To me, it sounds like the British triphoppers Portishead did a musical Vulcan mind meld with Richard and Karen Carpenter.

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But perhaps the scoffers are wrong and the president is an ultra nerd, and was referring to the Jedi battle mind meld mentioned in several Star Wars novels.

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Nevertheless, it only seems right to post a somewhat edited-down version of the piece, as amusing evidence of a weird mind meld between Brooks and myself, if nothing else.

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Details of daily living, accounts of surreal activities and evidence of states of mind meld visually into works which are enhanced by the cinematic and televisual qualities of the media she uses.

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We're not sure that Vulcans would endorse this kind of mind meld, though: apart from immediately depriving the decoder rat of self-control, prolonged testing led to the same rodent developing additional sympathetic reactions to the encoder.

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