KC

Auras..<snort>. More paraweenie crap.

KC

scombrid

Umm, dude those stained glass windows in churches are artistic expression.

BTW: Is there a forehead slapping icon?

Stephen T-B

I liked that challenge I read James Randi did on TV.
He gort a volunteer (I did read this a long time ago and may not have the details entirely correct) whom he stood behind one of many screens, all lined up.
He then offered a large cash award to any psychic who could identify the screen - in a single go - behind which the "aura-emitting" volunteer was standing.
Needless to say, the money was not paid out.

excreationist

I'd agree that it seems to be a synaesthetic phenomena... similar to how some people see similarly meaningful visual objects, like numbers or days of the week, as colours.
I think hallucinagenic drugs, like LSD, can cause people to become synaesthetic - e.g. I've heard on TV about people on LSD seeing music as colours, etc.
<a href="http://serendipity.magnet.ch/dmt/journeys.html" target="_blank">Four Reports of DMT Journeys</a>:
Anyway, I think people on DMT can have experiences similar to what those who often see auras have and this suggests it is just the brain malfunctioning... I mean in the case of numbers, different synaesthetics can see different colours associated with particular numbers - so there isn't an objective relationship between numbers and colours... so I don't think those who see auras are really seeing into a different dimension of reality.

Doubting Didymus

Actually there were many people standing behind various parts of the screen. If there was only one person the probability of getting it correct by pure chance would have been far too high.

If we are thinking of the same test, the psychic thought there were people behind every screen.
Oops.

Doubting Didymus

Wow! I had no idea the hypothesis contained that kind of detail. Your link wouldn't work, however, so I couldn't investigate further. Do you know of any other places where this is discussed?

Oolon Colluphid

Hi DD! It’s a shame that page seems to have gone down, cos it has more info in one place than I can find elsewhere. But a Google on ‘origins clay RNA’ brings up a lot of bits. Some better ones are:

<a href="http://www.nature.com/nsu/990422/990422-8.html" target="_blank">www.nature.com/nsu/990422/990422-8.html</a>

<a href="http://www.astrobiology.com/asc2002/abstract.html?ascid=214" target="_blank">www.astrobiology.com/asc2002/abstract.html?ascid=214</a>

<a href="http://www.vexen.co.uk/life/gen.html" target="_blank">www.vexen.co.uk/life/gen.html</a>

And this one at least seems to be working at the previous site:

<a href="http://www.rpi.edu/~straca/NSCORT/chem_pubs.html" target="_blank">www.rpi.edu/~straca/NSCORT/chem_pubs.html</a>

Like I say, does anyone more up on it than me know the current status of the clay-catalysis / replicators hypothesis?

Cheers, Oolon

Tabula_rasa

Woah, pz! I am shocked, SHOCKED at this unjustified slam on keilbasa from nowhere. What is so wrong with putrefying kielbasa that you feel compelled to equate it with these nitwits?

Tabula_rasa

pz

I herewith formally apologize to all rotten ground meats of any kind that might have taken umbrage at my ill-considered derogatory remarks.