StringJunky

So, you don't need a PhD to be a scientist? I think you need a large study with diaries of people's summaries of their innermost daily waking thoughts and their concurrent dreams. From these diaries detailing the waking and dreaming states, one could try and find a correlation between the dream content or symbolism and the subjects wakeful overall emotional state during the course of the study.

In the short time that has passed you have experienced a lot of new and varied memories and I think it's this that gives an expanded sense of time. Take the opposite instance, for contrast, where the years seem to fly...."it only seems like yesterday"...this is due to everyday being the same so you don't remember them and your mind casts back to the last significant (to you) event, 'editing out' the mundane times, giving you a sense of a shortened past; it's analogous to snipping a section of videotape of a film to get rid of the boring bit and rejoining it! I can't prove this but that's my take. Lesson to learn here is if you want live a subjectively longer life, make sure what you do today is different to what you did yesterday...variety!

One of the guys who put that site together is a research professor in psychology and sociology...had his PhD since 1962. This an article by him about how to use his websites and methodology...seems quite serious and as clinically methodological as one could be in a difficult area of study: http://www.asdreams.org/cyberdreams/domhoff.htm

Ok Michel. My apologies. I know English is not your native language and thought you didn't know the difference.

pen·i·tent/ˈpenitnt/ Adjective: Feeling or showing sorrow and regret for having done wrong; repentant. Noun: A person who repents their sins or wrongdoings and (in the Christian Church) seeks forgiveness from God. Synonyms: adjective. repentant - contrite - remorseful - regretful noun. repentant sinner per·ti·nent/ˈpərtn-ənt/ Adjective: Relevant or applicable to a particular matter; apposite. Synonyms: relevant - apposite - appropriate - suitable - proper He used the the correct word for what he wanted to convey.

The geometry of space is inferred or extrapolated from the observed behaviour of bodies within it.

Don't know anything about it but this seems to match the criteria for an awesome cutting edge that might cleave at molecular level: * Graphene is one atom thick, which makes it the thinnest material ever discovered. It is a sheet of bonded carbon atoms densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice. * At an atomic scale, it looks a bit like chicken wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. It is almost completely transparent and yet also extremely dense. * Graphene is highly conductive, conducting both heat and electricity better than any other material, including copper, and it is also stronger than diamond. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/10/05/us-nobel-physics-graphene-factbox-idUSTRE6941ZP20101005

Japanese swords are probably the ultimate in combining the properties of razor sharpness and shock absorption without breaking: http://www.scnf.org/forge.html

Nice...would you say we are now into the beginning and practical application of AI?

I very recently came across a utility company's answerphone system took verbal responses rather than key presses from me and repeated my responses back to me which I thought was quite impressive and certainly less irritating than "Please press1 if..."! It's quite impressive when you consider these systems must have dialectic differences factored in to cope with the different kinds of people ...my voice is not BBC or Queen's English and it repeated back to me perfectly.

It's not an error, it's called licentia poetica.

I stand corrected.

He discovered electric currents produced magnetic fields ...it takes nothing away from Faraday or Maxwell. And again, Orsted was a physicist and chemist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_%C3%98rsted

Yes. And if what you say about Maxwell explaining it 3 decades later is true it also debunks the notion that practical application must always follow theory...you example illustrates that it can happen and evolve arse-about-face.

Slight but important correction: "...that people only lucid dream at the most wakefull stage of their REM cycle." This is what I understand presently also but it's been a good while since I looked into it.

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) British physicist and chemist, best known for his discoveries of electromagnetic induction and of the laws of electrolysis. His biggest breakthrough in electricity was his invention of the electric motor. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfaraday.htm

When I'm aware of them I often go into thought-controlled anti-gravity mode and look around from a flying bird's view .

I might speculate that your most useful dreams occur during a Lucid Dreaming phase whereby you have a certain level of wakeful consciousness and consequently some proactive control over the dream's direction but be still fully immersed in a dream.

Is THIS an accurate review and oversight of NLP?

I think this a good example of Emergence: Termite mounds appear to be constructed by "intelligent" cooperation. The sometimes elaborate galleries and chimneys control air flow to manage temperature and humidity. But individual termites have no more notion of how to build a nest than a starling does of how to lead a flock. Individual termites cannot even perceive the overall shape of a nest (the workers are blind) let alone direct its "design." Instead, termites respond to very local chemical cues left behind by other termites and to temperature/humidity and airflow cues that are affected by the shape of the nest, wind currents, the amount of heat generated within the nest and other local phenomena. The termite's behavior affects the shape of the nest and the shape of the nest affects the termite's behavior. In that sense, the nest is a bit like a flock of starlings in very slow motion. http://evolutionofcomputing.org/Multicellular/Emergence.html Note that worker termites are blind.

I have also noticed that sort of broad correlation...I hypothesise the dream mechanism acting as a kind of governor geared towards maintaining emotional equilibrium in waking life. It also seems to act the other way to your experience; if I am excessively happy I am more prone to nightmares as though my brain is trying to balance my wakeful emotional state to a more neutral one. I am of the opinion that a persistent state of happiness is not desirable in an individual as it can make them more reckless and carefree about their environment ie prone to danger. Conversely, a depressive state in waking life is compensated for with vivid and desirable dreams to also try help make the individual more environmentally aware instead of getting trapped in a pattern of introspection which can also be dangerous from a survivability perspective. I think this observation ties in with my earlier comment about dreams conferring a survival advantage. The actual content or meaning of individual dreams is generally irrelevant, it's the net emotional consequences of a dream series that matters imo. I wish there was more hard science on this subject but as this Wiki article mentions, putting together a viable methodology towards studying it objectively is fraught with problems.

What do you think to dreaming as a platform for safely 'acting out' hypothetical scenarios and experiencing their possible consequences triggered by recurring situations or emotions in ones daily life? This might confer a survival advantage evolutionarily-speaking would you think?

INow It's how I feel about and interpret your posts and is the somewhat reluctant conclusion I draw after two years of reading your contributions...I'm not mocking, insulting or ridiculing you. I've criticised your style and it's not tenable in this environment where people come to learn.

I don't believe these qualities are appropriate or desirable in a pedagogical environment, especially one in which many are inexperienced in the "craft" of obnoxious adversarial dialogue. I concur with Hypervalent Iodine's thoughts:

That might be because there was no one on the moon filming them landing on the moon from another vantage point...absolute irrefutable proof is not possible. You have to put ALL the evidence together to confirm it. There was a thread on on this some time ago and when all the evidence that was compiled in thread was taken together the only conclusion that could be drawn was that it DID happen. I was seven when they did it and the atmosphere at the time was momentous...unless you were around at the time of the Apollo landings it's hard to describe what an affront to all those who helped achieve this awesome feat what a suggestion to the contrary is. Every accusation, every point was trivially dismissed in that thread. Too many people were involved in the project and too many people were watching for a conspiracy to deceive to be successful. Here's the latest NASA pictures of remnants of those missions that are still evident on the moon: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/06/new_lunar_images/