I think there might be more competitive spirit strung in tension between China and Japan.
The Chinese and the Japanese have quite the long-time rivalry. I suspect that the hi-def pictures Japan's lunar orbiter sent home a few weeks back did not go without notice in China. What a crummy way to have the wind taken out of China's sails barely a month before the completion of their own lunar mission. --And the political models of each country would certainly support another space race.
I'd be excited to see some sort of space exploration competition between Communist China and Democratic (sic) Japan start to kindle. That'd be really fun in a Game On kind of way.
I wonder if the first Asian to walk on the moon will be wearing a space suit or a, ahem, mobile suit.
Dude. If you're finding deep meaning in "Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, and Hate leads to Suffering", and you're looking for "a larger perspective of life" and "how politics works in our world" from Star Wars...well, all I can say is that you either must be 12 years old or you really need to get out more. Seriously.
While I generally hate it when people validate their opinions by pointing out that theirs happen to be the ones accepted by the majority, I do feel it necessary to clear up your confusion. . .
Star Wars pulled most of its ideas about the Jedi directly from some of the best respected Chinese and Toltec philosophies. So, if you're going to sneer at me from the back of the class room, then you might want to consider that you are doing so very much as a knuckle-dragging philistine in the landscape of philosophy. Or would you have me believe that you woke up one morning with the crystal clear understanding of the relationship between fear and suffering standing bright in your mind and that you achieved this insight all by your lonesome? Hm. You're a smarter man than me, if that's the case.
Or maybe you just find it offensive that I should enjoy my Taoist thinking packaged with cool light saber dramas. I don't know.
As for your other complaints. . . No, no, no. --You don't look exclusively within a story for truth. Nobody does this! You use the story to re-tell and refine what you learn from living; to share knowledge with your society. Stories always simplify truths, but they also inform by amplifying and isolating the important patterns. Stories are immeasurably valuable in this way. They are a way for communities to process and agree upon the truths which will shape and drive them.
Perhaps you're just trying to sound cool and all grown-up by rejecting the things of your youth. Only kids do that, until they eventually realize it neither works nor should.
I realize everybody here is probably well aware of how this game works, but it's still important to call the lies when you see them, cuz they're certainly not going to shut up and hand their heads when you point our their psychotic bullshit.
And so, here are a few of my favorite quotes from the article. . .
To understand open-source warfare, it's instructive to revisit Eric S. Raymond's 1997 manifesto, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, in which he describes how a large community of open-source software hackers created the operating system Linux. "Linux is subversive," Raymond wrote.
Wow. So there it is. Writing software in your spare time for the fun of it is now 'hacking', 'subversive' and linked to terrorism. They've been trying like crazy to connect those synapses for years now, but this is the first time I've read an article which says it with such bald-faced impunity.
In studying the behaviors of insurgencies in Iraq and elsewhere, as well as organized-crime syndicates and other groups, Robb noticed the many parallels to the open-source model in software. [. ..] members of the group don't report to a central authority; they operate relatively autonomously, and they tend to be well educated, media-savvy, and comfortable operating in a globalized, high-tech world.
Well, thank-you Robb! You just described everybody living in an industrialized nation with an internet connection. He's not describing the community living in a bombed out Iraq or Afghanistan, where they can't even get running water with any reliability, let alone electricity and an internet service provider. Nope. He's describing you and me.
But this article isn't just about trying to make every day activities seem suspicious. The whole thing is a giant sell-job. It just takes for granted that terrorists are real, that brown people defending their country against invaders are our natural enemy and that defeating them is merely a technical problem requiring trillions of dollars. Little robots for detecting road-side mines which cost $100,000 each? Jeezuz. Give me a $100,000 and I'll build you a fleet of frickin' radio-controlled Tonka dune buggies with mini-Canada Arms. Those $100,000 robots are the best indication of exactly what this war is really all about. Money. Hoovering up as much cash from the over-taxed citizens as is possible. Money. You are a terrorist if you write your own software instead of buying Microsoft. (--Money, and that loony little Christian-cult-of-apocalypse-Christ-Rising-In-Babylon(Iraq) thing.) But we know all of this! I'm just repeating what has been said a few thousand times already. And guess what? I'll keep on repeating it whenever I see evil sell-jobs like this dumb article.
Here's a new term: How about, "Closed-Source Propaganda"?
Somebody is paying this 'counterterrorism expert', John Robb's bills. Now who in the great Homeland could that be?
Money from the top. He's not writing this shit in his spare time while panning for donations. He's a soldier for the Neocon Pathocracy. Those secretive bastards are as closed-source as you can get.
Have you ever watched a kettle until it boils? I did when I was 10 to disprove my Grandma.
Wow. I watched a pot until it boiled to see if it could be done; out of curiosity. I didn't do it to compete with my Grandma. Shit. That's just ugly, dude. Go give your Bubby a kiss right now.
Interestingly, the myth of Star Wars is stronger than the films. --My memories of Luke's training with Yoda is much more robust than what was actually on the screen. The Jedi and what they mean hold a place in my mind and heart which isn't going anywhere, and which fits into a larger perspective of life as I see it, and I am thankful to have those ideas contained in the myth of Star Wars.
It's like the stories of the Greek Gods; there are many different tellings from many different story tellers, some good, some less so, but they were just facets of a greater thing. An idea which is 3D to a story's 2D, and which must be approached many times from many different angles to be fully understood, and which cannot be diminished by a bad telling; only the story might be foggy. The idea itself is perfect, and we know this, or we wouldn't argue about how such and such a scene could have been done better. We KNOW there is a perfect idea within it all, and it is what we are all seeking to understand. --And of course I'm not talking about the Greek myths here. They don't do much for us today. I'm talking about the myth that Star Wars looks in upon and which still holds enormous power today even though Lucas coughed and lost his place a few times while telling it as we all sat around the fire.
There are so many great ideas from Star Wars which can be used to measure and reinforce other stories. A couple of my favorites. . .
"Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, and Hate leads to Suffering. . . I see much Fear in you."
"You focus determines your reality" "I don't understand." "You will, Anakin. With time and training, you will."
Other films, even great stories like Lord of the Rings, don't cut to the quick of the experience of this world in quite the same way the Star Wars myth does. --Star Wars shows how politics works in our world, it shows how Spirit moves in our world, and it offers a means to navigate through these interesting times with grace and power. And that's why people constantly re-tell the same myths over and over. They inform our lives.
Yeah, I'd be happier if Teen-Anakin hadn't been such a weenie. But that was just a movie. The ideas are what count.
Aside from the fact that this is most likely not a real problem for the police, (as has been pointed out by several other posters), if operatives working in departments other than the police, (military, secret services), want to know everything about you, then technological barriers basically don't exist.
As was pointed out to me once by somebody who worked in the field, a simple light bulb can be used as a two-way monitoring device if you have equipment sensitive enough to read the signal. It's all just energy, and you have no secrets. The cops don't know this, though, but they're not exactly in the loop.
Of course, I'm probably just be talking through my head, right? The best way to keep secrets is to make the truth seem like a fantasy.
How about a discussion where you refrain from being rude, where you read what is said in the spirit it is meant and don't make dismissive, sweeping statements which bely thoughtlessness? That'd be nice for a start.
The studies all show it as having no grounding in truth, whether done by dispassionate third parties or by people with claims. Then you say try it yourself, I say I have and now I'm arrogant. Fuck off.
The studies do not ALL show this. --And it's that kind of statement which makes me say that you are arrogant. --And Yes you are arrogant. 'Arrogant' translates roughly from the Latin as 'Taking what is yours'. --The problem is that you are claiming things which are not yours, namely the experiences of others.
"Such forces (behind things like dowsing) often rely on the conscious state of the perceiver." Then they're nonsense.
How so? There are numerous forces which rely on the conscious state of the perceiver which are recognized even within the orthodox boundaries of science. Self-awareness being a rather large example. --I believe the whole concept of Quantum Mechanics also hinges heavily on where the observer happens to be directing attention. To simply say, "They're nonsense" is another example of that ill-earned arrogance I mentioned earlier. Perhaps I should use the word 'conceited' instead.
Now I know you're a troll. Astrology? Please.
Have you honestly explored Astrology to come to this conclusion?
By the way - I'm typo prone most of the time, it comes of the brain moving faster than the hands. Not that I'm saying my brain's all that fast.
Fair enough. I can be that way as well sometimes, finding that I can't hit that 'preview' button often enough to ensure that I'm communicating clearly. Live and learn.
If you question the whole basis of knowledge gathering through evidence collection then I suggest perhaps you should read Carl Sagan's "Candle in the Dark".
I have a very high regard for empirical knowledge construction and reduction. But if you accept that the observer's state of mind can effect certain types of result, then you must concede that there are limits to how fully the standard model can work. --Further I simply cannot assume that a biased scientific community which has a very strong fear of exploring taboo subjects is capable of fairly dealing with certain of those phenomenon which can be empirically measured. There are a number of subjects which some people simply do not want to accept no matter how compelling the evidence, and they will do anything to establish the veracity of their beliefs, up to and including making sweeping and groundless declarations like the ones you have made and then following them up with bullying rudeness.
As for Carl Sagan. . . He is a clever man, but he also makes some astoundingly brazen statements in areas where he has no more training than the average person. --For instance, why should an astrophysicist hold more credibility with regard to the phenomenon of UFO's than anybody else? Unless all strange objects buzzing conventional air craft are Venus, then he really doesn't have any special expertise in the subject. However, despite this, he has been quite vehement in his denial, and for some reason, people regard him as holding a kind of unassailable authority. Sagan, while he has contributed much to hard physics, isn't really all he's cracked up to be beyond that. His fear of exploring beyond conventional wisdom is just that; fear. The very title of the book you mentioned perfectly captures the nature of his fear. --He sees the junk and assumes there is nothing else. Assumptions born of fear are limiting.
You've call James Randi a fraud, but offered absolutely no substantiation.
Give an example or a good Google search!
Nah. I already did my research a long time ago while trying to ascertain whether or not Randi was a useful resource in determining the validity of super-natural claims. Nobody helped me and I ended up having a lot of fun doing the reading and the comparing of notes. You do it yourself. Don't let the whole, "Burden of truth" meme stop you from educating yourself. Your level of awareness isn't my problem, and you win nothing by protecting the fortification of your own ignorance.
Think of it this way. . .
If you walk away ignorant, you certainly don't win, and I certainly don't lose.
The "Burden of proof" meme is, I strongly suspect, designed to keep people from seeking knowledge. Most trite sayings are quite negative in this manner. "Turn the other cheek" (Stupid!) "Forgive and Forget" (Why? If we don't map behavior patterns, then how can we be expected to anticipate threats from psychopathic aggressors?) Our culture is littered with these little social programs which nobody ever seems to question and which hold massive sway over human behavior.
First I never said that real dowsers would drive all fake ones out, that is your bad argument (called 'a strawman fallacy'). What I said is that the existence of real dowsers would make it very hard to find a fake one. Because real stuff beats good ones. And yes that means that bad building contractors ARE much less common than good building contractors. Most buildings made by building contractors stand up. The prevalence of known and proven fakes is far far greater in Dowsing than in building contractors.
Straw man fallacy? Now, that's hardly fair. Please re-read what you wrote, the last line in particular, (such as it is), and tell me again that you honestly think I wasn't responding squarely to your assertion:
5. You admit that there ARE shysters and frauds. Fine. Believe it or not but that puts the burden of proof on you. Because the rest of us do NOT admit that anyone can do it for real. The existence of shysters and frauds means there is PLENTY of doubt that ANYONE can really do it. Why? Because for a real product, the shysters and fraud get OUTSOLD by the people doing it for real. When you go buy a new car, you do not have a real chance of getting something that has no engine. The existence of REAL cars make it very hard to sell fake ones. If Dowsing etc. was real, the real people would outcompete the fakes and it would be hard to find one of the shysters and frauds. The fact that there are so many many shysters and frauds is not 100% proof that no real ones exist, but it pretty darn close to it that no real ones existed 10 years ago (because if one real one existed 10 years ago, he and his students would have put the fake ones out of business by now.
As for there being few bad contractors. . ? You should talk to somebody who has had work done on their house sometime. I've known a lot of people like this, and many of them complain bitterly about over-billing, poor construction, and being held hostage once the side of their kitchen has been knocked out and then left while the contractor abandons the project for weeks to pick up new clients. There are a LOT of shady or incompetent contractors out there. The analogy may not be entirely apt, (being an analogy), but it is not nearly so far from the mark as you suggest. --And it's still a lot better than your, 'cars have engines' thing, which is the whole reason I brought it up. --And in case you're wondering, that isn't a straw man I'm knocking down. It's you.
I am presenting my ideas well (See the "insightful" ratings I got). The problem is you have already made up your mind and every time I present something, you refuse to read what I wrote, instead you make up something similar, but not quite true. Then you argue with it.
Insightful? Oh, please. You're playing in your home stadium, so don't let the applause go to your head; Your arguments are very shaky by all rational standards. As for refusing to read what you wrote. . . That's completely unfair and it makes me wonder if you are reading what I write. It doesn't seem like it to me. Case in point. ..
Part of the problem is the very fact that you attacked Randi at all. That is called "Ad hominem" fallacy - when you attack the person instead of their argument.
Look, Albert Einstein was a great scientist. But he also cheated on his wife. People don't bring that up much, because it has nothing to do with his science. Similarly, you have no business attacking Randi. If you dislike something he did than attack THAT PARTICULAR THING. Talking in a general way about how bad he is, then telling other people to research him is pretty much proof that you have no good argument. If you did, you would describe the particular thing you that he did wrong, not try to bring in a bunch of unrelated stuff.
Einstein cheating on his wife bears no relevance on his mathematical equations, but the way Randi manages his 'challenge', and I described some of those ways, is entirely relevant to the argument. Again to correct your analogy,
And yes, I've held dowsing rods, they wiggle all over the place for little to no reason, amplifying tiny movements in the users's hands. This has been born out by the scientific research into the area.
I've never had any positive results from dowsing either, but I'm not arrogant enough to think that my experiences can speak for everybody.
Npow, get off your "I'm open minded and try things before dismissing them" high horse, it's bullshit, as is everything else the "spiritual" types are so fervent about but can't reproduce undr observation or present evidence for.
That's another rather sweeping statement, and one which you apparently were unable to type in an entirely coherent manner, --which suggests to me a level of overwrought emotional involvement. Maybe I'm wrong, but it is a pattern I've seen before.
It also sounds to me as though you might well have gone into your dowsing experience with that attitude, ("it's bullshit") which is basically the same as not looking. Such forces (behind things like dowsing) often rely on the conscious state of the perceiver. I've always thought that dowsing and similar are ways for the subconscious to communicate with the conscious indirectly through the body. --Which, of course, makes the whole experience entirely voluntary.
If you're interested, then Astrology is often much more useful in determining whether something is 'going on' or not, in that the subject isn't the one in charge of creating the results.
When you can prove any of it, the slightest little thing, then we'll stop considering it nonsense. If you discard the empirical model of knowledge gathering (as most of these things do) then you discard the very thing that makes it knowledge - evidence. Claiming to know something by other means is simply delusion or idiocy.
The problem is, what you're saying is simply not true, but you wouldn't know because you've never looked or measured, have you? I feel safe in suggesting this, because had you given alternative knowledge an honest shake, you would realize that, wow, there IS something up with all of this. But instead, people refuse to leave their arm chairs and their manufactured clever-but-faulty denial logic rather than test the waters for themselves.
It's amazing that people who don't actually know the subject they're criticizing feel so confident in being so brazen in their assumptions; that people are fscking idiots, etc. We're talking about people who have never looked for themselves! --Or worse, have only given the subject a cursory and highly pejorative glance so that they could announce, "There! I looked! Bah!"
The rational black-hole in such thinking is both wide and deep, painfully obvious, and it's the primary commonality which links all these materialists together. Maybe you're different, but I've yet to meet a single one who actually spent any real time exploring the subject matter they are lambasting. They don't know what they're talking about, frightened that if they step back from their biases to actually try on new ideas that they'll somehow lose themselves. That they'll become one of 'them'. It's all about fear of growth and change.
And of course you couldn't offer the evidence again.
That's a very typical assumption, and a wrong one at that. Often, evidence does tend to be subjective, but it is also generally there to be found should anybody be willing to look for it. Anybody who wants to know will find all the tools necessary at their fingertips. But the whole point is that the kind of people we're talking about here, simply don't actually want to know. They say that they do, but really, they are very comfortable living within the reality they already have, despite its limitations and false premises. For many, the only thing worse than living a lie is having to own up to it. --Many people will do almost anything to avoid having to face an undesired truth.
I think Bertrand Rusell covered this one with his 'teapot around Pluto' argument. His point was that he can claim that there's a teapot in orbit around Pluto right now, and that anyone who disagrees with him is free to prove him wrong. Similar logic applies to the 'invisible pink Unicorn' and the Flying Spaghetti monster.
Bertrand Rusell is making a mistake then, isn't he? --Nobody can research teapots cruising around Pluto. But nobody is being stopped from trying out dowsing.
As for proof? I would suggest that there are plenty of people who have studied dowsing and come back with positive results, but there are several problems. One is that dowsing only seems to work for some people. Another is that the mechanics are not understood. Another is that there is a bias against even looking at the problem. There is a tendency for people who study dowsing or any of the other "taboo" subjects to be ostracized for coming back with anything other than a negative finding. And then we slip into the decidedly un-scientific realm of egomaniacs like, James Randi. We get people saying, "There is NO PROOF!" despite the fact that obviously some people have had experiences which they have found convincing enough to tell others about. --Except such findings do not count because there are conditions on proof.
The primary condition being, from what I can tell, is that the TV people, the Arbiters of Reality, declare on the 6 O'clock news that the proof is valid.
Yes. That's the big one. But to make that happen, one must spend a great deal of energy publicizing a finding, arguing to validate that finding, and that's hard enough to do when the finding exists within acceptable boundaries. Really, only the big companies and big university labs can afford to do alter the shape of public perception. But the moment you step outside those boundaries, people start to actively attack you and push back. I mean, it's a grim scenario; when James Randi is a self-appointed arbiter who openly attacks people for even approaching him with their ideas, and people actually use him as some sort of yard stick of respectability. . , well it's a bad scene.
What I'm saying is that people who attack either have a messed up agenda, like Randi, or they don't know what they're talking about. They say, "There is NO PROOF!", when really they don't know one way or the other. --Which is why I always say that people really need to stop swinging fists and actually go explore the available material in order to know what they're talking about. Anybody who does this honestly tends to come back quite shocked by the actual state of reality. But most people simply don't bother looking, choosing instead to resort to poorly fitted arguments like, "The burden of proof is on the one making the claim! I refuse to look!"
And so they don't look. They wait until the TV people and James Randi tell them what to believe next. --And they continue to repeat canned meme arguments like, "The burden of proof is on the one making the claim," and think that they've actually said something meaningful when really their brains are on auto-pilot. When people actually set aside their biases and start thinking for themselves, (and this is profoundly difficult to do and I suspect most never manage it for even a few minutes every few years), then suddenly the world opens up.
Perhaps you can understand why those for whom things like Dowsing have become useful and functional tools in their lives can feel a bit frustrated with others.
Dyed in the wool materialists are not as bad because they are consistently proved right. I can't think of a single thing the flaky spiritualists have got right, EVER.
Well, the flaky ones generally don't know what they're talking about, so it's quite understandable that they're wrong most of the time. But there are those who know what they're talking about, and they don't waste their time trying to prove anything. They just get on with their business. --But dyed in the wool materialists being consistently proved correct? That's ridiculous.
Materialists are the most schizoid group of denial junkies I've ever seen. I have seen people steadfastly refuse to look at evidence, who have seen evidence which made them go awfully quiet and which they actually couldn't remember seeing the next day. I have seen people get flustered and freaked out, expressing great agitation with their body language and facial expressions when the conversation turns to areas they don't want to touch on. --I've met people who have had some extremely frightening experiences with the spirit world and who were so upset by those experiences that they adopted fervently materialistic views out of sheer fear. I've seen all of these behaviors, and in each case, the paramount item held above all else is the need to believe that the classical scientific model remains pristine and unaffected by any of this other 'nonsense'. --And they'll twist logic and go to any length necessary to maintain this illusion.
James Randi is just an extreme example of this principle.
So really, this argument cannot be won. Nor should it be, since in the end, it is a personal struggle.
It's pretty hard to prove a negative like that... that's why snake oil salesmen like to trot out the old 'prove it doesn't work'.
Of course science doesn't work like that. You prove it works. Then you tell others, and they do the same thing in exactly the same way you did. If and only if they can do the same thing does anyone have any right to start using the word 'proof'.
If you get hung up on 'proof', then you miss out on a whole realm of awareness. Proof is all about convincing others that an experience was real. Unfortunately, some experiences cannot be so easily shared. Why run around trying to have your experiences validated by others when you could be spending that energy in other ways? If you feel it necessary to have your experiences validated by others, then what can be done with those experiences which can only be had by the individual? Should they be dismissed?
The problem is that consciousness plays a role in certain types of experiences. Put simply, measurement becomes a problem in that only those who are willing and/or ready to see will see. Why should they be burdened with validating their experiences with those who don't want to believe that such experiences can existed? And that's the crux of the matter; Some people are simply not ready, and it becomes important to their continued existence that such realities not be present, and they will do anything up to and including killing people to make certain realities go away.
So, no. I'm not really very interested in proving anything to such people. Let them believe what they will. But I will tease them from time to time.
You are welcome to believe anything you like, and be around people who believe the same. Free country. But don't dare start using the word 'proof' without backing it up.
I didn't use the word proof, nor would I without being able to back it up.
Nor do I really feel compelled to persuade anybody. Only those actively upset by people who explore outside the 'official' reality are hung up on proof. Proof is all about convincing others; about needing others to validate your own experiences. --Hmm. I don't know about you, but the 'group' is prone to caring about some pretty daft things. What brand of shirt one wears, what kind of work one does, how big your breasts/penis happens to be. Why on earth would I care to have my experiences in this universe validated by that group? So, no I don't really run around trying to collect proof for people. If I run across something interesting, then I'll share, but I don't really want to be attacked over it, or be forced to provide proof for some rude person's benefit. I don't have the patience to play such games.
I suppose it is unfair to call such people chumpy. It is a tough step to take, stepping beyond the bounds of the orthodox and into the less-than-material realms where phenomena exist in part as a result of one's willingness to experience them; where the conscious state of the observer plays a role. Choosing to be open to such ideas is a choice one must make in one's good time, or not at all. But it can feel like talking to the blind who are only blind because they are actively refusing to open their eyes. --And made all the worse by the willfully blind laying scorn and bad jokes on everybody who can see.
But as you say; people are welcome to believe what they like.
He doesn't need any proof. The burden of proof is on the one making the claim that dowsing works to prove it so.
Blah dee blah blah. Doesn't anybody do their own thinking anymore?
The amazing truth here is that nobody really CARES about proving anything to people who don't want to believe. Those for whom dowsing works benefit from it and are secure in this knowledge, and those who are angry about the concept of dowsing are free to be chumps. Plain and simple.
Your level of awareness is your problem. If you want to know more, go exploring, but don't expect people to want to waste their energy forcing knowledge upon you.
Whoa. That's a lot of bold type there. And I do believe you were calling me a moron as well. Somebody might infer that you're about to bust a gasket.
How can I be expected to take you seriously? Your arguments are clearly tinged with high emotion. --And you are obviously commenting before having looked at the evidence at hand. (A VERY common occurrence with people who get rude so quickly).
--I mean, if you'd taken the time to look into the Randi challenge, you wouldn't be suggesting that his standards are 'too strict'. Randi is just this side of egomaniacally nuts. --There are actually scanned letters from Randi showing how he totally loses his cool and calls people names when they approach him about his challenge. One fellow claimed that he could stop eating for a year and wanted to take the challenge, but rather than Randi positing tests or asking questions as any reasonable person might be expected to do given that his challenge is supposedly designed to test exactly these kinds of claims, he instead wrote back calling the man a liar and then proceeded to tell him where to go in rather colorful language. Your post was actually less aggressive. In any case, it was quite pathetic, and very revealing of Randi's character. And it was hardly an isolated item. He also has a track record of changing the rules mid-game, of making up silly explanations for how certain tests were accomplished which had they been achieved in the manners he suggested, would have been even greater feats than the ones being tested for. Basically, Randi acts like a petulant child and he doesn't play well with others. --This is the guy you're defending.
Anyway, you should re-read your own response. You are attacking points I never made, and you are being rude, and you are making patently silly arguments. --Suggesting that real dowsers would drive fake dowswers out of business simply by being real is. . . Well, that's like saying bad building contractors cannot exist because good building contractors would drive them out of business. --That's a far closer analogy than your 'cars have engines' argument. Like I said, it's very hard to take somebody like you seriously. You may even be a smart guy, but you have to admit, you're not presenting yourself very well here.
I'm sorry, but I've been in far too many debates with rude people who bluster and shout and refuse to listen to any sort of reason to want to waste a lot of time with you. At the very least, do some research on Randi before leaping to his defense with your +1 "text of boldfacing", okay? Thanks.
Yeah, there's some dumb scams out there, but the guy who wrote this blog is hardly wise enough to know the difference. He's just another uninformed materialist with the garden variety personal vendetta against anything which rubs his retail-version belief system the wrong way.
He even linked to Quackbusters.com by way of proving his point. Quackbusters? Doesn't everybody recognize that for the scam it is by now? --Funded by the medical industry as a reaction to losing billions to alternative medicine, Quackbusters is but one lobe of a PR scheme designed to redirect public awareness. This blogger has done some research on how it all works. My favorite part is how it turns out the lead propagandist in Quackbusters is a total flake. ..
Keep in mind that Barrett, although claiming to be a retired Psychiatrist, was never able to become "Board Certified." He failed his test. Also, Barrett gave up his MD license in 1993. I suspect he just couldn't keep up with new things. His employment record shows he NEVER was able to hold a full-time job - and his claim to "Psychiatric fame" was his part-time (4 to 8 hours a week) employment at a Pennsylvania Mental Hospital - from 1978 through 1993. From 1976 through 1978 he COULD NOT GET a paying job.
Barrett, with his lack of basic intelligence, is getting hammered when he shows up in a courtroom situation - and tries to inflict his weird opinions on a Judge. And Barrett has legal problems all over the country. Basically, I see Barrett as a loser, who couldn't make it in the medical profession. And, Barrett is TYPICAL quackbuster leadership.
Bobbie Baratz, the current president of the NCAHF, is laughable. He's, almost literally, hiding under the bed, avoiding depositions asking about his so-called "expertise." I believe he's desperate for the "testifying" money. Baratz, who's former position at a Boston area medical center, was terminated (and Baratz doesn't want to talk about it), after a physical altercation with a 72 year old woman, now operates a hair removal business. Some "expert." He also operates the NCAHF out of that same hair removal location.
While the above is opinionated, the facts back up the blogger's conclusions. --There are numerous other allegations against the clowns who run Quackwatch, including plagiarism (trying to pad resumes by pretending to have authored books which somebody else happened to have written), and showing the classic psychopathic response to being publicly caught in enormous lies while at a doctor's convention; that is, a total lack of shame or even recognition of having been publicly humiliated. (This total lack of shame, incidentally, is one of the ways a psychopath is so very good at manipulating people; those in the unfortunate position of having to deal with a psychopath are usually so taken aback by the subjects' lack of shame in being confronted with damning evidence that they actually stop and question their own certainty. Real people stop and think while psychopaths just lie, and lie and do so with total conviction.)
In any case, knee-jerking and making unfounded assumptions regarding alternative knowledge is foolish, but unfortunately, all too common.
James Randy Swift is offering 1 million dollar to show that they can accuratly dowse. I would like to assume that anyone actually able to do it would have claimed the prize. The fact that no one can replicate it in a controlled setting makes claim that it is possible dubious at best.
James Randi has a significant personal investment in not being proven wrong above and beyond the supposed million dollars. If you'll read some of the accounts of how he runs his little 'challenge', you will quickly see that he wouldn't allow somebody to prove him wrong even if Jesus showed up walking on water.
The thing to remember is that Randi is a stage performer. --If you've ever met anybody in that line of work, you'll know that ego and self importance come first in all calculations. Randi is no different, and anybody of any wisdom who has any actual abilities beyond the norm will recognize his kangaroo court from a mile off. Randi doesn't want to know, and so he won't, and in fact forcing the issue with him would be a violation of his free will choice of not wanting to know, which means those most able to do so would never dream of doing it. His challenge is nothing more than an elaborate personal denial.
This is not to say, of course, that there aren't shysters and frauds aplenty out there. But just because, as one philosopher put it, all cows are animals, it does not mean that all animals are cows.
The number of comments supporting dowsing rods based on anecdotal evidence on the article page makes me realize that we have a lot of work to do before anything like an educated majority will happen.
Do you have any indication that dowsing doesn't work based on anything other than anecdotal evidence? Heck, do you even have that, or are you simply making assumptions?
Talking about educating the masses is pointless until one's sacred cows are put to rest. Dyed in the wool materialists are just as bad as the Reiki-Flakies, except that their conceit makes them slightly more annoying to be around.
The Slashdot posting offered two links to two different articles, one a year old and one which is only a month old. Each article gives a different bit of perspective on an issue which has clearly been boiling for some time. The second article from this year places the launch date of the program as November 20th.
I find the whole issue annoying in the extreme, though not only because I don't want to be finger-printed, but because of the result of such laws. --That is, the overall effect is that such actions discourage people from traveling. Whenever a system goes fascist, they always try to prevent people from from traveling to other places. It's hard to realize just how oppressed you are, or just how much you are being lied to about other nations when you have no way to physically compare perspectives. Many people in the States, for instance, think that France is a horrid place to live and that the social services there don't work.
Japan is definitely under the rule of the Right these days. Hopefully they'll be able to undo all the damage which is being done to their country before it reaches the irreversible point. --Their government recently allowed new laws drafted by their department of defense dictating that school children must be indoctrinated with nationalist propaganda in the classroom. Charming. Classically, this means that war of some kind is about ten years down the road.
Wang built a dedicated word processor in the 70's. Radio shack did it again in the 80's. Both devices died when PC's became generally available. The word processor is just a word processor, the PC can be a word processor and much much more.
Yeah, and Alphasmart is doing it today. Sort of. While I can't speak for the Wang, having never seen one, I do know that while the Alphasmarts and the Radio Shack model 100 are and were very popular with writers and journalists, they both suffered from teenie-tiny screens.
--For me this is a problem, but I met one guy who still swore by his Model 100, and he had many bad things to say about lap tops. --Basically, that they were not rugged enough, took too long to boot up, and had cruddy battery lives. One feature he liked about the Model 100 was that it took regular batteries which you could purchase virtually anywhere on the planet. Needing to lug around a re-charger and having to use it every couple of hours renders a laptop virtually useless in the field, and having dealt with the same issues, I have to agree.
PC's are certainly useful, but if you ask anybody who writes professionally, a lap top is limiting exactly because of its being much much more. --Of course, if you could make a small laptop with a 30 hour battery life, then I'd probably settle down. (Rugged is a good idea in general, but I'm not the type to be journeying across the Australian outback while trying to hack out an article, so I can live with a more dainty flip-screen device.)
Somebody, someday will make what I'm after. I just hope the world doesn't end when that happens.
A durable, basic word processor with a nice big screen, long battery life and no silly features, such as WiFi.
I know that Amazon did not design this to be a word processor, but they did put a keyboard on it (albeit, an awkward-looking one), and it has a USB port, and a nice big screen which you can read in daylight. . . With all that in place, the only thing needed is a bit of code and the job would be finished. But still. . . It just hasn't been done!
The Asus EEE is sort of close, but still no cigar. The battery life is too short, the screen is a flashy all-color thing, and there are far too many features for somebody who just wants a durable portable word processor.
I think chasing this wish-list item of mine is like experiencing a dream. --In dreams, when you are faced with a problem, (at least in my dreams), I struggle to solve it and right when all the pieces are just about to fall in place, when the light bulb is just about to go on, that's when I wake up.
Which leads me to wonder if when somebody finally makes a decent portable word processor, the world will come to an end.
Maybe it's a good thing that nobody has built one yet.
You never see this one mentioned, and I suspect that it's perhaps the most important one of them all. . .
60Htz AC in conjunction with the Earth's magnetic field sympathetically resonates with Lithium ions, causing Lithium ions to energize and move on a vector. This means that naturally occurring Lithium in your blood crosses the blood-brain-barrier more easily, and in fact has an impact upon brain chemistry. (Lithium drugs are also known as anti-depressants). You can read more about this principal here.
Ergo, everybody living within a society wired at 60 Htz AC is living in mind-dampening cage.
I always wondered how AC was adopted over DC. While I think Edison was a dick, and Tesla was rockin' cool, I still think that the wrong system won for the wrong reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
The Chinese and the Japanese have quite the long-time rivalry. I suspect that the hi-def pictures Japan's lunar orbiter sent home a few weeks back did not go without notice in China. What a crummy way to have the wind taken out of China's sails barely a month before the completion of their own lunar mission. --And the political models of each country would certainly support another space race.
I'd be excited to see some sort of space exploration competition between Communist China and Democratic (sic) Japan start to kindle. That'd be really fun in a Game On kind of way.
I wonder if the first Asian to walk on the moon will be wearing a space suit or a, ahem, mobile suit.
-FL
While I generally hate it when people validate their opinions by pointing out that theirs happen to be the ones accepted by the majority, I do feel it necessary to clear up your confusion. . .
Star Wars pulled most of its ideas about the Jedi directly from some of the best respected Chinese and Toltec philosophies. So, if you're going to sneer at me from the back of the class room, then you might want to consider that you are doing so very much as a knuckle-dragging philistine in the landscape of philosophy. Or would you have me believe that you woke up one morning with the crystal clear understanding of the relationship between fear and suffering standing bright in your mind and that you achieved this insight all by your lonesome? Hm. You're a smarter man than me, if that's the case.
Or maybe you just find it offensive that I should enjoy my Taoist thinking packaged with cool light saber dramas. I don't know.
As for your other complaints. . . No, no, no. --You don't look exclusively within a story for truth. Nobody does this! You use the story to re-tell and refine what you learn from living; to share knowledge with your society. Stories always simplify truths, but they also inform by amplifying and isolating the important patterns. Stories are immeasurably valuable in this way. They are a way for communities to process and agree upon the truths which will shape and drive them.
Perhaps you're just trying to sound cool and all grown-up by rejecting the things of your youth. Only kids do that, until they eventually realize it neither works nor should.
-FL
And so, here are a few of my favorite quotes from the article. . .
To understand open-source warfare, it's instructive to revisit Eric S. Raymond's 1997 manifesto, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, in which he describes how a large community of open-source software hackers created the operating system Linux. "Linux is subversive," Raymond wrote.
Wow. So there it is. Writing software in your spare time for the fun of it is now 'hacking', 'subversive' and linked to terrorism. They've been trying like crazy to connect those synapses for years now, but this is the first time I've read an article which says it with such bald-faced impunity.
In studying the behaviors of insurgencies in Iraq and elsewhere, as well as organized-crime syndicates and other groups, Robb noticed the many parallels to the open-source model in software. [. .
Well, thank-you Robb! You just described everybody living in an industrialized nation with an internet connection. He's not describing the community living in a bombed out Iraq or Afghanistan, where they can't even get running water with any reliability, let alone electricity and an internet service provider. Nope. He's describing you and me.
But this article isn't just about trying to make every day activities seem suspicious. The whole thing is a giant sell-job. It just takes for granted that terrorists are real, that brown people defending their country against invaders are our natural enemy and that defeating them is merely a technical problem requiring trillions of dollars. Little robots for detecting road-side mines which cost $100,000 each? Jeezuz. Give me a $100,000 and I'll build you a fleet of frickin' radio-controlled Tonka dune buggies with mini-Canada Arms. Those $100,000 robots are the best indication of exactly what this war is really all about. Money. Hoovering up as much cash from the over-taxed citizens as is possible. Money. You are a terrorist if you write your own software instead of buying Microsoft. (--Money, and that loony little Christian-cult-of-apocalypse-Christ-Rising-In-Babylon(Iraq) thing.) But we know all of this! I'm just repeating what has been said a few thousand times already. And guess what? I'll keep on repeating it whenever I see evil sell-jobs like this dumb article.
Here's a new term: How about, "Closed-Source Propaganda"?
Somebody is paying this 'counterterrorism expert', John Robb's bills. Now who in the great Homeland could that be?
Money from the top. He's not writing this shit in his spare time while panning for donations. He's a soldier for the Neocon Pathocracy. Those secretive bastards are as closed-source as you can get.
-FL
Wow. I watched a pot until it boiled to see if it could be done; out of curiosity. I didn't do it to compete with my Grandma. Shit. That's just ugly, dude. Go give your Bubby a kiss right now.
-FL
Interestingly, the myth of Star Wars is stronger than the films. --My memories of Luke's training with Yoda is much more robust than what was actually on the screen. The Jedi and what they mean hold a place in my mind and heart which isn't going anywhere, and which fits into a larger perspective of life as I see it, and I am thankful to have those ideas contained in the myth of Star Wars.
It's like the stories of the Greek Gods; there are many different tellings from many different story tellers, some good, some less so, but they were just facets of a greater thing. An idea which is 3D to a story's 2D, and which must be approached many times from many different angles to be fully understood, and which cannot be diminished by a bad telling; only the story might be foggy. The idea itself is perfect, and we know this, or we wouldn't argue about how such and such a scene could have been done better. We KNOW there is a perfect idea within it all, and it is what we are all seeking to understand. --And of course I'm not talking about the Greek myths here. They don't do much for us today. I'm talking about the myth that Star Wars looks in upon and which still holds enormous power today even though Lucas coughed and lost his place a few times while telling it as we all sat around the fire.
There are so many great ideas from Star Wars which can be used to measure and reinforce other stories. A couple of my favorites. . .
"Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, and Hate leads to Suffering. . . I see much Fear in you."
"You focus determines your reality" "I don't understand." "You will, Anakin. With time and training, you will."
Other films, even great stories like Lord of the Rings, don't cut to the quick of the experience of this world in quite the same way the Star Wars myth does. --Star Wars shows how politics works in our world, it shows how Spirit moves in our world, and it offers a means to navigate through these interesting times with grace and power. And that's why people constantly re-tell the same myths over and over. They inform our lives.
Yeah, I'd be happier if Teen-Anakin hadn't been such a weenie. But that was just a movie. The ideas are what count.
-FL
As was pointed out to me once by somebody who worked in the field, a simple light bulb can be used as a two-way monitoring device if you have equipment sensitive enough to read the signal. It's all just energy, and you have no secrets. The cops don't know this, though, but they're not exactly in the loop.
Of course, I'm probably just be talking through my head, right? The best way to keep secrets is to make the truth seem like a fantasy.
-FL
How about a discussion where you refrain from being rude, where you read what is said in the spirit it is meant and don't make dismissive, sweeping statements which bely thoughtlessness? That'd be nice for a start.
The studies all show it as having no grounding in truth, whether done by dispassionate third parties or by people with claims. Then you say try it yourself, I say I have and now I'm arrogant. Fuck off.
The studies do not ALL show this. --And it's that kind of statement which makes me say that you are arrogant. --And Yes you are arrogant. 'Arrogant' translates roughly from the Latin as 'Taking what is yours'. --The problem is that you are claiming things which are not yours, namely the experiences of others.
"Such forces (behind things like dowsing) often rely on the conscious state of the perceiver." Then they're nonsense.
How so? There are numerous forces which rely on the conscious state of the perceiver which are recognized even within the orthodox boundaries of science. Self-awareness being a rather large example. --I believe the whole concept of Quantum Mechanics also hinges heavily on where the observer happens to be directing attention. To simply say, "They're nonsense" is another example of that ill-earned arrogance I mentioned earlier. Perhaps I should use the word 'conceited' instead.
Now I know you're a troll. Astrology? Please.
Have you honestly explored Astrology to come to this conclusion?
By the way - I'm typo prone most of the time, it comes of the brain moving faster than the hands. Not that I'm saying my brain's all that fast.
Fair enough. I can be that way as well sometimes, finding that I can't hit that 'preview' button often enough to ensure that I'm communicating clearly. Live and learn.
If you question the whole basis of knowledge gathering through evidence collection then I suggest perhaps you should read Carl Sagan's "Candle in the Dark".
I have a very high regard for empirical knowledge construction and reduction. But if you accept that the observer's state of mind can effect certain types of result, then you must concede that there are limits to how fully the standard model can work. --Further I simply cannot assume that a biased scientific community which has a very strong fear of exploring taboo subjects is capable of fairly dealing with certain of those phenomenon which can be empirically measured. There are a number of subjects which some people simply do not want to accept no matter how compelling the evidence, and they will do anything to establish the veracity of their beliefs, up to and including making sweeping and groundless declarations like the ones you have made and then following them up with bullying rudeness.
As for Carl Sagan. . . He is a clever man, but he also makes some astoundingly brazen statements in areas where he has no more training than the average person. --For instance, why should an astrophysicist hold more credibility with regard to the phenomenon of UFO's than anybody else? Unless all strange objects buzzing conventional air craft are Venus, then he really doesn't have any special expertise in the subject. However, despite this, he has been quite vehement in his denial, and for some reason, people regard him as holding a kind of unassailable authority. Sagan, while he has contributed much to hard physics, isn't really all he's cracked up to be beyond that. His fear of exploring beyond conventional wisdom is just that; fear. The very title of the book you mentioned perfectly captures the nature of his fear. --He sees the junk and assumes there is nothing else. Assumptions born of fear are limiting.
-FL
Give an example or a good Google search!
Nah. I already did my research a long time ago while trying to ascertain whether or not Randi was a useful resource in determining the validity of super-natural claims. Nobody helped me and I ended up having a lot of fun doing the reading and the comparing of notes. You do it yourself. Don't let the whole, "Burden of truth" meme stop you from educating yourself. Your level of awareness isn't my problem, and you win nothing by protecting the fortification of your own ignorance.
Think of it this way. . .
If you walk away ignorant, you certainly don't win, and I certainly don't lose.
The "Burden of proof" meme is, I strongly suspect, designed to keep people from seeking knowledge. Most trite sayings are quite negative in this manner. "Turn the other cheek" (Stupid!) "Forgive and Forget" (Why? If we don't map behavior patterns, then how can we be expected to anticipate threats from psychopathic aggressors?) Our culture is littered with these little social programs which nobody ever seems to question and which hold massive sway over human behavior.
-FL
First I never said that real dowsers would drive all fake ones out, that is your bad argument (called 'a strawman fallacy'). What I said is that the existence of real dowsers would make it very hard to find a fake one. Because real stuff beats good ones. And yes that means that bad building contractors ARE much less common than good building contractors. Most buildings made by building contractors stand up. The prevalence of known and proven fakes is far far greater in Dowsing than in building contractors.
.
Straw man fallacy? Now, that's hardly fair. Please re-read what you wrote, the last line in particular, (such as it is), and tell me again that you honestly think I wasn't responding squarely to your assertion:
5. You admit that there ARE shysters and frauds. Fine. Believe it or not but that puts the burden of proof on you. Because the rest of us do NOT admit that anyone can do it for real. The existence of shysters and frauds means there is PLENTY of doubt that ANYONE can really do it. Why? Because for a real product, the shysters and fraud get OUTSOLD by the people doing it for real. When you go buy a new car, you do not have a real chance of getting something that has no engine. The existence of REAL cars make it very hard to sell fake ones. If Dowsing etc. was real, the real people would outcompete the fakes and it would be hard to find one of the shysters and frauds. The fact that there are so many many shysters and frauds is not 100% proof that no real ones exist, but it pretty darn close to it that no real ones existed 10 years ago (because if one real one existed 10 years ago, he and his students would have put the fake ones out of business by now.
As for there being few bad contractors. . ? You should talk to somebody who has had work done on their house sometime. I've known a lot of people like this, and many of them complain bitterly about over-billing, poor construction, and being held hostage once the side of their kitchen has been knocked out and then left while the contractor abandons the project for weeks to pick up new clients. There are a LOT of shady or incompetent contractors out there. The analogy may not be entirely apt, (being an analogy), but it is not nearly so far from the mark as you suggest. --And it's still a lot better than your, 'cars have engines' thing, which is the whole reason I brought it up. --And in case you're wondering, that isn't a straw man I'm knocking down. It's you.
I am presenting my ideas well (See the "insightful" ratings I got). The problem is you have already made up your mind and every time I present something, you refuse to read what I wrote, instead you make up something similar, but not quite true. Then you argue with it.
Insightful? Oh, please. You're playing in your home stadium, so don't let the applause go to your head; Your arguments are very shaky by all rational standards. As for refusing to read what you wrote. . . That's completely unfair and it makes me wonder if you are reading what I write. It doesn't seem like it to me. Case in point. .
Part of the problem is the very fact that you attacked Randi at all. That is called "Ad hominem" fallacy - when you attack the person instead of their argument.
Look, Albert Einstein was a great scientist. But he also cheated on his wife. People don't bring that up much, because it has nothing to do with his science. Similarly, you have no business attacking Randi. If you dislike something he did than attack THAT PARTICULAR THING. Talking in a general way about how bad he is, then telling other people to research him is pretty much proof that you have no good argument. If you did, you would describe the particular thing you that he did wrong, not try to bring in a bunch of unrelated stuff.
Einstein cheating on his wife bears no relevance on his mathematical equations, but the way Randi manages his 'challenge', and I described some of those ways, is entirely relevant to the argument. Again to correct your analogy,
I've never had any positive results from dowsing either, but I'm not arrogant enough to think that my experiences can speak for everybody.
Npow, get off your "I'm open minded and try things before dismissing them" high horse, it's bullshit, as is everything else the "spiritual" types are so fervent about but can't reproduce undr observation or present evidence for.
That's another rather sweeping statement, and one which you apparently were unable to type in an entirely coherent manner, --which suggests to me a level of overwrought emotional involvement. Maybe I'm wrong, but it is a pattern I've seen before.
It also sounds to me as though you might well have gone into your dowsing experience with that attitude, ("it's bullshit") which is basically the same as not looking. Such forces (behind things like dowsing) often rely on the conscious state of the perceiver. I've always thought that dowsing and similar are ways for the subconscious to communicate with the conscious indirectly through the body. --Which, of course, makes the whole experience entirely voluntary.
If you're interested, then Astrology is often much more useful in determining whether something is 'going on' or not, in that the subject isn't the one in charge of creating the results.
-FL
The problem is, what you're saying is simply not true, but you wouldn't know because you've never looked or measured, have you? I feel safe in suggesting this, because had you given alternative knowledge an honest shake, you would realize that, wow, there IS something up with all of this. But instead, people refuse to leave their arm chairs and their manufactured clever-but-faulty denial logic rather than test the waters for themselves.
It's amazing that people who don't actually know the subject they're criticizing feel so confident in being so brazen in their assumptions; that people are fscking idiots, etc. We're talking about people who have never looked for themselves! --Or worse, have only given the subject a cursory and highly pejorative glance so that they could announce, "There! I looked! Bah!"
The rational black-hole in such thinking is both wide and deep, painfully obvious, and it's the primary commonality which links all these materialists together. Maybe you're different, but I've yet to meet a single one who actually spent any real time exploring the subject matter they are lambasting. They don't know what they're talking about, frightened that if they step back from their biases to actually try on new ideas that they'll somehow lose themselves. That they'll become one of 'them'. It's all about fear of growth and change.
-FL
That's a very typical assumption, and a wrong one at that. Often, evidence does tend to be subjective, but it is also generally there to be found should anybody be willing to look for it. Anybody who wants to know will find all the tools necessary at their fingertips. But the whole point is that the kind of people we're talking about here, simply don't actually want to know. They say that they do, but really, they are very comfortable living within the reality they already have, despite its limitations and false premises. For many, the only thing worse than living a lie is having to own up to it. --Many people will do almost anything to avoid having to face an undesired truth.
-FL
Bertrand Rusell is making a mistake then, isn't he? --Nobody can research teapots cruising around Pluto. But nobody is being stopped from trying out dowsing.
As for proof? I would suggest that there are plenty of people who have studied dowsing and come back with positive results, but there are several problems. One is that dowsing only seems to work for some people. Another is that the mechanics are not understood. Another is that there is a bias against even looking at the problem. There is a tendency for people who study dowsing or any of the other "taboo" subjects to be ostracized for coming back with anything other than a negative finding. And then we slip into the decidedly un-scientific realm of egomaniacs like, James Randi. We get people saying, "There is NO PROOF!" despite the fact that obviously some people have had experiences which they have found convincing enough to tell others about. --Except such findings do not count because there are conditions on proof.
The primary condition being, from what I can tell, is that the TV people, the Arbiters of Reality, declare on the 6 O'clock news that the proof is valid.
Yes. That's the big one. But to make that happen, one must spend a great deal of energy publicizing a finding, arguing to validate that finding, and that's hard enough to do when the finding exists within acceptable boundaries. Really, only the big companies and big university labs can afford to do alter the shape of public perception. But the moment you step outside those boundaries, people start to actively attack you and push back. I mean, it's a grim scenario; when James Randi is a self-appointed arbiter who openly attacks people for even approaching him with their ideas, and people actually use him as some sort of yard stick of respectability. . , well it's a bad scene.
What I'm saying is that people who attack either have a messed up agenda, like Randi, or they don't know what they're talking about. They say, "There is NO PROOF!", when really they don't know one way or the other. --Which is why I always say that people really need to stop swinging fists and actually go explore the available material in order to know what they're talking about. Anybody who does this honestly tends to come back quite shocked by the actual state of reality. But most people simply don't bother looking, choosing instead to resort to poorly fitted arguments like, "The burden of proof is on the one making the claim! I refuse to look!"
And so they don't look. They wait until the TV people and James Randi tell them what to believe next. --And they continue to repeat canned meme arguments like, "The burden of proof is on the one making the claim," and think that they've actually said something meaningful when really their brains are on auto-pilot. When people actually set aside their biases and start thinking for themselves, (and this is profoundly difficult to do and I suspect most never manage it for even a few minutes every few years), then suddenly the world opens up.
Perhaps you can understand why those for whom things like Dowsing have become useful and functional tools in their lives can feel a bit frustrated with others.
-FL
Well, the flaky ones generally don't know what they're talking about, so it's quite understandable that they're wrong most of the time. But there are those who know what they're talking about, and they don't waste their time trying to prove anything. They just get on with their business. --But dyed in the wool materialists being consistently proved correct? That's ridiculous.
Materialists are the most schizoid group of denial junkies I've ever seen. I have seen people steadfastly refuse to look at evidence, who have seen evidence which made them go awfully quiet and which they actually couldn't remember seeing the next day. I have seen people get flustered and freaked out, expressing great agitation with their body language and facial expressions when the conversation turns to areas they don't want to touch on. --I've met people who have had some extremely frightening experiences with the spirit world and who were so upset by those experiences that they adopted fervently materialistic views out of sheer fear. I've seen all of these behaviors, and in each case, the paramount item held above all else is the need to believe that the classical scientific model remains pristine and unaffected by any of this other 'nonsense'. --And they'll twist logic and go to any length necessary to maintain this illusion.
James Randi is just an extreme example of this principle.
So really, this argument cannot be won. Nor should it be, since in the end, it is a personal struggle.
-FL
Of course science doesn't work like that. You prove it works. Then you tell others, and they do the same thing in exactly the same way you did. If and only if they can do the same thing does anyone have any right to start using the word 'proof'.
If you get hung up on 'proof', then you miss out on a whole realm of awareness. Proof is all about convincing others that an experience was real. Unfortunately, some experiences cannot be so easily shared. Why run around trying to have your experiences validated by others when you could be spending that energy in other ways? If you feel it necessary to have your experiences validated by others, then what can be done with those experiences which can only be had by the individual? Should they be dismissed?
The problem is that consciousness plays a role in certain types of experiences. Put simply, measurement becomes a problem in that only those who are willing and/or ready to see will see. Why should they be burdened with validating their experiences with those who don't want to believe that such experiences can existed? And that's the crux of the matter; Some people are simply not ready, and it becomes important to their continued existence that such realities not be present, and they will do anything up to and including killing people to make certain realities go away.
So, no. I'm not really very interested in proving anything to such people. Let them believe what they will. But I will tease them from time to time.
-FL
I didn't use the word proof, nor would I without being able to back it up.
Nor do I really feel compelled to persuade anybody. Only those actively upset by people who explore outside the 'official' reality are hung up on proof. Proof is all about convincing others; about needing others to validate your own experiences. --Hmm. I don't know about you, but the 'group' is prone to caring about some pretty daft things. What brand of shirt one wears, what kind of work one does, how big your breasts/penis happens to be. Why on earth would I care to have my experiences in this universe validated by that group? So, no I don't really run around trying to collect proof for people. If I run across something interesting, then I'll share, but I don't really want to be attacked over it, or be forced to provide proof for some rude person's benefit. I don't have the patience to play such games.
I suppose it is unfair to call such people chumpy. It is a tough step to take, stepping beyond the bounds of the orthodox and into the less-than-material realms where phenomena exist in part as a result of one's willingness to experience them; where the conscious state of the observer plays a role. Choosing to be open to such ideas is a choice one must make in one's good time, or not at all. But it can feel like talking to the blind who are only blind because they are actively refusing to open their eyes. --And made all the worse by the willfully blind laying scorn and bad jokes on everybody who can see.
But as you say; people are welcome to believe what they like.
-FL
Blah dee blah blah. Doesn't anybody do their own thinking anymore?
The amazing truth here is that nobody really CARES about proving anything to people who don't want to believe. Those for whom dowsing works benefit from it and are secure in this knowledge, and those who are angry about the concept of dowsing are free to be chumps. Plain and simple.
Your level of awareness is your problem. If you want to know more, go exploring, but don't expect people to want to waste their energy forcing knowledge upon you.
-FL
How can I be expected to take you seriously? Your arguments are clearly tinged with high emotion. --And you are obviously commenting before having looked at the evidence at hand. (A VERY common occurrence with people who get rude so quickly).
--I mean, if you'd taken the time to look into the Randi challenge, you wouldn't be suggesting that his standards are 'too strict'. Randi is just this side of egomaniacally nuts. --There are actually scanned letters from Randi showing how he totally loses his cool and calls people names when they approach him about his challenge. One fellow claimed that he could stop eating for a year and wanted to take the challenge, but rather than Randi positing tests or asking questions as any reasonable person might be expected to do given that his challenge is supposedly designed to test exactly these kinds of claims, he instead wrote back calling the man a liar and then proceeded to tell him where to go in rather colorful language. Your post was actually less aggressive. In any case, it was quite pathetic, and very revealing of Randi's character. And it was hardly an isolated item. He also has a track record of changing the rules mid-game, of making up silly explanations for how certain tests were accomplished which had they been achieved in the manners he suggested, would have been even greater feats than the ones being tested for. Basically, Randi acts like a petulant child and he doesn't play well with others. --This is the guy you're defending.
Anyway, you should re-read your own response. You are attacking points I never made, and you are being rude, and you are making patently silly arguments. --Suggesting that real dowsers would drive fake dowswers out of business simply by being real is. . . Well, that's like saying bad building contractors cannot exist because good building contractors would drive them out of business. --That's a far closer analogy than your 'cars have engines' argument. Like I said, it's very hard to take somebody like you seriously. You may even be a smart guy, but you have to admit, you're not presenting yourself very well here.
I'm sorry, but I've been in far too many debates with rude people who bluster and shout and refuse to listen to any sort of reason to want to waste a lot of time with you. At the very least, do some research on Randi before leaping to his defense with your +1 "text of boldfacing", okay? Thanks.
-FL
He even linked to Quackbusters.com by way of proving his point. Quackbusters? Doesn't everybody recognize that for the scam it is by now? --Funded by the medical industry as a reaction to losing billions to alternative medicine, Quackbusters is but one lobe of a PR scheme designed to redirect public awareness. This blogger has done some research on how it all works. My favorite part is how it turns out the lead propagandist in Quackbusters is a total flake. .
While the above is opinionated, the facts back up the blogger's conclusions. --There are numerous other allegations against the clowns who run Quackwatch, including plagiarism (trying to pad resumes by pretending to have authored books which somebody else happened to have written), and showing the classic psychopathic response to being publicly caught in enormous lies while at a doctor's convention; that is, a total lack of shame or even recognition of having been publicly humiliated. (This total lack of shame, incidentally, is one of the ways a psychopath is so very good at manipulating people; those in the unfortunate position of having to deal with a psychopath are usually so taken aback by the subjects' lack of shame in being confronted with damning evidence that they actually stop and question their own certainty. Real people stop and think while psychopaths just lie, and lie and do so with total conviction.)
In any case, knee-jerking and making unfounded assumptions regarding alternative knowledge is foolish, but unfortunately, all too common.
-FL
James Randi has a significant personal investment in not being proven wrong above and beyond the supposed million dollars. If you'll read some of the accounts of how he runs his little 'challenge', you will quickly see that he wouldn't allow somebody to prove him wrong even if Jesus showed up walking on water.
The thing to remember is that Randi is a stage performer. --If you've ever met anybody in that line of work, you'll know that ego and self importance come first in all calculations. Randi is no different, and anybody of any wisdom who has any actual abilities beyond the norm will recognize his kangaroo court from a mile off. Randi doesn't want to know, and so he won't, and in fact forcing the issue with him would be a violation of his free will choice of not wanting to know, which means those most able to do so would never dream of doing it. His challenge is nothing more than an elaborate personal denial.
This is not to say, of course, that there aren't shysters and frauds aplenty out there. But just because, as one philosopher put it, all cows are animals, it does not mean that all animals are cows.
-FL
Do you have any indication that dowsing doesn't work based on anything other than anecdotal evidence? Heck, do you even have that, or are you simply making assumptions?
Talking about educating the masses is pointless until one's sacred cows are put to rest. Dyed in the wool materialists are just as bad as the Reiki-Flakies, except that their conceit makes them slightly more annoying to be around.
-FL
I find the whole issue annoying in the extreme, though not only because I don't want to be finger-printed, but because of the result of such laws. --That is, the overall effect is that such actions discourage people from traveling. Whenever a system goes fascist, they always try to prevent people from from traveling to other places. It's hard to realize just how oppressed you are, or just how much you are being lied to about other nations when you have no way to physically compare perspectives. Many people in the States, for instance, think that France is a horrid place to live and that the social services there don't work.
Japan is definitely under the rule of the Right these days. Hopefully they'll be able to undo all the damage which is being done to their country before it reaches the irreversible point. --Their government recently allowed new laws drafted by their department of defense dictating that school children must be indoctrinated with nationalist propaganda in the classroom. Charming. Classically, this means that war of some kind is about ten years down the road.
-FL
Yeah, and Alphasmart is doing it today. Sort of. While I can't speak for the Wang, having never seen one, I do know that while the Alphasmarts and the Radio Shack model 100 are and were very popular with writers and journalists, they both suffered from teenie-tiny screens.
--For me this is a problem, but I met one guy who still swore by his Model 100, and he had many bad things to say about lap tops. --Basically, that they were not rugged enough, took too long to boot up, and had cruddy battery lives. One feature he liked about the Model 100 was that it took regular batteries which you could purchase virtually anywhere on the planet. Needing to lug around a re-charger and having to use it every couple of hours renders a laptop virtually useless in the field, and having dealt with the same issues, I have to agree.
PC's are certainly useful, but if you ask anybody who writes professionally, a lap top is limiting exactly because of its being much much more. --Of course, if you could make a small laptop with a 30 hour battery life, then I'd probably settle down. (Rugged is a good idea in general, but I'm not the type to be journeying across the Australian outback while trying to hack out an article, so I can live with a more dainty flip-screen device.)
Somebody, someday will make what I'm after. I just hope the world doesn't end when that happens.
-FL
I know that Amazon did not design this to be a word processor, but they did put a keyboard on it (albeit, an awkward-looking one), and it has a USB port, and a nice big screen which you can read in daylight. . . With all that in place, the only thing needed is a bit of code and the job would be finished. But still. . . It just hasn't been done!
The Asus EEE is sort of close, but still no cigar. The battery life is too short, the screen is a flashy all-color thing, and there are far too many features for somebody who just wants a durable portable word processor.
I think chasing this wish-list item of mine is like experiencing a dream. --In dreams, when you are faced with a problem, (at least in my dreams), I struggle to solve it and right when all the pieces are just about to fall in place, when the light bulb is just about to go on, that's when I wake up.
Which leads me to wonder if when somebody finally makes a decent portable word processor, the world will come to an end.
Maybe it's a good thing that nobody has built one yet.
-FL
60Htz AC in conjunction with the Earth's magnetic field sympathetically resonates with Lithium ions, causing Lithium ions to energize and move on a vector. This means that naturally occurring Lithium in your blood crosses the blood-brain-barrier more easily, and in fact has an impact upon brain chemistry. (Lithium drugs are also known as anti-depressants). You can read more about this principal here.
Ergo, everybody living within a society wired at 60 Htz AC is living in mind-dampening cage.
I always wondered how AC was adopted over DC. While I think Edison was a dick, and Tesla was rockin' cool, I still think that the wrong system won for the wrong reasons.
-FL