Sip

Why don't we move the whole god damned religion section into the humor section? And yes, I'm fully aware I'll be burning in hell for saying that. Thank you

It is not as easy as let's lock'em up for life or let's cut them up ... The problem with making the punishment for rape too severe, is that then there wouldn't be much deterrent for the assailant to do worse things than rape ... i.e. murder. If one puts in place the same punishment for murder and rape, then I think we'll see a lot more rapes end in murder ... why? Because 1. A dead victim is less likely to identify his or her rapist, and 2. The punishment is going to be the same if caught. I like the castration idea ... but it must only be utilized when the evidence of rape is overwhelming ... for example, it would really suck right now if Kobe Bryant were walking around castrated.

And that is perhaps where we are going the wrong way with "memory" here. Storing things in a computer or PDA, what we might write down, put somewhere on some storage shelf, or record on a tape or cd, is probably very different than how our minds process and store things. The processing and storage are so intertwined. For example we see a car passing from one angle, we remember it ... and the next time we might see that car from a completely different angle, yet we recognize and recall having seen that car. This is no simple "storage/retrieval" ... it's far more complex. So many things took place from initially seeing the car, abstracting to a "general car", extracting specific featues of this car such as color, shape, context, etc, and then storing that information. ... then we see the car again from another angle we go through a similar exercise of extracting featurs, abstracting, mapping the object we see to the "car" concept, and then matching what we saw to what we have seen (fuzzy recall?) and go on from there. Yes ... "how do we remember things?" That IS the question!

I do #1-3 all the time. You really got my attention with that #4 ... I never thought of myself as actively doing any Maximum likelihood decoding but I now definitely see that that goes on a lot as well. We have to do fuzzy matching all the time! I guess in a sense, the most obvious example would be taking a multiple choice test ... you either know the answer, can arrive at it by deduction and elimination, have to purely guess, or do some sort of maximum likelihood fuzzy matching type thing to your built up knowledge But in your list, you left out the most basic one! Just pure and simple "Storage" (sometimes it's the easiest of all, especially when it needs no effort or happens by itself through repetition). I don't consider myself too good at pure storage/recall ... but things are definitely stored in there and depending on stimuli either from my current experiences or active thoughts, my brain somehow seems to trigger recall of some very obscure things that I would never have even imagined as having stored in there. It's really fascinating how we remember stuff ... nothing like PC's where if it's not in your registers, it's in the cache, and if not in the cache, it's in the RAM, and if not in the RAM, it's in swap on the disk .... and if not there, then you either have to go get it online or install it from CDs

Interestingly enough, I had the same thing circulated in my chem class back in my undergrad days (not from the prof)! Must have been around 1994/95?

Which one? "All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me - so let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer." or "Trying is the first step toward failure." or "Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals. Except the weasel." or maybe the other classic Homer quote shared by Kelly Bundy? "And how is 'education' supposed to make me feel smarter,everytime I learn something new it pushes some old stuff out of my brain!"

Definitely ... if the choice was there. But sometimes we don't have that choice.

I know it's kind of stupid of me to sit here and presume what possibly can go through the mind of a young girl when she is held at gun point like that ... but I do have a feeling I would never give into the wishes of someone holding a gun to my face. I really don't think someone looking to rape or mug will kill ... not unless they really have no other choice. So I personally don't think being approached like that at gun point or otherwise makes much difference ... the gun is merely an intimidation tool and the chances of it being used to inflict harm is not too big I don't think. Edit: Unless you're dealing with someone who's going to kill you anyway after raping you ... or kill you then rape you. Well in either of those cases, I think putting up a fight is better than not taking any chances and just giving in.

Don't sound so sure of what you have mentioned ... are you? Does it mean you don't care about what you've mentioned or that you don't use what you yourself say on a daily basis? Sorry had to get some wise-assity out of my system as it was really building up with no release

Maybe, I don't know ... I've never actually listened to that thing. Well, the only memory I know of is mine. And notice I didn't try to take advantage of you in your moment of weakness

This might be of help to you. To me, my memory is just something that's there and works in different ways. Sometimes I remember things by repeating and hearing myself say it. Sometimes I remember by visualizing the image of either what I saw or how I pictured what I was supposd to remember. Sometimes I remember by association ... I often tend to associate things with food for example. Sometimes I make jokes and rhymes out of things. And sometimes I remember things by enforcing structures on them ... or by understanding the principles behind them which allow me to arrive at the correct piece of information without having to store all details. It really depends.

Why couldn't I have been born in a rich family and lived next door to greedy b!tches?

The rape discussion was split into this thread in the Gender issues section. On a lighter note, I got a spam message that somehow passed my filters and ended up in my inbox saying "Double Your Dating" ... some sort of tip and technique crap ... except that it really made me laugh because I remembered this old Al Bundy quote that was intended to motivate himself to do better with selling shoes: "None today but tomorrow, TWICE as much".

Amen to that. Once we start attaching morality to thoughts and conversations, I think we have taken the first step towards a VERY wrong direction. Morality has more to do with actions rather than thoughts. On the same token, I also don't think censorship for the sake of "morality" is wise.

Hahahaha ... totally forgot about this one!

I don't have any processors to spare at the moment. Haven't had any for the past couple of weeks and they'll all probably be busy till well after new years.

Very sorry to hear it. I completely agree that the guy's body part should be cut off, tarred, rolled around in sharp metal shavings, then shoved up the back end. I know emotions are high now and you are looking at someone to be mad at, but as a man I'll have to tell you that that was NO "man". Almost every man experiences penile erection. A very very small fraction do what that bastard did. The two phenomena are not related (causality wise).

Use these Maybe now that I saved you this much, you'd be kind enough to take me to Sasoons?

So how come when I was there last time, you took me to Burger King?

http://www.all-creatures.org/aip/kittyregister.jpg

No I meant you say "what calendars" to the people wanting it back

The proper answer in that case would be: "What calendars?"

How about Davit ?

I'll have to say the coolest line I have ever heard was in Predator: Poncho: You're bleeding, man! Blain: I ain't got time to bleed! [Poncho shoots a bunch of grenades up to the top of the cliff.] Poncho: You got time to duck? The other one is from Crimson Tide: Capt Ramsey: "We're here to preserve democracy, not practice it." But by faaaaaaaaar the cheesiest one ever has to be this from "They Live": I came here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubble gum.

It can be justifiable homicide ... just like there is justifiable suicide.