[John Freestone]

Back already ALG? Lovely holiday snaps.

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

YouTube - Nina Kulagina Telekinesis Feats (This is one of the two women which led to the US and the Soviet militaries frenziedly pumping money into psychic research during the Cold War).

You posted that one already. I've responded. Yes they pumped some money into psi for a while. Mostly the US military are deeply embarrassed about it now. I said before, there was motive, opportunity and method. Moral of the story, don't believe everything you see on youtube.

YouTube - Qi,move things without touch!believe it? (Excerpt from the Chinese news media - what's shown here is actually pretty common in China).

Didn't seem to load on my browser. I think my copy of IE7 just couldn't be bothered, quite frankly, and gave up. Same moral. Note this title ends with a question mark.

(Btw, there are some commercial tour packages to China, where you get to be the object! That is, the qigong master will manipulate you and make YOU move, without touching you).

Wow. I can't wait.

Rather common too. Here's a special twist, how about you channel a spook and then stick a metal skewer through your cheeks? No blood will come out. I've seen hundreds of people do this annually, it's a festival called Thaipusam. The tourists love this too!

If you were paying attention, I acknowledged mind over matter when the matter in question is the body. I use such techniques myself, but I don't assume that spooks are at the bottom of it.

Sure thing, John! One of these gifted individuals was Adam Linzmayer, you can read about him here.
Joseph Banks Rhine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I suppose you believe the raw descriptions of the research. I'm much more persuaded that there is more value in the section on the same page entitled 'Criticism'.

"Yogi Pullavar, also known as Subbayah Pullavar...

...also known as Woolly Pullavar the IIs

Also try googling this name - Daniel Dunglas Home. He levitated a few hundred times in front of all sorts of people in all sorts of places.

Can't be bothered and no he didn't. And before you tell me I'm closed minded, I've just had enough checking out your evidence and find it utterly spurious, and I just know that if I follow this suggestion the result will be the same. Someone, at least, will have good explanations. What are you going to send me to look at next, the Skull of Doom?

If you are unscientific, you may refuse to acknowledge such an idea. However, the Many World Interpretation by Hugh Everett remains one of the major theories concerning the collapse of the wavefunction.

OMG here we frickin go again. Look, I was just saying that when a psychic experiment fails to demonstrate the amazing abilities of Mme Zorg or whoever, and someone says it's because of collapsing wave functions, multiverses and all that drivel, it has this habit of making the gullible take their eye of the ball (that's all these people are actually good at), so that they don't have to explain why their claims appear to be false in this universe we're arguing about them in. Geddit? I don't give a monkeys if you can levitate in a parallel universe you can't manage to show to me.

Bear this clearly in mind, Mr Freestone. If you refuse to even acknowledge the possibility of multiple universes, you are simply being unscientific and illogical.

Many-worlds interpretation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm bearing that clearly in mind, Mr Goddot. Do you get all your information from wikipedia? Moral: don't believe everything you read on the net.

You're exhibiting circularity here, John. Your personal definition of magick is "things which are not possible". Then you say, "Oh, magick is not possible."

It's quite hard to imagine I gave you that impression. I would say my definition of magic, with or without a 'k' for effect, is almost the opposite. To put it in simple, babytalk terms, it means being able to do any of those really extraordinary things that magicians do, but without trickery or down-to-earth explanations. That doesn't mean "things which are not possible" at all. The definition depends on the actuality of the events rather than their appearance.

Incidentally, to go into this in a bit more depth, were any to be demonstrated conclusively as real happenings, it would be widely assumed that there must be, known or unknown, a mechanism to be discovered, and hence they would then move from the realms of supernatural to natural phenomena. It is often not clear when people claim psi events whether they consider them due to some unknown natural force (i.e. that might yet be discovered) or just a kind of unknowable amazingness. I imagine you gravitate towards the former explanation for levitating gurus, a condition of reality not yet discovered. Hence, there's nothing weird at all, there are just things we know about and things we don't. LoA is slightly different, because it says things are true if we make them up.

You could be right. And if you say that the Great Flood for which Noah built his Ark was simply not possible, well, you could be right too. After all, how could a single flood affect the whole world?

Then again .... who knows?

Catastrophic ancient flood cooled the Earth | COSMOS magazine <---- This just in from our scientists, four months ago.

Hmmm, yep, you might say that dragons are mythical beasts and didn't really exist, too, but I've seen this: http://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/images/dinosaur3251a.jpg

There were floods, yeah. People told each other about them. The stories became retold, chinese-whisper stylee. We got Noah and the ark and the animals going in 7 by 7.