Again, something I wrote to a list a while ago. Sorry, I usually like to edit these down to be more stand-alone appropriate, but I think the point comes across here anyway.

>2009/8/31 Lee Bonnifield <leemaps@localnet.com>:
>>the bricoleur wrote:
>>
>>>Your belief that "reality does NOT exist objectively" is a model -
>>>just like the belief that there is an objective reality.
>>
>>Right. Non-objective reality is a model of what? A model of self, and a
>>model of not-self, and a model of how I distinguish self from wholeness.
>>Besides being a model (and unlike the belief that there is an objective
>>reality) non-objective reality is unitive experience, without the separation
>>models have from what they model.
>
>So your map is not a map, it is the territory.
>
>OK, you keep telling yourself that ...
>
>You model is looking increasingly like a middle-eastern religion the
>more you describe it.

In case it is helpful, I would like to describe the current state of my thinking on this question.

As the bricoleur says, a discussion of "non-objective reality" is a map, not the territory. Same for "objective reality", or any other philosophical position. One might (and most do) choose a map and believe it is the "right" one, or even that it is the actual territory, and defend this belief against others. However, it should be clear that belief is a choice, not an obligation. Although for some people it is so natural as to seem almost obligatory to be in possession of the set of enduring thought processes that constitute a "belief", it is not in fact obligatory.

There are clearly two extremes that can be seen to be set up for trouble. One, of course, would be to be utterly lacking in maps. For such a person all territories would be equally un-navigable and threatening. The other would be to be in possession of one map, which one has decided is the only one that matters (whether because one believes it is actually the territory, or because one believes that the maintenance of one set of beliefs in opposition to other options is demanded theologically, or because one believes it is more advanced than the others) and therefore to be quite at home in some territories, but entirely lost in others. Indeed sometimes this latter person might be even worse off than the mapless when he is outside of his home territory, because the mapless might develop some skill in navigating the landscape itself, while the person attached to one map at the expense of others might well believe that not only is only one map the "right" one, but only one *territory* is the right one, and thus the others might not be navigable on principle.

Now, of course, there's a bit of a slippery argument in that last sentence. If someone develops skill in navigating the cues of the landscape itself, then isn't he just mapping as he goes along? Yes, of course this is true. And if this person were truly mapless as a matter of principle, then *he* would be obligated to forget as he goes, and would really be pretty hopeless. So, then, what is the difference I am trying to describe? I would argue that the optimal approach is simply to accept that there are a potentially unlimited number of territories, and a potentially unlimited number of maps that could be useful in any moment.

The ability to move fluidly from one map to another based on the cues of one's actual observed environment is a skill, not a belief. I do think it is a particular flaw of the Western mentality that we have come to think of "knowledge" as declarative, at the expense of procedural, which seems to often lead to philosophical debates where it seems to be lost that the matter in question is not a belief at all, but rather some type of mental skill. Flexibility, in particular, the ability to shift mental frames fluidly in response to continuously arising contingency, might be the essence of what we are discussing here. Incidentally, this is the underlying reason why both a classical Western education and the still-extant Tibetan buddhist educational system include an emphasis on rhetoric, and particularly the exercise of expecting students to be ready to argue *any* philosophical position at a moment's notice. Students are then graded on how well they embody and promote the assigned position; not on how well they adhere to one "right" position.

The need to adapt to continuously arising contingency brings me to my next issue with this thread:

On Aug 31, 2009, at 2:47 AM, the bricoleur wrote:

>The scientific method being:
>
>1 Pose a question about reality.
>2 Collect the pertinent, observable evidence.
>3 Formulate an explanatory hypothesis, defining relevant assumptions.
>4 Deduce its implications.
>5 Test all of the implications experimentally.
>6 Accept, reject, or modify the hypothesis based upon the experimental results.
>7 Define its range of applicability.
>8 Peer review
>9 Publish (including methodology, data and analysis)
>10 Evaluation and peers continue to test, extend and challenge the hypothesis.


This definition of the scientific method is exactly the problem. The greatest scientists are, without exception, those with the most skill and devotion at the omitted step 0: OBSERVE. Without that the rest is often just a meaningless exercise in grant acquisition. Yes, I feel strongly about this. :)

One of my favorite scientific portraits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63535639@N00/3900637086/
OBSERVE.

Observe EVERYTHING.
...

Of course I readily admit that now that I've written it down, this, too, is a map. If by some bizarre happenstance someone interpreted this as wisdom and started a religion around it, then inevitably some day people would be killing for the idea that you need to be flexible. History is full of examples of people killing for weirder ideas. But it must be recognized that one's experience and one's approach to experience do not consist entirely of philosophical positions. A philosophical position can shape and direct one's development, but the text of the philosophy itself is not the same as the changes in the individual that might result.

Sometimes there's even a good reason to *believe* something for real for a while, because it serves your development, and then believe something else later...

maply yours,
-dave

In a recent discussion, other people were talking about the importance of living for something larger than yourself, devoting yourself to a higher cause. A counterpoint was raised by a divorcee, who pointed out that sometimes things fall apart exactly because you aren't living for yourself enough: "when you lose that loved one, you really have to want to live for yourself or you will lose it." Which is clearly true! Here is what I wrote:

On Aug 21, 2009, at 3:20 PM, someone wrote:

I think we all need something to live for... That something to live for could be a hobby, or a loved one, or a passion for learning. I think it is strongest and most impactful when it is something outside the self or selfish pleasure, and ideally something much larger than the self.

My response:
The important thing is not where the boundaries are, although that does make some difference. The important thing is, is it "self-like" or does it transcend that? In other words, there may sometimes be some temporary advantage to dedicating yourself to MY COUNTRY (versus the rest of the world) instead of JUST ME (versus the rest of the world). But in the end, it's just a larger number of people included in your absolute selfishness.

I think the secret here is that, contrary to much popular rhetoric, the benefit does *not* come from "dedicating yourself to a higher cause" or "total abandonment of self-interest". I think the real thing that's going on is that having an us-versus-them attitude living somewhere in the back of your mind, no matter how subtle, will cause problems for you.

If you eliminate that attitude, the result has nothing to do with self-abnegation. Rather, it is merely a recognition that benefit is common. There is not a conflict between altruism and self-interest; there is not even a sense of "enlightened self-interest" (that phrase is my absolute biggest pet peeve). It's merely that the concepts that led you to believe there were separate categories (i.e. "self" and "other") were misunderstood in the first place, and as a result of that, the real situation is not one where there is a framework for a conflict. Beneficial actions are beneficial; harmful actions are harmful; and that determination is not at all based on the classification of the object of the action as "self" or "other". Of course, there are still a lot of very complicated factors that determine whether actions are beneficial or harmful, including things relating to both the intention and the result, and that certainly takes some wisdom and insight and patience to navigate, and that is beyond anything I have to offer right now.

But I think it is very important to get over the idea that the quality of actions depends on the dimension of self-other. This saves you from either extreme (i.e. either ordinary selfishness, or harmful self-abnegation).

selfish/lessly yours,
-dave

OK, get this. My wireless printer stopped working a little while ago. After talking to the wireless ISP for my building, Restech Internet Services, it turns out they have it set up so their access point randomly puts each device on one of several different subnets. (Mind you, this building has only 5 units.) They don't route between subnets. So, if you have their service, and you have more than one device, you randomly may or may not be able to communicate between your various computers etc. depending on the luck of the draw of their DHCP server.

This was working fine for a couple of years, because my little building used to be on only one subnet, which makes a lot of sense to me. They added the extra subnets recently for reasons that they haven't yet explained to me, so it stopped working.

The only options they offered me were 1) buy my own access point or 2) buy all static IP addresses. The options I offered them were that they can figure out how to make it work again, within a few days, or else I'm switching my service to cable.

If they want to do it this way, they need to put it in their advertising fine print that if you have more than one thing on the wireless they won't be allowed to talk to each other! That would turn a lot of people off, but they're keeping it a secret.

isolatedly yours,
-dave

I'm reading Primordial Experience by Manjushrimitra, translated by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu and Kennard Lipman. Yes it's a Tibetan buddhist thing. Just wanted to type in part of it. I'm transliterating some of the Tibetan to make it easier to read, but some of it is hopeless so I've left those parts alone. This is actually from the contemporary introductory material, not the classical text that makes up the core of the book. The tone is obviously and somewhat obnoxiously scholarly, but nevertheless it is a concise framing and response to the question that really haunts me. Here it is:

As regards meditation in Dzogchen, the crucial question one has to ask is: how does one actually practice nonaction? Is this not a contradiction in terms? Now, we know that using the (activity of the) mind to go beyond the mind is a traditional theme in Buddhism. "Not-doing" is a fundamental concept of Taoism resonant with Chinese Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism: the Sage "acts without acting." But how is this made a reality? Or, to put it another way, in terms of the two major misunderstandings of nonaction: how is it to be prevented from degenerating into either remaining passive and indifferent (in fact, avoiding activity), on the one hand; or into doing whatever comes to mind under the guise of a doctrine of spontaneity (which does not, in fact, deal with the basic problem of one's deep-seated conditions, all one's habits and passions), on the other? Nonaction is basically the discovery of freedom as something inseparable from our being; it cannot be created. In this respect, freedom is not the opposite of determinism but of compulsion, of having to act. Both of the above mentioned extremes remain tied to a concept: one holds to the idea of being calm, of being in a state of meditation; while the other holds to the idea of being free from all limitations by waging war against one's limits.

First of all, it should be understood that nonaction has two aspects, as discussed in our text: as "meditation" (gompa, bhavana) and as "behavior" (spyod pa, carya), these two being based on the first of this traditional triad—lta ba, drsti, "philosophical outlook", "self-observation". That is, based on the outlook or point of view of a teaching, a practice of meditation can be set up, and this wil also lead ot a certain way of acting in the world. Here a spontaneous, unpremeditated way of acting, in which one does not have to avoid any situation as negative, for example, is only possible having had some experience of "nondoing" as meditation. This meditation is a profound grasp of the "natural condition" of the mind, usually termed rig pa. Only in this natural condition can there be "nondoing". Now, in addition to "nonaction," natural is another much abused term which seems to have lost any real meaning. But here "natural" is re-endowed with meaning because it is based on a precise experience. We can point to this experience by words such as "inalienable" and "uncontrived." "Natural" refers to the "ultimate content" (chos nyid, dharmata) of what we call our "mind". In this condition, or rather noncondition, there is nothing to correct or adjust, accept or reject; there is no meditation to enter into or come out of. Thus one can speak of "self-liberation" (rangdrol) in Dzogchen: as said before, nothing need be done to experience freedom. "Freedom" means that there is no possibility for positive or negative thoughts or actions to condition the individual (that is, set up the habituating tendencies discussed in the previous section), who "rests in" his/her own inalienable "nature".

In this man ngag, or oral instruction, as in all the Sems de teachings, much emphasis is laid on finding a state of "relaxation" in which one is not disturbed by whatever thoughts may arise, or in which there is an actual absence of thoughts. This is technically termed gnas pa'i rnal 'byor, the first of the four "yogas" (rnal 'byor, naljor) which characterize the Sems de teaching, and is very similar to the well-known practice of zhi gnas, (shiné), samatha, "state of calm".

In sutric Buddhism, however, zhi gnas is genreally regarded as a kind of prerequisite for entering into the practice of lhag mthong, vipasyana, "insight," which is itself regarded as a kind of analytical meditation, like shining a searchlight on objects, one by one, in a dark room. But Dzogchen is not a "gradual," but a "direct" path, i.e., the fundamental conception is not one of a graded series of steps towards the goal, although the "four yogas" of Sems sde are presented in a quasi-gradual manner, so that the Sems de seems like a gradual path in relation to the other two series of Dzogchen teachings, the klong sde (longde) and the man ngag sde (mennagde). In this case, zhi gnas means to enter, if one has the capacity, not merely a state of calm that makes possible further, more refined, mental "work", but the primordial state of relaxation spoken of earlier, the "resting in" (gnas pa) one's inalienable nature. As the man ngag states:

"Relaxation" (lhug pa) means, in this regard, that one doesn't necessarily sit cross-legged, etc.; that there is neither distraction nor stupefaction of the senses; and that in whatever situation one is in (there is) the intrinsic clarity of the state of pure and total presence, without entering into an attitude of correcting the condition of the body and the senses.

This practice is stabilized by doing one's "sessions of meditation" (thun) in an unforced manner, by unfolding one's relaxation, as it were, through giving oneself space to relax. Hence the length of a session is never fixed, and emphasis is placed on self-regulation. If one's sessions are forced, one suffocates oneself, and thus can never find an uncontrived state.

Another important topic in this oral instruction on meditation is what is termed nyams, or the experiential signs of the development of practice. These signs arise as the process of relaxation takes place. Relaxation has not been possible before because the individual has constantly charged himself up, so that the three levels of his existence—body, speech and mind—have become extremely sensitive and reactive to one another. The signs are usually grouped according to the three types of experiences much utilized in Tantrism: that of pleasurable sensation (bde ba), clarity (gsal ba), and absence of disturbing thoughts (mi rtog pa). In Dzogchen it is fundamental to recognize the difference between the nyams and rig pa, whis is the state of pure and total presence in which these various experiences are reflected, as in a mirror. As the text states:

A manifestation of clarity should not be taken to be the ultimate content of what is. Therefore, one relaxes without attachment to the ultimate content of what is, or to delight in the experience of absence of body, speech and mind.

The state of calm is itself a nyams, an experience characterized by the absence of disturbing thoughts (mi rtog pa), and is thus only a means to enter rig pa, our primordial, inalienable, natural state (which is both "being" and "knowing" inseparably united). Then, in this state one can understand how it is possible to behave in such a manner as to act without acting, where one does not have to avoid anything nor have to dwell on anything. Otherwise, as mentioned above, if one imagines one is being spontaneous by following whatever comes into one's head, one is just trying to be free. The essential point is total relaxation in which there is no compulsion to accept (give in to) or reject one's deep-seated conditioning. Thus one finds the ongoing reality of "self-liberation," the natural state.

Last night I was in my living room. Dr. Schroedinger was sitting in the front windowsill and I noticed her staring up at the sky so I went to look. Amazing sunset light on strange mammatus clouds! It was spectacular. My real camera is loaned out but I took a picture with my iPhone, which is not bad at all for a phone camera:




It is interesting to me that my cat was so intrigued by this sky.

cumulusly yours,
-dave

There was a response to that message, which prompted this next essay. Sorry for not including the reply but it's not mine, and I think this is straightforward enough even without knowing what it was a response to:

But see you're missing the point. It doesn't matter if it has any influence on any specific person or whether there is indisputable coercion. It matters if it has influence *in bulk*, and if that creates a runaway positive feedback loop. And it most definitely does.

Arguing ontology is also missing the point. Sure individuals "exist" in any ordinary sense. But the problem is that depending on what phenomenon you are trying to understand, effective understanding might arise from thinking about individuals, or about collections of competing mental processes within an individual, or groups of individuals competing with each other, or groups of ideas competing with each other, or any of infinite fine shades of division of those things. To think that the "existence" of "individuals" is important is nothing more than a blockage of your ability to categorize phenomena at whatever grain is relevant to the question at hand.

Personally I would argue that a classification system that prevents understanding (i.e. "individuals are the fundamental unit") is "wrong" in any meaningful sense of "wrong". Yes, I will also admit that "individuals don't exist" is "wrong" in any meaningful sense of "wrong". The point is not to argue one theory against another; that's the travesty of academia, forget about that. The point is that it inhibits your ability to relate your own mind to your own experience (i.e. in this case, it inhibits your ability to understand the phenomena of psychologically-driven corporate consumer marketing at the societal level) if you identify or reify one specific way of imposing order on your sensory experience at the expense of others (i.e. thinking that "individuals" are more real than some other level of discussion, as you say in the last paragraph).

To take one specific example from your message:

But is some nefarious locus really to blame, or was
the war an inevitable outgrowth of the nation's history, needs, and
position relative to its neighbors?

That's exactly like arguing about whether the damage was caused by Hurricane Katrina, or maybe it was really just a lot of really strong wind and rain. Both are equally true; the label ("hurricane", "locus of intentionality") is just something that we use to make it easy to talk about systems where groups of processes that have something in common tend to have some aspect that is co-located in some space for some time. Certainly it would be stupid to forget that "hurricane" really just means there's a lot of wind and rain in a certain area for a while; there's no essence or soul or homunculus to the hurricane above and beyond all that wind and rain. Likewise it would be equally stupid to refuse to acknowledge the usefulness of having a label to use as a handle to talk about it.

This came up in an email discussion about the documentary about Edward Bernays, consumerism and marketing, The Century of the Self:

On Jul 9, 2009, at 4:37 PM, [the other person] wrote:

If I air a nationwide commercial about a website, I'm sure I'll have a
rush of hits simply because of all the people who didn't know about it
and now do, and some percentage of them will go check it out. But it
sure sounds a lot more sinister when you say I am manipulating and
controlling the masses.

I don't really buy it. I mean I buy it, sure: advertisement and mass
media have statistically significant impacts on people's behavior.
But so does everything else.

Well, I will tell you why *I* buy it. It's exactly the difference between having a doctor prescribe morphine for you, and having access to it yourself "ad libitem" (now there's an interesting Latin phrase, but that's another story.)

When an organism has access to something that directly activates the behavioral reinforcement systems of the brain, if that thing is potent enough to activate the systems to a greater extent than other stimuli available to the organism, then a feedback loop is created where action -> increased reinforcement of behavioral tendency -> increasing frequency of action -> increasing amount of reinforcement. In practice, this behavioral/environmental/neural runaway positive feedback loop frequently, or even usually, results in the death of the organism, barring outside intervention. (It is a separate discussion what constitutes "outside intervention", we can talk about that too if necessary.)

On the other hand, the same potent thing will *not* lead to the death of the organism if the system in which it is being administered does not create a behavioral/environmental/neural runaway positive feedback loop. If the thing is administered on a schedule which is not under the control of the organism, then there may or may not be some kind of unhealthy effects but there is not a positive feedback loop.

A similar thing has happened with consumerism and marketing. Here it is not so much an "individual organism" that we are interested in (although if you remember my thing about the amoebas, then you know I don't think the idea of an "individual organism" is very meaningful).

Think of it this way: the organism of "American society" is engaged in a runaway positive feedback loop of increasing corporate sophistication -> increasing sophistication of marketing -> increasing consumer demand -> increasing corporate profit -> increasing corporate sophistication. The same locus of intentionality (i.e. the corporate profit motive) that is being reinforced (i.e. profiting) is in control of the decisions about how to administer the reinforcing thing (i.e. Bernaysian propaganda marketing). So we have a runaway positive feedback loop. (Well, we have a whole bunch of them probably.)

If there were merely a bunch of random, causally disparate acts of reinforcement, which is the scenario you are implicitly evoking, then there would be no runaway feedback.

It is true that "you are manipulating and controlling the masses" puts a sinister, mustachioed silent-movie-villain gloss on it which is misleading, although that gloss might serve a valuable marketing function for the contingent arguing against marketing, ironically. The important question is NEVER whether there "really is" a "real" "conspiracy" (yes those are all scarequotes). The question is whether there is a common interest that creates a locus of intentionality that has the facility to work to its advantage.

Of course these "loci of intentionality" that I am invoking are very nebulous, and can never really be pinned down or in any sense demonstrated conclusively to exist. But the same can be said for you, of course. That's the whole point. There's no difference.

propagandaly yours,
-dave

In June I went to the Mind and Life Summer Institute, which was really enjoyable, as always. I left my car with Skef while I was out of town. When I got back and picked it up, we went for a drive in the countryside. We ended up near the Humane Society of Dane County, where Skef got his kittens, so we stopped in because he had some questions to ask. I went to look at the cats available for adoption and was overwhelmed with sweetness! I saw one, a female calico named Dr. Scroedinger, and just started crying!

After that, I was in town briefly but then out of town again, five days or so in Seattle then down to Breitenbush, where I did my own meditation practice and took some yoga classes. My last day was the first day of my usual yoga retreat with Shannon McCall, so I got to see all my dear friends from that group. After that, a quick drive up to Seattle and a hectic flight back to Madison, which was delayed and turned into an all-nighter. I got home just in time to start the 5-day summer dzogchen meditation retreat with Khachab Rinpoche here in Madison. When that was over, on Monday, I checked at the humane society, and Dr. Schroedinger was still there. I went out there with Skef and Janis, both of whom adopted cats recently (I wanted some experienced help to kick the tires and make sure she was firing on all cylinders), and adopted her and went shopping for various new-cat supplies.



Click here for a photo album.


She is four years old, a little skittish still but very, very affectionate and meows like a kitten. I have been brushing her a lot so, so far I have avoided having cat hair everywhere. She still doesn't have much of an appetite, or maybe I just haven't figured out what kind of food she likes, but she is already overweight so I'm not too worried yet.

One night she sniffed at the window from my bed, but realized that the window screen prevented escape. But she saw the other "window" to the left and decided that was her best hope. She hunkered down and jumped right into the mirror. Splat!



So that's my new roommate. Now as far as I can tell, every unit in my building has a cat. I was the last holdout...

catly,
-dave

I wrote this for an email list, some here might find it informative:

Hmm, not to get too scholarly here (well OK, it is my job after all), but I think you are talking about "smrti". Having had extensive conversations with John Dunne about this, I think that "meditation" is usually being used as a translation for gom (Tib.) or bhavana (Skt.) which means cultivation, or "to make grow or increase". Meditation on emptiness just means cultivating your awareness of emptiness. Meditation on concentration means cultivating your concentration. Meditation on Vajrasattva means cultivating the qualities of Vajrasattva, confession and forgiveness and purification of obstacles etc. Meditation just means cultivation.

Unfortunately it seems like in the meditation research community, partly thanks to the popularity of MBSR, a lot of people got into the habit of using "mindfulness" and "meditation" nearly interchangeably. (I am not blaming John K-Z for this; I think he has a very good understanding of all this stuff.) John Dunne has a lot to say about "mindfulness", which is usually used as a translation for "smrti". But "smrti" really means something more like "remembering", as in remembering to keep your mind on the object of meditation. Wikipedia entry on mindfulness says:

Although sati/smrti is the primary term that is usually invoked by the word mindfulness in a Buddhist context, it has been asserted "in Buddhist discourse, there are three terms that together map the field of mindfulness . . . [in their Sanskrit variants] smrti (Pali: sati), samprajanya (Pali: ampajañña) and apramada (Pali: appamada). It should be noted that all three terms are sometimes (confusingly) translated as "mindfulness," but they all have specific shades of meaning and the former two might be glossed as "awareness" and "vigilance," respectively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness

"Meditation" should be used in a general way to refer to engagement in an activity designed to cultivate a particular set of qualities (presumably qualities of mind; I don't think cultivation of the body is ever really included in that, but I would leave it to someone else to complain if you did feel like using "meditation" in that context.) Note that although it generally implies an intentional activity, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche (and presumably others too) have made a point of mentioning that we're always meditating on something, whether we are intentional about it or not, so "meditation" does not strictly have to be intentional. "Mindfulness", or any of the three terms mentioned above, should be used more specifically to refer to particular variants of cognitive processes that are essential to any intentional process of cultivation.

I think that smrti, used in a non-technical way, just means "memory" in the ordinary sense. But as a technical term it refers specifically to the mindfulness-like process of remembering the object during meditation. The quote above suggests "awareness" instead of "remembering"; in any case, it has to do with the part of the process that holds on to the current chosen object. So "mindfulness" is a (sub-optimal) translation of the *technical* term smrti, but is NOT a translation of smrti as an ordinary word. The other part, samprajanya, suggested to be translated as "vigilance", has somewhat more to do with the process of identifying straying attention and returning it to the object. JD likes to say that "mindfulness" works well as a term equivalent to smrti plus samprajanya combined.

As an aside, I think the research community's focus on "mindfulness" has been a bit counter-productive (in the dharma sense if not in the academic sense). I think the most important thing is choosing to cultivate positive qualities; that is, the most important thing is the intention. The focus on "mindfulness" has been appealing to reductionism-minded scientists because it involves thinking about the whole thing in terms of some magic essence, the quantity of which is present is the determining factor for whatever result you are interested in. This is sort of true, I mean it's not entirely misleading, but it also distracts from the generality and simplicity of the real value of the intention to cultivate positive qualities....

I just sent the following message to a professor at U Iowa who seems to be teaching a human factors engineering class here in the fall:

Subject: Human Factors Engineering course at Wisconsin?
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 14:53:26 -0500

Hello, I see a course listed as "Cognitive Engineering Methods and
Models" as Psych 859 here at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I
am interested in this course and I am trying to find more information
about it. The course is listed as being taught by John Lee but there
is no John Lee here as far as I can tell. I think it might be you,
but I am limited to guessing because neither the timetable nor the
department's course listing provide any information other than the
name. I was wondering, if this is actually your course, if you could
point me to some information about it? Syllabus or topics or anything?

Here is the listing in the timetable that I am referring to:
http://timetable.doit.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/TTW3.navigate.cgi?20101+sects/d490c859A1.html

As an aside, I bet that, as a Human Factors Engineering expert, you
find it amusing that our system makes it virtually impossible for me
to find any information about the courses being offered. :)


--
-dave----------------------------------------------------------------
"Pseudo-colored pictures of a person's brain lighting up are
undoubtedly more persuasive than a pattern of squiggles produced by a
polygraph. That could be a big problem if the goal is to get to the
truth." -Dr. Steven Hyman, Harvard