So one time this culture discovered that a readily-available plant had a really tasty component, and they began harvesting, and then cultivating and later, processing and refining and making all kinds of analogs and variations on the tasty stuff. Everyone loved it, and it sold like gangbusters, and the refineries and plantations and products ( Read more... )

So it occurred to me the other day that I neglected to put one major thing in the last post:  I STILL NAP.  This makes my version of the "typical overworked monophaser" sleep-schedule a bit different from the norm; but it also illustrates that 20-minute naps can still be awesome in that context.

I don't nap with the kind of regularity I think would ( Read more... )

Oooo-ee, has anybody seen The Economist’s feature on How to Stop the Drug War?  I’m still reading it, but it’s worth noting the comments are up over 400, and that their very calm, well-supported conclusion is that “legalization is the least bad option”.  So far I’m agreeing completely.

Did you know there IS probably such a thing as Hair Blindness?  ( Read more... )

According to Matthew Good, a CD with cricket-sounds on it will put you to sleep amazingly fast.  Mr. Good’s not polyphasic, but he is an awesome musician and he once had T-shirts made that said "I hear Matt Good is a real asshole", so I think he deserves honorary credibility anyway.  (Being married to a musician and self-proclaimed bastard probably ( Read more... )

Two days ago - Aug. 26 - was the anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment, the one that gave women the right to vot
( Read more... )

From Scienceblog:

"…[scientists] analyzed trends in psychotherapy provision using data from national surveys of office-based psychiatrist visits from 1996 through 2005.

Over the 10-year period, psychotherapy was provided in 5,597 (34 percent) of 14,108 visits lasting longer than 30 minutes. The percentage of visits involving psychotherapy declined ( Read more... )

Have you ever read about how women used to be diagnosed with "hysteria" for basically anything that made them act "overexcited"?  Or hey, to back up a little further, how excitable and/or mentally ill people were treated as "possessed by the devil"?  Or oo, here’s a good one, remember way back in the day when children who didn’t sit quietly and ( Read more... )

Hey, folks.

This morning I started on the "Sleep Drugs" appendix of the Ubersleep book.  Now, I don’t know much of anything about the usual sleep drugs, since I’ve managed to avoid them all my life (with no small help from my polyphasic schedule).  But I am going to do a bit on Modafinil (Provigil), since it’s a different class of substance than ( Read more... )

Thank you, Tom Tomorrow.

"One of the great mysteries of political life in the United States is why Americans are so devoted to their health-care system. Six times in the past century-during the First World War, during the Depression, during the Truman and Johnson Administrations, in the Senate in the nineteen-seventies, and during the Clinton ( Read more... )