Coincidences

[Shaker]

Mostly females, apparently. Southern Spain and Portugal are preferred destinations.

[jeremyp]

The British birds don't but the European robins do.

Never say this board is not educational.

[Shaker]

It's been an education to me a good many times

[Leonard James]

Try Jim Al-Khalili's lecture, on "Ted", about how Robins know how to fly south.

I think this is a marvelous example of the strength of science, compared to the silly religious approach to life.

I think this short lecture of good old Jim the, I think now, the ex President, of the BHA, it underlines the comment of yours in this post of yours.

ippy

Very interesting, Ippy, but it has my old brain reeling! If I can summon the energy I'll look at some more of his stuff.

Thank you.

[Leonard James]

Mostly females, apparently. Southern Spain and Portugal are preferred destinations.

At least one of them appears in my garden in autumn and stays until late winter.

[Shaker]

Well there you go - our man in Spain confirms it.

Hope it's been a good start to the new year for you and Hugh, Len - may it be a good one for the both of you and many more after it

[Leonard James]

Well there you go - our man in Spain confirms it.

Well, I can't verify that they come from Scandinavia, but trust ornithologists to have confirmed it by ringing or something like that.

Hope it's been a good start to the new year for you and Hugh, Len - may it be a good one for the both of you and many more after it

Thank you mate ... right back at you! 

[Enki]

Well, I can't verify that they come from Scandinavia, but trust ornithologists to have confirmed it by ringing or something like that.

Thank you mate ... right back at you! 

Yes, robins are both sedentary and migratory. Ditto with starlings. Sometimes, usually in October, you can get falls of European(mainly Scandinavian) robins on the East coast of the UK. More than once I've counted circa a hundred robins at Spurn in one day, when the conditions are right. Plenty of our species are both sedentary and migratory, such as song thrushes and blackbirds. The highest count of blackbirds at Spurn in one day numbered in the hundreds. They then tend to disperse, some wintering in the UK and some moving to the warmer parts of Europe. For instance, in Lesvos,(in the news recently because of the sad movement of a different type of migrant) robins are abundant in winter, but only a very localised breeder during summer.

[Leonard James]

Yes, robins are both sedentary and migratory. Ditto with starlings. Sometimes, usually in October, you can get falls of European(mainly Scandinavian) robins on the East coast of the UK. More than once I've counted circa a hundred robins at Spurn in one day, when the conditions are right. Plenty of our species are both sedentary and migratory, such as song thrushes and blackbirds. The highest count of blackbirds at Spurn in one day numbered in the hundreds. They then tend to disperse, some wintering in the UK and some moving to the warmer parts of Europe. For instance, in Lesvos,(in the news recently because of the sad movement of a different type of migrant) robins are abundant in winter, but only a very localised breeder during summer.

You sound like a bit of a bird-watcher, ekim! (in the nicest way, of course!)   

[Gonnagle]

Dear Leonard,

Enki, don't confuse him with ekim, two totally different birds

Gonnagle.

[Leonard James]

Dear Leonard,

Enki, don't confuse him with ekim, two totally different birds

Gonnagle.

 

Blimey, I hadn't even noticed! Sorry, enki.

[Enki]

Dear Leonard,

Enki, don't confuse him with ekim, two totally different birds

Gonnagle.

I couldn't think of a more agreeable person to be confused with. I'm flattered.

[ippy]

I thought robins didn't migrate.

I take it you haven't gone for Jim's lecture?

ippy

[ippy]

Very interesting, Ippy, but it has my old brain reeling! If I can summon the energy I'll look at some more of his stuff.

Thank you.

Yes Len, it's refreshing to hear something that's both weird and backed up by evidence, unlike a lot of the stuff that's posted on this forum.

ipy

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Try Jim Al-Khalili's lecture, on "Ted", about how Robins know how to fly south.

I think this is a marvelous example of the strength of science, compared to the silly religious approach to life.

I think this short lecture of good old Jim the, I think now, the ex President, of the BHA, it underlines the comment of yours in this post of yours.

ippy

You can have both science and religion Ippy.

[ippy]

You can have both science and religion ippy

The science is always welcome  Vlad and there's always, The Brothers Grimm,  the stories of Hans Christian Anderson and Roald Dahl too?  Why would I want the religion?

Ippy

[Sriram]

Sriram,

Here’s where you’ve gone wrong. First, you correctly note that “science” doesn’t know everything – nothing startling there as science makes no such claim, which is why people continue to do it.

Second though you posit a phenomenon – the “biosphere” – and claim that it exists, only science hasn’t caught up with it yet. How would you know that it exists? What data have you gathered? What experiments have you undertaken? What falsifiability test if there? What peer review has occurred?

See, here’s the thing: you can’t just claim as fact stuff you personally know but science hasn’t got around to yet. Either scientists have looked at the claim and found it wanting, or there’s not enough evidence so there’s nothing to investigate using the tools of science. At best all you have is a speculation or a conjecture, but that’s all you have. Just pointing at things that weren’t known before and are known now as some sort of guarantee that other conjectures will necessarily be proven in due course is poor reasoning.

Yes....it is conjecture. Perhaps even an hypothesis. Nothing wrong with that. 

Dark Matter and Dark Energy are conjectures. There is no positive evidence for either of them.  These are concepts only meant to fill the gaps....and to explain certain other phenomena such as.... our calculations of the mass of the universe...and receding galaxies.  Nothing wrong with that either.

 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

Yes....it is conjecture. Perhaps even an hypothesis. Nothing wrong with that. 

Dark Matter and Dark Energy are conjectures. There is no positive evidence for either of them.  These are concepts only meant to fill the gaps....and to explain certain other phenomena such as.... our calculations of the mass of the universe...and receding galaxies.  Nothing wrong with that either.

But you implied that, just as there are phenomena that weren't known before and are known now, so the various phenomena in which you choose to believe as conjectures must be "out there" too, only science hasn't got around yet to validating them.

That's not how it works though - when someone posits a conjecture that appears to have explanatory power (the Higgs-Boson for example) then the tools of science are used to find it. When they do, the conjecture becomes a fact and when there are enough facts that hang together to create an explanatory model they become a theory. Simply claiming a "biosphere" that those scamps in the lab coats just haven't had time to get around to finding yet is poor thinking. 

[ippy]

Wasn't the discovery of dark matter based on the mathematics of the total mass of the universe not adding up correctly without taking the dark matter theory into consideration and as blue says and Cern, that very minor research project, was set up for the purpose of finding the Higgs Boson thingamy jig has something to do detecting and proving the dark matter theory.

I would imagine the finding of the Higgs Boson would be evidence, perhaps a little bit more evidence than the evidence we have for proving we have fairies at the bottom of our gardens, idea? 

(Sorry about the technical terms but sometimes these things can't be broken down any further into everyday language).

ippy.

[wigginhall]

Yes, the hypothesis of dark matter accounts for some gravitational effects, for example, in large galaxies, which cannot be accounted for in terms of observed matter.   A famous example is gravitational lensing, i.e. the bending of light as it moves towards an observer.  Various things can explain this, for example, black holes, but dark matter is implicated here as well.   There is nothing unscientific going on here clearly, and no doubt, further research is going on.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You can have both science and religion ippy

The science is always welcome  Vlad and there's always, The Brothers Grimm,  the stories of Hans Christian Anderson and Roald Dahl too?  Why would I want the religion?

Ippy

Because ,like Everest Ippy.....It's there.

[ippy]

Some of my wife's family emigrated to Australia in the late forties, my brother emigrated there in the sixties, just after I had met my now wife, to the same town and my brother found that my wife's family over there were his patients at the group surgery he had joined and then they found they lived about ten minutes away from each other.

I heard a radio programme a few years back now about coincidences; where this milkman doing his rounds one morning and as he passed a public phone box it started to ring, he answered it and it was someone for him from the Dairy's office with a query about his pay and had dialed his works number by mistake and it happened to be the box he was passing.

Makes the hairs on my neck stand up even now, thinking about it.

I had some dealings with the law courts too many years ago, nothing criminal, I used a firm of solicitors my sister was working for at the time, they gave me another solicitor because it would have been unethical so they said to use the solicitor my sister was working for, and blow me the secretary of that other solicitor was working back to back with my adversaries secretary, I had no choice I had to go elsewhere.     

In a city as large as London what would be the odds be on that happening?

ippy

[ippy]

Because ,like Everest Ippy.....It's there.

Everest does actually exist, nobody made it up.

ippy

[Sriram]

Sriram,

But you implied that, just as there are phenomena that weren't known before and are known now, so the various phenomena in which you choose to believe as conjectures must be "out there" too, only science hasn't got around yet to validating them.

That's not how it works though - when someone posits a conjecture that appears to have explanatory power (the Higgs-Boson for example) then the tools of science are used to find it. When they do, the conjecture becomes a fact and when there are enough facts that hang together to create an explanatory model they become a theory. Simply claiming a "biosphere" that those scamps in the lab coats just haven't had time to get around to finding yet is poor thinking.

Blue,

Its not that something 'must be out there '.   The 'must' is wrong and the 'out there' is wrong too.

You assume that its a belief... like believing in Noah's Ark or Adam and Eve.  And that based entirely on blind faith in some ancient legend, such phenomena are being imagined as fact.  This is not true. Secondly its not about anything supernatural or 'out there'.  Its about something 'right here' and very very natural.

Many experiences in our lives such as Synchronicity, ESP, sudden cures etc...and even simple observations such as the interconnected ecological system,  emergent properties of organisms.... which defy explanations......make the existence of a common biofield imperative. 

As I keep repeating...its nothing supernatural 'out there'. Its like the earths magnetic field which we can't feel or sense in any way but which none the less exists as an important part of our lives.

I have no idea what this interconnecting biofield is or what it is made of ....but that it exists can be deduced through many indirect experiences. 

Now the question of why such a common bioield cannot be seen or sensed.   The simple answer is that many things that even science proposes cannot be sensed or identified directly.....such as Dark Matter, Dark Energy and so on. And these are said to exist all around us too.  Mere mathematics cannot be the reason for accepting something as true or as 'proved'....and the absence of mathematical formulations cannot be taken as proof of the nonexistence of something.

So....the fact that the biofield cannot be sensed directly cannot be a reason for its outright dismissal. There are enough reasons to accept it as a valid hypothesis. Its just that such phenomena have traditionally been associated with religion and God which make them a strict 'No..No'... in scientific circles.  This is obviously wrong and is a major impediment to gaining knowledge of our world.



 

[Outrider]

Hollis, the Jungian analyst, readily concedes some coincidences exist apart from synchronicity. But he says there are other odd coincidences that go beyond mathematical possibility.

It's amazing, because I was only this morning listening to Tim Minchin comment that 'to assume that your one-in-a-million event is a miracle is to seriously underestimate the number of things that there are.'

I'm sure that has to mean something, right...?

O.