Younger offspring offers a way to distinguish dreaming from conscious experience:
I thought I was really awake, so I reached up to touch a cloud, but instead of feeling fuzzy like a cloud would feel, it was like touching an empty space. So that's how you can tell if you're dreaming, if you touch the clouds and they feel like empty space.
The child hasn't read Descartes yet, but we've got all summer.
More like this
In 2008, we
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7574684.stm">were
informed that a kind of cloud formation had been named: the mammatus
formation, so-called because it resembles a breast. Sort
of. Whatever.
This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
Today Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke at the University of Washington in the Microsoft Atrium of the Computer Science & Engineering department's Paul Allen Center. As you can tell from that first sentence UW and Microsoft have long had very tight connections.
Actually, the kid (or you) have it wrong way 'round! If you touch a cloud, and it feels "fluffy", you're definitely dreaming....
I *have* touched clouds, and they feel like fog! Take your kids up in a small airplane sometime....
Yeah, the "fluffy" part is probably wrong, but touching clouds and feeling nothing seems like a reasonable way to figure out that you're dreaming.