I just read an article in the Washington Post about a new drug called Modafinil.  This pill allows the user to stay awake and alert for 40 hours at a time.

Its neurological focus is precise, unlike stimulants such as caffeine and amphetamine.  It targets regions of the brain believed to regulate wakefulness, avoiding the jittery and addictive side effects of other drugs.  One "can't get high on modafinil.  There's no euphoria to it. When they first take it, a lot of test subjects figure they must have gotten the placebo. When this stuff takes over, it takes over.  Gently, not violently.  No apparent loss of acuity.  But you have definitely kicked into a gear you didn't know you had."  And it does not hinder your ability to sleep if you desire.

University of Pennsylvania sleep researcher David Dinges, among others, questions the long-term safety of this drug, and wonders if the drug will at all affect the phenomonon of long-term fatigue accumulation.  But he is looking forward.  "The more far-out question is: What if we eventually had something that was absolutely safe that could substitute for sleep?" he wonders.  "Is that the direction we want to go?  Many would say yes.  I don't know what the implications are for our species.  Probably not bad. … Should humans try to live without sleep? I don't know. We're already trying to do that."

The author wrote the article in 30+ straight hours after having taken Modafinil.  Near the end he notes that he is tired but not sleepy.  "Interesting to imagine a future in which those are two distinctly separate things," he notes.

I am terrifically excited about a drug such as this.  I have a medical condition that causes sleepiness.  I take a prescription drug for it that also causes sleepiness, and I have to time consumption of the drug carefully.  I, like many people, never feel that I have enough time in the day to pursue all my interests.  And as a believer in mortality, I do not want to look back at a life in which I spent a third of the time unconscious.  The ability to sleep only every other night, or less, is fantastic.

I am scared of a fen-phen style story unwinding.  If the drug decreases lifespans significantly the good effect is nullified.  But if safe, consider the ability to sleep for recreation, but never to be chained to a pillow.  How exciting.

Sleep research is, in general, exciting.  It is a mystery to me.  We live in a world with electric lighting, plenty of food, medicines; if our daily unconsciousness was evolutionarily advantageous simply for resource management, then the physiological necessity is obsolete.  I wonder if something is going on other than forcing a physical recuperation process.  But what? 

Thoughts?  Use the "Discuss" link to the right.

I am chagrined that mcgees.org is turning into a "check out this survey" blog, but I found a new quiz that seems a good counterpart to the BeliefNet quizzes discussed a few weeks ago.  This quiz calls itself a "Political Compass" quiz.  It takes the route of considering political position on two orthogonal axes, social and economic, to try to better represent today's complex ideologies.  A case could be made that this quiz is on crack as well, but on the whole I find it useful, if only for a place to begin an interesting discussion.

My results are as follows:

Economic Left/Right: -3.88
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -7.85

Authoritarian
Left		Right
Libertarian

The authors propose the following alignment for historic notables:

You can take the quiz here.  If you are so inclined, please post your own responses at this QuickTopic forum.

MSNBC thoughtfully gives us an article entitled So whatever happened to Linux?  "It's for geeks," describes the author, quoting a "consultant".  We also learn that "Microsoft's Windows operating system still rules."  However, Linux is getting better; it "now more closely mimics the Windows world."

Would someone remind me what the MS in MSNBC stands for, please?

I have an enormous purple and yellow welt where I have been repeatedly pinching myself.  First, the execution of the mentally retarded was banned.  Then 168 more death sentences were overturned.  And now the Pledge of Allegiance is declared unconstitutional.  It's as if the United States were a modern nation all of a sudden.  What a week.

For those following the story, my digital cable was finally installed this past Saturday, with another conversation worthy of the one with dear Ernesto.  This one was with the cable installer:

Installer:  I called this morning and you didn't answer.

Josh:  Really?

Installer:  Yes, but the base said I had to come anyway.

Josh:  Well, I'm glad you did.  What number did you call?

Installer:  Both of them.

Josh:  What were the numbers?

Installer:  I left messages on both numbers.

Josh:  Could you please read the numbers?

Installer:  Yes.  The first one is 373-4027.  The second one is 373-4027.

Josh:  (pause)

Installer:  Oh, I guess those are the same.

Josh:  Yes, and that's my work number.

MeFi has posted a link to what must be the strangest online disclaimer yet: "If you are an Australian, Japanese or Canadian person or are viewing this page from Australia, Canada or Japan you must exit the site by clicking on the 'I disagree' button below."

Playing off of the U.S. restrictions on exporting encryption software to "States of Concern", a couple people note that "The Axis of Politeness must be stopped or the terrorists will have won!"  (According to a humorous article from the Center for Defense Information, however, the three nations are more accurately called "just plain states".)

Was it Queen Victoria on Britain's first stamp, or was it King Ethelwulf?

Good question.  I'm guessing the latter, according to an online philately Q&A forum:

Q: Can you tell me when stamps first began to appear?
A: The first postage stamp was in Great Britain in 840.  The first U.S. postage stamp was in 1847.

My, were we behind the times!

Alright, time for admission of guilty pleasures.  You are never going to believe what show I have fallen in love with: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It came on  the air while I was in college and watching exactly one hour of television per week (The X-Files), so I never caught on to it when it was new.  I saw my first episode a couple of weeks ago when I was home sick.  It is a lot of fun: the writing is witty, with good jokes and a well-developed mythology, the acting (by a few of the actors, anyway) is pretty good, and the whole thing is so campy that it is pure fun to just sit back and watch.

The cable station FX has been broadcasting repeats; the first episode I saw was near the end of season 5, and after the final episode of season 5, they looped back to the pilot.  Coincidentally (or perhaps not) this is exactly the same point when UPN started re-running season 6.  So I am currently in two timelines.

I have fallen in love with the character of Willow, played by Alyson Hannigan.  She is absolutely adorable, especially in the early episodes.  She convincingly played a 15 or 16-year-old, and if I had gone to high school with the character I would have had a crush on her character that would have torn the world apart.  The character is a good girl, witty but shy, brown hair and brown eyes, is a computer hacker and perfect student.  In those episodes I find her ten times as cute as Sarah Michelle Gellar, the blond lead, who does not at all pass for a high schooler.

I knew I shouldn't have gone looking around IMDB.  I told myself that I would find out Hannigan was a crazy drug fiend or something and it would shatter my retroactive fantasy of a fictional character.  But I looked anyway.  To start with, she is older than I.  She is three years older than Gellar.  She dated the drummer from Marilyn Manson's band.  She played a raunchy character in the "American Pie" movies.  So much for the good girl crush (I know I should be able to separate the actor and the character, but I'm not very good at that.)

So I read the bio trivia on Gellar.  While pursuing her acting career she gruaduated with a 4.0 average from high school.  She collects antique books.  She has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.  She dated nice guy Jerry O'Connell, and is now engaged to nice guy Freddie Prinze Jr.  And she plays the slightly trampy character on "Buffy".  Aye, me.

OK, guilty admission II.  I also love the program Alias.  It is just as campy and just as fun as "Buffy".  I suspend my Coleridgian disbelief on the coatrack by the door and let myself become invested with the soapish characters.  Pure fun.  And it does not hurt that Jennifer Garner is gorgeous and that she is frequently costumed for her undercover work (get your mind out of the gutter!) in revealing outfits.  You will note that there is no hyperlink associated with Garner's name above.  You know why?  It's because I am intending to stay far, far away from her IMDB bio page.  May the fantasy continue.

Note added 19 June 2002:  So far four friends have contacted me letting me know that they too are fans.  This rampant Buffy-watching may be a silent epidemic of catastrophic proportions.

Philately Foils Fraud Attempts

From Canadian Stamp News:

Canadian investigators claimed their first big victory in the decade-old Nigerian Letter Scam [more detail] last summer after arresting three Toronto-area men charged with bilking foreigners out of millions of dollars.  The three-year joint task force investigation included the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police], FBI, and United States Secret Service.

Most of the 300 victims are American, but others live in Great Britain and Germany, investigators said.  Victims forked out as little as $52,000 after falling for promises of riches from an illegal money-laundering deal while one coughed up $5 million (U.S.).

Ironically, if any potential victim had been a stamp collector, one look at the envelopes [presumably placed by hand into mailboxes] should have provided a ludicrously-easy clue to something being wrong with the contents.  Of the handful of RCMP-seized letters franked with so-called Nigerian stamps, most were obvious fakes, likely colour photocopies produced in Canada.  The worst-looking one was a copy of a recent 50-Niara commemorative entitled Rock Bridge that had misregistered overly-light colours and perforations that appeared to have been made with a blunted sewing machine needle.

Note: Apparently there is a new variant specifically targeting Mormons.  The African correspondent is reportedly a Mormon who has been persecuted because of his beliefs.  The president of the BBB in the targeted area of the U.S. warns Americans that this is as much of a fraud as the standard Nigerian scam.  She writes, "It is just as bogus, no matter how many times it mentions God, country and church affiliation."  Actually, that is a useful sentence to remember in general.

Guns Are Only Deadly If Used For Their Intended Purpose

Only when guns are used as intended are they significantly dangerous to anyone.  But try telling this to all the crybabies suing the gun companies because not everybody in their family is alive.  What exactly are you suing them for -- making a reliable product?  That's a laugh.  Somebody should be suing those shoddy import jobs: You'd be lucky to kill a baby with one of them.

            -- Courtesy of The Onion

The title of an AP wire service despatch from today: Pentagon's Damaged Façade Repaired.

They wish.

I would be failing in my blogging duties if I did not go along with every other blogger in the known universe and note that Mozilla 1.0 is out of beta testing.  I am composing this post using Mozilla Navigator, in fact.

"We should have done a better job in these areas, and we're committed to doing a better job in the future."

McDonalds takes full blame for sneaking beef fat into their "vegetarian" french fries and being unwilling to admit this for years.  As part of the settlement with litigators, McDonalds will donate $10 million to Hindu and Vegetarian charities.

Beliefnet, as far as I gather, is a site that tries to serve everyone who posesses beliefs.  You may be amused by two of their quizzes: What's your spiritual type? and the pretty cool Belief-o-matic.

Curious about mine?  The Belief-o-matic determined that, with 100% confidence, I am a Secular Humanist.  Its confidence that I am a Mainline or Liberal Protestant Christian (M-LCP) is 78%, 67% that I am Neo-Pagan, 27% that I am a Scientologist, and 18% each for Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism.  I am actually judged more likely to be a Unitarian Universalist, Liberal Quaker, or M-LCP than a "Nontheist" (73%.)  This is because, under Beliefnet's definition, "Atheists' beliefs are similar to those of the Secular Humanists but do not necessarily include the emphasis on humanity's ability to improve the human condition."  Perhaps "Pessimistic Atheist" would be a better term.

I re-tried the test, trying to answer as I thought my father, a fairly liberal Lutheran (M-LCP) minister, might.  The Belief-o-matic reported 100% confidence in these responses corresponding to a M-LCP.  The confidence that these beliefs represent a Secular Humanist is 31%.

The Spiritual type quiz is perhaps more entertaining.  One is scored on a scale from 0 to 100, with 40-49 being an "Active Spiritual Seeker" and 90-100 being "Candidate for Clergy."  The category called "Hardcore Skeptic, but interested or you wouldn't be here" is the lowest category that has a name.  This covers 25-29.  I scored 15.

If you (the reader) have a few minutes, please visit to the quizzes, using the links above, and report your results in the new QuickTopic forum I set up.

In 1984, a cloud of the extremely toxic methyl isocyanate escaped from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India.  The company was fiercely criticized for its safety, media, and legal policies in the aftermath.  To address this the company launched a huge PR campaign.  The company owns Bhopal.com and uses the site to disseminate information.  One report is entitled Union Carbide: Disaster at Bhopal, written by the retired VP of Health, Safety, and Environmental Programs at Union Carbide.

The essay is a classic piece of spin (some might say propaganda.)  The report will say one thing, then say a second thing a page later that casts it in a different light.  The two statements are sufficiently separated that the report avoids sounding overtly contentious in spots, but a reader with a memory longer that one paragraph sees Browning talking out of both sides of his mouth, apparently taking a mea culpa one moment and denying responsibility the next.

For instance, the "tragedy continues to be a source of anguish for Union Carbide employees", but the incident was caused by a "disgruntled plant employee."  Union Carbide Corporation "took the heat", but it owned "just over 50 percent" of the subsidiary Union Carbide India Limited.  The Bhopal plant caused the deaths of thousands of people but "ironically" the plant was intended for a "humane goal" (namely, the production of highly toxic chemicals.)  Yes, UC is an American company, but at the time of the accident "the last American … had left two years before" and "the entire work force … was Indian."  The toxic cloud enveloped a shanty town, but the town's very existence was the fault of zoning decisions by "local officials."

Union Carbide employees showed their "personal concern and compassion" by setting up a relief fund.  A little arithmetic division shows us that the fund's coffers swelled to an average of a $1 donation per UC employee, and that the relief payout was under $7 per dead or injured person.  As a corporation, Union Carbide had originally offered $2 million as reparation (a bit over $100 per victim), then increased the offer to $7 million (under $500 per victim.)  The Indian government filed a claim for $3 billion ($200,000 per victim.)  After the Indian Supreme Court accepted a settlement of $470 million ($30,000 per victim), the new administration rejected the offer, returning to the original request of $4 billion.  Understandably this "outraged" many at Union Carbide.  Why?  Not because this would put a dent in profits, surely.  It was because UC, "from the first day … had been moved by compassion and sympathy", and could not tolerate the government's "apparent indifference to the plight" of the victims.

I don't know if you have heard the story of the Masai tribespeople learning of the September 11 attacks on the world Trade Center.  It was only after one of their own returned from his studies abroad in the U.S. that they learned of the tragedy.  In proper oral history tradition, he sat down with them and told them tales of the attack.

The Masai could not comprehend of a building so high that a man would die if he jumped from the top, but the returned Stanford University student, Mr. Naiyomah, explained that these were buildings stretching high into the clouds, that there were giant fires, and that men with special tools and equipment went into the buildings to try to save lives.

The tribespeople were relieved that their friend was unscathed, and they were angry.  The village's chief warrior, Mr. Oltetia, explained that if they got ahold of Osama bin Laden they surely would have to kill him.  They recognized, however, that bin Laden must be a powerful man to have caused this devastation, so he could not be killed directly.  Instead, the warriors would surround him in the bush and strike with spears and arrows.

Mostly, however, the villagers were saddened.  They asked Mr. Naiyomah to help find an important American.  Mr. Naiyomah contacted William Brancick, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.  This past Sunday, he flew to a game preserve and then was driven two hours over very rugged roads to reach the village.  The villagers were waiting for him.  At a ceremony in a grassy clearing, the village bestowed a gift of fourteen blessed cows to help the United States.

This put Brancick in a difficult position, and he explained that it would be very difficult to transport a small herd of cows to America.  He told them he would probably sell the cows, use the money to buy Masai jewelry, and give the jewelry to America.  I have no indication about whether this was a faux pas.  Cattle are very important to the Masai, who believe that all cattle in the world belong to them.  Their exhaustive use of the cattle parallels the Native Americans of the Plains' use of bison.  The animals are tapped for blood and milk, which are mixed together and drunk (this is, one would expect, highly nutritious.)  When the animal is killed the meat is eaten and all the parts used.  As Mr. Naiyomah explains, "It [the cow] is sacred.  It's more than property.  You give it a name.  You talk to it.  You perform rituals with it.  I don't know if you have any sacred food in America, something that has a supernatural feel as you eat it.  That's the cow for us."

I am touched by this gesture, but I cannot figure out how to write this post so that it does not sound condescending to the Masai.  Their act was so generous, so naïve, it reminds one of the gift of a child.  What an uplifting tale.

The New York Times has more info (registration required; you know the drill.)  Also, an American has set up a fine "thank you" site.

Indication #1 that you should turn off in disgust the animal documentary that you have playing in the background:

Conservation groups in Asia are also working to protect another member of the bear family: the giant panda.