[terry j]

Kinda understand what you mean Otto, but then again there is some weirdish stuff out there. I'm not talking about special stones etc that improve the response of your system!! ha ha.

Haven't looked at the links yet, like DRF I'm a bit awake tonite.

James Randi is an interesting one, but I've found you have to look at EACH persons preconceptions (we all have the un-examined conclusions) and I see JR bagging all the weird stuff, yet being uncritical when it comes to something (for example) like psychiatry, which has got to be a dis-credited ''''profession'''' if there ever was one.

Now, James Randi (and MANY others) would immediately discredit something like water dowsing. I must admit here my slight scepticism on that.

A couple of years ago we moved out here in the country, and it's a very old house indeed (well, at least by Australian standards!!) and still to this day our source of water is a well in our courtyard. It's a beauty!!, about 1.2 metres in dia, and dry brick lined (ie no mortar, obviously to allow water into the well) all the way to the water. It is over 25 metres deep, so it represents an awful lot of MANUAL labour in very hard and stony ground.

The well is smack bang dead centre of our courtyard, which is itself in the centre of the house layout, is wings symmetrical each side of the courtyard. All that means is that the house was built around the well, rather than build the house and (by luck) just happen to dig a well dead bang in the middle and miraculously find water.

So what with all this??? Well, the house was built in the 1830's, so how did they know to dig in that spot?? It's not a bore - drill, dry result so move and try again. And the bore drillers give NO guarantee they will find water, you pay regardless. So it is NOT a case of dig anywhere and you will hit water. We are almost at the top of a hill, there is a creek at the bottom. Yet they dug nearly at the top???

What sort of faith in a result would you need to have to keep digging (bricking from the top as you go down mind you) after you'd already gone ten, fifteen or twenty metres?? The farmers around here swear by dowsing, and claim results. Indeed, our local pump guy (all he does is go around the region fixing pumps, which especially now in the worst drought in 100 years is a vital service) also swears by dowsing and reckons he has seen many instances of it. I only bring him up because of his experience, and he also deals very often with the bore guys too.

So there you go, I'm not sure what conclusions we can draw from that. I do recall when last year I had to dig 50 holes to plant trees along our driveway I had to borrow my mates generator and jackhammer to get them dug because the ground was so hard from the drought. So I got a bit of personal reality of the magnitude of the effort involved in doing a lot of digging, and I kept asking myself how they were so sure the water was in THAT spot.