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.

You can be sure that a large proportion of the population did have experiences that day which they could conceivably interpret as fulfilling that particular prediction, or any other prediction they read which they believed referred to them.

I'd seriously doubt that. Unless, of course, you can produce statistics to support a case that ~8% of the population are likely to carry flat-tyred bicycles over their heads through Australian forest on any particular day. So have I succeeded in pulling the wool over your eyes yet, or do you persist in stubbornly clinging to the rational belief that the your health, love interests and shopping inclinations are not dictated by the apparent movement of distant constellations? I bet you don't even believe that's God knocking on your door wanting to tell you about his 10 "amendments".

I have absolute proof that astrology works. Once, back in my school days, I slept in and missed the school bus, which meant I had to ride my new bicycle the 10 miles through Australian forest to get to school. Halfway there a tire was punctured, and my mean big brothers had already told me that any bike with a flat tyre had to be carried, not wheeled. So I hoisted my precious bike into the air and carried it the rest of the way to school. (Geeks with aspergers can be frightfully gullible.) Being too late for class, I went to the library, and noticed my astrology prediction for that day in the paper. "You will be off to a late start this morning, but your cycle will pick up later in the day." Anyone who is not convinced of the deep eternal truth of astrology just by looking at the description for their star sign needs to look up a "horrorscope" instead. I didn't think I was at all like an Aries until I read through the Ram's bad points. Though I can't see why they include on that list an incorrigible tendancy to pull the wool over people's eyes.

You are assuming that seeing is completely dependent on information coming from the eyes. What appears on a photograph is dependant on the wavelengths hitting that hit that piece of film when it was exposed, but seeing does not work that way. What we see is not a direct result of light-waves hitting our eyes. What we see is the interpretation our brain puts upon the image transmitted to the brain from the retina. Our beliefs, our expectations and our familiarity with certain sights can all affect what we see, to the extent that fear and expectation can make a person actually see a ghost where there is nothing but a drift of smoke or fog. I'm quite short-sighted, and once visited a friend without my glasses on. I saw her mother at the sink, washing dishes, and could clearly see her old dress and grey hair. The she spoke to me, and it was the voice of my friend, not her mother. Immediately what I was seeing changed, and I could clearly see my friend Yvonne. I'm not saying there is no such thing as ghosts. I have never seen one, but I've had some very strange experiences which I can't explain, and could not expect reasonable people to believe. What I am saying is that a person can be honest in claiming to see something, even though no camera can photograph it. However what is seen may be more a reflection of inner reality than outer reality. The logical take on my little spiel is, "yes, we all know people can imagine things." My point is that everything we see is coloured by our minds and memories to some extent, so nothing we see can ever be completely trusted.

I travel to 3007 AD, and find a newly erected marble statue of myself and bring it back with me to 2007, and it's erected at the same latitude/longitude/altitude as I took it from. The people looking at that statue in 3007 see it suddenly age, looking strangely eroded. In 1000 years time, (3007 again,) I'm looking at that same statue, having travelled forward in time, but it's rather old, and barely recognisable. I take this decaying statue back, and erect it in the same location. In 1000 years time I am at the location of the statue again, but now the lump of broken rock there is not recognisable as a statue at all, and I don't touch it. So this time, returning, I bring nothing, and nothing is erected. In 1000 years time, I again find a nice new statue and bring it back, and so the loop continues.

If you had shares in a pharmaceutical company and they could produce a drug that 95% of the time could cure stomach pain you would think it well worth a few years of study and a few million dollars in investments. I do know what you're talking about, and I'm sure that if more people could take this stuff seriously, a lot more would find that they can use touch in a helpful way. The trouble with convincing people though often comes from people who bignote themselves pretending to have healing abilities, while the people I've met who actually do are more likely to be quiet sceptics who have trouble believing in it themselves.

The I never splits. The universe splits into two dimensions, but both dimensions are in the same place, and appear to the I to be one. Only the I appears to be two separate beings.

No, you are applying a force to counteract another force, but force does not equal work in the context of physics. In general terms you are correct, and what you are doing can be called work, but so can sitting still, ruminating on a problem.

You win. I found a site ( http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/energy/u5l1a.html ) which explains it all in simple enough terms even for me. It's the story of my life ... constantly expending energy, never getting any work done.

To hold something up in that position requires a constant pushing upwards. An upward force does not involve movement if the force upward equals the force downward due to gravity. However an equal force exerted on the piano in a horizontal direction can create movement, if there is no wall at the other side of the piano. To my body, lifting the piano, pushing a piano freely or pushing the piano against the wall all create muscle soreness, exhaustion, and burn calories. So who am I to believe, your physics text or my aching muscles?