BTW, I wanted to add a small comment at the end of this. Something I didn't add back then (but, looking back upon it, I think I should have).

It is regarding the little comment I mad e about feeling a connection to "something" bigger than me, then describing what this "feeling" was like.

I wanted to make it clear that the human mind, our testimony, and our eye-witness accounts are very, very undependable... A sad, but absolute truth.

Most cases that have been thrown out of court later on--once new evidence is brought to light; like DNA evidence--has shown over and over again that in many of these cases, the "victims" or prisoners sent to jail--for doing nothing--were sent there almost entirely on eye-witness testimony and accounts. Then the DNA shows that their entire "story" (because that IS exactly what it should be called), merely served as a way to put an innocent man in jail, and to keep that DA/prosecutor's record as close to "awesome" as possible (because we really DO care FAR too much about a DA's record than whether the person being prosecuted should actually be here, let alone if they are guilty or not). The defense attorney has the same problem; I'm not really sure WE should care about these things (only so much as to whether the state IS actually bringing cases to court that SHOULD be there...).

I have severe sleep apnea and also narcolepsy. With this I get sleep paralysis (basically every night) and an extreme amount of hypnagogic hallucinations (more than powerful enough that i fully understand why many believe in both ghosts and aliens--amongst other creatures). The "feeling" and situation I described above can very easily be traced back into this little issue of mine. It creates everything you could imagine--I even had a hypnagogic hallucination powerful enough that it felt as though someone or something was trying to yank me "through" my bed (hello, Nightmare On Elm Street"--I was actually more intrigued by the event than anything else, akin to a researcher). While most people would have run yelling from there house, or at the least gone to get comfort and forgone sleeping in that room AND bed for quite sometime...I went right back to sleep.

This is why KNOWING what you are up against, what it can do to you, and how powerful it really can be (especially on your psyche and even your physical state is very important...). I knew all of this before it ever happened AND I had also noticed the hypnagogic hallucinations doing A LOT of very small auditory based things--all the time--to me, but they sounded realistic (like dogs barking off in the distance, people whispering outside your window...across the street, telephones ringing upstairs, people you know talking or saying things--like your name--sometimes to the point that you have to ask them if they called for you...and YES you do feel like an idiot, but if everyone knows your physical problems, due to the sleep disorders, they understand what it going on, and can laugh with you when it happens--EVEN the scary ones).

Sleep paralysis happens to be when your body tries to wake up, but it doesn't quite get there. hence you end up in a state were you are both awake and asleep at the same time (dreaming to be accurate). These events have a tendency to be a bit like the hypnagogic hallucinations, in that they can seem real, since you are half-awake. History has a great many examples of SP--the ones that don't seem that scary, like visiting angels. To those that can create bone-chilling "ghost stories", like demons and succubi. There is a very famous painting of a "breath-stealing" demon, depicting a SP event (many people did in fact DIE in their sleep from "lack of breathing", this is where SP fiction AND the reality of many of the SP sufferers having severe sleep apnea--something fully unknown in that day and age--were not taken into account, and instead it was a demon! Many people that DO have sleep paralysis events have dreams and dream like events that are close to and resemble each other, so there must be a basic psychological connection in the formation of many of these dreams--even space alien abductions seem to have this same thing in common...

So when a big SP or hypnagogic hallucination comes along, and just by chance it happens to mix with each either (if you suffer both), you can get some truly panic inducing events (go look these up, if you don't understand why they could be so panic inducing--you'll understand pretty quick why they SUCK; luckily, as I've gotten older my mind has created two ways to deal with sleep paralysis events; the first it created, and I don't know how to be honest, is that I realize in these "half-dreams" that if I relax I will gain all of my abilities back...sure enough it works every time, but it can be VERY hard to do this when you have a pure-evil, shadow of fear standing 10 feat from you; then lately...and I think this happened literally due to the shear volume and amount of SP events I've had...I can basically FORCE myself to move again through willpower alone, allowing me to wake up as well--doing this actually feels "odd", it feels uncomfortable, like you are "going against the grain" and then suddenly breaking through a wall that wasn't allowing you to do what you wanted; so I imagine this "ability" forcefully allows me to make my body stop it's "protective" mode that it is in as you sleep and it is ALSO what causes the "paralysis" in all sleep paralysis vents...it is just your body doing what it should)...

Also, from what I've noticed, it seems to me that almost all hallucinations at some level are directly linked with whatever in the mind allows us to dream or create very vivid "imaginations". Both my sleep paralysis events AND especially my hypnagogic hallucinations, accompanied by the fact that I have indeed ran into "run of the mill" hallucinations (caused by adverse effects from medical prescriptions in the past), they ALL seem to be essentially linked together from what I noticed. I'd have to look around and see if there are others that have as many vantage points as I do, and also agree that they seem linked.

Throughout history people have seen these two aspects as something they absolutely are not OR not even close too! Yet FAR too many people don't ask the absolutely obvious question that they ALWAYS should have! Why, do ghost, aliens, demons, angels, you name it, show up at NIGHT (or for those that have odd sleep schedules: when you are TIRED or about to SLEEP--or just have...)?!? The answer should, indeed, be obvious... All of these things have to do WITH our sleep or something with our ability TO sleep (you don't necessarily need to be asleep or need to have just woken up for this stuff to happen to you; my narcolepsy shows this is absolutely true--as I can get hypnagogic hallucinations at ANY time of the day, sometimes without warning). The creatures and gods we have created do indeed exist, but they are located at the border between where our brain can see clearly and when our brain could use some rest--then we all live in our dreams.

So, be careful about how much stock you put into anything you believe is true, especially because you "believe" you have witnessed or experienced something magnificent... Believe it or not, seeing is NOT believing! Science always had the right idea, you MUST allow others to confirm what you found, and if they cannot find it--no matter even IF you "found it"--you might need to be able to accept the harsh reality that somehow you didn't see or experience what you thought you did (but, it can still be amazing)...

Lyrics in English, more or less:

Magnificent, magnificent
You were magnificent, I was pathetic,
we were magnificent,
magnificent,
you were magnificent,
I was pathetic,
we were magnificent.

Hey, baby, oops : young lady,
I swear I won't hit on you,
I am single and since yesterday, damn it,
I cannot have children, but anyway that's not... Hey, come back here!
Just a few minutes, come on, I did not insult you, I have my manners,
and I'm quite a bit plastered and for guys like me
you have other things to do, you could have seen me yesterday,
when I was

Magnificent, magnificent
You were magnificent, I was pathetic,
we were magnificent,
magnificent,
you were magnificent,
I was pathetic,
we were magnificent.

Hey, take a look at yourself, think you're Mr Handsome
just because you got married?!
This is but a ring, man, don't get carried away,
she'll dump you like they always do,
now about the other girl, did you tell her?
I can tell her if you want, that will settle the matter,
and I'll tell the kid too, if you have children,
you just wait for 3 or 7 years, and then you'll see
how it's

magnificent, magnificent
You were magnificent, I was pathetic,
we were magnificent,
magnificent,
you were magnificent,
I was pathetic,
we were magnificent.

Eh girl, oh, sorry: boy,
you know, in life there are no good and bad guys,
if Mom is a pain, that's because she's afraid to be a granny,
if Dad cheats on Mom, that's because Mom is getting old, what else?
Why the blush? Come on, come back, boy,
and what's wrong with you all
staring at me like I was a monkey, eh?
Sure, you're such a bunch of saints,
you bunch of apes!
Give me a baby monkey, he will be

magnificent, magnificent
You were magnificent, I was pathetic,
we were magnificent,
magnificent,
you were magnificent,
I was pathetic,
we were magnificent.

Cüneyt Arkın The Magnificent!

That man is the Turkish Chuck Norris (I know, shocking, right?)

Multitasking at it's most magnificent *quality *skillful *live music Simply Stupendous I tell ya

Rahat the magnificent! ... sniff, snuffle ... where's my box of tissues?

"The other day I saw a film called The Edge, which I regarded as the best thing to come out of Hollywood since The Silence of the Lambs. Perhaps not coincidentally, this flick also starred Anthony Hopkins. In one scene, Hopkins and his co-star, Alec Baldwin, seem in an absolutely hopeless situation, lost in the Arctic, stalked by a hungry bear, without weapons, seemingly doomed. Baldwin collapses, and Hopkins has a magnificent monologue, talking Baldwin out of his despair. The speech runs, roughly, like this: "Did you know you can make fire out of ice? You can, you know. Fire out of ice. Think about it. Fire out of ice. Think. Think."

This riddle has both a pragmatic and symbolic (alchemical) answer. The pragmatic answer you can find in the film, explicitly; and it might prove useful if you ever get lost in the north woods; and the alchemical, or Zen Buddhist, answer is also in the film, implicitly, and only perceptible to those who understand the dense character Hopkins plays in the story. It might prove useful whenever despair seems to overwhelm you. So, to those who at the end of this book still can't understand or sympathize with my Nietzschean yea-saying, I quote again: "Fire out of ice. Think. Think."

Who was that Prometheus guy and why did he give us fire in the first place?"

~Robert Anton Wilson

"They don't all agree with it, which is why it's not science."

If anyone is looking for absolute certainty, they should turn to their priests, their gurus, their investment brokers, their politicians, their snake-oil salesmen.

The only absolute certainty science can provide is in proving a wrong. Everything else is probabilities and exclusions, all the way to the end.

The fact that the public expects a proof of absolute certainty of a positive is maddening to me. Any assumed equivalency between "not knowing for sure" with "not knowing anything" is frustrating to no end.

Scientists have to enter the public arena and proclaim certainty to match the public's vernacular. If they were to stick to probabilities the way they do within their own realms, they'd fail to communicate the essence of their findings. Just look at how warped the common understanding of "theory" has become.

----------------------------

"Consensus, I repeat, is not science."

Everything scientific that is being communicated publicy is a consensus. The fact that statements of less than absolute, unanimous consensus are met with suspicion and a diminishment of trust in the process itself is one of the reasons why science cannot be properly discussed on the public stage. They cannot present the fuzzy edges of their findings as that would require a qualification in the form of probabilities. A consensus, the greatest common denominator if you will, is the best that can be done. The IPCC's reports are a magnificent illustration of that very issue.

And why can't we talk about the fuzzy edges? About scenarios and their corresponding probabilities? Because people are suspicious, even scared of numbers. Math as a subject is made fun of, a lack of mathematical understanding has become something to be proud of. An intuitive understanding of probabilities is the exception, not the norm. As soon as a prediction doesn't come true, people tend to dismiss the underlying theory, without any regard to the previously attached probability.

That's the climate the scientists have to endure when trying to present their work to the public.

What a magnificent machine. The skill of the metal workers is incredible.

Tywin is a cold, calculating magnificent bastard, and in the books that's really all he is.

One of the reasons I love this scene (and it's substantially different from the books, where Arya never meets Tywin) is that it humanises Tywin somewhat.

Some fiction likes to portray the bad guys as inhuman monsters, but in reality most people (even the very worst) are not like that. They came to where they are through a series of small steps, each more horrific than the last, but each justified in their own mind.

That, to me, is far scarier than the likes of Joffrey or the Mountain. Joffrey is just broken, and Ser Gregor is almost literally a monster. But Tywin made himself into what he is.

And that's the brilliance of this story. When you can feel sympathy for a character whose first significant act is to push a small boy out a window because he was saw him engaged in incest, you have a good writer.

Are you serious? Tearing up at the magnificent union of man and machine and the mastery of flight? I think you GAIN man points.

Daily life in Russia must be magnificently boring if they require this kind of activity to balance out the day. It's very "schoolyard" type of behavior too: my dog's better than your dog, my dad can beat up your dad, etc. I have solemn pity for them.

It's interesting that the controller is not really "disruptive". No love for us lefties as usual.

Using the tablets/phones out there as controllers makes a lot of sense.

But really that controller needs a bit of work.

These Android consoles will do well based on their cost. Sony and Microsoft have only sold about 70m units each I believe. There's scope to sell to far more people in a different part of the market.

That said I'm playing Far Cry 3 at the moment and a magnificent experience like that might not be seen too often on these new platforms.

Hello, my name is Lava, and I am coming to get you. Slowly. Magnificently.

A magnificent concert - the DVD/Blu-ray is called "David Gilmour: Remember That Night - Live from the Royal Albert Hall". And - this track is more than worth the price tag by itself.

Love how Bowie sings a harmony voice, instead of the main voice. (Bah - don't know the english word)

There are better quality videos out there, though, like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySx7af3fEf4

This 2006 concert needs a *quality, a *doublepromote and to lose the 70s tag.