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Since I find myself rambling a bit, I'm going to first address a later point from your post, where I have something more coherent to say. :-)

Focus is not subjective. Either your brain is in a focused state (mostly giving off 20hz beta waves) or not.

Your mind being "focused" is indeed a subjective experience. It may (or may not, I dunno) correlate with the objective phenomenon of your brain mostly giving off 20hz beta waves.

Nothing against using biofeedback (or psychedelic drugs, or whatever other tools) as a means to aid the process. It's something I'd like to play around with one of these days (in my copius free time :-) ). But control of brain states is still a far cry from understanding yourself - or understanding if there really is a "self" to understand in the first place.

Focusing on the EEG also tends to re-enforce the mistake that only the brain is important, as if it weren't intimately connected with the rest of the nervous system, which is entwined with every fiber of the body. Disregarding the somatic aspects of consciousness is part of the reason that our current clincal psychology is so horrid.

Taking that further and understanding that every fiber of the body is inimately connected with the rest of the Universe...anatman is where Zen and the other paths of mysticism go, though they inevitably view it through different colored filters.

Reality is that the mind is more like software. And like software you CAN reverse engineer it's function by watching the physical level because LIKE SOFTWARE it is merely an abrastraction of those physical parts (in software it's electrons, in the brain it is neurons and chemical states).

No, the mind is not merely an abstraction of the brain. The mind is a subjective experience, something of a whole different order of existence.

Yes, that subjective experience is correlated with an objective physical state. What is that correlation like?

Consider a less controversial relationship, between numbers and physical reality. I have three pens on the desk in front of me. Is "three" an abstraction of the pens? Does "three" cause the pens, do the pens cause "three"? "Three" exists independently of the pens, so how can there be causality either way?

Can mind exist indepenently of brain? Many reductionists believe that a suitably powerful computer could simulate the brain exactly enough to copy or transfer mind/consciousness. If so, if mind can be implemented in software, then given Turing showed us software is just a number, and numbers already and always exist, then are we immortal, like the "Boppers" of Rudy Rucker's "Hardware" series believe?

Any statement about the Universe more precise than "the Universe is doing what the Universe is doing" is a statement about a model or concept, not the Universe itself. "Three" and a physical description of the plastic molecules are both concepts, models.

When we talk about the plastic molecules - or about the molecules in my brain - we have to make simplifications. We don't consider that every particle in the cosmos is entangled with every other particle, not just to make it easier but because we simply couldn't consider that without a computer the size of the Universe.

There's also the issue that a truly reductionist model of consciousness must eventually get down to quantum theory, which must get down to the question of "what does it mean to make a observation", which brings consciousness into it again...

Good point. Though I'd like to point out that broadband is canada is much cheaper than it is in the USA. 3.0/640K DSL for CDN$35/month, no caps, limits, or threatening letters when you go over your 'unlimited' quota. (I don't work for this company and I am not their customer either. But my friends who live in DSL capable areas like them.)

However, increasingly, the absence of a bandwidth limit is becoming an important marketing tool on the competitive Canadian DSL market (even though Bell runs everything from behind the scenes).

In Toronto

Sympatico

Golden

and

Echo Online

all currently advertise no bandwidth limits on residential DSL.

Sounds just like the "Do not click on this link!" found on my prof's course webpage. (And yes, I did click on the link.)

If you tell a person that they cannot do something, they are almost certainly going to try to do it.
I think it might have something to do with "It's not gonna happen to me".

Gold?

Perhaps IHBT but I'll bite.

There's actually nothing fascist about Starship Troopers - the movie leans that way, but the book does not. Heinlein wrote it because he was pissed at the way our Nuclear and Military policy was being handled. Nobody in the book is forced to serve the government, as you would be in fascism - the government doesn't own the economy, as a fascist one would. It's true that the franchise isn't automatically granted, but that just makes it elitist, not fascist. The franchise isn't automatically granted in the US either - you have to reach a certain age - and in some states in the past you had to prove you could read, or pay a tax, or some such. Some of those individual policies may have been unjust, but that doesn't mean the government was fascist.

Also, the military is not allowed free rein in the book - members of the military/civil service do not participate in the government until AFTER their service - and even then the majority of citizens were not actually in the military, but in the civil service.

Don't take my word for it, this review is not favorable towards the book, but denies that it is fascist:

http://home.golden.net/~csp/cd/reviews/starship.ht m

Or try this page for another view:

http://www.kentaurus.com/troopers.htm

If you think Starship Troopers was meant as satire, perhaps you enjoyed the satire of such other political apologies as The Federalist Papers, the Communist Manifesto, or Mein Kampf. The fact that Mein Kampf, let's say, could be easily lampooned or refuted doesn't mean that it was meant as as satire. Or perhaps you remember the movie, which is satirical (of Heinlein). Contrary to the opinion of many, our (the US) military is not populated by idiots.

There's a whole homebrew Halloween subculture out there.

Here's a great Halloween Project List with diagrams and everything.

Some of the projects cheap, easy and can be done in an hour (and you still have a few days left).

Other projects are more involved, like building a IR motion detector to detect trick-or-treaters and set off some effect (like a fog machine) further up the path, the famous flying crank ghost projects, glowing ghosts, you name it. I mean, come on, haven't you always wanted to build your own electric arc (jacobs ladder)" that you see in Frankenstein's Labratory???

If you were to actually read the article, you would see that Dr. Wallace has been diagnosed as bi-polar.

So, he's probably not "just an asshole".

Jesus, people. The man is mentally ill.

I would have to agree with you on this one. I took a Russian history class at the university I attended at the same time I was taking the Russian Language course, both taught by the same professor who was head of the department. It was actually the best classes I ever took.

The professors theory for the class was that no two people can see things in exactly the same way because of the "Vast rainbow of texts" (the exposure obtained in all situations) that shapes each persons life is not going to be the same for any two people. But there is a certain amount of convergence, the more texts people have in common, the better they can understand each other.

Following this, the reading list for the Russian history class was made up entirely out of Russian Literature (translated into english) including works of fiction. It was a great way to experience a little bit of the culture you don't normally get in a history class.

Of the books we read two stick out in my mind We by Yvegeny Zamyatin, a work of science fiction that is probably mentioned a whole lot in this thread... and The Master and Margarita" A fanciful allegory of good and evil written in the 1930's by Mikial Bulgakov. The writing of "The Master and Margarita" reminded me a lot of the writing styles of Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain.

I know I've always kind of been a nut for all things Russian, but I don't think that was the whole reason I really enjoyed getting into these books. The literature, even translated into english, gave a feeling I don't think you could get by reading a history book. Think of the feelings and the Ideas sparked by, say, Heinlein. Now, if you read Heinlein from outside the society that generated him, (or even possibly just outside the mainstream social class he was aiming at) you probably won't get the same feeling generated in those that love his work. But, read enough of him, and you may be able to better understand a heinlein fan when he expresses himself within similar context. (And I'm not just talking Grok.)

Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space...

So, they don't want nuclear power in space, do they? What are they going to do ... blow up the sun?

In this "robot".

In /. for posting this story.

Why?

This has to be the lamest robot "story" on the planet. Similar "security" robots have been built by companies and individuals for years. I remember several companies in the 80's doing this, when robots were the "thing" of the "future".

GPS? Why GPS? A white or black line (or even one done in a flourescent "invisible" paint or something) would be much cheaper for navigation. In a new building, a buried wire under the floor or carpet could be used. Coded tags at doors could further aid navigation (UPC or IR "active" tags).

Nomadic Technologies used to sell research robots with this kind of use in mind (sadly, I just found that they stopped production).

IRobot has a research robot that seems ideal for this as well.

Of course, nothing would beat Odetic's Odex-1 for the "scare" factor in security - too bad this 80's robot never went into production...

Now, homebrew bots - that is where the action is:

Karl Williams seems to have many projects of the type that would make interesting security platforms - or at least something to build off of (mount the vortex cannon or coil gun onto the home drone - yikes!).

This machine might even be better for security - simply because it could be smaller and faster for such a job.

The truth is that there are a lot of homebrew and commercial robots that can easily do what this robot does - probably at a fraction of the cost (actually, some of the commercial bots are quite expensive). There were many robots built in the 80's that were capable as well.

That is the article I want to see. Somehow I was hoping for a two legged chicken walker (not ED-209 sized, but something) patrolling the halls, maybe packing low powered pea shooters for "defense" (actually, one homebrewer managed to build such a robot with a "pea-shooter"-style, multi barrel "gun" - it couldn't hurt you, but it could knock over empty pop cans - I wish I had a link to it - probably do, but it is buried in my link list somewhere deep).

Oh well...

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

Check out this old story.

http://home.golden.net/~cmkerr/