Advocatus

I’ve noticed a lot of shows on even network are trying to be “edgy”, or at least as far as they can get away with.  I like for at least one character to be someone I can relate to in some way, to understand what he’s going through.  Characters who lie and cheat and murder I don’t have much sympathy for, so I don’t get interested in what they d…[Read more]

I don’t mean to change the focus of the thread, but no one seems to be biting at it anyway.  🙂  Personally I don’t see what the big deal about Game of Thrones is.  I don’t get HBO, but there was a free preview weekend recently and I got to watch an episode.  I didn’t see one single likeable character, so I lost interest before that episode was…[Read more]

Aiden wrote: “Your mind creates your reality, mind over matter, your own thoughts are a form of usable energy, aaand a few other pseudoscientific hypotheses…”

Well, I wouldn’t say that your mind “creates” reality, but your mindset certainly influences how you interpret reality.  If you’re depressed, everything seems bleak and forlorn.  If you hav…[Read more]

There are only so many faces when you think about it.  I once bought a copy of Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia”, and the portrait of More on the cover is the spitting image of my nephew, Robbie.

Think about how the invention of the airplane changed the world.  There’s hardly any place on Earth that doesn’t have an airport, and as soon as you get a…[Read more]

That’s the paradox.  Assume someone invents a time machine a hundred years from now.  As time goes on and more machines are built, there would be more and more time travelers visiting the past (our present).  There would be no way that we wouldn’t encounter one every now and then.  Oh wait, you say — there’s a government agency that strictly mon…[Read more]

Maybe we need to step back to the beginning, Aiden.  What kind of “physical manifestations” are you talking about?  Can you describe one or two of them for us?

I still have a land-line phone, but we get so many telemarketers calling, we don’t answer it unless we recognize the number.  It’s just constant all day long.  Yes, we’re on the “don’t call” list but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

TimB wrote:  “This note was just found next to a recently deceased person:
Oh dear God!!! I just learned that the atmosphere is 70% Nitrogen.  I am allergic to Nitrogen!!!  ackkkuhhhhhhh…
signed, Mitch Munchausen”

I saw what you did there.  That was hilarious!  🙂

I think that a lot of so-called “paranormal” activity is related in some way to stress or anxiety.  And when you convince yourself that there’s an “entity” haunting you, your anxiety level just goes up.  My advice, Aiden, would be not to belittle her experience and insist that it’s in her mind, because that will likely only push her away from y…[Read more]

“Trying to belittle our President?”  Looks like they don’t have to try very hard, do they?  He makes it so easy for them!  I have to admit that I used to be worried that Trumpkin’s laughable attempts at what he calls “diplomacy” were going to get us into a shooting war with North Korea, but it’s comforting to realize that there’s a Deep State of…[Read more]

One nice thing about Trump, you don’t have to strain your brain wondering if he’s telling the truth, partially lying, or totally lying.  If his mouth is open, you can pretty much count on anything he says being a lie.

This is why I don’t bother to argue with Climate Change deniers.  It seems to me that the things they’re recommending for the environment seem perfectly reasonable, WHATEVER the cause is.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s caused by human action or not.

TimB wrote: “Your frequent use of the term “deep state” also belies your credibility.   From the best I can gather, what right wing-nuts refer to as the “deep state” is all of the pre-existing bureaucrats who are essentially non-partisan, but just go to work everyday, trying to do the best they can for their country, not for a particular party.”

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I was watching “The View” yesterday, and one of the ladies said something about how the Obama administration was free of scandals, at least on the scale we’re seeing now.  The token conservative (Senator McCain’s daughter, actually), got very upset at this.  She stated that this is exactly why the whole country voted for Trump and will vote for h…[Read more]

I do vaguely seem to recall that in “The Sword of Shannarra”, at one point the wizard pulls out what is obviously a flashlight.  And at the time (this must have been the 80’s right?) my friends and I discussed the possibility the whole thing was set in a post-apocalypse future (although the characters didn’t step through some portal to get…[Read more]

Another variation is accidentally stepping through a doorway into time itself (like in “Planet of the Apes” when Taylor thinks he is on another planet until he suddenly realizes that he has merely traveled a thousand or more years into the future).  Not long ago I was watching one of those mystery mongering television shows claiming that…[Read more]

I’ve heard of the story of the green children. It’s a standard legend about visitors from Fairy land, because in folklore fairies always have either green skin or green hair or green eyes, and they live in an underground kingdom where there is no sun, which you reach by stepping through a magical portal which is there sometimes but not at other…[Read more]

And there could be any number of reasons that we don’t pick up their signals.  In my Star Trek fan fiction, I make the assumption that really advanced civilizations communicate with one another by subspace radio, which is not detectable by radio telescopes.

I think what you’re talking about makes sense, but it can’t be taken into account in a formula like this.  It’s just possible that there is an advanced civilization around Tau Ceti, only 12 light years away.  They started broadcasting peace messages three hundred of our years ago — until their funding ran out and they stopped, just 12 years b…[Read more]

Allergic reactions occur when the presence of an unfamiliar substance triggers an immune response from your body.  Since you’ve been living with water in your body ever since you were born, you couldn’t possible be truly “allergic” to it.  However if a person had pathological concerns about contamination in her drinking water, she might exhibit h…[Read more]