There is evidence that fusion is not the power source of the sun, but even if it were, gravity of the sun and magnetic fields in ITER affect plasma quite differently.
To make fusion work, a means has to be found to overcome the mutual electrical repulsion of protons. An atomic bomb, when it explodes, creates the necessary forces for a long enough time, to cause a small fraction of the hydrogen or deuterium nuclei to fuse. This greatly amplifies the power of the fission trigger.
Basically that is what they are trying to do at the NIF using powerful lasers substituting for an atomic bomb. This is actually successful, but the number of fusing nuclei is much too small to produce any useful energy output. It can be compared to getting soaking wet firewood to burn, by lighting it with a match.
If governments confined themselves to their basic reason for existence, that is to protect people from each other, then our taxes, all taxes of all shapes and kinds, would amount to about 10%. As it is, the governments take half of the money that productive people earn, in order to redistribute that money taken by force, to those people that are unproductive, that are a drag on society. This includes not only the “poor”, but also, perhaps even more so, the ultra rich corporations, who are “too big to fail”.
Yes, ITER is very efficient. They put 1 million Watts in and if they're lucky you get enough power to run a toaster out. That however is merely an engineering problem. More fundamental is the fact that we still don't understand the basic physics involved in the behavior of extremely dense high energy plasmas interacting with intense magnetic fields. What they are doing at NIF has already been proven to work. They are basically making nothing more than tiny H-bombs. To light the fusion fire you need an extremely hot match. That is what they're trying to invent at NIF.
Starting with the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel, name anything that man has discovered or invented, that has not been used for both good and evil.
That said, I believe that inertial laser fusion, if commercial fusion happens at all, is the only way. What they are doing at the NIF, has basically been done and proven to work. It is called an H-bomb. Their goal is to explode nano H-bombs, about 15 per second. The energy of their micro-explosions can be harnessed to produce useful power. Maybe someone good at math here, could calculate the energy output of a stick or two of dynamite exploding 15 times per second continually! How many sticks of dynamite would it take at 15 times per second, to eventually push the stated goal of 200MW into the power grid?
There are really no theoretical physics problems to be solved here, only some rather formidable engineering challenges. That is not true of the magnetic confinement approach. That system faces some formidable holes in our basic understanding in the behavior of extremely high density plasmas in intense magnetic fields. If I were a betting man, I would wager on the NIF approach to be eventually successful.
Many thanks, for a detailed and rather lengthy reply. I also appreciate the fact that your reply contains no personal attacks. That is really great, being fairly uncommon on Slashdot.
If the Bible is such a terrible book, so full of lies and error, why do you think that it is the most widely distributed book on this planet by far? No other book ever written comes even remotely close. Why is it that all humanity counts time from the birth of Jesus Christ? All the armies that have ever marched, all parliaments that have ever sat, all governments ever been in power put together, have NOT affected life on earth as much is this one person Jesus Christ. Why do you think that the whole world is so impacted for almost two-thousand years, if Jesus Christ was a liar, was self-deceived or did not exist? If Jesus Christ did appear to you, what evidence would he have to present to you before you would worship him as God? What would he have to do in order to prove to you, that you are not having some kind of hallucination? Why do you think most human beings are so persistently religious, seeking for a reality outside of themselves and beyond this life? Why has religion and faith not died out long ago, giving way to rationality and reason? Do you really believe in your heart of hearts, that most people are rational, reasoning things out according to evidence presented? Do you agree with Carl Sagan that the things that you can perceive with your senses and understand with your mind encompass all of reality? Do you agree with him that this universe is all there is or ever will be?
It is interesting that you mention the Matrix. I like the analogy of an aquarium better. This universe is like a huge aquarium. We and other living things are like fish and other creatures in that aquarium. The fish are not aware of, nor are many of them interested in anything that happens outside of the aquarium, because they don't believe that anything exists outside, beyond the aquarium. If the keeper of the aquarium fails to maintain it properly, the fish will suffer, but never know why. If someone else other than the aquarium keeper puts a toxic substance into the water, the fish will be adversely affected, even die. When nasty things happen inside the aquarium, the fish get this strange notion, to blame the aquarium keeper, even though they don't really believe that there is an aquarium keeper. The idea that someone else other than the supposed aquarium keeper is responsible for the horrible stuff that sometimes happens in the aquarium, has occurred to a few of the fish. Some of unbelieving fish, the ones running insurance companies, blame the aquarium keeper, calling the nasty happenings acts of the aquarium keeper for which they are not responsible. Would you call that rational behavior?
Is there any room whatsoever in your worldview for this thing we call faith or trust?
Yes, unfortunately there are many thieves in this world. There are also many who want something for nothing, such as a government handout. Even super rich bankers and giant corporations get free taxpayer money these days.
trust noun 1 firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something faith noun 1 complete trust or confidence in someone or something 2 strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
As you can see from the dictionary definition, there is not a great deal of difference between “trust” and “faith”. In both cases remember that it is much more important WHOM you believe or trust, than WHAT you believe.
Much of today's technology would be called magic, miraculous by the people that lived centuries or millennia ago. This is only because we have understandings of the laws of nature, that they did not have. Do you really believe that we in our time are that much more advanced than they were? There are still large areas, almost infinitely huge, about which we know little or nothing. Therefore, we just as they of old, call those things which we do not understand in the slightest, magic, miraculous or supernatural.
Apple just came out with their fancy new iPad. If you could be teleported with one of those to the 1st century, how would you explain its workings to even the most educated person of that day? Would you be believed that you came from a time far in the future? Would you be burned as a witch or a sorcerer or worshiped as a god?
The central tenet of the Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To modern technological humans, the idea of resurrection from the dead in a totally new arrangement of matter that transcends time and space, violates KNOWN laws of physics. It is therefore still deemed to be a miracle. To me it is common sense, that the universe, especially life in it, is far too complex, to have come into being by the impersonal forces of nature. Therefore, it is not an unreasonable assumption (reasonable faith), that an intelligence far beyond our own created life in the beginning, whenever that was.
The only difference between you and me and any other human being or other known life-forms, in the physical sense, is in the arrangement of otherwise totally identical atoms. This arrangement is coded by software, a program, information, stored in the DNA molecules. Is it therefore so inconceivable for you to imagine that someone with the technological skill to manipulate that information, could apply it to a pile of atoms, to re-create your physical body? Is it completely beyond your imagination, that there could be beings in the unfathomable depths of the universe, or even in other dimensions, that are as much above us in knowledge and understanding, as we are above a bacterium?
In spite of Einstein and modern physics, we still really don't know what exactly time is or other fundamental questions in physics. Is it therefore so impossible for you to imagine, that someone who understands and sees time, not serially as we do, but simultaneously all at once, would be able to accurately foretell what for us are future events, but for that person is the eternal now? Quantum physics gives us tiny little hints, that there are means of communication between particles, that are totally alien to our “normal” means of everyday communication..
You and every human being on this planet has a gift, that cannot be explained in terms of the scientific method. It is called imagination. Let that gift in you roam to the uttermost limits. With it, some humans come up with some very far out, yet often rather entertaining books and movies. Yet, compared to the reality revealed to us by God in his communication to mankind, the holy Bible, all that pales into insignificance. The God of the universe, who transcends time and space, inspired a man we know today as the Apostle Paul to write this:
"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Corinthians 2:9)
It is impossible to love someone whom you cannot believe to be totally truthful. It is unreasonable and nonsensical, to discount and eliminate from your thinking a reality that your or my finite mind cannot grasp or understand. Faith takes over where normal thinking and human reasoning ends.
Jailbreaking buys a geek the ability to run viruses, worms, trojans and other fun programs on their iPad. Other than that, what is it good for? What does it do for the average consumer? Answer: nothing.
You certainly cite a number of books that have been written on the subject. Are you trying to convince yourself and others, that the quantity of books somehow makes reincarnation true? If that is the case, I can cite one book that has been around longer than any of the others and has more books in print in more languages than any other, by at least an order of magnitude if not more. This book claims for itself to be the word of God, the Creator of the universe. It is called the Holy Bible. Here is what God says on the subject:
Hebrews 9:27 And just as it is appointed for man to die ONCE, and after that comes judgment,
The question therefore boils down to this: are you going to believe any of these writers, or are you going to believe what God says in the all-time best seller? In the end, it doesn't matter WHAT you believe, but WHOM you believe.
"There is not one single theory (that I know of) that offers a consistent explanation of how ESP could function in terms of known physical law."
The word “science” used to be applied to ALL knowledge, not only that which can be gained by the scientific method, that is, observation and experiment.
There is another kind of knowledge, which is used far more often in our daily lives. This is the knowledge one person provides to another by REVELATION. When another person says to you that they had a certain experience or feelings, you can either BELIEVE them or not. There is no way to prove they have such thoughts or feelings. Our court systems primarily rely on the testimony of witnesses. History and historic events are also not provable by the scientific method the same way as measuring a physical quantity, such as the mass of the electron. You have to believe that the recorded historical account is reliable and truthful. No one has a time machine, to go back to check what really happened.
When you take your car out on the highway, you believe, you hope, that the other drivers will obey the generally arbitrary laws that have been set up to govern traffic on public roads. You have faith that the big semi coming down the road to the other way towards you, stays on its side of the road. You don't know that it will, but to simply have faith.
Therefore when you assert that ESP cannot be scientifically proven or disproven, you are correct. However that does not prove that it doesn't exist, any more than that your faith that that semi truck will stay on its side of the road can be proved. Most of the time that truck will stay on its side of the road, but that one time when it doesn't, you most likely will never know about it.
"In my opinion if you can accept an entity that no one has ever seen or heard except by third party reports is behind EVERYTHING that happens in the universe AND still has time to stay hidden, 'lightning hitting rocks is just as acceptable."
Not all knowledge is accessible to the perception of our senses or their extensions. Only that which is physical, tangible can be perceived through the scientific method of observation and experimentation. Some knowledge can only come to us by the route of REVELATION. Before our modern age, “science” was defined as ALL knowledge, whether observed or revealed.
Since this is a technology forum mostly dedicated to computers I will give an example pertaining to the difference in hardware and software. If you examine an ordinary computer physically in the minutest detail possible, you can never discover how that computer works and what it does. The only way you can gain knowledge about that computer, is to turn it on and have the software stored in it REVEAL what the computer actually does
Software is exempt from certain laws of physics. The characteristics of a computer are not determined primarily by its hardware, but by its software, which is intangible and invisible. It is not subject to gravity nor the limitations of mass and therefore can travel at the speed of light.
Life is no different, even physical life. All living things are composed of atoms which are identical. Their arrangement is determined by the INFORMATION stored within DNA molecules. This is the software of physical life.
In our everyday experience, all software, without exception, originates in a MIND, something which possesses intelligence. In the case of software for computers, it originates with human intelligence. The question ID asks is simply this: “where did the information stored in DNA molecules come from? Did it, similar to computer information, come from a mind, an intelligent mind?”
"Unfortunately there is a large contingent of people who believe they are in fact tasked with beating Jesus into everybody else."
I agree with you that this is against what the Bible teaches in 1 Peter 3:15-17, where Christians are admonished to live a life that causes unbelievers to ask questions about that believers faith. A question that gets often asked is: “why is it that you can keep so calm, on an even keel under severe pressure and stress?” In answering questions, a Christian can then give good reasons why Jesus Christ allows them to keep their head, when everybody else is losing theirs.
That said, there are a considerable number of people, who get quite torqued out of shape, when matters of faith in God, especially Jesus Christ are mentioned, even in casual conversation. If such a pushed out of shape religion hating person happens to be some kind of a boss, he/she will often go to great lengths to “punish” a Christian. This can and does include demoting and/or firing.
If a Christian does not live a Christian life in the power of Jesus Christ, he should keep his mouth shut. If he/she does live a life totally dedicated to Jesus Christ, then the people around such a person WILL notice and start asking questions. A sincere questioner with an open heart will then often come to believe in Jesus Christ as a result of the answers he/she is given.
ID is just an oblique way of slipping God the Creator into the conversation. Believers in ID of necessity have to believe in an “intelligence” that is doing the design.
"Lose a minute every night for half the year, then gain a minute each night for the other half."
That is the craziest idea I've ever heard of! Do you really believe that everybody wants to change their clocks every day or even every couple of days? Why doesn't the government keep their cotton picking hands off the clock? Do you really believe that cutting a foot off the top of a blanket and sewing it on the bottom will give you a longer blanket? The government apparently believes this, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
An old Indian chief once said that only the United States government believes that by cutting a foot off the top of a blanket and sewing it on the bottom, you get a longer blanket.
In such a world of no secrets, if the person in power were evil, then that world would be evil. If the person in power were good, then that whole world would be good. In essence what that means is that whoever has the power to decide what is good and what is evil, would by definition determine the nature of such a world. Free will could still exist, unless the person in power decides by means of that power, to impose his will on everyone regardless of whether they were in agreement or opposition to the definition of good or evil by the one in charge of such a world.
You are going by the assumption that genocide and war mongering are bad, but what if the person or persons in power decide that these things are good? In such a world, conformity to the persons in power would be defined as good and opposition gets defined as evil.
Isn't the DNS system roughly the Internet equivalent of a telephone book that gives the association between someone's name and the actual telephone number? All computers actually use the IP address that gets looked up in some directory. Just like I have an address book that associates my friends and business partners names with their telephone number, could there not be in each computer such a simple list? If someone screws around with a directory somewhere, then searching for my name will no longer bring up my actual phone number or IP number. However, all those people that still have my name correctly associated with my number, would still be able to reach me. If most people had such a local directory, then seizing a domain name by simply messing with the public master directory, would not be very effective, at least not immediately. Also, could there then not be any number of directories kept in places and by people outside the reach of any particular jurisdiction?
One of the IP addresses of Google.com is 74.125.127.100
If I type that address into my browser, I get Google.com. If I know that association, could the seizure of the Google.com domain name prevent me from reaching Google's website?
Storage these days is cheap. Could a computer not keep a gigabyte or 2 of my favorite address associations? Since the name to IP number translation is done locally, would that not speed up web surfing dramatically?
Do you really think that people who fly airplanes into buildings and blow themselves up in order to get 72 virgins in the afterlife as a reward for killing “infidels” care even a little tiny bit about such foolishness as MAD (mutually assured destruction)? Do you really believe that people who threaten to wipe another country off the map, ever think about such things? They believe that the more chaos they can create in the world, the sooner the Mahdi will come to set up his worldwide Islamic caliphate.
In a world where everybody knew everybody else's thoughts at any and all times, might not be so bad at all, provided there were NO exceptions of any kind for any reason. It would make it impossible to plan anything bad by anybody, including governments. Anybody with a malevolent or selfish thought would immediately know that everybody else knew that they had such a thought. It would make it very difficult if not impossible for evil to exist. The main problem might be who gets to decide what is good and what is evil.
Technology changes, but human nature does not and will not, at least not in the foreseeable future. When people lived in small villages, the village gossips knew what you had for dinner, how many kids you have and their names, who your husband/wife were, whether you showed up in church last Sunday, that your wagon broke and you got a new horse last Wednesday and on and on and on and on. The biggest difference today is that the village has become global, thus multiplying the number of people that may have information about you. People today actually have more privacy, even on the Internet, than they ever had when they lived in small, tightly knit communities, where everyone knew everybody and knew what everybody was doing. In the days when people lived in small villages, it was much harder to hide things about yourself from your fellow villagers. Today you have a choice of whether to put information about yourself out into the global Internet village. Therefore, you have actually more privacy today in the global village, than people had in their tightly knit communities in days gone by.
Many scientific theories held by the majority, sometimes for centuries, were overthrown by observant people working alone. Some of these were never vindicated by majority scientists until many years after these lonesome scientists died. There are many examples of this. I will just give one.
For centuries it was the consensus among scientists, that the speed of light was instantaneous, that is it took no time at all to travel any distance. There were even “experiments” done with lanterns and shutters on mountain tops to “prove” this scientific “fact”. Then in 1611 A Danish astronomer, carefully observing the Jovian moon Io, noticed that the appearance of it's eclipses were not what they should be according to orbital mechanics. He calculated the speed of light amazingly close to what we know it to be today. However it took another 150 years, before technology advanced enough, to enable countless experiments to finally overturn the stubborn commonly held scientific beliefs of the majority. There are other examples of this sort of thing throughout the history of science.
The theories existing now are obviously wrong. Scientists, especially cosmologist these days are always puzzled, perplexed, surprised, mystified and confounded by the unexpected data that does not fit into any of their theories. There are theories that other people have come up with that don't require dark matter, dark energy, black holes and other convoluted mathematical constructs that have never been observed in real life. Maybe it is time to throw out the old theories and consider some of these theories, which up till now have been dismissed as crackpot ideas. Maybe some of those alternate theories that have been labeled “crackpot” need to be looked at more seriously in light of the flood of data confounding, perplexing and fooling current mainstream scientists.
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Instead of electrical tape, just use a frosted magic mending tape. Light can still get through, but no image.
That won't work, because they will make possession of duct tape a felony.
There is evidence that fusion is not the power source of the sun, but even if it were, gravity of the sun and magnetic fields in ITER affect plasma quite differently.
To make fusion work, a means has to be found to overcome the mutual electrical repulsion of protons. An atomic bomb, when it explodes, creates the necessary forces for a long enough time, to cause a small fraction of the hydrogen or deuterium nuclei to fuse. This greatly amplifies the power of the fission trigger.
Basically that is what they are trying to do at the NIF using powerful lasers substituting for an atomic bomb. This is actually successful, but the number of fusing nuclei is much too small to produce any useful energy output. It can be compared to getting soaking wet firewood to burn, by lighting it with a match.
If governments confined themselves to their basic reason for existence, that is to protect people from each other, then our taxes, all taxes of all shapes and kinds, would amount to about 10%. As it is, the governments take half of the money that productive people earn, in order to redistribute that money taken by force, to those people that are unproductive, that are a drag on society. This includes not only the “poor”, but also, perhaps even more so, the ultra rich corporations, who are “too big to fail”.
Yes, ITER is very efficient. They put 1 million Watts in and if they're lucky you get enough power to run a toaster out. That however is merely an engineering problem. More fundamental is the fact that we still don't understand the basic physics involved in the behavior of extremely dense high energy plasmas interacting with intense magnetic fields. What they are doing at NIF has already been proven to work. They are basically making nothing more than tiny H-bombs. To light the fusion fire you need an extremely hot match. That is what they're trying to invent at NIF.
Starting with the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel, name anything that man has discovered or invented, that has not been used for both good and evil.
That said, I believe that inertial laser fusion, if commercial fusion happens at all, is the only way. What they are doing at the NIF, has basically been done and proven to work. It is called an H-bomb. Their goal is to explode nano H-bombs, about 15 per second. The energy of their micro-explosions can be harnessed to produce useful power. Maybe someone good at math here, could calculate the energy output of a stick or two of dynamite exploding 15 times per second continually! How many sticks of dynamite would it take at 15 times per second, to eventually push the stated goal of 200MW into the power grid?
There are really no theoretical physics problems to be solved here, only some rather formidable engineering challenges. That is not true of the magnetic confinement approach. That system faces some formidable holes in our basic understanding in the behavior of extremely high density plasmas in intense magnetic fields. If I were a betting man, I would wager on the NIF approach to be eventually successful.
Many thanks, for a detailed and rather lengthy reply. I also appreciate the fact that your reply contains no personal attacks. That is really great, being fairly uncommon on Slashdot.
If the Bible is such a terrible book, so full of lies and error, why do you think that it is the most widely distributed book on this planet by far? No other book ever written comes even remotely close. Why is it that all humanity counts time from the birth of Jesus Christ? All the armies that have ever marched, all parliaments that have ever sat, all governments ever been in power put together, have NOT affected life on earth as much is this one person Jesus Christ. Why do you think that the whole world is so impacted for almost two-thousand years, if Jesus Christ was a liar, was self-deceived or did not exist? If Jesus Christ did appear to you, what evidence would he have to present to you before you would worship him as God? What would he have to do in order to prove to you, that you are not having some kind of hallucination? Why do you think most human beings are so persistently religious, seeking for a reality outside of themselves and beyond this life? Why has religion and faith not died out long ago, giving way to rationality and reason? Do you really believe in your heart of hearts, that most people are rational, reasoning things out according to evidence presented? Do you agree with Carl Sagan that the things that you can perceive with your senses and understand with your mind encompass all of reality? Do you agree with him that this universe is all there is or ever will be?
It is interesting that you mention the Matrix. I like the analogy of an aquarium better. This universe is like a huge aquarium. We and other living things are like fish and other creatures in that aquarium. The fish are not aware of, nor are many of them interested in anything that happens outside of the aquarium, because they don't believe that anything exists outside, beyond the aquarium. If the keeper of the aquarium fails to maintain it properly, the fish will suffer, but never know why. If someone else other than the aquarium keeper puts a toxic substance into the water, the fish will be adversely affected, even die. When nasty things happen inside the aquarium, the fish get this strange notion, to blame the aquarium keeper, even though they don't really believe that there is an aquarium keeper. The idea that someone else other than the supposed aquarium keeper is responsible for the horrible stuff that sometimes happens in the aquarium, has occurred to a few of the fish. Some of unbelieving fish, the ones running insurance companies, blame the aquarium keeper, calling the nasty happenings acts of the aquarium keeper for which they are not responsible. Would you call that rational behavior?
Is there any room whatsoever in your worldview for this thing we call faith or trust?
Yes, unfortunately there are many thieves in this world. There are also many who want something for nothing, such as a government handout. Even super rich bankers and giant corporations get free taxpayer money these days.
trust
noun
1 firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something
faith
noun
1 complete trust or confidence in someone or something
2 strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
As you can see from the dictionary definition, there is not a great deal of difference between “trust” and “faith”. In both cases remember that it is much more important WHOM you believe or trust, than WHAT you believe.
Much of today's technology would be called magic, miraculous by the people that lived centuries or millennia ago. This is only because we have understandings of the laws of nature, that they did not have. Do you really believe that we in our time are that much more advanced than they were? There are still large areas, almost infinitely huge, about which we know little or nothing. Therefore, we just as they of old, call those things which we do not understand in the slightest, magic, miraculous or supernatural.
Apple just came out with their fancy new iPad. If you could be teleported with one of those to the 1st century, how would you explain its workings to even the most educated person of that day? Would you be believed that you came from a time far in the future? Would you be burned as a witch or a sorcerer or worshiped as a god?
The central tenet of the Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To modern technological humans, the idea of resurrection from the dead in a totally new arrangement of matter that transcends time and space, violates KNOWN laws of physics. It is therefore still deemed to be a miracle. To me it is common sense, that the universe, especially life in it, is far too complex, to have come into being by the impersonal forces of nature. Therefore, it is not an unreasonable assumption (reasonable faith), that an intelligence far beyond our own created life in the beginning, whenever that was.
The only difference between you and me and any other human being or other known life-forms, in the physical sense, is in the arrangement of otherwise totally identical atoms. This arrangement is coded by software, a program, information, stored in the DNA molecules. Is it therefore so inconceivable for you to imagine that someone with the technological skill to manipulate that information, could apply it to a pile of atoms, to re-create your physical body? Is it completely beyond your imagination, that there could be beings in the unfathomable depths of the universe, or even in other dimensions, that are as much above us in knowledge and understanding, as we are above a bacterium?
In spite of Einstein and modern physics, we still really don't know what exactly time is or other fundamental questions in physics. Is it therefore so impossible for you to imagine, that someone who understands and sees time, not serially as we do, but simultaneously all at once, would be able to accurately foretell what for us are future events, but for that person is the eternal now? Quantum physics gives us tiny little hints, that there are means of communication between particles, that are totally alien to our “normal” means of everyday communication..
You and every human being on this planet has a gift, that cannot be explained in terms of the scientific method. It is called imagination. Let that gift in you roam to the uttermost limits. With it, some humans come up with some very far out, yet often rather entertaining books and movies. Yet, compared to the reality revealed to us by God in his communication to mankind, the holy Bible, all that pales into insignificance. The God of the universe, who transcends time and space, inspired a man we know today as the Apostle Paul to write this:
"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Corinthians 2:9)
It is impossible to love someone whom you cannot believe to be totally truthful. It is unreasonable and nonsensical, to discount and eliminate from your thinking a reality that your or my finite mind cannot grasp or understand. Faith takes over where normal thinking and human reasoning ends.
Jailbreaking buys a geek the ability to run viruses, worms, trojans and other fun programs on their iPad. Other than that, what is it good for? What does it do for the average consumer? Answer: nothing.
You certainly cite a number of books that have been written on the subject. Are you trying to convince yourself and others, that the quantity of books somehow makes reincarnation true? If that is the case, I can cite one book that has been around longer than any of the others and has more books in print in more languages than any other, by at least an order of magnitude if not more. This book claims for itself to be the word of God, the Creator of the universe. It is called the Holy Bible. Here is what God says on the subject:
Hebrews 9:27 And just as it is appointed for man to die ONCE, and after that comes judgment,
The question therefore boils down to this: are you going to believe any of these writers, or are you going to believe what God says in the all-time best seller? In the end, it doesn't matter WHAT you believe, but WHOM you believe.
"There is not one single theory (that I know of) that offers a consistent explanation of how ESP could function in terms of known physical law."
The word “science” used to be applied to ALL knowledge, not only that which can be gained by the scientific method, that is, observation and experiment.
There is another kind of knowledge, which is used far more often in our daily lives. This is the knowledge one person provides to another by REVELATION. When another person says to you that they had a certain experience or feelings, you can either BELIEVE them or not. There is no way to prove they have such thoughts or feelings. Our court systems primarily rely on the testimony of witnesses. History and historic events are also not provable by the scientific method the same way as measuring a physical quantity, such as the mass of the electron. You have to believe that the recorded historical account is reliable and truthful. No one has a time machine, to go back to check what really happened.
When you take your car out on the highway, you believe, you hope, that the other drivers will obey the generally arbitrary laws that have been set up to govern traffic on public roads. You have faith that the big semi coming down the road to the other way towards you, stays on its side of the road. You don't know that it will, but to simply have faith.
Therefore when you assert that ESP cannot be scientifically proven or disproven, you are correct. However that does not prove that it doesn't exist, any more than that your faith that that semi truck will stay on its side of the road can be proved. Most of the time that truck will stay on its side of the road, but that one time when it doesn't, you most likely will never know about it.
"In my opinion if you can accept an entity that no one has ever seen or heard except by third party reports is behind EVERYTHING that happens in the universe AND still has time to stay hidden, 'lightning hitting rocks is just as acceptable."
Not all knowledge is accessible to the perception of our senses or their extensions. Only that which is physical, tangible can be perceived through the scientific method of observation and experimentation. Some knowledge can only come to us by the route of REVELATION. Before our modern age, “science” was defined as ALL knowledge, whether observed or revealed.
Since this is a technology forum mostly dedicated to computers I will give an example pertaining to the difference in hardware and software. If you examine an ordinary computer physically in the minutest detail possible, you can never discover how that computer works and what it does. The only way you can gain knowledge about that computer, is to turn it on and have the software stored in it REVEAL what the computer actually does
Software is exempt from certain laws of physics. The characteristics of a computer are not determined primarily by its hardware, but by its software, which is intangible and invisible. It is not subject to gravity nor the limitations of mass and therefore can travel at the speed of light.
Life is no different, even physical life. All living things are composed of atoms which are identical. Their arrangement is determined by the INFORMATION stored within DNA molecules. This is the software of physical life.
In our everyday experience, all software, without exception, originates in a MIND, something which possesses intelligence. In the case of software for computers, it originates with human intelligence. The question ID asks is simply this: “where did the information stored in DNA molecules come from? Did it, similar to computer information, come from a mind, an intelligent mind?”
"Unfortunately there is a large contingent of people who believe they are in fact tasked with beating Jesus into everybody else."
I agree with you that this is against what the Bible teaches in 1 Peter 3:15-17, where Christians are admonished to live a life that causes unbelievers to ask questions about that believers faith. A question that gets often asked is: “why is it that you can keep so calm, on an even keel under severe pressure and stress?” In answering questions, a Christian can then give good reasons why Jesus Christ allows them to keep their head, when everybody else is losing theirs.
That said, there are a considerable number of people, who get quite torqued out of shape, when matters of faith in God, especially Jesus Christ are mentioned, even in casual conversation. If such a pushed out of shape religion hating person happens to be some kind of a boss, he/she will often go to great lengths to “punish” a Christian. This can and does include demoting and/or firing.
If a Christian does not live a Christian life in the power of Jesus Christ, he should keep his mouth shut. If he/she does live a life totally dedicated to Jesus Christ, then the people around such a person WILL notice and start asking questions. A sincere questioner with an open heart will then often come to believe in Jesus Christ as a result of the answers he/she is given.
ID is just an oblique way of slipping God the Creator into the conversation. Believers in ID of necessity have to believe in an “intelligence” that is doing the design.
"Lose a minute every night for half the year, then gain a minute each night for the other half."
That is the craziest idea I've ever heard of! Do you really believe that everybody wants to change their clocks every day or even every couple of days? Why doesn't the government keep their cotton picking hands off the clock? Do you really believe that cutting a foot off the top of a blanket and sewing it on the bottom will give you a longer blanket? The government apparently believes this, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
An old Indian chief once said that only the United States government believes that by cutting a foot off the top of a blanket and sewing it on the bottom, you get a longer blanket.
In such a world of no secrets, if the person in power were evil, then that world would be evil. If the person in power were good, then that whole world would be good. In essence what that means is that whoever has the power to decide what is good and what is evil, would by definition determine the nature of such a world. Free will could still exist, unless the person in power decides by means of that power, to impose his will on everyone regardless of whether they were in agreement or opposition to the definition of good or evil by the one in charge of such a world.
You are going by the assumption that genocide and war mongering are bad, but what if the person or persons in power decide that these things are good? In such a world, conformity to the persons in power would be defined as good and opposition gets defined as evil.
Isn't the DNS system roughly the Internet equivalent of a telephone book that gives the association between someone's name and the actual telephone number? All computers actually use the IP address that gets looked up in some directory. Just like I have an address book that associates my friends and business partners names with their telephone number, could there not be in each computer such a simple list? If someone screws around with a directory somewhere, then searching for my name will no longer bring up my actual phone number or IP number. However, all those people that still have my name correctly associated with my number, would still be able to reach me. If most people had such a local directory, then seizing a domain name by simply messing with the public master directory, would not be very effective, at least not immediately. Also, could there then not be any number of directories kept in places and by people outside the reach of any particular jurisdiction?
One of the IP addresses of Google.com is 74.125.127.100
If I type that address into my browser, I get Google.com. If I know that association, could the seizure of the Google.com domain name prevent me from reaching Google's website?
Storage these days is cheap. Could a computer not keep a gigabyte or 2 of my favorite address associations? Since the name to IP number translation is done locally, would that not speed up web surfing dramatically?
Do you really think that people who fly airplanes into buildings and blow themselves up in order to get 72 virgins in the afterlife as a reward for killing “infidels” care even a little tiny bit about such foolishness as MAD (mutually assured destruction)? Do you really believe that people who threaten to wipe another country off the map, ever think about such things? They believe that the more chaos they can create in the world, the sooner the Mahdi will come to set up his worldwide Islamic caliphate.
Yes, but Bozo the clown did not come up with any workable new scientific theories, that eventually overthrew widely held scientific dogmas.
In a world where everybody knew everybody else's thoughts at any and all times, might not be so bad at all, provided there were NO exceptions of any kind for any reason. It would make it impossible to plan anything bad by anybody, including governments. Anybody with a malevolent or selfish thought would immediately know that everybody else knew that they had such a thought. It would make it very difficult if not impossible for evil to exist. The main problem might be who gets to decide what is good and what is evil.
Technology changes, but human nature does not and will not, at least not in the foreseeable future. When people lived in small villages, the village gossips knew what you had for dinner, how many kids you have and their names, who your husband/wife were, whether you showed up in church last Sunday, that your wagon broke and you got a new horse last Wednesday and on and on and on and on. The biggest difference today is that the village has become global, thus multiplying the number of people that may have information about you. People today actually have more privacy, even on the Internet, than they ever had when they lived in small, tightly knit communities, where everyone knew everybody and knew what everybody was doing. In the days when people lived in small villages, it was much harder to hide things about yourself from your fellow villagers. Today you have a choice of whether to put information about yourself out into the global Internet village. Therefore, you have actually more privacy today in the global village, than people had in their tightly knit communities in days gone by.
Many scientific theories held by the majority, sometimes for centuries, were overthrown by observant people working alone. Some of these were never vindicated by majority scientists until many years after these lonesome scientists died. There are many examples of this. I will just give one.
For centuries it was the consensus among scientists, that the speed of light was instantaneous, that is it took no time at all to travel any distance. There were even “experiments” done with lanterns and shutters on mountain tops to “prove” this scientific “fact”. Then in 1611 A Danish astronomer, carefully observing the Jovian moon Io, noticed that the appearance of it's eclipses were not what they should be according to orbital mechanics. He calculated the speed of light amazingly close to what we know it to be today. However it took another 150 years, before technology advanced enough, to enable countless experiments to finally overturn the stubborn commonly held scientific beliefs of the majority. There are other examples of this sort of thing throughout the history of science.
The theories existing now are obviously wrong. Scientists, especially cosmologist these days are always puzzled, perplexed, surprised, mystified and confounded by the unexpected data that does not fit into any of their theories. There are theories that other people have come up with that don't require dark matter, dark energy, black holes and other convoluted mathematical constructs that have never been observed in real life. Maybe it is time to throw out the old theories and consider some of these theories, which up till now have been dismissed as crackpot ideas. Maybe some of those alternate theories that have been labeled “crackpot” need to be looked at more seriously in light of the flood of data confounding, perplexing and fooling current mainstream scientists.
That is why I never buy new software that needs an Internet connection in order to install or reinstall.