Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 March 15

= March 15 =

MISSION AND VISION
What is Mission and what is Vision? There are conflicting explanations by various people. I will be thankful to you if you explain in a simple way with some examples. Thank you.175.157.38.59 (talk) 14:26, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * "I have a vision for the future, where all mobile phones will have the same battery charger".
 * "I have a mission to ensure that all mobile phones will have the same battery charger".

Hope this helps. KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 ) ( Chin Wag )  15:17, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * A vision is perhaps at a higher or more general level than a mission. Compare Vision statement and Mission statement. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:23, 15 March 2015 (UTC)


 * So, in the OP's Kaga's example, we might change the Mission Statement to:


 * "Our company will provide a common cell phone charger to all manufacturers and consumers." StuRat (talk) 17:45, 15 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Stu, those were my examples. In fact, I chose the wording because this has been proposed as a law in the EU. KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 15:10, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I changed my credit accordingly. StuRat (talk) 19:11, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * No worries, but you spelt my name wrong. :) KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 23:40, 17 March 2015 (UTC)


 * As Bugs notes, vision is more abstract, mission more concrete (and with a greater sense of urgency). In addition, the former doesn't imply that you're necessarily going to put any effort into achieving it, while the latter does have that nuance. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:16, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Outwardly, the vision precedes the mission, but Innermission beat "Innervision" by twenty years. You need to plan ahead to see inside. The rest is readily apparent. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:52, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Dreaming and controlling one's body at the same time
I just had a lucid dream while having a nap. I realised I was only dreaming and what I perceived as happening was not true, but it still kept on going. But then I wanted to intentionally control my real-life body and keep on dreaming at the same time. I found it impossible. As soon as the dream continued, I lost connection with my real-life body. My arms and legs felt to be where I dreamed them to be, not where I had last remembered them really being. As soon as I woke up, I regained connection with my body and was able to control it. Has anyone ever been able to dream and control their real-life body at the same time? J I P &#124; Talk 18:16, 15 March 2015 (UTC)


 * You are paralyzed while asleep, to prevent you from injuring yourself or others. However, this mechanism fails in sleepwalking, suggesting it is possible. StuRat (talk) 18:23, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Your body essentially has two main nerve centres. One is the brain, and the other is located around the area of the solar plexus. I have epilepsy, and after a seizure, my brain may be still unconscious, but the other nerve centre takes over, and I can continue doing my daily things with no problem, except that I have no memory of doing them (and do occasionally get injured). I don't know how long this lasts (maybe only five or ten minutes or something). It's weird when you have a seizure and wake up in a different room with a meal in front of you and you don't know who made it because you live on your own. After a seizure, you are completely unconscious - no dreaming, nothing. The brain has switched off. Still, you can act normally, even though your brain is not working. When you come round, you end up completely confused. "Who the bloody hell made a bowl of Rice Krispies for me???"  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  19:09, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The solar plexus is a nerve plexus that serves your internal organs, thus it certainly cannot take over the many functions of your brain, like processing your vision within the visual cortex, that are necessary to unknowingly serve yourself cereal. In other words, your brain is still functioning even if you are doing tasks unconsciously like a sleepwalker and, IFIRCC, sleepwalkers will be confused with what happened to them if awakened, yet they were still using their brain. -Modocc (talk) 19:47, 15 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Sleep paralysis is the normal thing that doesn't happen when one sleepwalks. I take a medicine for other reasons, one of the side-effects of which (my physician explained after I reported the symptoms) is to divorce the act of waking from the end of the dream state.  This means I sometimes wake up, but am still paralyzed, yet know I am dreaming.  The other is that I will wake, be able to move and be conscious of my surroundings, but still feel the dream is continuing with a break, and if I go back to sleep the same dream pretty much picks up, like coming back from a commercial.  I imagine there may be all sorts of medical conditions that cause this, so I would speak to a specialist, rather than blithely assume its not a tumor or hormonal condition that can or should be treated. μηδείς (talk) 19:55, 15 March 2015 (UTC)


 * From what I remember, I had a lucid dream, and thought "This is a dream. This isn't really happening." But I wanted to go with the dream anyway, and move my real-life body at the same time. This proved impossible. Throughout the whole dream, I could only perceive and move my dream body, not my real one. I distinctly remember this because although I was really lying down on my back the whole time, I dreamed I was standing up. I could wave my dream-hands around but not my real ones. The article sleep paralysis sounds like I would have had a sense of alarm about not being able to move at all. No such thing happened. I could move my dream body about as I pleased, but I felt a sense of disappointment about not being able to even feel my real body, let alone move it. As soon as I woke up, I reconnected with my real body, but all sense of the dream was lost. J I P  &#124; Talk 20:09, 15 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Sleep paralysis is normal while you are dreaming, since it prevents you from falling out of the tree you are nesting in for the night. It's only problematic if you are actually awake, but still paralyzed, in which case it can be horrifying.  I had that happen to me maybe 12-20 times from 5-7 years of age.  I would awaken from a nightmare, try to move or scream, knew I was in bed, but couldn't do anything for the time it would take to make a few full-breath screams to summon my parents.  Slowly I would get my breath back under voluntary control, and by that time I would get up, knock on their door, tell them I had a nightmare, and go back to sleep in their bed.  Being an adult, you should probably mention this to your physician if it recurs, or you are on any medications.  There's always the chance of a neurological disorder.  My friend died of brain cancer.  She had been inexplicably walking into the left wall of a doorway on occasion for about a year.  Finally she lost all balance.  At that point it was diagnosed, but inoperable. μηδείς (talk) 22:27, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I started getting sleep paralysis (the awake type) at about age 16. It felt like someone was lying on top of me, and it only happened when I had been asleep on my back, which I stopped doing. But then, about 9 years later, when I was living in Japan, I started getting it again, and this felt like I was lying on my side (which I was), and that there was someone in the room, behind me. This became so frequent that my Japanese wife started to recognize when I was in that state, because I would be trying to call her name, but was unable to. She'd wake me up after a while. I asked her if she could hear me calling her name, and she said no, it was just high pitched squeaks. After coming back from Japan, it hasn't happened since.  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  23:43, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The imaginary person on top of you was a succubus. Maybe Jorōgumo, since it didn't follow you back. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:56, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Kanashibari is the word in Japanese. It occurs across many cultures, and most of them have the explanation that it is a succubus. The Japanese word, however, literally means something like 'being locked in chains'. KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 04:10, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * That's the wonderful thing about wonderful beings; they only visit briefly enough to ring an alarm, then it's up to you to figure out what the hell happened. Same goes with regular dreams. They make more sense in hindsight, as we pick out the memorable bits, ignore the rest and draw a common thread through them. What's common varies (was that a strange whale, or a normal manatee?), but getting stuck universally sucks. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:36, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Allegedly a bit more common in Japan than in America. That's a great name for a newspaper. I hope it's real. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:42, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Seems legit. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:43, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, The Japan Times is the best English Language newspaper in Japan, and in fact, I used to write for it. KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 15:01, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * StuRat and Medeis have both described sleep paralysis as a normal state. Yet our article classifies it as a sleep disorder and discusses treatments etc.  I am not aware of ever having experienced it. If this paralysis is normal, and necessary "to prevent you from injuring yourself or others" (StuRat), what explains the perfectly normal turning over from left to right or v-v that happens to most people most nights?  That certainly can't occur if the sleeper is paralysed.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  04:46, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Technically, "sleep paralysis" is what happens when you become aware of the fact that your body can't move; that is you become consciously aware before you body is capabale of movement. Technically speaking, the normal state of being unable to move during sleep is called "atonia", and you can read about it here; I couldn't find a separate article on it.  The two terms are often used interchangably; atonia is the normal state that occurs during REM sleep when your body does not respond to stimuli, including imagined stimuli during dream states.  Sleep paralysis is simply when this normal state persists into wakefulness for a short time.  It can be disturbing for some people.  -- Jayron 32 05:00, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * REM atonia screws with your motor cortex's ability to talk to your upper motor neurons. You're basically just denied voluntary movement. You don't choose to toss and turn, keep breathing or wake up. Which is good, because you'd probably get wrapped up in your dream and forget. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:03, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

As an aside, when I first heard of lucid dreams, I read hints about how to get to experience them. I tried to, but it didn't work. But several years afterwards, after I stopped trying, I've had them frequently. It's kind of nice. I know I'm only dreaming and none of this is really happening. I often want the dream to go on anyway. The only thing that bothers me is that I often dream of getting a nice opportunity to photograph something, and then remember that I'm only dreaming, neither the photograph or its subject will ever really exist, so I don't bother even trying. And then there's the downside that I want to wake up in the morning, but sometimes I only dream of waking up. I've once even dreamed of waking up, getting dressed, making a cup of coffee and going outside my apartment to the corridor, when I was really lying down in bed asleep for the whole time. J I P &#124; Talk 20:31, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * More OR here. Sleep paralysis has happened to me only once (that I recall).  I woke from a dream very quickly.  It lasted for only a minute, maybe less, but it was very terrifying, because the inability to move has made me think I'd injured my spine.  &#x2013; b_jonas 18:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)