Recent content by Doofy

I haven't read it, no. What does it suggest and is it happening?

In recent centuries a relative handful of brilliant people have devoted their lives to figuring out some very difficult things and developing some ingenious tools to do so along the way. However, as far as I know, the only places this work has been recorded is on things that are easily destroyed...

I am weeks away from submitting my PhD thesis (hep physics) and would like to carry on as a postdoc. However, I have made no applications so far because the job advertisements stipulate a 'statement of research interests'. This is a problem because I don't really have them. I don't mean that I...

Ah yes, this does make sense. I'm sitting here feeling lucky now because my body has always been essentially perfect in a functional sense. Never had any real health issues to speak of beyond the odd bout of flu, common chilhood illnesses like chickenpox, or an occasional broken bone. Do you...

Don't the genres still follow common rules though? Ie. forget about anything so complex as rock vs. hip hop. Just take a simple piano tune. I think in a simple little sequence of notes everyone can identify when one just sounds 'off', right?

Ah right, that does ring a bell actually, I can remember the plot where the lines almost all converge (and when you invoke SUSY it becomes really close) but it's been ages since I last looked into this stuff. I should really know it automatically by now but it just evaporates from my brain so...

Why is the effect of going to high temperatures considered to be unifying the forces into one force rather than effectively destroying/negating all forces? Is this 'super-force' attractive, repulsive or what?

I've wondered why it is that we instinctively know which sequence of notes sounds nice/"musical", and which sounds like ****. Maybe it's because we've somehow been programmed to seek out certain pitch sequences in the distant past that would indicate where food was or something... but when I...

Indeed, whatever it is that safeguards development has clearly been honed to near perfection through many mistakes, but I get the impression that there's no bite-size answer here.

Wow, ok. That wiki page claims 15-20% of women who know they're pregnant miscarry. I never imagined it could be such a high number. Also: "around half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant." Never would have guessed this...

Actually I consider it totally natural behaviour, it's not even confined to our species, but enough of the psychedelics talk before I derail the thread too much. Sounds interesting and I will certainly have a read about it when I've got time. What is really meant by 'hierarchically...

Been there. Unpleasant to say the least. Some people claim there's more to be gained from a bad trip than a good one... but I am not one of those people, lol. How sure are people about that grasslands thing? I've heard talk of us having stood upright because of starting to wade through water...

I've googled a bit and haven't found a number, but do I take that to mean that the majority, or even a decently-sized minority, of fertilised eggs come to nothing? Surely not?

Hmmm, fair enough. McKenna was a crazy guy, he went deeper with psychedelics than anyone I else I am aware of and he came up with some wild ideas, some of which have turned out to be nonsense (but he would acknowledge how 'out-there' a lot of it was). He also came up with some brilliant...

Not sure if anyone here will be familiar with this, but one idea I have heard is that consuming psychedelic mushrooms could be what moved us so far beyond the other apes. If you've ever experienced the indescribable wonder of a full-blown psychedelic trip this might not sound far-fetched to you...