Here's an article on that exact implant and its effects: http://gizmodo.com/5895555/i-have-a-magnet-implan...

I hadn't thought about an extra-limbs scenario for humans, though I've long believed that four walking legs plus two arms is an ideal configuration for a sentient creature.

Hi there! Yes, the sense is called "proprioception" (hundreds of years ago, it was called the "sense of locomotion") — and it is managed by little packets of nerve endings mostly in muscle tissue, which perceive the amount of compression in the muscle. (There are also some of these packets in joints and skin.) This (with some practice) allows us to sense our body position.

In microgravity, such as in orbit, this sense has to be retrained, as it costs little or no muscle tension to hold an arm in position.

In order to create a truly natural-feeling artificial limb, this sense (with feedback to the brain) has to be supported as well.

But there's nothing in principle that says that a Kyra-like electroception couldn't be wired up to feed to the brain. We've already done work to feed a mouse cursor's position in directly, and that's not a sense that people normally have.

Artificial proprioception has been successfully field tested in stroke victims with success.

A number of creatures, not all in water, sense magnetic fields. This is usually done with tiny magnetic metal particles inside the cell itself, generally involved in navigation.

Many plants directly sense gravity. Octopuses have an extraordinarily developed sense of up and down and acceleration, but interestingly only a poor proprioception sense, we think. Perhaps the flexible arms are too much for the central octopus brain to keep track of, and each arm has its own brain tissue in any event.

We can eventually augment or create almost any sense and feed it in to a human brain. Imagine having a "feeling" that your most recent thought gets a lot of Google hits.

So Kyra shouldn't give up on humans, even though it will take some artificial tinkering. After all, she is herself (apparently) the result of human tinkering, demonstrating that it can have good results. Or at least impressive results, depending upon one's notion of "good."

I'm enjoying your work, and imagining that Kyra is for some folks a sort of therapod therapy.

Best wishes!

The political aspects of this story have long fascinated me, and I am looking forward to your presentation.

The "Oz is political" debate is peculiar. The early productions of the book as a stage play (which Baum was involved in) often simply used the politicians' names in speeches of the characters.

The political retelling was "rediscovered" relatively recently — and now the argument used to suggest that Baum was really for McKinley was the fact that he wrote a poem that seemed to be rooting for McKinley. Modern readers don't realize that this satirical poem "When McKinley Gets the Chair" came out right as the notion of executing criminals with the electric chair became the new Progressive style:

This is about that poem: http://level-head.livejournal.com/468432.html

And this is about Bryan, the only man to run against himself for President. He lost: http://level-head.livejournal.com/467780.html

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Not true. In fact, the early productions of the book as a stage play (which he was involved in) often simply used the politicians' names in speeches of the characters.

The political retelling was "rediscovered" relatively recently — and now the argument used to suggest that Baum was really for McKinley was the fact that he wrote a poem that seemed to be rooting for McKinley. Modern readers don't realize that this satirical poem "When McKinley Gets the Chair" came out right as the notion of executing criminals with the electric chair became the new Progressive style:

This is about that poem: http://level-head.livejournal.com/468432.html

And this is about Bryan, the only man to run against himself for President. He lost: http://level-head.livejournal.com/467780.html

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

The Iran Contra affair does not trouble me. I've looked into it extensively, and while it was somewhat mishandled by the administration, it was not illegal, simply covert. The Boland amendments violations did not convict Col. North, it was a minor issue over the security system installed to protect his family. That conviction was later vacated, and Congress looked foolish indeed pursuing this.

I put up a couple of posts about the fellow, with some links to background: http://www.dehavelle.com/2011/12/follow-up-on-jul... http://www.dehavelle.com/2011/12/evolution-of-a-p...

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Jules Manson is an atheist libertarian who apparently despised the Tea Party. He was removed as editor of SupportAtheism.org because of a racist private comment, according to the current editor of that website. He is apparently a "9/11 Truth" conspiracy enthusiast, he officially favors rent and price controls on his web page, and he says that he dislikes both main political parties but has been a member of both. He was (he says) motivated to run for "office" (the town's City Council) because his landlord raised the rent on his trailer, among other things.

His positions are an odd mix; he seems as good or better a fit with the Occupy movement. But in any event, the "Tea Party Leader" and "Tea Party darling" and "Republican politician" statements are all evidently fabrications.

It would be good to deal with the facts as they are, especially as this fellow could be as easily portrayed on one side of the aisle as the other. There are not too many militant, anti-Christian ranters in the Tea Party, for example, but Manson's posts at SupportAtheism contain that sentiment.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Well, Newt Gingrich here didn't propose
That he'd put on those Socialist clothes
He wanted regs and IT
While these things aren't for free
They are smart. That's as far as he goes

Note that Romney, Obama, and Hill
Made us swallow the still-bitter pill
Of us paying for millions
Who'd soon cost us trillions
This is what Newt has promised to kill

But a system for tracking the data
And the role of healthcare regulator
Isn't foolish or dead
There's some place for the Fed
(Though the info we'll talk about later...)

WALL•E's "message": Government nanny-states dehumanize us all — and it's time to go back to working for a living, faming, and building cities. Not too bad a message, actually.

Our friends on the left saw the trash scenes and jumped to Global Warming (despite the movie showing no rise in sea level), but the actual story was far more interesting.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle