Ok, hunker down, it's time to git-er-dun. RP, to start with, I would like you to respond to the issue of methodological faults in the experiments that were analyzed, as I asked you before. I would like you to respond to the fact that the experiments purported to show "evidence" for the existence of remote viewing or some sort of psychic phenomena analyzed in the above paper suffered from severe methodological and statistical flaws, and then I would like you to tell me where exactly you find support for the belief that there is, in fact, reasonably acceptable scientific evidence of the existence of a remote viewing phenomenon, to the extent that further research is justifiable.

I'm serious about this. I want you to meet me eye level on this one. Scientific evidence for a scientific issue, everything else is secondary. It's easy to hand-wave when it comes to issues of "what science can prove and cannot prove". It's not so easy to hand-wave when it comes down to the actual science itself. Although I've responded to your more general arguments below, I will not carry this any further until I see you respond to the above.

That being said:

If we always listened to the naysayers, major scientific discoveries would never have happened.

That's not a valid argument nor is it even applicable to this situation. I have had that argument tossed at me at least a dozen times during my time sifting, and I'm tired of people pointing at the stupid shit the Catholic Church did to Galileo centuries ago and then pretend that that type of situation is even remotely comparable to a situation like this. Passing judgement swiftly? I dare you to give me a single damn example where a major scientific discovery was made after decades' worth of thorough empirical evidence had been provided to the contrary, as is the case with remote viewing. You won't be able to. Guess why.

I am NOT claiming that remote viewing *definitively* exists, just that there "may be" some scientific evidence to support it, as I said in the post's original description. I leave the final judgement to the scientists.

They already have made a final judgement, insofar as scientists ever do, which is what I have been saying all along. The fact that the scientific community has already passed heavy judgement upon remote viewing is what I'm trying to get you to understand, yet you persist in not accepting this. There "may be" some scientific evidence to support it? Like I said just above, I call bullshit. Show me the damn scientific evidence.

I am only disputing the close-minded attitude that remote viewing is nonsense, bullshit, bunk, etc. Anyone can shout out an opinion, but to categorically state that remote viewing is nonsense would imply a complete knowledge of what's possible and what's not in the universe (for today, and for all time). I don't have that kind of sweeping insight, and does anyone?

Not a valid argument. Science is not based on making categorical statements, it's a matter of using evidence and analysis to support theories to varying degrees of strength. Tell me, what kind of experiment would you suggest that could unequivocally scientifically prove that remote viewing does not exist? Offhand, I can't think of one. Shit, I don't even think such an experiment could be created. However, it is possible to prove it far beyond a reasonable doubt, and this has already happened. But but but we can't be sure for really sure? Big fucking whoop. Nothing is 100% sure in science, the theory of gravity is still just a theory, life goes on.

IF there's a chance some sort of psychic power does exist—no matter how small—then it's worth investigating further. A talent like that, augmented and refined, could have staggeringly useful applications.

Fucking no. Did you actually just put forward Pascal's Wager as an argument for researching psychic phenomena? I mean, I'm not even sure how to begin to tell you how poor that argument is, it's been beaten to death so many times I'm hesitant to lay a finger on it. Instead, let me quote you the final conclusion from the document I cited (emphasis mine), in which your claim is clearly negated:
"In summary, two clear-out conclusion emerge from our examination of the operational component of the current program. First, as stated above, evidence for the operational value of remote viewing is not available, even after a decade of attempts. Second, it is unlikely that remote viewing—as currently understood—even if existence can be unequivocally demonstrated, will prove of any use in intelligence gathering due to the conditions and constraints applying in intelligence operations and the suspected characteristics of the phenomenon. We conclude that: Continued support for the operational component of the current program is not justified.

In conclusion, remote viewing is bullshit and does not deserve further money-wasting, be it through government-sponsored research or misguided media hype.

“The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Galileo affair, and witch hunts together make up less than 1% of the murders that have occurred during modern atheist regimes like Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.”

Hitler wasn't an atheist. He was a Christian.

Stalin was a paranoid egomanical sociopath - his atheism had nothing to do with his atrocities.

And Mao? Tell us all about Mao, smarty-pants.

Where is the country made up solely of atheists? Or the town, for that matter? Surely non-believers, so full of reason and logic, could form their own community somewhere!

“The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Galileo affair, and witch hunts together make up less than 1% of the murders that have occurred during modern atheist regimes like Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.”

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

That's so sad that in this day and age 56% of the audience thinks the sun orbits around the Earth. I'm depressed now - and Galileo is spinning in his grave.

The crusades and the inquisition are just the first things that come to mind. Some churches have contributed to a lot of ills more recently in the last 100 years, such as complicity and cooperation with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, molestation of thousands of altar boys, opposing the use of condoms (thereby causing faster population growth and more malnutrition and poverty), and delaying the apology for the treatment of Galileo until 1993. Millions of people are going to die of AIDS or starvation because of the pope's ridiculous and unjustifiable opposition to the use of condoms.

If the cave 'no longer exists,' then how do you know there was one?

I'm amazed at how much conjecture and 'consensus' is taken for science now days.

Remember this, in the time of Galileo science was absolutely positive that the universe (planets, sun, etc.) revolved around the Earth. They had the models, charts, and mathematical formulas, to prove it, and they all worked. They also had those in power fully supporting their theories as fact. The problem is, they were wrong, despite their models and complicated formulas. Today it's no different, except complicated charts and models are replaced with computer models that are just as 'without a clue' and lacking in any real science as those of old.

Science knows far too little to be able to claim 'this is how it happened' without any real cold hard scientific proof. Otherwise it's an 'educated guess' despite the number of degrees the person(s) may have and how many other scientists may agree with them (have a consensus). It still doesn't make it any more true, it's just a theory.

With that said, all of your figures and models can be fit together beautifully and 'work' flawlessly to 'prove' a point, yet you can be totally wrong anyway.

Sorry, I followed a tangent way too far, but remember that next time someone tries to tell you they know how to predict climate and what's going to happen in the next 10 years.

What's that have to do with jelly fish? I have no clue... oh yeah, they came from a cave that doesn't exist anymore.

"The Catholic church gets bashed on a lot and I'm never sure why."


The vatican staying silent about the holocaust during WWII,

Still teaching even today that HIV can pass through condoms in AIDS stricken Africa,

Covering up child abuse allegations, for example that of Father John Geoghan, accused of sexually molesting over 100 boys in the Archdiocese of Boston,

The persecution of Galileo, the inventor of the telescope,

The infamous brutal and violating interrogations directed at the suppresion of heresy,

In fact hundreds of years of years of persection, deceit, lies and social control; much of which can be levelled at any religion in the world. Take your pick.

The vatican's position on evolution does not explicity say that evolution is the most likely creation theory, only that "faith and scientific findings regarding the evolution of man's material body are not in conflict, though man is regarded as a 'special creation', and that the existence of God is required to explain the spiritual component of man's origins."

This is always worth saying: Science is a METHOD, not a position.

"Alright come back and debate your point when you've actually read The Screwtape Letters."

Why? Is the piece recited in the video not representative of the book? If indeed that is the case then my criticisms still apply to this particular letter which in my opinion is quite exploitative.

"And when you refer to "the church" which one are you referring too. "

When people refer to "the church" they are usually talking about The Roman Catholic Church with it being the largest christian church and all. I thought this would be evident as I was refering to the famous controversy involving the catholic church's insistance on a geocentric model of the universe (i.e., earth in the center) which conrtibuted to the murder of Bruno, the life imprisonment of Galileo and, to the rather embarrassing recantation of the doctrine in 1992 by Pope John Paul II.

"And why do you feel a need to associate religious beliefs with a church?"

I was using the church as an example of a religious institution exploiting/reinforcing certain fallacies common to human thinking; in this case the fallacy being an egocentric model of the universe. That is not to say such exploitation is unique to christanity (I offered hinduism as my other example) or to religious institutions for that matter.

"I never offered my feelings of possessing a soul as proof."

I believe you said something along the lines of: "How do I know there is such a thing as a soul? because..."
I realize that this is a "personal" proof that you have used to convince yourself of your soul and if I get the gist of your proof it seems to go along the lines of "I have these incredibly strong transcendent feelings which must originate from a non-material source like the soul." My examples were meant to illustrate the rather physical/chemical sources of these transcendent feelings. When I was kid I used to think I was special because I had these inexplicable experiences which I now know to be deja vus. It's quite likely you are making a similar mistake.

Ok, quick physics lesson time. 

There are three forces acting on the tire as it moves: gravity, air resistance, and the reaction force of the ramp on the tire. (Or tyre if you lean more towards the British persuasion.)

Gravity is the same for each of the tires -- as Galileo proved when he dropped two balls of different masses off of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and they landed at the same instant. But that doesn't mean that the tires reach the same speed by the end of the ramp, because they each have a different moment of inertia.

The higher the moment of inertia, the slower the tire builds angular momentum, and the lower its velocity when it leaves the ramp. And moment of inertia is a product of mass, and radius squared -- so for a given weight of tire, it would go faster if it has a smaller radius.

The air resistance depends on the tire's surface area. The larger the frontal area, the more drag it will experience. And the lighter the tire is, the more the force of drag will slow it down.

So the tire (or tyre) that gets farthest is the one that has the best balance of: large mass, small moment of inertia, and low frontal area.

Friction and tread pattern have negligible effect, since the tires are rolling, not sliding.

Another thing I just thought of is that they probably didn't all come off of the ramp at the same angle. If they caught a good bounce and got more height, that would make a big difference as well.

How's that for a geek posting? 

Tags changed from "gravity, moon, experiment, galileo" to "gravity,moon,experiment,galileo,nasa" by gold star member lucky760.

By a "historical interpretation of genesis" I mean an assertion that Genesis more or less represents history, perhaps imperfectly, as opposed to the idea that Genesis is a creation myth with little or no historical accuracy.

The sources cited by your wikipedia link are:
1.) An unsourced (dead link) vague generalization by an archbishop, which doesn't amount to an assertion that a non-historical interpretation of Genesis was ever common or tolerated before the 1700s.

2.) Several other articles with cherry picked quotes of early church figures supporting various historical interpretations of Genesis. Many of them just quarreled with the meanings of "day" and "light", e.g., "A day of the lord is 1000 years".

That's unconvincing. If the author of Genesis meant a thousand years instead of "the evening and the morning of the x-th day", he should have written a thousand years. And he'd still be very wrong. Christians who believed that Genesis was non-historic were a very small minority until the 1700s

Here's a list of people who've been burned at the stake (or threatened) for contradicting a historical interpretation of Genesis:

"In 1749, the distinguished French scholar Comte de Buffon proposed that the 6 days of creation may have been 6 long epochs of time and that the Earth's surface had been shaped and reshaped by processes still going on. The Church took great exception to this and threatened Buffon to recant and publicly accept the Old Testament age of 6000 years. No doubt remembering the fate of Galileo (who lived most of his life under house arrest for proposing the Earth went around the Sun,) and Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for proposing the same theory and adding that he believed there was life elsewhere in the universe, Buffon complied." - http://starryskies.com/Artshtml/dln/6-97/earth.age.html

"In Les époques de la nature (1778) Buffon discussed the origins of the solar system, speculating that the planets had been created by comets colliding with the sun (see Passing star hypothesis). He also suggested that the age of the earth was much greater than the 4,004 years b.c. proclaimed by Archbishop James Ussher of the church. Based on the cooling rate of iron, he calculated that the age of the earth was 75,000 years. For this he was condemned by the Catholic Church in France and his books were burned. Buffon also denied that Noah's flood ever occurred and observed that some animals retain parts that are vestigial and no longer useful, suggesting that they have evolved rather than having been spontaneously generated. [3]" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Louis_Leclerc,_Comte_de_Buffon

"A French scholar, Bernard Palissy who lived from 1510-1589 believed the Earth was much older based on his observations that rain, wind, and tides were the cause for much of the present-day appearance of the Earth. He wrote that, these forces could not work over such a short period of time to produce the changes. He was burned at the stake in 1589. A bad time for scientific inquiry. " - http://www.astronomical.org/astbook/age.htm

"Another was Thomas Burnet, a member of the English clergy, who lived from 1635-1715. He had written a book around 1681 supporting the idea of a worldwide flood, but in 1692, he wrote another book in which he questioned the existence of Adam and Eve, and that ended his career."

Giordano Bruno: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

Before the 1500s, almost no one, perhaps no one, understood enough to have any good reason to say that the earth was older than 6,000 to 12,000 years, and most Christians accepted Genesis as a historical account by default. Christians back then believed in Adam and Eve because their alternative was that Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic "original sin" by a non-existent individual. Modern genetic evidence proves that we are not the inbred descendants of only two homo sapiens.

I ought to fix that wikipedia article.

Anyone who doesn't parrot the mainstream view is "nuts." Galileo was "nuts" when he said the earth revolved around the sun...

theo, you have the internet at your disposal .... you should really utilize it a bit more.

Earth's gravity can only accelerate objects downward at one known, constant, maximum rate (1 g). Heavier objects are not accelerated any quicker than are lighter objects, as Galileo demonstrated centuries ago with the Leaning Tower of Pisa ... *smiles*

the more you write, the more respect i'm losing for you ... it's quite sad really.

i'll help you out a bit ....

The towers were 1350 and 1360 feet tall. So let's start by using our trusty free-fall equation to see how long it should take an object to free-fall from the towers' former height.

Distance = 1/2 x Gravity x Time²

or

Time² = (2 x Distance) / Gravity

Time² = 2710 / 32 = 84.7

Time = 9.2

So our equation tells us that it will take 9.2 seconds to free-fall to the ground from the towers' former height.

"On page 305 of the 9/11 Commission Report, we are told, in the government's "complete and final report" of 9/11, that the South Tower collapsed in 10 seconds. Here is the exact quote: "At 9:58:59, the South Tower collapsed in ten seconds". (That's the government's official number. Videos confirm that it fell unnaturally, if not precisely that, fast.



But as we've just determined, that's free-fall time. That's close to the free-fall time in a vacuum, and an exceptionally rapid free-fall time through air.

But the "collapse" proceeded "through" the lower floors of the tower. Those undamaged floors below the impact zone would have offered resistance that is thousands of times greater than air. Recall that those lower floors had successfully supported the mass of the tower for 30 years.

Air can't do that.

Can anyone possibly imagine the undamaged lower floors getting out of the way of the upper floors as gracefully and relatively frictionlessly as air would? Can anyone possibly imagine the undamaged lower floors slowing the fall of the upper floors less than would, say, a parachute?

It is beyond the scope of the simple, but uncontested, physics in this presentation to tell you how long a collapse should [sic] have taken. Would it have taken a minute? An hour? A day? Forever?

Perhaps. But what is certain, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that the towers could not have collapsed gravitationally, through intact lower floors, as rapidly as was observed on 9/11.

Not even close!

Because, as you may recall, not only was much energy expended in causing the observed massive high-speed sideways ejections, but virtually all the glass and concrete was pulverized -- actually dissociated is a much better word. (Nevermind what happened to all the supporting steel core columns...!!!) And the energy requirements to do anything even remotely like that rival the total amount of potential energy that the entire tower had to give. (source) So while gravity is nearly strong enough to cause some things to fall that far, through air, in the observed interval, and while gravity is probably not strong enough to have so thoroughly disintegrated the towers under their own weight, gravity is certainly not strong enough to have done both at once. "

Religion is truly in trouble when two magicians/comedians can make more cogent fact supported arguments regarding human existence than those armed with the culmination of 5,000 years of of Judeo/Christian religious study. The faithful have little chance of success when support for creationism is derived from an attitude of arrogant ignorance combined with a rejection of supported facts by those who have dedicated their lives to discovery as opposed to dedication of supporting a single myth from amongst the myriad of creationist myths around the world. But have hope, years after torturing Galileo Galilee for discovering that the sun did not revolve around the earth, the church capitulated. We can now discuss this science without fear of the persecution of the intelligent by the ignorant.

From the perspective of documentary style, I don't see too much difference between something like this and The Power of Nightmares. I agree with you, Farhad, that the BBC presenters provide more visual cues than necessary that the 9/11 Conspiracy Crowd is bonkers (in their view). But I disagree strongly that you always have to address specious "questions from the people" in the archetypal "fair and balanced" way. Fair and Balanced is often an excuse for a documentary director to turn off the camera and turn on the microphone. Alex Jones is clearly unmoored from fact and discoverable reality and a good documentary presentation demonstrates how he is unhinged. To blithly compare someone like Alex Jones to Copernicus/Galileo . . .well . . .this way lies madness.