Ok, I remember when I first read on qt.... you're right, I'm not quite that old. I think it might serve to make the point, tho. I never meant to say, and don't think I did, that "the maths" imply anything about ESP; how you got that I canna fathom. It seemed to me a simple way to illustrate that over the years a variety of things formerly un-explainable become so, by way of suggesting the possibility only that such might apply to some things we don't now know or understand. It seemed clear enough, but obviously not sufficient.

Even in my approaching enfeeblement I do know what year it is, but thank you for the information. I've read a fair amount over the years, pre- and post-search engine, on the topic and related stuff. I think that I'm sufficiently aware of the distinction and body of info available (enough, anyway, maybe two or three hundred books covering the ground, to be able to follow on to more sources should I care to revisit all that) apart from my personal experience. I dropped a personal tidbit and figured that would be OK. How it got to some scrum has taken me by surprise. It was in no wise meant to be some examination of the field, fer Chrissakes.

Of course my "argumentation" is personal. That's all I ever said it was. Unless you want to hold my poor attempt at illustration against me forever, that is.

Sorry for delay - meat life intervened.

One thing I've long wanted - bigger screens (that I can afford, like that will ever happen) and good rez with small dot-pitch (or whatever they call it these days) so's one could have a thread expanded farther out, even put a copy or another thread right next to it, and still have room for a third whatever. Especially I'd like that capability for email. Having the software, wherever it lives, deliver all that is another story.

Yeah, I remember the AFQT from high school; I know many of my friends took it. I was tempted to take it if for no other reason than curiosity but had already gotten word that I'd been accepted for an Army-funded Merit, so there was no immediate need (depending on future grades and draft status, of course - this was back in '65). Anyway, sounds like what you took.

I'm glad you followed the link. Makes one feel better about making a suggestion when now and then someone takes you up on it. Yeah, interesting page, nicely laid out, covers all the basics and then some for constituting a solid, useful FAQ. There are some links there, and other sites. For some of the background, if your interest takes you there, there are a few worthwhile histories or memoirs that I found from the '70s-'80s - don't know how many are still in print. (I note that unless one lives in a good-sized city that used book stores are getting scarce. My town of now ~60k has none, down from three twenty years ago.) Richard Marcinko in "Rogue Warrior" has some good bits and pieces of how things started and the early days; if you find this stuff of interest there are some really good other books.

What I liked about the site was not only did it maybe serve to cull, as you say, but works for the idly curious as well as those who might qualify and want to dive in (right-o, that's a cheap pun).

Cheers.

Because it's personal experience. Because I'm not Uri Geller (nice scam, gotta admire his chutzpah; he made some money, met some chicks, and had more than his fifteen-minute share). Because I make no claims to anything beyond mentioning having had some experiences (which, by the by, I did not describe; they're private, and will remain so) that had physiological effects; I can conceive no tests nor posit useful explanation for those experiences. Wheat from chaff and all but there is an accumulation of reports of several phenomena going back beyond the Vedas (or Rigas or Upanishads - I fergit the proper terminology) but reported therein and elsewhere. Some appear to be nigh universal. Kinda like where there's smoke there's fire; but it does not do to confuse smoke with fog.

Way I see it, world is flat is a straw man or something. We've known, or had the info available to informed minds, or any simple observer with the opportunity to see it, for at least a good 2,500 years or so in writing (and who knows how long before) that the world is indeed spherical - ship's masts and Earth shadow on Moon, or just plain stadiametry. World is flat is a myth we were taught as part of the Christopher Columbus gig, and a religious "truth" decreed by some bishops or whatnot.

Being unable to explain something is not of itself grounds for dismissal of a thing, an observation, or an experience. I'll give some straw back - it wasn't until within the past century that we could sneak up on an adequate explanation for seeing the daytime sky as blue.

I remember when quantum tunneling was only implied by the maths. Over time there were enough observations of something happening and shaving with Occam left few choices for what was going on; experiments were devised based on developments in observational technique. Now that weird effect is taken for granted because we found a way to get a handle on forces formerly inaccessible. Right now we're looking for gravity waves and better hints of dark matter. Oh, and toss some entanglement into the salad of "spooky stuff".

More on point, while you might be able to work up a description of consciousness in action, could you provide me an explanation of its cause and how it works? Can you detect whatever it is and measure it? So far as I know, that has not yet been done, yet most of us accept that it is a real thing if for no other reason than that's all that we have to even allow us to talk about it or any other thing in Universe. For all I know it'll be shown to be an algorithmic matrix of spin states attendant protein-protein ion exchange in the brain as a whole (how's that for hand-waving?), or an expression of the various force fields involved by Universe thinking itself with each individual brain acting as a focus locus. Right now brain science is birthing as the new rocket science, and we haven't any Chinese firecrackers let alone a Robert Goddard. I do keep an eye on Douglas Hofstadter, tho.

"....who as a species are prone to bias, self deception, and credulity" Oh, my, yes, indeed. But I prefer taking it as one individual at a time and building up rather than the other way 'round. By the same lights, we have people who look around and see neat and interesting things and try to find what they are; to describe, measure, test, reproduce results, and continually try to disprove and refine operational truths as the living process of science.

In a way, a good scientist is like a well-disciplined mentally adept three-year old: "Wow, man, what's that?" And onward to how does it work and why does it work that way and not some other way. And for everything neatly catalogued and placed on the shelf, dusting them off from time to time, looking anew, and questioning. To me, this is the magic.

We have it that Universe in finite but has no edge. We also have it that Universe is infinite but closed. Wtf? What little I know is that it is chock-full of wonder. It makes for awe, and humility. I'll go with that, with science as companion. YMMV.

Sorry, man, timing was off and I missed it until after I had posted - then forgot on top of it. Congrats on your own catch - takes an honest intellect for that - and thanks for the reminder.

Don't know if you followed that link, btw, but it's makes for some quick and interesting reading. The guys I've met over the years have been in the main some very quietly impressive individuals and I'm happy to be able to call a few of them friends.

And you were right, in the respect that the "media" fastened on to the 6 thing like a piglet to a magic-milk teat. Does great for ratings while letting them claim professional reportage. Gah.

Ah, jeez, guys, I didn't need to be reminded of this stuff. Does it count that I haven't had a TV in seven years?

Not imaginary. Look stuff up, maybe. Read. Inform yourself past "Actually I did hear..." The Sovs had their own various programs contemporaneous with "Star Wars" as well, don't forget. There's also the crude rubric: you can break trail and give their spies something to do; you can stay abreast and hope for a balance of offense and defense; or you can learn from the other's mistakes, save time and money, give our spies something to do, and hope the other guy doesn't steal a march on you.

There was a boatload of basic and applied research in lasers, radar, discrimination, targeting, guidance, kill methods, and all the software to do all this stuff, to name a few. Some were apparent dead ends, more were not feasible due to limitations of materials or efficient controlled point energy sources; a fair amount of all that knowledge and some of the tech went into current weapons systems and some things found application in the civilian sector.

Can the claim be made, with whatever validity, that we outspent the Sovs? Sure. Did we piss all that money away? No. How to divvy up the gains and losses on those expenditures, that's another matter, and I suspect nothing more than maybe good approximation can be made. If you want to go full-bore St. Reagan, then how do you amortize current expenditures against projected ones in light of what price/benefit of the Wall coming down? Gives the bean counters something to do, and provides much fodder for think tanks and near-term historians.

Then there's a longer view. Some think it was close to a coin toss whether we or the Sovs tanked first. The religious economists will vehemently disagree but there's is nothing particularly long-term magical about capitalism per se so far as I can figure. After Clancy, "War is robbery writ large." then maybe capitalism is feudalism on a grand scale. I don't know. I stick with Mill and Fuller with a sprinkling of Galbraith (he writes nice and has interesting thoughts) and read a little bit here and there.

"Did you ever wonder why we never hear about Seal Teams 1-5?"

No. I was reading about them thirty and more years ago. For that matter, a friend I met in late '60s served in the teams in mid-'60s in Vietnam. It was 6 that for years was the quiet one, with portions of its funding, tasking, and operations off the books.

If your knowledge of things comes from what you casually come across on TV and don't bother to look up, then maybe that explains your question. If for some strange reason you don't think the Sovs didn't know about publicly announced operational military units or know how to look in the goddam phone book, then I don't know what.

Meanwhile, try: http://www.sealswcc.com/navy-seals-frequently-asked-questions-faq.html or goto Wikipedia.

MKULTRA (an umbrella term anyway) encompassed a whole lot more that the woo-woo stuff. There were experiments done with various mind-affecting chemicals on both witting and un-witting test subjects, for instance. The full (well, as full as they're likely to have been - I don't recall if there's still stuff in the pipeline awaiting future declass) disclosures, starting with the Church committee hearings, make for some fascinating reading. I think there've been a couple rounds of materials released since then as well.

Given the amount of time and money spent on real-world things in an earnest effort to find ways and means tends to preclude at least some of the efforts from being in the full-on scam category, I should think.

Yup. We don't know what consciousness is (although we putter with operational definitions) nor how it arises. For that matter we don't exactly have a great handle on un-consciousness, either - talk to an anesthesiologist sometime. The phenomenon of hypnosis is an odd one, too.

Don't know means don't know. That some phenomena exist or are said to exist outside of what we know, and know well enough to explain, can be an interesting grey area ripe for exploration. When over the course of millenia there is a significant weight of attestation, that might be a clue that something unknown may well be happening. But un-knowing also does not justify leaping to unfounded belief, either.

(That said, and I maybe shouldn't even mention it, but way back when I experienced - well, three mutally- experienced would be closer to it - a few things for which I can as yet find no scientific explanation. All three are mentioned by kind in some of the very old surviving writings, but I never learned Sanskrit. ;-) In one instance their were third-party witnesses at both ends to something happening, nature indeterminate. In the other two cases, both I and the other person knew something happened and let it go at that, making no further claims on belief about any particular this and that.)

Meanwhile I tend to go with science, while trying to keep a mind open enough to avoid bigotry and reined in enough so it doesn't all leak away.

"Actually most of the interest was in ICBMs."

Sorry, no. Separate tasks, separate methods. You can look up all the basics of the history easily with a few searches.

Early on there was a divergence in engineering. The commonalities were more in ablatives, control circuitry (later ICs and chips, then CPUs., guidance, and even in these, the needs diverged enough that so did those techs after a while.

While the U.S. Mercury and Gemini programs used re-built man-rated (and the IRBM, Redstone, for sub-orbital) ICBMs (Atlas and the several Titan and Titan II configurations) - because that's all we had with the necessary boost - missile development went to solid fuel (more stable for storage, very little prep for launch beyond enabling some squibs and verifying target co-ords); all the later man-rated boosters were liquid-fueled - lots of prep time, but they could be defueled and re-spotted, aborted, throttled and, later on, restarted. That decision, IIRC, was made by Ike very early on.

Further the throw weights and flight profiles were quite different, requiring substantially different designs. The space race was what it was, and it wasn't anything to do with warhead delivery. (I'm not counting FOBS; that was mutually outlawed about as swiftly as the basic capability was demonstrated. Nor do I count the armed Soviet recon stations - even they admitted it was not one of their better ideas, however nifty they were.)

Given the tenor and kind of the discussion to this point, one of the things we need is to find a sufficient common point of agreement, firmly eschew any a priori ideology, then start doing questioning and analysis based on energy flow and cost. The permanently attached rider is the question that's been central to what's passed for debate so far: what, exactly, will we do with the current and future members of our species (expected to peak ~10billions) who have no current or realistically projected place.

There's been entirely too much hand-waving away of problems; I see a lot of self-imposed blinders, based, often as not, on pre-concieved notions and comfortable prejudice. History can be a guide but in the face of something new it does not and cannot provide much of a useful map.

The elite will always do well, of course. Some take the view that this is as it should be. Perhaps we are not the human race unless a significant portion of us live in misery* (owning a cell phone while starving makes it ok, right?). Maybe that is correct, a universal truth, a necessary condition. That's a good question, I think. So it then boils down to keeping a lid on such unrest as may develop so's not to overly disturb the ritz and glitz - nor the coupon-clippers who glance at it all with bemusement. As for algae depletion, all that other stuff, well, really, that's what servants and scientists are for.

*best I can figure, throughout our history the single best-surviving yardstick of success measures having against not having - and that those that have are better able to pass on their genes and care for their young. Doesn't fly in the face of reality, but that hasn't disturbed the ideology of it a whit.

There are easily a half-dozen or so contenders but when I was a lad likely the two most common lies were "The check is in the mail." and "I'll pull out in time."

Magnets work by selective attraction, not to be confused with beer goggles. Look for the "This sign up." side.

"Maybe the IRS needs a better PR department more than it needs anything else."

That's you, and you just did a better job of it.

(I've had only a few dealings directly with IRS; in the two doozies, someone there was able to slice through the crap, provide clear answers, and resolve the situations - in one I paid, in the other the Treasury did, no hard feelings. I do feel fortunate in that I know a few people who've had greater difficulties in getting things made right. (My own experience in dealing with almost every issue with almost any company or agency is that half the solution is to be found in finding the correct person to speak with.))

SciAM October '86? I looked at the table of contents, didn't see anything obvious. So, what happened?

I do recall an article circa '88 by the three engineers at Hanford that re-built an unused research reactor in their spare time to show that with the right design one could shut off the main coolant line and have no meltdown. Guy sat in the control room, watched the temp rise for a while, then cool down over a period of three days. No damage to rods, core, etc.

Their paper was shelved and they all were transferred within six months or so.

Maybe I read a different article, but the fun I found talked about was the challenge of trying new ideas in reactor design - core geometries, fuel composition and cycle, fun stuff like that. Heck, we had a working thorium reactor for a while, but that stuff got nixed because it didn't fit with the weapons program. From Wikipedia:

"The reactor, built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, operated critical for roughly 15000 hours from 1965 to 1969."

Full article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power. Glenn Seaborg figured we'd be using thorium long ere now; even good ol' Eddie "H-Boom" Teller is in favor of using thorium.

The guys who built that were having fun, too, exploring alternate paths to power generation. Having fun does not equate to carelessness or caprice. Having fun does not imply goofing off or screwing around. Having fun does not mean being dangerous. If having fun meant a bunch of bad stuff happens, then none of us would have survived childhood. (Presuming, of course, that one has a childhood; I wonder about the kids these days - it looks to be mostly all thumbs.)

When one is allowed to apply play with hard work, good stuff happens. I've done it with house-building, renovation, and software, as part of a crew having fun building stuff. It's... fun. I recommend it.

I get some help from friends; a lady brought me a plate of Thanksgiving supper, and another let me do laundry a few weeks back (I've been washing small stuff out in my sink all year, otherwise.) There's an Interfaith Council in town that does stuff - rides and the like, but Jesus doesn't like felons, so that's a no-go.

I wouldn't mind so much, but I'm in worse shape now than when I came home from rehab on 13 December last year - although the pain is not so acute and I can get mostly full walking motion and full weight on the foot much of the time (providing I stretch real well; the Achilles tendon and such have tightened up considerably - I've lost about an inch, have to try to get that back.) Breathing is not so good half the time, the other half it's kinda bad. [grin] I asked the lung guy if he could put in a trap door so's I could use the space freed up by the lobectomy for a stash box, but he wasn't terribly amused.

One of the things I found most hurtful in all this is that from the time I called 911 to report a blood clot to the Fire Department getting me to the ER took an hour - and I'm eight blocks from the hospital, the FD five blocks away. But no way I could have walked it with the cane, let alone add to the risk of the clot busting loose and going to lungs or elsewhere. They weren't busy that night, either - I checked. If I had had the money in my pocket I would have taken a cab. They spent twenty minutes with me in the back of the ambulance in front of my house making me answer all their questions three and more times. Every time I raised my voice in pain they started over - said I wasn't cooperating. Had they gotten me to the hospital in timely fashion the heparin might have dissolved the clot, rather than the leg sealing off. We'll never know. But this is a city of rich folks, and they purely don't like los pobres.

In all honesty I think they were waiting for me to die. Towards the end, I heard one ask the other "Is he still back there?" "Yeah." "I guess we better go, then." DVT/VTE/lung embolism kills ~300,000 per year. (So if your doc says take warfarin, change your diet, and exercise - do it. I didn't have a forewarning, albeit the bypass to the same leg in '03 should maybe have been a clue.)

Thing is, if things work out reasonably well, a lot of this - except for the COPD - is temporary, apart from risk-management via on-going drugs regimen. I know a couple of people with worse stuff that they have to deal with full time. I hate having to compare myself to someone worse off to make me feel better, tho - it's not a practice I find acceptable or likable. On the other hand, as I told my Doc, "It's my body and I want it back." She just smiled, and shook her head a little. So, what the hell. You live long enough, things start crapping out.

The rehab place was also a hospice. Was a guy there, had to have every thing done for him. They'd park him in his wheelchair in the TV alcove by one of the nursing stations for the day. Every so often, he'd just enough control to push the wheels and he'd sort of aim himself down a hallway, saying "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go." until he ran into to something, then he'd start bawling or mewling. They'd fetch him back, soothe him down. Infrequently an aide would have some spare time to wheel him around the halls. He died while I was there.

The thought of ending up like that gave me the chills, ya know? To end up, trapped, with who knows what mind left - no, no way, man. I believe that everyone should have the simple right to decide for themselves about the whole quality of life thing - and be able to check out as and when they please, or have that stipulated in a living will if that control is not directly available to them (with confirmation, if that's possible, of course). My own druthers would be to pick a time, invite my friends, have a party, and say goodbye during the festivities. It'd be one helluva wake.

Thanks for your kind wishes; much appreciated.

One thing I think I've learned, long ago, is that even tho it might not be readily visible, most folks got stuff they got to deal with, one way or the other.