2023-03-18 10:06:16 <KipIngram   > Well, I finally got around yesterday to taking my RX-8 into the body shop.  It's paint job had suffered pretty badly under the Texas sun, and a few years ago a boy my daughter was dating vandalized it (no proof, but it's pretty clear it was him), so I'd been meaning to do this for a while.  I look pretty forward to seeing it spruced up.  I'll probably also get some seat covers, and that model car has a
2023-03-18 10:06:18 <KipIngram   > chronic problem where the dash section the passenger air bat is packed under gets all cracked, so I'll probably try to do something about that.
2023-03-18 12:18:23 <KipIngram   > Hmmm.  Now that's an interesting data point.  Apparently there's a developmental biologist named Michael Levin.  In one of his experiments he trained a group of flatworks in some way; not sure of the details.  But anyway, they learned something.  Then he cut them in half and let them regenerate (something these worms are good at).
2023-03-18 12:18:58 <KipIngram   > All of the regenerated works retained the training - including the ones regenerated from the parts that didn't include the brain.
2023-03-18 12:19:13 <KipIngram   > Which says something about where learned behaviors are stored.
2023-03-18 12:19:44 <KipIngram   > Or, more the point, where they're NOT.
2023-03-18 12:21:01 <KipIngram   > That's the claim I'm seeing, at least.  I need to look him up and learn more.
2023-03-18 12:29:21 <thrig       > worms have destroyed many works of man
2023-03-18 14:02:41 <KipIngram   > Here's a Michael Levin video - just the one I happen to be watching right now.
2023-03-18 14:02:43 <KipIngram   > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0TNfysTazc
2023-03-18 14:03:07 <KipIngram   > He sure seems young.  Geez, I'm getting old.
2023-03-18 14:07:42 <thrig       > : lawn if ." get off my lawn" then ;
2023-03-18 14:20:40 <KipIngram   > Man - he's clearly a sharp tack.
2023-03-18 14:25:27 <thrig       > oh and Tom Bombadil might have a mirror as "Master Bright Beauty" over in Chuang Tzu
2023-03-18 14:32:23 <KipIngram   > Heh.  I still don't really understand what Tom Bombadil was all about.  I do know that LotR was originally started as a sequel to the Hobbit (that's what the publishers asked for), and the first part of it shares the semi-childish tone of the Hobbit.  Bombadil is in that part.  By book two it had taken on a much darker and more adult tone.
2023-03-18 14:32:27 <KipIngram   > "More serious."
2023-03-18 14:32:51 <KipIngram   > I think Bombadil was just some "reflection" of Tolkien's love of nature and so on - a "personification" of it.
2023-03-18 14:33:33 <KipIngram   > About the only use he was put to in the big story, though, is that Gandalf speculated that if Sauron prevailed in the conflect it was likely Bombadil wouldn't be able to continue in existence.
2023-03-18 14:33:47 <KipIngram   > It just wouldn't be a world he could find a place in any more.
2023-03-18 14:34:50 <KipIngram   > Oh, and there's a great line in there by Galadriel that captures Tolkien's view of the real world (he wasn't happy with how it was all going).  Galadriel described her whole life with her husband, and all the things they had done for thousands of years, as "fighting the long defeat."
2023-03-18 14:35:40 <KipIngram   > So Tolkien was saying that even after they beat Sauron, the world was still on an "ultimately" bad path.  It would just be taken down that path by less overtely evil men rather than by Sauron.
2023-03-18 20:03:40 <KipIngram   > Geez.  I just found out about the sport of "highlining."
2023-03-18 20:03:50 <KipIngram   > Now that's the most nuts thing I've seen in ages.
2023-03-18 20:04:09 <KipIngram   > At least the circus tightrope walker was getting paid.
2023-03-18 22:42:20 <KipIngram   > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFnEOBynyIo&t=25s
2023-03-18 22:53:21 <KipIngram   > I had no idea that Jung and Pauli had worked closely together.
2023-03-18 23:37:36 <thrig       > or Jung and the other Paul, the yellow submarine one