Nistal said:
>The other thing, and Paul... is very inspirational in this, is that I
>realize that I really don't know shit. All doomsday ideas are based on the
>second law of thermodynamics, but it seems that this 'law' needs revision.
>'free energy', living without food, dematerializing yourself (for awhile)
>what else?

Paul says:
The optician used drops in my eye to dilate the pupils.
When I came outside the ocean was too bright to look at.
When my eyes are 'normal' and I put on my polaroid sunglasses the ocean
suddenly looks a deep turquoise with white capped waves breaking on the
golden shore. So what is 'real' colour of the ocean?

When we were young and got warts on our hands my mother would take us on the
number 96 electric trolley bus into the city. We would walk through the town
to a chemist - Bellamy & Wakefield, in Paradise Street.
A man in a white coat, white hair and half-rimmed reading glasses would
enter into a book our name, age, and address and tell us one wart would
disappear each week. And they did.

My youngest brother was born thirteen years later than me.
When my mother tried to take him to the same chemist - it was gone, and in
its place was a furniture showroom.
Undeterred, my mother got a salesman (who was not wearing a white coat, etc)
to go through the same ritual. The warts disappeared.

Un-conclusion:
As Nistal says, do we really know anything? Anything at all?
If an event does not fit into a category - as defined by 'science' then it
is not accepted, and often ridiculed. Yet over and over and over, science is
being proved wrong. Science decides on a set of parameters, and if the event
does not fit in these confines then they are not seen as facts.

And religion!
Scientists are so adamant about 'facts' - yet many of them are Christian!

And so it goes...