I had to come up with a new category for my brain dumps. Current Events just wasn't cutting it.
The last couple of days, I’ve had my head down at my desk buried in paperwork. I haven’t had to speak to anyone – which has been good. After a few sentences, I break into an uncontrollable cough. No congestion or other symptoms; just a hacking that makes communicating very difficult.
No, it didn’t take two months to read unChristian – just that long to review it. What an excellent read. I’ve had a pretty involved email conversation about the book’s ideas with a long-time friend in Texas. Maybe I’ll snip it down and post some of it.
Sleep Update: After a week of increasing exhaustion using “regular unleaded” Ambien, I finally got the insurance approval for an AmbienCR script. I don’t have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep all night (indications for Ambien). The CR seemed to help my brain stay in deep sleep without interruption and I feel rested as a result. Brain chemistry is definitely interesting. …Probably the only organ in the human body for which medication can have serious ethical and spiritual implications. During the Marion Jones dust-up, Radley Balko asked this question: if researchers, students and other intellectual-types used sleep aids or other drugs to help them concentrate and/or do more work, would they be penalized for the performance-enhancing qualities – like in consideration for a grant or Nobel Prize or degree? (my paraphrase, I can’t find the link) Check out Brant’s story too, along with the comment thread. It’s really insightful.
Along similar lines, does anyone know how a one-time blood draw can be realistically used to diagnose a potential problem with a dynamic body system? If it’s a known fact that a particular chemical in your body fluctuates over the course of the day, then how does a snapshot from one time of day indicate the presence, or absence, of a problem? For example, melatonin levels are a function of ambient light-levels, cortisol (a stress hormone) levels increase at during sleep and are depleted while awake. This is true for a number of chemicals, amino acids and proteins in the body. If I took a snapshot of shared memory in the simulator and presented it as final word that “nothing is wrong” I’d get laughed out of engineering. It’s like concepts of stimulus/response and change over time are not even considered. OK…vent complete.
Watched Hell’s Kitchen last night because nothing else was on. That’s a sad hour of my life I’m never getting back. I thought the excerpts shown on The Soup were atypical. I was wrong. There were more bleeps in that one episode than a Dog the Bounty Hunter weekend marathon.
Aside: Robert, I'm still trying to distill down one take-away point from unChristian. One of the adjectives in my tagline is wordy.
Hey.... take time and blog some more... love your blog... you just need to update more often. Also, wanted to tell you that I heard from lots of what a great job you did Sunday. You jumped in and were instant in and out of season. I'm proud of you... Great job and thanks...
Posted by: Robert Pooley | May 12, 2008 at 07:03 PM