So ..as to light in bottles...and this is all me, so probably is broken, wrong and littered with assumption and error, but here goes...

You can catch a wave in a bottle, for a while. Lie the bottle down in a puddle. Make a wave on the puddle and it will enter the bottle. If you then brought a gate down swiftly, the wave in the bottle would persist for a while, but would lose it's energy to the walls of the bottle eventually.

Similar with sound...stand in a long room with a door and have someone shout your name as they shut the door. Here's the wired part...you would hear you name AFTER you saw them shut the door (as long as the room was long enough)! If the back wall of the room was designed correctly, you could even here an echo after that! The sound IS trapped in the room with you even though the source is on the other side of the door!

I think light is the same...but it moves so much faster that it's trapped for a tiny fraction of a second...smaller than we can perceive.

If we could make a PERFECTLY reflective surface, then maybe we could "carry moonbeams home in a jar" as the song says ..

Who cares

Dear Phil...Who said we don't have anything at zero degrees? They never lived in Chicago in January.

Lani, I think it best we let it lie before we end up discussing quantum fluctuations and cats who are undecided vis a vis their wellbeing!

Well, curse this forum (technically more of a bulletin board) and it's tendency to hide posts.

And, as predicted, curse my flippancy.

Phil10 was right, my comment that the bible was the word of man, not the word of God was a red button. I should at least have inserted the required "I believe" (since atheism requires just as much faith as a belief in the divine), but since this has obviously started an argument I'm not going to edit it now. Let my mistake stand for all to see.

Further, I didn't see Phil's "red button" response until I was prompted to investigate Dale's apology. Thus my comment about dogs with tails was made in ignorance of the growing furore and must have looked very glib indeed, as if I was ignoring the offence I'd caused. I wasn't, I was simply unaware of it.

I respect everyone's right to believe and am actually rather envious and in awe of the faithful. It's not that I don't WANT there to be an afterlife; I much prefer the idea of "being" to "not being", all things being equal. But if I "try it on", imagine that God exists, that there's something after...it just feels wrong. I suspect if I am wrong, that God would prefer an honest non-believer to a deceitful man claiming a faith he never had, just to get into heaven.

Sorry Lani, I can't see it as a choice...at least not a free one. You either resonate with the word, or you don't. You do, I don't. I envy you in many ways as I said ...and here is just one; if you're right, you get to say the ultimate "I told you so".

If I'm right, I don't!

I love you all, whatever you believe, and will defend your right to believe it with all my being.

And at the same time, defend my right to say I believe something else.