Me and my dad had the exact same dream, with all the exact same details, a few days after a very difficult loss. We were all hugging each other, together - like when we were younger - and we both agreed on our positions, things that were 'said' (felt), everything. As he kept telling me details that i also had written down, i was getting chills down my spine. It felt like nothing i'd ever experienced before.. i even woke up feeling positive, like nothing was really wrong and it was all going to be ok.

I always went through life certain that nothing profoundly mysterious would ever happen; i understood a lot about the world and i thought i knew how to make sense of anything that happened given time. I felt like life was about getting to know someone, growing to love them and need them, only for them to be stripped away and never be known again, and for me to live on carrying that pain until eventually i was released from it. And that single experience changed my mind on all of those things, giving me a feeling of passion back... which in a way, to me, confirms that it was real - even though he passed, he somehow managed to enrich me and give me a reason to carry on. But that experience is something unique to me and my understanding of things, and no one else could or should be convinced by it.

I accept that no one else will be able to believe that what i know happened really did happen, and there will be people who would say it's coincidence. Yes it looks like one, no i can't prove it, but i feel differently about it than you do, and you weren't there.... and that's all i can say with any certainty to another person. If there IS some kind of god, or some kind of life after death, and our loved ones are waiting for us, then why would the evidence BE scientific and provable? Why should it be scientific instead of unscientific evidence, just because THIS world is scientific?

I don't believe in mediums, ghosts, tarot cards or any hocus pocus - none of that will be proven. But that doesn't mean that sometimes, perhaps, when you love someone so much, the distance between is not so great. All i can be sure of, about death, is that absolutely anything can happen, and there is no reason to assume it will be anything like what we know now.

I believe you bob. I wouldn't have before that happened, but i do now... it's just that perhaps we disagree on what it means. Which is ok, cos your guess is just as good as mine.

We do see lensing, so we do know. It's also true that black hole lensing can be recreated with an actual lense setup if you really wanted, so we're not exactly talking about the mysterious here.

The thing with physics in games is that all you have to do is make sure you program the physical laws correctly - mass and light respond to gravity, etc. - and it'll look how it should look..

Wiki has a bunch of examples. Einstein's cross is great.

Is that when they make something impressive yet strange and mysterious?

Many many moons ago when I was seventeen we started doing life drawing at my school. there were a few models they used but the most common two were a lady about thirty, nice looking, slightly plump but attractive and Alan. Alan was a thirtyish year old gay guy who was just very average looking. Physique wise he was 5' 10" or so, maybe just under 200lbs, slightly balding, wore glasses. Nothing offensive but as a seventeen year old lad I obviously started off preferring drawing boobies to schlong.

Thing is, I always drew better when drawing Alan because I just wasn't as distracted I suppose. He was a really nice guy and we got to know him pretty well over the year or so we did the class. I'd grown up doing a lot of sailing at a club with communal showers for the men so naked guys were no mystery to me. I wasn't offended by him and he certainly never did any poses like the guy in this video.

Fast forward ten years and I'm at a friend's house party. I know about half the people there and there's a lot of people from her work that I don't know. She worked at a medieval castle as a wench for their banquets and a lot of her actor colleagues were there. I kept catching the eye of this guy, forty years or so old, 5' 10" and just over 200lbs, pretty bald. You know when you get that feeling that you know someone? The face is familiar but you can't for the life of you remember where you've seen him before. Worse was the feeling that it was someone I knew quite well, not just someone I'd bumped into in the supermarket or something like that.

He looked puzzled by me too and we eventually got talking in the kitchen about where we knew each other from. We went through everything, from what we did for a job, where we'd worked, where we lived and drew blanks every time.

We went further and further back in time until he stopped, grinned and said 'you didn't go to Woodland's school did you?'

In that instant I knew exactly who he was, laughed and completely without thinking blurted 'Alan! I didn't recognise you with your clothes on!'

Of course it went quiet and I had to explain to my wife why I didn't recognise the gay guy with his clothes on (not helped by the fact that it was an all boys school). I still have paintings and drawings of him in my attic somewhere, which my wife was 'thrilled' to be shown!

Life drawing is great, and you don't need a 'fit' or attractive model. Anyone will do, in fact the more normal the better I think. It helps you look at what's there rather than any sort of ideal you might have in your head.

Say what?! Thank you mysterious awesome person!!

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The videomaker, ahem, artist, chose to shroud the outcome in mystery, causing the viewer to reflect the emotions of the burning truck, itself simultaneously shrouded in a fine fire preventative mist.

Man, Nabokov's prose could punch the balls off of anything Dickens ever wrote. You're seriously gonna hold up the language of Dickens as a shining example? The guy who wrote such memorable purplitudes as:
"And in this particular period, the skiey influences seem to tincture the animal life with their own mysterious and wayward spirit of change. The birds desert their summer haunts; an unaccountable inquietude pervades the brute creation; even men in this unsettled season have considered themselves, more (than at others) stirred by the motion and whisperings of their genius. And every creature that flows upon the tide of the Universal Life of Things, feels upon the ruffled surface, the mighty and solemn change, which is at work within its depths."

I've never understood the reasoning behind Rapture-scenarios. Part of the world's population goes on a magical adventure to a fantastic invisible skyhouse, and the movie focuses on the people who stay behind? The ones who aren't partaking in a divine mystery beyond our dreams and expectations? It's almost like Christians don't actually care about going to heaven, and instead just care that everyone else isn't.

Why anyone likes Jimmy Fallon is a mystery to me. Is he really that popular in the US what it seems?

A better description might be "Lawrence O’Donnell criticizes The New York Times for claiming there are witnesses that back up police stories without ever producing a whit of evidence to back it up."
I'm guessing these mysterious 'witnesses' are actually only officer Willson's account, but if they admit that it's too obvious how misrepresented, self serving, and untrustworthy these 'corroborating witness statements' are.

Understanding why so much anecdotal evidence exists is certainly worthwhile! The following link cites many studies on double blind tests for MSG sensitivity.

http://www.businessinsider.com/msg-allergy-doesnt-exist-2013-8

Glutamatic acid (which is what MSG turns into after solubilizing in water, along with a sodium ion) is one of the 20 amino acids that is the basis for all proteins and life, since the beginning of life on earth. It is in relatively high concentration in every cell of your body. Consuming MSG would be akin to consuming 'protein' in your diet, and is commonly labeled as protein in food labeling: http://www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.html

Consuming too much protein in your diet can cause problems, but you need to be eating it to a relatively obvious excess (a gallon of milk per day). Weightlifters who protein supplement far too much quickly experience heart problems.

The business insider link suggests that there are some people who could potentially be sensitive to Glutamate, and be activating the vagus nerve in the stomach...though it seems to be speculative in that article.

The idea that another ingredient is causing the problem is far more likely. Americanized chinese restaurants all taste the same, because all of their food comes from the same place. A group in China has monopolized the american chinese restaurant market, and provides food and resources at unbeatably low prices. To remain competitive, almost all american chinese restaurants invariably purchase from this group. Given China's track record of putting all kinds of crazy stuff in their produce, it seems entirely likely that some ingredient other than MSG is a much more likely culprit.

I know a couple of people in particular who have reacted extremely badly to chinese restaurants in america, and even went to the emergency room for it. Given the details of their story (a mystery glob of black sauce that they ate from the black sauce egg tray), I could only imagine what kind of horrible things they could have ingested other than MSG. 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' may indeed be a relatively accurate term for what people are experiencing.

Plus the music is awesome! but anyway...this guy believes in Jesus? Probably doesn't believe in the divinity of Jesus, although I don't know, but that belief is not popular with the academic set. Since he blasts Osteen, it guarantees he will get some good press.

As for interpretations of Jesus, all of religion is an interpretation. A hungry man sees food everywhere but the lover sees his lover's face everywhere, and the worst philosopher is a miserable man.

No man can have an absolute knowledge of God, only an interpretation. The greatest mystery is love.

@dannym3141, I understand that you are "stepping out of the debate," but, for your edification, I'll respond here... And, for the record, I am not "funded" by Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Solar, or Big Green. Nor am I a professor of climate or environmental science at a State University (and don't have a political agenda around this issue other than to help promote sound reasoning and critical thinking). I do, however, hold a doctorate and can read the scientific literature critically. So, in response to what climate change "believers" say, it's worth noting that no one is actually taking the temperature of the seas. They simply see sea levels rising and say "global warming," but how do they know? It's a model they came up with. But far from certain, just a theory. Like Antarctica melting, but then someone finds out that it's due to volcanic activity underneath, and so on.

And also, why is the heat then staying in the water and not going into the atmosphere? So, they then have to come up with a theory on top of the other theory... So the heat is supposedly being stored deep below where the sensors cannot detect it. Great. And this is happening because...some other theory or another that can't be proven either. And then they have to somehow come up with a theory as to how they know that the deep sea warming is due to human activity and not to other causes. I'm not denying that any of this happens, just expressing skepticism, meaning that no one really knows for sure. That folks would "bet the house on it" does not serve as any proof, at all.

The discussion on the sift pivots from "global warming" to vilifying skeptics, not about the original skepticism discussed, that there is catastrophic man-caused global warming going on. Three issues yet to be proven beyond skepticism: 1) that there is global warming; 2) that it is caused by human activity; 3) that it's a big problem.

When I ask about one, they dance around to another one of these points, rather than responding. And all they have in response to the research is the IPCC "report" on which all their science is based. And most if not all published "believers" say that the heat "may be hiding" in the deep ocean, not that they "certainly know it is" like they seem to claim.

They don't have knowledge that the scientists who are actively working on this do not have, do they? It's like the IRS saying, "My computer crashed." The IPCC says, "The ocean ate my global warming!"

Here are some links worth reading:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304636404577291352882984274

And, from a different rebuttal: "Referring to the 17 year ‘pause,’ the IPCC allows for two possibilities: that the sensitivity of the climate to increasing greenhouse gases is less than models project and that the heat added by increasing CO2 is ‘hiding’ in the deep ocean. Both possibilities contradict alarming claims."

Here's the entire piece from emeritus Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, Dr. Richard Lindzen: http://www.thegwpf.org/richard-lindzen-understanding-ipcc-climate-assessment/

And take your pick from all of the short pieces listed here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/08/is-gores-missing-heat-really-hiding-in-the-deep-ocean/

And http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/ipcc-in-denial-just-so-excuses-use-mystery-ocean-heat-to-hide-their-failure/

"Just where the heat is and how much there is seems to depend on who is doing the modeling. The U.S. National Oceanographic Data Center ARGO data shows a slight rise in global ocean heat content, while the British Met Office, presumably using the same data shows a slight decline in global ocean heat content."

http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2013/10/03/the-ocean-ate-my-global-warming-part-2/#sthash.idQttama.dpuf

Dr. Lindzen had this to say about the IPCC report: "I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to a level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase."

http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2013/10/01/the-ocean-ate-my-global-warming-part-1/#sthash.oMO3oy6X.dpuf

So just as "believers" can ask "Why believe Heartland [financier for much of the NPCC], but not the IPCC," I can just as easily ask "Why should I believe you and not Richard Lindzen?"

"CCR-II cites more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers to show that the IPCC has ignored or misinterpreted much of the research that challenges the need for carbon dioxide controls."

And from the same author's series:

"Human carbon dioxide emissions are 3% to 5% of total carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, and about 98% of all carbon dioxide emissions are reabsorbed through the carbon cycle.

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/archive/gg04rpt/pdf/tbl3.pdf

"Using data from the Department of Energy and the IPCC we can calculate the impact of our carbon dioxide emissions. The results of that calculation shows that if we stopped all U.S. emissions it could theoretically prevent a temperature rise of 0.003 C per year. If every country totally stopped human emissions, we might forestall 0.01 C of warming."

http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2013/08/01/climate-change-in-perspective/#sthash.Dboz3dC5.dpuf

Again, I have asked, repeatedly, where's the evidence of human impact on global warming? "Consensus" is not evidence. I ask for evidence and instead I get statements about the consensus that global warming happening. These are two different issues.

"Although Earth’s atmosphere does have a “greenhouse effect” and carbon dioxide does have a limited hypothetical capacity to warm the atmosphere, there is no physical evidence showing that human carbon dioxide emissions actually produce any significant warming."

Or Roger Pielke, Sr: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/pielke-sr-on-that-hide-and-seek-ocean-heat/

Or Lennart Bengtsoon (good interview): "Yes, the scientific report does this but, at least in my view, not critically enough. It does not bring up the large difference between observational results and model simulations. I have full respect for the scientific work behind the IPCC reports but I do not appreciate the need for consensus. It is important, and I will say essential, that society and the political community is also made aware of areas where consensus does not exist. To aim for a simplistic course of action in an area that is as complex and as incompletely understood as the climate system does not make sense at all in my opinion."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/meteorologist-lennart-bengtsson-joins-climate-skeptic-think-tank-a-968856.html

Bengtsson: "I have always been a skeptic and I believe this is what most scientists really are."

What Michael Crichton said about "consensus": "Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."

Will Happer on the irrelevancy of more CO2 now: "The earth's climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth's temperature -- on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. It is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but your are only wearing a windbreaker. To really get warmer, you need to add a warmer jacket. The IPCC thinks that this extra jacket is water vapor and clouds."

Ivar Giaever, not a climate scientist per se, but a notable scientist and also a skeptic challenging "consensus": http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8786565/War-of-words-over-global-warming-as-Nobel-laureate-resigns-in-protest.html

Even prominent IPCC scientists are skeptics, even within the IPCC there is not agreement: http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/08/21/un-scientists-who-have-turned-on-unipcc-man-made-climate-fears-a-climate-depot-flashback-report/

And for your research, it may be worth checking out: http://www.amazon.com/The-Skeptical-Environmentalist-Measuring-State/dp/0521010683

@newtboy If you've heard "most Teabaggers" advocating such things, why haven't you reported them to the "authorities" for conspiring to commit a crime?

Leaving lies and absurdities aside, "advocating" something is legally different from specifically inciting someone to commit a crime, knowing that they will in fact go through with it. I guess Manson could've claimed that he was joking or something, but the court didn't think so any more that they would think that Bin Laden and the other 9-11 "masterminds" were just "advocating" without expecting anything to happen. Manson was charged with conspiracy to commit murder, not with actually murdering anyone. "Most" Teabaggers aren't conspiring to kill anyone.
Like the head of a criminal organization "conspiring"* or ordering a subordinate to go take someone out, a lot depends on the relationship between the instigator and the one who does the deed -- which is not the same as "advocating" generally or to random people to do some criminal activity in the abstract. So, yeah.. why, indeed, would they get such a "bad rep?"
As for Manson getting a "bad rep?"
It's a mystery dude, a total mystery.


*The charge does not require actually committing any crime (other than conspiring) of going through with it. That's why law enforcement likes entrapment so much: because they can make arrests by instigating people to plot a crime. It's like hiring an undercover cop pretending to be a prostitute. No actual crime was committed, but the intention to commit a crime itself is considered a crime. But, to be sure, there's some degree of "mind reading" involved in the charge of conspiracy, as the law implies the assumption of intent. The charge, then, lends itself to false accusations (and convictions) too. (Apparently social media is inundated with agents trying to get people to agree to crimes so that they can get arrested and prosecuted for conspiring. Of course, nobody trolls videosift for legal advice.)