I have applied for the challenge

Why is the word "delusional" in quotes?
Why is this a claim that could be won?
Why has no one thought of this before?
Why is the sky blue?
 
I just happen to have a B.S. in Geology. I've read most of Randi's commentaries on dowsing, and, while he does on occasion say things that are not technically accurate, his miss-statements are similar to most peoples' understanding of geology. I've never thought that he believed that his wording was the be all and end all of geological definitions or that he wouldn't be gracious and say "Thank you for correcting me" if someone took the time to point out the minor inaccuracies in his wording.

Peter Morris reminds me of a former supervisor of mine, who would seize on any small mistake or alternate interpretation of someone's wording just to prove that the speaker was 'wrong'.

It also seems that Mr. Morris' claim hinges on whether or not 'flow' is a synonym of 'percolate'. I contend that they are not synonymous.

iv) Water supply is extremely variable over a short distance. It is perfectly possible to locate a well that produces several hundred gallons per minute (GPM) while another well just a few metres away can produce very little or nothing at all.
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While I suppose that it's possible for this to occur in some geologic formations, it's highly unlikely to happen where most well drilling takes place.
 
I'm just trying to make sure I'm picturing what we're talking about. The flowing underground water we're arguing about is supposed to be like water flowing in a pipe, right? Unobstructed? If, hypothetically, the water weren't there, there would be an empty tubular hole big enough to contain at least a small river, say several yards in diameter?

So it doesn't count, for example, if there's a long chanel of porous rock through which water is seeping fairly quickly, while the non-porous rock around it has virtually no water moving through it. Because that's the normal percolation of water through rock/soil, and not an "underground river." Correct?
 
An imaginary dialogue:

JR: The soup du jour at the Corner Deli is chicken.

PM: No it isn't! Here's a menu, and it says the soup today is tomato, so you're wrong! If you can't prove your claim, you owe me a million dollars!

JR: Right or wrong, the Challenge is for a PARANORMAL claim. Menu choices aren't paranormal.

PM: I don't care! You're wrong! I filed an application, so gimme my million dollars!
 
Old man said:
I just happen to have a B.S. in Geology. I've read most of Randi's commentaries on dowsing, and, while he does on occasion say things that are not technically accurate, his miss-statements are similar to most peoples' understanding of geology. I've never thought that he believed that his wording was the be all and end all of geological definitions or that he wouldn't be gracious and say "Thank you for correcting me" if someone took the time to point out the minor inaccuracies in his wording.

Peter Morris reminds me of a former supervisor of mine, who would seize on any small mistake or alternate interpretation of someone's wording just to prove that the speaker was 'wrong'.

It also seems that Mr. Morris' claim hinges on whether or not 'flow' is a synonym of 'percolate'. I contend that they are not synonymous.

While I suppose that it's possible for this to occur in some geologic formations, it's highly unlikely to happen where most well drilling takes place.
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Thank you for some knowledgeable input.
It appears the OP has a long standing chip on his shoulder regarding Mr. Randi. Whenever accusations like that happen, things generally get more obscured and people start mincing about terms as seen in this thread.

Of course, taken literally, an 'underground stream or even river" is absurd.
Is Mr. Randi going to insist that water never moves underground?
No.
Is Mr. Morris going to be able to do the One Mill Challenge on a claim that water moves underground?
No.
We will just have another amusing thread that will eventually go out with a whimper.
 
This all boils down to a semantic debate.

Groundwater movement is an absolute fact. Google "Aquifer"
Water migrates through connected pore spaces in permeable rock and soils, through cracks, joints and fractures in rocks which may be otherwise impermeable (ie in which any porosity is unconnected) and it most certainly flows in closed tubes beneath glaciers . (Google "Esker")

In limestone which has been subjected to sub-aerial erosion or occasionally dissolved by action of acids including but not limited to carbonic acid - in short "Karstified",- and then has been subjected to reburial , or in which water flow is reactivated by rising water tables or climate change (eg the end of a glacial phase), phreatic passages may fill with water which continues to erode a vadose channel.
(Google "phreatic", "vadose", "meteoric water". Hell,- google "Hydrogeology".

Now lets get sensible. A river is an open channel filled with water, which is not also filled with soil or unconsolidated rock. If the channel is full of soil, so water percolates through it, it is not a river. With me? It's a groundwater flow.
If we have an underground channel part or all filled with water,but open to outside air, (entering at the stream resurgence or the sink) it's a cave, probably a buried phreatic passage.
If you want to call that an "underground river"fine, but it's specifically excluded by Randi in the case of dowsing.
A tunnel through ice can indeed be full of flowing water. The water is effectively in a closed pipe, so it can even flow uphill if it's under enough hydrostatic pressure. If it flows under a crevasse, so it's open to the surface, that water may even shoot out, briefly. It's apt to freeze and heal the pipe though. (Weep with envy, plumbers).

One more time. An underground passage is a cave. Randi excluded caves.
By Randi's definition (the only one that counts here), there is no such thing as an underground river.

(There are underground, buried, fossil river channels. The Nile is a classic. Far more interesting in many ways.)

Edit to add- Incidentally oil moves by more or less the same mechanism as water, but is less dense and often contains dissolved gas under pressure. Right now, I'm sitting 10000 feet above the Kashagan Reservoir in the north Caspian Sea, which is a karstified and reburied limestone block, with vast interconnected phreatic passage systems. They have not collapsed because fluid pressure holds them open against the overburden pressure. Drill a hole in them full of high density drilling mud and guess what happens?
Guess what happens if the oil has about 300,000 ppm of H2S dissolved in it.
Next time anybody feels like bitching about $3.00 gasoline- go boil your head.
 
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Hey Old Man!

Old man said:
I just happen to have a B.S. in Geology. I've read most of Randi's commentaries on dowsing, and, while he does on occasion say things that are not technically accurate, his miss-statements are similar to most peoples' understanding of geology. I've never thought that he believed that his wording was the be all and end all of geological definitions or that he wouldn't be gracious and say "Thank you for correcting me" if someone took the time to point out the minor inaccuracies in his wording.

Peter Morris reminds me of a former supervisor of mine, who would seize on any small mistake or alternate interpretation of someone's wording just to prove that the speaker was 'wrong'.
Click to expand...

A few other people here seem to do the same thing. If you are regarded as "hostile" to the cause (whatever that is), every little thing will be picked to death, while the large points are ignored.

I just talked to a friend who is a groundwater engineer, and asked him a bunch of questions about this. After he answered them, he asked me why I was so interested. How did this come up? When I told him, he asked me why in the hell was I worried about what people said about it on a message board? :duel

Good point. Why does it seem so important?

Oh yeah, a million dollars, and a very public figure.

heh

Pup said:
I'm just trying to make sure I'm picturing what we're talking about. The flowing underground water we're arguing about is supposed to be like water flowing in a pipe, right? Unobstructed? If, hypothetically, the water weren't there, there would be an empty tubular hole big enough to contain at least a small river, say several yards in diameter?
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As it was explained to me, there are different kinds of underground water. (duh!)
Concerning flowing water, in what could be regarded as streams or rivers, there are several physical reasons. An open tube, or pipe, in the rock, is a real underground river or stream. They are well known. The large ones are considered "caves" after they have eroded a large enough structure to enter. But there are many more smaller passages. As was pointed out, this is in Karst formations, as well as volcanic areas, with eroded lava tubes. Karst formations exist in many areas, not just florida.

There is also porous rock or ground that can have a flow. It will, over time, erode a channel and possibly a cave. There are well known underground streams at the Devils Millhopper, just north of Gainesville FL. A reall deep dry sinkhole.

http://gainesville.about.com/od/sports/gr/DevilMillhopper.htm
Movie
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/expfl/millhopper.html

The streams come out of the side of the hole, make waterfalls, then runs back into the ground, and continue on, underground.

Nobody considers the flow a "cave", but there are fissures and channels that the water has created over time.

In fact, that is what makes sinkholes, water eroding material from under the ground, as it flows. The underground stream in the Millhopper created the formation.

The many springs in Florida are considered the above ground portions of underground rivers. This is true in many other states as well.

Pup said:
So it doesn't count, for example, if there's a long chanel of porous rock through which water is seeping fairly quickly, while the non-porous rock around it has virtually no water moving through it. Because that's the normal percolation of water through rock/soil, and not an "underground river." Correct?
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Well, the nitpicking over definitions of words IS a real issue. In fact, it seems to be THE issue at times.

Perhaps a last resort when there is nothing else to say. Long channels of porous rock, soil, and fissures in rock, are exactly what water flows through underground, in the case where the flow is considered a stream or river. After a million years, when the water has made a big old cave, it is still an underground river.

There is also scientific evidence of underground rivers that have formed in a completly different way. They were buried.

Calling it something else doesn't change the fact that there is water flowing under. Into the blue again, water flowing under, into the blue again, water flowing under.

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.

:i:
 
Soapy Sam said:
This all boils down to a semantic debate.
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HA! You posted that while I was composing my response. Damn it. While some people want it to be that, I don't agree. It is a diversion. If you make a claim, (there are no underground streams), and you get you teeth handed to you by scientific evidence that there are, saying it is a matter of semantics is a cop out.

Insulting people, claiming you know the motive for there statement, trying to change the definition of words, they are all squirmy wiggle moves that woos make when they can't prove something.

Sceptics can't use the same methods. Scientist can't use those methods.
(well, they can, but it looks bad)

I'm sure someone will attack some part of this statement, while ignoring the scientific evidence. That is a woo move. IMO

After you say,"there are no underground streams" or "no scientific evidence has ever been shown for water flowing underground", you can't say "well, it is rare" and expect that to make the false claim valid.

Or to say, only in caves. That is beyond dumb. Its woo talk!

I got a good laugh over this last night, and I feel another one coming on.

So don't stop! Keep saying the same thing! If you say something over and over, it becomes true!
:wackylaugh:

Now please, say that thing about water being almost everywhere again. The people in Southern Cal need sources of water bad. If you keep telling them there is water almost everywhere, they can just sink some deep wells and solve the water crisis there. A thing of beauty.
 
I agree with Sam about semantics.

What dowsers have to do is detect water through antennae of purity 100% of the time.

They cannot do it.

To argue about the difference between "percolation" and "flow" is specious.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
Why would water percolating through rock form an open channel over time?
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I know this one:

In the battle between the stream and the rock
The stream always wins
Not through strength,
But through perserverance.



I heard that somewhere.
 
I just checked what Randi did say. Proving that 'that there exist vast rivers of fresh water that run deep in the ground' exist may not get you the $1 million prize. You will need to prove dowsing works. That is what the Swift article says. Unless Peter is relying on something he has not mentioned in his OP?

Also Peter Morris is not mentioned in the Swift article.
 
Peter Morris, if you find the time:

Have you already sent your notarized application? If so, has the JREF accepted your application?

What do you mean exactly by "related things"?

How will you prove your claim?
 
And for those of you who aren't familiar with the straight dope, this gentleman has directly caused around 500, mostly wordy, posts in the last 48 hours.

See boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=394028 which provoked boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=394125...

(http removed because I haven't made fifteen posts yet)
 
Mr. Morris has shot himself in the foot with his own dueling pistol.
He wants to use the One Mill Challenge to call Mr, Randi out to a duel.
However, the Challenge is not Mr. Randi's personal set of dueling pistols. It's a tool of the JREF, and there's no way the Board is going to sit back and let it be abused by someone's private vendetta against James Randi.
Mr. Randi's personal views (even as published on the site) and his E-mail communications, even when he's the irascible granddad we all know and love, aren't grounds for the MDC, and for good professional reasons should be kept out of it.

Nothing to see here. Move along.
 
I hate to stick my muzzle into this mess, but I believe the issue of "underground rivers" arose from dowser's claims, essentially, that's the only way you'll find water. I've not heard them mentioning "finding the water table", but rather locating that elusive stream that must be found or else you'll hit a dry well. Randi's point is that drilling for water involves striking the water table, and not these elusive "underground rivers" that dowsers seek. They simply do not exist as dowsers claim, though as Randi admits they can occur.
 
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