from smashed to sober in two minutes

A pill to eradicate the hangover is already out there, available at Albertsons, Wal-Mart, and other fine stores. But what about a pill to eradicate drunkenness? Too far-fetched? Perhaps not. [subs. req.]

What if you could have all that is good about alcohol, with none of the bad? What if you could enjoy a night of frivolous fun, then simply pop a pill for instant revival? Your sobriety restored, home you'd ride - or even drive - to a good night's sleep (or better) with no risk of a hangover. Or what if, before imbibing, you could swallow a tablet that would block the negative effects, such as memory loss? Better yet, imagine there was a substitute that could deliver relaxation and merriment without the nausea, disorientation or aggression. In fact, what if one day this dream drink could be so well-tailored that even a lifetime of indulgence would leave the liver, brain and heart unharmed?

It may sound too good to be true, but that day may not be as far off as you think. There's already a drug that can sober up a drunken rat in 2 minutes flat, and researchers are busy searching for compounds to do the same in humans. The memory preservative is not fantasy either, nor is the notion that with a little tinkering, pharmacologists could come up with a faux alcohol able to mimic the charms of booze with less of the sordidness.

The article goes on to explain two competing methodologies: modifying or supplementing alcohol so it has a different or shorter-lasting effect on the brain, or building a new kind of guilt-free, pleasurable drug from the chemical up. It doesn't matter which route is fastest. You can pretty much guarantee that someone, somehow will succeed.

And, when that happens, ironically, a lot of people will be very, very unhappy, and will fight hard to keep it unavailable.

Nutt suspects that only an intervention by government - announcing that it supports the making of safer alcohol, that they will tax it preferentially, or regulate it differently - is likely to make the difference. There are reasons for optimism on this front. New Scientist has learned that the UK government has asked the Academy of Medical Sciences to look at the case for safer alcohol and make recommendations.

Even with government backing, drug companies will be cautious. "The pharmaceutical industry does not position itself to be going into the recreational market," says Ragan. There are always risks when you take a drug, he points out. When you're treating a life-threatening disease such as alcohol addiction, they may be risks you are willing to take. But those risks are harder to justify in the merely sozzled.

Add to that the moral indignation that attaches to any suggestion that boozers should be allowed to drink more safely, and it looks like an uphill battle for safer alcohol. Many people in the alcohol addiction recovery field believe fervently that the only solution is outright abstention, and any drug of the type Nutt suggests would meet with stiff opposition. As an example, Room points to a drug called propylthiouracil. Normally prescribed for an overactive thyroid, it has also been shown to protect against cirrhosis of the liver in alcoholics, but is not widely used for that purpose. "My theory of why [it] has not become better established as a medication for reducing the harm to an alcoholic's liver," he says, "is the fear that it will allow the alcoholic to continue drinking."

There's no glee so obnoxious as glee without guilt.

can a curmudgeon have a happy anniversary?

If he's the Comics Curmudgeon, he can. Happy second to the blogger who reads Pluggers and Mark Trail and Apartment 3-G so you don't have to.

Autoreply: The Muse is out indefinitely

I'm not a poet, but I know the feeling.

It doesn't bother me that I don't feel compelled to write poetry anymore. I'm being creative in other ways, and it's not a big deal.

But then again...

I do feel like I write good poetry...hell, I'm right next to Jim Daniels now! Twice!...so I want to get something on paper. I don't want just former versions of me to be in the magazines...I'd like current versions as well. I want my stuff to keep my fairly slim dream of publishing a book of poems alive.

I have a novel sitting in the back of my brain, tossing darts at the cerebral cortex and singing "Edelweiss" with the hippocampus (both tenors). As I've been reading books for the ninth grade curriculum, all I can think is, I can do this, when the story strikes. But something's in the way.

As TRP writes, "Quality follows quantity." I have a road trip to Chicago coming up this weekend. When I'm not driving, I'll be writing.

I send email... with my mind

Science fiction, meet science fact.

Surgeons drilled a hole in Nagle's skull and inserted a pill-sized chip covered with 96 protruding electrodes into his motor cortex, an area at the centre of his brain that normally controls bodily movement. The operation carries the risk of infection and brain damage, an especially chilling prospect for someone already quadriplegic.

The motor cortex is made up of billions of neurons that constantly produce electrical signals, known as "spikes". Activity in different parts of the motor cortex was already known to correspond to different limbs, but Donoghue's team was able to identify signals related to different movements of the same limb.

To do this, they asked Nagle to imagine moving a limb and recorded the corresponding electrical signals. They found that the same small clusters of neurons produced different numbers of spikes when imagined moving a limb in different ways. For example, the same cluster might produce 15 spikes when he thought about moving the left arm to the left and only six when he thought about moving it to the right.

Donoghue's team built a list of spike patterns and corresponding movements. By automatically matching these together, a connected computer allows Nagle to control his computer or robot arm.

violin subharmonics

Mix a musician with freaky talent and physicists with too much free time, and what do you get?

“Kimura makes a violin string vibrate in a totally new way. In physics we call this a driven and damped non-linear system, which we are particularly preoccupied with in our research,” Hanssen said. Driven and damped systems are, respectively, ones in which an outside force either stimulates or quashes a vibration. Nonlinear systems are ones in which there is no simple relation between a disturbance and the response to it.

Kimura said that if Hanssen’s team comes up with any answers, these may be useful to her, by suggesting yet new avenues to manipulate tones. “As an artist you are always searching for ways to expand the sound,” she said.

All she needs now is an amp that goes up to eleven.

get out and stay out

come on in!
Charles Bukowski

"These poems are part of an archive of unpublished work that Charles Bukowski left to be published after his death," the book announces--making it the ninth posthumous collection of the poetic asshole's work. The title poem introduces the bilge to follow.

welcome to my wormy hell...
plenty of room for us all,
sucker

The reader knows exactly what to expect: self-indulgent, too-clever griping disguised as blue collar angst. In "nothing but a scarf," the speaker bitches about a "facile and bright" writer with "no edge."

I thought,
Jesus Christ, if this is what they
want,
from now on
I might as well write for
the rats and the spiders
and the air and just for
myself.

which, of course, is exactly what
I did.

Utter bullshit. As Allen Ginsberg put it, "I write poetry because I want to be alone, but I want to talk to people." If it's just for yourself, keep it that way, and never publish, especially not posthumously, beyond the sting of criticism.

The speaker of many of Bukowski's poems--dare we call him Bukowski, and treat the poems autobiographically?--is bitter at the ars-gratia-fartis literary set.

in decades past
I once warned
some poet-friends
of mine
about the masturbatory
nature of poetry readings
done just
for the applause of
a handful of
idiots

The self-righteous prophet of "I'm not all-knowing but..." meets an eager up-and-comer in "form letter," amazed that he would be sent "such obvious crap...."

I myself have never mailed any
of my work to anybody but
an editor or a publisher.
despite the fact that
my own work
was rejected for
decades...

and joins forces with a bartender to denounce the pretentious in "talking about the poets."

"if I was the policeman
of the world," the barkeep
continued, moving the drink
toward me, "many a darling
poet would either be allowed to
starve or forced to get a
real job."

After a few of these jeremiads bashing those who've never ridden the bulls and drank the whiskey and slept with the whores only write about the bulls and whiskey and whores, in an imaginary land where the music is "only for me," it's difficult to take speaker-Bukowski as anything but a crank. But hey--you're welcome to try! Come on in!

local education news, 7/11

As noted earlier, the Olympia School Board met last night to discuss the 2006-2007 budget, in advance of the public comment session this coming Monday. Not all requests for funding were met.

Any new spending means less money for future years unless the Legislature decides to increase school funding, district officials said. Lahmann's $73.9 million budget proposal includes about $4.6 million - or 6.2 percent - in a reserve fund....

Lahmann's proposal adds almost $125,000 to special education, including assistance targeting autistic students, disabled children from birth to preschool and non-native English speakers.

But it doesn't include several others, such as adding a full-time position to coordinate special education students' transition from high school to adult life after they've completed school.

"We want our full set of recommendations," said Donna Obermeyer, a Bridges member and the parent of a child in special education. "That's what we're going to push for."

In other news, the North Thurston District has created a special administrative position to tackle WASL score improvement and remediation.

Oliver said that while the district will be looking at programs to address the needs of those students who need to pass the WASL in the next two years, the middle schools are also in the middle of upgrading the math program, which will help students in the long run.

"If we don't do that, we're going to have the same problem in the future," he said. "We need to back it down to grades nine, eight, seven, so they're in a position to pass the WASL in tenth grade."

Oliver said among his first tasks will be looking at different programs that have been successful, and then bring those to the schools.

do as I say, and only in English

Via Nick Gillespie, we learn of Steve Lonegan, mayor of Bogota, NJ, who is offended by a Spanish-language sign.

Mayor Steve Lonegan said the McDonald's billboard on River Road near Elm Avenue and the railroad overpass is offensive because it sends the message that Spanish speakers and immigrants do not need to learn how to speak English.

"English is the language that binds us as a community and as a country," Lonegan said Thursday. "This billboard says, 'You Hispanics can't learn English, so we're going to put up this sign.' It's really sending the wrong message."

Minor problem: on the left hand side of Bogota, NJ's municipal website, far below Lonegan's photo, is a funny little graphic.

How thoughtful--a newcomer can read the city's website in Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, Portuguese, or... Spanish.

preserving your right to employ dubious statistics

The great state of Oregon, called "maverick" to the point of cliché, may soon join the growing ranks of the smoke-free.

"It's time for legislators to step up to the plate and pass a law that protects all Oregonians from secondhand smoke," says Tabithia Engle of the Tobacco-Free Coalition of Oregon, which includes groups such as the American Heart Association and American Cancer Society.

In 2001, the Legislature passed a measure that outlawed smoking in businesses but exempted bars, taverns, bar areas inside restaurants, bowling alleys and bingo halls in most places. More than 35,000 people work in those establishments, and Engle says the surgeon general's report makes it clear that their health is being put at risk by exposure to secondhand smoke.

The report, released June 27, corroborates what many health experts and anti-smoking activists have argued for years: that even minimal exposure to secondhand smoke can cause severe health problems, including heart disease and lung cancer.

Except the report did no such thing.

Of course, it's not the first time antismoking advocates have used junk science to prop up paternalistic public policy.

'scuse me while I kiss the sky

To the literal-minded reader of Genesis 11, humanity's baffling mix of myriad languages arose out of hubris, as God punished ancient architects by sowing linguistic confusion. It worked for a time.

But God had better act again, and soon. In the ultimate act of mad science, physicists are working on a way to create a mini-universe [subs. req.].

Sakai and his team realised that a seemingly stable monopole in our universe is always teetering on the brink of expansion - needing just a nudge to start it inflating. Hurling mass onto the monopole - increasing its energy density - will push it over the edge, leading to runaway inflation (www.arxiv.org/gr-qc/0602084). "Our calculations show that, given enough energy, the monopole will inflate eternally," Sakai says.

This process could be triggered naturally. According to Sakai, if a monopole floating through space collided with another massive object it would gain the mass needed to trigger inflation. One candidate is a cosmic string - a kind of high-energy rip in space-time. Though we have yet to see one, cosmic strings may have been created as a by-product of the big bang.

But since we have no cosmic strings - and we'd like to remain in control of the project - Sakai suggests we might be able to trigger inflation by hurling particles onto a monopole in an accelerator. This would add mass, and thus energy, to the monopole, and make it blow up into an entirely new universe.

It would be an extraordinary achievement, of course, but what happens then? It's one thing to create a universe, but quite another to know where to keep it. After all, an eternally inflating universe might be expected to take up quite a bit of space - the cupboard under the stairs simply won't do.

Actually this wouldn't be a problem, Sakai says. For a start, the process warps space-time enormously, so that it is no longer the Euclidean space we are familiar with. This highly distorted space doesn't have the same geometry as normal space, so it's not as if the universe would blow up and engulf us....

The question is, would it be worth all the effort? Linde thinks so. "I sat down and really thought about why we should even care about creating a universe in the laboratory," Linde says. "We put energy into the baby universe to create it, but we can't get any energy out of it - we can't mine its resources." Once it's formed, he adds, its space and time - though growing - is entirely divorced from our own. "We can't jump into this tiny thing and visit it," says Linde. "We don't seem to be able to communicate with it at all."

In the end, Linde realised he had overlooked the obvious motivation: good old-fashioned megalomania. "Just imagine if it's true and there's even a small chance it really could work," he says. "In this perspective, each of us can become a god."

Woe unto us all.

staying intellectually fresh all summer long

For the past few months I've been helping completely revamp CHS's freshfolk English curriculum, one of the best experiences of my (admittedly brief) professional career. Our work has spilled into the summer, since it's impossible to escape the siren song of curriculum planning forever. You run out of wax and wear out the ropes binding you to the mast.

Today seven department members met at a house on Totten Inlet to discuss the books we've read and the gossip we've missed since the end of school, and, with the deli tray in place and the coffee percolated, to prepare the fall trimester coursework and figure out a list of books for literature circles. (The sun refused to break up the cloud cover, so we stayed on task, a remarkable achievement, given our loquacious host.)

I've learned that it's pretty darn tough to choose texts for a wide range of reading abilities, genres, styles, and backgrounds. I've had to read books I would never pick off a shelf--Slam!, Uglies, The Runner, Sabriel--and to re-examine every facet of my teaching in the light of research and my peers' expertise. Most important, though, I've learned the reward and intellectual satisfaction of collaborative curriculum construction.

Even in the summer.

staying intellectually fresh all summer long

For the past few months I've been helping completely revamp CHS's freshfolk English curriculum, one of the best experiences of my (admittedly brief) professional career. Our work has spilled into the summer, since it's impossible to escape the siren song of curriculum planning forever. You run out of wax and wear out the ropes binding you to the mast.

Today seven department members met at a house on Totten Inlet to discuss the books we've read and the gossip we've missed since the end of school, and, with the deli tray in place and the coffee percolated, to prepare the fall trimester coursework and figure out a list of books for literature circles. (The sun refused to break up the cloud cover, so we stayed on task, a remarkable achievement, given our loquacious host.)

I've learned that it's pretty darn tough to choose texts for a wide range of reading abilities, genres, styles, and backgrounds. I've had to read books I would never pick off a shelf--Slam!, Uglies, The Runner, Sabriel--and to re-examine every facet of my teaching in the light of research and my peers' expertise. Most important, though, I've learned the reward and intellectual satisfaction of collaborative curriculum construction.

Even in the summer.

[cross-posted at my other blog]

in which I meet Jed Whittaker

My wife and I are lounging in Sylvester Park, this time free of stentorian louts, when we're approached by a man with a clipboard.

"Would you like to end the war in Iraq?" he asks.

We laugh. What my wife is thinking, I don't know, but I'm thinking, If it's going to take an Amway purchase, so be it.

"I'll take that as a yes," replies clipboard toter, who introduces himself as Jed Whittaker, running for Congress against Brian Baird, but first collecting 1,000 mandatory signatures so he can put his name on the ballot.

After a brief discussion on the merits of pointless campaigns, protest votes, and the dubious status of the Washington state Libertarian Party (notice the website, suspiciously lacking upcoming events), I tell Mr. Whittaker that I don't give my personal information to strangers with clipboards, and he politely packs up and heads to the next park lounger.

My initial impression: nice guy, seems friendly, honest, principled, respectful, listens carefully, invites dialogue, doesn't have a chance of winning anywhere outside of downtown Olympia.

An examination of his past confirms my suspicions. Whittaker lost Alaskan bids for a U.S. senate seat in 1996 and a state senate seat in 2000, both as a Green Party candidate. (This year, despite his support for the Green party, the Greens refused to nominate him, hence his independent candidacy.)

Look at Whittaker's announcement on Olyblog.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jed Whittaker and I am an independent candidate for Congress in the third congressional district. My main platform is to end the war in Iraq, impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, balance the budget (because I am a fiscal conservative), and Univeral Health care [sic]. We are spending $120 billion a year on the war in Iraq, and that is money we could be using to provide free health care to all Americans. I am a graduate of Evergreen State College, and a member of the Laborer's Union Local 252. I have never crossed a picket line and I never will. I lived in Alaska for 40 years, and helped found the Green Party in Alaska. I have lived in Olympia for 4 years. I filed a lawsuit against the discriminatory election law in Washington state, which I lost last Friday (you won't read about it in the Olympian). I have challenged the incumbent congressman, Brian Baird, to donate $800,000 of the over $900,000 in his campaign fund to Bread and Roses to build a shelter for homeless veterans of the Iraq war. We already have homeless veterans of the Iraq war living on the streets of Olympia. Thank you for reading. Peace.

Futile but noble gestures aside, Whittaker's insinuation that The Olympian is ignoring him is disingenuous--his lawsuit was reported back in May.

Whittaker is a fighter. Back in 1996,

...Whittaker spent just $4,000 on his challenge of popular GOP incumbent Ted Stevens. Whittaker was so cash-poor he hitchhiked rides with bush pilots to get around the state. Stevens was returned to the Senate in a landslide, but Whittaker outpolled the Democratic candidate.

He was there to yell at Exxon when the Valdez spilled oil on Alaskan shores. He's even been arrested for protesting Bush. Even though he won't get my vote, I respect him for his community involvement and his attempt to bring fairness back to Washington's primaries.

I'm sorry, Jed. If only I had known who you were--if only you had told me about your accomplishments and your rap sheet, instead of assuming I was mostly interested in the Iraq occupation--I might have forgone my usual distrust of clipboards and signed your petition.

no thank you

They're struggling with the math WASL, but they don't want to take summer WASL prep classes. Question: if so few want remediation, where does all the extra money go? I could think of a few places....

fighting fire with fire

Would you be excited by the prospect of keeping 93% of convicted drug offenders from re-offending?

Would you be less excited if you knew it took another drug?

Today Joliff has more than 90 days clean and sober. She credits an experimental treatment program, called Prometa, that offers addicts a glimmer of hope through a combination of an antihistamine, a sedative and an antidepressant that stops the drug cravings.

Joliff was among 40 people — all of whom were stuck in the Pierce County drug-court system because they couldn't stay away from drugs — who were given a chance to try a new treatment for addiction through a pilot program.

Pierce County Alliance, the county's treatment center, found that 92.5 percent of the participants remained drug-free in the first three months of the trial — while 98 percent of the weekly random urine analyses tested negative for substance abuse. The relapse rate in drug court is about 50 percent....

Prometa is based on three medicines that were originally approved by the FDA for other maladies — the antihistamine hydroxyzine; flumezanil, which counteracts the effects of sedatives; and the anticonvulsant Neurontin — but which together have shown great promise for addicts....

Of the three pharmaceutical drugs that are administered during the treatment, one is given orally and two are administered intravenously once a day for three days. A second cycle of infusions is administered about three weeks later.

The treatment is finite, not habit-forming and shows few side effects, Torrington said.

The participants were allowed to choose Prometa. If its initial success carries on for the long term, you'd have to imagine that policymakers will consider making it mandatory, and exploring its use in other circumstances--who knows how it might affect sex addicts or kleptomaniacs.

Bowdlerists baffled by bench

A federal judge has ruled that VHS and DVD scrubbers can no longer release edited-for-prudes versions of Hollywood product.

Editing movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence is an "illegitimate business" that hurts Hollywood studios and directors who own the movie rights, said U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch in a decision released Thursday in Denver.

"Their [studios and directors'] objective ... is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies," the judge wrote. "There is a public interest in providing such protection."

These sorts of schemes have always amused me. Kate Winslet's bosom is the least offensive part of Titanic. There's no way you can make sense of a redacted The Libertine. It's not like removing profanity from Wedding Crashers will somehow magically make it upright and moral.

be true to your brewer

Why do coffee lovers stay loyal to their shop of choice? The halo effect. Assorted quotes:

"I like that this place is small and cute. There's just something about it.... All the girls (employees) are excited to see me when I come in."

"I know the people. It's a great place just to hang out.... It's kind of a hobby."

"It makes you feel like they know you.... They are so friendly."

"It's more than just coming to buy coffee, it's a place to socialize."

"I'm a total Starbucks customer. For me, it's all about consistency."

Most of the comments focus on the experience, not on the drink itself. Witness the popularity of Starbucks, which serves mediocre java (at least it's the same mediocrity everywhere you go) yet has remora-loyal patrons.

Am I weird for keeping my laptop at home, ordering my coffee to go, and taking it outside to enjoy with a better-looking backdrop?

when the jokes write themselves

A recent initiative to increase funding for LED research leads to this hilarious headline:

"Light bulb targeted as pinnacle of waste"

...by the federal government.

(The same federal government that is seriously considering prohibiting online gambling, as House Republicans strive to imitate the Left Coast.)

A Scanner Darkly anagram

Click "read more" for the answers.

1. Trasher of the Tedham Porterhouse legacy
2. Clinton guided by shout
3. Moldy rueben. Who's to blame?
4. Too bad, Finnish crooner makes mistake
5. Lusty whip-smart humped Tibetan bovines
6. Mrs. Ronnie's wapiti sense
7. String pushes crystal
8. Nude automobile with an attitude
9. Somehow she got the word out that McDonalds loves the trans fat



1. Dylan ransacker
2. cry led Arkansan
3. rank rye scandal
4. alack, Danny errs
5. carnal yak nerds
6. Nancy's elk radar
7. yarn deals crank
8. snarly naked car
9. sneaky lard narc




[111th in a series]

local education news

Two major stories in the Olympian about upcoming meetings.

The first: local parents, concerned about the education their autistic children receive in area districts, consider opening a private school.

The private school probably would start out as a K-4 or K-6 year-round school that would offer flexible schedules to about 10 to 20 students and their families, Holliday said. She also would like to offer swimming and horseback riding therapies and eventually expand the school to a high school.

But other details about the possible school have yet to be worked out, including where the money would come from.

Holliday said she likely would have to rely on parent donations and tuition to pay the $15,000 to $20,000 monthly payroll expenses. That doesn't include other costs, such as rent, insurance, curriculum and more. Meanwhile, Holliday still is looking for a site to buy or lease that would fit the school's needs.

The group will discuss the issue today at the Mud Bay Coffee Co., from 3:30-4:30 p.m.

The second: the Olympia School District meets Monday at 6:30 p.m. in the Knox Center to discuss the budget for 2006-2007. (No public comments.) Not surprisingly, the budget includes several measures to improve education for autistic students. There's much more, though, so check it out.