Confucius' Cat

What is stopping some creul and heartless person from putting Anthrax in our mail system? There is nothing stopping some cruel and heartless person from doing about anything they or you can think up on their behalf. The precautions and risks remain the same. Beat me to it. What is stopping you from enjoying yourself despite the evil that lurks at every turn? Perhaps just a little common sense? The only way to prevent the evil of human nature is to eliminate human nature. Only way to do that is eliminate humanity. With all the people gone we can finally have a safe world where the darling baby seals can play in peace. CRAP! The polar bears want to eat them. IS THERE NO PEACE? IS THERE NO JUSTICE? IS THERE NO SAFETY?

In light of the previous quote below, i am amazed the rotten pole is still there!

LMAO Glad to hear about the successful appeal.

Actually there had been a road there years before and it was turned into a park and that part was left undeveloped and got reclaimed by Mother Earth. (The chiiiiildren thing was facetious) FWIW

Necessity is the mother of all inventions. (sic) There was an original need for more participation and it grew exponentially. I was involved within about a year or so of the opening and I have seen explosive growth at GC- from couple of hundred in 100 miles to nearly 3000 today. Now it could be argued that GC is too big. There are so many caches available that determining which ones to go for is more time consuming than finding the caches themselves. If one wants to utilize their time on caches they are likely to like, they often have to wade through hundreds of caches they are likely to dislike to find them. IMO recent policies at GC are leading to a new "necessity" that could perhaps lead to substantial growth on the other sites (and consequently diminishing of GC). GC is alienating a lot of its customers in subtle little ways. As yet there is no real alternative, but as more and more cachers become aggrieved, the other sites are sure to grow. The question is pretty much "who will bell the cat?" Those brave souls who jump ship first are going to do a lot of traveling for a few caches and are going to have to hide their little aces off to entice others to join in.

Flamingos are deadly... poisonous fangs and such... especially the plastic ones... oh, and they are made with lead based Chinese paint. Can't be too careful! There is a now archived cache around here that was placed at the bottom of a speed limit sign. Nothing special there... except the sign was deep in the woods where there is no road. I think it was archived because someone complained that the chiiiildren might get run over whilst looking for the cache.

Yeah and this site is not immune to such placements. At least over there the community gets a chance to voice their objections. Here, it's "tough nuts, it conforms to the guidelines." Or conversely here you place a perfectly safe and legal cache, it gets denied, and all you get is, "tough nuts, it violates an unwritten guideline that we (TPTB) refuse to delineate clearly." TC has a conundrum. They are not popular because they are not popular. I joined about a year ago, found there are very few caches available, didn't bother with it and lost my sponsorship. I logged on again a couple of weeks ago and got sponsored again in minutes, but again there just aren't enough caches to bother with. Until a lot of people decide it IS worth the effort, it will never be worth the effort. GC is the best game in town. (IBTL) *surprised it is still open* mods must be asleep at the switch.

I fully understand your frustration. I have considered quitting several times over similar things encountered in the hobby. I have known several others who have quit or, like myself, drastically diminished their enthusiasm because of various Barbara Streisand encountered in this activity. In the end though, quitting only hurts oneself. None of us is so important as to be missed if we leave. In fact as far as ANY individual is concerned, after their rant thread is closed, no one will much care a hoot. And even during the forum suicide thread the predominant comment will be along the lines of "don't let the doorknob hit you in the southbound end." Having a cache UNJUSTLY denied is really not worth punishing oneself over. Caching goes on. On a side note, I can't believe the BLM is that strict. What is this land anyway, a brontosaurus or yeti habitat? Maybe the only place one of the last four polar bears has been sighted? Since there are no rocks there, would the existence of one not be a fairly obvious place to hide a cache? Rocks are pretty generic, ubiquitous, difficult to recognise as NOT being native, relatively portable, can be carved out with hammer and chisel, and are rarely moved very far by 100+ mph winds. So get a medium-big rock (weighing about 25-30 lbs) of a type common to the area. Carve a hollow in it. Place the cache in the hollow. Set the rock, hollow side down, on the ground a "SAFE" distance from the DEADLY NON-ELECTRICITY and resubmit the cache.

I can't help but laugh. This statement sound like electrical boxes are rare and hard to come by.

I wonder how fast one could rack up mileage if one released multiple copies of a coin? HMMMN? *strokes chin*

By them having the power to deny whatever they choose to deny, they can pass the easy ones and deny the ones they deem questionable in their own judgment, thus placing the impetus on the hider to change the submission or appeal. Most hiders will change the submission and move on. If the reviewers are not given broad discretion, the system might well get bogged down in bureaucracy as they would have to send every questionable submission up the ladder because they did not have the authority to deny it. They NEED to have carte blanche authority. They SHOULD be careful in how they exercise it. I think by and large they DO, but there are exceptions in every endeavour.

I regularly upload pictures to one of my Archived caches in order to post the pix on the forums. Just got done uploading a couple minutes ago.

At first glance, she appears to be a real girl of about 8 yrs of age but after enhancing the photo with GhosOuter® photo investigation software, i see that the apparition is in reality a rare manifestation of Elvis in an earlier life in which he was the daughter of a reincarnated gnat on the west bank of the Licking River (one of only two rivers in the world that flow North, - the other is the Nile- not counting of course the St. Johns) This is a VERY convincing picture!

The bakery demon: I shot this picture to show an antenna located on a commercial bakery building which was believed to be involved in RF interference (later ruled out). I did not see the apparition until i looked at the picture (see arrow) I have a good explanation for it. Anyone want to guess? it was taken at about 1/2 hour before sunset 1-19-08 18:18 EST on a clear, sunny day. Camera was Panasonic DMC-FZ8 in automatic mode. F5.6 1/250 flash disabled. Original size 3072/2304 Even with a good rational explanation of the pic, it is still cool. if one has pix of cool phenomena, one should not be afraid to have it analyzed. I doubt a picture is going to seriously change anyone's world view. Full pic. Cropped:

Some comments on this pic: The red lines and arrow are of course my additions. Arrow points to some text similar to what was seen in the TeamSeek photo. is this graffiti? If so, it would support redtech's postulation. Both the real person and the apparition appear to be very close to the coloums, therefore the perspective can be assumed to be the same. Assuming that the arches are the same height and assuming that the person on the left is of average stature, the apparition would be a GIANT. I would estimate his height at at about 8'. he is nearly as tall as the top of the arches. Indeed a strange picture but i think it is more likely an illusion than an apparition. I would like to have a copy of the original to evaluate.

I doubt that anything i might say is going to convince you that this streak is not paranormal. I'm OK with that. For myself, i like to VERY DEEPLY consider physical explanations before accepting the supernatural. I am a Razor fan (Occam's Razor that is.) At this time, "unexplained" is a proper analysis. The "text" I refer to is the apparent letters in the image faintly apparent in my blowup. These are probably just a visual misinterpretation of the pixels in the gross enlargement. To me, that is more "unexplainable" than the streak itself. I am thinking perhaps the memory card did not get overwritten totally from a previous picture, that would perhaps cause random streaks or misread pixels in the digital data. No true analysis can be done with pix uploaded to this site because the site modifies them. The stray pixels (not the streak) could be from GC resizing and deletion of header data from the jpg. "Double exposure" could happen when the CCD was not totally discharged between pictures. This is especially plausible in conditions where pictures were taken in rapid sequence as you indicated is the case here. It might help analysis if the last few pictures before this one were also available for analysis. Again, I'm not an expert by any means, but I would like to pursue an analysis if you are willing to send me the originals.

I blew up the "ghost light" as much as I could and still see any detail. It is very interesting. It seems to have some text associated with it too. My guess would be a double exposure or memory error. Not sure how either could happen.

I mean AWESOME !! C'mon look at it ! It's a bright coil of light zipping past an old cement headstone. There's ZERO explanation for it !! Go Look. Be sure to put the space after the W. Maybe somone could clue me in on leaving a link here ?? Do you just type in the address in your reply box ? Also why isn't my Avatar showing ? tu TeamSeek.... Is it a digital photo or film? If film, it looks like a scratch on the negative. The online pic is not good enough for close analysis. What is the original size? Do you have shutter speed information? (it is obviously very slow judging from the blur) What kind of camera was it taken with? Leaving a link? Not sure exactly what you mean, but assuming you mean put a link in a post, there is an icon just above the text box that looks like a little globe with a paperclip under it. You click that, type in (or better yet, paste) the URL information click OK and in the next box type what you want the link caption to say. Then click OK. If you roll over the icons it tells you what they do. If you just added an avatar, you must enter the forums by using the link on the left of the "my account" page... this will update your info on the forums.

If everyone followed that advice, there would be no geocaches. No, many if not most caches are on land where "every Tom, Dick and Harry" are ALREADY invited. My comment was specific to PRIVATE land (see bolded word). It is a dadgum good question to ask yourself if you own a piece of PRIVATE land and are thinking about putting a cache on it. I'm pretty sure that there's no law against a non-licensed person opening his/her own breaker box and 'messing around' inside. Heck, I did it this weekend. Dude, are you okay? When do the doctors think you'll be able to leave the hospital? I had to go to the library and do a lot of research on the safe way to reset that breaker, but I finally figured it out. Actually, there really is a prescribed safe way to reset a breaker. Because a breaker is designed to interrupt an excess flow of electrical current, when it trips, it is most likely because the circuit is in such a state that, if reenergized, it will again draw excessive current. in the case of a short-circuit, this excessive current could be literally THOUSANDS of times the normal operating current and on occasion has been known to cause a breaker to EXPLODE quite violently when reset. (Here's a little trivia for you: a circuit breaker is only REQUIRED to clear a short-circuit ONCE. Many times a breaker will suffer internal damage when it clears a short with a heavy fault current. Theoretically, a breaker that has cleared a heavy short should be replaced - although this is seldom done in the REAL world.) The correct procedure for resetting a breaker is: 1. Inspect the circuit to find the fault that caused the breaker to trip (if possible) and clear it. 2. Stand at arm's length away from the box and place the index finger of which ever hand you would feel best about living without for the rest of your life on the tripped breaker. 3. turn your head AWAY from the breaker panel (to protect your eyes from possible flash and shrapnel) 4. Engage the breaker. 5. If the breaker trips again immediately DO NOT RESET IT AGAIN until the circuit has been repaired by a qualified electrician (Yes this is the way I ALWAYS do it.) Electricity is no joke. It is TOTALLY unforgiving. And it is a NON-ISSUE in the case currently (pun) before the forum because there is NO ELECTRICITY involved and the "electrical boxes" in question are in such a state of destruction that it is not possible for any rational person to think they could be live. Irrational persons would only need to ignore the cache. The cache in question should have been approved under current (there's that pun again) guidelines.

I've never been impressed by the EVP's. There are several episodes that stick out in my mind. There was one from a week or so ago on an Airforce base (I think). They placed the flashlight on the ground and asked it to turn it on and it turned on. Beyond an obvious farse, that one was fairly interesting. There was also the lighthouse episode where they saw the "ghost" peek over the edge of the stairway from the top. That one sent shivers up my spine. Then there was the episode they did in Colorado at the hotel where the Shining was based on. There was some VERY strange stuff going on there, but they also had guests staying at the hotel, which opens the door for hoaxes. There is definitely a spirit world. I find evidence of the spirit world an uplifting thing for my faith. A lot of people view it as demonic, but I find it fascinating. Those episodes were impressive to me also. the lightouse was one of the few where they actually debunked a manifestation... the "bucket noise" that turned out to be a loose window. I am sure there COULD be "rational" explanations for all of the above but they were not readily apparent. Um, correct. That is what makes them an EVP. It's the defintion as it were--a voice that is heard on electronic playback but not heard in person on-site. In which case, faking it would take a bit more effort but a person familiar with RF could make it happen. I don't know which is more or less likely, someone on the hotel staff with a radio transmitter that heshe has previously tested with that particular model recorder that TAPS uses or a ghost that just happens to be able to make digital electrical pulses that compile nicely into muffled but possibly intelligent audio. Making a radio transmitter that would be CLEARLY heard on a digital recorder by audio rectification would be quite a feat, but getting muffled and distorted audio would be quite easy. I see the muffled, distorted audio as somewhat strong evidence of audio rectification in the analogue portion of the recorder by an amplitude modulated RF source- intentional or not- in the case of the above audio clip, provided the voice is actually saying what it seems to be saying, it would seem to be intentional... by ghost or hoaxer has not been determined. I would contend that if a ghost can manipulate digital memory (or analogue electronics) to the extent that discernible audio can be heard, they should be able to do so CLEARLY. To me, the distortion and low amplitude mitigates against an intentional attempt at communication by a spirit. If the "EVP" was not an "EVP" by definition but audible even to the live witnesses, it would be much more feasible for a ghost to accomplish since sound merely requires the movement of air. many things in nature are capable of making sounds similar to a human voice. For example, a guitar in the hands of Peter Frampton. You got that right! I love how science changes over the years. The Earth is flat and man can never fly. (I wonder how long it will be before this thread gets shut down or moved to off topic. Anybody got a pool going?)

Good one!!

Then perhaps you didn't hear the one from last week? Be sure to listen to it before your read what the person typed so you can see if you agree! Actually, i DID see that episode and probably have it on DVR so i will review it. I'm sorry, but to me it is not clear at all on the computer clip for the most part. That could be my computer audio system. I find it odd that: 1. The actors' voice is not studio quality- which could easily be done 2. The "ghost" voices are severely muffled. This seems to always be the case. Perhaps someone needs to give the ghosts speech lessons? If the actors are clearly hearing these voices, they need to invest in better recording equipment. 3. Apparently the voices were only heard on the recording and were not heard live by the actors, which leaves open the possibility of radio transmissions received by the recording equipment (which would probably have had to be intentional in this particular instance). I did a prank like this once at an audio-visual company for which I used to work. It is very simple to do and the fact that the hotelier was so "open" to the final interpretation of the results "how cool to work in a haunted hotel" suggests that there might be a possibility of a "set-up." I can easily see an economic incentive for the story. i would like to see them use an RF spectrum analyzer along with their EVP and EMF equipment to determine if there is strong RF activity coincident with their readings on their other instruments. Skepticism is not a bad trait IMO. I am still open.

I see nothing wrong with a cache there. If I was the approver (utterly useless point), I would approve it based on the picture even if there WAS a guideline prohibiting caches around electrical equipment since the cache would not be near electrical equipment. I gather from your posts that it is your understanding that the denial was because of proximity to electrical equipment, but is it possible that the real reason for denial is because of its proximity to public infrastructure (radio tower) which could possibly be considered a terrorist target? I work at a LOT of radio towers and I have often considered placing caches nearby them, (several are on State Park land and permission could be obtained by the normal process). But I have always thought better of it because we simply don't want "suspicious" activity in the areas. If nothing else, the towers ARE frequent targets of copper theft. A cache near a radio tower is a LEO encounter waiting to happen. Since this is your land it is your business, but do you really want to invite every Tom, Dick and Harry to prowl about on your land? But as you say in post #66: And you have carefully considered all this and still want to get it approved, it shouldn't really be any big deal to move the cache off the pole to say, the side of the building or the base of the tower or a guy anchor or the perimeter gate. That would be a much better way to accomplish the stated goal of increasing the number of caches in the area because it would make approval a snap. Since the goal is to place a cache and get it approved, it stands to reason that doing what is needed to get it approved is preferable to pulling the unapproved cache and re-opening this can of forum worms which clearly does not apply in this case.

That's one of my favoritist shows on TV. They've caught some amazing stuff. Those guys seem like the geocaching type, they definitely love their gadgets favoritist isnt a word. try again RON! Try the British spelling: "favouritest." I get a lot of orbs. They are quite meaningless in electronic pictures. They can't be "unexplained" because they are common with bright points of light and pixels misinterpreted in the compression algorithms. Since this occurrence is possible for any electronic pix, any manifestation of orbs could possibly be caused thusly. Any other cause cannot be proven unless this possibility is definitively disproved. Ghost hunters is very interesting but they don't seem to really go deep enough in their investigations (at least in what they actually show in the episodes.) In a lot of occasions they do debunk the observed phenomena, but in many cases I could suggest possible explanations which they don't apparently pursue. In all of their voice clips that i have heard thus far, they have been unconvincing. They seem to indicate the "voices" are so clear to them, but they don't sound clear to me. With broadcast quality equipment to reproduce the sounds as they hear them from their consumer grade recording equipment, there is no reason to think the broadcast audio is of any lesser quality than the original clips. All-in-all it is very subjective and once someone suggests "the voice sounded like (ferinstance) it said "Mary," one will always hear "Mary." It seems odd to me that they would even use $50 memo recorders in the first place. Mine picks up cellphone RF interference... this possibility alone (because of the related potential for picking up analog radio transmissions) casts serious doubt on any data gathered by these machines. I DO believe that unexplained things happen and I DO allow for the possibility of REAL haunts and apparitions and I would really love to experience some solidly unexplainable ones myself. But so far, out of thousands of accounts I have read about or heard about, none have been truly convincing. I have heard "footsteps" and "doors opening" while I have been alone at home, but such noises could easily have many natural explanations which are beyond easy research, mainly due to their rarity and unrepeatability. One is free to believe what one wants. I believe a spirit world exists because the Bible indicates that it does. I also believe true carnal encounters with that spirit world are extremely rare. An explanation I mostly like for apparitions and such is the existence of parallel "time lines" in alternate planes of existence which occasionally get very close together in space-time that a glimpse is had of activity in the other line. Sounds good, but of course there is nothing like "evidence" to back it up "A man will hear what he wants to hear and disregard the rest." - Simon and Garfunkel "The Boxer" (edit to add smiley)

Speaking as a professionally licensed Electrical Engineer let me say I have HUGE concerns about using such boxes. I think they should be banned outright.... If they are so poorly designed that an actual box poses so much threat that you have grave concerns over a marked and harmless caching version, I'd have to think that perhaps the problem is the crappy design of the real boxes. If you have made peace between the danger of live electrical boxes and the public benefit of having them, then perhaps you should focus on real issues like suggesting the caching box be marked in some way so a cacher knows. As for cachers taking apart something they are unsure about to find a cache. Don't. Simple enough. Works for boxes, works for sprinklers. Undoubtedly the impetus is NOW with the seeker since the genie is out of the bottle. Electrical box caches exist adn people have learned already. There is no way to unlearn everybody from thinking "the electrical box MIGHT be the cache." So a simple rule FOR THE SEEKER to follow is - IF IT IS NOT CLEARLY MARKED SO THAT YOU KNOW IT IS A GEOCACHE DON'T OPEN IT. (and leave your screwdriver and bolt cutters at home.) Live electrical boxes are in fact extremely hazourdous if opened. There is pretty much universal agreement on that point. NOT opening electrical boxes of unknown energization is the ONLY sensible course of action. Now if we can just teach "sense" to the general public...