Daily Archives: January 26, 2005

Love Machine

NewScientist
reports that libido may soon be quantifiable through the monitoring of brainwaves:

Monitoring the change in specific brain waves could be the first quantitative
method for measuring libido, new research suggests.

The technique measures attention, rather than sexual desire specifically,
but Yoram Vardi, at Rambam Hospital and the Technion, both in Haifa, Israel
told NewScientist: "We found that sexual stimuli are the most potent."

So far 30 people with normal sexual function have been tested, but if further
tests are successful, Vardi hopes his method will have many applications.
These could include quantitatively analysing the libido-lowering (or enhancing)
side effects of medication or even supporting legal claims of a reduction
in sex drive after an accident.

Okay,
the medical side-effects and accident claims deal are important. Of course they
are. But I think there are some significant implications here that NewScientist
has missed. What we are talking about, after all, is the first tentative steps
towards transforming Getting One’s Groove On from an art to a science.

That’s huge.

For example, what if it can be established that eating chocolates gives the
typical woman a 10% libidinal boost in responding to a particular stimulus,
where a glass of fine champagne provides an additional 6% boost? Or what if
it can be shown that a particular perfume gives the average man a whopping 27%
boost? It won’t be long before someone creates an environment loaded with stimuli,
touching all of the senses, which have been clinically proven to increase libido.
The long-cherished dream of the babe
lair (or male
equivalent thereof) will finally be achieved.

Moreover, if a quantifiable scale of attractiveness can be established to augment
the quantification of libido, some researcher will eventually introduce a formula
showing how much alcohol it takes to drive the libido number up to the point
that one risks compromising interactions with a partner with an unacceptably
low level of attractiveness. Such a formula could help us completely eradicate
the phenomenon known as beer
goggles.

But it’s not all good news. Should some kind of home kit become available for
measuring brainwaves, men will be at unprecedented risk from perennial dangerous
questions such as

"Do you like my hair this way?"

or

"Do I look fat in this?"

The libido measuring technology would at this point become a polygraph. The
best defense in such a situation would be to blame some interefering factor
in the environment:

"Come on, Honey, I really do like it. It’s probably just those antehistimines
I took yesterday. You know how those things are always messing up my brain waves."

Step One

Via GeekPress, here’s a neat plan to power a lunar colony with moon dust. This could be an excellent first step in our long-range plan to address the world’s energy problems via Helium-3 mining.

By way of full disclosure, I should point out that the Helium-3 strategy is itself part of an even more ambitious plan that Stephen and I have to take over the world.

Stillness Part VI, Chapter 59

“So you’re saying that all these other versions of me, living in all these parallel dimensions, are in some kind of competition with me? Is that the idea?”

I look down. My coffee cup is nearly empty. For the third time.

Three cups in one sitting is a bit much for me, even when I’m not feeling jittery. And, as I may have mentioned, this Marco Polo whatever the hell his name is makes me more than just a little jittery.

But let’s be accurate. It’s really more like two and half cups of coffee, seeing as I spilled about half of my first cup. And to tell you the truth, I’m not really feeling all that jittery now. Or at least I think it’s fair to say that the jitteriness I am experiencing is almost completely caffeine-induced. Sure, this guy is way beyond creepy. Not just the way he looks and talks, but something about the way he moves and, even worse, the way he just kind of is even when he’s not moving.

The man is not right.

But, hey, that could be said of a lot of people. Why, I could take the elevator down to the ground level, walk out of this building, and within a few blocks find a half dozen people just as delusional as he is.

Some probably even more delusional.

But why bother going all that distance? Right here in this building, certainly among the worker bees down below — but every bit as certainly among the queen bees up here at altitude — the place is crawling with hang-ups, phobias, idiosyncrasies, night terrors, oddities, paranoid delusions, and myriad other conditions both certifiable and un. Even my own dear wife has a kind of crazy side to her. (Albeit lovable. Sort of. Once you get used to it.) But just because somebody is a little off, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily dangerous.

I’ve decided that, owing to the fact that he apparently jumped off the screen from a David Cronenberg movie right here into real life, my guest exudes a kind of sinister air which causes one to mistake him for a dangerous individual — and it doesn’t help when he says things like it wouldn’t have been “practical” to kill me, especially as convincingly as he says it — but, come on, the guy can’t really be a threat.

Not really.

And yet, having come to that conclusion…what? A cup and a half ago? I still have done nothing to remove him from my presence. I still sit here talking to the man as though it were a good use of my time. As though his issues really are important.

As though I really don’t dare say anything about his leaving for fear that he’ll get mad and hurt me.

And so the chat continues. It’s kind of interesting, anyway.

Targeting Cancer

FuturePundit Randall Parker has the scoop on a new gene therapy that selectively kills only cancer cells:

This approach is important because cancer can not be cured without the development of therapeutic agents that have far greater ability than current conventional chemical chemotherapy agents to selectively target cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed. The use of molecular switches that will flip on to deliver therapies only in cancer cells is going to be one of the major ways that cancer is going to be defeated and perhaps even ultimately the best way. There are two parts to such a therapy. The first is the switching part that detects unique signature patterns in cancer cells to know to activate. The other part is what will get done once the activation of the switch has happened. There are many possibilities for the second part. Imagine, for example, an enzyme that gets synthesized in cancer cells that can metabolize inert chemotherapy compounds into toxic forms. Or imagine a protein made from the switch that effectively punches a hole in a cell. Or perhaps the switch would turn on a bigger package of genes that would restore normal cell division regulation. The gene package could include a replacement non-mutated p53 cell divisiion regulating gene to replace the mutated p53 genes found in many types of cancer.

Cool. That reference to a “molecular switch” makes me wonder whether some kind of nanotech/gene therapy hybrid might prove effective in fighting cancer. Step One: gene therapy treatment induces throwing of molecular switch to identify cancer cells. Step Two: nanodevice applies gold nanoshell or other destructive treatment to cancer cells, leaving healthy cells completely unharmed.

Might be a winning combination.