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It was just a matter of our worst enemy...."Time".... Criss has had a bout of serious battles with his health lately... came down to a "Cerebral hemorrhage" a couple of daze ago and his sawbonez said,"He ain't gonna make it..." Criss went Trackn' up to that "Eternal Star" at 19:48 (EDT) on 05MAY2019.... this past Sunday!! Up in Va. he was stayin' with his sister... was just admitted to Hospice and he left us shortly after.. When he was still down here in Louisiana I was fortunate to visit with him... 'Found out from Sandy Callahan that he was in "Port Allen!!" just across the bridge from Baton Rouge... I'm in Hammond.. just 65 miles away!! Went to visit.... Brought him a "Fresh" "AIR TRASH" hat!!...when he was in the hospital over here... He had some serious complications from surgery... fortunately came out of it but it was scary!! He went up to Va. to live with his sister... anyway he's in that "Eternal Star" now!!! Fly on Buddy.... you will be missed.... skybill

Interesting. You ask the question of whether the universe only allows things to exist that are attainable by our knowledge. I don't know if I can get on board with that as a solid hypothesis. I think consciousness is an emergent property of matter in motion, like wetness. A water molecule is not wet, and we don't know how many water molecules it takes to cause the property of wetness to emerge. It is a property that emerges based on our sensory perception. Similarly, our human trait of consciousness is the result of neurons firing in an attempt to navigate the environment (universe) around them, as a survival mechanism. I think it's best put as: we are the universe's way of knowing itself. I think that was from the "Cosmos" reboot. I feel like I'm rambling here, and maybe a bit incoherently. But I like where your head is at for the most part.

Possessing a functional bullshit detector is nothing to do with luck.

I use the term 'climate change denial' to delineate a very specific position taken in this debate. It refers to people who have no consistent scientific position on climate change; the only thing consistent in their approach is denial of any negative aspect of climate change, a political position created in opposition to the scientific consensus on climate change, which the right wing sees as supporting democrats. This is very different than the position of some scientists studying the phenomenon. Several have taken issue with the claim that climate change will intensify most storms, for example, and are working to demonstrate that. I have respect for such scientists because they are trying to further our understanding of climate change, relying on science to do so. I have a lot less respect for people who deny things to support their political agendas. One of the characteristics of climate change denial is a rapid and careless changing of scientific positions to support their agenda. The classic progression is "there's no such thing as climate change!" "Of course there's climate change but we didn't do it! Climate changes all the time!" "Look, maybe we did it, but the changes will all be good!" We see that classic progression here in this thread. First we see the "it's not warming" argument: "Warmer climate?" "a below average Jan-March." " . . the 13th coldest April on record . . Record and near-record cold temperatures . . " "As I have already shown, global temperatures are dropping as well." Next, with no justification or explanation, that position is discarded and a new one presented: "I would not expect alarmists to believe me . . ." "I hope we can all agree that global warming and a loss of Arctic sea ice is, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing." "The facts stand for themselves: record food production . . ." From "there's no warming" to "everyone can agree that we are seeing warming/melting ice, and it is good" in a few posts. That's one of the primary reasons that climate change deniers aren't taken seriously; they don't care much about the science, and they don't even really have a fixed scientific position to begin with. It changes by the day.

OK, now that there's funny, I don't care who you are. Wendy P.

Continuing the topic-drift: It isn't so much about getting around inconsistencies or apologetics; "unfalsifiable" means that something cannot be disproven IN PRINCIPLE. So, in the case of "God" it depends on what kind of "god" we are talking about: A god who interferes in human (or universal) affairs, for example, would in principle be falsifiable. If we can track down every single cause and effect and find that no causes are missing (so every effect can be proven to be caused by something inside the physical Universe) then such a god would be proven to not exist (or to not be of the nature of such an interfering god) If we are talking about a god, who stands completely outside of the universe and does not interfere, then this would be unfalsifiable. If we are talking about an initial creator, who interfered at the moment of creation (before the big bang) and then left his creation to its own devices, this may or may not be falsifiable (depending on if we can trace causality back to "before" the big bang--there seem to be different theories on that) For an unfalsifiable theory that is proposed by many serious scientific minds, we have the multiverse theory. At least the versions of this theory that postulates that there is no way that the different universes can influence each other in any way whatsoever, (either through causality or any weird quantum effects) is an unfalsifiable theory. It cannot, in principle, be disproven as there are no effects we could find that would prove that there cannot be another universe (which has no effect on ours). So: If we say something is unfalsifiable, it means it is not something that is useful to explain our universe in a scientific manner. It could be true, it could be false. There is no way to prove or disprove it, and many people would say it is therefore irrelevant. It does however not mean it cannot be true. There is absolutely no reason why something should not exist, just because it does not conform to our need to prove or falsify something.--That is not meant to be an argument for god, just a clarification of what that term is supposed to mean.

There are a number of references to that jump in the History and Trivia forum; do a forum search for "Lake Erie" and you'll get a lot of information, including the names. Bill Cole (who was on dz.com for a long time until his death a few years ago) was around at the time, and knew pretty much everyone. I tried copying a link to the thread, but it showed up as something else when I pasted it. Just do the search, and the thread title is "Lake Erie B25." There's a second thread, "Lake Erie Incident" with Bob Cole posting in it directly. Wendy P.