Skeptic, when I say that I won't argue with what I know, I mean just that. I love science and follow it religiously *BG* but I suspect that science will be adding a great many components to its format as time goes on. And thank God *BG* for that. Science, being science, needs to continue to discover and ascertain. Human beings need to incorporate that information, and we will. Even skeptics will.

I would imagine that we all agree that there are more things that human beings know than there are human beings. No problem with that. The disagreement comes with particulars.

Among the things I know is that, on occasion, we human beings are able to utilize inanimate things for our own perceptions. For instance, I think we all agree that we can't smell things over the telephone. Right? It is not part of its physical makeup. How then to explain the couple of times that I have? And my daughter at the age of 9 once did the same thing.

In my own experience, the first time happened when I was talking on the phone to a girlfriend in a town 3 miles away. My feet were on a hassock and I was relaxed and lazy. At a certain point, unediting, I said, What do I smell? Boiled eggs? Taken aback, she faltered, Well, I boiled eggs for supper.

The second time I was talking to a girlfriend 5 blocks away. My 100-year-old home has odd odors at times- that's a different story- so I told my friend that I could smell my oven heating, and that, no doubt, soon I would smell cookies (biscuits) baking. If they are chocolate cookies, she said lightly, I'll be over. We continued talking and a couple of times I mentioned that the oven's getting hotter but no cookies yet. Finally she said, Well, I have to go- we're having waffles for supper. I said, Are you heating the waffle iron right now?! She said, Yes... I said, That is what I'm smelling.

As you can see, these events are totally non-consequential but because the information doesn't fit in with things they can explain, skeptics will often lay it to whatever turns them on- whether it's suggestibility, ignorance of 'science', hallucination, stupidity... Fine. Do that. But I do know it happened.

Ebbie