Humodour

Weapon silencers (and silenced weapons like crossbows) in NOLF 1 and Deus Ex 1 were so sexy.

[quote name='H

Oh, no, that's fine. It's not an opiate (AFAIK that's a specific type of alkaloid, and Salvia isn't even an alkaloid), though. It's not habit forming, either, to answer your question. Opiates are not like most drugs because they actually cause physical dependence as well as psychological dependence (alcohol is the other well-known one to do that). The physical dependence is primarily determined by the delta and mu receptors, while Salvia is a kappa receptor agonist. The delta and mu receptors are also responsible for euphoria/pleasure, while the kappa one is not. Just a bit of trivia: paracetamol binds to cannabinoid receptors, yet is nothing like marijuana. Oh, not to mention kappa-agonism causes dysphoria at recreational doses, meaning a low abuse potential (and hence why I doubt Salvia will become the next party drug).

You're pretty close. As close as a lot of scientists, probably. Nobody's actually sure about the full specifics yet, but there's some sound theories. Part of the problem is that there's multiple types of ADHD presenting similar symptoms but with different neurochemical bases (although all revolving around the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenaline). The most common theory/ADHD type, IIRC, is that people with ADHD have too many 'recyclers'. So they have normal production of dopamine and noradrenaline in the synapses, but it's destroyed too fast. Supporting that theory is the fact that things like ritalin (and less known, cocaine), which are reuptake inhibitors, are therapeutic for people with ADHD. On the other hand, some people (relatively rare) with ADHD don't respond all that well to ritalin but do respond to methamphetamine, which is mainly a synapse stimulator - it increases dopamine production. Non-methylated amphetamine (dex) is both a reuptake inhibitor and a synapse stimulator. It's also a mild MAO inhibitor (MAO is also recycler of dopamine, but at a later stage, and appears to be normal in ADHD). It's likely both mechanisms (production levels in the synapse, and reuptake outside the synapses) are at work in at least some types of ADHD. What you suggested is essentially too many nerve/neuron connections (how else would you have too many synapses)? That'd mean too much dopamine produced, I'd think, and would also be easy to notice in the lab (same with too few connections). Related, however, is synapses which produce too much/too little dopamine. However, it's plausible some types of ADHD result from synapses which produce too little dopamine (again, stimulants all increase this production to varying degrees). I've been contemplating asking my doctor to prescribe me selegiline, which is an MAO-B inhibitor and thus does a similar job to amphetamines (and indeed is slightly metabolised into them) but without the potential stimulant effects (e.g. insomnia, euphoria, comedown). Early test show it being roughly as effective as Ritalin, whist lasting 24/7 and improving mood (something I can assure you Ritalin does not do - in fact I'd say it does the opposite). An obvious upside is that, not being a stimulant, its abuse potential in the general populace is non-existent. Here's an abstract of a scientific article on the basic concept of hypoarousal (lack of dopamine leading to lack of stimulation leading to stimulation seeking behaviour a.k.a. hyperactivity). This article mentions the concept of 'stochastic noise' which I've contemplated a bit, but neglected to mention previously (because I don't fully understand it, but am aware it's strongly related to how our brains calculate things and while seemingly chaotic is anything but random). Other studies have shown that stimulants work by refining nerve/synapse firing in the brain, making it more accurate, by altering 'random' (actually stochastic) noise levels, presumably via their interaction with dopamine. In people without ADHD, they make noise levels worse, probably because they make them fire too much - making these specific synapses less accurate (i.e. decreasing concentration/attention for those without ADHD). http://www.citeulike.org/user/shoshin/article/2896407

So has this been released yet? I've been waiting like 5 years.

From the technical point of view, K2 had many more problems than The Original Trilogy Remake KOTOR 1 had. But from the artistic point of view, TSL owned K1's existance and threw it right here: TSL has been released? Oh, wait, I'm thinking of that fan expansion pack. NM.

Oh, lame. That's not stealth.

I'm not a fan either, but Beyond Good and Evil did it (and lots of other console-ish things) and I survived and still enjoyed the game. I tend to feel checkpoint saves detract from replayability, though. If you have to replay many areas repeatedly from scratch it doesn't lend itself to wanting to replay the game.

[quote name='H

We have an inventory including armour slots? This gets better and better!

because he was suicidal? ^gorgon: people may have depended upon this to put food on their table, but nooooo, we can't think that because it's about money. heaven forbid we condemn his cowardly act and the potential for people being out of work because it's about money. you're just an ass. is everything about being an ass with you? taks Notice how I can belittle your beliefs without calling you names. It's a useful skill to have particularly where you aren't allowed to call people names. It's a mistake to get too drawn in/worked up. I mean it's not life or death, it's just two guys posting their thoughts on a message board. If it were personal or face to face all the usual restraints would be in place, and we would never have reached this place in the first place. Try to remember that. lol

Such doses of nutmeg damage the brain though (or was it the liver?). That's fair enough, but whether or not a drug damages the body/brain is actually not dependent on its strength, rather its method of action and often duration. Salvia uses opioid receptors which makes it a rather unique drug. Salvinorin A (the drug at work in Salvia Divinorum) does not cause any organ damage (i.e. no neurotoxocity), and it doesn't seem to last anywhere near long enough to be liable for changes in gene regulation. Most dissociatives (Salvia is not a psychedelic) actually can cause organ damage, so your suspicion is justified. E.g. ketamine, PCP, dextromethorphan, nitrous oxide/laughing gas. Specifically read about Olney's lesions. Salvia is not like these because it uses an opioid receptor instead of NMDA receptors. Interestingly, shrooms and LSD (psychedelics based on 5-HT receptors) actually prevent Olney's lesions from forming. I don't think the red one is Divinorum - it's been growing in my backyard for years. It grew at my primary school and I used to pick the flowers and suck the ends of them because the nectar tasted like honey. Divinorum looks to have blue/purple flowers.

That's not really true. I've never used it, but it only lasts about 5 to 20 minutes and then the person is essentially normal again, feeling a bit nauseous. I've heard it's interesting but not especially 'fun'. It's become en vogue to ban it in Western countries recently but I really don't see the point. One reporter who tried it said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WruyjJwyf0M So funny.

It's not fully mapped out yet, but it really seems to be the case that people with ADHD have brains that are actually under stimulated. That's why stimulants work: they produce enough dopamine and noradrenaline to get the levels up to normal (which is also why instead of speeding the person up they might just slow them down as they now have enough neurotransmitters to focus as a normal person does). Somebody with ADHD is hyperactive because nothing can hold their attention (stimulate them) for long. Normal people on speed are hyperactive because everything captures their attention (stimulates them). It's an interesting distinction. Another thing is that about 80% of cases of ADHD seem to be genetic. What you suggest is, however, environmental.

You're not reaching me?! It looks like you didn't even read my post!

By the sound of it I should be able to get more like 50 hours or more out of it.

Geez. My average class is 34. 37 is my upper limit. I need to teach where you live! Wow. Is that high-school or university? Those class sizes make sense for university (in fact they're small!) but certainly not high-school (even 20 is too large to effectively reach and cater to every kid IMHO).

Then wouldn't it make sense to tell me what your argument was instead of what it wasn't? From what I can read your argument is most likely that email is "good enough" and that people don't need extra features. Somehow I doubt that holds water. Take a look at the Instant Messenger market. Take a look at the mobile phone market, take a look at the operating system market, the word processor market - people like extra features. Google provided the best start possible for Wave by making it backwards compatible with email by design. Vendors will probably start coding emails as Waves instead without you even knowing it. And when you do, nobody will be forcing you to use those extra features, but they'll be available for those who do want to use them. So I guess I'm betting on two things here: 1) people will want to use it, 2) 'people' generally don't decide protocol formats and standards anyway (did consumers decide on SMTP or POP or IMAP or HTML?); programmers using those protocols do, and programmers love elegance and efficiency (they hate coding the same thing multiple times)... they also love new features. Look at Internet Explorer. It loaded web pages. It didn't do much else, but it did its job. Along came some new browsers that added loads of extra features (some agreed as standard by de facto, some implemented based on new, better standards) and suddenly IE is bleeding market share (people/users) all over the place to these browsers until it finally gets upgraded to start conforming to new standards, protocols and add new features. And the biggest champion of these new standards is web developers and web vendors. Microsoft will resist Google Wave with all its might (MS hates open standards because they can't be controlled nor locked to their products), but Microsoft's might is turning out to be worth less and less these days. Hotmail, MSN, and Exchange will continuously lose market share to new applications that utilise the full power of a free and open universal communications standard until Microsoft gives in and sluggishly starts implementing it to stem the bleeding.

Mes: You'd be feisty too if you had to contend constantly with people claiming ADHD is fake and you're just lazy whenever they find out you have it (Dagon did it in this very thread for example). I still disagree with you, anyway. ADHD is overprescribed but not to the magnitude you imply. For starters, only 1/5th of patients with ADHD (which is itself about 5% of the population) are actually prescribed drugs. Of that 1% that's on stimulants, it's relatively easy for a doctor to tell if their diagnosis was correct or they got it wrong and something else is at play like semi-deafness or laziness: as I said, when you've got ADHD, drugs generally work - when you don't have it, you won't see a lick of improvement and indeed you'll get worse. Even assuming the doctor is unethical enough to try and continue prescribing a case where it isn't actually ADHD, I doubt the parents have the patience to pay for a drug that makes their kid more hyperactive, impulsive and inattentive because it's not meant for him. The claims of ADHD being 'overdiagnosed' are greatly exaggerated. Yes, it's millions. With a genetic prevalence rate of 3% to 10% worldwide that's something like 500 million people with ADHD. In somewhere like America that gives you 15 million people with ADHD and 3 million on medication for it. It's unfortunate that so many people have ADHD, but I see little point fretting about the downfall of modern civilisation because the number is in the millions rather than the some other arbitrary magnitude like thousands. Medication of ADHD didn't start because society was 'boring' and capitalistic - it started in the 60's and 70's when researchers made breakthroughs in understanding ADHD, so I don't see how medication is a manifestation of anything more than a sound neurological understanding of the disorder. My average class size was 20 people. 5% of 20 is 1. I.e. the average class will have a kid with ADHD in it. And then you've got things like clinical depression, sociopathy, autism, deafness, etc. Bemoan the existence of kids with disorders in classes all you want, but they'll exist regardless of whether they're given treatment. At least if they're given treatment their lives can be better. Let's see...

How about I call you silly instead for presuming any disorder with an acronym is fake? Suppose we called it 'Hypodopaminism' instead, would that be all fine and dandy with you? Anyone calling themselves a human being has had, or is currently having one or several of these symptoms. Anyone can distil a description of a disorder into something so general it applies to many things if they really try (go ahead, try it with Asperger's syndrome - there's only one or two diagnostic criteria different to ADHD). You've certainly done that here by referring to a less than one page summary of ADHD traits to reach your conclusion. Unfortunately, I think some doctors do the same, only lending further to the problem. Anybody who prescribes solely a drug as treatment for ADHD should have their medical license revoked. You need at least 2 components: behavioural change (effort by the person), chemical change (methylphenidate, atmoxetine, amphetamines, etc). Drugs will do nothing if the person isn't also actively trying to make the best of their situation. Would you like to know why amphetamine class drugs are prescribed for ADHD? It's actually not because they chose some random illicit drug and decided "let's prescribe this". Indeed, if they were going to do that they'd probably chose some sort of depressant rather than a stimulant. Still, lucky they prescribe a stimulant, because it quite neatly cuts to the core of the matter: normal people become hyperactive on speed (I'm pretty sure you won't argue with me here), people with ADHD slow down. That mere observation alone should be enough to put to rest your doubts that ADHD exists, or that medications work, but I have a feeling you'll continue to scoff and see ADHD as an 'excuse' and call people with it lazy. ADHD as a disorder has existed in medical literature for something like 80 years, and was certainly prescribed during the period you speak of. What a claim! Are you now going to claim clinical depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder are mere shams, too? I guess you know more than every psychiatrist alive (and many dead), after all.

When I do that I always forget to look at my hand.

I believe you're incorrect for the simple reason that email can be completely emulated inside Google Wave.

It takes a special kind of abject ignorance to confuse ADHD with laziness these days, given the wealth of neurological research on the topic. Filthy lies, you're a witch! Now I have to turn you into a frog so the secret doesn't get out.

They found the wreckage. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0352999720090603 I'm not flying Quantas anymore (OK so I last flew when I was 4 but) since this plane was the same model as Quantas planes and crashed for likely the same reason two Quantas planes have undergone inexplicable mid-air plummets recently (nobody died, many were injured). Basically it seems as though the 'subconscious autopilot' (always on, not overridable, kicks in by default during certain emergencies) malfunctions sometimes by getting confused into thinking there's an emergency when there's not, going into a dive. If this malfunction happens during an actual emergency (e.g. a lightning strike as in the Brazil-France flight), it basically tears the plane apart. I hope they fix this **** soon, but without knowing the exact details it will be hard. And the exact details are on the black box and flight recorders. And apparently those will be as hard to find and recovery as the Titanic. Even if they do recover them, it may not help much - the two Quantas planes were intact but still gave few clues.