Post by Bob CasanovaOn Tue, 28 Jun 2016 09:40:10 -0600, the following appeared
Post by BruceSPost by Bob CasanovaOn Sun, 26 Jun 2016 16:48:20 -0600, the following appeared
Post by BruceSPost by Bob CasanovaOn Fri, 24 Jun 2016 14:33:55 -0600, the following appeared
Post by BruceSPost by Bob CasanovaOn Thu, 23 Jun 2016 23:55:15 -0400, the following appeared
in sci.skeptic, posted by Garrison Hilliard
Post by Garrison HilliardWith toll free numbers the charges are paid for by the party who is
called instead of the caller. Although area code 844 is not assigned
to a geographical area, calls to any toll free number may be
restricted by the customer. Other toll free area codes are 800, 855,
866, 877, and 888.
Good to know (I already knew it), but just a *teensy* bit
off topic for s.s...
That's as may be. The fact remains that it's the only post to s.s.
today (other than your response, of course) that my filters didn't
remove. I'm going to have to go ahead and thank Garrison Hilliard for
his contribution.
S.s went downhill when it became a forum for religion
instead of its stated purpose of discussion of claims of the
paranormal.
Even that would have been OK if the quality of such discussions were not
so low. We get a number of people from another, more
religiously-related group, who utterly fail to provide any rational
discussion, instead resorting to personal attacks, and justifying their
juvenile behavior by saying they've at some point in the past made
rational arguments and are now too tired to do so. I'm as happy to
discuss religion as to discuss mind-reading or homeopathy, as long as
it's with someone intelligent and reasonable. Actually, truth be told,
I've had a good bit of fun with at least one raving lunatic who claimed
magical powers, so that may be a slight exaggeration.
Remember Riley G? Earl Curley?
Nope. I guess I could check Google Groups for them. I do use twit
filters a bit, so if they weren't at all entertaining, I might have
only seen a few early posts from them.
They mostly had disappeared by 2000 or so; Earl Curley due
http://www.ratbags.com/loon/2001/06conspiracy.htm
I have no idea what happened to "Riley G., The Psychic
Detective" (usually referred to as the "Psychic (or
http://www.skepticfiles.org/skep2/rileyfaq.htm
I've opened both of those in my browser, skimmed a little, and will
read more later. Fortunately, I remembered to save the link location
from within Thunderbird, open new tabs in Firefox, and do the paste &
go there. I used to be able to just click on links here and they'd
open in new tabs in FF, but at some point that stopped working. Now it
just makes FF confused, and try to open the links when I close it. I
suspect some vast conspiracy of lizard-people are interfering with the
energies over the Internet, making my computer misbehave. Either that,
or I have a crap distro and need to find a better one.
Post by Bob CasanovaPost by BruceSPost by Bob CasanovaThe quality hasn't gone down from those two; I can't imagine
how it could. What *has* changed is the switch to off-topic
subjects as nearly universal ("nearly" only because there's
one occasional poster who claims personal supernatural
powers).
I can't think of any since Graham, my favorite paranoid schizophrenic.
Since I demonstrated that my own magical powers are seven times as
strong as his, he stopped wanting to talk to me.
*That* was it; Graham. Thanks; I'd forgotten his name (all I
could remember was <Something> Adam. I still chuckle at his
cloud images, especially of a supposed AK-47.
Graham has (or at least had) a number of claims. One was that he's
"Adam of the Bible", apparently reborn though possibly just really
old. He also claimed to be Hercules, and liked to call himself "Herc"
or "|-| E R C" or something like that. He claimed every movie ever
made was based on his life, which ends up being a bit of a
head-scratcher. That one with the guy's life being (unknown to him) a
TV show was the main one. The cloud bit was something to the effect
that, in his presence, clouds would form into clear images of things,
to the point that other people would notice and take pictures of them.
I told him about my many cloud pictures, which are very clear and
realistic, but he didn't seem impressed. My pictures don't require any
interpretation or added lines; pretty much anyone can recognize the
real-world items the clouds depict, and anyone familiar with
meteorology can even tell specific varieties (e.g. "that's clearly an
altostratus!"). His claims of mind-reading were convoluted, and that's
where I showed my "7 times" power, getting far better results than he
did in a sort of cold reading situation.
Post by Bob CasanovaPost by BruceSPost by Bob CasanovaPost by BruceSPost by Bob CasanovaSo effectively, almost 100% of the posts in the
past few years were off-topic. Just not quite this far
off-topic, especially if one considers "supernatural" fully
synonymous with "paranormal", which some do. I don't, even
though the OED lists supernatural as one of many synonyms
for paranormal; I consider paranormal to be about human
psychic claims while deities are included in the
supernatural. YM, of course, MV.
It does, but that's OK. As pedantic as I like to be at times, fighting
the tides of hoi poloi pollution of the language, in this case I'll
accept the OED. I remain a skeptic of claims of all sorts of natures,
when those claims don't seem well supported by empirical data. For any
of that, sci.skeptic remains as good a place as any to argue the claims.
I agree, but only to the extent that the claims are subject
to test and subsequent verification or disproof. Claims of
individual paranormal abilities qualify. Religious claims
don't, which is why science addresses the first but not the
second. And s.s was designed as a scientific newsgroup.
Good point. While we can discuss religious claims at great length, the
fact remains that the "evidence" provided to support them is limited to
the anecdotal, popular, and circular varieties. I remain open minded,
to both religious claims and other forms of magic, in the hope that
*someone* can at least make an honest attempt to provide empirical
evidence to support his claims. It's that tendency to optimism in the
face of repeated disappointment that makes me ideal as a software
developer.
It's a good tendency for anyone who does any sort of
development, software *or* hardware. I did both, so I know
where you're coming from. ;-)
I'm not a real hardware developer, but I do have a breadboard and a
bunch of chips, mostly quad NAND, that I used to play with a bit.
Post by Bob CasanovaPost by BruceSPost by Bob CasanovaPost by BruceSBack on topic, I haven't bothered to do any sort of fact-checking on the
claim about those area codes. I could really care less whether it's all
true. Not a lot less, not even enough to justify the work of a quick
search, but less.
I haven't verified all of the specific area codes, but I
know by experience that at least some of them are correct,
as is the ability of the subscriber to restrict access.
I knew some of them to be correct, but didn't know about the restricted
access at all, so you're ahead of me there.
So now here we are, reduced to discussions of topicality. I *almost*
want to make some claims of personal magical powers, just to get
something started. I guess I'll go search some videos on Nostradammit,
or something like that. Or maybe look for some prepper stuff; that's
usually amusing for a while.
Sounds like a plan...
I watched a bit, but got tired of it quickly. The loon factor in
Nostra fans is wearing. As for my own "powers", I'll say here that I
have the ability to predict the future, with great specificity and
precision. This includes objectively measurable events such as
throwing dice and picking stocks. For example, I can predict
tomorrow's closing price of a GE stock to the penny, and can predict
the outcomes of the next four times you throw a fair six-sided die. In
a similar vein, I can speak to the dead, though Shakespeare fans will
get the caveat to these abilities.
Now, if only this group had enough of an audience for any of that to
start something.