Dream spinning gone horribly wrong!

There is some literature online about how to prevent the waking up effect when one becomes giddy/excited about the fact that they are lucid dreaming and can control it. One of these methods is "dream spinning": You spin around like a kid trying to get dizzy and then, in theory, you will be transformed to a new dream sequence without waking up (hopefully retaining the aspect of lucidity). 

So last night when I was dreaming, it just so happened that I realized that I was dreaming, and, as usual, the surrounding started to fade away as I felt like I was going to wake up. So I'm like "dream spin!" And I imagine myself spinning. It doesn't do anything for the first couple of seconds. I think, maybe I should outstretch my arms to my sides, to increase the feeling of spinning that I'm feeling and BAM WHOA, it was so intense that I felt genuinely nauseous, and indeed the spinning "worked" in that it seemed to spin me into an alarmingly deep level of sleep, like in inception, only that unlike in inception, whenever I get to this layer of consciousness I feel like my heart is going beserk and spazzing anywhere between 0.5 to 5 beats per second! I tried to rub my hands (another method of sleep retention) but my hands were pinned/glued to my sides and I couldn't even bring them together! So obviously I didn't want to stay in this state (in case I die from heart attack), and didn't want to risk spinning myself even deeper into oblivion -- so I had no choice but to wake up.

Next time, I will try the hand-rubbing method without doing the spinning method. Supposedly it works just as well as the spinning, except instead of changing scenes, it will retain that scene/plot. 

Then again, maybe I should just try dream spinning even more and even harder. Maybe I have to pass the stage of nausea and heart-rate confusion in order to move on to the next dream sequence...

Watch battery bomb dream

I discover some random stuff taped/glued/attached to my skin, including a small object resembling a "watch battery" that I know to be a small bomb. I tap at this watch battery, attempting to dislodge it, and realize a moment to late that this bomb is tap-activated. So, 5 seconds later the bomb explodes and blows a good chunk of flesh from my left arm. Drat.

Dying quickly from blood loss, I can choose either to go to the hospital, or try to turn back time. I opt for the latter. Blood is dripping on the floor but I know that as long as I can complete the ritual I can reverse time to before the bomb exploded on my arm. I manage to set the alarm with only my right hand for the coming minute. Several seconds later, "beep beep, beep beep" says the watch, and everything goes black... I open my eyes and I'm back to the same position in which I was sitting before I tapped at the watch battery; the time reversal was successful. 

Now some stuff happened that I can't remember but fast forward a couple minutes later. I am waiting at a bart station to go to Southern California, because apparently that is the only way to get these detonators off of my skin. A train arrives. "Millbrae", it announces. Oh shit, I forget -- am I supposed to take the millbrae train and transfer, or not? Not having enough time to look up on my smartphone which train I'm supposed to take, instinct kicks in and I hop on the train.

Looking at the map I quickly realize that this was the wrong decision because the Millbrae station is a dead end and at the opposite direction that I should be going. I will have to get off at the station and get on another train bound in the opposite direction. During the trip I make light conversation with some random guy and we sort of become buddies.

The train stops and we get off. We step on a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt actually has a dead end that drops off to an abyss. However, a right side low wall with moving rubber handlebar strip continues into the abyss as a foothold for passengers that wish to brave the chasm  (Please see picture). "Do we have to go through here even if we're just trying to catch another train?" I ask. "Yes," responds some random guy with authority.

Unfortunately at this very moment I check my pockets and realize my wallet had been stolen. Wanting to first find my wallet before proceeding, I turn around and start jogging in the opposite direction, to avoid falling into the abyss (since the conveyor belt is actually moving at a jogging pace, I can remain stationary by jogging in the opposite direction).

The "friend" that I had light conversation with earlier catches up to me with my wallet in his hand. "Haha I picked your pocket" he says, then nonchalantly tosses my wallet so that it lands exactly on the moving handlebar strip. To catch up to my wallet I quickly dig my feet into the wall and hang on the moving handlebar for dear life (similar to a "cat hang" in parkour), as I have now cleared the moving floor and have nothing under me but the abyss, and nothing to hang onto except the wall.

Just as I catch up to my wallet and am about to take it, some random guy from the OTHER side of the wall (there is no abyss on the other side of hip-high moving handle wall) harasses me by taking the wallet and sliding it even further down the moving handle. For good measure he also superhumanly reaches into my other pocket, pick-pockets my smartphone, and slides THAT down the moving handle as well. 

At this point I realize I'm playing a video game and that the game developers implemented these crazy annoying pick-pocketing trolls to give the level a challenge. Simply scuttling along the wall would be too easy, I realized. Scuttling along the wall while worrying about retrieving your wallet and iphone, both of which are traveling along the moving handlebar -- now that's a challenge. 

I finally manage to retrieve both items in my hand. Not wanting to deal with cat-hang-side-stepping anymore, I finally wise up and hop over this very low wall to the other side, where there is firm ground and no abyss. However, apparently this is not "the right way" to complete this obstacle course, as immediately my "friend" (who isn't friendly at all anymore) tackles me, mounts me, and begins to deliver terrible punches to my body. 

The scenes is abruptly paused. A message box pops up in the game, informing me that the punches are not actually hurting my character; it's just a cutscene of the "friend" expressing indignation. It also says if I proceed with the "right way" (braving the entire obstacle course instead of pussying out like I did) I can get a slightly higher "quest reward". A bullet point indicates that the amount of extra reward is $300 in-game currency. A second bullet point below that says "Microsoft: -$45000". I have absolutely no clue what that second one meant. then i wake up

Why is everyone writing/rapping like zombies instead of Eminem?

Why does no one rap like Eminem in pop music anymore? At one point in time people preferred the syncopation and rhythmic ingenuity of Eminem's "Lose Yourself" style to the more predictable, obsolete "rhyme at the end of the phrase". In addition to the rhythmic awesomeness, consider also the innovative, non-intuitive rhymes of "Oh there goes gravity" to "Oh, there goes Rabbit, he" to "choked, He's so mad, but he" to "won't give up that easy" (this endorphine-stimulating double rhyming of "oh" and "ah" actually continues for like 10 more glorious lines without reusing words)--- or perhaps "even harder" to "feed and water" to "teeter totter" to "bein' a father" to "prima donna" to "baby mama drama" all while sounding completely natural and organic and badass. 

Why then has the trend started to reverse and favor the dumber rap style again? Anyone can rhyme at the end of the phrase. It sounds like high school students making a dumb rap music video. I'm not trying to spew a typical cliche rant about music becoming degenerate with the new generation (it has not; junk pop will always be junk pop and good songs become classics), etc, but the trend of weakening rhythmic complexity is certainly a very real problem with rap in pop music, as I'm sure most will agree.

How to drive part 2: Car turning ramp radius

I used to think that when going around one of those curvy ramps I should stay on the outside. My reasoning was that the turn would be less sharp, and there would be less centrifugal force so I could still go fast without flipping over. However, I always wondered why turns felt smoother and better whenever I made really tight turns instead of wide turns.

After quick physics reasoning and a recall of a high school formula it becomes obvious that when turning one should stay on the INSIDE.

Centripetal force = (v^2) / r

Circle circumference = pi*2*r

velocity = distance / time

We are judging the viability of bigger vs smaller radius given that we complete a ramp/turn in the same amount of time. For example, if I go around the ramp choosing a wide turn in 20 seconds, vs going around the ramp choosing a tight turn in 20 seconds, which one puts less force on my car?

The tight turn has a smaller r, but also a smaller v. We know that as the r decreases, the v will decrease in a way linearly proportional to r because circumference is linearly proportional to radius, and velocity is linearly proportional to distance (given the same amount of time). But now as you can see from the top equation the v is SQUAREDLY proportional to my centripetal force whereas the r is only linearly proprtional to my centripetal force. Therefore even though the v and the r will decrease at the same rate as the circle gets tighter, that also means that the overall centripetal force is DECREASING as the circle gets tighter (because the v decreasing has a greater effect on the force's value than the r decreasing).

Therefore if you want to get somewhere quickly without flipping over your car the best way is to make a tight turn. Even though you can't go as fast on the turn, the smaller distance you have to cover more than makes up for it. If you take the same amount of time in boths situations, a tighter circle will put less force on your car. Similarly, if you keep constant the amount of force you put on your car in both situations, a tighter turn will be completed sooner.

If this proof is not well-written or needs clarification please let me know.

Dementor raped by Whomping Willow (literally!)

In the following dream a dementor is literally raped by a Whomping Willow tree.

I'm at some sort of LAN party and people are playing a free-for-all first-person shooter. So I get on my computer and connect into the game.

Suddenly I am walking through some dark scenery, with building rubble and leafless trees around me. It is more like real life than a game. A guy sprays a volley of bullets at me from out of nowhere, so I retreat through the opening a large half-destroyed stone building, while throwing 3-4 grenades in my wake to discouage pursuit.

As I walk over the rubble/rocks of this half-destroyed building I realize there are dementors flying around, circling the building. I realize that this end of the "map" is highly dangerous and that's why everyone is actually choosing to fight on the other side of the map, where there are Whomping Willows (it turns out that dementors are afraid of Whomping Willows). Since I'd rather die in a gunfight than I my life sucked out by a dementor, I start making my way back to where I came from while detonating some "dementor grenades" on myself along the way (they only affect dementors). The dementors are trying to get to me, but they are repelled each time I detonate a dementor grenade.

Finally I make it back to safety and stand under a protective Whomping Willow. Alas, they are not designed to last forever, and after being pulled by a dementor, the tree begins to drift off into the air as if in a zero-gravity environment! Fortunately there is another, bigger Whomping Willow nearby. So I go stand under that one. One ambitious dementor tries to dislodge this tree as well, but fails miserably. The tree secures its branches around the dementor and reels it in.

All of a sudden the dementor has inexplicably transformed into an orange dinosaur/giraffe and the Whomping Willow was raping it doggy style. This comforted me because it meant the dementor would be unable to attack us. Then I woke up.

The end. Please feel free to add your own Freudian analyses.

Extremely important potentially world-changing idea: Judo/BJJ Machine Learning

Anyone who has followed MMA or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu now knows that often the best combat techniques are not readily apparent -- in fact some are downright ridiculous looking and counterintuitive. A good example that comes to mind is "inverted guard". It involves raising your legs over your head as if you were trying to suck your own dick and somehow using that to your advantage against your opponent. I had it done to me at a gym recently and it completely boggled my mind how easy it was for him to put me in the rear naked choke from that initially awkward position.

Then for some reason my mind wandered to computers and their abilities in human games. We know that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a special martial art in that it is extremely analagous to chess (no really, I'm not trying to sound flowery; this is a well-documented and true analogy, as people who do both BJJ and chess will understand). We also know that COMPUTERS CAN BEAT HUMANS AT CHESS.

So I was wondering "maybe we can invent a robot with same weight and strength and test its intellect against the BJJ champion". But that's too difficult b/c of the material required. So then I thought, "what are the uses for keeping it all software, no hardware?" A simulation, of course!

Now the question is: How much more "weird shit" is there to discover? Maybe martial arts and MMA have evolved long enough for humans to basically discovered most of the best techniques to use -- triangle, kimura, armbar, etc. Then again, maybe not (inverted guard is probably rather recent)! So in order to discover these new techniques, should we just roll around and discover them ourselves? Should we let the masters discover it and have it trickle down to us? OR, the third option: by MACHING LEARNING.

This is what I propose:

1. Program in the physics, kinematics, rules of the game, and the human body as accurately as possible, down to joints at least as small as the wrist. This is probably the hardest part, and we will have to tweak it until it looks like real humanoid BJJ/Judo.

2. Create a "starting" artificial intelligence agent. This agent should have a lot of pre-programmed techniques (all known techniques) and should preferrably already be as good as a black belt in BJJ/Judo.

3. The game is basically the agents running "minimax" algorithm on each other to see what is the most likely way to "finish/checkmate" (submit) the opponent.

4. Run a ton of games, 1on1, with varying weights, reaches, and reaction times, and use GENETIC ALGORITHMS to select only the most intelligent players

5. Run it for a very long time, tweaking if necessary

6. Observe the playing style of the finished product and see if it is different from regular human black belt players!