DrmDoc

And likely much closer today than you may think with all the furor Donald Trump has caused this county since soundly losing the presidency.

Hello again, As a follow up and for clarity, dreams are efferent brain responses that do not trace a path to permanent or long-term memory unless they include or end in a real sensory experience. Recording our dreams, physically or materially, involves afferently real sensory experiences that refresh and reinforce our memory of the dream content we record. Unlike dream experiences, physical/material sensory experiences trace a path to memory through their neural altering impact. The evidence for this is shown by the neural affect of sensory experience on brain development. My particular interest in all of this, as I have previously commented, has been a better understanding of what I consider extraordinary dream experiences and content. I considered those experiences and content extraordinary when they have had some unquestionably real impact in my conscious cognitive experience. Consequently, I've acquired remarkable insight on brain evolution, neural development, brain function and the consciousness that function produces. It's my hope that what meager insights I've shared here have proved worthy of your interest.

Hello All, Functionally, memory was evolved for experiences that had a real physical/material impact on the survival of ancestral animals. Dreams aren’t easily remembered because they are not materially real experiences and our brain is able to detect that distinction in sleep. If you’ve heard or read this explanation before, it probably originated from thoughts I’ve expressed here or elsewhere. What I may not have shared here or elsewhere before now are the mechanisms for this process in brain function. In the brain distinctively, neural activity flows in just two basic directions: Afferent for the direction of neural impulses entering the brain as stimuli from the sensory systems of the body and efferent for the direction of neural impulses exiting the brain as functional responses to stimuli. Dreams emerge from the efferent response systems of brain function and only emerge as a collective interpretive response to afferent stimuli. Memory was evolved for afferent stimuli, which describes stimuli that have a direct and tangible impact on the sensory systems of the body. Although our dream content relies on our brain’s memory stores to interpret stimuli, dreams are efferent interpretive responses that are only memorable for the afferent stimuli evoking their emergence. As they indeed originate from real sensory experiences, afferent stimuli are encoded with a physically distinct signature facilitating a unique and traceable neural path for each sensory experience to a designated state of memory in the brain. Without that physically distinctive signature, the memory of our experiences may never reach a state of permanency. From this perspective short-term memory involves stimuli and experiences that never reach a state of permanency. Dream content remains short-term because they are efferent responses that do not originate from afferently encoded stimuli. Dreams originate internally from brain function rather than externally though sensory experience. Although dream content does efferently interpret afferently encoded effects, those interpretations will not become permanent memories without afferently encoded signatures reinforcing their material value or memory worthiness—which is why recording our dreams reinforce our memory of them.

If not considered in earlier discussion, this election was a referendum on Trump that likely owes victory to Republicans rather than Progressives, Democrats, or some other independent affiliation. The evidence for this is suggested by the loss that House Democrats experienced and their failure to make significant gains in the Senate despite Biden's nearly 5 million more popular votes than Trump. This significant margin of popular votes suggests to me that a large number of Republicans crossed party lines to vote for Biden while continuing their support for down ticket Republicans. If other affiliations were responsible for Biden's victory, they likely would have also elected a congress that would likely support rather than potentially obstruction his administration's goals.

I agree, discussions centering on defunding the police is a shameful distraction from this history making movement gripping our nations conscience and the world....yet it remains a distraction arising from the movement itself and it is quickly becoming a significant part of it's message and call to action. I fervently agree and believe that "WHY" is profoundly important and should remain at the forefront of our nation's discussion but I also believe that "HOW" should remain as equally important if our goal is to remedy our country's inequities and create a nation more securely rooted in freedom, justice and true equality for our citizenry. What happened to Mr. Floyd is indeed the "Last Straw." The moment for action is now. This movement is a call to action and the HOW in its message should inform and direct our actions with resounding clarity if we want it to prevail.

Although I agree that services to a community might benefit from redirected funds, I think there's a danger to promoting this idea of defunding the police. In our society, I think most people have a tendency to consider only the bumper sticker version of an issue rather than read the fine print as Booker eloquently provides. Just today, Minneapolis protesters ejected their mayor from their peaceful action when he refused to support defunding and, specifically, removing police from their community. When the protests are done and the police are gone, crime in America remains. We are an uncivil and uncivilized society that require policing and the slogan "Defund the Police" sends our communities, citizens, police, and, particularly, our criminals the wrong message. A message that we are a reformed society, which we aren't, and that we do not require protection, which we do. I think "Defund Bloat and Waste, Fund Public Schools and Mental Health Clinics" would send a clearer more effective message.

I support every constructive effort to reform our police policies and tactics, as well as, every civil effort to bring equality to our nation's people; however, "Defund the Police" is an idiotic idea. As a wise person once said, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

Your advocacy for police brutality suggest your statement here is unequivocally disingenuous. You've touted your belief in police brutality and, thereby, confirm you do believe it exist. It's hardly convincing that a person who holds such beliefs is in anyway sincerely or slightly interested in humans rights protection whatsoever. As decent human beings raised with a modicum of morals, they should have innately known to weigh "following training/orders" against the loss of common decency. "I was just following training/orders" is not an excuse for crimes committed while doing so.

Didn't Chauvin, the offending officer, provide a very clear and concise statement by holding his knee to the neck of a handcuffed and deceased black man for nearly 3 minutes? What more can he possibly say to clarify or justify something so abhorrent.

I completely agree and if my comments were construed otherwise, you're mistaken. My intend was to convey an opinion that one was likely the progenitor of the other rather than both being somehow synonymous. I've imagined that before early humanity diverged into separate races, we were separate families that became separate tribes that would one day savagely compete for the same resources. I believe racism owes its ancient origins to that savage competition among early humans for survival between families and tribes. It was may way of conveying to Moreno our equal potentials.

Racism likely owes it origins to tribalism emerging from the dawn of the human animal 200,000 years ago in Africa. All of humanity share an equal potential for varying degrees of suspicion and savage hostility towards divergent groups as we vie for the same, singular, and often limited resources. What we witness through Chauvin's actions was an expression of savage indifference towards a fellow human being with whom he saw or felt no kinship and, therefore, no empathy. Although we are all predisposed to behaviors emerging from our savage origins, I believe we equally share a potential to change that predisposition and become something more than the animal we were thousands of years ago.

Although the proof you seek isn't as overt as you perceive, Chauvin was a 19 year police veteran with numerous (18) citizen complaints in a predominantly minority district. This service record suggests that Chauvin was as deaf to the complaints of the minority citizens he was supposed to serve and protect as he was to the pleas of the black man he asphyxiated. Minus his uniform, badge and position on that fateful day, Chauvin was just another white man with an unyielding knee on the neck of a black man. Yes, it was racist!

This is not to suggest that the death of an Asian or Caucasian from police abuse isn't equally egregious, it's just that the distinction of George Floyd's horrifying murder comes after several recent murders and over a century of similar well publicized murders among America's black citizens at the hands of police or similar authorities whose sworn job is to protect and serve those very same citizen. Chauvin's demeanor and expression while compressing Mr. Floyd's neck amid his desperate pleas to breath suggest that Chauvin was well aware of what he was doing. What we saw in that horrible moment in America's recent history was a very public lynching albeit by knee rather than rope.

Science can't prove anything; however, with clearly defined and approved parameters and references in science, I think it can provide a methodology whereby evidence can be investigated or found for the existence of "God or afterlife". Wouldn't a more interesting question be what experiment would we personally designed to provide definitive evidence in science for the existence of god(s)? Then we might at least be aware at which point in our own experience we would begin to suspect or accept the existence of some omnipotent intelligence.

Today I learned about the C.Elegans and how researchers have digitized and inserted its brain into robots. Apparently scientists have mapped the C.Elegans entire connectome, which is the only one they've managed to map completely.

As I understand, microwave ovens employs frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. My presumption have been that to cook food this has primarily involved frequencies of sound. For a novice, such as myself, could you briefly explain how the speed of light and electromagnetic radiation are linked?

Today I learned about Cotard's Syndrome, which is a rare psychosis involving somatic delusions of missing body parts and even a belief that one has died when one clearly remains alive and in good physical health.

Today I learned that those white spots that sometimes appear under our fingernails are call Leukonychia and that certain types may confer serious health conditions from malaria and leprosy to Darier's disease, liver failure, and kidney failure. There are four primary types: Punctata, stratia, longitudanal and totalis.

Today I learned about supernumerary nipples and why some people have them. According to the Wiki and Seeker references, these are the extra breast nipples that form along our embryotic milk lines but regress before birth; however, some do not and can become fully formed nipples and breasts.

Today I learn about "the way to spiritual power through discipline" as practiced by Shugendō monks beginning in the 7th century until outlawed by the Japanese government. Essentially, the practice involved a method of extremely slow suicide called self-mummification, which lasted about 9 years if successful. Ritualized suicide, ultimately religious escapism.

Today I learned more than I though I knew about the smallest levels of reality. I learned that neutrinos are measure in yoctometers (10−24 yotos).

Today I learned that the average life expectancy for humans plateaus at 114.1 years for male and 115.7 years for females. According to a Tilburg and Erasmus University study published in Nature.

Today I learned why getting kicked in the groin hurt so much. The culprit is referred pain, which is our brain's generalized signaling of injury rather than injury of the specific organ involved.

Thankfully, neither do I. Today I learned that American whiskey brand Jack Daniel's owes its founding to Nathan Green, a slave who taught a teenaged Daniel how to distill. According the New York Times, sales of JD brands generate about $3 billion in annual revenue.

For those of you who have interest, here's a SciShow Psych link where you may learn about the 5 distinctive brainwave patterns our brain produces. They are delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. The video also discusses a study suggesting how gamma wave exposure might influence our brain biology. According to the host, researchers found that mice-with genetically modified light-sensitive neurons--produced "half as many plaques in their visual cortex compared to controls." The implications of this finding in the treatment of Alzheimer could be enormous. Enjoy!