El Pibe

Five weeks louisa. I'd love to buy you a nice glass of wine or g&t if you pop along to the edt. I promise not to mention ghosts.

No love. I've made my arguments quite clear. That was a hypothetical situation representative of the logic involved. There is no evidence of supernatural (ghosts, goblins, gods) phenomena. There is no evidence of paranormal (telekinesis, telepathy, prescience) phenomena. Therefore any "explanations" of experiences are conjecture, based upon personal feelings and beliefs. Until anyone provides a shred of evidence then I'll assume the real explanations of any experience to be mundane, based upon physical (or psychogical) reasons. Take my ghost. I could have said "I know what I've seen and you're all close minded" but my instinct was to question my sanity. Eventually it was explained perfectly well as as an acute sleep disorder. Bob's your uncle. Again, until a fact is produced in support you've only your own logical fallacies, and complaints about personal insults (there were none) to fall back on. So waiting, facts...

A thread about ghosts where we only use facts. * crickets chirruping * * tumbleweed in flight *

dig dig dig

Mine, like smg/sj was to renounce moderator abilities. I still feel guilty enough to do plenty of housekeeping with MP though :(

definition of crass: "adjective - showing no sensitivity" I submit "If you don't like my comparison with cancer research, then tough." as evidence m'lud Definition of explanation: "noun - a statement or account that makes something clear" I submit "If those events are subsequently (even many years later) shown to have had a cause which was not "supernatural", that has no bearing whatsoever on any other unrelated event." as evidence m'lud. Advice, stop digging.

To stick up for RD (not that he needs it) I've always thought he's generally pretty thoughtful, pragmatic and levelheaded as these things go. Not that that reduces my schadenfreude at Man U's season, long may it continue mwah hah hah hah..... And there's no point hainv g a comeback that involves the hammers' misery, I've decided to get my grieving in early :-/

I'd look at Camberwell Grove, grove park, ivanhoe, Avondale, Bellenden sort of area. A stonesthrow from Kings and very nice, and you'll get more for your cash than the village (plus much closer). Herne Hill also lovely, much improved with pedestrianisation and market. There's a lovely place going on the rental market on Champion Hill, 5 minutes walk from Kings, 100 yards from Dog Kennel Hill school, in a few weeks *notes possible conflict of interest*

Rio can slip quietly into retirement, but I'd happily have Carrick back, though I reckon he'd probably like to return to his roots in Newcastle (not to mention avoid relegation). Pardew never shagged his missus did he?

5 weeks left, I can't see distance curing my addiction, I'll just have fewer opinions on that new restaurant/pub/pop up

Well quite, plus psychology is pretty woolly as science goes, and neuropsychology is relatively speaking still in its infancy. Parapsychology, study into telkenisis, telepathy etc, has come leaps and bounds. I saw a documentary where this chap moved an entire x-wing fighter out of a swamp using just the power of his mind.

Imagine a scenario, you're in your tenth story flat. Whilst asleep you are awoken by sharp tapping on your window. There's no way anyone could get there, there's no hail, no tree tall enough to reach. Suddenly you remember it's the anniversary of your dad's death. He was an old salt who taught you morse code on his knee. Maybe he was trying to get in touch, you feel it could be true. You get a spiritualist in who is able to give you his name without you telling home anything "I sense a b, no a p, no maybe a t, tommy..." "Well he was a sailor, that's a bit like a soldier, and his name was Pete...uncanny" There you have an unexplained phenomenon, but you're satisfied that it was a supernatural event. Of course the next day when Noreen from the block of flats opposite drags little bob over by his ear to apologise for shooting at your windows with his gat gun, it becomes explained, but in between the unexplained occurrence and the explanation it was always explicable. I could carry on, you know, patronising you a bit more if you like...duh.

No that's exactly might point. Sue, try a dictionary, unexplained simply means that it hasn't been explained, that doesn't mean it can't be; explicable means capable of being explained. In the same way UFOs are unidentified but not necessarily unidentifiable, of course they just become FOs after that. As for the cancer point you were trying to equate research into the paranormal with research for curing disease by dint that neither produce a quantifiable end (cancer cured, paranomral activity proved). For starters one addresses real life or death issues, the other, well nothing really. That aside you imply that cancer research hasn't achieved anything, which is obviously nonsense. It was facile ie simplistic thinking, it was crass to bring something as devastating to millions as cancer and somehow trying to suggest paranormal research has an equivalent value. I'm not sure what your getting it with your bold highlight and the weird bit about one thing or it's opposite (although any phenomenon is either governed by physical laws or beyond those, ie super-natural, so it's pretty black or white), but your final point, is just restating my point, so thanks for that. But I'll let you have the last word, I believe that's one of the fundamental laws rewritten into the fabric of the universe.

Would love borrowage, and actually have a couple of books set aside for you that you've expressed an interest in in the past. You'd be committing yourself to a visit to the new pad of course.....

Noo, nooo, go for it, a marvellous read, though it's not strictly speaking travel writing, more that's a skeleton for philosophical and historical meanderings. It wasn't really tough going, i loved it, but lets just say it richly rewards effort. Don't go near Austerlitz though, jayyyysus....

Might have to give that a go. I enjoyed Pullmans The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, even if I thought it a tad, I dunno, clunky (as in being clunked round the lughole).

The noise is a useful indicator as to what time my kids are waking me up in the morning. If they shout "DADDDDYYYY" and I can't hear any planes then it's a definite "GO BACK TO SLEEEEP". If i can hear them but it's dark then they can get into bed with us and I can but hope that the whirring jets and basso rumble will soothe me to sleep. The only time they're intrusive is in the summer with the balcony doors open, sometimes the telly needs to be pretty loud just to hear it.

I have actually been replaced by an omnipotent alien grown from a pod that absorbed the dna of my rotting carcass. To this date only EDF predictors have harboured suspicions...

Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways. Absolutely lovely travel writing, with more than a dash of psychogeography about it; more accessible than W G Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, less infuriating than Iain Sinclair's London Orbital. It's a meditation on walking, poetry, metaphysics and mortality written with such charm that you don't really think it's about any of those things. I'm actually most reminded of Cormac McCarthy's novels, though barring the odd grazed knee there's rather less blood,violence and despair. I had a quick google to see if anyone else had made the connection only to find he's a massive fan himself...good man!! Highly, highly recommended.

"I do think that there are unexplained things and I don't dismiss "paranormal activity" out of hand." Absolutely otta, there are tons of unexplained events, but most of them are explicable. People deciding it's the paranormal, unwilling to accept more mundane (and far more plausible) explanations are the ones with the closed minds. I'd love there to be ghosts and ghoulies, a little bit of the child inside me is dead because the world apparently lacks these things. If there are genuinely inexplicable phenomena (we'll leave stuff like photosynthesis and magnetism aside for the moment) then lets research them, for it can only further humanity (and is the staple of a million horror films). Hell if I we really could contact the dead that would be frickin' amazing!

daily mash still occasionally scores http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/michael-goves-history-lesson-2014010782312

whilst bob seems spot on here (and by golly that map is interesting, right!! over my house) is there any decent data for city as they seem to bank over my house too and are much noisier. I should add that aircraft noise has never bothered me at all, in fact I find it rather comforting. I'll miss it :( I'll miss the planes too

It was a facile and crass point Sue in all fairness, rather undermined by the incredible leaps we have made in fighting the disease, such that SJ has a pretty good chance of surviving his hypothetical cancer. It's good that science researches these things because science isn't close minded, unlike those projecting their narrowmindedness upon others ("Well I've seen and experienced things I don't care what anyone else says."). But SJ is right, in a hundred years of paranormal research, in a world of six billion people and three billion phone cameras, where even homeopathy can have millions of false positives a year, we have zip, nada nothing. As the above cartoon says, no nessies, no bigfoots, no ghosts, no demons, nothing. Read the research at that department. It makes for interesting pyschological research, but a dubious experiment, not taking into account all sorts of factors comes up with a woolly worded "it may be suggestive of". Certainly no conclusions that it exists. Keep trying, but holding my breath for another hundred years could prove fatal (but at least I could let you know all about it from the other side....ooooooOOOOoooOOOooooo)

I remember a mate of mine buying his metro for a quid for these reasons. He found ?4 in the glove compartment and felt quids in. He was a dab hand at cars and invested about ?100 to get it up and running. A few days later he gave me a lift to a mates wedding down the M4. Car blew up, we waited for an hour in torrential rain on the hard shoulder with artics thundering past. 80 quid to be rescued, plus another 25 for the chap to tow it away to be disposed of. We then got a 20 quid cab to the wedding that we completely missed. False economy leaps to mind. Unless spares?

I doubt it, the 'what i know..' is always written by the guest contributor.