Exactly. I mean, he … [read full article]
Posts tagged with 'Affordable Trapping'
Ok. Confession. If we’re gonna go there: Yes, there was the “Conan” GenX and then there was the “Beastmaster” GenX. Beastmaster GenX could talk to the animals and stuff — and they’d fight for him of their own free will (although he could fight too if it came to it). Conan on the other hand turned into a robot to destroy humanity and then said “I’ll be back” and became governor of California. No idea what happened to Beastmaster.
Ok. Confession. If we’re … [read full article]
Therefore, they conclude that these processes all integrate with each other.
I’ve long been intrigued … [read full article]
What are some little mental tricks you can do with yourself that you find interesting?
What are some little
… [read full article]Once Upon a time, I had an idea for an invention. 25 years ago, webcams just became inexpensive. I thought, wouldn’t it be great to have a few thin screens behind the steering wheel and cameras on the front and back of the vehicle along with radar to gauge distances to any object on the front, back and sides? I looked through the US patent website and I could find nothing like it. I worked on it a little for a few months in my off time, not knowing what I’m doing and I didn’t invest any money thankfully. Six months later, I was ready to jump in and take seriously my first patent idea and invest money and time into it. So, I took one last look to see if I could find anything like the device I wanted to patent. I found it. Five months beforehand. One month after I had my bright idea there was a patent filed by a person in a corporation in California for a car camera system EXACTLY like I envisioned! I could find nothing different about it. (I’ve looked since and yes it was the basis of lots of future patents going by citations from all the big companies) I was heartbroken. How was it possible that someone else came up with EXACTLY the same idea at EXACTLY the same time as me? It felt stolen. I felt cheated. It took a few weeks of soul searching and having a private pity party before it dawned on me: It WAS STILL my original idea. It was ALSO his original idea. It was probably the original idea of 1,000 other people too. I can feel proud of it. He was simply faster/better at getting it patented.. Ibn Tufayl’s protagonist resonates strongly with me in many ways but particularly in this one: He reasoned, without a language we know, truths about nature and the cosmos by following reasonable connections between things. The results of his reasoning matched with the neighbor who had language and arrived there from being taught through schools and I don’t find that concept to be the least bit strange. While I don’t believe there is a “Language organ”, nevertheless the CAPACITY of language learning and the capacity of reasoning and the capacity of all of these things we get for free by simply being human beings. How different cultures fill that up may differ and I see it perfectly possible to achieve much of the results outlaid in the text. That said, we are also the products of culture from birth onwards and if his socialization was from the animals, I don’t believe that would limit his human cognitive capacity at all but it would mean his internal language would be based upon whatever language was around him that he could extract meaning from. But just as you can build a house with bricks or wood, involving totally different construction techniques, you can construct a rational being out of any sufficiently descriptive language. There’s still a culture. It may be made up of animals and plants and the seasons instead of pop stars but it deserves a round of applause just the same.
Once Upon a time, … [read full article]
I mean, I don’t like discomfort. But the awkwardness of constant uncertainty encourages me to drive towards a solution that sits in a middle ground between certainties and uncertainties. I suspect it’s more of an animal than a rational thing, if you forgive using the crude “we are all plants wrapped in animal wrapped in human flesh” idea
I mean, I don’t … [read full article]
Thank you for the opportunity. Yes, the first two of the questions were absolutely the two I struggled with.
Thank you for the … [read full article]
When I was a boy, my grandmother was into “Ancient Aliens”, talked about Edgar Cayce’s sleeping prophecies and the Akashic Records “spiritual library that contains a record of all events, thoughts, feelings, and actions that have ever happened.”, etc She didn’t “believe believe” but she was open minded. Got me into science fiction and spooky TV shows. One of my favorites was “In Search Of…” with Leonard Nimoy. Great show. Talked about the killer bees that would enter the USA by the early 2000s. And turns out I was runnning an animal removal service with my brother and around 2009 I went with him on a job for bees in Everglades City. [I rarely ever went with him on jobs as I’m owner so I don’t have to] They were so vicious they came right after us and we had to dive into the truck as they crashed into the truck like hail. Thousands and thousands of angry Killer bees swarming around. It took 15 minutes for them to give up, we got out and sprayed the hell out of the hives and ran back in the truck and left. Since then, as they travelled north, the killer bees mated with the local population and created “irritated local/killer hybrid bees” which is as close to neutralized as we’re gonna get . So Leonard Nimoy was right. But I doubt Edgar Cayce nor was erich von daniken, as fun as it was to read as a boy and see many years later in X-Files, etc.
When I was a … [read full article]