The Modern Quest for Heaven

The New York Times had a fascinating article today about an increasingly normal behavior and emerging culture of self-medicating young people. That is, people in their 20's and 30's who share prescription medications such as anti-depressants and stimulants and make amateur diagnoses of themselves and their friends' mental troubles. There seem to be more and more people all the time seeking relief and geater control of their lives by medicating their brains.

The article is "Young, Assured and Playing Pharmacist to Friends," by Amy Harmon:

For a sizable group of people in their 20's and 30's, deciding on their own what drugs to take - in particular, stimulants, antidepressants and other psychiatric medications - is becoming the norm. Confident of their abilities and often skeptical of psychiatrists' expertise, they choose to rely on their own research and each other's experience in treating problems like depression, fatigue, anxiety or a lack of concentration. A medical degree, in their view, is useful, but not essential, and certainly not sufficient.

It's my generation's own way of seeking heaven, enlightenment, salvation, peace, balance, normality. We're building on the past, on our ancestors who sought as well and invented psychiatry and New Age and the counterculture of the 1960's and all these new drugs. But it's not just drugs -- we're mixing psychology and prescription drugs with technology and socializing, sharing on- and offline about medications, side-effects, experiences with therapists and doctors, war stories of our symptoms, as well as sympathy, encouragement and compassion (see all of the above on the Bipolar blog).

We see therapists or psychiatrists, have referenced the DSM IV, have read stacks of books on psychology, philosophy, religion, have attempted religious practice, drugs, dream analysis, lucid dreaming, TM, affirmations, maintaining better boundaries, getting in touch with our inner child, punching pillows and various forms of escapist fun. We don't buy religion any more -- maybe scared us for a few years there, had us going. But if God could've provided solutions for things like depression and anxiety, we'd know about them by now.

Well, this is where I can no longer relate because I realize I've found two things that help me more than any of the things listed above: working out at the gym and writing. Life's never going to be perfect. I try to remember that. I'm not a kid anymore. I don't expect eternal happiness, world peace or nirvana. On the other hand, I don't expect the end of the world either. Things are going to go on like this for a long time, long after we are gone. So, I am learning to lower my expectations. That's another thing that helps. I'm grateful too. Grateful for the good when it's there, when it comes and after it's gone.

Still, it is fascinating what's going on with psychology, one of the softest sciences, and psychopharmacology, with young people taking control of their lives in new ways, with the modern American version of the quest to end suffering.

Candian Government Collapses, No One Cares

Heard this online last night then again on the TV news this morning:

• Canadian government is expected to fall today
• Corruption scandal forces collapse of Canadian Government

EULAscan: community-written EULA reviews

Commercial software, even free software, when first installed most always presents you with an End User License Agreement (EULA, pronounced like "YOO-la") that you accept by clicking a button. Most people click right through without reading the EULA. I sometimes scan the EULA, depending on whether I paid money for the software or how long it is or what the nature of the application is. Still, I have skipped right over reading many a EULA and clicked the accept button without thinking twice.

Usually EULAs are just a boring formality. Sometimes there are interesting legal limitations that commercial software vendors try to impose by forcing you to accept their EULA in order to install the software. For example, some app server companies used to have clauses in their EULAs prohibting the use of their software for performance benchmarks, or preventing the release of benchmark numbers without consent of the vendor. Thus competitors would be prohibited from publically releasing performance comparisons.

For those who don't read their EULAs and don't want to but are interested in what they say there is a Web site dedicated to posting and reading comments about specific EULAs: EULAscan. You enter a software product name in the search field and see what returns.

There are a few major software companies and products in the database at EULAscan, but not a lot of reviews yet.

Weird Word of the Day: quidnunc

Dictionary.com/Word of the Day: quidnunc

From Latin quid nunc? meaning "what now?"

Ziggy and Vergil on chairs

Dan and I began refinishing two old wooden kitchen chairs by applying stripper and mineral spirits. The stripper causes the lacquer finish on the chairs to bubble up and liquefy. We scraped gently with putty knives and rubbed vigorously with rags dipped in the mineral spirits. And here are my cats, black Ziggy and red mackeral tabby Vergil. They are male, as are their names, though people don't always make the connection.

Travel Blogs

From a NY Times article, some travel blogs to follow up on:

• BootsnAll Travel
• TravelPod
• TravelBlog.org (slow site)

Essay: Eat, Sleep, Work, Consume, Die

What an insightful and sharp essay on technology and every day life from an excellent writer at Wired.com named Tony Long. Here's an excerpt:

But stock-market capitalism is today's coin of the realm, consumerism its handmaiden, and technology is the great enabler. You think technology benefits you because it gives you an easier row to hoe? Bollocks. The ease it provides is illusory. It has trapped you, made you a slave to things you don't even need but suddenly can't live without. So you rot in a cubicle trying to get the money to get the stuff, when you should be out walking in a meadow or wooing a lover or writing a song.

Utopian claptrap, you sneer. So you put nose to grindstone, your life ebbing as you accumulate ... what?

Look around. Our collective humanity is dying a little more every day. Technology is killing life on the street -- the public commons, if you please. Chat rooms, text messaging, IM are all, technically, forms of communication. But when they replace yakking over the back fence, or sitting huggermugger at the bar or simply walking with a friend -- as they have for an increasing number of people in "advanced" societies -- then meaningful human contact is lost. Ease of use is small compensation.

"Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge" on PBS

I've been watching an amazing series about infectious diseases, global health and medicine on Boston's PBS: RX for Survival. It is pleasantly narrated by Brad Pitt. There are six episodes. I've seen three so far. Every one has been fascinating.

The episodes include a lot of cool stuff like computer animations of cells and virii, re-enactments of historical events, all sort of documentary footage and commentary from experts and workers in the fields of infectious disease and medicince. Some things I recall from the shows I've seen:

• Penicillin was discovered by a WWI doctor named Fleming who'd seen the effects of infection in war. Infection killed men more surely than their wounds. He was trying to discover a way to kill bacteria after the war, which he'd been culturing. He left a stack of cultures in a tray to clean later and forgot about them. Eventually he noticed some household mold growing on a culture dish and that the bacteria in the dish was being eliminated by something in the mold. Thus was penicillin discovered.
• There are fierce "superbug" strains of bacteria in soil that can be caught by football players because they spend so much time playing in the dirt. One terrible story of a 21 year old college football star was told. He was in top physical condition but died shortly after contracting a bacterial infection that doctors weren't able to diagnose in time.
• Smallpox was eradicated largely due to the efforts of a team of long-haired, unconventional "disease warriors" who relentlessly organized and carried out vaccinations in third world countries.
• Malaria is caused by a parasite that invades red blood cells and multiplies, destroying the red blood cells in the process. It used to be quite common in the US until it was eradicated, largely through DDT spraying and wetlands drainage. Most cheap, over-the-counter malaria drugs are no longer effective in Africa, and many of the drugs sold (to impoverished people!) are counterfeit.
• DDT might be a good thing to bring back in Africa to fight malaria. DDT was highly effective in eliminating mosquito-borne malaria in the US, but was banned for its environmental effects before Africa got a chance to be treated with it.
• Sub-saharan Africa is a harsh world full of horrible diseases that kill and maim millions of poor people. Some of the worst diseases there could be fairly easily eradicated if richer countries would spend some money to do it.
• The first vaccine was for Smallpox. It was discovered by a man who observed that milk maids who caught Cowpox from cows never caught Smallpox. He hypothesized that the Cowpox conferred immunity to Smallpox. He tested his hypothesis by scraping the pus from a milk maid's Cowpox blister into a small incision in a local boy's arm and then locking the boy in a room with contagious Smallpox victim!

The shows do well as part entertainment, part education.

The series is definitely worth watching. Catch it if you can. It'll remind you how lucky we are in a first world country and in this point in history. And donate if you can. This site is connected with the show and allows donations online: https://donate.care.org/05/20810000cl/

This morning I was reminded

I don't know what it was -- something to do with a combination of thoughts in the shower about figuratively climbing out from under wreckage and then the breeze coming in through the open window in my bedroom afterward, the autumn day outside flashing through fluttering curtains. There it was, a stream of memories of us. Better times. Back in the days when we said we would be together forever, when my whole adult life hinged on one choice: that I would live it with you.

There were beautiful times, many of them. And when memories of them dislodge from their recesses in my mind and float to consciousness, I am struck by how much I lost and how painful it is. How meaningless and empty my life seems today!

Was I running away? Why, yes I was. I hadn't noticed. I was trying to escape the pain and put it all behind me like it was something I could control by will. It's easy to start running away in life and forget that's what you were doing. This morning I was reminded. Back to the here and now.

Techdirt:MIT Maps WiFi Users; Discovers Students Sleep In Dorms, Go To Class By Day

I work as a QA and software engineer in the RFID locationing field. I work on apps that display floor plan maps of assets and their locations in space. There are other companies and consortiums putting together wireless (802.11x) locationing specifications, standards, apps and devices, including "tags" that are tracked on assets by radio frequency identification (RFID). Cisco, IBM and Microsoft are all working on wi-fi locationing tech as well.

The MIT project sounds interesting:

It is turning up some useless/obvious info: students tend to use wireless in the dorms at night and in the early morning, while during the day they tend to log on from classrooms. However, it also is pinpointing some other useful (if still not surprising info): study/computer labs have pretty much lost their usefulness. Students can just go wherever they want to computer. What will be more interesting over time is to see how it really changes the way students do things.

You can view a real-time map of the campus and track the location of volunteers who have wireless devices here.

What do you mean, "be true to yourself?"

"Above all, to thine own self be true," said Polonius to Laertes in Hamlet. People say it today: be true to yourself. It's a consolation: "Hey, at least I was true to myself." It's a barb: "You're not being true to yourself." It's a maxim.

What is your self? Should you always be true to it? What if your self needs improvement in some area? Should you be true to the self all the time? Doesn't the self change?

Maybe an improvement on "be true to yourself" would be: watch out for your own ass at all times. That makes it a little more concrete, doesn't it?

A Pomelo Review

I tried a pomelo, aka shaddock, yesterday. It is a hefty, deep green citrus fruit. I bought one at Stop & Shop for $4.00. My experiences with homegrown peaches this late summer turned me against the hard, prematurely picked fruit that predominates in grocery stores. Organic or not, the issue isn't the provenance of the fruit so much as the stage in its life at which it is picked. Since ripe fruit is highly perishable and has to be shipped and displayed for sale around the country, most of the fruit in stores has been picked too soon. Home grown peaches are large, soft, sweet and running with juice. Peaches in grocery stores, from Bread & Circus to Stop & Shop, unless they are locally grown, are more like baseballs: unripe, dry, small and anything but soft.

So my expectations are low for store-bought fruit. The pomelo wasn't very good considering its price. It looks like a very large, unripe (because it's dark green) grapefruit. The skin has the leathery texture of other citrus fruit. The fruit is sectioned and pink, just like pink grapefruit, but the sections are larger. Mine was kind of dry and tough, picked too soon and not quite done ripening, apparently. I only let it sit out for one day at home after I bought it, but I doubt more time would have made much difference.

I measured the thickness of the pomelo's skin after I ate it. It goes from 1/2" to over 1" thick. The edible fruit inside is enveloped by a thick layer of spongy white dermis. I cut it into roughly equal halves like a grapefruit. I sprinkled some sugar on each of the halves. One half at a time, I ate the inside sections with a soup spoon.

Omondo Eclipse supporting UML reverse engineering

Reverse-engineering UML was a big drop out in functionality for Rational's IDEs when the new line of Eclipse-based tools came out late last year. IBM will fill the gap eventually, if they haven't already.

Omondo, which has been making a great UML diagramming plugin for Eclipse for years, is announcing their worldwide premier of class and sequence diagram reverse engineering from byte code in their EclipseUML 2.1.0 Studio beta.

Hillel's Three Questions

Just learned about this on PBS: Hillel the Elder, a Jewish religious leader in Jerusalem in the time of Herod. He's famous for expressing his doctrine in three questions:

If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And when I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

In Medias Res and the Speed of Biological Systems

You're born into this world thinking that "your" life begins. But people are being born and dying into this world, with a million things going on around at every moment, every day. We are born into the middle of things as they are. And things as they are, here and now, change with infinite frequency. Perhaps "now" has been scientifically defined as some irreducible instant of time at which subatomic particles appear motionless, though I assume its value would be relative to the observer (and, in another corner, Zeno's paradox comes to mind).

Homeric epic and modern cinematic "epics" such as Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan accentuate this awareness of being dropped smack into the middle of things. The classical Latin term for it in epic is "in medias res": in the middle of things.

For life this awareness provokes questions about the ontology of responsibility: if I am born into the middle of a contingent world over which whose rules and state I have no control, what is responsibility? Is it anything more than convention, a socially and legally defined "aura," that's got me at its center? Locke. Locke talked about the tacit social contract between people in society and addressed the issue of responsibility and consent for the newborn of this world.

Paul McCartney's new album is pretty good. I bought it at Best Buy the day it came out. I listen to it now and then. It's got some very good songs worth repeated listening for the music and, at times, the lyrics.

Life happens at a certain speed. For us, 24 frames per second, the speed of motion film, is fast enough to trick us into thinking we're seeing live action -- our visual systems seem to get by at a rather slow sampling rate. A fly might see things differently. I think it does. 24 frames per second would look like slow motion snapshots slowly clicking by. For a slug, if it could see, 24 frames per hour might be too much information. "How can you catch the sparrow?" as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young asked. Life is long or short, depending on your current perspective.

Weird Word of the Day: subfusc

Weird word I'd never seen before. Cool definition.

subfusc: Dark or dull in color; drab, dusky. [from Latin subfuscus, "brownish, dark," from sub-, "under" + fuscus, "dark-colored."]

Dave Attell's Advice for Young Comics

I got myself a ticket to see the comedian Dave Attell (perhaps best known from Comedy Central's "Insomniac" show) in Boston this Friday.

I've been getting a lot of e-mail from aspiring comedians who want to break into the exciting world of stand-up comedy and want my advice.

Well, if you want to spend your life going from airport to club to strip club to ATM back to strip club and then masturbating in a hotel room, then this is the career for you. The only advice I have is this: Go to your local comedy club and go up on an open mic night, and keep doing it over and over. There are no shortcuts or words of wisdom; it's different for everybody. And always remember, what the fuck do I know?

Good luck, God bless, Dave Attell.

That advice sounds about right for a lot of things. It boils down to: work hard, keep trying, and be realistic.