iglak

very soon i will be learning Ba Gua, Tai Chi, and Hsing-I. Ba Gua and Tai Chi are internal martial arts, and Hsing-I is a transition from external to internal martial arts. "internal" means, basically, you're controlling your body internally, all of the subtle muscles and everything. it also includes Chi, or "energy" (basically), in the form of electrical energy, and even emotional and mental energy. it deals with keeping the body completely relaxed, as opposed to tense like most external martial arts. tense allows you to block, but relaxed causes everything to just pass through you. all of the punches and kicks are "soft" (nothing is tense), and use ideas of waves to deal damage to specific areas, usually internal. they can also send people flying fairly far with little effort. Ba Gua has been called the mother of all martial arts, or the trunk of the tree. it's one of the first, and most or all martial arts are minor subsets of Ba Gua. i love martial arts, but i don't like classes. so far what i've learned of this is quite intuitive, and i'm hoping it will remain that way.

not that i frequent the boards, but whatever. mine's the main character of Rurouni Kenshin. This particular picture kinda (sorta kinda) looks like me. i find that his character is very similar to me in many ways. i've only seen one anime who's main character is even more similar, but i only watched that recently, and i've been using Kenshin for a while now. but the main reason i like this particular avatar is his eyes. it's the determination, and the resolve to survive. i like it. i especially like it when i have the same determination, and when my eyes become like his >

as far as i'm aware, there are 3 types of muscle movement. static, slow-twitch, and fast-twitch. static is like when you hold something out at arms length, or when you squat for a long time. slow-twitch is when you lift weights like normal. or when you use pretty much any machine like normal. this tends to build muscle size fast-twitch is when you lift more than normal faster than normal. this tends to build muscle definition. fast-twitch is best for agility and speed. slow-twitch is best for stability and control. static is best for endurance. all of them build strength at their restective speeds. fast-twitch provides explosive martial arts strength. certain muscles build better at certain speeds. i don't know what's what though. i think smaller muscle groups are generally faster.

the problem with the chemical imbalance idea is that it should be obvious that it's a chemical imbalance. that's part of the definition of depression. depression is in the brain. the brain works by balancing chemicals to regulate electrical signals. a chemical imbalance in the brain is what we call "emotion". treating depression by correcting the balance that deals with the emotion of depression can be effective. but, the person had that imbalance for a reason, it was a reaction to stimuli of some sort. as long as the stimuli still exists, the balance will try to tilt toward depression.

protection from the heat? well, anything that reflects the light will create shade, which would be a good protection from the heat. it could be that the organism would sit atop a light sail of some sort. but how it would then get energy from the light, i don't know. also, how does it get the materials to grow and reproduce? they would have to come from the star somehow. or, organisms made out of energy and plasma have been hypothesised in science fiction. although i don't know how that would be possible.

are you procrastinating because you don't want to work? or are you procrastinating because work doesn't help you in any way? i'm a huge procrastinator. i was mildly depressed for the last 4 years of my life, starting in freshman year in highschool, and gradually getting worse. the reason was because the way school teaches is not compatable with the way i learn. homework taught me nothing, and even degraded my knowledge and intellegence. lectures were boring and pointless. projects had their moments of being interresting, but were often so regulated that i couldn't do anything useful. i got lucky, and got good grades. i was smart and was able to do some of the work, and i did well on tests when i wanted to. i got into a pretty good college, with the hope that college would be different from highschool. that i might be able to finally learn something. i was, unfortunately, wrong. college was exactly like highschool. i was unable to learn anything. i was talking to people, and found out that it never changes, not even in their senior years. so i dropped out and lived on my own. now, 2 months later, i'm finally feeling healthy again. my depression is finally gone, because it came directly from homework and teaching techniques (and my parents). it disapeared slowly because my emotional state was heavily ingrained in my mind, but it's finally gone now. now, i'm miving in with a friend who's going to a community college. i'm getting an entry level job. i'm making a video game with a friend. i'm making electronic music. and i'm self-teaching martial arts and meditation. i'm pretty certain that i'm going to have an awesome future. i guess what i'm trying to say is, as long as you have integrity, you can't screw up your life. take the others' advice and try to figure out why you procrastinate, and why you want to get better grades. that will give you motivation to work for it.

"Hey babe. How about you be the function, and i'll be the derivative. that way, i can be tangent to all your curves."

GO SIGN OW ERE and GO DISGN OH ERE i kinda mixed the W and H together. and i kinda read DISN as a mixture of SIGN and DESIGN. and i think ERE is suposed to be EAR. guess i'm a bit dyxeslic

i did that one in 3rd grade. i read all of the directions, including the last one that said to skip the other directions. but that one was last on the list, which meant that i was to follow it last. i was confused because looking at it that way, that means i'm supposed to do everything there, then once i'm done with all that, i'm supposed to not do it. meaning, only follow numbers 1 and 15. but that is number 15, which means you're not supposed to follow it until you've done numbers 1-14 get to it in the list. i ended up doing 1-14, because i didn't have anything else to do, and i didn't feel like being bored.

if it's S.A.D., i can point you to the absolute best prescription. it's proven, completely safe with absolutely no side effects, and works wonders in the absence of sunlight. and can even save money over time if you get long life ones. a full spectrum light bulb, to be put in every lighting fixture in the house (or at least the one you wake up to). beats the hell out of drugs anyday. i hate psychiatric drugs, because i've seen far too many people's conditions worsen because of them. in my opinion, never, EVER, take a drug unless you know EXACTLY what it's going to do to you. (or if your life depends on it, such as it would with heavy depression)

a will of any sort requires interraction between the pieces that make up the will. the neurons in a brain interract with eachother, and interract with cells via electrical and chemical signals. atoms and molecules in a cell interract with eachother via neclear and gravitational forces, as well as chemical and electromagnetic signals, and by both newtonian and quantum physics. life interracts with other life via electromagnetic, electrical, and chemical signals, and newtonian forces. planets and other space particles interract with eachother via gravity, electromagnetic signals, and newtonian and relativistic forces. in this sense, all levels can be called a willpower of some sort, excepting that between galaxy clusters. galaxy clusters are too far apart to interract in the life of the universe, and even in the potential life of the universe if such potential is less than about a quadrillian years. i like the free will topic. so i'm going to comment on that in response to your friend's e-mail two atoms have a vast multitude of variables stored within them. first is the position, direction, and velocity of every proton, neutron, and electron in each atom. second is the amount of strong nuclear, weak nuclear, gravitational, and electromagnetic force caused by each particle, and the newtonian, quantum, and relativistic physics equations in which they interract. third is the quantum mechanics of the individual particles, such as the spin of the particles, or the quantum level each electron is on and how the electrons interract. fourth is everything relating to the sub-sub-atomic particles, such as the fermions he mentions, or the cosmic strings even below that, which i know almost nothing about. with all of this information, it isn't beyond out computational power to determine exactly how they will interract, even though we don't have the required information (such as particular details about quantum mechanics, or even the ability to measure all of those properties of all of those particles at any given time) however, to determine anything more than how a few atoms will precicely interract is impossible by any means. the only potential way to determine such a thing would be to create an exact duplicate, down to the cosmic strings, and have the duplicate interract first. with such a duplicate, one could determine the future with exact accuracy, excepting the uncertainty principle that says a particle could be anywhere at any given time. but such a thing is also potentially impossible, because creating a duplicate requires the exact measurements of every detail of every particle in the entire system, which is physically impossible according to quantum mechanics. something cannot be precicely measured without unpredictably changing it. so, while the universe is predetermined, the only entity capable of determining the future is the universe itself, and it does so as time goes by. so determinism can only be used to determine with a degree of accuracy. and to that effect, determinism can be said to be free will. but even so, assuming determinism is completely true, free will in the purest definition requires something outside of the universe that can interract with the universe at its will. such as a soul. such a thing is beyond infinite in complexity, because no matter how complex, something can still be understood, such as the infinite complexity of the universe. but free will in the purest sense against the above determinism must be something that cannot be understood on any level, because it is outside of the universe, and thus could only be understood as random interractions with the universe. it is concievable that random interractions we observe and attribute to the uncertainty principle are in fact free will in action. but i don't have enough understanding of the uncertainty principle or quantum mechanics to put anymore thought into this prospect. also, i agree with you philosophically thinking of ID. ID in the sense of space aliens could potentially be observed in the future. ID in the sense of a 'gaia' or 'mother earth' of some sort could potentially be observed in the future. interractions between a faith-based god and the universe could potentially be observed in the future. it is concievable that such interractions don't follow normal physics (as any free will in the purest sense would not follow physics anyway, as Jake stated), and so we haven't found them yet. ID in the sense of a 'chi', 'ki', or 'qi' flow, or some other 'force' (referring to "Star Wars") could potentially be observable in the future. ID in the sense of supernatural entities, similar to ghosts or souls, could potentially be observable in the future. ID in the sense of the noodly appendage of the FSM could even be observable in the future. not now, but possibly in the future. of course, going by the free will above, it's also possible that free will can never be observed, because any measurement and observation tools use physics and are observed by determining physics equations. and since free will in the purest sense above would be outside of physics, only interracting to change the direction of physics, could possibly not be observed by physical means. someone on here said ID is not philosophy because philosophy asks questions, and ID is faith. but ID is not only faith; and asking questions about ID leads to many more interresting questions. for example, this free will thing. or when talking about space aliens, the physical possibility of such a thing, which gets into relativity and quantum mechanics. or when talking about a 'life force', or 'chi', gets into the philosophy of many different religions and teachings, and gets into meditation, buddhism, tibetan monks, martial arts, and new age ideas.

i find that most times people ask for advice, they're trying to get motivation to act on the situation. it's hard for one person to make a decision, especially one that seems to be either completely unknown to everyone else or goes against what everyone else generally thinks. when i ask for advice, i'm looking to see if there is anyone who came to the same solution/conclusion i did. if no one does, then i think something must be wrong with what i was thinking, so i go back and re-analize the situation to see if i can come up with the same solutions they did. if one person comes to the same conclusion on their own, then i know that at least one person agrees with me. s/he might not openly admit it, but if i act in that way, because i think it's the right thing to do, then i know that i made the right decision, because i'm not going against everyone. at least one person will support me. being the social creatures that we are, i tend to not be able to act purely on my own whims or decisions. i have to know that i'm doing something for someone other than myself, or it becomes somewhat pointless to act. when everyone is indifferent, i tend to be able to make decisions easily, but it's much harder when everyone seems to think against what i want to do, despite whether or not they know why they think that way or whether or not i think they're fundamentally wrong. other instances are, of course, when someone doesn't have any idea how to react to a situation, or could only come up with bad solutions, and is looking for at least a general direction to explore.

using "it already happened" as an argument only prevents one from changing the past, not visiting. it's still potentially possible to go back into the past, try to change something, and find out that you actually caused it. or to try to change something, and have no effect on it. saying "it already happened" means that you can go into the past all you want. it's just that when the past was the present, your future self was there too, which means that everything has already reacted to it.

meditate. a lot.

firstly, snakes do (in a way) have hair. feathers, down feathers, hair, and fur are all simple mutations of scales. sweating: seems right. why do we still have a little hair? well, notice that when you sweat, the sweat clings to the hair. this helps the sweat evaporate by giving it more surface area, and more area of contact with moving air. why do we have hair on our heads? our brains prefer a certain temperature to function correctly. people who are bald or shave their heads often mention how much colder it is without hair, and usually have to wear a hat when it's a little bit cold to feel comfortable. beards, too, keep us warm. could we have evolved semi-aquatic? sort of. i have heavy doubts about AAH. but i have my own conjecture. the African savahna has quite a few rivers. strong rivers with predators. migrating animals all have their own apporach to crossing the rivers. Zebra have slick hair, and use the shotgun apporach, guaranteeing that a fairly random portion get across. buffalo are larger and stronger, and aren't affected as much by hair, and use the shotgun apporach. elephants are very large, and not affectetd much by the water at all, but at their slow pace, having lots of hair would slow them down even more. cats and dogs swim quite well, and have slick air, and their body shapes are good for passing through water. humans, being upright, would have a problem if they had ape hair. slick hair would probably be okay, but then we get into the sweating problem. less dense hair, like the apes in the picture recently shown, would dramatically reduce our ability to cross the rivers. at the same time, apes aren't exactly great at crossing rivers, and could easily be swept out of control. it became extremely beneficial to be able to swim well, and control your body in water, so our feet and hands are slightly more webbed than necessary. with only tool-using and running defining our feet and hands, it would make more sense to have less webbed hands (to move fingers in a wider range, and with more control), and slightly longer and stronger toes (to provide more spring in each step, as well as more balance). i don't know if i believe the hypothesis that we out-enduranced our prey. we have brains with complex communication abilities, and a complex understanding of strategy and tactics. presumably, this was to catch prey. although on second thought, it could have been to survive war, and predators. but still, it's not good for humans to run as much as most people do. it puts excessive strain on the whole body, including important internal organs, especially when running for extended periods of time. it seems much more likely that we didn't run after our prey, but instead scared it into sprinting away, and walked the short distance to where it stopped running away to scare it again (only really running when scaring it). the animal would have likely tried to join the herd again, so it was a matter of predicting where it would come from, and walking with the herd in wait for it to come. we could have also confused it by coming from multiple directions, to try to get it to run around in circles, or to a predicted, predetermined spot.

then you either weren't listening hard enough, or you got bored and went on a tangent. i'm sure i would be considered ADD, if i cared to be tested for it. i simply can't do homework, because no matter how much i try, i just don't want to. but i'm not going to, because i know i don't have it. and even if i did, i wouldn't want to change it. i like my ADD-like problem, it's the last thread keeping me attached to doing what i want to do, to living the way i want to live. also, i hate their drugs.

don't go straight to a psychiatrist. they have a chance to misdiagnose you, and thus mistreat you. i have a few friends who have wrongly been put on prozac, todays miracle drug, which happened to damage their minds and make them crazier. a psychologist could misdiagnose you also, but there are no drugs involved to create permanent damage. only when you know for a fact that you need drugs should you use them. psychiatric drugs cause brain damage. it's just a question of whether or not your brain would benefit from the particular damage.

only because you get addicted to it. usually at a young age, when sugar and fat taste good, to promote having excess calories to use for growing and learning. and as a result of drinking fat-filled breast milk. if you stop eating those foods for a few months, i can guarantee they'll start to taste bad. tea tastes better than soda to me right now. McDonalds, and most fast foods taste terrible to me. actually, it does. having a big fancy car makes people think you can afford a big fancy car, which makes people think your rich. being rich, or even being thought of as rich, is very beneficial to our survival and the ability to have and raise children. if people don't think of you as rich enough for the car, then at the very least they're going to know who you are because of it. because they stopped to notice how fancy the car is, and wanted to know if you were a snobby rich kid, just interrested in cars, or someone trying to look fancier than he is. and having people know you is also beneficial in society, even if it's just a little bit.

definition and tone.... there are a few ways to work muscles. you can: lift more, building up muscle strength - this increases muscle size lift slowly, building up muscle stability and control - this increses definition lift quickly, building up muscle speed - this seems to make muscles spread out more. lift repetedly, building up muscle stamina - i don't know what this does, but i'd guess it's more definition and size. i'm not that much of a weight lifter, and i don't read much about it, but from experience and judging myself compared to others, i think i'm right about how the different ways affect appearance.

i fit people onto a 3D graph. from left to right: dangerous - helpful to my community from top to bottom: aware - unaware of others as individual people from front to back: aware - unaware of their own thoughts and actions if people are dangerous to my community, i will try to change. if they remain dangerous, i will disable their danger. if they heal and remain dangerous, i will kill them. the average tends to be a line from the front top-right tp the back bottom-left. it's a very fuzzy subject though, and i don't have the legal or ethical ability to disable or kill emotionally (as opposed to physically) dangerous people who won't change from words alone.

the future of the internet is in forums. in forums, people can learn everything (or almost everything) they want on a specific subject. that's something that can't be done in a library without spending years and years searching through old magazines, newspapers, and books that can only be found in multiple libraries and company archives. in fact, that's the present of the internet also, along with news, opinions, and much entertainment. it just happens to be that people mainly focus on what's bad, and lose sight of the potential the world wide web holds.

probably to be born without a brain, but with the spinal cord and brain stem intact. or maybe death before prenounced brain-dead. this is just speculation though.

why do they all need to evolve at once? it could be that the ancestor already had the ability to digest insects in it genes already, even before it was needed. it could be that the original venus fly traps migrated into or lived in an area with more bugs than any amount of plants or animals could deal with, and happened to have a sticky flower, or a flower that closed slowly with changing air pressure, temperature, or light levels. this would catch a bug every once in a while, and would negate the need to attract the bugs until more predators moved in. it could also be that the soil wasn't very devoid of nutrients, but collecting the extra nutrients from a few bugs allowed it to grow slightly larger than the others, or slightly faster, slowing the growth of he others.

indescission

harmful on what level? the foreskin of the penis is the most sensitive part. uncircumsized toddlers touch it and play with it often, just because it's so sensitive. religions believe that every time someone masturbates, they learn to love themselves, and love god less. to prevent toddlers and your children from loving god less, they cut off the most sensitive part of the penis, so that they will have no reason to touch themselves there when they don't know what it is. there might be more reasons for circumcision, but that's a big one. i wasn't circumcised. i have a question i should probably ask a doctor (or a sex information forum or something), but it applies here. the opening in my foreskin is slightly smaller than the width of the head of my penis. in addition to that, my foreskin is attached by a very sensitive piece of flesh, like a clitoris. yet i've heard of people who hide their foreskins by pulling it back, and sometimes tying it there. i can't do that. it'd hurt, and probably rip the sensitive connecting skin. is that at all normal? if i was circumcised, i wouldn't have it. i wonder if i had it bck then; in which case, they would have had to cut it if it were circumcised... ouch. circumcision would have deprived me of a very improtant part of my sex organ... that can't be an easy thing for the brain to remap. maybe that's why so many people have weird fetishes, lol. a regrown foreskin wouldn't have that either. (regrowing the foreskin is a simple matter of stretching it daily. it can be done by hand.)