[lds23]

All I want to know is, after being neatly and quietly stored, why the garden hose (or extension cord or Christmas lights) always get tangled. And don't say "torque". That's how. I want to know WHY. WHYYY!!

[dighton]

"As I read this, I kept thinking: 'How hard can it be to prove that this paper is incontrovertibly wrong?'" he said. "But it is hard. Not because his ideas are right. They're not. But because he's created a self-consistent system of arguments."

Great post.

Chesterton says it all about arguing with madmen, but the passage eludes me. Anyone?

[Scully]

"It shows how easy it is to slip from healthy, even necessary, conviction into certainty and delusion..."

Well that certainly would describe me these days. LOL! As far as the incidents mentioned within this article having any connection with the X-Files, I cannot comment at this time. ;)

[longshadow]

must read crank-report ping and bttt

[isthisnickcool]

Cool post.

There is a guy in Texas with a machine that generates energy from a certain combination of magnets. No power is needed. He has solved the energy problem. Above his work bench hovers a flying saucer he made. It just hovers, and hovers, and hovers. I know that people that have seen his energy device. It scared them.

Since everything is connected, when I type on my keyboard I sometimes knock a sufer off his surf board on the coast of Australia.

People don't age. Everything around them gets younger.

Hey, this is fun.......

[LarryLied]

Physicist Rich Muller tries to save every crank missive he receives.

Figures. Check out his web page:

http://muller.lbl.gov/

Did you know chocolate chip cookies contain, by weight, five times the energy of TNT? Muller is also interested in glacial cycles,The Search for Nemesis,Al Qaeda's Anthrax and the Sins of Jesus. Don't miss "Physics for future Presidents", the chapter on explosives is very good.

[NormsRevenge]

crank theorists? LOL

did the unabomber run a meth lab? how the hell did he support himself?... a book bomb of the month club aint a real moneymaker ... ask OpraH

parallel universes ... that explains where my car keys go from time to time

[jlogajan]

I've invented a working model of a time machine, and if I could ever get the US government to allow the patent, I could raise investment funds to add different travel rates. Right now it only has one setting -- advancing 86400 seconds per day.

[My back yard]

Enjoyable read. Thanks for posting it.

I had a feeling once about Mathematics - that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me - the Byss and Abyss. I saw - as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show - a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go. Churchill, Sir Winston Spencer

[Physicist]

I used to be a connoissuer of crank physics theories. My main internet hangout before I discovered FreeRepublic was alt.sci.physics.new-theories on usenet.

The challenge was not in debunking the theories, but in distinguishing between, as they say, "those who strain at the oars to reach Kook Island, and those who arrive by magic carpet with no idea they've made the voyage."

[RLK]

But because he's created a self-consistent system of arguments."

---------------

...known in psychiatry as a frame of reference or a closed system of self-referencing hypostizition. It's oneof of the basis's of liberalism and much religion.

[aruanan]

All I want to know is, after being neatly and quietly stored, why the garden hose (or extension cord or Christmas lights) always get tangled. And don't say "torque". That's how. I want to know WHY. WHYYY!!

Because you fail to give every loop you add to the growing handful of loops a sufficient twist.

[apochromat]

Maybe you were too quiet. I had the same problem with my telephone cord until I started screaming into the receiver.

[Junior]

"It shows how easy it is to slip from healthy, even necessary, conviction into certainty and delusion."

Ted, this Bud's for you.

[boris]

All Your Sunshine Ray Are Belong to Us.

[Junior]

Arguments crescendoed to uppercase type. Words, boxed and colored, squeezed together on the page like castaways on a homemade raft.

Does this sound like anyone we know?

[Harrison Bergeron]

Admit it! I was pinged to this thread because of my theory that the earth doesn't just look smaller from a distance, but that it actually shrinks in the observers private universe! You laugh now, but when I win the Pulitzer for my Nobel Prize acceptance speech, you'll brag that you knew me when! BWAHAHAHAHAHH!!!!!

[Bob J]

Live! Now on RadioFR!

6pm/9pm - Thr Banana Republican interviews Dr. Miguel Faria Jr., who has some great articles such as his "Suggestions for Pres. Carter's trip to Cuba"--Macon Telegraph. On "Women, Guns and Disinformation". And a new book called "Cuba In Revolution; Escape From a Lost Paradise."

Click HERE to listen LIVE! while you FReep!

[Travis McGee]

Enjoy!