transhumanism and pain

i mentioned last time people's objections to cybernetics, specifically one that has to do with humanity. it's a common idea that the more someone works with technology, especially implants and biotechnology, the less 'human' they get; hence the usual stereotype of a cyborg as an uncaring, robotic soldier, the creation of irresponsible scientists in some sterile white laboratory. i often get flak about "losing my humanity", and although i don't exactly agree with it, i think that stereotype is where it comes from, and also from people's equation of 'human' with 'natural'. images of the enhanced tend to include assumptions like cyborgs will all be contemptuous of unmodified humans and cyborgs will want to make everyone into other cyborgs and even cyborgs will be people who have lost their feelings and ability to empathise with unmodified humans, which is more widespread than you'd think. damn you, Hollywood, for filling people's heads with this crap and making them less willing to accept real technological advances. damn you. there's only one tiny grain of truth in that picture, and that's the unfeeling part.

i don't mean that i'm an uncaring jerk because i have an interest in cybernetics. i'm a jerk with an interest in transhumanism, just like i'm a jerk who eats chocolate spread straight outta the jar; they're unconnected. what i do mean is that this shit really raises your pain tolerance, as well as making you seriously reexamine your concept of not damaging your body. i noticed that yesterday, when i was reopening a wound on my hand with a scalpel to stop it healing over before i could get a skin diver into it. the wounds are made with a biopsy punch, and i'd inserted a no.10 blade horizontally and swivelled it round under the skin in a circle, having gotten all the way to pulling out the loosened flesh and clots with a pair of tweezers before it occurred to me that maybe that's kind of fucking weird, and a normal person would have just put a plaster on it and given up on that piercing until they could get it redone. me, i bought another diver and reinserted it myself; after the magnet, and with me planning to do nine more in the comfort of my own home, it just didn't register as painful. or rather, it did, but i just don't care anymore. it needs to be done, damage in the short term that conveys an advantage in the long term.

so, You're gonna hurt yourself isn't really a valid objection either. i know. i don't mind hurting myself in exchange for a little more knowledge. in order to get subdermal components in place, right now a scalpel is necessary. in order to get transdermal ones to stay in place, you're gonna need to make incisions. the pain is bad at the start, but the longer i do this kind of thing and the more experiments i do, the less i seem to care about the pain at all. eventually i don't think i'll even consider it to hurt.

cybernetics: if you're not in pain, you're not doing enough science.

objections

so i'm sitting in the lecture theatre yesterday, playing with the magnetic stylus for my touch phone, pushing and pulling it along the desk without touching it like i'm Uri fucking Geller and generally not paying attention to anything else. this important work for the cause of the betterment of humanity is interrupted halfway through the lecture by a terrified whisper of, "Lepht, what are you doing?" from one of my housemates, say D, who's sitting next to me. she's a great caring type, but cybernetics isn't her bag at all and turns out she didn't know i had the neodymium.

"Psychic powers," i tell her as seriously as i can, and give myself away with my usual i'm-not-lying-guv shiteating grin. when i showed her the scar on my fingertip, she twigged that it was another backstreet modification, and freaked. holy shit, do people around here hate the idea of implants. in D's case, it's 'unnatural'; but i get a lot of people who have a lot of weird reasons for telling me i should stop experimenting with these things. viz.

1. That's just disgusting/scary/weird.
i get this one most of all, and it's the one i understand the least. i can get that self-surgery would be disgusting to watch, or maybe even to think of, if you were a squeamy bastard. but why is it disgusting for me to have implants if you don't have to watch the surgery? are people with pacemakers and blood glucose meters disgusting? same with 'scary'. are you afraid of people with artificial legs? if not, why are you so scared of me, and if so, what the fuck is wrong with you?
as for 'weird', well, brand me with a W. of course it's considered weird before everyone's adopted it.

2. There's no point until you have (insert ridiculously advanced technology here).
i've talked about this one before. saying we shouldn't experiment with cybernetics until robot shells and cyberjacks have been invented is like saying that we shouldn't have experimented with canoes until nuclear-powered destroyers were around. we've got components, soldering guns and minds, what's the holdup?

3. You don't know what you're doing. You'll hurt yourself.
well, yeah, i probably would hurt myself if i just jumped in at the deep end of each project and went for self-surgery before i'd designed the systems. i'd also get a lot more work done a lot quicker if doctors could do all the surgery for me, but that ain't gonna happen, so i don't have an alternative. it's not a reason to stop, it's a reason to be really fucking careful and study the anatomy of an area properly before i site things.
and if i knew what i was doing, i wouldn't call it research, as they say.

4. You're going to lose your humanity and become a soulless robot.
demonstrate to me that i have a soul to lose and i'll accept your evidence that cybernetics will make me lose mine. you do have evidence of those things, right?

5. It's not natural.
neither is chemotherapy. next objection.

6. You're just an undergraduate.
yeah, i am. in fact, i'm an undergraduate repeating an entire year, and my grades aren't at the very top of the class. but a degree doesn't magically confer the ability to do science, and if i can experiment now, why should i wait? if this means i can get some interesting system working two or three years earlier, what difference does it make whether i'm Lepht Anonym or Lepht Anonym, BSc?

i'll probably hear more than this before my career is over. i hope i do; it'd mean i got somewhere and did something worth criticising.

chillin' in 1954

i'm a transhumanist, someone who believes that technology can and should be used to improve the human condition, and specifically, the human body. this is why i have all these implants, and why i design more - i want to learn something about how to use technology to help me, and in doing that, maybe help someone else to improve themselves too, or even create something that helps millions of us.

my view of the future of such implants is completely bottom-up, in that i'm for creating implants that can do a fraction of what i want an entire transhuman body to be able to, and then combining them in my research subject - yours truly - as science and i progress, to eventually add them together and get closer to what i want. hence the tiny, homebrew components i've sited and had sited are simplistic and monofunctional; but an array of tiny, monofunctional devices is what we call a computer, and i hope the whole human who has many modifications like these will be better than the sum of their parts.

a lot of people don't agree with me. go to a discussion on transhumanism like the ones started by my buddies at Atheist Nexus, and you find people wanting downloadable silicon brains, full-conversion robotic bodies, cybernetic jacks into virtual representations of the Net, ad nauseam. now these are wonderful dreams, sure, but we're not living in a manga or a game, we're adults alive in 2008 and we're probably not gonna live to see this shit. i see so many people totally unmodified, hanging around in cyberspace waiting for Masamune Shirow's prosthetic robot bodies and electronic ghosts. it's not gonna happen in your lifetime, awesome as it'd be if it did. it's like we're sitting around in 1954, waiting for our robotic house servants and our flawless machine translation, before any of us has even taken a look at a neuron.

so we don't get ageless, beautiful super-cyborg shells, and we don't get mathematically enhanced solid-state brains to put in them. what we do get is various electronic components that aren't averse to being immersed in a wet environment, soldering guns, electronics knowledge readily available to anyone who can get to a library, and curious, inventive, spectacular human minds. what we do get is the curiosity and the resources to start creating those dreams.

so if you're a transhumanist as well, and you always wanted a cyberdeck, you can't have one yet. sorry. but don't sit on your ass waiting for someone else to invent them. experiment for yourself. design a few circuits, try an RFID security system out, see what today's technology can do for tomorrow's dreams and see what you can do to bring about some tiny part of that transhuman species you wanna see. get the fuck out there and put our philosophy into practice.

L

thermistor system in development

i traded two thermistors for a quantum mechanics primer today, from an absolute legend of an engineering buddy of mine. i'm siting them in the back of my left hand or wrist - haven't decided which yet; it's a question of practicality - in order to artificially replace (poorly, but better than nothing) my natural temperature sense, which has been pretty much obliterated by my painkiller use. the idea is that i'll be able to develop a small circuit with a lithium cell and a pair of LEDs, one for each thermistor, whose brightness will increase as the resistance of the thermistors decreases, meaning the hotter it gets, the brighter the LEDs should be.

i have a long way to go, including building the system, siting the implanted components, and testing it all, before i consider this a success, but the idea is pretty much there. i have no idea if my concept of how accurately the thermistors respond to temperature shifts is accurate, and that needs testing too.

the reason there are two sensors is (in my relatively worthless opinion) also pretty cool: one is in the ohm range, for sensing the temperature of things i touch, whereas the other is in the kiloohm range, for ambient temperature. combined, they should give a rudimentary picture of the temperature of my environment.

if i succeed here, the next step will be to replace the LED indications with a proper LCD readout of the temperature, which needs a microcontroller to calibrate the thermistors and perform the calculations necessary to translate their resistance values into grokable Celsius ones. that's a pipedream, for now, but the first setup i'm actively developing. more news as it evolves... this is gonna be one hell of an experiment.

RFID and implant tutorial

lets you be just as stupid and self-destructive as i am. may even get you referred to a shrink.

ODT:
http://stashbox.org/v/99392/rfid-tut.odt

PDF:
http://stashbox.org/v/99393/rfid-tut.pdf

the implant part is optional, so you could just use this to learn some beginner stuff about RFID and improve your knowledge of the EM4102 protocol... do whichever.

L

implants can't be addictive, right?

right?

so we all know i'm screwed when it comes to those things, and i only plan to get more so. so far the implant project is a massive, awesome pile of success: my original tag is cutely readable by a little C program i mutated out of some examples that came with the reader (cause i'm not actually as smart as people think i am), and i'm now working on a way to use AES or RSA (or something weird like the KHAZAD cipher i was considering before) to encrypt the tag data i'm currently storing within the program as escaped ASCII characters, and externally as hex literals, into something a little less snarfable. screenshots will be up as soon as i can get a metadata stripper for them...

i'm also not doing any University work, and i keep forgetting to eat.

second, i still want a Hitag read-writable tag. if anyone knows where a poor government-handout-dependent wetware hacker can get one, let me know; i could have some serious fun with one of those little fuckers.

and third, i'm currently researching the feasibility of an implantable temperature sensor with an external LCD gauge or some other surface-mounted display. (it's because i can't feel hot and cold properly anymore. that and it'd be awesome.) some ideas:

1. it's gonna be the messiest operation yet, needing at least four incisions as far as i can see, if i fix the display to the surface of my skin. you could do that quite easily with subcutaneous "planks" - little flat bits of polymer that extend for a way under the skin, porous so that flesh grows back into them. it'd be a total bitch to remove, but why would i do that?

2. i wanted to site it on the back of my wrist. according to Gray's, i've got two deep veins, two deep arteries, four important nerves of the hand and a hideously complicated little web of surface vessels to look out for, all of which i'm fucked if i hit (well, nerves and arteries at least, not to mention tendons.) i might want another site, but i can't think of an easy way to look at the display anywhere else.

3. i'm gonna need a whooole lot more equipment than i have right now. for a start, it's looking like my little scalpels aren't gonna cut it with nondelicate parts of my anatomy or big incisions: cutting with them is painfully slow, and with three or four cuts to make, i can't afford to be slow, so i'm gonna want:
- Lidocaine and some syringes (and probably some smaller hypos, mine are fucking huge)
- most likely a suture kit, it being less messy and more likely to take that way
- more steristrips
- Betadine

also more parts: a soft tube-embedded fluid temperature probe (Eltek is like a candy store that way), a tiny CPU of some sort (that's gonna be a huge challenge) and a display as small as i can get it, plus a way to integrate them all.

4. there's wireless temperature tags out there, but no ampoule types, so i might try and create one by myself just as POC if they'll let me into the University electronics labs (not likely; they know what i want in there for).

y'all know by the time i'm fifty i'm gonna be the goddamn Borg; that or i'm gonna have killed myself doing something retarded with a bonesaw and a C-LEG. peace out, meatbags.

L

tag recognition program, rudimentary draft

/* rfid-mod
* simplistic rfid recog program heavily based on Phidgets Inc's RFID-simple
* version: 0.1b
* author: Lepht Anonym */


#include
#include

/* attachHandler
* displays status to the terminal */
int attachHandler(CPhidgetHandle reader, void *userPointer)
{
int serial;
const char *name;

CPhidget_getDeviceName (reader, &name);
CPhidget_getSerialNumber(reader, &serial);
printf("%s %10d attached.\n", name, serial);

return 0;
}

/* detachHandler
* displays status to the terminal */
int detachHandler(CPhidgetHandle reader, void *userPointer)
{
int serial;
const char *name;

CPhidget_getDeviceName (reader, &name);
CPhidget_getSerialNumber(reader, &serial);
printf("%s %10d detached.\n", name, serial);

return 0;
}

/* errorHandler
* prints errors to the terminal */
int errorHandler(CPhidgetHandle reader, void *userPointer, int errorCode, const char *unknown)
{
printf("error handled: %i - %s\n", errorCode, unknown);
return 0;
}

/* tagHandler
* turns on the LED port and prints the ID of the tag
* later, it will store the read tag in a local var so it can be verified as either matching L's or not
* pls note this is not a secure thing to do as the tag value could be strings'd out of the program (should hash'n'md5 instead) */
int tagHandler(CPhidgetRFIDHandle reader, void *userPointer, unsigned char *tag)
{
int i;
CPhidgetRFID_setLEDOn(reader, 1);
printf("got tag: ");
for(i = 0 ; i < 5 ; i++) printf("%02x ", (*(tag+i))&0xff);
printf("\n");
return 0;
}

/* tagLostHandler
* turns off the LED port and prints the ID of the lost tag to the terminal */
int tagLostHandler(CPhidgetRFIDHandle reader, void *userPointer, unsigned char *tag)
{
int i;
int var[5];
CPhidgetRFID_setLEDOn(reader, 0);
printf("tag lost: ", tag);
for(i = 0 ; i < 5 ; i++) printf("%02x ", (*(tag+i))&0xff);
// store that same data as a variable:
for(i = 0; i < 5; i++) { var[i] = (*(tag+i)&0xff); }
// TODO check that the separate parts of the var array match L's implant
printf("\n");
return 0;
}

/* displayProperties
* displays the data about a physical reader to the terminal */
void displayProperties(CPhidgetRFIDHandle reader)
{
// declare variables for the data and a buffer to store device type in:
int serial, version, outputs, antennaStatus;
const char* type;

// get data from the device:
CPhidget_getDeviceType((CPhidgetHandle)reader, &type);
CPhidget_getSerialNumber((CPhidgetHandle)reader, &serial);
CPhidget_getDeviceVersion((CPhidgetHandle)reader, &version);
CPhidgetRFID_getNumOutputs(reader, &outputs);
CPhidgetRFID_getAntennaOn(reader, &antennaStatus);

// print to the terminal:
printf("%s\n", type);
printf("serial number: %10d\nversion: %8d\n", serial, version);
printf("number of digital outputs: %d\n\n", outputs);
printf("antenna status: %d\n", antennaStatus);
}

/* main
* administrates */
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
const char *error;
int result;

// declare and create a handle for the reader:
CPhidgetRFIDHandle reader = 0;
CPhidgetRFID_create(&reader);

// set handlers for device and tag events:
CPhidget_set_OnAttach_Handler((CPhidgetHandle)reader, attachHandler, NULL);
CPhidget_set_OnDetach_Handler((CPhidgetHandle)reader, detachHandler, NULL);
CPhidget_set_OnError_Handler((CPhidgetHandle)reader, errorHandler, NULL);
CPhidgetRFID_set_OnTag_Handler(reader, tagHandler, NULL);
CPhidgetRFID_set_OnTagLost_Handler(reader, tagLostHandler, NULL);

// open device:
CPhidget_open((CPhidgetHandle)reader, -1);

// wait for the physical RFID reader device to be attached:
printf("polling for physical device presence...");
if((result = CPhidget_waitForAttachment((CPhidgetHandle)reader, 10000)))
{
CPhidget_getErrorDescription(result, &error);
printf("device error: %s\n", error);
return 1;
}

// activate the antenna and display properties to the terminal:
CPhidgetRFID_setAntennaOn(reader, 1);
displayProperties(reader);

// keep the program open until the user is done:
printf("now scanning for tags.\nhit any key and enter to end session.\n");
getchar();

// close the device and free the memory back up:
printf("closing...\n");
CPhidget_close((CPhidgetHandle)reader);
CPhidget_delete((CPhidgetHandle)reader);
return 0;
}

meathacked

fuck yeah, there's a chip in the hand i'm not typing with. it took longer and hurt more than i expected, but bled a lot less; the first thing i'm gonna do as a cyborg (pfft) is a. scare the shit outta the kiddies in the spring term's first lecture, and b. show you guys how to be just as irresponsible and foolhardy as me.

first up, i should explain why the fuck i did this. for a start, it's gonna make some awesome crypto projects - the chip is inherently insecure, seeing as how it broadcasts in cleartext, and i'm really fucking interested in how they can be incorporated into securer systems. also, i've been wanting to do this just to prove to myself i could ever since reading Battle Angel Alita and being told by a seven-year-old that i couldn't take a pinprick without my pain pills (little shit). i think this and my countless liver-purgings sans analgesia have proved that kid wrong =] third, i did it cause i wanted to know what it was like, plain and simple.

second, why i did it this way, in a student bathroom, instead of having it shot in like a normal... dog whose owners don't wanna lose it. like i've yelled about before, .gov health services won't do this sorta thing for a few reasons: takes up real patients' time, isn't medically necessary, i might sue (yeah...) there's no vet in my part of town, and i doubt they'd do it anyway, so i was left on my own...

so how to do it? aw, here goes. i'm assuming you got a rice-grain type glass ampoule tag.

1. gather ya tools. you need a sterile scalpel (Swann-Morton disposables are the cleanest bet, but a boiled and Milton'd surgical knife would be way more efficient), wound spray or iodine for cleaning the area and the incision, gauzes, steri-strips, fabric strapping and cotton wool. also, it's good to have TCP or Milton liquid antiseptic on hand in case shit gets nasty. you're also gonna want a permanent marker, in addition to the tag itself.

2. find a buddy to help ya out (preferably a non-squeamish buddy who's at least a bio student) and a secure, clean bathroom or kitchen to do the "operation" in. it's this buddy's job to spot you, help you make the big cut, swab while you're inserting the chip, help you dress the wound and call 999 if you nick an artery.

3. get ya marker. now, put your hand flat on a surface. look for the triangular, vein-free area between the bones of your index finger and thumb; that's where we're gonna insert the chip. draw a solid line a centimetre long, in the clearest part of this area you can see, parallel to your thumb. you gotta get it the right way round though.

4. make sure the area is really clean, then wash your hands like you had TB and sterilise them all over with the wound spray or Milton. you can wear latex gloves if that's easier to work in. have your buddy wash and steri his hands too.

5. now for the pain. get something to bite, and make the first cut all the way along your marker guideline on your hand. it'll take about ten or twenty strokes of the scalpel before you get deep enough to insert anything, and brother, it will hurt like fuck. get your buddy to take over if you get the shakes, make sure you keep swabbing the blood away with Milton or whatever, and stop when you're about two mil deep and you can see distinct lips of skin on either side of the wound.

6. and now for the fucking nasty part. push the end of your ampoule chip underneath the 'lip' closest to the index finger bone, where it'll probably lodge. now shove that motherfucker in until you can't see any of it - it can go under the skin, you just need to force it. this will also hurt a lot, but just do it all at once or you'll never make it.

7. once you can't see any part of the tag, swab the wound until you can close it with steri-strips, then sterilise the whole hand again, and cover the strips with a gauze pad. bind your hand up real tight with the strapping and get yourself and your buddy a shot, cause bro, it's over.

so, uh, enjoy yourselves. more on this once it heals.

L

meat hackery

ok, i got kinda sick this year. the consequence being that all my university work is gonna get repeated next year, all my quals and everything, and i got a little more time on my hands. so first up, i'd like to direct you to why the lucky stiff's interactive Ruby tutorial; it's in ur browsah, defyin ya non-administrator install permissions, and it's fun as fuck; i'm liking this sorta scriptomatic approach.

secondly, i'm going right ahead with my RFID chip project, despite not one single fucking medical professional anywhere in the damn city being able to help me. i'm so fucking mad at these assholes; the NHS won't do it because they don't have the equipment, or the ones that do have it - like for the contraceptive implant that millions of women get every day at their damn local surgery - just refuse to do it, i've had three hospitals say they just won't do it with no fucking reason or justification. this is after i tell them that if no fucker helps me out, i'm gonna do it myself with a scalpel and a fuckload of Miltons, and they still tell me they won't help...

anyway, results later. i've got med student buddies, a copy of Gray's Anatomy (the text, not the dumbass show), a sterile scalpel and a fuckload of painkillers...

ladies and gentlemen, let the meat hack begin.

that bridge is not my roof

my lab-attending little friends: look, i know, okay? i don't need to be told about the holes in my sweater. i know. i also know about the rips in my shoes, the less-than-superior quality of my laptop, the fact that my backpack is almost as old as i am, my eighties casque headphones (yeah, it's not a retro fashion statement) and that all the games you see me playing in tutorials are '90s abandonware. in short, i know i look like a hobo, but it's rude to be making bum jokes about the only entity in the room which happens to be both prepared to do your homework for money and capable of getting 95% on it: i ain't gonna help you if you diss me, morons.

so. in order to convince you, i propose a sociological study. i got a hypothesis: the kids who look the poorest in class, i.e. those who bought the textbooks and a portable HDD instead of using their loan money on four Prada T-shirts and a fake-ripped pair of jeans (hell, i can show you how to get a more authentic pair for free), will actually turn out to have learned more over the course of a year. since most of you have just finished your first year, i suggest using you as the experiment population. i'll submit you all to an independent, randomly-selected panel, who will give you each a "hobo rating" of 0 to 1, based on the newness of your clothes, brand presence, how bothered you seem about your hair, etc.

i will then take your hobo ratings, and plot them against your CSx grade averages. i predict at least a +0.2 correlation between hoboness and average exam mark. if i don't find one, i'll leave you alone and stop chewing you out for writing XHTML in all caps. if i do, you have to shut the fuck up about my ripped-up goddamn fatigues.

behold the STFU-inducing power of stats.

Lepht

PS. two more globbets of awesome - 1. i have an official TriOptimum mail account and 2. i can offer the System Shock games as .iso images or cracked files to anyone who wants them, purely because more people could have fun playing them. and they compare me to Professor Snape.

a message from the User!

more correspondence on audio, this time from the man, James Atkinson of the Granite Island Group. i'm actually quite impressed that he replied to me in the first place, seeing as in this sphere, i'm kind of scum. a peasant of the white-hat world, if you will.

It is properly called "audio correlation" where a known audio signal (pressure waves) are induced into an area, and then those same signals are measured both as a physical movement elsewhere, or matching electrical response is sought..

it's a little over my head, seeing as Atkinson is officially trained in TEMPEST, and i'm a dabbler, but i think this might mean you could use the audio signals as a means to verify an image of your target's monitor you obtained via other ways. i've asked him for clarification, and meanwhile, yours truly has about half an experiment proposal finished...

and now, on to today's a la carte special: crispy fried bitch with extra cheese. roquefort, no less.

it is known otherwise as "For fuck's sake, it's spelled 'ATHEIST'."


Lepht
(baby-eating "athiest fundamentalist")

what time is it?

my fellow geeks of the Interweb: we may have some serious experimental fun on our hands, the kind that were i twelve years old i should spell "phun". i've recieved a reply from the admin of cryptome.org, who i won't name out of respect:

You're on the right track. Audial leakage of surveillance equipment is
used by counter-surveillance experts to pick up inadvertent signals.
Audial emanations of other electronic equipment are certainly
likely but I've not seen a study of it.
[...]
Let me know what you come up with, we've not published anything
on audial TEMPEST.

what time is it? it's EXPERIMENTATION TIME.

Lepht

audial TEMPEST

sit down at any lab PC or perhaps at your home machine, jack in your headphones and reboot. during the boot sequence, and under various OS, during periods of high system activity, you'll hear strange low-volume audial chatter - i'm pretty sure it's been abused by woos to make "electronic voice phenomena", in fact.

i got a different hypothesis about this chatter. i think it's a form of data leakage; like a Category III-risk optical TEMPEST indicator - a HDD status LED or the indicator LED on some routers and broadband modems - it seems to correspond to the data passing through the device. on a PC, you hear what seem to be unique patterns of chatter during application startups, writes to and reads from the HDD, and when joining or acceding from a network.

this is to my curiosity what liquid oxygen is to a barbecue. i have got to find out whether data from my networks is leaking out the sound card as well as out the emissions of the components, the old-school cathode-ray monitors and half the LEDs on everything.

therefore, i have a new research project. i'll be back with all the existing research i can find on the subject ASAP. you guys are in for an ethically awesome, fact-finding, data-jacking, network-sniffing, audially-challenging goddamn adventure!

my Zero Cool-emulating childhood self would be really impressed with this.


Lepht

the addiction idea

i do wonder sometimes if this Net addiction business ain't in the same class as electrosensitivity: that is, the psychosomatic one. sorry folks, but 30+ clinical studies with decent methodology say you're not allergic to electricity, and zero say you are - the fact that you're experiencing the symptoms nonetheless means you need to figure out what actually is causing them, pronto.
(there's an appropriate Randi insult here: You're so open-minded your brain has fallen out.)

i'm wondering if anyone's made a clinical case study out of any of these guys. i'd be really fucking interested to know the root cause of it - the Net's not heroin, it isn't physically or neurochemically addictive sitting on your arse all day cabled into your rig (and i say that from experience, believe me) - so what does make these guys keep coming back? what does 24-7 connection give them that it doesn't give me?

i'm no shrink - i don't know enough about people even to be an armchair one, even if i did possess any armchairs or the time to sit in them - so i can't begin to guess. but i'll be chuffed when someone does.

what i do know is this - the reports of the Beijing clinic all show the poor shites hooked up to drips, and the staff refused unanimously to tell reporters anything about the IV fluid. a nurse let slip to Wired in 2005 that the drips are meant to "rebalance the brain secretions", but after that, nothing.

i'm slightly skeptical as to the efficacy of this unknown medicine, if only because it's unknown. the secrecy surrounding it smells distinctly of woo; occam's razor is telling me it isn't the case that they've discovered a neurological root, isolated the neurochemical imbalance that's the heart of the problem, developed an IV solution that really does work on the imbalance and for some unknown reason refused to publish any data, make any international journals aware of the discovery or capitalise off it in any way whatsoever, including just making themselves look good...

in any case, i'm liking the 17" TVs and Pooh comforters. maybe i should just check into one of these places and find out for myself what the fuck's going on in there (assuming my country even has anything that panders to the addictions of technologically-literate scum such as myself).

if anyone wants me, i'll be in the local hospital, trying to get the NHS to prescribe me a T1 line.


Lepht