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Commented on Invaders line the walls of Varanasi
I think part of the bargain for "good" graffiti is that the viewing public receives some hidden artistic benefit that balances the basic vandalism. I doubt the locals in Varanasi derive much benefit from something like this compared to a...
Commented on Fruit flies with free will
I agree with gtmoogle in that the blog seems to misrepresent an interesting study of fly behavior as some sort of statement on free will. I am much more surprised when we find out the opposite: that we can accurately...
Commented on Video: Kitty Cornershot Hides Rifle Inside Plush Cat
And when children come up to play with it?...
Commented on Flowchart: How D&D is a gateway drug to every flavor of nerdiness
My favorite part in the diagram is how one gets close to girls via chat rooms, but never quite gets there....
Commented on Map of choose your own adventure book
Its not simply for the heck of it. By looking at the graph, you get an idea how a good narrative structure works, how many decisions change the plot, how many don't, etc. I like Cortazar's Hopscotch where the narrative...
Commented on Economic problems with interstellar commerce
I think the genetic homogeneity of humans is why we are so willing to trade, and the genetic homogeneity of celles in the body is why they are willing to trade as amulticellular organism. Trading is very uncommon in other...
Commented on How people around the world count money -- video
I am pretty sure it is a joke. What type of culture counts money by putting money in random stacks on a table when hand counting is obviously faster? Also, my experience with Indians suggest they just use the American...
Commented on Bush administration wants Europeans' family details, the right to put armed officials on European planes, and a pre-approval for European visitors
Good. Whenever I tell people how ridiculous the new regulations are, I think they often fail to fully empathize because the discrimination in how these policies are enforced. There's a weird class system where travelers from some areas India, Africa,...
Commented on Gitmo's torturers decry negative portrayal of gulag in new Harold and Kumar comedy
rrsafety: I think it straightforwardly wrong to assert that GITMO is better than normal American prisons. Do normal American prisons operate in a hazy legal standing because they are not considered under US Federal Law or military law? If GITMO...
Commented on Zojirushi Rizo: The Rice Cooker That Will Convince the West?
Re: C1JOSH If you cook rice on a regular basis, using a rice cooker allows a level of precision and consistency that is impossible on a stovetop. Aside from control, the stove top is just inconvenient for pressure cooking. The...
Commented on Rotting London grocery store sign
I guess the black lettering is hydrophobic so water that drips into the white holes in the letters are trapped and slowly oxidize the surface beneath them to form those nice rust-colored spots. I guess the lettering is also bound...

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brembs commented on Fruit flies with free will
ruzel, the behavior of nonlinear systems is very difficult to predict, but it's not random. There is a gradient in predictability where "random" and "determined" are just the endpoints. So nonrandom spontaneity is not an oxymoron. gtmoogle, in our research article, we have analyzed the spontaneous behavior of flies in three different environments and have found that despite the behavior being very different to the human eye, the same nonlinear signature could be detected. So quantitatively, the behavior is different in different environments, but qualitatively it remains very similar. This is reminiscent of what people see when they image the...
eevee commented on Invaders line the walls of Varanasi
French Blue@6 So you're saying the Lotus Lounge Restaurant, Phulwari Restaurant & Sami Cafe, Shiva Resaurant, Modern Vision Guest House, Dolphin Restaurant, Rashmi Guest House, and all those other advertisment all over those pictures were all done by imperialistic westerners? If he's crapping all over the local religious structures, he's just following the local custom....
GTMoogle commented on Fruit flies with free will
After a bit of pondering this morning, I'll reel out a little more cynicism. Why is it that spontaneity is considered such a huge factor in the "feeling of free will and authorship"? I'm not well versed in the related philosophy, but I am honestly curious. It seems to me that any definition of free will should include how people feel a sense of control over things that really are random or uncontrollable. For examples familiar to those around here, putting up a bag of water on what happens to be a windy day will still let people feel in...
brembs commented on Fruit flies with free will
GTMOOGLE - you open up a whole new can of worms here! Right on the spot. Control is also one of my major research interests as it is the effect of learning to use the consequences of spontaneous behavior (i.e., operant learning). Once operant learning ha evolved, feeling in control evolved to be rewarding by itself, even in flies: if flies are allowed to chose between a situation of full control or reduced control, they choose the full control version. Obviously, there's a lot of research going on in this respect and "free will" in my opinion is a much...
gamebookreader commented on Map of choose your own adventure book
If you remember the Lone Wolf series of adventure books, then you may be interested in the linked maps I made for the first 22 books at: http://sites.google.com/site/gamebookproject/...

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