Dexamphetamine - A Brave New World

Okay, so it has been a long time since this blog has been updated and a lot has happened since then.

One of the bg events in my life has been that I have been prescribe dexamphetamine for my ADHD. This is an illegal drug for most people, However the amount of hassle that you have to go trough to get half a gram a month means you will probably find it much easier to buy some in a club in Kings Cross than bug your doctor for some.

Medical dosages are generally much smaller than recreational dossges. It would seem that someone taking half a gram of amphetamine sulphate would be getting anything between say 50mg and 500mg of the drug while these are 5mg tablets. Also because of their isomisation (dexamphetamine is the right handed molecule) the effect is (apparently) a lot smoother and has fewer side effects.

So what is it like? Productivity is through the roof, mood is much better. I’ll update you as it beds in. I can’t help thinking that many people would benefit from this drug and that it should be available to more than a handful of well informed patients with access to private medicine.

A Life of Vice

I have compiled a list of the surprising things that are legal in various countries around the world. I have been looking at things that are actually allowed in developed countries rather than obscure loop wholes or third world countries. I do have to add the disclaimer that I am not advocating all of these.

• Germany – this might not sound like a home of vice but it is the home of the motor car and the motorway. They still have many sections of the autobahn without any speed limit. Yes, you can drive as fast as you want
• Portugal – The possession of any drugs for personal use is not a criminal matter. Do expect an intervention from your doctor if you are caught however.
• Spain – Sex with 13 year olds. The age of consent in Spain, subject to some complexities, is 13 years old.
• Holland – Obviously the most fun one to write about.
o Marijuana can be bought over the counter in tightly regulated coffee shops
o Magic mushrooms are still freely available despite various attempts to ban them.
o You can buy videos of people having sex with animals or pretending to be raped.
• Canada – Seal clubbing
• Norway – Whaling
• Switzerland – Assisting suicide
• Japan and Russia – It is legal to possess child pornography for personal use.
• Belgium – It is legal to have consentual incestual sex with someone aged over 16, in Brazil 14.
• Czech Republic – Handguns are generally available to anyone over 21, 16 in some cases.

Enjoy

Random revelations (G rated version)

1. I was crash tackled by one of Margaret Thatcher’s minders
2. I had to find Morrissey a place to urinate
3. I went on a selection weekend to be an intelligence officer. It wasn’t the job for me.
4. I was interviewed to be a document analyst at Goldman Sachs. I failed the selection test miserably.
5. The best day at work I ever had was working in the rooftop of the boiler room at the big day out while Underworld and Fat Boy Slim were playing
6. I once got on the wrong overnight train in the middle of winter in Poland but made it eventually.
7. I have been in charge of repossessing cars
8. I was asked by a senior Australian politician to leak the identity of the zodiac driver in the Rainbow Warrior bombing to the UK media. It was bit of a none-story as it was already widely known that he was involved. I didn’t bother passing the story on.
9. I hold the yellow (first) belt in Chinese style kickboxing and the green (second) in Thai style.
10. I once passed myself off a speaking Spanish in a Facebook IM conversation even though I was using Google translate.

Futurama - A very existential job offer

I have a job offer for you. Basic knowledge processing work, unlimited salary, unlimited travel benefits, any hours you want and amazing working conditions.

Interested? The only catch is that you will be placed in suspended animation by your employer on a feed of liquid nutrients and your job will exist entirely in a virtual reality world. A bad day or even the non leisure parts of your life can be wiped from you memory. It will be indistinguishable from real life. Any lifestyle that can be computer generated can be yours. You will be able to interact with other people in the system or with computer generated promiscuous blondes.

Science fiction or reality? Well still science fiction at the moment but in forty years it may be very possible. I predict that by 2050 some people will be living significant parts of their lives in these conditions. It could bring a better quality of life for billions of people.

So could we be happy in these conditions? We have no idea what human life would be like in a world of surplus. Indeed I don’t think that the years of plenty in early 21^st century western world made people any happier. Scientists say that it is relative wealth that makes us happy so could we choose to be a millionaire in a world of virtual beggars? It doesn’t sound very appealing to me. Perhaps the virtual world could chuck some challenges in to keep us on our toes? Or would we subconsciously generate challenges for ourselves? As a Buddhist I believe that suffering forms a gateway to enlightenment,

One of the benefits would be the reduced strains on our bodies. Computers would monitor every aspect of our health and nano-bots could keep us healthy. This would mean that the aging process could be slowed down remarkably.

This possibility of suspended animation does begin to make long distance space travel look possible. Someone can put the Sat Nav on and go to sleep for 8 years while they travel to Sirius. The high speeds and suspended animation would mean that virtually no physical aging occurs at all.

The possibilities, questions and things that could go wrong are endless.

Random - My guide to electronic decluttering

In case anyone is a hoarder of information like me try these tips.

1. Email - Sort by date and delete everything older than a certain age. I find 2 years for random stuff and 6 years for important stuff works fine.
   
2. Email - Unsubscribe from any mailing lists that aren't important or you don't read. Wine and travel mailing lists are my favourites but if you don't read every time you can probably do without it.
   
3. Email - Delete any contacts that you don't need. I mean go through your contacts and delete everything from the safe list except for the ten or so people most of us email on a regular basis. Anything inbound can be added back to the safe list when it comes back in.
   
4. Email -Switch any newsgroups to daily or weekly summary rather than individual emails
   
5. Browser - Delete any bookmarks that aren't on your quick list. If you actually need them the sites can be found again.
   
6. Facebook etc - Switch of any email alerts that you don't really really need.
   
7. Phone - Delete any contacts that you don't use. You aren't going to get back in touch with that venture capital agent from your business scheme 3 years ago, besides he has probably lost his job by now. Anyone whose identity is in doubt when you look through your phonebook must go.
   
8. Phone - Reply "stop" to any text alerts that you don't really need.
9. If that's not enough cull some Facebook friends and people you follow on twitter.
10. Run a merge on your email and phone address books to tidy up any duplicates

If you are like me you will feel a lot better after you have done this. Please add any more in the comment section

Brave New World - Is the war on drugs collapsing?

As I read the papers in the UK and scan the news from across the world I can’t feeling that we have reached a tipping point in the prohibition of drugs. 14 US states (Colarado, Alaska, California, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington) allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. In the UK the issue has been brought to a head by the sacking of Professor David Nutt (Hilariously look for #nuttsack)

The amazing thing about the war on drugs is that it is so young. Their are a large group of people who have total moral certainty about the criminalisation of drugs but would have not idea that prohibition as we know it is far younger than, say, the aeroplane. The current legislation was framed by two United Nations agreements in the 1950s with local legislation dating back to the 1920s. To me the US driven war on drugs has always smacked of the political opportunism of Nixon and Reagan.

The greatest story of how the legal use of now illegal drugs affected the world is of course how the British Empire was built on the opium trade. In 1839 the Chinese were exporting so much and importing so little that the balance of payments was threatening British hegemony. China would only hoard silver in return.

Without making too much of the historical parallel the fact is that we are having the biggest economic crisis in 80 years. Add to that tolerance and decriminalisation in Canada, Portugal and Holland and dozens of other countries. It may very well be that drug reform is gaining near universal acceptance.

The real pinch point in the drug wars will be the Americas. It is telling that it is America's two land neighbours, Canada and Mexico, are crunch points. Canada is a modern pragmatic western democracy that is rapidly becoming marijuana tolerant. Mexico has probably paid a higher price than anywhere else to try to prevent the trade in marijuana trade, and, in conjunction with places like the California, is considering "all the options".

Brazil must also be desperate to rid itself of the street crime, violence and corruption that is coming with its inner city drug wars. The Brazilians are an open minded and pragmatic nation who must be aware of the rice the slums in Buenos Aeries and Sao Paulo are paying for a policy of prohibition. It is interesting to note that Brazil's former colonial power, Portugal, has quietly decriminalised the usage of all drugs.

So will this happen before or after the 2016 Olympics? My prediction is after, when the nation has gained enough confidence to escape from the clutches of US policy. I am sure that they can manage the Olympics without violence and do not want to become a drug tourism Mecca.

There is another point here. Once the forces of legal drug usage gain acceptance then there is a growing commercial incentive for nations to develop their hemp industries and their might be a growing race to gain a commercial foothold.

ATH’s prediction? From 2019 it will be possible to get from the Bearing Straight to Montevideo buying Marijuana in shop fronts legally all the way. The Irony is that it is virtually possible anyway. At this point what will the point of billions of dollars of law enforcement resources being spent to stop international trafficking? It will just look even more ridiculous. The war on drugs may very well disappear as quickly as it appeared.

WeirdScience - Graphs, a ball of string and Winos

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That is the standard model of sub-atomic particles. Thanks to Wiki for the pics in this article. The thing that I like about science is how easily something as abstract as the above, possibly the most abstract thing known to man, can be represented on a simple two dimensional grid.

I have to wonder if the trick is not inherent in nature, that these are not so nice and organised but merely in our perceptions of it are able to organise it. The above data could be represented on a multidimensional shape, such as on a sphere, in a line, an irregular solid or a rotating model.

You could make a much less tidy graph by linking it up like this

A human can easily manage a three dimensional graph. A four or five dimensional graph, involving a colour and time variable, would be pretty easy to follow in certain circumstances.

Any multidimensional graph is merely a human representation of a tiny data set and of course is incredibly limited compared to the information that the universe holds.

The universe would seem to be a huge data set of multi dimensional information. A graph is a tiny representation of it. One would assume that there is an infinite amount of information in the universe as information is being copied all of the time and all previous information would be preserved.

However three things suggest that there is not an infinite amount of information in the universe. Firstly copied information is not new information but reorganised information. Secondly if we believe that there are about a google of electrons in the universe then there can only be a limited amount of information stored in them. Thirdly there is no reason to think that things that have occurred in the past are preserved as information. Brownian motion suggests that they are not and memory is really just a feature of biology rather than physics. Therefore without information about past events there can be no choices and the universe would be best modelled as a piece of string with information on it, rather like DNA. Unless it has an end the string would be a loop.
The apparent alternative to a string universe would look a lot like Wikipedia. Information linked to other information in a giant cloud, all interlinking. By definition a universe made up of interlinked information would be a cloud as the only links could be back into the cloud. If we could only follow one path of this interlinked information then we could never know if it was an interlinked web of information or a single string. Anything else, to a bio-aware organism, would simply be a theory.

A string model leaves us with a huge question. Is their only one piece of string, one set of possibilities that we can travel down or is it some bit of fluff with junctures everywhere? I like Stephen Hawking's model of the universe as something more like the inside surface of a balloon. I can't answer this of course but if memory is only a biological phenomena rather than a physical one then their is no reason for choices or memories to be physically real anyway; very Vanilla Sky.

For the one person or so who as read to the end, a Winos are the superpartners of the SU(2)_L gauge fields. The theoretical Anti-W particle and a prime candidate to be anti-matter.