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wrote:
> The guys should be granted the Nobel Price, for sure.
>
> To be able to create an electrical field strong enough to attract ions
> over a distance of 5000 m from a plane: respect!
>
> Of course - I would not recommend using a device this highly charged near
> any combutible or instable substances, especially when one is doing the
> detecting from a few meters away. I am pretty sure if such a device could
> be built, it would detect explosives from a few meters distance for sure.
> Once. And in a very terminal way.
Teehee! Good one.
It reminds me of Terry Pratchett's "dragon detector" that CMOT Dibbler was
selling in "Guards! Guards!" - a piece of wood about as long as your hand.
You knew it had detected the dragon when it had burned completely through.
Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.
--
Stefan Viljoen
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> Hey, studying things is a valid way to determine whether there's any truth
> to them - provided you do the studying correctly and don't just try to
> dream up data that supports the conclusion you want to reach. ;-)
Also if the potential benefits are high enough then even things with a tiny
chance of being successful should be studied.
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> It reminds me of Terry Pratchett's "dragon detector" that CMOT Dibbler was
> selling in "Guards! Guards!" - a piece of wood about as long as your hand.
>
> You knew it had detected the dragon when it had burned completely through.
>
> Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.
ROTFL! I had completely forgotten about this one!
But there is a difference between CMOT's dragon detector and this gadget
(for want of a better word): The dragon detector, while being completely
useless, will actually to the job. And it is much more reasonably priced.
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] dev null> wrote in message
news:4b0e83f5$1@news.povray.org...
> Indeed. Price it high enough and people will believe that it *must*
> work, otherwise they wouldn't be able to sell it for that price.
Plus, a high price leaves a healthy margin for bribes.
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Stefan Viljoen <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote:
> Didn't both the CIA and the KGB at a stage seriously study psychokinesis,
> "reading" and other types of "extrasensory" phenomena for possible military
> applications?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project
Goes to tell how much influence the so-called "psychics" have had in the
world. Some scammers really do.
--
- Warp
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On 11/26/09 10:03, Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> Didn't both the CIA and the KGB at a stage seriously study psychokinesis,
> "reading" and other types of "extrasensory" phenomena for possible military
> applications?
Well, if they did it was decades ago, and the evidence against
psychokinesis wasn't that strong.
I guess my phrasing is poor. There were always lots of _reports_ of it,
so it was worthy of looking in to.
--
"Gentleman, this computer has an auditory sensor. It can, in effect,
hear sounds. By installing a booster, we can increase that capability on
the order of one to the fourth power." - Captain Kirk in "Court Martial".
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Warp wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project
>
> Goes to tell how much influence the so-called "psychics" have had in the
> world. Some scammers really do.
Looks to me like the government seriously looked into it, concluded it
was nonesense, and dropped it. Nothing strange about that...
Don't forget, sometimes these bizare claims do have some grain of truth
to them. Obviously the ability to see things before they happen is
nonesense, but old folk tales about plants having magical healing
properties sometimes turn out to be based in part on truth. No harm in
checking it out.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> Don't forget, sometimes these bizare claims do have some grain of truth to
> them. Obviously the ability to see things before they happen is nonesense,
> but old folk tales about plants having magical healing properties
> sometimes turn out to be based in part on truth. No harm in checking it
> out.
You are right here. Even the full moon has genuine magical properties. It's
light grants people the power of sight in the dark of night.
To those living in medieval times who wanted to gather any plants with
healing abilties it was probably not a good idea to do it in broad
daylight - at least if being tortured and subsequently burned on a stake is
not your idea of having a good time. Carrying torches to light the dark is
no good idea, either. A torchbearer sees less good in the dark than if he
doesn't carry any light at all... if you ever tried it, you will know.
People carrying torches in the night make an impressive sight for those
standing in the dark (or those watching movies with a medieval theme), but
they themselves will not be able to see much.
That left only nights with a full or nearly full moon to go searching for
herbs, or to get together in secrecy, or to actually notice anything strange
at night. And I suppose that is the reason all the myths of the mystical
powers of the moon really started: the only chance to properly see anything
in the dark in ancient times was to go out in moonlight.
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"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote in message
news:4b0eab58$1@news.povray.org...
> > Hey, studying things is a valid way to determine whether there's any
truth
> > to them - provided you do the studying correctly and don't just try to
> > dream up data that supports the conclusion you want to reach. ;-)
> Also if the potential benefits are high enough then even things with a
tiny
> chance of being successful should be studied.
That's a fallacy, at least without quantifying that "tiny" (and it's next to
impossible to quantify tiny in most such contexts since the "hypothesis" is
irrational/non-scientific anyway). There's a tiny chance that my house is
built right on a diamond mine worth a "billions and billions" of dollars,
which nobody knows about. Should I start digging?
Any of us can come of with thousands of such "tiny" probabilities attached
to outrageous gains, that, if we believe the premise, we should spend time
and effort and money to investigate them all. It's a Pascal's wager type
argument.
Probabiliy of so called psychic phenomena being "real" is, for all practical
purposes and by all intelligent accounts, is between 0 and 0. Any single
cent wasted on such research is, well, wasted, and the only reasons for an
intelligent human to bother to do such research is employement and
publishing.
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Invisible wrote:
> There is a phrase that is somewhat over-used on the Internet which none
> the less seems to fit this perfectly.
>
> Truly Epic Failure.
Did you see this?
http://qcjeph.livejournal.com/110229.html
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