psydereal's New Writeups

Analogy as the Core of Cognition (idea)

2006-02-07T12:57:37Z

Douglas Hofstadter gave a lecture at Stanford University on the topic Analogy as the Core of Cognition in February of 2006. Just to start off with, I thought the guy was brilliant before, and I am even more impressed after hearing him speak. You could call me a total fangirl. Everything he talked about was very accessible and entertaining. I summarized the concepts below, but I am afraid they are not delivered nearly as well by me, so my apologies:

Analogy is the mechanism that drives categorization and therefore cognition. Analogy making expands the personal concept. There was an interesting idea here about the personal concept being different from the public concept, but "no less valid" which I liked. Two examples were given of repeated analogy expanding concepts, one being the concept of a shadow. A tree on a sunny day casts a shadow. This same tree on a cloudy winter day has a shadow beneath it where snow fell all around the tree but did not reach the ground underneath, and…

we will replace the stars with machines of our own creation (idea)

2006-01-12T15:29:58Z

We will pave over every strip of land with concrete and build parking lots, supermarkets, and freeways. We will have created real-estate, and it will glitter in the sun. We will drive the creatures that share our space into oblivion, unless they are delicious of course, and then we will lock them up and create factories of them to suit our needs and their lives become devoid of all beauty. We will replace the stars with machines of our own creation, and the ever-changing constellations will be impossible to name. It will be impossible to imagine omens about life down here on the ground based on anything in the sky. It will be impossible to imagine gods who play cavalierly with our lives.

We will drain the earth of carbon pools. The tools of this process are very hungry indeed. We will crush millions beneath the weight of new infrastructure as we grind on starving souls to support a lifestyle where we want for nothing. Well, nothing that can be bought or sold, we have had less luck…

January 8, 2006 (place)

2006-01-08T18:05:07Z

Things I have learned in 2006:

The importance of a clean break. Being friends with your former partner is an admirable goal, but some distance needs to be achieved before this can happen. Distance is not achieved by talking every day, saying "I love you," holding hands in public, and regular visits to each other's bedrooms. (Yes, it seems so obvious now that I write it out...) Eventually you will find out that your ex spent some time in someone else's bedroom--maybe even while their place in your own was still warm--and while technically they have done no wrong, it can't feel like anything but betrayal.

Violation of privacy never has a happy ending. The next question is always, how did you find out? I am not proud of my actions, but would not have behaved this way if we weren't still involved in each other's lives. I never did this when we were together, but the knowledge that something was being kept from me…

leptin (thing)

2004-07-05T14:39:03Z

It is widely accepted by the medical community that obesity seriously increases risks for several life-threatening diseases, though this idea has its detractors (see: The Obesity Myth). It was thought that the excess body fat that must be carried about by the obese person put such a strain on the heart and other organs which eventually led to this increased risk. More recently, however, scientists have been looking at the adipose tissue (aka FAT) as not just extra weight to be carried around, but as an organ secreting chemical messengers.

One of the most well-known of these chemical messengers is leptin. As is bound to happen when researchers discover ways to turn formerly svelte laboratory mice into the rodent equivalent of Jabba the Hutt and vice versa, the media jumped upon leptin as a potential silver bullet to our obesity problems. It was not, as we nearly always find out, that simple, however ongoing research into leptin is a promising route to understanding obesity…

Even though I sleep terribly with another body in the bed (place)

2004-02-22T20:53:25Z

I'll admit to the twinge of envy as you settle your arms around me and your breathing begins to change nearly instantly. If I am still for the next few minutes--no kisses, no questions, no giggles, you will be asleep and I will be awake, intertwined with you. I try to imitate you, imitate a sleeping person for long enough sometimes the body is fooled into becoming one too. But sometimes this trick does not work. Still, I'd rather be here than anywhere else.

I continute to pantomime sleep so as not to disturb--feel the rise and fall of steady, strong breath, feel your heart beat. Often your muscles will twitch ever so slightly, your hands move over my body as you dream. Your arms are locked around me, if I wanted to move it would be difficult to...but I don't want to. Our bodies locked together like two puzzle pieces. From this vantage I can see your face peaceful in sleep, feel the breaths soft against my…

Dream Log: August 19, 2003 (thing)

2003-08-19T14:37:08Z

This dream was unusual because it happened to prominently feature zombies(!). Zombies aren't really something that I think about on a daily basis, I don't think I've ever really even watched a zombie movie as a matter of fact, but nevertheless, I find myself trying to write a breakup letter to my boyfriend because I found out that his dad is a zombie...

Instead of being in our early twenties and fresh out of college, my boy and I were in high school. He lived with his parents, and it was after school and we were hanging out at their house. Being young and horny, we went off in search of a little privacy, and found ourselves in the basement of the house. Though I never saw his mother and his father was a shadowy figure, I guess it was safer to boink furiously there than in a more obvious place, like a bedroom.

We never get down to business, however (unfortunate, because my boyfriend bore a striking resemblance to Josh Hartnett, and that would have been a wonderful…