Kailassa

Right ... So I'll try to remember while I'm still asleep to spin around very fast to make myself more likely to stay asleep. If it works I'll let you know.

Hi 5, Bombus. Good to see someone else here with their eyes open. We in Australia are now in the same predicament. We have a right-wing party who pretends to be left-wing, and a right-wing party becoming ever more fascist to differentiate themselves from their rivals. It seems to me our countries are sandboxes for testing dictatorial policies before they are implemented in America.

How can you use a false awakening? You have no lucidity in a situation in which you are dreaming but believe you are awake. You are doing nothing but sleeping.

Bettina, The HMS Cornwall never surrendered. It had no immediate involvement in the confrontation, and was not taken by Iran. The sailors were from the HMS Cornwall, but they were in two rubber inflatables, at a long distance from the Cornwall. The ship could not come to their aid because of the shallowness of the sea-bed between them. The sailors were carrying out surveillance on local shipping, and were on board a merchant ship at the time, checking it out. If anyone had made plans for that eventuality it was Iran, not England. Seeing the Iranians coming out in two armed motor boats the English sailors disembarked from the merchant ship and attempted to get back to the Cornwall. However they were prevented from doing so, and soon 6 more military speed boats had them surrounded. Shooting the Iranian boats from the Cornwall was not an option when their own sailors were inbetween on inflatables, and would have disastrous for those sailors once Iran had them surrounded. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/06/wiran506.xml

I was only guessing that, by waking-life, you meant false awakening. If you meant something different I apologise for the confusion. I would interpret mbarone's use of "waking life" as meaning the normal state of being awake.

Jack Jacobs was in the midst of a war, and protecting his mates, so of course he did the right thing in fighting back. The English sailors, by fighting back, would have almost certainly precipitated a war, achieving nothing but getting themselves and a great many other people killed. Having been a hero apparently does not prevent arrogant judgemental stupidity. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/04/07/1175366534526.html This shows that there was no way those sailors could fight back. You do not attack armed speedboats which could presumably call a whole navy to their aid from two inflatables. I'm very glad these sailors made it home safely, and that their commanding officer did not get them killed in useless "heroics".

If the job situation is so bad that I'm desperate for a way to feed my children I might accept the job of scrubbing toilets for a dollar an hour, and I might even act grateful in order to keep it, but don't expect a person to feel privileged to get a job just because their situation forces them to take it. I'm not a snob about work, and I've been grateful to work in a backyard job cutting rags for $3 an hour, but the gratitude was because they were nice people and I could have my kiddies there with me in an environment that was healthy for them. A "proper" job at the time would have netted me less because of transport and childcare costs. However some jobs offered are demeaning and underpaid, with bosses feeling nothing but contempt for their workers, who are squeezed like oranges and then dumped, as there are plenty more where they came from.

Why would anyone want drugs to be illegal? The answer changes depending on who wants the law involved, and which drugs are being referred to. Making prescription drugs illegal when not sold on prescription has four effects. 1. It protects the profits of the relevant drug company by making it more difficult for a company which has not invested money in research to profit from the drug, 2. It makes it more likely that the drug being sold will be pure. 3. It helps keep the price of the drug high. 4. It stops people being able to decide for themselves that they are going to take a drug. The overall effects of restricting these drugs appears to be good, but there is another, generally ignored effect. When people learn to rely on doctors who rely on drug companies to produce drugs, the only drugs researched and sold will be those that can be patented, to ensure profits. This means there may be many easily accessible and safer substances which will increase health and cure disease, but there is no money to research these things to prove any effects, as there is no great profit to make from them. Keeping the illegal drugs illegal also can have unintended consequences. People often confuse "making a substance illegal" with "preventing the use of that substance". However there is not necessarily a logical connection between the two. I contend that making heroin, (for instance,) illegal, only benefits those making money from supplying the drug illegally and those paid to enforce those laws, and damages individuals and society by increasing the numbers of addicts and criminals. For as long as a drug is illegal, drug pushers can make money by selling it. Increasing the power of law enforcement never works, as people making a good living from an activity have a higher motivation to find ways to continue it than law enforcement officials can ever have to prevent it. And we are all aware that the law enforcement officials sometimes become pushers themselves, and are in the ideal position to protect their own activities. Drug pushers can only make money if people are using their drugs, so it's common practice amongst pushers to befriend susceptible people and give them enough to get them addicted, so they can them drain them financially. Thus we have a group committed to creating new addicts out of people who would otherwise have no interest in addictive drugs. Then the addicts may well become pushers themselves in order to fund their own addictions. I've done some voluntary work in heroin rehab, and the patients there fell neatly into 3 categories, the pushers, the prostitutes and the thieves, as it was necessary for them to find a way to support their habit. The heartbreak I felt was not over the addiction itself, as that could be treated. It was over the terrible effect the illegal lifestyle forced upon these kids had on their lives long-term. I'm a masseuse, and the ones who had resorted to prostitution, often choosing that because at least they were not hurting anyone else that way, at first could not bear to have their bodies seen or touched, as they hated themselves so much for what they had done. And when they had got over their addictions and left the rehab, their pushers would be waiting at the gates for them with open arms. Legalising addictive drugs (sans advertising) could mean you would have far fewer addicts, as you remove the motivation for addicting others. At the same time you are improving society by making addiction-induced theft, irresponsible prostitution with its associated spread of disease, and drug pushing itself into unnecessary anachronisms. Marijuana is a separate case completely, as it can be argued to do a lot more good than harm. Some people argue against using it medicinally merely on the grounds that it can get you stoned too. I'd suggest that a periodic break from reality can in itself be good for both your physical and emotional health. There has to be some reason why drugs and alcohol have always been a part of human culture, and, to assume the reasons are inevitably bad is neither logical nor scientific.

The craziest thing is how it spreads. It's like a virus, a brain-eating one. Two of my formerly intelligent brothers caught it, and I tried explaining why the bible cannot be interpreted literally, pointing to one passage that indicates the earth is flat. Instead of waking up to the bull...., they not only decided the earth must be flat, but one, who is a teacher, now teaches his students the earth is flat. One the other hand, they both say they pray for me, so I guess I should be grateful ...

I know some people here look down on Wikipedia, but the article on "False Awakening" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening ) is well referenced and explains it well. "A false awakening is an event in which someone dreams they have awakened from sleep. This illusion of having awakened is very convincing to the person. After a false awakening, people will usually dream of performing daily morning rituals, believing they have truly awakened. A dream in which a false awakening takes place is sometimes colloquially referred to as a "double dream". ... A false awakening may occur either following an ordinary dream or following a lucid dream (one in which the dreamer has been aware that he or she is dreaming). Particularly if the false awakening follows a lucid dream, the false awakening may turn into a ‘pre-lucid dream'(Green, 1968), that is, one in which the dreamer may start to wonder if he or she is really awake and may or may not come to the correct conclusion. More commonly, dreamers will believe they are awake." There have been some periods in my life where I have experienced so much false awakening that it has been a real problem. These periods have always been associated with long term severe overtiredness. One example was when a handicapped child of mine was a baby with a condition which made him frequently stop breathing so that I would have to resuscitate him. Daytimes were busy running a small farm and minding the older children, and I had to be half awake all night to keep my baby alive. Sometimes I would accidentally sleep properly, and then my dreams would be a night-long cycle of getting up to look after the crying baby, hearing him cry again, realising I had only been dreaming I'd looked after him last time and getting up to look after him properly, then hearing him cry again and realising again that I'd only dreamed I'd looked after him ... The strange thing was that each time I thought I was awake I was aware that I had dreamed this already, but was still convinced that this time I was really awake. Slow learner, I guess. The nearest doctor was a half-hour drive away and he wanted me to bring my baby to him while his heart was not beating in order to make a diagnosis. I explained the only diagnosis he'd have to make then would be one any unqualified fool could make; "dead".

If these things were actual manifestations of something supernatural they would be too far outside our understanding for us to predict what they might wear or not wear. If I was haunting you I certainly wouldn't want to do it in the nude.

"al·che·my ... 1. a form of chemistry and speculative philosophy practiced in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and concerned principally with discovering methods for transmuting baser metals into gold and with finding a universal solvent and an elixir of life. 2. any magical power or process of transmuting a common substance, usually of little value, into a substance of great value." (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=alchemy) I wouldn't link alchemy, which has evolved into chemistry, with astrology or (uggh) creationism. Every day now people are turning carbon into cubic zirconium, uranium into plutonium, and, most wonderful of all, potato peelings into vodka.

I'm sad to say it was the former. I don't know how the alarm got turned off, but possibly I'd forgotten to set it in the first place. The gardener, btw, was very polite and never referred to it again; he just looked rather disappointed when I opened the door wearing a tracksuit the next week.

There's nothing unscientific about saying: "Science can't explain this flying object, therefore it is a UFO". The problem is when people confuse the terms "UFO" and "flying saucer". But I agree 100% with the point you are making. Too many conclusions are jumped at merely because people can't think of any other explanation, so assume their theory must be correct. Scientists just as much as charlatans need to be careful in analysing what really does constitute proof. At least scientists try, but both can be misled.

Yes, lucid dreaming could be a similar state to waking life; waking life could be just another dream. Last time I had a "lucid dream" I had gone to bed too late and had to get up early the next morning to greet the new gardener and explain what I wanted done. I was dreaming, and knew I was dreaming, and remembered that the alarm would be going off soon so I could have time to get decent before the gardener arrived. It seemed like it would be smart to wake myself up properly then and get dressed in something comfortable enough to sleep in so I could then sleep until I heard a knock at the door. So I woke properly, turned the alarm off, put clothes on over my little t-shirt, and went back to sleep. A few hours later I was woken by a knock on the door and, aware that I'd dressed already and was wearing a warm, decent tracksuit, jumped up to meet the gardener. We strolled around the garden while I explained what I wanted done, but, try as I might, I could not seen to put him at ease. He was so tense, and giving me the strangest looks. Walking back inside I noticed my reflection and realised why the gardener was acting funny. I was still as under-dressed as when I first went to bed. Sadly, this was not a dream I could wake up from.