I'm the giant
WeReo_ScoTTy
The giant
Here I am adorning every garbage dump, sewer scour and lamppost in New York
City when I was "famous" lol. I've gone global.
This photo is taken way before the age of Wereo. I think you can find a LOT
more about it under the title of "Obey Master" or something like that. I am
the only one who matters.
Wookuu
"WeReo_ScoTTy" <scotta...@ixpres.com.no_spamm84037uj> wrote:
> I've gone global.
>
Translation: I AM A HUGE FAT UGLY PIG
--
"Scott Lifshine is the biggest joke on the Internet" -Desk Rabbit
�o|o�
Greendistantstar
> In article <lnJNm.17491$Sw5....@newsfe16.iad>,
> "WeReo_ScoTTy" <scotta...@ixpres.com.no_spamm84037uj> wrote:
>
>> I've gone global.
>>
>
> Translation: I AM A HUGE FAT UGLY PIG
You may need to apologize to all the huge, fat ugly pigs who may be insulted by this remark.
GDS
"Let's roll!"
thang ornithorhynchus
Look, those tinyurl pages all link to some signup for Yahoo so no damn
use at all.
Secondly, you need help, and quick. Megalomania is so symptomatic of
a veritable swathe of diseases and incapacities that you really need
to have some attention. Do it quickly and you won't regret it.
thang
thang ornithorhynchus
I like ya nick because it puts me in mind of some Frederick Pohl
stories. Shows some heart.
thang
Greendistantstar
Unfortunately for this demented muppet, such advice comes decades too late.
Were you to acquire a Yahoo email address and subscribe to this nutter's California Jam group, you
would see a veritable menagerie of madness; he's a self-chronicled kook par excellence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GTKTDaB03I&feature=related
GDS
"Let's roll!"
WeReo_ScoTTy
news:iLWdndwwB7ASZprW...@westnet.com.au...
thang ornithorhynchus
Nah I'm smokin' some nice white widow here at the moment and *its* the
only thing that matters...
thang
Greendistantstar
Doin' the white rhino at this end....
GDS
"Let's roll!"
WeReo_ScoTTy
news:qhdig5do4ojmb83ek...@4ax.com...
WeReo_ScoTTy
WeReo_ScoTTy
thang ornithorhynchus
<scotta...@ixpres.com.no_spamm84037uj> wrote:
What's a groc?
thang
Wookiez
thang ornithorhynchus <th...@spitzola.com.org.net> wrote:
THAT is PiGGy MADE-UP word for crocodile
--
"Scott Lifshine is the biggest joke on the Internet" -Desk Rabbit
(R)o|o(R)
WeReo_ScoTTy
thang ornithorhynchus
Doesn't tell me what it is though. You are being purposely evasive,
no? Can't be a croc because you only have little shrimpy alligators
over there.
thang
WeReo_ScoTTy
thang ornithorhynchus
<scotta...@ixpres.com.no_spamm84037uj> wrote:
We have a little thing called an estuarine crocodile. Its a nasty
mother, been around since the Mesozoic and, being perfectly adapted as
it is, just got a bit smaller over the millennia. Your 'gators have
thin snouts, brittle teeth and cowardly natures. Sorry 'bout that.
By the way, alligators do not grow to 20 feet. Salties do.
PS so what's a fucking groc?
thang
Greendistantstar
It's his pathetic attempt at ridicule, as in his mind, an Aussie is somehow offended by croc
references...lol!!
And 'groc'? Who knows why he'd use 'groc' instead of croc. He's all over the place like a mad
woman's breakfast.
GDS
"Let's roll!"
thang ornithorhynchus
Down here (or up here, depending on your universal orientation) we say
"all over the place like a mad woman shitting".
thang
btw, where _did_ you get your nick from? It reminds me of "Gold at
the Starbow's End" or somesuch.
Greendistantstar
'Down here' as in where? "All over the place like a mad woman's breakfast" is quintessential Aussie
slang. "All over the place like a mad woman shitting" I've not heard before, but I like it.
> thang
>
> btw, where _did_ you get your nick from?
My daughter thought it up when she was about six years old.
>It reminds me of "Gold at
> the Starbow's End" or somesuch.
There being no green stars, it's an interesting concept, and that's easy when you're six, eh?
GDS
"Let's roll!"
WeReo_ScoTTy
WeReo_ScoTTy
thang ornithorhynchus
<Greendis...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
Trust me, its quintessential Aussie. Another you may like is "God
pays debts without money".
>
>> thang
>>
>> btw, where _did_ you get your nick from?
>
>My daughter thought it up when she was about six years old.
>
>>It reminds me of "Gold at
>> the Starbow's End" or somesuch.
>
>There being no green stars, it's an interesting concept, and that's easy when you're six, eh?
From our perspective, yes. But then again, we aren't travelling at
hyperspeed (FTL). Frederick Pohl is a SciFi writer, as in futures
which have not occurred and probably won't.
>
>GDS
>
>"Let's roll!"
Woofe1z
"WeReo_ScoTTy" <scotta...@ixpres.com.no_spamm84037uj> wrote:
Notice how the SICK PEDO PiGGy has SUDDENLY PoPPed up at that thought?
--
"Scott Lifshine is the biggest joke on the Internet" -Desk Rabbit
�o|o�
Greendistantstar
I've never heard it. It must be a Qld thing ;>)
> Another you may like is "God
> pays debts without money".
Never heard that one, either.
>>> thang
>>>
>>> btw, where _did_ you get your nick from?
>> My daughter thought it up when she was about six years old.
>>
>>> It reminds me of "Gold at
>>> the Starbow's End" or somesuch.
>> There being no green stars, it's an interesting concept, and that's easy when you're six, eh?
>
>
> From our perspective, yes.
That's the only one we have.
>But then again, we aren't travelling at
> hyperspeed (FTL).
Nor is anyone else, but even if they were, still no green stars. There's no 'green shift' I'm afraid.
> Frederick Pohl is a SciFi writer, as in futures
> which have not occurred and probably won't.
Yes he is. I prefer Niven and Stapledon, but that's just me....
GDS
"Let's roll!"
Greendistantstar
Yup. Still, one is content in the knowledge he is going to be spending Thanksgiving on a Greyhound
bus on a fool's errand, assuming of course he can find the fare somehow.
GDS
"Let's roll!"
thang ornithorhynchus
<Greendis...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
Nah, its a Sydney thing, a crasser version of your quote.
>
>> Another you may like is "God
>> pays debts without money".
>
>Never heard that one, either.
It means essentially the same as Karma. Its a surfer saying from
around Woolongong.
>
>>>> thang
>>>>
>>>> btw, where _did_ you get your nick from?
>>> My daughter thought it up when she was about six years old.
>>>
>>>> It reminds me of "Gold at
>>>> the Starbow's End" or somesuch.
>>> There being no green stars, it's an interesting concept, and that's easy when you're six, eh?
>>
>>
>> From our perspective, yes.
>
>That's the only one we have.
Not at all. Its one of the benefits of sentience of a high order,
relatively speaking, that one is capable of utter flights of fancy,
such as in SF, or SciFantasy, etc, therefore adopting, even
imaginatively, other perspectives. Remember Carl Sagan's TV series,
part of which was hosted from the bridge of his spaceship of the mind?
Other perspectives (what about when you're smoking your white rhino,
betcha you have different perspectives then).
>
>>But then again, we aren't travelling at
>> hyperspeed (FTL).
>
>Nor is anyone else, but even if they were, still no green stars. There's no 'green shift' I'm afraid.
The red and blue shifts are analogous to the Doeppler effect, but no
one knows what happens in FTL flight. That's because its a flight of
fancy (at the moment). There is no shift at all, perhaps that distant
star *is* green from hyperspace or during FTL shift. Its all fantasy,
and as your daughter knew, anything is possible in the imagination.
>
>> Frederick Pohl is a SciFi writer, as in futures
>> which have not occurred and probably won't.
>
>Yes he is. I prefer Niven and Stapledon, but that's just me....
I read Olaf many many years ago and didn't mind him. Never liked
Larry Niven, but a good writer nevertheless (if you like hard SF). Now
Pohl is light years beyond either of them, but *thats* just me :)
>
>GDS
>
>"Let's roll!"
Greendistantstar
I'm from Sydney and I've never heard it. Must be a Western suburbs thing.
<ducks incoming>
>>> Another you may like is "God
>>> pays debts without money".
>> Never heard that one, either.
>
> It means essentially the same as Karma. Its a surfer saying from
> around Woolongong.
Having never surfed in the 'gong, I'll take your word for it ;>
>>>>> thang
>>>>>
>>>>> btw, where _did_ you get your nick from?
>>>> My daughter thought it up when she was about six years old.
>>>>
>>>>> It reminds me of "Gold at
>>>>> the Starbow's End" or somesuch.
>>>> There being no green stars, it's an interesting concept, and that's easy when you're six, eh?
>>>
>>> From our perspective, yes.
>> That's the only one we have.
>
> Not at all.
Yes, at all.
>Its one of the benefits of sentience of a high order,
> relatively speaking, that one is capable of utter flights of fancy,
> such as in SF, or SciFantasy, etc, therefore adopting, even
> imaginatively, other perspectives.
There can be green stars in your imagination, sure.
> Remember Carl Sagan's TV series,
> part of which was hosted from the bridge of his spaceship of the mind?
Yes, I remember Cosmos....
> Other perspectives
This isn't about 'perspective'.
>(what about when you're smoking your white rhino,
> betcha you have different perspectives then).
Yet reality remains unchanged.
>>> But then again, we aren't travelling at
>>> hyperspeed (FTL).
>> Nor is anyone else, but even if they were, still no green stars. There's no 'green shift' I'm afraid.
>
> The red and blue shifts are analogous to the Doeppler effect,
Changes in wave frequency for an observer moving relative to the wave *is* the Doppler effect. No
'analogous' here.
> but no
> one knows what happens in FTL flight.
There's a rather simple answer to that, now isn't there?
> That's because its a flight of
> fancy (at the moment). There is no shift at all, perhaps that distant
> star *is* green from hyperspace or during FTL shift.
It's illogical to discuss the finer points of something which is not real.
> Its all fantasy,
> and as your daughter knew, anything is possible in the imagination.
Almost anything.
>>> Frederick Pohl is a SciFi writer, as in futures
>>> which have not occurred and probably won't.
>> Yes he is. I prefer Niven and Stapledon, but that's just me....
>
> I read Olaf many many years ago and didn't mind him. Never liked
> Larry Niven, but a good writer nevertheless (if you like hard SF).
Sure do.
> Now
> Pohl is light years beyond either of them, but *thats* just me :)
Read AA Attanasiou's 'Last Legends of Earth'. Don't take my word for it, go to Amazon and read some
of the reviews. If you like hard Sci Fi as much as me, you'll find it jaw-dropping. That and Julian
May's Saga of The Exiles.
GDS
"Let's roll!"
thang ornithorhynchus
<Greendis...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
Haha (none of this LOL bullshit for me!) I don't come from Sydney, but
have lived in Mona Vale years ago, Linfield for a short while, and
Woolongong and especially Gerringong (surf city). Western suburbs
means bugger all to me, presently I'm on the other side of the
continent but you were right as to my origins. So, no "incoming".
So, do you like (Tooheys) Old or New? I'm and Old man meself.
>
>>>> Another you may like is "God
>>>> pays debts without money".
>>> Never heard that one, either.
>>
>> It means essentially the same as Karma. Its a surfer saying from
>> around Woolongong.
>
>Having never surfed in the 'gong, I'll take your word for it ;>
Yeah, I heard it first from a mate in Gerringong about 20 years or so
ago. Like it a lot. Much more eloquent than its counterparts.
>
>>>>>> thang
>>>>>>
>>>>>> btw, where _did_ you get your nick from?
>>>>> My daughter thought it up when she was about six years old.
>>>>>
>>>>>> It reminds me of "Gold at
>>>>>> the Starbow's End" or somesuch.
>>>>> There being no green stars, it's an interesting concept, and that's easy when you're six, eh?
>>>>
>>>> From our perspective, yes.
>>> That's the only one we have.
>>
>> Not at all.
>
>Yes, at all.
And this from a smoker of White Rhino? Hell, some of my more extreme
trippies have *certainly* shown me different perspectives. Lets wait
for the LHC to fire up proper, you might be otherwise instructed in
alternative realities, or perspectives.
>
>>Its one of the benefits of sentience of a high order,
>> relatively speaking, that one is capable of utter flights of fancy,
>> such as in SF, or SciFantasy, etc, therefore adopting, even
>> imaginatively, other perspectives.
>
>There can be green stars in your imagination, sure.
Well I am a great believer in the imagination and the fallibility of
science. Green, by the way, or red or blue, exist only in beings with
certain pigmented retinas. Colours don't exist in nature, as you
probably know. So, if you want to be specific, lets talk wavelengths.
Lets also talk about gas envelopes surrounding novae, which are still
technically stars, and therefore can be deemed "green" as the hot gas
is certainly "green". Remove the "green" perception (perspective?),
and talk bare wavelengths, which are all there is in cold space, and
we have "green" coming in at around 4000 Angstroms, of which there
*are* stars such as Vega and Sirius. However our eyes see this colour
as white, as we tend to use the black and white rods in our eyes,
using the cones (colour) only for the really bright stars. So,
technically, there are green stars.
>
>> Remember Carl Sagan's TV series,
>> part of which was hosted from the bridge of his spaceship of the mind?
>
>Yes, I remember Cosmos....
>
>> Other perspectives
>
>This isn't about 'perspective'.
>
>>(what about when you're smoking your white rhino,
>> betcha you have different perspectives then).
>
>Yet reality remains unchanged.
Don't agree. Cf Heisenberg and Bishop Berkely.
>
>>>> But then again, we aren't travelling at
>>>> hyperspeed (FTL).
>>> Nor is anyone else, but even if they were, still no green stars. There's no 'green shift' I'm afraid.
>>
>> The red and blue shifts are analogous to the Doeppler effect,
>
>Changes in wave frequency for an observer moving relative to the wave *is* the Doppler effect. No
>'analogous' here.
>
True, I tend to think of sound, but its the same effect.
>> but no
>> one knows what happens in FTL flight.
>
>There's a rather simple answer to that, now isn't there?
Disagree - you are applying old science and dogma here. Lets wait
for some decent LHC results to come in, now that both beams are
circulating. When one considers the possibility that there are many
many dimensions curled up in hyperspace (a very serious theory),
alternative impinging universes (the multiverse theory), vibrating
strings, tachyons which must travel *no slower* than the speed of
light, neutrinos which are massless and do not interact with matter
(see 2012 - just kidding, that's a spoiler I'm afraid - its a damn
junk movie, a big letdown), wormholes in the continuum, and so on, FTL
travel becomes a strong possibility, if not a probability. Who knows
what we will see in a few centuries from now, interfaces with bionics
will probably let us see natively in all spectra, including green for
Vega and Sirius etc.
>
>> That's because its a flight of
>> fancy (at the moment). There is no shift at all, perhaps that distant
>> star *is* green from hyperspace or during FTL shift.
>
>It's illogical to discuss the finer points of something which is not real.
>
So, discussing the finer points of God, Allah, Krishna, JHV, and so
on, is illogical? Tell more than half the world's population.
>> Its all fantasy,
>> and as your daughter knew, anything is possible in the imagination.
>
>Almost anything.
Anything. The healthy mind discounts nothing until proven by the
scientific method to be inappropriate (empirical observation). I
remember a long time ago learning the finer skills of brainstorming
with a group from my firm, all, and I mean, all, ideas for a vehicle
and its wheels were thrown onto a whiteboard. One was a vehicle with
square wheels. This was patently and obviously ridiculous, except
square wheels were much more efficient and effective for a vehicle to
cross stony, rocky terrain, than the usual doughnuts. It was in fact
a good idea.
>
>>>> Frederick Pohl is a SciFi writer, as in futures
>>>> which have not occurred and probably won't.
>>> Yes he is. I prefer Niven and Stapledon, but that's just me....
>>
>> I read Olaf many many years ago and didn't mind him. Never liked
>> Larry Niven, but a good writer nevertheless (if you like hard SF).
>
>Sure do.
Then, you like Hal Clement (the heavy world series in the old Analog
when John Campbell ran the show)? I liked him in my youth, but found
such technically based SF to be boring as I got older. Niven to me
was similarly hard SF.
>
>> Now
>> Pohl is light years beyond either of them, but *thats* just me :)
>
>Read AA Attanasiou's 'Last Legends of Earth'. Don't take my word for it, go to Amazon and read some
>of the reviews. If you like hard Sci Fi as much as me, you'll find it jaw-dropping. That and Julian
>May's Saga of The Exiles.
I'll try to find an ebook, rather than the reviews, or pick it up at
one of the libraries on the next run. I don't particularly like hard
SF, I prefer authors such as Silverberg, Brunner, Ellison, Pohl. AE
van Vogt, Laumer, Lafferty, Sturgeon, Kuttner, Leiber, Saberhagen,
Budrys, Long, Simak and so on. Oh yes, how can I omit Gene Wolfe or
James Tiptree, or...? I will read Attanasiou though and report in due
course (we are extremely OT here you know :)
>
>GDS
>
>"Let's roll!"
Hey, y'all Sydnesider, what's this sig doing here, you need something
Aussie perhaps rather than that dang plane that went down (but
admittedly, I saw the movie and it was great, especially the ending
when they took down those damn terrorists and then it pranged)
Hey, can I ask - why are you so down on this deluded Wereo bloke, he
is clearly ill and needs some form of light medication to calm him
down. However, I find some of his posts entertaining and no threat.
Has he upset you?
cheers
thang
"I first explored mescaline in the late '50s, Three-hundred-fifty to 400 milligrams.
I learned there was a great deal inside me."
Alexander Shulgin, LA Times, 1995
Greendistantstar
>> I'm from Sydney and I've never heard it. Must be a Western suburbs thing.
>>
>> <ducks incoming>
>
> Haha (none of this LOL bullshit for me!) I don't come from Sydney, but
> have lived in Mona Vale years ago, Linfield for a short while, and
> Woolongong and especially Gerringong (surf city). Western suburbs
> means bugger all to me, presently I'm on the other side of the
> continent but you were right as to my origins. So, no "incoming".
Northern beaches is my old stomping ground...Bilgola, Avalon etc.
Lived in Lindfield for a while too.
> So, do you like (Tooheys) Old or New? I'm and Old man meself.
I don't drink.
>>>>> Another you may like is "God
>>>>> pays debts without money".
>>>> Never heard that one, either.
>>> It means essentially the same as Karma. Its a surfer saying from
>>> around Woolongong.
>> Having never surfed in the 'gong, I'll take your word for it ;>
>
> Yeah, I heard it first from a mate in Gerringong about 20 years or so
> ago. Like it a lot. Much more eloquent than its counterparts.
It is.
>>>>>>> thang
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> btw, where _did_ you get your nick from?
>>>>>> My daughter thought it up when she was about six years old.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It reminds me of "Gold at
>>>>>>> the Starbow's End" or somesuch.
>>>>>> There being no green stars, it's an interesting concept, and that's easy when you're six, eh?
>>>>> From our perspective, yes.
>>>> That's the only one we have.
>>> Not at all.
>> Yes, at all.
>
> And this from a smoker of White Rhino?
Yup.
> Hell, some of my more extreme
> trippies have *certainly* shown me different perspectives. Lets wait
> for the LHC to fire up proper, you might be otherwise instructed in
> alternative realities, or perspectives.
Not all perspectives are equal.
>>> Its one of the benefits of sentience of a high order,
>>> relatively speaking, that one is capable of utter flights of fancy,
>>> such as in SF, or SciFantasy, etc, therefore adopting, even
>>> imaginatively, other perspectives.
>> There can be green stars in your imagination, sure.
>
> Well I am a great believer in the imagination and the fallibility of
> science.
I'm not sure we agree on the meaning of 'fallible'. Science does not claim irrefutable truth, but
rather successive appproximation. This is the path to truth, not like, say, a Roman Catholic pope
whose ex cathedra pronouncements are supposedly infallible. The latter is a rigid, dogmatic creed
which rejoices in its infallibility, and laughably so IMHO.
> Green, by the way, or red or blue, exist only in beings with
> certain pigmented retinas. Colours don't exist in nature, as you
> probably know.
Uh, yes they do, as wavelengths. The perception of colour is another matter.
> So, if you want to be specific, lets talk wavelengths.
> Lets also talk about gas envelopes surrounding novae, which are still
> technically stars, and therefore can be deemed "green" as the hot gas
> is certainly "green". Remove the "green" perception (perspective?),
> and talk bare wavelengths, which are all there is in cold space, and
> we have "green" coming in at around 4000 Angstroms, of which there
> *are* stars such as Vega and Sirius. However our eyes see this colour
> as white, as we tend to use the black and white rods in our eyes,
> using the cones (colour) only for the really bright stars. So,
> technically, there are green stars.
In a very convoluted sense there are.
>>> Remember Carl Sagan's TV series,
>>> part of which was hosted from the bridge of his spaceship of the mind?
>> Yes, I remember Cosmos....
>>
>>> Other perspectives
>> This isn't about 'perspective'.
>>
>>> (what about when you're smoking your white rhino,
>>> betcha you have different perspectives then).
>> Yet reality remains unchanged.
>
> Don't agree. Cf Heisenberg and Bishop Berkely.
Mate, do you *really* understand idealism?
>>>>> But then again, we aren't travelling at
>>>>> hyperspeed (FTL).
>>>> Nor is anyone else, but even if they were, still no green stars. There's no 'green shift' I'm afraid.
>>> The red and blue shifts are analogous to the Doeppler effect,
>> Changes in wave frequency for an observer moving relative to the wave *is* the Doppler effect. No
>> 'analogous' here.
>>
> True, I tend to think of sound, but its the same effect.
>
>>> but no
>>> one knows what happens in FTL flight.
>> There's a rather simple answer to that, now isn't there?
>
> Disagree - you are applying old science and dogma here.
And you are applying science fiction as though it were fact.
> Lets wait
> for some decent LHC results to come in, now that both beams are
> circulating. When one considers the possibility that there are many
> many dimensions curled up in hyperspace (a very serious theory),
> alternative impinging universes (the multiverse theory), vibrating
> strings, tachyons which must travel *no slower* than the speed of
> light, neutrinos which are massless and do not interact with matter
> (see 2012 - just kidding, that's a spoiler I'm afraid - its a damn
> junk movie, a big letdown), wormholes in the continuum, and so on, FTL
> travel becomes a strong possibility, if not a probability. Who knows
> what we will see in a few centuries from now, interfaces with bionics
> will probably let us see natively in all spectra, including green for
> Vega and Sirius etc.
No, FTL won't be a a fact or a greater probability no matter what happens with the LHC.
>>> That's because its a flight of
>>> fancy (at the moment). There is no shift at all, perhaps that distant
>>> star *is* green from hyperspace or during FTL shift.
>> It's illogical to discuss the finer points of something which is not real.
>>
> So, discussing the finer points of God, Allah, Krishna, JHV, and so
> on, is illogical? Tell more than half the world's population.
That they believe in things for which there's no evidence? It's illogical no matter how many believe
it, which in itself is a logical fallacy.
>>> Its all fantasy,
>>> and as your daughter knew, anything is possible in the imagination.
>> Almost anything.
>
> Anything.
No, almost anything.
> The healthy mind discounts nothing until proven by the
> scientific method to be inappropriate (empirical observation). I
> remember a long time ago learning the finer skills of brainstorming
> with a group from my firm, all, and I mean, all, ideas for a vehicle
> and its wheels were thrown onto a whiteboard. One was a vehicle with
> square wheels. This was patently and obviously ridiculous, except
> square wheels were much more efficient and effective for a vehicle to
> cross stony, rocky terrain, than the usual doughnuts. It was in fact
> a good idea.
Things that are impossible in the imagination are those that are logically impossible, which is a
separate 'impossible' from the physically impossible.
I've just finished coaching my son through his last year of a Philosophy degree, (for which he will
graduate summa cum laude) and this is a nice topic to discuss in Year 1.
>>>>> Frederick Pohl is a SciFi writer, as in futures
>>>>> which have not occurred and probably won't.
>>>> Yes he is. I prefer Niven and Stapledon, but that's just me....
>>> I read Olaf many many years ago and didn't mind him. Never liked
>>> Larry Niven, but a good writer nevertheless (if you like hard SF).
>> Sure do.
>
> Then, you like Hal Clement (the heavy world series in the old Analog
> when John Campbell ran the show)? I liked him in my youth, but found
> such technically based SF to be boring as I got older. Niven to me
> was similarly hard SF.
Not much hard sci fi I don't like.
>>> Now
>>> Pohl is light years beyond either of them, but *thats* just me :)
>> Read AA Attanasiou's 'Last Legends of Earth'. Don't take my word for it, go to Amazon and read some
>> of the reviews. If you like hard Sci Fi as much as me, you'll find it jaw-dropping. That and Julian
>> May's Saga of The Exiles.
>
> I'll try to find an ebook, rather than the reviews, or pick it up at
> one of the libraries on the next run. I don't particularly like hard
> SF, I prefer authors such as Silverberg, Brunner, Ellison, Pohl. AE
> van Vogt, Laumer, Lafferty, Sturgeon, Kuttner, Leiber, Saberhagen,
> Budrys, Long, Simak and so on. Oh yes, how can I omit Gene Wolfe or
> James Tiptree, or...? I will read Attanasiou though and report in due
> course (we are extremely OT here you know :)
>> GDS
Attanasiou is accessible, unlike some others I could mention.
>> "Let's roll!"
>
> Hey, y'all Sydnesider, what's this sig doing here, you need something
> Aussie perhaps rather than that dang plane that went down (but
> admittedly, I saw the movie and it was great, especially the ending
> when they took down those damn terrorists and then it pranged)
"Let's roll!" has multiple meanings, all of which resonate with me, including the one you refer to.
It's also a neat ref to grappling/Bjj which is another interest of mine.
> Hey, can I ask - why are you so down on this deluded Wereo bloke, he
> is clearly ill and needs some form of light medication to calm him
> down. However, I find some of his posts entertaining and no threat.
> Has he upset you?
Do you have kids?
GDS
"Let's roll!"
thang ornithorhynchus
<Greendis...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>thang ornithorhynchus replied:
>
>>> I'm from Sydney and I've never heard it. Must be a Western suburbs thing.
>>>
>>> <ducks incoming>
>>
>> Haha (none of this LOL bullshit for me!) I don't come from Sydney, but
>> have lived in Mona Vale years ago, Linfield for a short while, and
>> Woolongong and especially Gerringong (surf city). Western suburbs
>> means bugger all to me, presently I'm on the other side of the
>> continent but you were right as to my origins. So, no "incoming".
>
>Northern beaches is my old stomping ground...Bilgola, Avalon etc.
>
>Lived in Lindfield for a while too.
Lindfield was royalty in those days, I don't know what its like now. I
remember the city was just next door.
>
>> So, do you like (Tooheys) Old or New? I'm and Old man meself.
>
>I don't drink.
You should, there's a reason its legal (I mean, you smoke el doporama,
booze ain't so bad by comparison in moderation).
Trite but true. With the complex physiognomy of the human brain,
perspectives can't be equal (do you know combinatorial math?
Permutations and combinations of several billion cells arranged more
or less in a standard pattern is staggering. Therein arises each and
every sentient perspective)
>
>>>> Its one of the benefits of sentience of a high order,
>>>> relatively speaking, that one is capable of utter flights of fancy,
>>>> such as in SF, or SciFantasy, etc, therefore adopting, even
>>>> imaginatively, other perspectives.
>>> There can be green stars in your imagination, sure.
>>
>> Well I am a great believer in the imagination and the fallibility of
>> science.
>
>I'm not sure we agree on the meaning of 'fallible'. Science does not claim irrefutable truth, but
>rather successive appproximation. This is the path to truth, not like, say, a Roman Catholic pope
>whose ex cathedra pronouncements are supposedly infallible. The latter is a rigid, dogmatic creed
>which rejoices in its infallibility, and laughably so IMHO.
Yes, I worked in R&D for a while, hypothesis, experiment, observation,
validation, or iteration. Scientific method. Been around since Da
Vinci. Its when dogma strikes, such as the scientist at the turn of
the 20th century (who was it?) who said that everything had been
discovered and there was no need to go on. Then came Einstein, Bohr,
Heisenberg, etc.
Religion of course is strictly personal apart from those who
proselytize for whatever reason. Faith means belief without proof. A
bit like induction really, which you will appreciate from your own
field (to me the term "inductive reasoning" is like "army
intelligence").
>
>> Green, by the way, or red or blue, exist only in beings with
>> certain pigmented retinas. Colours don't exist in nature, as you
>> probably know.
>
>Uh, yes they do, as wavelengths. The perception of colour is another matter.
Beg to differ, mein herr. They are wavelengths in nature, colour in
humans and other organisms. Colours do not exist in nature, just
waves. Colours are perceptions, nothing more.
>
>> So, if you want to be specific, lets talk wavelengths.
>> Lets also talk about gas envelopes surrounding novae, which are still
>> technically stars, and therefore can be deemed "green" as the hot gas
>> is certainly "green". Remove the "green" perception (perspective?),
>> and talk bare wavelengths, which are all there is in cold space, and
>> we have "green" coming in at around 4000 Angstroms, of which there
>> *are* stars such as Vega and Sirius. However our eyes see this colour
>> as white, as we tend to use the black and white rods in our eyes,
>> using the cones (colour) only for the really bright stars. So,
>> technically, there are green stars.
>
>In a very convoluted sense there are.
Thank you.
>
>>>> Remember Carl Sagan's TV series,
>>>> part of which was hosted from the bridge of his spaceship of the mind?
>>> Yes, I remember Cosmos....
>>>
>>>> Other perspectives
>>> This isn't about 'perspective'.
>>>
>>>> (what about when you're smoking your white rhino,
>>>> betcha you have different perspectives then).
>>> Yet reality remains unchanged.
Well, I don't know so much. We still do not know the ultimate
reality, in part that is what the LHC is tooled up to do. Was it
Aristotle who coined the shadows on the wall in the cave as our
perception of reality? People walk by outside, and cast shadows, and
all we see is the shadows and we attempt to divine reality, what the
people who walk by, from those shadows? In order to say "reality
remains unchanged" I think you need to know (empirically) what reality
is. No one does...yet.
>>
>> Don't agree. Cf Heisenberg and Bishop Berkely.
>
>Mate, do you *really* understand idealism?
Hang on, let me refresh from my Phil 101 I took in the mid-80s. Damn,
I threw those books out after I passed the first year elective. Irving
Copi? Nah, that was logic. Ah, Richard Taylor (you would know him
wouldn't you, he died recently). Lets see. Metaphysics, 1974...in the
full 133 pages, he gives precisely three lines to "idealism" under the
beguiling chapter title, page 17, of "A Plethora of Theories".
"Idealists have simply denied the existence of matter, maintaining
that all bodies, including one's own, exist only as ideas in some
mind". That's it. What is there to understand? I doubt Heisenberg
was an idealist, he was a top notch scientist with unlimited intellect
and imagination who helped turn the world of physics upside down.
Berkely was a genius, simple as that, and a man of God. Yes, some
smart people believe in God.
>
>>>>>> But then again, we aren't travelling at
>>>>>> hyperspeed (FTL).
>>>>> Nor is anyone else, but even if they were, still no green stars. There's no 'green shift' I'm afraid.
>>>> The red and blue shifts are analogous to the Doeppler effect,
>>> Changes in wave frequency for an observer moving relative to the wave *is* the Doppler effect. No
>>> 'analogous' here.
>>>
>> True, I tend to think of sound, but its the same effect.
>>
>>>> but no
>>>> one knows what happens in FTL flight.
>>> There's a rather simple answer to that, now isn't there?
>>
>> Disagree - you are applying old science and dogma here.
>
>And you are applying science fiction as though it were fact.
Well, I think Arthur C Clarke (writer, Englishman, scientist, discover
of the geostationary orbit, etc etc) said that in the future,
scientific advances will be indistinguishable from magic (badly
paraphrased). This quotation has outlived him and its true. I never
apply SF, but I do look at it as sometimes very indicative, perhaps
predictive, of where we will be in the not so distant future.
>
>> Lets wait
>> for some decent LHC results to come in, now that both beams are
>> circulating. When one considers the possibility that there are many
>> many dimensions curled up in hyperspace (a very serious theory),
>> alternative impinging universes (the multiverse theory), vibrating
>> strings, tachyons which must travel *no slower* than the speed of
>> light, neutrinos which are massless and do not interact with matter
>> (see 2012 - just kidding, that's a spoiler I'm afraid - its a damn
>> junk movie, a big letdown), wormholes in the continuum, and so on, FTL
>> travel becomes a strong possibility, if not a probability. Who knows
>> what we will see in a few centuries from now, interfaces with bionics
>> will probably let us see natively in all spectra, including green for
>> Vega and Sirius etc.
>
>No, FTL won't be a a fact or a greater probability no matter what happens with the LHC.
Why? We have men of science saying that the LHC may open doorways to
other continuua wherein things from those continuua may enter our
universe and vice versa. We have such scientists, rational men all,
saying that the universe is averse to the LHC and its potential
discovery of the Higgs Boson, and is therefore jinxing the machine.
How can you just rule out common bottom-of-the-garden FTL travel? Very
dogmatic, but then again, philosophy, when I studied it (hah, studied,
that's a joke, I missed two out of three terms and still got a damn C
after my wife convinced me to turn up at the exams) was tenous and
difficult to grapple with and steeped in dogma. I much preferred
economic statistics, investment analysis, calculus, mathematics.
>
>>>> That's because its a flight of
>>>> fancy (at the moment). There is no shift at all, perhaps that distant
>>>> star *is* green from hyperspace or during FTL shift.
>>> It's illogical to discuss the finer points of something which is not real.
>>>
>> So, discussing the finer points of God, Allah, Krishna, JHV, and so
>> on, is illogical? Tell more than half the world's population.
>
>That they believe in things for which there's no evidence? It's illogical no matter how many believe
>it, which in itself is a logical fallacy.
I don't know about that. Baye's Theorem was formulated by a
Presbyterian Minister who was searching for mathematical proof of God.
There is no purer logic than statistics, it is the basis of the
structure of the universe. As an aside, Berkely, in your field, was a
religious man (A Doctor of Divinity no less) who was supremely logical
and contributed greatly to philosophy.
>
>>>> Its all fantasy,
>>>> and as your daughter knew, anything is possible in the imagination.
>>> Almost anything.
>>
>> Anything.
>
>No, almost anything.
>
>> The healthy mind discounts nothing until proven by the
>> scientific method to be inappropriate (empirical observation). I
>> remember a long time ago learning the finer skills of brainstorming
>> with a group from my firm, all, and I mean, all, ideas for a vehicle
>> and its wheels were thrown onto a whiteboard. One was a vehicle with
>> square wheels. This was patently and obviously ridiculous, except
>> square wheels were much more efficient and effective for a vehicle to
>> cross stony, rocky terrain, than the usual doughnuts. It was in fact
>> a good idea.
>
>Things that are impossible in the imagination are those that are logically impossible, which is a
>separate 'impossible' from the physically impossible.
Do you know of the mathematical field of tautology? The impossible
Kleins Bottle? You can make a moebius strip, I used to all the time
as a kid. Logical impossibilities (although a Moebius strip is only
an approximation in our 4 dimensional world, as is the Kleins bottle).
Look up the word tesseract. That is imagination, both logically
impossible and physically impossible, but only in our restricted 4
dimensional world.
>
>I've just finished coaching my son through his last year of a Philosophy degree, (for which he will
>graduate summa cum laude) and this is a nice topic to discuss in Year 1.
A three year degree in Philosophy, as in B.Arts majoring in
Philosophy? Its been a long time for me and I haven't kept up with
academia. And you are a tutor, or lecturer? Anyhow, congrats to him
for the hard work, I found Phil to be very difficult and rather
boring, I needed to grapple with math and the like. Hard to excel at,
hard to fail.
Do you mean, his style of writing is accessible as in easy to
understand? I detest obtuse writers, the more like Hemmingway, the
better.
>>> "Let's roll!"
>>
>> Hey, y'all Sydnesider, what's this sig doing here, you need something
>> Aussie perhaps rather than that dang plane that went down (but
>> admittedly, I saw the movie and it was great, especially the ending
>> when they took down those damn terrorists and then it pranged)
>
>"Let's roll!" has multiple meanings, all of which resonate with me, including the one you refer to.
>It's also a neat ref to grappling/Bjj which is another interest of mine.
No idea what that means. Elucidate?
>
>> Hey, can I ask - why are you so down on this deluded Wereo bloke, he
>> is clearly ill and needs some form of light medication to calm him
>> down. However, I find some of his posts entertaining and no threat.
>> Has he upset you?
>
>Do you have kids?
Well, I have children, they are all grown up and out on their own
(with their own kids). Are you saying he is a sex offender? Has he
paid his dues, or is he trolling or something? Not with you on this.
I thought from what he has been saying the bloke who pursues him with
the caps on and off was some sort of sex offender.
thang
>
>GDS
>
>"Let's roll!"
Greendistantstar
> On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:45:46 +0800, Greendistantstar
> <Greendis...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
>> thang ornithorhynchus replied:
>>
>>>> I'm from Sydney and I've never heard it. Must be a Western suburbs thing.
>>>>
>>>> <ducks incoming>
>>> Haha (none of this LOL bullshit for me!) I don't come from Sydney, but
>>> have lived in Mona Vale years ago, Linfield for a short while, and
>>> Woolongong and especially Gerringong (surf city). Western suburbs
>>> means bugger all to me, presently I'm on the other side of the
>>> continent but you were right as to my origins. So, no "incoming".
>> Northern beaches is my old stomping ground...Bilgola, Avalon etc.
>>
>> Lived in Lindfield for a while too.
>
> Lindfield was royalty in those days, I don't know what its like now. I
> remember the city was just next door.
Lindfield is still pretty and expensive. Chatswood you would not believe; it is now a city with
frikkin' skyscrapers.
>>> So, do you like (Tooheys) Old or New? I'm and Old man meself.
>> I don't drink.
>
> You should, there's a reason its legal (I mean, you smoke el doporama,
> booze ain't so bad by comparison in moderation).
I just hate the feeling that alcohol imparts. It's not a moral thing, any more than disliking the
taste of mushrooms etc would be. I like *the taste* of beer and red wine, just can't drink very much
before I feel the alcohol and that's when I stop.
That's one take.
>>>>> Its one of the benefits of sentience of a high order,
>>>>> relatively speaking, that one is capable of utter flights of fancy,
>>>>> such as in SF, or SciFantasy, etc, therefore adopting, even
>>>>> imaginatively, other perspectives.
>>>> There can be green stars in your imagination, sure.
>>> Well I am a great believer in the imagination and the fallibility of
>>> science.
>> I'm not sure we agree on the meaning of 'fallible'. Science does not claim irrefutable truth, but
>> rather successive appproximation. This is the path to truth, not like, say, a Roman Catholic pope
>> whose ex cathedra pronouncements are supposedly infallible. The latter is a rigid, dogmatic creed
>> which rejoices in its infallibility, and laughably so IMHO.
>
> Yes, I worked in R&D for a while, hypothesis, experiment, observation,
> validation, or iteration. Scientific method. Been around since Da
> Vinci. Its when dogma strikes, such as the scientist at the turn of
> the 20th century (who was it?) who said that everything had been
> discovered and there was no need to go on. Then came Einstein, Bohr,
> Heisenberg, etc.
Sure. But this on-going history is successive approximation at work.
> Religion of course is strictly personal apart from those who
> proselytize for whatever reason. Faith means belief without proof.
It does.
> A
> bit like induction really, which you will appreciate from your own
> field (to me the term "inductive reasoning" is like "army
> intelligence").
Induction is a 'native' reaction and while not infallible, it does help organisms survive.
We expect that the chair we're going to sit on isn't going to collapse beneath us when we sit on it
because after numerous interactions with the chair, it's always supported us; it's a reasonable
assunption to make. Of course, occasionally a chair *does* collapse - there's your 'fallibility'!
>>> Green, by the way, or red or blue, exist only in beings with
>>> certain pigmented retinas. Colours don't exist in nature, as you
>>> probably know.
>> Uh, yes they do, as wavelengths. The perception of colour is another matter.
> Beg to differ, mein herr. They are wavelengths in nature, colour in
> humans and other organisms. Colours do not exist in nature, just
> waves. Colours are perceptions, nothing more.
'Colours' exist as descriptors of the phenomena. This is analogous to the old "If a tree falls in
the forest and there's no-one around, does it make a sound?" canard. The falling tree will propagate
sound waves, and the ear-drum picks that up. Even if there's no ear drums, the sound waves still exist.
>>> So, if you want to be specific, lets talk wavelengths.
>>> Lets also talk about gas envelopes surrounding novae, which are still
>>> technically stars, and therefore can be deemed "green" as the hot gas
>>> is certainly "green". Remove the "green" perception (perspective?),
>>> and talk bare wavelengths, which are all there is in cold space, and
>>> we have "green" coming in at around 4000 Angstroms, of which there
>>> *are* stars such as Vega and Sirius. However our eyes see this colour
>>> as white, as we tend to use the black and white rods in our eyes,
>>> using the cones (colour) only for the really bright stars. So,
>>> technically, there are green stars.
>> In a very convoluted sense there are.
>
> Thank you.
You're welcome.
I referred to idealism only to highlight the direction you were heading down, viz existence being
tied to experience and that objects exist as perception, not as matter separate from perception.
>>>>>>> But then again, we aren't travelling at
>>>>>>> hyperspeed (FTL).
>>>>>> Nor is anyone else, but even if they were, still no green stars. There's no 'green shift' I'm afraid.
>>>>> The red and blue shifts are analogous to the Doeppler effect,
>>>> Changes in wave frequency for an observer moving relative to the wave *is* the Doppler effect. No
>>>> 'analogous' here.
>>>>
>>> True, I tend to think of sound, but its the same effect.
>>>
>>>>> but no
>>>>> one knows what happens in FTL flight.
>>>> There's a rather simple answer to that, now isn't there?
>>> Disagree - you are applying old science and dogma here.
>> And you are applying science fiction as though it were fact.
> Well, I think Arthur C Clarke (writer, Englishman, scientist, discover
> of the geostationary orbit, etc etc) said that in the future,
> scientific advances will be indistinguishable from magic (badly
> paraphrased). This quotation has outlived him and its true. I never
> apply SF, but I do look at it as sometimes very indicative, perhaps
> predictive, of where we will be in the not so distant future.
Yes, I like that quote too, and doubtless technologies of the far future would look like magic to us
here in the very early 21 century. But even so, we know the bounds the laws of physics place upon
matter and energy, and these bounds apply both here at the very depths of stellar space and are
likely to be so even in the far future. Talking about what might happen during FTL travel is fun but
it's no better than discussing the various shades of invisible pink unicorns.
>>> Lets wait
>>> for some decent LHC results to come in, now that both beams are
>>> circulating. When one considers the possibility that there are many
>>> many dimensions curled up in hyperspace (a very serious theory),
>>> alternative impinging universes (the multiverse theory), vibrating
>>> strings, tachyons which must travel *no slower* than the speed of
>>> light, neutrinos which are massless and do not interact with matter
>>> (see 2012 - just kidding, that's a spoiler I'm afraid - its a damn
>>> junk movie, a big letdown), wormholes in the continuum, and so on, FTL
>>> travel becomes a strong possibility, if not a probability. Who knows
>>> what we will see in a few centuries from now, interfaces with bionics
>>> will probably let us see natively in all spectra, including green for
>>> Vega and Sirius etc.
>> No, FTL won't be a a fact or a greater probability no matter what happens with the LHC.
>
> Why?
Because moving mass to beyond light speed would require energy > infinity.
The LHC isn't going to shed any light on anything being FTL.
>We have men of science saying that the LHC may open doorways to
> other continuua wherein things from those continuua may enter our
> universe and vice versa. We have such scientists, rational men all,
> saying that the universe is averse to the LHC and its potential
> discovery of the Higgs Boson, and is therefore jinxing the machine.
It might, but the chances are staggeringly small.
> How can you just rule out common bottom-of-the-garden FTL travel?
Because it's physically impossible and has nothing to do with what you're comparing it to.
>Very
> dogmatic, but then again, philosophy, when I studied it (hah, studied,
> that's a joke, I missed two out of three terms and still got a damn C
> after my wife convinced me to turn up at the exams) was tenous and
> difficult to grapple with and steeped in dogma. I much preferred
> economic statistics, investment analysis, calculus, mathematics.
So why didn't you do a double degree, you lazy bludger? ;>)
>>>>> That's because its a flight of
>>>>> fancy (at the moment). There is no shift at all, perhaps that distant
>>>>> star *is* green from hyperspace or during FTL shift.
>>>> It's illogical to discuss the finer points of something which is not real.
>>>>
>>> So, discussing the finer points of God, Allah, Krishna, JHV, and so
>>> on, is illogical? Tell more than half the world's population.
>> That they believe in things for which there's no evidence? It's illogical no matter how many believe
>> it, which in itself is a logical fallacy.
>
> I don't know about that. Baye's Theorem was formulated by a
> Presbyterian Minister who was searching for mathematical proof of God.
The Rev Bayes did not discover God.
> There is no purer logic than statistics, it is the basis of the
> structure of the universe.
Then you'll understand that a violation of Baye's Theorum is little different to a violation of
E=MC^2? You could entertain one, but not the other? How's that work?
> As an aside, Berkeley, in your field, was a
> religious man (A Doctor of Divinity no less) who was supremely logical
> and contributed greatly to philosophy.
He was and did, but that has nothing to do with the validity of faith.
>>>>> Its all fantasy,
>>>>> and as your daughter knew, anything is possible in the imagination.
>>>> Almost anything.
>>> Anything.
>> No, almost anything.
>>
>>> The healthy mind discounts nothing until proven by the
>>> scientific method to be inappropriate (empirical observation). I
>>> remember a long time ago learning the finer skills of brainstorming
>>> with a group from my firm, all, and I mean, all, ideas for a vehicle
>>> and its wheels were thrown onto a whiteboard. One was a vehicle with
>>> square wheels. This was patently and obviously ridiculous, except
>>> square wheels were much more efficient and effective for a vehicle to
>>> cross stony, rocky terrain, than the usual doughnuts. It was in fact
>>> a good idea.
>> Things that are impossible in the imagination are those that are logically impossible, which is a
>> separate 'impossible' from the physically impossible.
>
> Do you know of the mathematical field of tautology? The impossible
> Kleins Bottle? You can make a moebius strip, I used to all the time
> as a kid. Logical impossibilities (although a Moebius strip is only
> an approximation in our 4 dimensional world, as is the Kleins bottle).
> Look up the word tesseract. That is imagination, both logically
> impossible and physically impossible, but only in our restricted 4
> dimensional world.
Nope. Please imagine a round square.
>> I've just finished coaching my son through his last year of a Philosophy degree, (for which he will
>> graduate summa cum laude) and this is a nice topic to discuss in Year 1.
>
> A three year degree in Philosophy, as in B.Arts majoring in
> Philosophy?
Yup, (plus Communications/Media) and hons next year.
> Its been a long time for me and I haven't kept up with
> academia. And you are a tutor, or lecturer?
My wife is, so he's been fortunate.
>Anyhow, congrats to him
> for the hard work, I found Phil to be very difficult and rather
> boring, I needed to grapple with math and the like. Hard to excel at,
> hard to fail.
It's nowhere near as dry as it used to be.
Oh, you will love this book. Sentient black holes, alien species resurrecting humans from all ages
from DNA discovered 2 billion years after earth's destruction.....and that's just the beginning.
>>>> "Let's roll!"
>>> Hey, y'all Sydnesider, what's this sig doing here, you need something
>>> Aussie perhaps rather than that dang plane that went down (but
>>> admittedly, I saw the movie and it was great, especially the ending
>>> when they took down those damn terrorists and then it pranged)
>> "Let's roll!" has multiple meanings, all of which resonate with me, including the one you refer to.
>> It's also a neat ref to grappling/Bjj which is another interest of mine.
>
> No idea what that means. Elucidate?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVCKEbiEJNc
>>> Hey, can I ask - why are you so down on this deluded Wereo bloke, he
>>> is clearly ill and needs some form of light medication to calm him
>>> down. However, I find some of his posts entertaining and no threat.
>>> Has he upset you?
>> Do you have kids?
>
> Well, I have children, they are all grown up and out on their own
> (with their own kids).
Wonderful! Mine are younger, will leave home one day <crosses fingers> :)
> Are you saying he is a sex offender? Has he
> paid his dues, or is he trolling or something? Not with you on this.
> I thought from what he has been saying the bloke who pursues him with
> the caps on and off was some sort of sex offender.
It's complicated. Email me if you'd like.
Cheers mate
GDS
"Let's roll!"
thang ornithorhynchus
<Greendis...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
Fair enough. I once had an employee who didn't drink but most of my
clients did, and it was more or less obligatory for me to do so as
well. He listened, spoke, listened some more as the social lubricant
took effect, with the excellent results you can imagine.
That's one perspective :)
>
>>>>>> Its one of the benefits of sentience of a high order,
>>>>>> relatively speaking, that one is capable of utter flights of fancy,
>>>>>> such as in SF, or SciFantasy, etc, therefore adopting, even
>>>>>> imaginatively, other perspectives.
>>>>> There can be green stars in your imagination, sure.
>>>> Well I am a great believer in the imagination and the fallibility of
>>>> science.
>>> I'm not sure we agree on the meaning of 'fallible'. Science does not claim irrefutable truth, but
>>> rather successive appproximation. This is the path to truth, not like, say, a Roman Catholic pope
>>> whose ex cathedra pronouncements are supposedly infallible. The latter is a rigid, dogmatic creed
>>> which rejoices in its infallibility, and laughably so IMHO.
>>
>> Yes, I worked in R&D for a while, hypothesis, experiment, observation,
>> validation, or iteration. Scientific method. Been around since Da
>> Vinci. Its when dogma strikes, such as the scientist at the turn of
>> the 20th century (who was it?) who said that everything had been
>> discovered and there was no need to go on. Then came Einstein, Bohr,
>> Heisenberg, etc.
>
>Sure. But this on-going history is successive approximation at work.
Iteration is the foundation of the method, until the results either
match or closely approximate the hypothesis. We agree on this I can
see.
>
>> Religion of course is strictly personal apart from those who
>> proselytize for whatever reason. Faith means belief without proof.
>
>It does.
>
>> A
>> bit like induction really, which you will appreciate from your own
>> field (to me the term "inductive reasoning" is like "army
>> intelligence").
>
>Induction is a 'native' reaction and while not infallible, it does help organisms survive.
>
>We expect that the chair we're going to sit on isn't going to collapse beneath us when we sit on it
>because after numerous interactions with the chair, it's always supported us; it's a reasonable
>assunption to make. Of course, occasionally a chair *does* collapse - there's your 'fallibility'!
Or, we expect that we won't sink into the interstices between the
particles, which could happen in the fullness of time and
space...there is some more fallibility.
>
>>>> Green, by the way, or red or blue, exist only in beings with
>>>> certain pigmented retinas. Colours don't exist in nature, as you
>>>> probably know.
>>> Uh, yes they do, as wavelengths. The perception of colour is another matter.
>
>> Beg to differ, mein herr. They are wavelengths in nature, colour in
>> humans and other organisms. Colours do not exist in nature, just
>> waves. Colours are perceptions, nothing more.
>
>'Colours' exist as descriptors of the phenomena. This is analogous to the old "If a tree falls in
>the forest and there's no-one around, does it make a sound?" canard. The falling tree will propagate
>sound waves, and the ear-drum picks that up. Even if there's no ear drums, the sound waves still exist.
We are in agreement again.
Cigito ergo summa. There is no certainty except self.
>
>>>>>>>> But then again, we aren't travelling at
>>>>>>>> hyperspeed (FTL).
>>>>>>> Nor is anyone else, but even if they were, still no green stars. There's no 'green shift' I'm afraid.
>>>>>> The red and blue shifts are analogous to the Doeppler effect,
>>>>> Changes in wave frequency for an observer moving relative to the wave *is* the Doppler effect. No
>>>>> 'analogous' here.
>>>>>
>>>> True, I tend to think of sound, but its the same effect.
>>>>
>>>>>> but no
>>>>>> one knows what happens in FTL flight.
>>>>> There's a rather simple answer to that, now isn't there?
>>>> Disagree - you are applying old science and dogma here.
>>> And you are applying science fiction as though it were fact.
>
>> Well, I think Arthur C Clarke (writer, Englishman, scientist, discover
>> of the geostationary orbit, etc etc) said that in the future,
>> scientific advances will be indistinguishable from magic (badly
>> paraphrased). This quotation has outlived him and its true. I never
>> apply SF, but I do look at it as sometimes very indicative, perhaps
>> predictive, of where we will be in the not so distant future.
>
>Yes, I like that quote too, and doubtless technologies of the far future would look like magic to us
>here in the very early 21 century. But even so, we know the bounds the laws of physics place upon
>matter and energy, and these bounds apply both here at the very depths of stellar space and are
>likely to be so even in the far future. Talking about what might happen during FTL travel is fun but
>it's no better than discussing the various shades of invisible pink unicorns.
Much more fun that that. Take wormholes, instantaneous transmission
of matter, both are quicker than C. They don't have velocity though,
so apples are being compared with oranges. Would a wormhole be
considered "flight"?
>
>
>>>> Lets wait
>>>> for some decent LHC results to come in, now that both beams are
>>>> circulating. When one considers the possibility that there are many
>>>> many dimensions curled up in hyperspace (a very serious theory),
>>>> alternative impinging universes (the multiverse theory), vibrating
>>>> strings, tachyons which must travel *no slower* than the speed of
>>>> light, neutrinos which are massless and do not interact with matter
>>>> (see 2012 - just kidding, that's a spoiler I'm afraid - its a damn
>>>> junk movie, a big letdown), wormholes in the continuum, and so on, FTL
>>>> travel becomes a strong possibility, if not a probability. Who knows
>>>> what we will see in a few centuries from now, interfaces with bionics
>>>> will probably let us see natively in all spectra, including green for
>>>> Vega and Sirius etc.
>>> No, FTL won't be a a fact or a greater probability no matter what happens with the LHC.
>>
>> Why?
>
>Because moving mass to beyond light speed would require energy > infinity.
Agreed.
>
>The LHC isn't going to shed any light on anything being FTL.
All bets are off with the LHC and its results. It may well open
otherwise closed minds.
>
>>We have men of science saying that the LHC may open doorways to
>> other continuua wherein things from those continuua may enter our
>> universe and vice versa. We have such scientists, rational men all,
>> saying that the universe is averse to the LHC and its potential
>> discovery of the Higgs Boson, and is therefore jinxing the machine.
>
>It might, but the chances are staggeringly small.
>
>> How can you just rule out common bottom-of-the-garden FTL travel?
>
>Because it's physically impossible and has nothing to do with what you're comparing it to.
>
>>Very
>> dogmatic, but then again, philosophy, when I studied it (hah, studied,
>> that's a joke, I missed two out of three terms and still got a damn C
>> after my wife convinced me to turn up at the exams) was tenous and
>> difficult to grapple with and steeped in dogma. I much preferred
>> economic statistics, investment analysis, calculus, mathematics.
>
>So why didn't you do a double degree, you lazy bludger? ;>)
Well I did it part time while holding down 2 jobs and just after the
birth of my first child while my wife wasn't working, one job of which
was investigatorial with the Commonwealth, so I was not lazy. I
needed the degree to further my career and in fact get out of the
Gov't which I did. I was offered honours, but declined. I did my
last year of the degree full time while I was working and achieved 4
A's and 2 B's (6 half units) - overkill really because I was worried
about failing because of the load. During this year, my child was
hospitalised and I was told she might die, but of course didn't and
now has three kids of her own.
I know you are kidding, but I was not lazy and never have been.
>
>>>>>> That's because its a flight of
>>>>>> fancy (at the moment). There is no shift at all, perhaps that distant
>>>>>> star *is* green from hyperspace or during FTL shift.
>>>>> It's illogical to discuss the finer points of something which is not real.
>>>>>
>>>> So, discussing the finer points of God, Allah, Krishna, JHV, and so
>>>> on, is illogical? Tell more than half the world's population.
>>> That they believe in things for which there's no evidence? It's illogical no matter how many believe
>>> it, which in itself is a logical fallacy.
>>
>> I don't know about that. Baye's Theorem was formulated by a
>> Presbyterian Minister who was searching for mathematical proof of God.
>
>The Rev Bayes did not discover God.
No, if I can recall my stats year, he attempted to find proof of God
as a prime cause. It didn't work.
>
>> There is no purer logic than statistics, it is the basis of the
>> structure of the universe.
>
>Then you'll understand that a violation of Baye's Theorum is little different to a violation of
>E=MC^2? You could entertain one, but not the other? How's that work?
Let me ponder that one. I think there are no statistical
imponderables, they are strict laws (the Gaussian distribution for
instance, try dropping a few boxes of matches on a crack on the floor
and plot the number which fall on the crack as a curve - the normal
distribution, thanks Gauss). However, neither Einstein nor the
quantum boys have ever unified the two. Perhaps one is wrong? I'm no
physicist.
>
>> As an aside, Berkeley, in your field, was a
>> religious man (A Doctor of Divinity no less) who was supremely logical
>> and contributed greatly to philosophy.
>
>He was and did, but that has nothing to do with the validity of faith.
No by essence faith cannot be describes in terms of validity.
>
>>>>>> Its all fantasy,
>>>>>> and as your daughter knew, anything is possible in the imagination.
>>>>> Almost anything.
>>>> Anything.
>>> No, almost anything.
Well yes, no-one can imagine any more objects at once than about 7 or
eight - its a well known mental restriction. But I can imagine a
universe where 2 and 2 equal 5, without imagining that 2 and 2
actually add up to 5.
>>>
>>>> The healthy mind discounts nothing until proven by the
>>>> scientific method to be inappropriate (empirical observation). I
>>>> remember a long time ago learning the finer skills of brainstorming
>>>> with a group from my firm, all, and I mean, all, ideas for a vehicle
>>>> and its wheels were thrown onto a whiteboard. One was a vehicle with
>>>> square wheels. This was patently and obviously ridiculous, except
>>>> square wheels were much more efficient and effective for a vehicle to
>>>> cross stony, rocky terrain, than the usual doughnuts. It was in fact
>>>> a good idea.
>>> Things that are impossible in the imagination are those that are logically impossible, which is a
>>> separate 'impossible' from the physically impossible.
>>
>> Do you know of the mathematical field of tautology? The impossible
>> Kleins Bottle? You can make a moebius strip, I used to all the time
>> as a kid. Logical impossibilities (although a Moebius strip is only
>> an approximation in our 4 dimensional world, as is the Kleins bottle).
>> Look up the word tesseract. That is imagination, both logically
>> impossible and physically impossible, but only in our restricted 4
>> dimensional world.
>
>Nope. Please imagine a round square.
But there are many things which can be proven, but not imagined. Extra
dimensions curled up inside our universe for instance. Mathematically
shown.
>
>>> I've just finished coaching my son through his last year of a Philosophy degree, (for which he will
>>> graduate summa cum laude) and this is a nice topic to discuss in Year 1.
>>
>> A three year degree in Philosophy, as in B.Arts majoring in
>> Philosophy?
>
>Yup, (plus Communications/Media) and hons next year.
>
>> Its been a long time for me and I haven't kept up with
>> academia. And you are a tutor, or lecturer?
>
>My wife is, so he's been fortunate.
>
>>Anyhow, congrats to him
>> for the hard work, I found Phil to be very difficult and rather
>> boring, I needed to grapple with math and the like. Hard to excel at,
>> hard to fail.
>
>It's nowhere near as dry as it used to be.
That's good. I was at the time disappointed but also quite young and
idealistic, expecting much different.
I'll pass on that, its probably stuff I don't need to know and don't
want to know. He is a kook anyhow.
>
>Cheers mate
>
>GDS
>
>"Let's roll!"
regards to you
thang