There's more than a couple of things here I disagree with. I suppose the DNA origami is one. The leap from "folding DNA into shapes" to "making trees grow into a chair" is astounding in it's oversimplification.
Do you think that's it? By that logic, I could make a game that's ridiculously easy and become a millionaire like that. People will beat it, no effort, success.
I think there's got to be a perceived effort and learning curve involved.
Blogging gives the blogger a rewarding experience of being listened to - I wouldn't say that's a trigger, people enjoy being heard, so while they have listeners, they're gonna speak.
The reader on the other hand gets a new post, which could be about anything, and sometimes the post will be bad, other times good, really good. This will create a variable reward system, and keep the reader coming back.
It could be that due to the inherent lack of ability to perform this in a controlled manner it is not being looked at. I can't imagine there's a line of people waiting to be put in a near-death situation for an experience you have ~16% (?) of having, with the risk being death or brain damage.
Even if you could find volunteers, I'd like to see an institute willing to take on the impending lawsuit should something ever go wrong.
It should be noted that the Pam Reynold case, the portions for which she had the out of body experience (OBE), she was technically not clinically dead. Additionally, following entering the light we have no way of knowing what time-frame this occurred in; how do we know this occurred when she was recorded as having no brain activity.
I find myself flopping between the two camps in a Devil's advocate manner - the evidence really isn't strong on either side. There seems to be many questions raised by NDE's, but seeing as we don't even have a firm grasp on what consciousness is, or where it comes from, to suddenly say "NDE's prove an afterlife, we can maintain consciousness when we're dead" is a very tenuous claim.
Until we can say "This is consciousness, this is where it comes from, this is what we believe to be the main contributors" to make a leap of this magnitude concerning a topic we know little about is simply irresponsible.
It's always watching. It's kind of sensitive right now, with not enough of a "lockout" between stopping and starting (sometimes as i lower my hand from pausing/playing it'll play/pause, a bit annoying)
Also, maybe my face looks like a palm, but sometimes it'll just pause.
This is a critical problem in the Scientific realm right now. Too much emphasis is placed on research that breaks ground - and not nearly enough is put on research that simply didn't work.
For example, suppose I have a hypothesis, and I test it out. To fully reject that hypothesis I might expend a year of lab time. This results in a year 'wasted' if I found no result, and expected one (an alternative would be you got no result and it was surprising - thus you found something exciting, but often this isn't the case).
This is a year wasted for me, but with so many labs focusing on the same areas, it means that many can double up in their 'time-wasting' endeavours. This effectively means labs are trying the same hypothesis and failing, wasting cumulative time on the same dead-end questions.
Every piece of research is a vital piece of an ever-growing puzzle that helps us deduce exactly what is going on. Unfortunately it seems focus has centered on those discoveries that 'cure cancer' or 'find the answer to immortality'. There needs to be a massive re-haul on the way we treat research.
Quality research is quality research - regardless of the results it garners.
I think there's a fine balance here. Of course, unless you're extremely lucky you're not going to be on a path of constantly doing things you want to do and succeeding. But doing things you HATE constantly just so you can get an end goal?
To me that seems like you're sacrificing a lot of your values in order to obtain a goal, which by the point you get there may be meaningless after the journey you took to obtain it.
I think you should be aware you might have to do less favorable projects along the way, but if you find yourself hating your work it might be time for a change.
Just some feedback - it's something minor but it bugs me every time, I'm not sure about other people. Every new competition in addition to the type of competition dropping down (Best dressed, cutest etc) it also shakes from side to side.
I just find the shake unnecessary and a little distracting.
I think this is a critical, and maybe the most fundamental, part of programming. It's not just how well you understand a language, but the entire process of translating what you want to do into a set of instructions.
Once you can do that in a useful and meaningful way the computer just becomes a tool to implement your ideas.