What’s on your mind?

D.T. said:
I mean, yes, we joke about it because that's our personalities, but the sentiment is real, knowing what a horrible disease / condition it is.

Wee keep ourselves mentally frosty, but if in some future, if this did become a direct concern, we'd certainly pursue all medical options.
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Each to their own, and this is a deeply personal decision and choice.

However, having seen (and lived with) what happened with my mother, and the nature of the decline of the mind of this fiercely intelligent and independent woman with a terrific sense of humour and an innate generosity and kindness (the humour, generosity and kindness remained until the end - vascular dementia destroys the mind and memory, but character remains more intact than with other forms of dementia) I can well understand why anyone would seriously contemplate such an action, and won't deny that I would be more than a little tempted myself.
 
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decafjava said:
I am sorry to read this and you have all my sympathy, like @Scepticalscribe I had a parent, my father, suffer from dementia (in his case a form of Parkinson's I was told). I remember watching a childhood friend's family go through that with the grandfather suffering from Alzheimer's some 25 years ago.
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My father, too, had Lewy Body Dementia, which is indeed related to Parkinson's. He was becoming more noticeably symptomatic when he developed pneumonia, and that -- the so-called "old man's friend" -- mercifully took him away before his dementia had the opportunity to encroach upon him further.

I also got to see what vascular dementia does to someone when I helped a good friend care for her mother on several occasions while the regular caregiver -- her brother -- took a much-needed and well-deserved break.

Dementia is such a cruel, cruel and destructive disorder, regardless of the particular causative factor and type.
 
This was just sent to me, to add to the pile of future story ideas...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...ker-ESCAPED-eating-dead-bodies-nestmates.html
Up to a million 'cannibal ants' that have been trapped in a post-Soviet nuclear weapon bunker for years have finally escaped, after an intervention by scientists.

The 'colony', which was first discovered in 2013, was made up entirely of worker ants, meaning they could not reproduce.

At the time, the scientists estimated that close to a million worker ants had become trapped in the bunker, after continuously falling down a ventilation pipe.

The ants were living in cramped conditions, with no light, no heat and no obvious source of food.

But after several years, the 'colony' still appeared to be thriving, according to scientists from the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

In a new study, the scientists conclude that the ants survived by eating the dead bodies of their imprisoned nestmates, as they piled up on the bunker floor.
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:oops: :oops:

"Cannibal ants" does NOT sound good.

Note: Don't click on that link, the site is ad ridden mess. Sorry about that.
 
So after three weeks here and much work whining I got a new product red iPhone and a German O2 contract. Last Sunday I ordered a ordered a totallee red case and tempered glass screen protector, it'll be a couple weeks with the case and a couple days for the screen protector. It took not ten minutes after ordering and paying for apple care + with loss and theft I knocked the silly thing off the bed side table and cracked the screen.

While I'm sure the Apple doesn't care I really feel like an a$$
 
lowendlinux said:
So after three weeks here and much work whining I got a new product red iPhone and a German O2 contract. Last Sunday I ordered a ordered a totallee red case and tempered glass screen protector, it'll be a couple weeks with the case and a couple days for the screen protector. It took not ten minutes after ordering and paying for apple care + with loss and theft I knocked the silly thing off the bed side table and cracked the screen.

While I'm sure the Apple doesn't care I really feel like an a$$
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Cracked screen? You have my sympathies. Never experienced one yet.
 
Matz said:
I feel for you. It is a truly devastating disease, for the patient, family, friends, and those who care for them. I watched it take someone from living life to the fullest to a husk of her former self. It was awful.

I too wonder if something like that is looming in my future, and what I would do about it if I realized that it was happening, or had happened.

Like yourself, I do what I can to keep the neurons firing, forming new pathways, and hopefully repairing damaged ones. In my case, it’s taken the better part of my life to fully appreciate the importance of doing that. Not just for avoiding problems, but for being more present in all that I do. Better late than never, I suppose.
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Scepticalscribe said:
Having spent much of the past decade responsible for ordering, organising, and managing the life of my mother - who, as some readers of these threads will know, suffered from dementia (the specialists thought that it may have been a mixture of vascular dementia - which was pronounced - and elements of Alzheimer's) - I empathise completely with your post and have some tea of what this particular journey details.

You have my sympathy and very best wishes.
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decafjava said:
I am sorry to read this and you have all my sympathy, like @Scepticalscribe I had a parent, my father, suffer from dementia (in his case a form of Parkinson's I was told). I remember watching a childhood friend's family go through that with the grandfather suffering from Alzheimer's some 25 years ago.
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D.T. said:
My wife and I have a pact - the pillows are on standby.
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Scepticalscribe said:
Each to their own, and this is a deeply personal decision and choice.

However, having seen (and lived with) what happened with my mother, and the nature of the decline of the mind of this fiercely intelligent and independent woman with a terrific sense of humour and an innate generosity and kindness (the humour, generosity and kindness remained until the end - vascular dementia destroys the mind and memory, but character remains more intact than with other forms of dementia) I can well understand why anyone would seriously contemplate such an action, and won't deny that I would be more than a little tempted myself.
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I appreciate the kind words, everyone, I really do.

The more difficult part of the situation isn't with me or with my mother. Rather, it's with my father who is having the most difficulty with the situation. He's the one I'm most concerned with as he isn't processing it all that well when compared to me or my sister. It's been about 18 months since the diagnosis and all things considered, the situation is stable, but that doesn't make it any easier on him.

It's just that we're helping to care for her and manage the new life situation as it is.
 
chown33 said:
Is that you, Mike?
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While I (we) don't actually hear photons, we can hear its effects on the medium surrounding us much like we can't measure directly what gravity is, but we measure its effects on objects with mass.

Photons, as we know, have no mass and such also have no weight. However, according to Einstein, mass and energy are equivalent and light (photons) have energy which means its path can be changed by gravity.

Sound is a characteristic of the medium, in this case, the air or pressure waves generated by an electromagnetic field, i.e. the magnet of a stereo or TV speakers producing sound.

Photons are the carriers of electromagnetic fields and as such can create sound by interacting with objects having mass - the air in this example. It's the reason why sound travels farther and clearer at night than in the day. The star at the center of our solar system bombards us with photons changing the way the medium behaves and alters how we hear things. But at night when the Earth is turned away from the star, we get fewer photons slamming into us.

This thought I had last night happened while I was watching some YouTube videos of music being played on a turntable. I am always keenly aware of how music sounds when I listen to it come from a stereo or headphones, versus when it is coming from a TV. If I listen to a track on a TV and then listen to the same track on the same system with the TV off (if configured properly) you can hear a remarkable difference between the scenarios. The difference is photons.

See what odd and interesting things that are "on my mind"? :p
 
D.T. said:
A 450 nanometer photon walks into a bar. The bartender says, "why so blue?"
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Ahh yes. The frequency spectrum and the related red-shifting. Now I am thinking about spectrometry where scientists figure out what distant stars, gas clouds, exoplanets and more are made of by measuring the frequency of light and comparing that to the known signatures of chemical compounds to determine the objects make up, even from billions of light-years away.
 
Cast your votes, and discuss...

Suppose that a person is born without the five senses (this includes no hunger, no physical pain, no feeling of heat or cold etc.) and is kept alive (all organ functioning as they should) by machines.
  1. Can this person think? (it doesn't matter the quality and quantity of the thinking)
  2. Can this person have feelings? (hate, love, boredom etc.)
 
SandboxGeneral said:
Ahh yes. The frequency spectrum and the related red-shifting. Now I am thinking about spectrometry where scientists figure out what distant stars, gas clouds, exoplanets and more are made of by measuring the frequency of light and comparing that to the known signatures of chemical compounds to determine the objects make up, even from billions of light-years away.
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Actually, I still remember the day at school when the concept of spectrometry was explained by the teacher and how awestruck I was at the time.
 
yaxomoxay said:
Cast your votes, and discuss...

Suppose that a person is born without the five senses (this includes no hunger, no physical pain, no feeling of heat or cold etc.) and is kept alive (all organ functioning as they should) by machines.
  1. Can this person think? (it doesn't matter the quality and quantity of the thinking)
  2. Can this person have feelings? (hate, love, boredom etc.)
Click to expand...
I shall ponder on this thought experiment and report back later.
 
yaxomoxay said:
Cast your votes, and discuss...

Suppose that a person is born without the five senses (this includes no hunger, no physical pain, no feeling of heat or cold etc.) and is kept alive (all organ functioning as they should) by machines.
  1. Can this person think? (it doesn't matter the quality and quantity of the thinking)
  2. Can this person have feelings? (hate, love, boredom etc.)
Click to expand...
I'll counter with a simpler question: How would anyone be able to determine this?
 
chown33 said:
I'll counter with a simpler question: How would anyone be able to determine this?
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Funny you ask, I just invented a machine and I am glad that you're volunteering to try it out ! 😉
It's just a thought experiment, no one knows, and no one will either know or will be able to communicate it.
 
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