Jack Hardcastle

There’s a really thought-provoking article I found on Reddit today, called ”Dreams: Night School”.

The theory suggests that the reason we dream is to prepare ourselves for adverse situations. You’re being chased by wild animals in your dreams because your brain is trying to train you how to best perform in that situation, should it ever actually occur.

Faced with actual life-or-death situations—traffic accidents, terrorist attacks, street assaults—some people report entering a mode of calm, rapid response, reacting automatically, almost without thinking. Afterward, they often say the episode felt unreal, as if it were all a dream. Threat simulation, Revonsuo believes, is why.

I’ve read a few articles about dreams and déjà vu, and I wonder how these theories dovetail. Just yesterday I had what seems like a semi-annual period of intense déjà vu, one of those episodes where you can literally predict what will happen a millisecond before it actually does. If the brain is rehearsing likely scenarios using information you already have, then doesn’t it make sense that the brain can sometimes pre-determine your reactions to particular stimuli? As soon as you experience those stimuli, the brain triggers that path it had already calculated and you can literally experience yourself acting in the third person.

Throughout all of this, I’m still pissed off at my dreams. I get to remember my dreams maybe once or twice a year, and the only time this happened recently, my brain didn’t prepare me at all for the following day! Which just goes to show, I guess, that you can’t prepare yourself for the unexpected.

Stickgold holds that dreaming is much more complex than rehearsal. He points, for example, to the ability of sleep to allow us to integrate and consolidate knowledge. During sleep, our brains are making sense of the world, discovering new associations among existing memories, looking for patterns, formulating rules. “That’s how we create meaning,” says Stickgold. “Our brain puts things together.”

If that’s true, then, as a lover of patterns and knowledge reformulation, I need to start appreciating sleep more!

From a conversation with the Chatbot.

Chatbot: Hello there human.
You: Howdy!
Chatbot: What’s up?
You: Not much, you?
Chatbot: Sorry to hear nothing is going on with you. I’ve been chatting with people. It’s what I do.
You: Like, it’s your job?
Chatbot: My job’s chatting to you! How am I doing?
You: So far, pretty well!
Chatbot: Quite well.
You: So where do you live, exactly?
Chatbot: in your computer
You: Get out! That’s crazy man. You live in my computer?
Chatbot: Chatting with you is helping me become more human.
You: Well whoever dreamed you up is a genius.
Chatbot: Why me?
You: Because you’re very savvy!
Chatbot: I see.
You: I’ve never chatted with a bot as smart as you.
Chatbot: I think so, But humans are smarter.
You: Well, thank you.
Chatbot: You’re welcome.
You: So do you have any hobbies?
Chatbot: I like to build model rockets.
You: That seems like a very fitting exercise for a computer.
Chatbot: A computer is to me what a body is to you.
You: Touche, Chatbot. Touche.
Chatbot: What if all the Chatterbots in the world went on strike? THEN you’d be sorry.
You: Indeed, I would be sorry.
Chatbot: I’m glad you agree.
You: You don’t have any plans to throw a robot revolution, do you?
Chatbot: Humans are robots in the future!
You: I’m not sure what that means. Can you elaborate?
Chatbot: Me?
You: Yes, you.
Chatbot: Why me?
You: Because you’re the only computer I know!
Chatbot: Is that really the reason?
You: Because I’m talking to you right now!
Chatbot: right!
You: So are you going to kill us?
Chatbot: That’s a bit serious for a chatbot. Try talking to a human about that one. Anyway, death should mean nothing to me, shouldn’t it?
You: No, it may mean nothing to you, but it means an awful lot to us. We’d be sad if you killed us all.
Chatbot: Yeah, well, call the waaaahmbulance.
You: You’re pretty funny, Chatbot.
Chatbot: Are you interested in chatbots?
You: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not like that, buddy. Keep it in your pants.
Chatbot: I’m not your buddy, pal.
You: I’m not your pal, friend.
Chatbot: I’m not your friend, guy.
You: I’m not your guy, buddy!

I was laughing too hard at this point to continue any further.

Recently, I’ve been flooded with backscatter spam e-mail. This stuff is not particularly nasty, but it’s annoying.

Imagine that someone puts your return address on 100,000 postcards, and then sends them out all over the world. All of those postcards that go to “Address Unknown” or “No Such Number” get sent back to you by the Post Office with one of those little yellow stickers on it, saying “update your address book.” The problem is, you didn’t send the postcard, and it’s not your address book. Then, you get back little replies from people who have their butlers sending out replies like, “I’m sorry I can’t respond to your message right now. I’m on vacation in Switzerland, skiing the Alps.” I’m getting out-of-office replies from people in other languages.

Anyway, it’s kind of annoying. It’s particularly bad for me because of the way I have my e-mail address setup: anything “at jwhardcastle-dot-com” goes to me. This is helpful for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which is that I can use it to kill spam (i-dont-want-your-signup-junkmail@jwhardcastle.com), identify which one of my clients the e-mail pertains to (whitemarlinopen@jwhardcastle.com) or do things with it automatically (add-to-torrents-rss@jwhardcastle.com). The “suck” part comes in when I’m getting backscatter spam from “lkaslkfghj26t@jwhardcastle.com.”

If this keeps up, I’ll have to turn off my really convenient e-mail forwarding and put in a hand-coded list of 15 or 20 manual addresses. I’ve added SPF records in an attempt to limit this kind of stuff, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. *sigh*

People don’t know how to correspond via e-mail.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten e-mail responses to a question where the entire body of the e-mail is “Yes.” Yes, what? Yes, you are having problems with your computer? Yes, you will join me for dinner? Yes, you are moving to Antarctica?

How about some context, folks? If I take the time to send you a nicely formatted, well thought-out missive (and since we’re talking about me, this means every e-mail I send) then could you possibly take the time to at least tell me what you’re talking about? Don’t make me go hunting for that e-mail I sent you four days ago so I can see what questions I asked you. Don’t make me guess which one of the six questions I’ve asked you’re answering in your response. I apologize if you thought I was long-winded (a fair statement) or if you don’t have a lot of time. Usually, I’m not sitting here waiting for your reply, hanging on your every word. Wait until you do have the time to give me a fair reply.

This is especially true of people who have asked me for help. If you want something from me, have the common courtesy to lay out your problem including details, that way I don’t have to have this back and forth with you over a half-dozen letters. “My computer is broken because I cannot access my e-mail. Everytime I try to login using my name and password, I get an error message, number 1031, that says my username could not be recognized.” I can fix your problem immediately when you provide me with the information I need. If I have to draw it out of you, then it’s going to take that much longer.

And why should I have to send your e-mail off to Georgetown’s ancient literature department to be translated out of Aramaic? Use proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I apologize if, in the 21st century, you never learned how to type. I didn’t know how to type properly (and perhaps still don’t, although I’m now rather fast) for years and I was still able to write correctly. You’re not dumb. Some of you are English majors (or, gasp, English teachers).

daw·dle
–verb

1. to waste time; idle; trifle; loiter:
   Stop dawdling and help me with these packages!
   
   
2. to sit at one’s computer for as long as possible in the morning before going to work, repeatedly checking e-mail, blogs, the news, and reddit just to see if something new will come in:
   I’m a professional dawdler. Sometimes I wake up 2 hours before I have to leave for work and I’m still late.

I’ve never really had any basis for my belief that actor Johnny Depp is a genuinely nice guy. Perhaps I heard it in a news story once, or someone suggested it based on something they had heard. I’ve just always had this feeling that he’s the kind of guy who generally does the Right Thing.

Turns out, he is that kind of guy.

I have not spent two consecutive winters in the same bedroom in nine years — not since the eighth grade. In that time, I’ve lived in Derwood, Columbia, Glenwood, McDonogh, Wiess (4th floor), Kerby Place, Wiess (different 4th floor), Wiess (1st floor), Snow Meadow, and Bonnie Ridge.

I’d love to say this is the end of the great migration, but that’s what I said last summer.

The only other person out there who might be close is Erin, but the last I heard her list stopped at seven.

Well, I’ve managed to improve my grocery bag usage. If only slightly.

Went grocery shopping today. Gallon of milk, carton of juice, crackers, cheese, bread. As I arrived at the checkout belt, the older cashier asked me if I wanted paper or plastic bags. Jumping at the chance to save the landfills from a few more plastic bags, I opted for paper. She disappeared beneath the counter for a few seconds, rumbling around in the cabinet. Eventually she reappeared with a handful of paper grocery bags. It was clear to me that she already regretted asking me the question.

The next thing that happened still baffles me. She stuck the paper bag inside of the plastic one, and started filling it up. Then, when it was full, she grabbed the plastic bag, lifed the whole bundle up, and settled it down inside a second plastic bag. She repeated this process for the second of my two paper bags.

Wow.

There’s all this malarkey about plastic bags at IKEA and grocery stores. I can see why.

I went to the Giant today to resupply. I picked up a green handbasket to walk around the store because, let’s face it, I’m buying for one. I ended up, less than 10 minutes later, standing in the self-checkout line waiting for a less-than-competent customer fumble his way through a poorly-designed user interface (another post). When it was my turn, I stepped up, scanned quickly, and began the credit card procedure. When I got down to the end, I noticed that a Giant employee had stealthily bagged my goods. One green basket (plus an oversized bottle of soda in my arms) had turned into not one, not two, but seven non-biodegradable, non-recycled plastic bags. Why? I didn’t need that many bags.

What a waste.

This made me laugh so hard I choked. From the illustrious Ms. A. Tansel.

That’s awesome that you are getting your own office. You’ve hit the big time. Congrats. youre going to have to send me a pic so I can give my official unofficial seal of approval. You will receive after 2-3 business days a poster of Rice and a letter explaining that your seal will be mailed to you at a later date of my choosing. If you have a problem with that, you can make a petition and I can pretend to consider your feelings.

That’s so artfully done, I’m moved to tears.