Political leanings and the mind/brain connection

I actually thought at one point, what would Bilbo do in this situation. I fiddled with my Ring but invisibility didnt help.

degrading though

what? fiddling with my Ring?

no blowing someone off

Well, you don't do it in their presence. You act all proper during the interview, then as soon as it's over you click down the receiver and go "WTF?!" Then you don't worry about it any more. Having gotten the nonsense out of your system you're good to go for the next one.

Only works if the two episodes are close enough together that the influence of one can spill over into the other.

how can you blow them off if they're not there

*sigh*

Relax Mrs Figg, I think we've all done that! Any experienced interviewer understands and makes allowances. (Besides, it always seems 10 times worse from your end of the interview. Really! )

I mean just think about it. How many nerdy academics are there in the world?

Do you really think they all got there because of their suave interviewing style?

the worst thing was they sent me images by email while the interview was going on, and I had to comment on them, only they didnt tell me I needed Powerpoint, and I didnt have it installed so i couldnt open the f-ing things. So I was half listening to them half replying, and half desperately trying to get the images. But I didnt understand in my ga-ga state that i would have to install a programme and talk at the same time. So I had to tell them it was a no go. Why the hell they didnt ask me before if I had Powerpoint I really dont know. Anyway they asked me to comment on a ficticious object instead, but by that time I had lost the will to live, and it went downhill from there. Luckily this next interview doesnt require God-like Oracle of Delphi computing divining, so thats alright.

The probably assumed everyone has MS office, but they should have warned you just in case. But yeah, ppt would be pretty crucial for the art world since it's visual. I guess the slides were the trick interview questions you were worried about.

I dont have a proper computer, just a notebook, Its very basic, I dont even have Word. Just Wordpad, Its crap. *sigh*

At one point I thought of getting a notebook, but software has gotten so bloated now they are really only good for browsing the web and taking notes.

tell me about it. But its light on the tum when I am lying in bed.

Aside from the annoying money thing, the macbook air or its ilk would solve that problem.

money is annoying.

and so are people with money. it seems very unfair to me...

I saw this article an I instantly thought, "Maybe that's what it will take to get our politicians working together constructively!"

http://news.yahoo.com/mind-melds-move-science-fiction-science-rats-144950902.html

"Mind melds" move from science fiction to science in rats

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The scientists call it a "brain link," and it is the closest anyone has gotten to a real-life "mind meld": the thoughts of a rat romping around a lab in Brazil were captured by electronic sensors and sent via Internet to the brain of a rat in the United States.

The result: the second rat received the thoughts of the first, mimicking its behavior, researchers reported on Thursday in Scientific Reports, a journal of the Nature Publishing Group.

Adding to its science-fiction feel, the advance in direct brain-to-brain communication could lay the foundation for what Duke University Medical Center neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis, who led the research, calls an "organic computer" in which multiple brains are linked to solve problems solo brains can't.

If that sounds like an ethical minefield, several experts think so too, especially since Nicolelis is now working on brain-to-brain communication between monkeys.

"Having non-human primates communicate brain-to-brain raises all sorts of ethical concerns," said one neuroscientist, who studies how brains handle motor and sensory information, but who asked not to be named. "Reading about putting things in animals' brains and changing what they do, people rightly get nervous," envisioning battalions of animal soldiers - or even human soldiers - whose brains are remotely controlled by others.

Yeah, I saw that but if you read what the did, all they did was train a rat to respond to a brain stimulus by an electrode, and train another rat to send a signal by an electrode. The sending was more interesting to me: the rats had to learn how to increase the signal at will. May be a first step to having a whole net of electrodes and someone learns how to send and respond to different patterns, but I'd call it more of a parlor game than true mind melding. Almost like training to send and receive winks.

I don't think congress is as trainable as a lab rat.

halfwise wrote:

I don't think congress is as trainable as a lab rat.

You're probably right. Still I think it would be an interesting experiment to try lab techniques on them.

Isn't it standard procedure to start by withholding their food and making them earn it by constructive behavior?

It would be worth a try.....

Okay, so I dropped by a panel discussion on "Consciousness" at the New York Academy of Sciences. (I had gone to one on complexity a few weeks ago, but didn't realize there was more than one world trade center these days. I kept trying to storm the gates of the big famous one; they kept shoving me back outside, but they were nice about it. Eventually figured out I had to go to 7 World Trade Center rather than 1 World Trade Center. But I digress...)

Best two quotes from the evening:

"The central question of consciousness is not *if* there is a metaphysical gap between mind and brain; it's why we *feel* there is a gap."

"As a physicist, I view myself as rearranged food."

Mind the gap.