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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
 Posted - 09/25/2006 : 19:55:22 [Permalink]
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Recommended reading: "The Mirror of Her Dreams" by Stephen Donaldson.
Review here.
Amazon Link. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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steinhenge
Skeptic Friend
USA
69 Posts |
Posted - 09/25/2006 : 20:16:22 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Recommended reading: "The Mirror of Her Dreams" by Stephen Donaldson.
Review here.
Amazon Link.
I de-lurk, very briefly, to second that. |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2006 : 02:50:18 [Permalink]
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Is this a spoof? If so, jordoskeptic, well done!, and welcome to SFN!
If not, I must ask for links to studies done on the topic as well as the qualifications of those researching it, and welcome to SFN anyway!
Mirrors..... They are with us every day, almost anywhere we go. They are in stores -- those big, convex (wide angle) ones usually mounted on the ceiling at the corners of asiles -- on our vehicles, in cameras and so forth. Many fairy tales and myths involve magic mirrors, and it is said that the dread basilisk can only be viewed safely by means of a mirror. I have been told that fun-house mirrors can produce nauesa in the easily nauseated.
I myself, have only been harmed by a mirror once. I cut a finger picking up the glass after my younger daughter broke one. I really can't say that we/she had seven years of bad luck, as I was going through a streach of relitive prosperity at the time, and not much changed.
The history of mirrors would be a fascinating read, I think. And I have little doubt that they, in one form or another, have been with us for a very long time; indeed since ancient pre-history. In form, they range from the reflections in a still pool of water to the highly complex mirrors in telescopes. They can be made to magnify or scale down, or distort an image simply by changing their form. Pretty amazing, this thing that we so take for granted.
And there's really no escaping them, is there?
At the moment, I'd think that in normal light conditions, any damage an ordinary mirror might do, apart from my past, bloody finger, would be mental rather than physical. A reflection fixation wouldn't be all that much different from most others, would it? Of course, if Narcissus is gazing raptly at his reflection in a store window and fails to note the runaway truck.......
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Original_Intent
SFN Regular
USA
609 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2006 : 04:38:54 [Permalink]
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When you get all you want and you struggle for self,
and the world makes you king for a day,
then go to the mirror and look at yourself
and see what that man has to say.
For it isn't your mother, your father or wife
whose judgement upon you must pass,
but the man, whose verdict counts most in your life
is the one staring back from the glass.
He's the fellow to please,
never mind all the rest.
For he's with you right to the end,
and you've passed your most difficult test
if the man in the glass is your friend.
You can fool the whole world,
down the highway of years,
and take pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
if you've cheated the man in the glass.
Not a clue on who to attribute it too... But would have to say, yes... Habitual mirror starng can be bad for you if the person has a concious, and isn't right.... It can be very stressful...
Peace
Joe |
| Edited by - Original_Intent on 09/26/2006 04:40:30 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2006 : 05:25:49 [Permalink]
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Jordo,
Welcome to SFN. First of all, I would like to object to the assertation that skeptics only are interested in taking on the "easy" targets. Just because we don't drop everything to analyze your special pleadings doesn't mean we don't take on the hard stuff.
Then you commence telling us how you issued the same challenges to noted skeptics. It is narcisitic to believe that your letter above all the myriad letters recieved by these people should be singled out as special or if they are ignored/brushed off due to lack of a statement of claim that it is any commentary on what cases they are willing to look at.
I think your reasoning suffers from wrong cause. You blame habitual mirror looking with the damage. The mirror emits no toxic or harmful rays on it's own. It's not the mirror that is the problem, it's what it reflected IN it that is the problem. When hanging personal mirrors, it is always a good idea to examine what may be reflected in it.
You also have failed to define the term "habitual" in a meaningful sense. How much time per day staring at a mirror is too much?
Automotive mirrors are there for your protection. This is to give you some warning of other cars who are in your car's blind spots. The rear-view mirror typically mounted in the middle of the windshield can be tilted up or down so that a greatly dimmer view can be gotten during night and day driving where strong light sources may be behind you. (the Sun or those damn Zenon bulbs)
Overall, you have failed to make a testable claim. You merely state that you believe that prolonged exposure to a mirror is harmful. We are calling that unsupported while accepting that certian things reflected in the mirror can cause damage with prolonged exposure. Making the blanket statement that prolonged mirror looking (or gazing) is harmful without evidence or even a hypothesis is not something that can be tested.
"Light reflecting from a mirror is strong enough to damage human tissue."
That depends on the source of the light, intensity of the light, whether or not the person stare directly at the light's reflection or close proximity, and configuration of the mirror. Since you have not quantified any of these, if one takes a least case scenario, no tissue damage occurs because the reflected light source is not intense and is of a softer color.
The healthy and operational human eye requires light to render images. As with all things, too much of a stimulus can cause tissue damage.
At this point, unless you are willing to quantify your statements into a testable hypothesis, I'm inclined to agree with Randi's assessment. What's your point?
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Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
| Edited by - Valiant Dancer on 09/26/2006 05:27:47 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2006 : 06:08:39 [Permalink]
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jordoskeptic is pulling our legs.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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GeeMack
SFN Regular
USA
1093 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2006 : 07:47:37 [Permalink]
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Come on guys, give jordoskeptic a break. This is serious stuff here. Harmful mirrors? You bet!Adapted from Feng Shui: Back to Balance by Sally Fretwell:
Mirror, Mirror On the Wall? Feng Shui How-To
One woman had a whole wall, ten feet, of small strip mirrors. They reflected the highway in front of her house. The woman who moved into the house developed heart problems and multiple panic attacks. Sitting in her living room it looked like the highway was driving through it, with cars flying and swerving around the room. Worse, the small mirrors made the images vibrate and distort!
[. . .]
One couple contacted the author. The husband felt that his efforts were going unnoticed at work. During a tour of their home the author noticed that the mirrors that were all very old and cracked, and hung very low. When asked why the mirrors were hung so low, the wife said that because she was shorter than her six-foot-five-inch husband, she assumed he could bend down to see himself in the mirrors set for her height.
The problem was that he never did bend down, and energetically every mirror cut his head off; thus he never saw his own true reflection. The couple installed new mirrors. On some level he really did want to look in a clear mirror in the morning, and to his surprise he found that the new mirror that encompassed the whole upper half of his body helped him feel more integrated.
And would you like to be the victim of the "poisons arrows" which are obviously reflected by some mirrors? I think not!From the "Lucky W" Amulet Archive by Cat Yronwode:
Feng Shui Trigram Mirrors for Protection and Good Luck
The concave mirror is used on the side of the building from which the worst harm is expected -- the side of your home that faces the house where the crazy hateful drug dealing neighbors live, for example, or the side of your business where a large skyscaper building owned by a pillaging multinational corporation overshadows your smaller building. Its magical protection consists of reversing or returning back any harmful "poisons arrows" that are sent your way.
You scoff now, but just you wait. Someday there'll be an awakening to this terrible problem. Someday, when jordoskeptic gets the help he/she needs to quantify the harm and do the necessary math to prove his/her assertions (sorry, Mozina, yes even woo-woo's are required to do math), the world will stand in awe at the foresight and wisdom of these revelations which were first expressed on these simple pages of our humble SFN forum.
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2006 : 11:16:34 [Permalink]
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Hey jordoskeptic, welcome to the board where we'll take almost anyone seriously. The reason you've gotten the response you have from skeptics (in my opinion of course) is because the skeptics you wrote to most likely took it for granted the light reflected in the mirror wasn't qualitatively different from the light entering your eyes or body which isn't reflected first.
If you are serious, then I'll give you my response to such an inquiry. What is it you think is harmful? Wave-particle units of visible light or other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, (EMR). So what are you seeing that isn't from a mirror? You are seeing those same particle-waves which go from their source, (usually a light source or the Sun), to an object or surface and then the EMR that isn't absorbed is reflected off the visible object and enters your eye. All you have with the mirror is the exact same particle-wave only it has bounced off one more surface.
Well those same particle-waves are bouncing off surfaces sometimes before hitting the visible object and the mirror is no different than any other object surface except it absorbs very little of what EMR hits it. But what hits it has already had the same absorption and reflection alter it before hitting the mirror.
In other words, if you are worried about mirrors you need to know a little about light waves and if you knew the basics about light waves you'd know that mirrors do not alter those particle-waves. So your fears are based on an imaginary idea about light rather than an actual understanding of light waves. |
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Original_Intent
SFN Regular
USA
609 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2006 : 11:24:02 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
quote:
Originally posted by Original_Intent
Not a clue on who to attribute it too...
Dale Wimbrow.
Cool... Thank you
Peace
Joe |
The Circus of Carnage... because you should be able to deal with politicians like you do pissant noobs. |
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Original_Intent
SFN Regular
USA
609 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2006 : 11:25:14 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Recommended reading: "The Mirror of Her Dreams" by Stephen Donaldson.
Review here.
Amazon Link.
Man, it's been years. I really liked Thomas Covenent (sp).....
Peace
Joe |
The Circus of Carnage... because you should be able to deal with politicians like you do pissant noobs. |
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jordoskeptic
New Member
6 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2006 : 16:02:37 [Permalink]
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I like this quotation the best
"Why not question something for a change?"
This is coming from a guy who's asking to see proof from a premise.
So based on the responses the following must be the case:
1. Like clean, temperate water or oxygen, a mirror poses no risk to humans whatsoever. Unlike water and oxygen, a mirror cannot be contaminated and cause any harm. Moreover, there aren't any conditions or circumstances in which mirrors could cause harm (also unlike ingesting water or oxygen).
2. The act of avoiding mirrors is not the same as a Diabetic who avoids certain food. It's a sign of neurosis.
3. Only a mirror can be used in a car, not a video camera, but there would be no difference in the affect on the driver because mirrors cause no harm.
I'll shut up now. I come up with better arguments against my own premise--should I post those to assist anyone who disagrees?
So an environmental factor shouldn't be considered when diagnosing a breast cancer patient? Why doesn't someone post a list of studies showing how safe the things are? But there aren't any of those either. This is called taking something for granted. It's blind faith. How is it not? Is there a list of other things which absolutely should not be studied? I'd like to see it.
Skeptics should sign their posts with signatures that say "6 billion people cannot be wrong."
I'll take my chances with a reflection-free lifestyle.
"I am frightened before all mirrors"
- Jorge Luis Borges
"See Ya. Wouldn't Want to Be Ya"
- Wesley Snipes, New Jack City |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2006 : 16:42:23 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by jordoskeptic
Why doesn't someone post a list of studies showing how safe the things are?
Why would anyone waste their time conducting a study when there has yet to be presented any conceivable mechanism by which mirror reflections could cause bodily harm?
You have not yet once state how you think mirrors might be harmful. What reasons do you have for presuming they might be? As you have already noted, unlike food and water, mirrors are not ingested.
quote:
This is called taking something for granted. It's blind faith. How is it not?
It's called common sense. There is no reason to suppose mirrors are harmful. If you can think of a reason, present it. We're open to new ideas, just not unsubstantiated paranoia.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 09/27/2006 16:46:07 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2006 : 16:50:29 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Original_Intent
Man, it's been years. I really liked Thomas Covenent (sp).....
Peace
Joe
Yeah, and I just found out that there's a third Chronicle of Thomas Covenant.
I need to visit the library... 
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Topic Locked
