Random Thought Thread

I frequently see people wearing helmets when out on a leisurely bicycle ride, yet prison guards working in maximum security facilities don't wear any head protection. At least not in the videos I've seen.

 

Yeah and about 70% of the time, wearing helmets while biking is completely unnecessary based on the amount of risk of head injury that people willingly assume performing other activities. If you’re biking four blocks through a quiet residential neighborhood to grandmas house, do you really need to wear a helmet? The converse is also true, that the people who go bicycling down winding, two-lane highways where drivers go 5-10 over the 55mph speed limit and take corners like maniacs are delusional if they think helmets are going to provide them anything more than incidental protection against collision.

 

I see no issue with it. I mean, it's your head. You can walk off most broken limbs, but a broken skull is not one of those things.

 

Between horses, high adventure sports and general klutziness, I've had a number of concussions over the last sixty years, and the effect is cumulative. I don't recommend it.

Our deal with our children was they'd wear bike helmets and we'd wear motorcycle helmets. One day when my son was about nine, I found his bicycle helmet marred by a big crack in the surface and through part of the padding. I asked him about it, figuring he'd been hammering spikes with it or something. To make a long story short, he'd been out riding his bike, hit a hole in our dirt road, flew over the bike handlebars, and crashed head first into a fence corner post that was made out of 3" well casing. I asked what would've happened without the helmet. He said he reckoned we'd have found out what his brains looked like. Ten years later, he was riding bareback in ranch rodeos. He got hurt doing it, but he never hurt his head because there was a helmet firmly strapped to it.

 

There's a good advertising idea in there: "Head Case Helmets. Hurt your helmet, not your head!" Perhaps accompanied by this image:

Spoiler: Click it!!!

...Or not.

 

Oh. I shouldn't have clicked it. Now it won't let me unclick it.

 

Mind blown!!

 

I don't think one can walk off with a broken leg.

 

Don't know about legs, but I walked and danced on a broken foot for several weeks before I found out it was broken. A horse stepped on me. Figured since I could walk, it as just soft tissue damage. (File under Dumb Things I Have Done.)

 

How long before Afghanistans decide to flight not fight for their country

 

Hard to flee when you have nowhere to go and no means to get there anyway.

 

The wealthy will find away and the poor will face everything...

 

Nothing new there. I was in Afghanistan as an exchange student at Kabul University in 1978; it was a beautiful and mostly primitive place, just beginning to get on its 20th century economic feet, until the international power strategies ("the Great Game" as the British and Russians called it in the 19th Century) tore it asunder once again. I remember how the people I met said they "loved" America and despised the Russians. Heartbreaking to see what transpired.

 

What happens is the well connected and educated..doctors lawyers..etc..get their right of passage and their kids take up the moral high ground in years to come and the poor who had to stay faced with kill or be killed will be treated as terrorist and the middle classes will see themselves as freedom fighters for their parents cowardice....

 

I had a dream . . . in which I was black

and then another dream in which a wolf was pursuing me and as I started running, it grew bigger and faster (a werewolf!), and as soon as I entered a home I shut the door and it was left outside . . . saving myself. I woke up happy and satisfied, although realistically speaking, if that were the case, the werewolf would have knocked down the door with no effort whatsoever. The interesting thing was that I split into two people, one who ran inside and the other who shut the door as soon as I entered the house, so technically, I did and didn't see the werewolf stopped by the shut door. I don't know if this makes any sense . . .

Most importantly, even if a situation of danger, I felt positive. Is it true that emotions are less diluted than thoughts in the unconscious (and so true to how you see the situation)?

 

Did it actually change into human form, or just get bigger and stronger? Running from anything predatory kicks in its predatory instinct, but more importantly (since there was no actual wolf in the dream, there is only you) it's your fear making the threat SEEM bigger and stronger. I learned this from a lucid dreaming website, plus general dream psychology plus a lot of experience in my own dreams.

The advice always given is this. Never show fear or run from a predator, it only makes them stronger and go into attack mode (this is true in both waking life and dreams). Instead you want to confront it in one of 2 ways.

Let me first describe what an attacking creature in a dream usually means though. It's something in your life that you're afraid of and refuse to face squarely, but instead you keep 'running away' from facing it. Some problem that needs your attention but you're afraid to confront it. I think in this case the house represents comfort and security free of these pesky and frightening things like whatever the wolf represents. When you run in and close the door your'e taking refuge and hiding from it. ignoring it.

And when the dream gives it the semblance of an animal it often means it's something instinctive. Particularly horses, wolves and other forms of wild dogs or jungle cats. Plus the idea that everything in a dream represents some part of yourself seems to usually work. At least I'll always consider that thoroughly before trying something else. So being chased by a wolf most likely means there's some instinct inside you that wants you to do something but you turn away from it in fear and hide in a more safe civilized part of life (represented by the house). Instincts usually have to do with survival or sex, and survival sometimes means standing up against a person or a problem that instead you keep hiding from.

It's very intriguing that you split into 2 versions of yourself at the end. Did one of you remain outside the house with the wolf? It sort of sounds that way but I don't want to assume.

If so, it sounds like the dream is showing you 2 different possible paths you could take, one to run into your normal domestic life, and the other to remain outside (in the wilder part of life) and face whatever it is that frightens you. And possibly the burst of joy was because some part of you remained in the wild and faced the problem. Often these bursts of joy are part of the dream, created by the unconscious, rather than your own waking reaction to it. But it's hard to tell which it is.

And now the 2 different approaches I promised.

One is to stop and face whatever is approaching and and ask it what it is, or what it represents. Usually as soon as you do this it will shrink down and often change into a less aggressive form, even something cute and cuddly or at least friendly and able to communicate. It will then talk to you, or somehow get its message across.

The other method is to fly toward it arms wide open and beam pure love at it, assuming it's a part of yourself that's alienated because of your fear of it. Like in the movie Black Swan, if we're afraid of some part of ourselves it takes on a threatening appearance and seems like an attacking monster, but when we find the courage or the self-love to face whatever it is and accept it as a part of ourselves that needs love and acceptance rather than fear and aggression, then it becomes a helper (this is the meaning of the supernatural helpers in so many fairy tales etc, that everyone is afraid of but that the hero or heroine speaks to with respect. Like Yoda.)

You can fairly easily program yourself how to react to these situations in your dreams by using a mantra, dream journaling, and visualizing. By writing down whatever dreams you can remember each morning you make them important to yourself and your mind will remember them better and pay more attention to them.

Write your mantra in the journal each night before you go to sleep. This really helps your mind focus on it. Also repeat it to yourself over and over and let yourself feel emotions related to it. This should be something like courage and love and acceptance. The mantra would be something like 'I run toward my fears and beam pure love and acceptance at them'. Word it in present tense and don't use any negatives, in other words don't write or mantra about what you won't do, but about what you will. You should also stop several times throughout each day and picture yourself doing this, running or flying toward some fierce wolf, heart filled with love and arms open wide for a big bear hug. And visualize it becoming a puppy or a child and helping you. Understand that's it's an aspect of yourself that you've alienated out of fear and misunderstanding and that it comes bearing an important message from your unconscious, something that can help you immensely if you accept and understand it and start living your life the way it wants you to.

If you want more information or to talk about it send me a PM.

 

Oh, I forgot about the earlier dream of you being black. dreams often come in groups that are related to each other. And a white person dreaming of being black or being approached by a mysterious black person often is a Shadow dream. The shadow is the parts of yourself that you're afraid of because they're mysterious and seem threatening, but that you need to make peace with or at least face squarely without suspicion and fear. The fact that you dreamed of being black could mean that you're willing to converse or convene with the Shadow, to see that it's a part of yourself rather than something external as we often pretend it is. Or that you should see it as a part of yourself.

This little dreamlet combined with you splitting into 2 versions of yourself in the other dream, one of whom I think remained in the wild with the wolf, seems to indicate that the unconscious is telling you you need to face something, an aspect of yourself, that you're normally afraid of but that now you need to make peace with.

 

I used this method once when I used to have a lot of terrifying dreams about bears. I kept journaling and mantra-ing that when I see a bear I fly toward it beaming pure love, and lo and behold one night I found myself walking through a big empty warehouse in a dream and there lying in a corner was a huge black bear. After a brief moment of fear I remembered my mantra and was filled with a burst of joy and love, and I knew it was some alienated part of me.

I ran and then started flying toward it and could feel the pure love beaming out of my chest. And as I got close I suddenly 'saw' that it wasn't really a bear, it was 2 of my former dogs (who were both dead in real life) laying together that just looked like a bear. They jumped up tails wagging and we had a joyous reunion, and then one of them stood up on its hind legs (sort of like MacGruff the Crime Dog) and started talking to me as we walked off toward a cafeteria in the warehouse. The other dog disappeared, I think it's like they merged into one though I didn't see that happen.

We went to a long table where there were computer stations and it sat down like it was about to type something up on a computer, but I woke then. But this showed me that the technique definitely works. Over a period of time involving other similar dreams (in which I also lost me fear of dream dogs of the attack variety) I made a lot of progress toward facing my waking life fears, which I believe is what the dreams were referring to, at least in general. So it doesn't happen all at once in one dream, it's a process. It's dream therapy really and takes time like therapy does and works according to how well your'e able to face the things that are frightening you, at least in theory at first and then in dreams, which are totally safe simulations. Just imagining yourself facing them in a safe situation over and over and writing about that and what it might accomplish can begin to work wonders and lead to you being able to actually do it.

 

If I hear one more person say “It’s coming home!” I’m going to punch them in the epiglottis.

 

If you had no references and no power tools, how fast can you create a lead acid battery powered motor?

 

Am I able to get supplies? If not, making an acid isn't too difficult. The internal plates are the hard part with the properly oriented conductive metals. The shielding would likely have to be a substitute. Still, it's very possible. More probably an Egyptian pottery battery modernization than anything else though. May take me a day or two depending.

Edit: Missed that this requires a motor as well. This may add a few days to the job depending on the size and type of the motor. Again, this really depends on parts harvesting for what's available and what the motor is used to do. Small electric motors are more probable with household products, as the battery would likely only produce low voltage. Piecing together gears if they arent available would be problematic as well. Not impossible, just slow.

 

Sounds very McGyver-like. I have trouble figuring out which end of the battery goes in first into a flashlight.

 

Actually what does 'properly oriented conductive materials' refer to?

 

I'll bet he means setting it up so your copper and lead sheets alternate.

But this is me trying to remember stuff I learned way back in grade school. I'm probably wrong.