No, but its name was very apt when you know German. "Mist" literally translates to "Rubbish".

Please? I have a sleep disorder called Sleep Paralysis. In other words I have waking dreams. Before and after (and sometimes during) sleep my body will become paralyzed, and I hear the rushing sound of my brain waves shifting into a sleep pattern -- I stay conscious while my body (and brain) goes to sleep. During sleep random neurons fire in the brain. I experience a very wide range of stimulus (read "tiny hallucinations") which I can discern individually. When a neuron cascade happens in my visual cortex I'll see a white flash in the shape of the neuron group (a tree shape with roots and no leaves). When my auditory processing center is stimulated I'll hear something that sounds a crash with increasingly heavy compression artifacts over a second or so. Deeper auditory stimulus can yield short phrases or sounds. Visual stimulus further in from my visual cortex yields geometric patterns and shapes (the object recognition part of my brain, I suppose). Stimulus deeper in may trigger both visual and auditory stimulus, which usually takes up only a part of my visual field -- It's overlain upon what I see, and occurs deeper into sleep.

Sometimes my hearing will cut out as I go deeper into sleep, vision will also 'cut out'. During a "nod-off" where one's head typically droops I've noticed this is almost always accompanied by a hypnogogic hallucination. The random synapse firing can trigger just about any kind of impulse. There are sensations of moving, falling, rising, etc. In both pre-sleep and hypnapompic (post sleep) hallucinations I've experienced ideas or conceptual hallucinations -- These are VERY hard to distinguish from the random thoughts that bubble up from one's subconscious, however being practiced in meditation I can normalize and mitigate my thoughts, but theses conceptual hallucinations I can not control. For example: "Syntax exists orthogonal to meaning", "subdimensions are indistinguishable from hyperdimensions", "Sub cell particles supply accumulated attributes each pass", were some I had last night; Sometimes they are very meaningless, the last one is a solution to a problem in my thermodynamics simulation, I probably would have got that idea later, it just got sparked while going to bed. I also have "mood" hallucinations: Anger, arousal, fear, joy, etc. will briefly be triggered. I once hallucinated a church bell and a stucco wall up close, and became afraid... I tried and failed to find any scary faces in the wall pattern, it was just a mood stimulus.

After waking (and during sleep) the hypnapompic hallucinations become longer in duration -- The cascades of neurons seem to go on longer. Eg: Instead of flashing a visual "tree" the pattern will branch out and become larger. The auditory hallucinations grow in length too. The "Episodic" hallucinations of dreams seem to be stitching together of these longer random stimuli.

Beyond lucid dreaming, I have transitioned into full consciousness very slowly while dreaming -- The dream "comes apart" at the seams of the hallucinations. While dreaming that I had ordered one of everything on the menu at a restaurant and panicking because I didn't have my wallet, I realized I couldn't have eaten that much food, and that I was dreaming. I walked out of the restaurant without paying, and the clerk was fine with my statement, "This is my dream, I don't have to pay if I don't want to." I thought I saw a car coming down the road, perhaps to pick me up, but it was a giant scaly snake / worm (like something from Tremors or Dune), I heard it "call out" or "honk" but recognized the sound as a typical "overly compressed" sounding auditory cascade. When I turned my attention away from the visual hallucination I noticed the world surrounding it was blackness, I looked "back" but could not summon up the restaurant.

Other random visual and auditory hallucinations occurred for another 5 minutes or so until I regained ability to move. I opened my eyes before the paralysis was fully gone and watched the hallucinations appearing and fading "in front of" my eye's inputs. I sometimes can muster a flop of the arm before the hallucinations disappear and I've discovered my hand goes right "behind" hallucinatory things that seem close to me (typically the aliens or demons that frequent my morning bedside), apparently my brain doesn't know about Z-Buffers...

So, that's what dreams are. There's no "interpreting" them. They're just random firings of your synapses. I think this helps to scrub away residual 'memory' from the pathways that is non-essential, while re-enforcing the more important things, and possibly helping the hippocampus to coordinate the areas to trigger when "remembering" something later. I've found that there are several different kinds of dreams, some where I'm just a passive observer of randomness, and others where I'm far more cognitively engaged and either exploring or problem solving. I think some dreams may help safely experiment with social situations, explore dangers, think of 'new' techniques to try, etc. This is what I would research -- Differentiating types of dreams and determine their benefits, and possibly how to trigger the kind you want.

But no, DARPA will just piss all that money away on some quacks who haven't even ever seen their own neurons fire. What a shame.

Why don't you think about familiarizing yourself with the concepts behind the space elevator? There won't be anything like that. The end of the cable "floats" in the receptacle. It hangs from its anchor asteroid.

Why don't you instead get a quick education in the topic we're discussing before you flap your yap?

The issue isn't where peoples' eyes are pointed. The issue is what people will actually see.

It's one thing to move the clock, gas tank gauge and speedometer up so it appears to float over the road. It's another to do the same thing with a book, a work document or a sports game.

Stuff that only requires brief attention and is relevant to the operation of the car is perfectly safe, which is why it's OK when it is set down in the dashboard, away from your view of the road. The audio system is less relevant to the operation of the car and can take more attention for longer as you look for what you want. People *do* get into accidents because they take too much time fiddling with their radio instead of looking at the road. But that's behavior you can guard against.

Something that takes the driver's focus off driving is bound to be bad, even if it is optimally placed in his field of vision.

Your example raises an interesting point in that the justification to refuse to serve the KKK is arguably *less* than refusing to serve a gay couple. A cake is not an instrument of violence and oppression, unless the Klan starts leaving sinister cakes instead of burning crosses on people's lawns. A gay wedding cake is actually about redefining what has been the recent cultural norm for marriages.

I actually think that if this law were only confined to fancy cakes and photographers, it wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunate, perhaps, but people can bake their own cakes and take their own pictures if need be. What I'm concerned about is the cumulative effect of *any* kind of business being denied to people on the basis of their private behavior and beliefs.

For example imagine a gay couple living in a small Arizona town. The local grocery store won't sell to them, so they have to drive fifty miles to shop at Walmart. Then their car breaks down and the local mechanic won't fix it. If you like for "gay" substitute "atheist", "Mormon", or "black" if you like. It's one thing not to associate with people you disapprove of, it's another to drive them out of town. To live in a place you need to be able to purchase goods and services.

The law can't make us like each other, nor should it try, but it should enable us at a minimum to live together in peace and order.

It is also a contractual thing. You advertise your business, people divert from the course to attend you business in preference to other locations, a contractual obligation has been established based upon the advertisement and the cost inherent with visiting the business. When you get there business is refused the contact abrogated with no recompense for the attending customer upon arbitrary 'religous' reason ie the state is attempting to claim arbitrary indefinite religious beliefs of no definable duration take precedence over contract law and constitutional rights of all people being equal.

Consider the time duration of being a homosexual, is a person homosexual all the time or factually only homosexual when they are committing a homosexual sexual act that does not necessarily result in orgasm but does involve mutual interaction with their same sex genitalia. Are people when not engaged in sexual activity for that time (by far the majority of time) definitively asexual as they are not engaging in sexual activity. The limit must of course be actual activity involved in direct genital contact, else a grandfather kissing and hugging their grandson becomes a homosexual act, an Aunt hugging her niece becomes a homosexual act because their breasts are pressed together.

That does not even touch attempt to prove a belief in court because their in no time limit to define an extent of that belief and attempting to bring it into contract laws means, "I believe", "I don't believe", "Changed my mind again I believe", "Just kidding, I don't believe", "Believe don't belief fuck you my contractual obligation is meaningless because I believe it to be so" now becomes contractually legal in that state. The smallest nobody can now challenge the largest corporations contract based upon the claimed religious belief in being able to break a contract because the corporation was conducting an activity that it did not advertise and the person was unaware of and has a religious opposition to it ie contract void.

One of the things I don't see discussed much is the potential failure modes for such a system.

My wife is a physical oceanographer, and one of the failure modes for instruments deployed on cables from a ship is a 'wuzzle' -- a large tangle of steel cable. Given the nature of the stuff, a length of cable that fits nicely in a spool on deck can twist itself into a knot larger than the ship.

So one thing I'd like to know is what are the potential hazards a couple thousand miles of elevator cable falling to the Earth's surface? Could we end up with tangles miles in diameter?

I think a space elevator is a great idea if it's feasible, provided that in the criteria for "feasible" we include being prepared for the conceivable ways the project could fail.

Well, it's not the original meaning. (OTOH, the original censor was a Roman governmental official. Later it was a Papal office. Other governments came later, and were named by analogy to the church office.)

I don't know if he's serious, but it *is* worth remembering that very few people have bothered to actually look at what the creationists are presenting as evidence. I haven't, for example.

OTOH, it's also worth remembering that few people have actually looked at the evidence that the evolutionary folk have presented. There's too much of it.

We're specifically talking about a house built in the fifties. About half the places I've lived have only had 100 amp service. They had gas appliances, thankfully. I far prefer them. I always seem to burn everything on electrics, though I've never had an induction range.

Meh. Not a big deal. But any time you're dealing with the service connection you need the blessing of a licensed electrical contractor.

but it will always make you think about the problem difficulty

Sorry, I meant to say, "...it will always make you think about the problem differently"

Who knows what DARPA is really doing and how much of this is just part of the "4 D's", (Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, Deceive).

https://firstlook.org/theinter...

But forget DARPA for a moment. Since we're talking about dreams, if you have ever considered learning to have lucid dreams, you really ought to go ahead and do it. It's terrific.

I started playing around with the idea in 2010, and it took me a few months but now I've learned to lucid dream at will. It's the most goddamn fun you can have asleep. Plus, it's really useful. I've done things like solve problems in dreams and have the solution at hand when I wake up (it's not always going to actually solve the problem, but it will always make you think about the problem difficulty) and I've even been able to learn to play pieces of music that I'd previously found very difficulty, by playing them in my dreams, even to the point of seeing the score (it's not exactly the same, but it seems to me that if you rehearse something in a lucid dream, it actually helps you in practice when you try it awake).

Honestly. Give it a try. There are plenty of primers on how to do it available. It's easy, you just have to be patient and practice something called a "state test" at various times through the day. It can be as easy as looking at a street sign, and then looking away for a moment and then looking back to see if it says the same thing. The idea is, that you are testing to see if you are awake or in a dream. Then, when you have practiced this a while, you'll be dreaming and you'll do a state test and then WHOA! you'll realize your dreaming and then it's off to the races. There are other techniques too.

Lucid dreaming can make your dream life a blast.

Maybe someone at DARPA has been giving the bong a workout again.