Phi for All

I consider Christmas and Valentine's Day to be for amateurs who don't practice goodwill and love daily.

Sounds like a job for the first tool, a stick. I have an 8' board, 1"x2" that would be perfect. You could use a broom handle but it might not be long enough. Slip the stick into the access, and slide it back and forth across the floor, and hopefully you'll break all the eggs. Major smell, all at once, but hopefully no more unexpected surprises. That's the bomb dispersal method. If you want to try bomb retrieval, you need another 1"x2"x8' stick and some rope. Tie the ends of the rope to the ends of the sticks, leaving 6' or so between. Now you push both sticks through the access, with the rope at the basement end. Separate the sticks, and the idea is to have the rope stretched between the ends so the rope carefully corrals the eggs as you slowly pull the sticks back out of the access opening.

For much the same reason, I make a distinction between reasons and excuses. One often has reasons for doing something bad or unlawful, but almost never has an excuse for doing so.

I find more irony in the fact that you value truth so highly, yet you have such misconceptions about many things, and seem predisposed to fixing your beliefs strongly based on those misconceptions. You don't know what atheism is (it's a lack of belief, not a strong belief), you don't know what science is, yet you think you're seeking Truth by fooling yourself. Ironic. You remind me of a joke: Randolpin: "You look familiar, and I never forget a face. What's your name?" George: "It's George." Randolpin: "No, that's not it."

FTFY.

A common wish. You consider yourself creative instead of scientific, and now want to shortcut the science part. Are you saying you don't have to work hard to be creative? That you don't have to learn things?

It seems more like you aren't satisfied because science doesn't give "answers" to questions, but rather it offers explanations using a preponderance of evidence to support them. You've misunderstood science, but instead of trying to understand it, you've decided it should look like your misunderstanding of it. You will fail, because what you want isn't the way the universe works.

This seems trivially untrue.

There are some instances where an offense from ignorance can't be overlooked. I once made a U-turn on a bridge in Vienna (so wide I didn't realize I was on a bridge), and apparently the signs are posted at the beginning (it was a long bridge too) and it's just understood by everybody there that you don't EVER make a U-turn on ANY bridge (and most of the time you can't, or it would be obviously a stupid thing to do). I didn't seem to be doing anything dangerous, I had the room and the opportunity for the maneuver. But people honked at me, pedestrians looked at me like I was a lunatic, and if the police had seen me, I probably would have had a very harsh punishment while on vacation. In general though, ignorance is ethically offensive only when it's persistent and willful, I think. Most societies are willing to teach you if you're willing to learn.

It's called a "society", and if you're complaining about its necessary guidelines for behavior, I would ask you to consider the alternatives.

Thank you for sharing that, Sensei. That's amazing!

Fossils are petrified. Petrification is easily identified.

Clever engineering, like figuring out how to make a solid surface to work on?

And like the 50-80% improvement experiment, this is only to raise more interest, for more properly designed experiments. The goal here is to be able to show that there was a significant temperature increase when chi was demonstrated after all reasonable efforts to isolate the experiment from outside influences. If one were to run this test and find that "pretty hot" is actually an 8 degree increase, then you'd have the attention of the folks with the checkbook.

And instead of enlightening me, you choose to do nothing. I know why you are sick.

You're fooling yourself. Atlantis was a myth.

If you use a person, try to remove all influence the person might have on the experiment. The person shouldn't know when you are using your chi or not. The person should be blindfolded. The person's mouth shouldn't be facing the thermometer so breathing affects temperature. The person should not talk during the experiment. The goal is to show that, if there is an increase in temperature recorded by the thermometer, it can only be the affects of chi. Do as much as you can to limit anything that might interfere or influence the experiment.

I've also heard that super short electric pulses can break the hydrogen and electrostatic bonds of ice so it's more easily swept away. I wonder if that type of technology would work with snow. I can see the ad on Craigslist now, asking for snow bunnies to "clear your driveway".

Forget about sources for now. If you can affect the temperature of something with this "energy", you can measure that effect with a thermometer. Put the thermometer on a table in a room and remove anything like fans or open flames (a light source is OK, as long as the amount of light stays the same). Now sit in front of it and wait for 5 minutes to let air currents settle down. Then mark down the temperature, and repeat this each minute for five minutes, to get a baseline temperature. Then apply your chi. Focus on the thermometer itself, making it rise in temperature. Record the temperature every minute as before. Do it for ten or fifteen minutes. Now you have some data, which you can use to put together meaningful information about how chi affects temperature. This is what scientists will be looking for, testable, repeatable results that suggest strongly there is energy present that is unexplained by anything but chi. And instead of saying "pretty hot", you get to say something much more accurate like, "+8.3 degrees C over 11 minutes".

There are many ways you could arrange an experiment to test this. I'm excited about my new Chiunicyle. These are the types of claims you need to support with evidence. You can't just claim you can do this. We need evidence. Pretty hot? Not scientific. We can measure the heat from energy, so why can't you? Are you saying that if you focus chi on this person's hand, a thermometer that had been calibrated from normal would show an increase? That's something you should be able to measure fairly easily.

Incredulity is a weak mortar.

... or we can think about our kids, poison them a lot less, and regulate responsibly, according to what the experts have outlined. Better environment, and we avoid the hideously costly scramble to "scrub the atmosphere" that Mr Adams mentions. Scrub the atmosphere? That sounds a lot like you waited until your marshmallow turned black before pulling it out of the fire.

It would be interesting to see what impact a group of young legal minds drafting up cases (pro bono, of course) against some of the major corporations behind the denier movement would have. "Just getting ready for the inevitable lawsuits that will be leveled at your company for all the foot-dragging and active efforts to halt regulations designed to mitigate climate change effects."

What if you lose the blade, keep the winch, and lay down a heavy tarp the length of the driveway before it snows (20'x40' US$108, cut and sew to get 10' x 80')? Run rope through grommets at the house end to your winch/come-along at the street end. The snow falls on the tarp, and when it gets full enough, you winch/roll it to the street, where it's easier to deal with.

And now I want a chi car. Something I can charge up myself and drive. Or a chi-powered unicycle Segway. The One Wheel.