Why do you feel the need to say anything at all? Your opinion on whether someone’s joke is funny or not is entirely irrelevant to your moderation. You are, of course, entitled to express your opinions just like anyone else, but perhaps you should consider doing so in a separate post from one in which you’re performing a moderator action.
snerk
So you’re volunteering for the test after all? 
They are? I’d like to see a Simmons-Roddenberry or even a Wilder-Hackman. Just imagine.
Hey, you got one right! Was the clue that I don’t have a moderator title beneath my username?
I was being sarcastic? Huh. Who knew?
Awwww. . . . thanks. . . . more people should say that about me. But I don’t mate much around here, so I guess there’s not much opportunity.
Yeah, yeah. . . that’s what they all say.
So you’re saving your great questions for Jesus? Great plan.
At least this is getting kinda funny. Will you be breaking into leet speak next?
Oooh goody.
Ohm!
OK. . . . ~waving bye~
No cheating and coming back before 10 years!*
*just kidding. . . . you’ve been a slightly entertaining troll
No, actually; you shouldn’t do it when moderating. It’s obnoxious. If it were at least clever, it’d have the virtue of being entertaining; but you don’t even do it cleverly. You should knock it off.
Whatever; you can be obnoxious if you’d like.
Edit: I have no interest whatsoever in a defense of the behavior. I only hope you’ll reconsider it.
Daniel
Huh. This thread is turning into a pissing match. Who’d’a thunk it?
You mean you weren’t the one using your psychic powers to create it? 
Not knowingly, but since everyone’s a little bit psychic… maybe.
Thank you for clarifying that. In which case my thread qualifies as it is.
Well my thread seeks a method (a fool-proof method at that, I have clearly stated) to test an actual claim, while not a series admittedly because of its unusual nature (I mean how many people claim that they can make you urinate uncontrollably just by using their mental power? beats Uri Geller, and his spoon bending gang hollow, dont you think? heh heh - O pardon me - (excuse my rather putrid humour, but I understand how you feel about that - no need to comment - keeps me amused though), none-the-less an actual claim as you have subsequently verified.
The ad infinitum, ad nauseam surely must be an exaggeration? Infinity is a very large number. Did you know that there were 3 grades of infinity though, each larger than the other? A little known mathematical fact I thought I’d share with you. Oh I get it. It was a joke! Ha Ha … that was really good! pardon me I’m a little slow in the intake (though faster on the uptake). I like your sense of humour - once I get it.
Anyway my original statement stands. My thread is debatable and in fact, a debate had actually started, when shortly afterwards you so abruptly closed it.
namelss had actually suggested a fairly reasonable test, to test the claim. Though I thought it suffered from some flaws. It would work fine if n were an infinite number (getting back to infinity), but might very well be skewed, if there were a limited number of people willing to be tested, as seems more probable.
For example, some of the people may be suffering from urinary incontinence, due to disease or a medical disorder. When subjected to the steely psychic eye of Ms Hunter, they may very well urinate uncontrollably, which they may also do if suggested by someone else, not so psychic. There are many other things I can think of - but then thats a whole debate.
Now when I said I kind of agreed with you, I was being humble(false modesty?/sarcasm?). Dont hold me down to it. It was also because I thought that the actual point to debate had to be “great”, but that, you have clarified perfectly, is not so.
I have clearly shown above, that, it is debatable, and you have graciously said it doesnt have to be profound. Designing a fool-proof Test for Psychic Urination seems pretty coherent to me. I look forward thus to you re-opening the thread. Sincerely - richnz
And you should be congratulated for this noble contribution to the scientific community, but isn’t the test design pretty straightforward? Just ask the person claiming the ability to commit to a few measurable benchmarks (i.e. given a group of ten random individuals, the psychic can have three of them headed for the restroom within ten minutes) and go from there.
shush - 10 years remember? - the less you talked , the more you heard, try to be more like that wise ole bird.
Very honourable suggestion. But given, in the unlikely event, the person claiming the ability intends to commit fraud, safeguards must be put in place to guard against it.
Remember how Uri Geller fooled many?
The operative words in your suggestion are “Random Individuals”. Do you see there maybe trouble if you went into a crowd and said “hey I want to test if you can be made to urinate uncontrollably”. The people putting up their hands could be plants, or could be wanting to go to the loo and look on this as a heaven-sent opportunity… there are so many things…
In my experience (and that of about half a dozen others), he can’t.
In the interest of making your stay a the SDMB more enjoyable, (and longer), I will call your attention to the fact that no one is to tamper with other posters’ quotes: from the Rules for posting:
[quote]
Text inside
[QUOTE]
tags is sacrosanct. Normal editorial rules apply: that is, you may indicate omitted portions of a quote by the use of ellipses “…” and you may add text to clarify a word using square brackets (e.g., “her [the sister’s] friend”), but you may not add editorial comments or edit a quote so as to change the substantive meaning; nor may you substitute text such as “some blather” or “more nonsense” inside the
Heffalump - my apologies for being rude. I do not need to apologise to tomndebb? or whatever, he is rude enough as it is - thus accounting for his obvious unpopularity here.
YAAAAY I won! My thread is back! go have a look - can I charge for pay per view here? (jus kidding)
I dont intend to hang around long. I have made my point.
Cheers - Rich
Possibly, but none of them are so difficult to grasp that they require debate or analysis with us. Go find someone who claims to have this ability and show them your list of conditions. Let us know how it turned out or post it on a blog or something.
What do you want from us, anyway, help in weeding out fraudulent psychic urination claims? I wasn’t aware of any great amount of ongoing psychic-urination fraud that needed to be stopped. Are kidney patients putting themselves at risk by paying urination-psychics instead of undergoing dialysis? I can’t say I’ve ever heard of such a case, but by all means, enlighten us.
Dowsing, by comparison, is big business. Huge business.
richnz, if you’re here to simply garner responses (trolling) and promote a single agenda (one-trick pony), don’t bother posting again. We have no tolerance for this here and you will be banned.
Q.E.D.
Beat that!
fluiddruid I am not here to garner responses (trolling) or or promote a single agenda. (I had to look up trolling/troll - someone who posts controversial messages in an online community, with the intention of bating others into an emotional response - nope not me). But I am sick of getting warnings from the likes of you, which I suspect, has more to do with the lack of respect I have shown to the moderators than anything else.
I wandered onto your board by accident and the words “Great Debates” attracted me. In that I saw “Should western democracies self-censor to suit Islamic militancy?” a subject that I think is very relevant in today’s world, as I feel western democracies are under threat from Islamic militancy. I have contributed to that thread without being accused of “trolling”.
The other thing that interests me is rationality vs mumbo-jumbo and thus was mildly interested in the psychic dowsing thread. I quickly realised however that there was nothing much to it.
I think the important questions here are why people believe in this, or any other psychic phenomena, despite being continuously debunked without fail. James Randi himself says that most dowsers believe in their ability and are quite surprised when they invariably fail their tests. Many people similarly believe in astrology. The reason is perhaps because people are not familiar with mathematical probability and getting things right by random chance.
Many are fraudsters too. Here magicians, who deal with fooling people as part of their trade, but do so honestly, are the most qualified people to catch them. Houdini bebunked a lot psychics, and in-fact never came across a single genuine one, despite a life-time of searching.
Why am I not going to hang around long?
- **Tomndebb ** - "Great Debates is a Forum for debates. The “Great” in the title is a bit ironic: in its original incarnation before the Cafe Society and IMHO Forums were created, an example given for a topic was “Kirk vs. Picard.” "
The moderator admits that the quality of the debates is pretty poor, thus vindicating others here, who have expressed the same opinion.
- People are pretty rude here, lack a sense of humour and have hugely inflated ego’s about themselves.
Bryan Ekers - “What do you want from us, anyway, help in weeding out fraudulent psychic urination claims?” No Ekers. I want NOTHING from you. And the thought that you can provide help in weeding out anything is about as delusional as as the pyschics themselves.
Incidentally she genuinely believes in her powers and is not a trickster, if you would care to investigate.
“Dowsing, by comparison, is big business. Huge business.” - so what? what can you do about it? Talk about inflated ego’s. It is already being most aptly handled by Randi’s organisation - Go out and save the world - dowsing is too small an issue for you.
- My holidays have finished and I’m off for work.
Good luck to you all.
FOBTSP, troll.