Ricky's greatest experiment ...

[rickymooston]

Hi, I'm Ricky the Moose.

Some of you know me very well and others may think they do.

This site is intended to be for atheists who EMBRACE life. That is how I see it and I applaud the choice of titles.

I'm biased as a Taoist in that that is what I consider myself. If I like your approach I consider that Taoist too. That's probably unfair but well, we all have our limiations.

Anyway, in this thread, I want to discuss the moose and his history.

In the spirit of the HAPPY ATHEIST. I ASK Posters to refrain for using names. This does make the discussion less objective but I really want to discuss the exeriment itself.

[rickymooston]

Enter the Moose!!! (This thread is looking to be a blog I guess.) Feel free to post here tho.

Who is the Moose and why did he come here. What does he represent?
Is he about philosophy, just a silly both, or what?  Where did he come from.
Lets start with some of the things he's been into before and during his entry into the
world of atheism and theism. Who are his friends? I'm trying to keep this is small chunks becuase I hate long posts.

Quick Summary of some of his encarnations

[rickymooston]

Ricky the Paranormal Experimenter
Sadly unsuccessful due to difficulties in acquiring people willing to be experimented on.
The time factor was also a problem in this unsuccessful bid to enter the world of science and psuedo science objectively.



Influences/Inspirations:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087332/
http://www.amazon.com/Drunken-Goldfish-Irrelevant-Scientific-Research/dp/044921804X
http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0716733870
http://www.amazon.com/Borderlands-Science-Where-Sense-Nonsense/dp/product-description/0195143264
http://www.joyofpi.com/bookbuy.html
http://a776.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/14/l_6bbd87e8f7cd95ac4cca39f406e6338f.jpg

Where he lived? Mostly in MSN SPACES and Pico.

The experiments:

One was supposed to be a "prediction experiment" where people try to make regular "guesses" against an event that already occured and then get "scored" on their accuracy.
This experiment involved some cards that were chosen with the answer being encrypted with an unspecified encryption system that could be explained and verified later. Card drawing was chosen for this and in fact the cards were drawn with a random number generator based on the same principle: digits of PI.

The next experiment involved attempts at PREDICTION. The idea was for people to regular try and predict the results of 12 dice rolls and statistics would be kept on thsi

To try and objectively evaluate how "psychic" people were, a "monty carlo" meothod was to be employed. That is a computer simulation would simulate the experiment many times to see what the average results might be.

All the encryption and random number generation algortims were based on the apparantly random digits of PI. This idea was inpired by the idea that PI could be calclated easily.
However, the calculations were not that easy to find based on what I found on the web so I got lazy. I downloaded 1000,000 digits of PI and used those ...

[rickymooston]

Ricky the hockey fan!!!

I'm Canadian. Orginally Ricky was a guy, I bought on the way to work, in the department of national defense her in Canada.

I thought he was cute and I put him on my desk.

People REALLY liked him.

Eventually a CUTE cleaner from Guatamala suggeston to name him Ricky Martin. (People kept buggin me to name the moose).

Anyway, I changed it to Ricky Mooston and an addiction was born!!!

At that time, he sat on my desk.

Anyway, on of my co-workers from Newfoundland, (known for their sense of humour), was a graphic designer with an evil grin. He decided to kidnap the moose and leave a picture of him tied to a chair with a randsom note.

Of course I wanted my moose back and had NO clue, who the guilty party was.

This played on for quite a while.

Eventually he made up a randsom of me buying donuts for the whole office (Canadian thing) and gave me back the moose.

Around that time, he took me to my FIRST professional hockey game.

Now hockey is a strange game. Its VERY fast, kind of violent but while the fans are LOUD, usually they are peaceful.

In Canada people are CRAZY about it. In the US? They'd rather watch grass grow. This is primarily because it expanded to huge
urban centers WITHOUT snow and because the game does not involve alot of scoring of late.

Anyway, I was not really much of a hockey fan. However Newfoundlanders are LOUD and I went with one of the loudest to a
play off game against the Ottawa teams rivals the Toronto maple Leafs. I beleive I brought to moose but that is a forgotten note of history.

Mape Leaf fans were really rude. And they let us know exactly how "bad" our team was. Anyway, we one the game but on a "suspicious" call.

None the less, I was somewhat addicted. Here I was 32 years old and I had not really explored the world of sports which for many is
everyday life. And, ..., Ottawa lost to Toronto in game 7. The hate for these Leaf fans turned me from casual watcher into an addict?

Does rivalry make professional sports? Hell yes.

After that the moose was slowly brought into watching sports and even eventually tried life as a sports blogger on MSN SPACES. Choose because my nephew aged 15 started up a www site easyly and quickly lost interest. I tried for a while and eventually even joined some fan boards.



This is Ricky with a Platonic friend I brought to a hockey game.

A few years after posting pictures of my moose on fan boards and stuff I found these guys for sale at the Corel center which is where the
Ottawa Senators play:
http://a663.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/46/l_be41fb5f55bb4ce3faff65200939895e.jpg

As a sports blogger, the moose aquired a personality. Naturally, as a fan, he had to have a bit of pashion.

In addition Ottawa fans are always negative and he REALLY hated people being down on the team before they even lost. In addition, the only way to win is to stick with one's team. This was Ricky's first attempt to make a difference.