Starship Asterisk*

mjimih wrote:
yuuccchh that dreammoods excerpt was a depressing account of otherwise benign dreams imo. I am usually in a school or office building talking to acquaintances when invariably something gets frightful. I then end up in a car that I'm driving, or running on foot to find a way to get away or hide from something that is pursuing me. Different ways of waking up ;can't run fast enough, ;drive into water, or ;become trapped. Luckily they aren't too vivid, and my Psychologist father never cared about "dreams", so I don't either. The brain is too complex to pretend to know why it does things while on automatic repair-mode.

Now if my computer comes out of sleep mode and flashes a message like "Wow that was a weird dream." then I'll get worried!

• Perhaps it dreamt that a snake ate it's mouse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepieion wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Illustration by Kepler from his book De Stella Nova in Pede Serpentarii (On the New Star in Ophiuchus's Foot) indicating the location of the 1604 supernova. The supernova, also know as Kepler's Supernova, is the star marked with a 'N' on the right foot of the Ophiuchus (Serpent Bearer/Asclepius) constellation. It is the latest supernova in the Milky Way observed with certainty by mankind.[/color][/b]

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<<In ancient Greece and Rome, an asclepeion (Greek: Ἀσκληπιεῖον) was a healing temple, sacred to the god Asclepius. Starting around 350 BC, the cult of Asclepius became increasingly popular. Pilgrims flocked to asclepieia to be healed. They slept overnight ("incubation") and reported their dreams to a priest the following day. He prescribed a cure, often a visit to the baths or a gymnasium. Since snakes were sacred to Asclepius, they were often used in healing rituals. Non-venomous snakes were left to crawl on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured slept.

Asclepius may first have been worshipped as a hero in Trikka, Thessaly, which ancient mythographers generally regarded as the place of his birth, but to date archaeological excavations have yet to uncover his sanctuary there. Epidauros, on the other hand, was the first place to worship Asclepius as a god, beginning sometime in the 400s BC. In the Asclepieion of Epidaurus, three large marble boards dated to 350 BC preserve the names, case histories, complaints, and cures of about 70 patients who came to the temple with a problem and shed it there. Some of the surgical cures listed, such as the opening of an abdominal abscess or the removal of traumatic foreign material, are realistic enough to have taken place, but with the patient in a dream-like state of induced sleep known as "enkoimesis" (Greek: ἐγκοίμησις) not unlike anesthesia, induced with the help of soporific substances such as opium.

Pausanias remarked that, at the asclepieion of Titane in Sicyon (founded by Alexanor, Asclepius' grandson), statues of Hygieia were covered by women's hair and pieces of Babylonian clothes. According to inscriptions, the same sacrifices were offered at Paros.

Hippocrates is said to have received his medical training at an asclepieion on the isle of Kos. Prior to becoming the personal physician to the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Galen treated and studied at the famed asclepieion at Pergamon.>>

mjimih wrote:
It's fairly well established that if you smile on purpose when your unhappy, you will affect your mood and become less unhappy. If you stand in front of a mirror all grumpy and you smile at yourself and tell yourself good things like "I'm actually good looking and smart, I don't care what others think" etc., you will feel less grumpy. Dreams serve the same purpose.

I think it's so interesting to watch my cat twitch his whiskers n feet around as if he's struggling with a live mouse. It's all about keeping the sponge on our necks at the ready.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_interpretation wrote:Two researchers have postulated that dreams have a biological function, where the content requires no analysis or interpretation, that content providing an automatic stimulation of the body's physiological functions underpinning the human instinctive behavior. So dreams are part of the human, and animal, survival and development strategy.

. . .

geckzilla wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_interpretation wrote:
Two researchers have postulated that dreams have a biological function, where the content requires no analysis or interpretation, that content providing an automatic stimulation of the body's physiological functions underpinning the human instinctive behavior. So dreams are part of the human, and animal, survival and development strategy.

There we go, that's a lot less manure-y. Maybe they do help with development but to try to make any sense of dream content or otherwise interpret them as having some kind of meaning or as a metaphor is silly. It makes no more sense to derive meaning from them than it does to interpret what someone with a brain tumor might be saying. They're disconnected from reality and the brain is not really functioning as a whole. Dreams could be brain exercise. Different parts are being activated as some kind of neuron maintenance but it's not necessarily meaningful.

The Great gnue wrote:Art "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, & doggone It,
I don't care what others think" Neuendorffer

Beyond wrote:

mjimih wrote:
William Shakespeare stands in front of his own mirror and says; "To thy own self be true."

Aye, and "it" is. But tis only a reflection and not the Bard's bod. So the words thusly spoken to the reflection, come back as a reflection and the Bard's bod ignores them evermore, for the Bard's bod, tis not the reflection that he spoke to.

• Julius Caesar Act 1, Scene 2

• Troilus and Cressida Act 3, Scene 3

• Writes me: 'That man, how dearly EVER parted,
  How much in having, or without or in,
  Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
  Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;
  As when his virtues shining upon others
  Heat them and they retort that heat again
  To the first giver.'