A day and some observations

Made it today on time. Not common these days with a skewed body clock. Squished my finger in the door though. It was cold outside and I was clutching my flask of piping hot coffee. They make good flasks these days, the heat barely gets to the outside. My fingers are frozen stiff. Didn't realize I had squished one - I was grinning stupidly at a pretty girl. After what must have been an eternity, the pain receptors were triggered and the searing pain shot through my brain. A big bearded man is going on about Markov processes and "nice" matrices. The finger calls out for help with quick nerve impulse SOSs. Lucky for me the hot coffee has finally awakened the higher fucntions of my struggling grey mass (Yes, I use higher brain functions to respond to spinal impulses (Boy, is the bearded biophysics chap influencing me)). So yes where was I. Oh ya, the responses. So my middle finger is warming up while all the others are cold as hell (?). This and the coffee and a bearded physicist get me thinking (oh and two lucid dreams in two months) - what if you can cheat the brain to think someone smashed your fingers? Brain responds (even if you don't use higher functions like me) and your fingers heat up (trust me here - significantly!)! No more cold fingers! Look at me I'm so cool, can walk in the cold - no gloves, and I'm not a fool! Hold on a minute, I don't think I quite understand what this man is saying. Oh, but thats not because I'm writing this trash - the higher brain functions are still warming the injured extremity. Phew, think I am vaguely back on track now, thanks to the good old coin toss. Probabilities. Fun. So we have to figure out how to cheat the brain. Its not as impossible as it seems at first (We all know how to procrastinate). As it seems though, convincing yourself to take a break is much easier than convincing yourself you have a smashed finger. I just noticed I don't know a shit about matrices. Anyway, lets think about the following question: Is it possible to remember pain? Motivation is that may be, memory might trigger the same response as to the real thing. Now I didn't mention that lucid dream just to sound cool (Dream is destiny.... (piano fills)). So in this dream, I found it fairly easy to feel sensations in all their glory, and clearly there wasn't any moist grass on my bed. The sensations must be based on memory with a certain amount of intelligent extrapolation. Ofcourse, that you can remember sensations need not imply that the brain would respond to then like if they were real, but lets assume that the brain's not so smart. How does one learn to do such a thing then? How does one remember sensations at will?

Time warp by atleast four hours. I'm in a colloquium now. Non-linear Shrodinger equation and soliton solutions. By a mathematician. I'm not complaining. I wouldn't understand anyway. We were talking about some brain control thing. May be I'll follow that train of thought later. More interesting things now. Physics and math education. Looking forward to some fireworks here. Some bad humour now, and some geek bad humour. People leaving. Speaker's reeling off some objectives of some, well, objective. Overhead projector display is skewed, speaker's buzzing, ofcourse, people seem quite non-perturbed by this. Perhaps everyone's in a state of dream. The Xi on the black board has one squiggle too many. Only the want to continue making observations keeps me here. Why am I making ovservations? Well, it started with the jammed finger and kept going from there. Blog power keeping me going. I'm sure I won't write another for two months atleast. People leaving. Momentary edginess in speakers voice. Areas of rectangles - I know that! (They're 2D Euclidean space rectangles, you see). Momentary amusement about self being so cool and disconnected. Hold on, we just went from cubic Shrodinger equation and soliton solutions to areas of rectangles! Something is seriously wrong here! (Uncoolness floods back in). Did I just hear the mention of rotation groups? Wait, I think she was talking about kids working in groups and rotating among themselves. Lady, there's physicists here, you have to watch what you say! Everyone's completely amused at whats going on. Physicists rejoicing at the expense of a mathematician. Not quite new. Questions being thrown back and forth. This is fun. May be we can think about that thing again (This lecture has started sounding like a governor's speech). Umm, so how does one cheat his head? Oh yes, we were thinking memory. So lets so this. Train. Pick up some perfume, pick up a hammer. Smash your finger. Smell the perfume. Everyone can think of times when a smell has triggered a memory. So may be if you do this enough number of times, you might successfully create a link between that smell and the smashed finger. All you gotta do now, is smell, and hopefully your brain will react like your fingers been smashed. I don't know a think about the brain or anything to do with it, but I'm guessing training of this form will develop the connections. Ofcourse, you may not have any fingers at the end of the exercise but thats apart from the point. Well, lectures over folks. Hers, and mine. Lets go home.