now that was a loaded statement...

And you boys claim that my dirty talk is distracting! Your all such bad boys, GO TO MY ROOM!

quite a bullet point there, Huntress.

God, I can't leave you people alone for a second, can I?

two or three days away from the board and you've turned into a pun factory!

anyway... I'm back from my little trip... things got very very ugly...but I'm sleep-deprived and nursing a broken rib or two (which is better than can be said of the poor guy who gave me a ride down there), so I think I'll wait to give you the full run-down till morning... gotta track down Flower Witch again and get some sleep now... maybe take a few dozen Tylenol too...

No problem, I'll just rifle through some other posts...(heh)

Let's hear the report.

my Mom sure picked a great time not to pay the cable bill and let our internet get cut off... makes me wonder what she was really doing with my plasma money last week... (gee Mom, it's no big deal, I just bled for two hours straight to get it, go waste it on some stupid crap and don't bother spending a cent on me)

guess I'll have to hold off on my little war story until after I can go bleed again tomorrow (assuming they'll even let me donate when I'm this banged up) and pay off the cable company.

long story short, Ron: yes... we ran into a lot of somethings...

BraveSirRobin wrote:my Mom sure picked a great time not to pay the cable bill and let our internet get cut off... makes me wonder what she was really doing with my plasma money last week... (gee Mom, it's no big deal, I just bled for two hours straight to get it, go waste it on some stupid crap and don't bother spending a cent on me)

guess I'll have to hold off on my little war story until after I can go bleed again tomorrow (assuming they'll even let me donate when I'm this banged up) and pay off the cable company.

long story short, Ron: yes... we ran into a lot of somethings...

Robin, don't do that. I'll see if I can help. But you have to do one thing for me, get me information on your local technical school or community college and tell me what programs you are interested in. We can help you financially, but you've GOT to get an education. After that, I'll see if we can't put you to work at REC. Contact me by PM.

I have some friends that work for the cable company- I can see about making your bill go away so you can stay networked so-to-speak. But I would definatly look into the education- or a good stint in the Army.

Perhaps moving away from that horrid family would help too. I'd put you up if I lived closer to you.

Ron Caliburn wrote:And stop selling your own blood damnit! Work Mickey D's if you have to but dont bleed for pay.

Preach on Brother Ron! Its an unneccesary expenditure of character when there are much better ways of making the green! The way I understand it, you can make better pay in those two hours time at the local BK than you would getting juiced in the clinic.

I've been wanting to ask this since I first came accross this site last month, just to see what Debunker has to say about it. If science proves that magic and the supernatural exist, will you accept it as truth?

Look Debunker...

I'm a pretty down to earth kind of guy.

I don't claim to to be a spoonbender or a spellchucker.
If I was in a Harry Potter novel I'd probably be a card-carrying dyed-in-the-wool Muggle.

But let's face it... there have always been things that fly in the face of scientific thinking. I know... I tried to make sense of some things in my life, my natural cowardice has made me suspicious and cautious when it comes to these things.
I do research and try to read up on this stuff. (a good library card is sometimes better than a DSL connection on your computer)
I talk to people.
I look at the stuff that is left behind.

These are the things that all of my teammates and I do when we go do the Mystery Inc thing.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not some kind of super genius, but I want to beleive that 9 times out of 10 I try to keep a level head about this stuff.

We look for the rubber masks, the wires, the fog machine... but we're also willing to accept the impossible when we find it.

Think of it... the giant squid was only the stuff of sailor stories until just ten years ago when they started finding them.

Look at the Duck-billed Platapus... a creature described best as "a duck designed by committee", if they had never been seen before and I told you I saw one of them... you'd call me a flaming nutbar.

What about germs, viruses and microbes? If there were no microscopes, what would you say about the idea that there were tiny little life forms, too small to be seen that have the power to make you sick?

There was also that thing where some university guys split a photon in half and found what one half did the other copied, showing that there was a undetectable connection between them even if split apart by miles.

Let's not forget that 'earth is round' thing.

One of the smartest people that I can think of is Albert Einstien. He was pretty bright and they say he had the great talent of theoretical thinking.
He could take the most complicated ideas and break them down into simple visuals that the ordinary joe could get.
From what I read he sounds like a good guy, the kind of person I could hang out with at a bar.

But anyways he had two quotes that will always stand out in my mind.... and in needlepoint on the wall of my garage.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge"
and
"Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out."

Smart guy that Albert.

When I look at those words up on the wall while I type this, I realise that my friends and I work good together because we have... I dunno... balance.
We have fighters, thinkers, tacticians and workers. We're as ready for what's out there as anyone.
We never go in guns blazing, we try to look before we leap and we gather what evidence we can.

We know there are gonna be dead-ends and hoaxes. We accept that... but we also try to keep ready for those times when the real deal pops it's ugly... parts up in our faces.

Open, but not so open our brains fall out.

You sound like you're pretty bitter about the whole ghostbuster thing that your family forced upon you. I'm cool with that.
Truth be told... we need guys like you in all of this mess.
Someone who will point out the smell of greasepaint and the white sheets with the holes in them.
You provide... objectivity to this stuff, but denial is more than a river in Egypt.

I'd rather live in a neat, clean world which runs like a well oiled machine, but my experiences show me that the earth has surprises galore for humanity.

Unless you're ready to accept the possibility that there are things out there that fly in the face of scientific understanding, and the natural order... things that can only be described as SUPERnatural, then you're as much a danger to yourself as you are to the average, carnival grade hoaxer.

Expecting the unexpected is a part of science sir, it always will be. I also have no doubt that you've seen strange and unusual things, we all have. But there is nothing that cant be explained by science and rational thinking.

There are the usual suspects like Pareidolia, Confabulation, Hypnopompia, and just plain overactive imagination, but they are all explainable phenomena. Even if something you witnessed or experienced cant be explained today, one day it will be.

Well, until that day arrives, I'll be chasing the stuff science can't explain. A short list:

UFOs: Nobody is willing to study the subject, and if they try, they are not taken seriously.
Ghosts: Pretty common. Got an explanation?
Strange creatures/beings: Every now and then, something from somewhere shows up on our planet.
Strange human abilities: Some people seem to have abilities that are paranormal. I know one guy quite well. He gets these feelings and premonitions about things that are going to happen, and they happen.

Con-artists: Yeah, there are people who stage rather elaborate meetings, claiming they can talk to the dead, etc. They are either selling something or charge a lot of money.

Just a quick note to the curious and dabblers. There are evil forces out there. A common story is how someone attempts to contact these forces and finds out later that he can't control them.

Evil is something science can't measure.


Contact_21
Lazlo Agent

Debunker wrote:Even if something you witnessed or experienced cant be explained today, one day it will be.

Word. "Once you eliminate the improbable, whatever remains, no matter how impossible, must be the truth."

I'm not sure if anyone's said this here yet, but wasn't it H.L.Menkin (?)
who once said, "For every problem, there's a solution that's simple, straightforward, and, invariably, wrong."