Southwest boots woman off plane in Re:?no! for "obsceni

[can't sit still]

The erratica is fascinating. For the most part, duplicity doesn't seem to be involved. Rather than look for fame, some of the discoverers just dismissed their finds. One thing not mentioned in the text was the fact that the stitching in the shoes was so clear that you could see double stitching at the points of high stress. It certainly gives you something to think about.

Joel. I fear that you're correct. The steady erosion of freedom seems to be unstopable.
As humans look for more comfort and security, they're willing to trade off freedoms if they think they'll receive more security.
They're willing to let Big Brother run the show as he sees fit if it brings them more security,,,real or perceived.

They want a guardrail on every curve, a warning on every product, a muzzle on every disturbing person, political correctness so that their feelings will never be hurt. They want the classroom to move at the fastest speed of the slowest student so that poor Johnny won't feel left out.

The word "special" used to have a different meaning.
The bible brings them comfort. Why bother with new ideas.
Disarm, incarcerate, lobotamise, litigate, persecute, ridicule, terminate. Do whatever it takes to make people feel comfortable and secure.
Give us "bread and circuses" and happy pills and we'll toe the line.

[Isotopia]

Calsur,

Piltdown was is viewed as one of the greatest scientific hoaxes of all time. The line of suspects are many - including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The point I was trying to make that the poster who gives credence to teapots in coal beds seems to forget that extordinary claims require extrodinary proofs. Some suggest that the Pildown perp pulled the stunt as a slap in the face of scientitifc hubris. A hubris due in part to the failure of the scientific community back then to look at all the evidence before making claims to extrodinary scientif findings or theories.

[Chai Guy]

Were this board censored (again) you think people would say "it's their board, they can do as they wish"? I remember the last condemnation of the LLC over it, and just like yon airplane, it's *their* board.

Yep, it is their board and yes they can shut it down or do with it what they want.

Personally, I think it's a travesty that people are allowed to board aircraft wearing any kind of T-shirt. I say let's go back to the days when people had a little more class and style.

[Fraser]

[quote="Sensei"] I wonder what would happen if I rented a Ryder truck and put my kefiyah on and tried to park at Sea-Tac. [/quote]

Just ask Phil Teller. He camps with the Playa Cruisers and has some very large flame throwing art cars. A couple years ago he had an incident while trying to fill his propane tanks.
I don't remember if he was arrested for terrorism, but I think he was on Redmond's art council at the time.

[robotland]

What bugs me is who says Intelligent design, the laws of physics, and evolution are mutually exclusive? Seriously. Wo says someone didn't set this whole shit in motion 4 and a half billion (or however many) years (in *our* tme continuoum - may be a billionth of a nanosecond in the one our "reality" is trapped within) ago, and this - now - is the result. Or better - wanna paradox? The "big bang" that created everything was *one* of the atomic nuclei in the chain reaction at Trinity which was shattered, and there are octillions of billions of other "all of existances" out there. Were it not for our own atomic blast in '45, nothing in this universe would exist. Or any others. So we created ourselves - in our own image.

THERE'S one for the books. And who says it can't be true?? Can anyone disprove that our universe - all the galaxies it contains - isn't really a portion of a quark? >>grins<< Kinda strange, no?

bb

The way I heard it, God was constructing a couple of little planets on a beach in California back in '00000000000085, and it just grew from there.

[HughMungus]

Ever seen this in a restaurant or bar?

"We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone"

Agreed. They're running a business, not a political campaign.

Funny, I remember a thread on this very board about someone encountering a religious or political message while doing business with some company and not liking it.

Freedom of speech and freedom of association sometimes conflict with each other. Deal with it.

[ZaphodBurner]

My buddy Flash (ex unofficial mayor of Gerlach, operator of the infamous white whale and bartender extraordinaire) couldn't understand why he was stopped by gate guards at SFO and basically stripped searched for wearing a tee shirt with the word 'BOOM!' printed on the front.

When we came home from Robot Wars in England, passing through the additional security gates in Vancouver BC, we had a roll of red electrical tape confiscated.

They let us keep the black electrical tape, but confiscated the red tape.

On the way INTO England, at Heathrow, the passport people gave us a hard time until we said we were there for Robot Wars, and then all of a sudden we were cool.

On the other hand, we had the Portland Jailblazer who tried to smuggle his weed onto an airplane by wrapping it in aluminum foil. Straight out of Spinal Tap.

-c

[d6]

inane question #93 :
if ant colonies have the "queen"
and humans have "god"
what do robots have?

I thought farce and plausible deniability have always been a tactical human exploit.......just like lying for sex.

so, at times i get tired of living in a death culture,
(FUCKING SHOOT ME)
and chose to take it out on some other insignificant "problem",
(F.O.S = the USA "Freedom of the Press" currently ranked #27 worldwide-or so I hear-source:airamerica10-05-05)

now wheres my "baby jeebus kills you now commandment" t-shirt?
which reads like:
"
1)got to get to that "black" abortion clinic to lower the future crime-rate.

2)blowing-up all of the "non-believers", and hold a "fundraiser" in rejoicement of the fact that
"that voodoo-deviant city has been wiped clean by gods wrath" -(P.Robertson-2005)

3)can someone direct me to the nearest mosque?
perhaps on my way to the tractor-pull races?
4)I need more FUCKING GUNS!
5)the day of reclamation is at hand!
666)DONT YOU KNOW that JESUS LOVES ONLY ME?
"

d6,
idiot,
searching for my "Focusan",
given birth from a cold-unfeeling robot arm,
Scurviest of Bastards.

[Simply Joel]

hmmmm, i wonder if exercising a little self-discipline and self-restraint might stem the tide of big brother's involvement in people's lives?

nah, it'll never work.

[Magikal]

hmmmm, i wonder if exercising a little self-discipline and self-restraint might stem the tide of big brother's involvement in people's lives?

nah, it'll never work.

*sigh* I hate like hell that more & more intersections now have cameras on them, to snap pix of folx zipping through the reds. CLASSIC big brother, cameras in public places.

...except for the small fact that it seems Joe Citizen insists on zipping thru intersections on the red, endangering peoples' lives, w/o giving a FUCK (there, I said it) about anyone but themselves and their desire to get to Starbuxxxx for another triple latte before they pick up their snot-nosed larve from daycare.

[Fat SAM]

*sigh* I hate like hell that more & more intersections now have cameras on them, to snap pix of folx zipping through the reds. CLASSIC big brother, cameras in public places.

Those cameras are a symptom of a much larger problem that's been creeping in on us for YEARS. Do you watch reality tv? Do you watch COPS? That's the first one I recall...It's television designed to desensitize people to the idea of total surveillance. It's perfectly normal to have a camera on you at all times. Perfectly healthy...

I want to move away from the world so badly...Unfortunately, there are also some things I happen to really like about it. What's a nutcase paranoid conspiracy theorist to do?

[Simply Joel]

I want to move away from the world so badly...Unfortunately, there are also some things I happen to really like about it. What's a nutcase paranoid conspiracy theorist to do?

may i suggest something like...

"Jesus is coming, look busy."

[Davoid]

I want to move away from the world so badly...Unfortunately, there are also some things I happen to really like about it. What's a nutcase paranoid conspiracy theorist to do?

Instead of replying about it here, I started a new post:
http://eplaya.burningman.org/viewtopic.php?t=11521

So I'm thinking about that, and hoping for positive outcomes. Or hoping that the 2012 people are right. Of course, Dubya has us gunnin' for the apocalypse. Ah shit, something's coming down the pike to take your mind offa things.

Can't wait to see the t-shirts.

[theCryptofishist]

Do you watch reality tv? Do you watch COPS? That's the first one I recall...It's television designed to desensitize people to the idea of total surveillance.

Still waiting for someone to write a paper explaining why they consent to have thier image broadcast...

[can't sit still]

Jesus is coming and boy is he pissed.


.""..except for the small fact that it seems Joe Citizen insists on zipping thru intersections on the red, endangering peoples' lives, w/o giving a FUCK (there, I said it) about anyone but themselves and their desire to get to Starbuxxxx for another triple latte before they pick up their snot-nosed larve from daycare.""

Magikal, you do have a talent for painting mental pictures.

I'm sure that someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the problem is related to death. Many people seem so haunted by their impending death that they try to cram some experience into every moment that they have.
Everyone has an instinct for survival. If you compound that with a desire to fill every minute of one's life with something "meaningful" it's difficult to end up with a "noble" or "gentle" result.
The result is more likely to be self-centered, self-absorbed, and self-indulgent. Everyone else's problems and desires are far secondary to your own. I'm gonna get what's mine, screw the rest of you. You're just a bunch of numbers anyhow.
An anti-societal view. Judging by the increase in white collar crime, I'd say that the attitude is on the rise. White collar crime is generally committed by people who are intelligent enough to know that they are snipping away at the very fabric of society. They aren't doing it to feed their starving kids.
This attitude is found in all levels of society.
Many of our capitalists and our leaders would make Ebenezer Scrooge quite proud.
Dan

[can't sit still]

[quote="Isotopia

"The point I was trying to make that the poster who gives credence to teapots in coal beds seems to forget that extordinary claims require extrodinary proofs."
It looks like I'm the poster in Question.
I never said that these anomalies are carved in stone. No no no, I never said that they are proven facts. I said that they are intruiging. It wasn't that long ago that the first dinosaur remains were found. Nobody believed at first. When enough had been found, there was general acceptance. Nobody actually proved "anything" with the 100th find that wasn't proved with the first.
There have been many "erratica" found. I believe that SOMETHING has been found. I imagine that someday, these erratica will be explained and classified. Until then, I'll just file them away as "interesting but unexplained"
Piltdown was a lone example. The erratica are quite plural.
I could spend a month looking at a Piltdown skull and not be able to tell you a single interesting thing about it.
It would be EXTREMELY presumptious for me to pass judgement on the authenticity of the "erratica" One has to use physical evidence as well as logic to attempt to verify a premise.
Our bodies are partly composed of materials that came from stars that died millions or billions of years ago. To speculate that some other species developed or visited Terra millions of years ago is not a difficult leap of logic.
For me it's a far more difficult to understand or rationalize someone's ability to predict the future. I can't get a toehold on that particular idea.

Several years ago, the highland seer, Swein McDonald called up the London newspapers and told them that an oil tanker was going to run aground in Scotland. A few days later an oil tanker ran aground in the Scottish Shetland Isles. I don't see a whole lot of room for naysaying in this episode.
Swein was famous for making predictions that included acts of nature. Mother nature rarely acquiesces to the desires of charlatans.

I made 2 trips to Scotland and I hunted him up. I wanted to ask when the big quake was going to hit LA. I found him and paid 15 quid for my own personal miracle. I guess it was an off day for him. The big San Ann never moved at the appointed time.
I talked to the old guys at the pub and they told me that his father was really good at predictions.
It's hard to fathom the ability to tell the future,,,it's even harder to understand that it could be hereditary.
I just look at everything and file it away.
Dan

[Lassen Forge]

Hmmm... maybe if the visions or feelings come to him naturally (just float into his consciousness) it happens, but if it's forced (like somoene asking a question) it doesn't. Psychic energy is strange that way sometimes...

bb

[can't sit still]

Sue, you may have hit the nail right on the head. While you're at it could you tell me where these visions or energies come from. My mind is quite stuck on a linear view of time. Tomorrow isn't perceptible because it didn't occur yet.
I've got a catalog with an interesting list of books. One of the books listed is about grammar and semantics dealing with time travel and time displacement. I thought Latin was hard. I'm not planning on studying TT semantics.
Dan

[Badger]

Mother nature rarely acquiesces to the desires of charlatans.

But the desires of charlatans often capitalize on the capricious nature of the Mother.

To speculate that some other species developed or visited Terra millions of years ago is not a difficult leap of logic.

How so? One corresponds to known laws/theories of physics. The other suggests a leap of faith. A HUGE leap of faith and nothing more. The logic tree you seem to be climbing appears bare and missing quite a few limbs to this reader when trying to make the connection. Most people I've spoken with who subscribe to inter(extra)-terrestrial visitations often exhibit a profound arrogance when challenged with the counter-points suggesting a physical impossibility to such sight-seeing excursions. The best examples to date being the idea of crop circles and the innumerable refutaions or the 'experts' - usually by the very folks who made them out of boredom. Same to be said of those who subscribe to the magic energy of crystals or weak magnetic fields manifesting curative properties for medical ailments or... St. John's wort for colds. The data (i.e 'proof') just isn't there.

[Ranger Genius]

Hmmm... maybe if the visions or feelings come to him naturally (just float into his consciousness) it happens, but if it's forced (like somoene asking a question) it doesn't. Psychic energy is strange that way sometimes...

bb

In other words, it only works when it is completely unverifiable? Once you remove the possibility of cheating it doesn't work. So the conclusion is that you should not remove the possibility of cheating?

[can't sit still]

[quote="Badger"][quote]Mother nature rarely acquiesces to the desires of charlatans.
[/quote]

But the desires of charlatans often capitalize on the capricious nature of the Mother.
Your comment is true I'm sure. But it has nothing at all to do with the incident concerning Swein mcDonald.
You won't give me a good run if you're simply grasping .

[quote]To speculate that some other species developed or visited Terra millions of years ago is not a difficult leap of logic. [/quote]

How so? One corresponds to known laws/theories of physics. The other suggests a leap of faith. A HUGE leap of [i]faith[/i] and nothing more. The logic tree you seem to be climbing appears bare and missing quite a few limbs to this reader when trying to make the connection. Most people I've spoken with who subscribe to inter(extra)-terrestrial visitations often exhibit a profound arrogance when challenged with the counter-points suggesting a physical impossibility to such sight-seeing excursions. The best examples to date being the idea of crop circles and the innumerable refutaions or the 'experts' - usually by the very folks who made them out of boredom. Same to be said of those who subscribe to the magic energy of crystals or weak magnetic fields manifesting curative properties for medical ailments or... St. John's wort for colds. The data (i.e 'proof') just isn't there.[/quote]
Badger, you're definitely a born sceptic. Obviously my belief or your disbelief have no effect on the truth. I keep my mind open and speculate. I do like your picture of the logic tree.
Crop circles are not on my list of terribly relevent things.
I hope that you have something more substantial to explain away the artifacts referred to as erratica.
I have no reason to fall back on arrogance. Visitation or no visitation,,,FTL or no FTL. Neither of us can prove anything. But keep in mind that if you say "something is impossible", you're usually wrong. In the early 19th century most people believed that you would die if you went faster than 30 mph.
There is a long list of "impossibilities" that have fallen in the dust of history, barriers that were created by the obstinacy of man and cast down by the ingenuity of man.
Are you familiar with the ongoing research concerning applications of elements that they hope to create from "The Island of Stability"?
Most advances in science were brought about by advances in materials.

Remember when the value of C was a fixed constant? Now science is having to redo some of the other "constants" I can't remember if it was Hubble's or Planks or who.
I'd say that it's now impossible to speculate on FTL travel given the disarray created by "dark matter" and string theory.

The given age of the universe is about 15 billion y. Our planet is given about 4.2 billion years. That leaves 10 billion years for systems to come and go. Some race could easily have started out 1 million or 1 billion years ahead of us. After studying the experiments on spontaneous formation of the precursors of RNA, I think that it's demonstrably inevitable.
I think that it's utter foolishness to try to tack on our percieved limitations to a race that might be immeasurably advanced from us.
Given that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the world I'd say that the odds are stacked immeasureably in favor of other sentient species.
Dan

[geekster]

It'll all be sorted out when they nail the Higgs boson. Either that or it won't.

[theCryptofishist]

It wasn't that long ago that the first dinosaur remains were found. Nobody believed at first.

Wrong. They've been finding dinosaurs and other fossils for centuries and millenia. Chinese "Dragon bones." Midevil europeans belived that fossils found were seeds that god had planted of plants and animals that then failed to grow. I've read an anyalisis that stated that the griffon myth could be based on finds of fossil protoceratopseses. What would a tea pot look like after it has spend millions of years in a bed of decaying vegitable matter being turned into coal by the metamorphic process of heat and pressure? I'm betting not like a silver tea pot...

Pretty much all of the alien visitor hypotheses I've heard violate occam's razor or are based on way to slim and anomalous evidence.

And this is from someone who knows that there's more out there, that it was only a few hundred years ago that meteorites did not "exist>"

[can't sit still]

Crypto, obviously you're correct. I should have said that it was only "recently" that they began to make sense of the finds.
Pitchblend was found centuries before Madam Curie made sense of it's properties.

""The second problem with the "simplest is best" equation is that Occam's razor never claims to choose the 'best' theory, but only proposes simplicity as the deciding factor in choosing between two otherwise equal theories. It's possible that, given more information, the more complex theory might turn out to be correct the majority of the time. Occam's razor makes no explicit claims as to whether or not this will happen, but prompts us to use the simpler theory until we have reason to do otherwise.""
Occam's Razor is only a preference not a fixed directive.It can't be violated. The human body is a magnificent contradiction of Occams Razor. It's chemical processes and balance are extraordinarily complex.

You're also correct, the teapot should be pretty mangled. I imagine that a coal bed is anaerobic as far as corrosion goes, but the pressure is undeniable.
Your comment on meteorites was somewhat cryptic Uuhhhh?
Dan

[theCryptofishist]

Not so long ago, th 1700s?, the idea that rocks could fall from the sky was completely false, as far as western knowledge went.

[Lassen Forge]

Hmmm... maybe if the visions or feelings come to him naturally (just float into his consciousness) it happens, but if it's forced (like somoene asking a question) it doesn't. Psychic energy is strange that way sometimes...

bb

In other words, it only works when it is completely unverifiable? Once you remove the possibility of cheating it doesn't work. So the conclusion is that you should not remove the possibility of cheating?

Didn't say that at all. What do you mean "completely unverifiable"?? You look at when the prediction was made, and see if it coorelates to the event predicted, and to what extent. That's not only verifiable, one could tell the degree of "psychic intuition" a person has or not by comparing the predection to the event (or non-event >>grins<<). There *is* the "lucky guess" scenario (Someone says something off the wall and it happens), there's the vauge one size fits many prediction ("You are thinking of someone you have met"), and there's the "too uncanny to be chance" stuff (There's an injured person with a broken left femur on this hillside, and sure enough, the person is injured as specified and right there).

What I alluded to, tho, is if you try to "push" a psychic "event" (prediction, whatever) into happening, the very act of trying to draw it out keeps you from doing so. Kinda like forcing yourself, as hard as you can mentally, to going into a hypnotic or meditative state. The harder you push, the more difficult it is to make it happen.

A psychic comes up to you and tells you "there's a woman dying in hat collapsed building right about there (as she points to the plans)". Your rescuers, at the same time, find a woman, almost deceased, in the building in the same area. Was the psychic right, or was it just dumb luck and coincidence there was the dying woman there, and that she was found? How do you prove either way? Or disprove?

Or you piss off someone who practices Voudoun, and they "curse" you. Bad shit starts to happen to you - you lose your job, your dog dies, your house catches fire. Was it the curse, or just a twist of fate that you got downsized, the dog ate a rabid bat, and your toaster shorted out?

It gets into personal beliefs, and ANY time you go there, it get's VERY hard to verify or not (and also gets very sticky as well...)

TFYT..
bb

[can't sit still]

Sue, just an observation on your observation..
The burden of proof can be any variable. Some people will believe anything.
"The International Flat Earth Society is the oldest continuous Society existing on the world today".

Some people won't believe anything.
When the president of the society was shown pictures of the earth taken from space, he replied, " I can see where an uninformed person might interpret these pictures incorrectly".

If only 1 instance of a supranormal or paranormal event can be proved beyond doubt, this opens a door that can't be slammed shut by any ammount of naysaying.
"proved beyond doubt" is the crux of the matter and it's not worth fighting about. Meteorites, lodestones and eclipses were all supranormal at one time. Now they're just rare. Time will tell.
Dan

[theCryptofishist]

Some people will believe anything.
"The International Flat Earth Society is the oldest continuous Society existing on the world today".

Dang, what about Ignatious Loyola's society of jesus?

[can't sit still]

Hi Crypto, I was quoting, hence the quotation marks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society

I appreciate your keeping me honest. Yes , the Soldiers of Jesus have been around a long time. I'm not sure if they were the only order that went armed,,,but they sure were effective at gaining converts. They were kicked out of a few countries for being overenthusiastic.

The flat earth people have evidently forgotten about Hermetics, Masons etc, etc. I have no idea how many eastern societies are ancient. My Indian brother-in-law told me that there is a society in India that devotes all its' time to seeing how high one can jump.
After visiting the sacred temple of the monkeys,,,I can easily believe it.
Dan

[Lassen Forge]

Like wood floating from Japan to North America...

DRIFT. Would it? >>grins<<

Hard to believe where this esoteric thread started, no?

BTW,
bb