Madelaine McMasters

Perrie Juran wrote: /me wiggles her tail. Now that's a cosmology I can get a handle on!!!

ROB34466IIIa wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Certainly you can think of parallel examples? The one that keeps recurring to me is by Johannes Keppler, who was certain the heavens were of divine order : "Mensus eram coelos, nunc terrae metior umbras Mens coelestis erat, corporis umbra iacet." Divine order is still in the minds of a great many exceptionally bright and knowledgable people. Although I'm sure Kepler was miffed by Brahe's observational data, he did ultimately let go of his perfect solids and embrace the elipse, which he could argue is still a pretty devine shape ;-) Planck is another example. He went to his grave unable to accept that his "quanta" were not a figment of his imagination. I find that both sad, amusing, and a reminder that dogma doesn't dog only the religious. The example I had in mind can no longer be found at Holiday Inn.

Phil Deakins wrote: To be honest, I don't believe she's studied it at all. It's much more likely that she read something about it about 40 years ago, and she's read stuff about it as she came across it since then. No study, no research, just occasional browsing or stumbling on things. Just like the rest of the stuff she claims. E.g. she must have read something about a brown dwarf in the Oort Cloud and naturally believes it to be an absolute. And she must have read someone's wild idea about Amelia wotsername and Star Trek, and believes it to be an absolute. And, naturally, anyone who doesn't believe the guff she readily swallows must be an intellectual pigmy, or whatever put-downs she uses. Well, I think that's what I was getting at. She read something about the Van Allen belt written prior to our exploring it sufficiently to know how to fly through it. That satisfied her curiosity, so no further input was sought or even allowed. You don't believe that to be "studying the subject". I don't either. But, it's possible Lucinda does. Good luck trying to shake that belief. And so we get to a discussion of how to respond to things like this. Do you just walk away, or do you put up resistance to the promulgation of false information for the benefit of those who are ignorant of the facts but still curious? We're neither saving nor destroying the world here, so I think there's latitude.

Phil Deakins wrote: (referring to Lucinda) You strike me as a person who likes to believe there are conspiracies everywhere, and who likes to believe every 'odd' whim that anyone comes up with. It's no wonder that people seem to find what you write to be unreliable. And that's being kind. "Like" might not describe what's at work here, Phil. We are wired for irrational beliefs, including the belief that we always act rationally and that we "know" things to be true. One might consider examining a 1958 sketch of and article about the Van Allen belt for 40 years to be the same as studying the belt itself. Certainly you can think of parallel examples?

Nyll Bergbahn wrote: Spot on Dillon. I did some research on this and atmospheric phenomenon seems to be the most plausible explanation. It is said that the sun rose on the 11th January in Ilulissat, two days earlier than expected but there are no photographs or data relating to this. People should remember that for this area, the sun rises almost due south and for the ceremony of watching the sun rise, the locals go to the top a nearby hill looking over the Ilulissat Fjord. It's not watched from the town itself. On the 13th January, the sun rose, just peeping over the horizon, as expected although said to be 30 minutes late. What gives credence to the atmospheric phenomenon is that the sun did not rise on the 12th January at this location, thus dispelling any nonsense about a shift in the tilt of the Earth. This is a photo of sunrise from the hill above Ilulissat on the 13th January. The tilt of the Earth occurs over a period of 26, 000 years so 13,000 years each way before it gets back to where it was. Any change in the Earth's tilt would have been immediately noticed by every observatory in the world whose telescopes are permanentl polar aligned and this did not happen. It would have made headline news in every paper and media. It just did not happen. The tilt of the Earth is exactly what it should be. Agreed. Robotic telescopes, now readily available to people of modest means (I have an LX-200), would immediately reveal any unexpected change in planetary/stellar/solar position, as they contain ephemeris data that should be good for the life of the telescope. I hope to watch Venus transit across the Sun on June 5. I caught the last one in 2004 but won't be around for the next in 2117. If the Sun, the Earth, or Venus are not where they're expected to be, thousands of amateur astronomers, including me, will be ringing up news desks all over the world.

Marigold Devin wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Marigold Devin wrote: It often makes me laugh out loud that people wish to climb to the top, but the top of what? Ego is a strange thing. I am also old and tired. When I was 16-18, I would meet my young friends at certain places in my town, and the world belonged to us and us alone. We knew it all. Now the town belongs to the 16-18 year olds, and they know it all, of course. :matte-motes-wink: Ignorance can be bliss. I fear I am ignorant in many things, but what I don't understand, I endeavour to learn about, and if I ever put anyone down, it is done unintentionally. You started a potentially interesting thread, you must focus on the like-minded within it, and discard the flippant and unkind. If someone treats you like you do not matter, better not to even acknowledge they exist, because we don't know what lies behind harsh words, not really; maybe simple arrogance, maybe mental illness. Mari, your "you must focus on the like-minded" seems to contradict your "I endeavour to learn". Do we learn from the like minded? As as to Lucinda's focus, it does seem laser-like to me. Does it seem to? And yes, you can learn from the like-minded, those being people with similar interests and leanings, rather than those who dismiss your beliefs, if you get what I mean. Luci, like everyone, knows what she knows, researches what she's interested in, and just seemed to me to wish to discuss those interests. What followed was a mix of like-minded people also wishing to discuss the theories, along with "the usual" people who just wanted to put her down for wanting to discuss something a little bit out of their range of interest. So I don't believe my statement was contradictory at all. I've seen Lucinda put down a lot of people who have presented facts which seem to be outside her range of interest. I think I could mount an argument that facts themselves are outside Lucinda's area of interest. Perhaps she's a performance artist, who knows. I am reminded of "balance in journalism" arguments which claim that every argument has two sides, with the implication that those sides are equally valid. That's simply not true. The preponderance of the evidence is against Lucinda's contentions here. When that is pointed out she puts down the presenter. I have had long civil discourses with people who's beliefs I do not hold. Sometimes they move my needle a little. That's unlikely in Lucinda's case, as her arguments are often neither factual nor rational. If pointing that out feels harsh or arrogant, I don't know what's to be done about it. I enjoy satire, but not sarcasm. It's tricky to avoid turning the one into the other when only a few people are involved. Lucinda eppears to enjoy sarcasm, but only if she's delivering it. It hardly seems fair for her to decry receiving it in return.

Lucinda Bulloch wrote: It is, I tried to isolate whether a hole in the magnetosphere could create sounds with the air at the bottom(top of atmosphere) and with the electro magnetic particles caught up in eddies at the top of the hole reacting with the solar wind, I thought that would be simple, but it seems none wanted to focus on that and wanted to focus on whether I am a worthy person or other outlandish things like making sounds in space and with bodies millions of miles away, as I am unable to express what I was looking for I have given up, I thought what I have said at the start would be seen for what it is as described above but this is not a chat to have with most of the people here. http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q1852.html http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_6_111/ai_87854873/ I heard a whistling meteor one night back in 1993 or so. The sound seemed to emanate from the power/telephone wiring just over my head at the exact instant of a very bright flash as the meteorite streaked overhead. Alas I did not see it directly, just my shadow moving across the ground, it was that bright. Ham radio operators hear meteorites all the time. That said, if you wish to detect the ultimate cause of these sounds, we've been doing it for ages with radios. I'm not terribly worried that people are hearing things which aren't being detected already by other means. There is, I think, a common misperception that only big governments have the ability to see certain things, and they regularly hide them from us. In fact, there are a great many amateur eyes and ears watching and listening all the time, all over the world, under different governments and having different cultures and beliefs. Many amateur astronomers are also ham radio operators, and there are even amateur radio-astronomers in the mix. So, all those eyes and ears can easily communicate DIRECTLY with each another across the globe if they wish, with no "censored internet" between them. Given these facts, I think a conspiracy of silence would be hard to achieve on such a grand scale. http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/sao/guest/evans/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2048797/Amateur-skywatchers-Tenerife-impact-threat-asteroid.html http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/asteroids/3305146.html?showAll=y&c=y

Ruby Reynaud wrote: Thanks Madelaine for your reply and the great information! I can see I still have a lot to learn about building I'm excited to try this all out tonight ! Thank you! I'm right here in class with ya, Ruby! /me hands you half her Kitt-Katt and blows a raspberry at the learning curve.

Marigold Devin wrote: It often makes me laugh out loud that people wish to climb to the top, but the top of what? Ego is a strange thing. I am also old and tired. When I was 16-18, I would meet my young friends at certain places in my town, and the world belonged to us and us alone. We knew it all. Now the town belongs to the 16-18 year olds, and they know it all, of course. :matte-motes-wink: Ignorance can be bliss. I fear I am ignorant in many things, but what I don't understand, I endeavour to learn about, and if I ever put anyone down, it is done unintentionally. You started a potentially interesting thread, you must focus on the like-minded within it, and discard the flippant and unkind. If someone treats you like you do not matter, better not to even acknowledge they exist, because we don't know what lies behind harsh words, not really; maybe simple arrogance, maybe mental illness. Mari, your "you must focus on the like-minded" seems to contradict your "I endeavour to learn". Do we learn from the like minded? As as to Lucinda's focus, it does seem laser-like to me.

Ruby Reynaud wrote: Hi Scooter! Thanks for your reply. This is a house I bought over a year ago, before mesh was popular. Is it likely that it would still contain mesh? Also--I know how to choose one side of a prim to texture but didn't know I could texture one prim while it's linked to 20 others. You are saying this is possible? thanks! Yes Ruby, as mentioned elsewhere here, check the "Edit Linked" box and you can then select the individual prims in the linkset. The reason to do it this is that you will preserve the ordering of the prims in the set, which may be important to scripts within. When you unlink, that ordering is lost. Upon re-linking, the last prim selected as you aggregate for the link becomes the root prim. If you drag select the entire set, I'm not sure how the ordering is determined. In addition, if I recall correctly, the root-prim propagates its phantom/non-phantom setting to all child prims. There is a script workaround for this that exploits a bug allowing child prims to be set phantom. If your house was not all phantom, it's possible that such a script made phantom the child prim that now blocks you because the prim ordering has changed and the script is phantomizing the wrong prim. Of course I could be completely wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.

valerie Inshan wrote: Yay Maddy! You know, I've been thinking about your comment on my pic last night. Considering ajja and me are supposedly "larger" breeds, that would be some 32 years or so we've been together in dog years! Translating Dog Years into Human Years Age of dog Small breed - age in human years Medium breed - age in human years Large breed - age in human years 1 15 15 15 2 24 24 24 3 28 28 28 4 32 32 32 Well then, I need to increase the size of my CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

valerie Inshan wrote: Good morning happy hippies! Hugs ya all! Have a coffee with me? I'm not a coffee drinker, but just this once I'll have a cup of regular. No de-cat for me! Good morning, Kids!!!

Randall Ahren wrote: Cinnamon Mistwood wrote: I believe there is no pure good or pure evil. Just shades of gray, everything in balance. Cinn Instead of good and evil, let's just consider good and bad. If there was no good and bad, would art still exist? There would be no way to distinguish a bad painting from a good painting. Just hang anything on the wall and call it art. We've been hanging just anything on the wall and calling it art forever, Randall. It's not about good or bad, it's about variation in taste resulting from a combination of things, including cultural and environmental influences, personal nature, social effects and the environment of the art itself (galleries would not worry about presentation if art was impervious to it). When I see or hear famous art, the first question I ask myself is what succeeded most, the art, the artist or the advertising. When I hear a friend wax rhapsodic about the transcendent nature of the unicorn on black velvet hanging over the commode in her newly redcorated powder room, the reality of it slowly sinks in. The men in her life will gaze on it and cringe, likely unaware that the women in her life will not. Beauty is in the mind of the beholder. Cinn, I don't think good and evil are in balance. If the overall prosperity of mankind is "good", then I think good has been winning the war while we focus on the battles she's lost.

Lucinda Bulloch wrote: so you know about the duds then? Dad lost his duds in a wind powered washing machine on Guam when a typhoon blew through.

Griffin Ceawlin wrote: Lucinda Bulloch wrote: the fact that she was on star trek suggest murdered Wut? Actors are expelled from the Guild upon death, accidental or otherwise. If you can tolerate wooden performances, this saves considerable cost, as you don't have to pay scale.

Lucinda Bulloch wrote: It is more likely that she was either lost or murdered, the fact that she was on star trek suggest murdered, she may have stumbled on some things but some very odd things went on, like the issue of known dud fuses on torpedo's, it is still not known why all US subs that went out to sink japs oil tankers only had 1 or 2 torpedo's working, the top brass knew this but allowed it, maybe they didn't want to beat Japan so quickly and needed to drag the war out, don't know. My Dad was in the submarine service just prior to Pearl. The reason each sub carried only one or two viable fish is that the South Pacific Islanders paid so handsomely (well, actually prettily) for torpedo juice.

Lucinda Bulloch wrote: Every one knows about that one but very few people know of the others and that the USA and Russia did a few things together while the cold war was on, so I think a lot of the cold war was false as they both helped each other to develop them, I must say that was one of the oddest things about the cold war, china have only just got in on the act, so they were kept out of it but are part of the club now. What about the supposed Liechtenstein LIDAR installation on Nikumaroro? That thing has been station-keeping a Lockheed Electra at the Earth-Moon L2 point since shortly Amelia Earhart stumbled across something she shouldn't. I have my doubts about Earhart's survival of the Electra's passage through the Van Allen belt on 100 octane, but believe Fred Noonan was protected by a signficant ingestion of 100 proof.

Griffin Ceawlin wrote: Mmm hmm. An evil CIA/Mossad plan. Yep. If you think that was an evil plan, wait till you see mine!

Griffin Ceawlin wrote: Lucinda Bulloch wrote: the USA NEVER WENT TO THE MOON. Yeah, it all took place on a sound stage. :matte-motes-sarcasm: It did!!!!

Randall Ahren wrote: Or as Bukowski's epithet states "don't try". @Maddy, Richard Feynman thought that one of the great heritages of Western civilization was Christian ethics. The answer to every question does not lie within the technical arts. Perhaps the answer to why one should be nice is better answered from a religious or moral perspective. Kindness is the beginning of wisdom, not technical mastery. Randall also wrote: Got a book for you: Be The Worst You Can Be - Life's too long for patience and virtue. He said that in 1956. If you'd asked him about Christian ethics just after the A-bomb drops, when he was walking the streets of New York, wondering why everybody was smiling in the face of almost certain doom, he might have had a different view. If you'd asked him in 1988, as he was dying, me might have had a different view yet again. We've learned a lot in the last 56 years and I don't imagine Feynman would be surprised to see that science has pushed back on the metaphysics so far that naturalism has gained many adherents. He might still think that doesn't matter. In that paper, Feynman addressed (I think) the practical state of things, which is that our beliefs and need for inspiration were gonna hang on to the bitter end, particularly in light of the "cargo cult science" that so often accompanies discussions of religion. His observation that our morality and need for inspiration doesn't seem to erode in the face of the vanishing metaphysics is certainly noteworthy. He doesn't explain why he thinks morality and inspiration seem to run independently of (meta)physics, but people are working on explanations. We evolve much more slowly than we are advancing technologically and socially. So, evolutionary lag comes to mind in explaining the seemingly unchanging nature of morality and the need for us to think about it in the face of social advances it might not handle well. Life was vastly simpler just a few evolutionary moments ago. It may also be that the way we reason (or that we reason at all) evolved to think about gaps or errors in unconscious morality. That said, it's hard to reason through the moral consequences of things that themselves are too complicated to fully comprehend. So, our ability to reason might have limits as well, but it's a pretty neat evolutionary adaptation. Feynman was an athiest and saw no point to, or reason for, existence. I could certainly be wrong, but that belief would seem at odds with thinking that morality is some external thing with intent, guiding us. And so Feynman's "Christian Ethics" have no Christ in them. He simply seemed happy to know that, given our propensity to be moral to some degree, institutions had popped up to codify guidelines to help maximize our outcome. I also don't think Feynman meant to say that Christian ethics were somehow different from or superior to others, but that they were ours and he appreciated them. If science someday pulls back the curtain on the full workings of the human mind (I believe that would count as technical mastery), and discovers that it's all biochemistry and "nothing more", will we still have legions of believers in "more"? Will that belief yield better morality than the truth? That's a future Feynman didn't address.

Hippie Bowman wrote: Thank you Parhelion! You are right! Happy Sunday to you and all! Peace! Happy Sunday to you two and all!

Eileen Fellstein wrote: my guess is it was rezzed right next to or partially on the sim line of your property, or on top of an object (like flooring etc) that slightly overlaps. Objects can get easily flung just about anywhere from sim crossings, even if they arent in motion, though being in motion amplifies the problem greatly. I've had things get pushed underground when rezzed near other objects. If I rez something between my sofa and ottoman (both have sculpties that probably have collision boundaries larger than what I see), there's a chance I'll have to dig it out of the floor.

Randall Ahren wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Well, for one who seems to derive a world view from anecdotes, what are my chances of providing an answer to any question you pose? It isn't easy having a mind that operates on a higher plane than everyone else, is it? Maybe you're trying too hard?

Randall Ahren wrote: None of which is an answer to the question that I posed. Well, for one who seems to derive a world view from anecdotes, what are my chances of providing an answer to any question you pose?

Randall Ahren wrote: The question I posed was "Why to be a better person" as opposed to "How to be a better person". We already know how, it's obvious. Don't lie or cheat, share, be friendly, clean up after yourself, be considerate, etc. Everyone already knows this. But why do it? Does evil really exist? Or is it just something imagined? The light from the stars shines down with cold indifference to both good and evil. Theories of the evolutionary advantages of altruistic behavior have been around for a long time. Game theorists are the latest to tackle this subject. If survival is desireable (good), then I think we have at least some grasp of the "why".