A Busy Holiday Weekend

Posted on November 30, 2008 by Tyson Koska

I’m sure it’s too soon to do another open thread.

So… let’s do another open thread!

Last time I learned so much about vampires and zombies, I can’t wait to hear what’s on your minds!

Filed under: Open Thread |

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15 Responses

  1. Miriam Brown, on December 1, 2008 at 12:11 am said:

    ok … i’ll jump right in … many many things rattling around in the noodle these days.

    But I think this is rather intriguing …

    Memories may be stored on your DNA – 26 November 2008 – New Scientist
    Patterns of chemical caps on our DNA may be responsible for preserving both long and short-term memories, suggest experiments in mice

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026845.000-memories-may-be-stored-on-your-dna.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20026845.000=

    Reply
  2. Jesse, on December 1, 2008 at 10:05 am said:

    i’ll throw first punch and i’ll always preface with this, i am by no means an expert on anything but i love to write passionately about what i like….would anyone like to debate these subjects or off shoots to them:

    the disappointing finale to the Shield

    why (american) football is great

    the existance of ghosts

    will gas prices go up?

    Reply
  3. Megan, on December 1, 2008 at 10:19 am said:

    if every action has an equal and opposite reaction, not only what goes up must come down (i.e. gas prices) but what goes down must come up (i.e. gas prices).

    i do not believe in ghosts but i’m not willing to put myself in situations in which i might be proved wrong.

    apparently nostradamas made a prediction that in 1999 the 7th months something would happen to the new city and if you interpret this to really say “9111 september month”, then he predicted the attack on the twin towers. personally, i don’t buy it. i learned this yesterday on the history channel.

    albert einstein is beyond amazing.

    Reply
  4. Mike, on December 1, 2008 at 12:01 pm said:

    I will “tackle” some of your topics Jesse,

    Football is great b/c of fantasy football. (terrible I know) But why else would games such as tonights MNF game (Jacksonville @ Houston) game matter to me? answer: b/c I will watch 3 hours of football hoping Houston’s kicker has at least 10 points. again, i readily admit this is terrible and somewhat pathetic. but its my hobby.

    I have the beliefs as Megan on the ghost issue

    gas prices: They will go up after people forget what $4/gallon gas is like and people start buying SUVs again.

    Reply
  5. Megan, on December 1, 2008 at 12:09 pm said:

    on a humorous and scary note…my mother saw signs outside of a gun store in Delaware that is counting down the days until Obama’s inaguration saying these are the number of days you have left to buy your fire power. She saw this and was alarmed at this blatant advertisement to assassinate Obama during the ceremony. I informed her that the primary goal of the sign was more than likely to insight gun lovers to buy now since Obama is going to “ban guns” once in office. It made me chuckle until I wondered how many other uninformed were thinking the same thing but where not alarmed or disgusted by the sign….

    Reply
  6. Anna K., on December 1, 2008 at 7:52 pm said:

    @ Megan: we lived in rural Alaska when Clinton was elected, and many of our neighbors started buying AK-47s and other weapons of mass destruction because a Democrat was going into office and was going to take away all of their guns. If I owned a gun shop, I would vote Democratic and be manning the D campaign offices. 😀

    @ Jesse: I grew up in a 200 year old farmhouse that I was convinced was haunted, but I talked myself out of it and decided that the noises & the occasional sense of not being alone even though I was physically alone, were just my (admittedly active) imagination. Some years later we moved, and my parents kept the house and rented it out for fifteen years. Few renters stayed for long, and in every case, a few months after each person/family/set of roommates moved in, my folks would get a phone call and be informed that the house was haunted. The college students who lived there seemed to like the ghost, and one of them, who was a grad student in English literature who claimed to be sensitive to ghosts, said that it was a man who died around 1900. Another renter, a single woman, broke her lease and left in an enormous hurry, and said she would no longer stay there. My folks found that she had barred the basement door with duct tape and then jammed a couple of pieces of her furniture against it, because she was convinced that the ghost came from the basement. Another couple, where the wife was from Scotland, reported that the ghost had started to materialize but disappeared when the husband screamed. (According to the wife, she had grown up in a 300 y.o. haunted house and such things were common to her and she was hoping the ghost would show up.) So a few years ago I asked my parents if they thought it was haunted, and they reported the same kinds of things happening that I had sensed as a child, but they had never said anything to us kids, because they thought it must be their imaginations . . .

    So, I don’t know. Maybe the house, being so old and rather isolated, was the sort of place that fosters one’s imagination, or maybe it was haunted. Hard to say.

    I don’t know if American football is great, but an American football audience, in the person of my husband, is GREAT. He yells. He leaps. He swears creatively. He slides down off the chair moaning in boneless agony. He whoops in triumph and pumps his fist and screams stuff like GO, BABY, GO, BABY, GO, BABY GOOOOOO!!! And: RIP HIS HEAD OFFFFFFF!!!!! Watching him watch football is the best, especially when I stand in front of the TV as a key move is being played.

    I know it is wrong, but I just can’t help myself.

    Reply
  7. Jesse, on December 2, 2008 at 7:49 am said:

    sorry i did write back last night…got busy.

    i’m a rather new fan of football (approx. 8 years) which has gradually risen over the years. of course it started with the Raven’s Superbowl win in 2000. the whole surrounding area was in a magically blissful state. i would go to the grocery store and everyone would be happy and smiling! for the Baltimore area…this is special. i’ve come to appreciate other teams while discovering the complexity of whole experiance. Mike, you are so right, that game was horrible last night if you don’t have money on the game or have a vested fantasy interest. maybe i’ll have time and interest for fantasy when i hit the decade mark of my fandom.

    (claps hands and starts rubbing) Okay….here we go! Anna, i am a believer in ghosts and Tyson and I have conflicted on many occasions. I’ve had some personal experiances that i can’t just brush off to imagination. My father’s side of the family has a long history with the paranormal and the accounts that i hear i mull over with skepticism (if i’m allowed to use that word when speaking of the paranormal and believing in it’s existance). I know it’s scientifically impossible for a non-physical entity to make a sound when there is no voice box to form it but i’ve heard my name called with no physical person in the room.

    the interesting thing is all the people that i have heard personal accounts from with ghosts have the perchant to believe in a higher power. does this solely discredit their accountability to a skeptic….or will a truely skeptical person always discredit what they have experianced if it doesn’t fit logic 100% by definition?

    Reply
  8. Tyson Koska, on December 2, 2008 at 9:10 am said:

    Since my name was invoked I feel compelled to jump in! First, being “skeptical” doesn’t mean one has to be always and constantly “logical” — sometimes what may seem illogical can be (as far as we can tell) “real”… best example of this is the theory of Quantum Mechanics. And then of course there is the ability of intuition and/or emotional responses to point us toward “truth”…

    As someone with a skeptical outlook, however, one should probably look for the “most logical” or “most reasonable” explanation… and i would say that if the reasonable or logical explanation does not coincide with the evidence, we have to look for another answer… now having said that when it comes to ghosts, one simply can’t discount the mind’s ability to manufacture sensations and make those feelings just as real as any other experience… and one needs to be very honest with oneself as to the nature of ones experiences, especially when a penchant or fascination with the “other-wordly” already exists… even when we hear our name called for real, remember it is your mind which is telling you your name was called — THAT is how real the sensation can seem even when there is no caller — i would say, indistinguishably real…

    As for the whole “non-physical” aspect of ghosts, i simply do not understand what the term means. To be is to be physical. Now it doesn’t mean something needs to be made of matter. A photon does not have any at rest mass, but it certainly doesn’t mean a photon is non-physical or supernatural. It is natural, and it is physical. How something can be, but be in no way “detectable” seems to me a fundamental contradiction, for to be detectable it must, by definition have a physical aspect…

    Reply
  9. Mike, on December 2, 2008 at 2:41 pm said:

    “Since my name was invoked I feel compelled to jump in!”
    good to know how to keep Ty out of conversations for future reference 🙂

    In response to Ty’s comment of the mind manufacturing the experience. That makes total sense, but how does that explain the examples of 2 or more people “seeing” the same thing?

    And Jessie, good for you (being a Ravens fan)! I neglected to mention that I also am a huge fan as well. I am sure my wife would say the same thing about me that Anna K does about her husband.

    Reply
  10. Tyson Koska, on December 2, 2008 at 2:59 pm said:

    Mike? Shh! Quiet! Did you hear that?! Holy shit?! Look over there! What is that!?

    In those titillating moments of half-seen, half-heard visions and sounds, we are eager to see and to agree… we love the mysterious and we yearn for more than what is or what seems to be… it is not at all surprising to me that people sync-up in their recollections and in the multiple sensational tellings of their story after the fact…

    Reply
  11. jesse, on December 2, 2008 at 7:03 pm said:

    haha, Mike i was going to make a similar joke but i would hate to have a conversation about ghosts without Tyson present! Present but not physical here in cyber-space. What an ironic place to have this debate.

    i would very much like to hear of Anna K. eyewitness experiances in an effort to debunk them.

    Mike, good of you to bring up the detail of a paranormal experiance by more than one person at the same time. I will only speak of personal experiances for consistancy’s sake. Once not too long ago in the apartment i live in now it was witnessed by both myself and my wife that the kitchen light turned off by itself. I was tying my shoes and she waiting for me and we both saw the light go out. i went to go turn it back on and noticed that the switch was down. As i continued to tie my shoes it went off a second time approx. 30 sec. later. Again i turned the switch down. I find that pretty physical with no logical explanation.

    now Tyson, since i said your name….don’t get all like the Ravens and be Defensive.

    Reply
  12. Tyson Koska, on December 2, 2008 at 8:44 pm said:

    hmmm… i will only say, what is the more likely explanation, that an entire world of spirits exist “hidden” from science and in defiance of our best theories… or that you have a faulty light switch?

    Reply
  13. Anna K., on December 2, 2008 at 9:09 pm said:

    Now, why would anyone share paranormal experiences that they may be debunked? That is like telling a cynic with a bad love life that you have just met the man you want to marry. 😀

    A philosophical point: I am not sure we should equate being with the physical, or we cannot say that numbers or information or thoughts exist. Or most money, for that matter, which is no longer in physical form.

    Jesse, I personally tend to think that ghosts exist, due to my own and others’ experiences, but I’m willing to let it be an open question, without denying my own experiences. My husband and I went through a rather compelling set of experiences some years ago which convinced us that our view of the way things worked would have to change. We both have scientific backgrounds and I was an atheist for several years, so we were not completely predisposed to buy this kind of stuff.

    If no one else believes you about the light switch, I do. For what it’s worth. 😉 And I hope if you do have an unexpected roommate in your apartment, that it’s a friendly one.

    Reply
  14. Tyson Koska, on December 3, 2008 at 6:25 am said:

    Yeah, it is always tricky dealing with words like “non-physical” or “non-material”… i would argue that things like numbers or money ARE physical simply because they are etched somewhere in a substrate — either as data on a harddrive or as an idea in a person’s head… ideas’s have a physical reality, just as un-recalled memories do…

    It’s get’s trickier though, for example does “2” exist beyond the idea of 2? If we say that it does, then perhaps there are non-physical things that exist, but then i’m not convinced that 2 really exists beyond the idea of it… that would be so Platonic!

    Reply
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