Who's rattling your cage/tent?

[Gary Bills]

Probably just a Skyrod nothing to worry about.

I'm not at all sure what a Skyrod is - please explain...?

[Loop Erimder]

its a rod to catch fish in the sky :sarcasm: or something to do with unexplained mysteries i thinks. and the rods not relating to fishing rods me thinks

[Snape]

Skyrods are a ridiculous idea some people have about 'rod' shaped objects which appear in photos etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_(optics)

[StalkingLuke]

Probably just a Skyrod nothing to worry about.

I'm not at all sure what a Skyrod is - please explain...?

Skyrods,Skyfish or skysnakes are living organisms that in surprisingly large numbers are constantly flying about us but at such extreme speeds that they are rarely seen with the naked eye. It was not until fairly recently with the use of high speed filming techniques that they were first discovered. The race is on to be the first to capture one for closer examination.

Snape has yet to spot one in a test tube so is not yet convinced but there is plenty of scientific evidence as shown on the well respected youtube-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ3jWACKU3M

[Snape]

Probably just a Skyrod nothing to worry about.

I'm not at all sure what a Skyrod is - please explain...?

Skyrods,Skyfish or skysnakes are living organisms that in surprisingly large numbers are constantly flying about us but at such extreme speeds that they are rarely seen with the naked eye. It was not until fairly recently with the use of high speed filming techniques that they were first discovered. The race is on to be the first to capture one for closer examination.

Snape has yet to spot one in a test tube so is not yet convinced but there is plenty of scientific evidence as shown on the well respected youtube-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ3jWACKU3M

That does it. I'm convinced!

[Snape]

See Borges' "The Witness"
http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/borges.thewitness.pdf
Who will be the last witness of Clarissa or the Bishop or the King?

[Davyr]

I remember that well, toxo - very chilling! Here are the details:

THE EXORCISM
5 Nov 1972 / BBC ("Dead of night").

Writer & Director: Don Taylor.

Two couples spend christmas at a country cottage where they encounter the ghosts of a destitute family who had lived there years before and had starved to death. Events move to an unexpected and deadly conclusion.

With: Clive Swift, Anna Cropper, Sylvia Kay, Edward Petherbridge.

http://webspace.webring.com/people/th/h ... 70to75.htm

[TonyPrior]

Physicists usually keep away from this due to a lack of evidence when it comes to communication between possible dimensions.
The current way of thinking is that the way we perceive time is not the way it is. The other dimensions all exist (although on an unimaginably small scale) as do all possible pasts and futures. Time is a little like walking across a field through long grass. if you look back you can see the line you have flattened in the grass but the alternative possible paths (an infinite variety) lie outside your chosen path, looking to the front (the future) you have a infinite amount of possible paths ahead of you. In terms of probability you are more likely to walk the possible paths closest to you but all possible future paths exist. The difference is that in a field of paths you can move freely back and forward and side to side but we are limited to linear movement in time. Yesterday and the events that occurred still exist (like the frames in a film) but we do not have access to them any more. If you sit in a chair in which another sat yesterday in a very real sense that person is sitting in the chair but they are sitting in it yesterday and that does exist. Physicists will happily go this far but are unwilling to go as far as to suggest that some form of communication could be passed from that person to you.....

Thanks for the explanation. :hat: I'm embarrassed to admit I still can't quite get it. No shortfall in the explanation - I just don't have the sort of brain that can cope with the Big Bang, Relativity way of thinking. I once took ill trying to follow a public lecture by Roger Penrose.

Worm Holes and Strings apart, I think there are two other dimensions by which we humanoids experience the world. The first is the objective, universal dimension, by which things can be measured etc. A tap is a tap, a hat is a hat. Simples. The second is the subjective dimension. Inasmuch as, if we have no knowledge of a thing, it does not exist for us. Likewise, if we 'know' (sometimes aka 'believe') something, then it does exist. We construct, mentally, the world we live in. A hat to us might appear to be a water vessel to a desert-dwelling native. I.e. perception and the knowedge that is based on it has a plastic, uncertain and constructive basis. Short of the bizarre experiences of psychotics, delusions and hallucinations etc, very many people have harmless, strong beliefs, to the point of 'knowing'. Some of them share this knowledge-base/belief system with many others, but not with yet-others. Just like the ultra-elite of the scientific world.

There is a point at which one could argue that all knowledge is based upon concensus, shared 'stories' rather than an external reality. Given the imaginative capabilities of the human brain, and the tendency of brain-owners to find/construct congruence in personal experience, including the experiencing of congruent physical sensations and visions, stories about people being spooked by inexplicable physical events might perhaps regarded as no more strange than the hypothetical constructions of Professors Hawking, Penrose et al. This is not to disrespect achievement based on hard-core Newtonian science. Just a way, perhaps, of explaining some weird events.

BTW, I am not a tree-hugger, nor superstitious :D

[Snape]

Physicists usually keep away from this due to a lack of evidence when it comes to communication between possible dimensions.
The current way of thinking is that the way we perceive time is not the way it is. The other dimensions all exist (although on an unimaginably small scale) as do all possible pasts and futures. Time is a little like walking across a field through long grass. if you look back you can see the line you have flattened in the grass but the alternative possible paths (an infinite variety) lie outside your chosen path, looking to the front (the future) you have a infinite amount of possible paths ahead of you. In terms of probability you are more likely to walk the possible paths closest to you but all possible future paths exist. The difference is that in a field of paths you can move freely back and forward and side to side but we are limited to linear movement in time. Yesterday and the events that occurred still exist (like the frames in a film) but we do not have access to them any more. If you sit in a chair in which another sat yesterday in a very real sense that person is sitting in the chair but they are sitting in it yesterday and that does exist. Physicists will happily go this far but are unwilling to go as far as to suggest that some form of communication could be passed from that person to you.....

Thanks for the explanation. :hat: I'm embarrassed to admit I still can't quite get it. No shortfall in the explanation - I just don't have the sort of brain that can cope with the Big Bang, Relativity way of thinking. I once took ill trying to follow a public lecture by Roger Penrose.

Worm Holes and Strings apart, I think there are two other dimensions by which we humanoids experience the world. The first is the objective, universal dimension, by which things can be measured etc. A tap is a tap, a hat is a hat. Simples. The second is the subjective dimension. Inasmuch as, if we have no knowledge of a thing, it does not exist for us. Likewise, if we 'know' (sometimes aka 'believe') something, then it does exist. We construct, mentally, the world we live in. A hat to us might appear to be a water vessel to a desert-dwelling native. I.e. perception and the knowedge that is based on it has a plastic, uncertain and constructive basis. Short of the bizarre experiences of psychotics, delusions and hallucinations etc, very many people have harmless, strong beliefs, to the point of 'knowing'. Some of them share this knowledge-base/belief system with many others, but not with yet-others. Just like the ultra-elite of the scientific world.

There is a point at which one could argue that all knowledge is based upon concensus, shared 'stories' rather than an external reality. Given the imaginative capabilities of the human brain, and the tendency of brain-owners to find/construct congruence in personal experience, including the experiencing of congruent physical sensations and visions, stories about people being spooked by inexplicable physical events might perhaps regarded as no more strange than the hypothetical constructions of Professors Hawking, Penrose et al. This is not to disrespect achievement based on hard-core Newtonian science. Just a way, perhaps, of explaining some weird events.

BTW, I am not a tree-hugger, nor superstitious :D

What this alludes to is that we can never experience 'reality' directly. All our experiences come through the filters of our senses and in a very real way there may not be any absolute reality.
I teach a little bit of quantum mechanics and it is totally mind blowing to most people. The idea that a particle such as an electron is actually everywhere in the universe at the same time (super position) until an observation is made which causes the quantum wave to collapse and results in it being somewhere specific is so beyond most of our ability deal with that we don't but it is true.

[TonyPrior]

Hmmm- straight into Wittgenstein. No, leave him!

Far north in Scotland, very near Cape Wrath, there is a rather lovely sea trout and salmon river called the Dionard. Fished mostly by syndicate rods, and really quite undemocratic as far as access to ordinary folk went. My ordinary fishing companion and my ordinary self could get on to the lowest pool, the tidal sea pool, at an affordable rate, however. So we did. The pool is called 'The Jaws', probably more because of its shape than its inhabitants. At any rate, it's a pretty long, wide, deep pool, with a small cliff at the north side and a steeply sloping shingle bank on the south. We were fishing off the south bank late one lovely summer night as the tide went out. A moonless night and total silence apart from the swish of the fly lines and the odd splashes and swirls in the darkness from the silvery tourists waiting for the tide to turn in order to make their way upstream. I was perhaps 10 yards off shore, wading at the edge of the shelf-off, slightly apprehensive about falling in. Suddenly, I felt a firm hand on my shoulder and a voice that seemed deafening after the peace and in the silence: "Evenin'!". It was a young man, dressed in military-type fatigues. Summer job as a river watcher, ex-SAS or something like that. He was armed with a truncheon. He had crept across some 30 yards of shingle and waded out to stand right next to my side without my slightest awareness. I nearly fell in. Of course, all was well between us after we confirmed our right to be there, but somehow the fishing atmosphere was completely ruined. We packed in and went off to the pub shortly after. Who needs ghosts?