1veedo

That's what I figured. Some forms of meditation I've heard can be dangerous. Usually "de facto" when discussing meditation people are referring to buddhist meditation, even though it's usually referenced by it's specific name (eg mindfulness). Not that they have a monopoly on it or anything.

I have a friend who swears by using shrooms at least once in your life. Surprisingly it isn't directly harmful (long-term) unless you use it like everyday (can cause hppd). Usually visual drugs are worse for you than non-visuals eg where you actually hallucinate in the sense that you see things or your vision is directly altered. You say outside of drugs self-induced hallucinations can be dangerous, Taktiq, but I seriously doubt meditation is dangerous. Of course meditation isn't the same kind of hallucination you get with sleep deprivation, fever, lsd, or anything else, it's mostly a perceptual change of your location in space and the size of things, similar to epileptic auras in some ways, and probably not the same type of hallucination the OP was looking for (eg LSD type hallucinations). Also I have a friend who has used diphenhydramine and he recommends staying away from it. Disassociates in general seem to cause more problems for people than other drugs, eg salvia or pcp. I have used salvia legit 20x though and found the experience enlightening, but it's seriously something you cannot be prepared for. I'm not a drug person so that's just my opinion but before I started learning about some of this and trying salvia for myself I had a completely different idea about what a hallucination would be. Your entire state of consciousness, your awareness, changes, and then you have hallucinations.

Through meditation? It depends on how much you dedicate yourself. I've been meditating off and on for years, and have been going steady for a while. In many ways it can be similar to a drug experience. States of euphoria aren't uncommon, but the trick is you cant actually search for it; it's more of a by-product (this can be your goal I guess but during meditation if you "chase" after it you'll usually lose your meditative state). During meditation you can experience a sense of infinity; both the infinitely large and the infinitely small. Your body or parts of your body get really large or really small and you can experience like a vastness around you. This is all science of course (mris have been done on mediators before) but science agrees that Buddhist practice can be very beneficial. The state of euphoria I think is called piti (the wiki page I saw on a bb.com forums a long time ago). The "hallucination" is mainly an experience of infinity and/or a destruction of your "ego" (nothing at all to do with Freud, it's called ego death). Also you can find yourself floating or moving through space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death

Has [buddhist] meditation been suggested yet? Not exactly an LSD hallucination but your sense of size and location in space can be altered. This is something you have to practice through.

Have the user input an equation and parse it. The calculus part would be the easiest the hard part would be simplifying it (eg algebra).

I'm in calc 2 and don't really remember much from trig (took it in highschool 3 years ago and my act was so high I skipped college math through calc 1, going strait into calc2). I just need all the basics in one place -- not a lesson (I remember all the basics/principles) just the identities and stuff. Especially the special angles like sin(pi/4)=1/sqrt(2) and the special triangles you use to get these angles. I remember a friend of mine used to have a sheet like this he found on the Internet that was meant specifically to be a reference (but a general website is all I really need).

SkepticLance is correct in what he's saying. There is a lot more to the story than that and implications in every day social interactions but on the basic biological level that's pretty much how it is.

It would be funny if another university did this experiment and their "university students" were better than the chimps.

Yeah that's what I tend to notice too.

I wasn't aware that we actually did. Usually people in history who have had at least close to absolute power have seized control themselves -- nobody ever gave it to them. There's a lot more going on than you realize, Fred56. In the US government for example most of the power is held behind the scenes where through a bit of ingenuity and odd circumstances (otherwise called life) people have gained certain amounts of power.

Emacs is alright. I don't see how you can not know if you like it or not. If you like it go ahead and use it, if you don't then keep using vi. I personally like emacs better but that's just because I've never learned how to use vi. It's confusing as **** unless you really set down and teach yourself how to use it. Instead I prefer nana or even something like k/gedit lol

Hi I recently started learning some SDL but I cant seem to get SDL_CreateRGBSurface to work. http://linux.die.net/man/3/sdl_creatergbsurface http://docs.mandragor.org/files/Common_libs_documentation/SDL/SDL_Documentation_project_en/sdlcreatergbsurface.html I have some basic code which displays a moveable image, and I want a solid color generated with createRGBSurface for my background. So when you move the image you cover up the old image w/ that part of the background and redraw the image. For some reason using 8 bit will generate an all black background (regardless of rgba values), and anything else seems to be completely null or something (the image leaves a trail). #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include "SDL.h" void Slock(SDL_Surface *screen); void Sulock(SDL_Surface *screen); int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { if( SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO | SDL_INIT_VIDEO) < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "Unable to initialize SDL: %s\n", SDL_GetError()); return -1; } SDL_Surface *screen; screen=SDL_SetVideoMode(640,480,32,SDL_HWSURFACE|SDL_DOUBLEBUF); if(screen == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "Unable to set video mode: %s\n", SDL_GetError()); return 0; } SDL_Surface *image; image = SDL_LoadBMP("doggy.bmp"); if(image == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "Unable to load image: %s\n", SDL_GetError()); //return 0; } SDL_Surface *back; //background SDL_Event event; SDL_Rect rect; SDL_Rect rback; SDL_Rect rback2; rect.x = 50; rect.y = 50; rback2.x = 50; rback2.y = 50; rback2.w = image->w; rback2.h = image->h; rback.x = 50; rback.y = 50; back = SDL_CreateRGBSurface(SDL_HWSURFACE, 639, 479, 8, 0x70, 0x80, 0x90, 0x64); //639 -- minus one from 640 just in case until it starts working if (back == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "Unable to create SDL Surface for background" ": %s\n", SDL_GetError()); // exit(1); } Slock(screen); SDL_BlitSurface(back,NULL,screen,NULL); Sulock(screen); SDL_Flip(screen); while(1) { while(SDL_PollEvent(&event)) { switch(event.type) { case SDL_KEYDOWN: switch(event.key.keysym.sym) { case SDLK_ESCAPE: exit(0); break; case SDLK_RIGHT: rect.x +=5; break; case SDLK_LEFT: rect.x -= 5; break; case SDLK_UP: rect.y -=5; break; case SDLK_DOWN: rect.y += 5; break; default: break; } break; case SDL_QUIT: exit(0); break; default: break; } Slock(screen); SDL_BlitSurface(back, &rback2, screen, &rback); SDL_BlitSurface(image, NULL, screen, &rect); Sulock(screen); SDL_Flip(screen); rback.x = rect.x; rback.y = rect.y; rback2.x = rect.x; rback2.y=rect.y; } } } void Slock(SDL_Surface *screen) { if ( SDL_MUSTLOCK(screen) ) { if ( SDL_LockSurface(screen) < 0 ) { return; } } } void Sulock(SDL_Surface *screen) { if ( SDL_MUSTLOCK(screen) ) { SDL_UnlockSurface(screen); } } Here's the part of code that's giving me problems: SDL_Surface *back; ... back = SDL_CreateRGBSurface(SDL_HWSURFACE, 639, 479, 8, 0x70, 0x80, 0x90, 0x64); I've tried all different values for Uinit32 from full string 0x0000ff00 etc to integers and different bits but cant seem to get it working right. Any help is appreciated, thanks

x2. It might take faith technically to be a strong atheist but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than something like Christianity. There are very few people who are actually "theists" and nothing more, but technically I would say theism by itself and strong atheism could be construed as requiring the same amount of faith. Weak atheism is considered a default position, so is the middle ground between strong atheism and theism. Many people who call themselves agnostic because they want to be in the middle are actually weak atheists, because the middle is essentially what weak atheism is.

Damn small Linux is way too large to boot from a floppy Mr Skeptic. Lol I had to laugh you said, " I'm not sure whether Damn Small Linux fits on a floppy." Of course it doesn't 50MB or something is what they advertise and a floppy holds 1.44MB. There are distros of Linux that fit on floppies but you can network boot and it'd probably be a lot easier for you, depending on your needs.