day. Then think of all the people a person meets in that day. The number of simultaneous or sequential events is staggering so it's far from impossible that there will be regular coincidences. We go around saying things like: "amazing, I was just thinking about hot dogs and then you walked in eating one". We don't go around saying: "Amazing I was just thinking about hot dogs and you walked in without one" or "Amazing I was just thinking about hot dogs and you didn't walk in the room at all" or "Amazing I was just thinking about hot dogs and the phone rang" or "Amazing I was just thinking about hot dogs and the moon shone through the window and illuminated my nose" and on and on and on.... IMO it's all coincidences that we notice because the mind likes patterns.

Yeah - although some of there results were interesting. Either for being very cleverly rigged or for actually working. The diagrams drawn using remote viewing of the huge cranes in the USSR spring to mind, they were almost identical to the real thing. May I just note that I am a dedicated sceptic, I will not believe in any paranormal activity until somebody can prove, and reproduce, their results to me.

Exactly - there are a number of supposed experiments of people reading the numbers on a piece of paper in a nearby house by projecting into it but there is nothing that has been carried out under controlled conditions and can actually be verified. I won't go so far as to say that Astral Projection does not exist, just that it exist solely in the mind of the one who is projecting. It is a very strong feeling so I can see why people feel it must be real but it's real only to them. The astral plane is supposed to be where wandering astral projectors can meet. This is really do not believe as each persons experience must be entirely within their own mind.

I believe in and practice astral projection but in so much as it is an altered state of mind somwhere between awake and asleep where dreams are more vivid. In my experience it's just an extension of lucid dreaming (concious control of dreams) which I can now do whenever I want. If you wish to get up and walk around in a lucid dream then that's what will happen but only in the mind. A couple of things that are connected to the practice of lucid dreaming are paralysis and the 'snap back' into the body. The paralysis comes when the mind is awake and yet has shut down direct control of the body (there is an order by which this is done, I think it is taste, smell, site, touch/movement and finally hearing) - when you try to move you can't and it's often accompanied by a very strong feeling of being watched. It takes a huge effort to move but concentrating on moving a toe for example will eventually end the state and wake you up. The snap often comes when the body is very tired but the mind is active. Usually the mind will follow a train of thought and become engrossed in it enough to enter a type of REM sleep (almost like a very vivid daydream). Meanwhile the body slips into a sleep state and the jolt usually comes when the 'dream' causes a subconcious reaction (to lift a hand, or duck or jump) this seems to 'resynch' the mind and body through the subconcious channel causing the snap that one feels. If you want to give lucid dreaming a go there are a few steps to perform - keep trying, it takes a lot of practice and can take a while: When you are in bed try to keep your body as still as possible. Keep thinking about noticing when you start dreaming, try to maintain this while you fall asleep. When you are in a dream try to look at your hands or the ground - this will make you aware of your position within the dream. If you do enter the lucid state of a dream then at first you will find that control is only fleeting. Keep at it and eventually you'll have full control. Have fun, it's your dream! This can mess up your sleep patterns so if you feel more tired during the day than usual then stop for a while and go back to it - if you're not relaxed when you go to bed it won't work.

My Dremmel is registering as 0. I think it might be broken - although it is still etching.

My Dremmel is very good at etching glass. How do I find out if it's an acid or a base?

It all depends on the concentration of the sulphuric acid. Stomach acid is said to have a pH of 1, similar to a 0.1 mol dm-3 solution of sulphuric acid.

Javascript can only make a pop-up page without the scroll bars, status bar etc (furniture). In other words the first window has to be a full browser window - subsequent pop-ups can be stripped of furniture and resized. I think you may mixing methods here though. If you want the movie to be in it's own window then you will have to make it entirely in flash - including the pop-ups (dunno how to do that) otherwise the first window to open will be a full blown browser window.

You need to set up an ODBC on your system code a connection string into your VB page to reference the mdb. It's not something that is easily copied and pasted from one app to the next. Try a quick google search there are hundreds of sites explaining how to do this. Although if it's just for phone numbers it might be worth looking into XML rather than using a db - this makes your data useable by many different applications and devices including some mobile phones.

Yeah - that's my point. Not that Hydrogen Flouride is the only acid to etch glass but that just because suphuric, hydrochloric and nitric don't doesn't make them less strong necessarily. It's a bit like asking which person in the world is the best. We need to know best at what otherwise we can't answer the question.

No. We need to say in what way is it strong before we can define the stongest. There are different definitions and meanings to the word so it's pretty futile to carry on without defining what we are talking about. Hydrogen Flouride will etch glass and we keep other acids in glass which remains untouched therefore hydrogen flouride is stronger. Wrong.

I'm not sure the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is a factor.

True - and I suppose there is a problem with different time zones and choosing a time that is the best compromise across the continents.

The blue whale has no problem with it's weight because it effectively floats in the water and it eats ALL day getting through huge quantities of plankton. The dino's didn't need to eat that much because they were cold blooded. A grazing lizard doesn't need to eat as much as a grazing mammal.

I believe that the nuclear energy would remain even though the heat energy was removed. There is a lot more nuclear energy than thermal energy in a body so overall the majority of the energy would still be present even at 0K.

Sounds like a good idea. Another site similar to this one - philosophy based though - has a scheduled chat for this sort of thing. It might flow better and the invited scientist may be more likely to participate in something that is more of a dialogue rather than just swapping posts. The transcript can be made available afterwards and any follow up questions can be forwared to the guest.

Oops - mental block just kept typing N02 rather than N2. The idea would never work I agree, I'm just trying to dispel the myth that liquid N2 will demolish everything in its path as other people were suggesting.

Hmm - it probably is simple we just haven't managed to work out the universal rules yet