Return of the Beat Generation

August 9, 2008 10:43 AM

Binaural Beats have been mentioned before, but that was when they were innocent, before someone thought of the children.
posted by tkolar (77 comments total)

Companies that sell digital drugs claim they're safe. Supposedly, they won't affect your physical health.

Let's think about this for a moment. The sites claim binaural beats cause the same effects as illegal drugs. These drugs impair coordination and can cause hallucinations. They've caused countless fatal accidents, like traffic collisions.

If binaural beats work as promised, they are not safe. They could also create a placebo effect. The expectation elicits the response. Again, this is unsafe.
posted by tkolar at 10:45 AM on August 9, 2008

We live in stupid times.
posted by dirigibleman at 10:49 AM on August 9, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

Uh, so uh, where can I get these...?
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 10:54 AM on August 9, 2008

Companies that sell newspapers claim they're safe. Supposedly, they won't affect your mental health.

Apparently the USA today is ruled by fear.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:56 AM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

"Kim Komando hosts the nation's largest talk radio show about computers and the Internet."

And has apparently run out of topics to write about.
posted by orthogonality at 11:02 AM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

At the very least, digital drugs promote drug use.

Yes, that is what binaural beats do.
posted by everichon at 11:02 AM on August 9, 2008

Ahh... the endumbening of America continues apace.
posted by stenseng at 11:02 AM on August 9, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

It's all fun and games until the RIAA gets bittorrent shut down using the drug enforcement laws.
posted by tkolar at 11:07 AM on August 9, 2008 [12 favorites has favorites]

Some sites provide binaural beats that have innocuous effects. For example, some claim to help you develop extrasensory powers like telepathy and psychokinesis.

Lost all credibility right there. Everyone who pays the slightest attention knows that when a child develops psychokinetic powers, a horrifying bloodbath at the school prom will follow with adolescence, as surely as more body hair and pimples do.
posted by Drastic at 11:08 AM on August 9, 2008 [9 favorites has favorites]

I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, having not yet read anything about binaural beats except that USAToday column. But I would stake my life on that woman not knowing what the fuck she's talking about.
posted by Bookhouse at 11:12 AM on August 9, 2008 [11 favorites has favorites]

Man, I guess you never really think about how competitive the world of crazy-ass alarmist newsreporting is. You just figure that it's like, 5 guys knocking out stories about rap music and raves and how 5 year olds are smoking crack or whatever, and that's basically it. But then you stumble across this story by a hungry, young upstart named Kim Komando, armed with a vision and a dream that's going to blow the whole world of alarmist reporting apart and take it in strange new directions, and you realize that there's way more too it. There's probably a whole underground, indie community of experimental alarmist reporters, champing at the bit to swipe the crown from all those dinosaur FoxNews reporters with their totally mainstream reports about child molesters on Facebook.

There's probably a whole scene of concerned parents too, who are way ahead of the curce. 'Yeah, I was worried about digital drugs back in '02 but that scene just got really commercial, just basically unscary. Lately, I've been freaking out about this kind of grind dancing that's coming out of Hungary right now. It's awesome, I'm just going nuts about the thought of my kids doing it.'

I kind of see Kim Komando's fearmongering work going unappreciated and then getting resurrected 20 years after her death as a cult anxiety. People will call it ahead of its time and wonder why we didn't properly worry about our children's safety back in 2008. But then, as near as I can figure, we're living in the Golden Age of Bullshit Alarmism, so we're really spoiled for choice.
posted by Tiresias at 11:13 AM on August 9, 2008 [69 favorites has favorites]

Clearly the only option is to BAN ALL SOUND IMMEDIATELY

I've tried some of these "digital drugs." One of them helps me go to sleep. Another gives me a slight perk, like a few sips of mild coffee. Maybe I missed out on the truly primo stuff, but this is far from wall-melting LSD waveforms.

Aphex Twin makes me feel mighty strange, though.
posted by naju at 11:31 AM on August 9, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

naju writes "I've tried some of these 'digital drugs.' One of them helps me go to sleep."

Seriously, does this stuff actually work?
posted by orthogonality at 11:36 AM on August 9, 2008

It might've been the placebo effect, admittedly. Twelve minutes of gentle pink noise can make you very restful, whether it's binaural or not.
posted by naju at 11:37 AM on August 9, 2008

Kim Komando? Meh. Goofy name, and she'll never be as good as Leo.
posted by wastelands at 11:39 AM on August 9, 2008

It's the block rockin' beats that have me concerned. I mean: "Chemical Brothers"? Hello?
posted by everichon at 11:43 AM on August 9, 2008

I lishtent 2 teh beet and thad no effffects on mee. Ish bullshiv.
posted by sonic meat machine at 11:51 AM on August 9, 2008 [5 favorites has favorites]

...champing at the bit...

I have never seen another person use that expression correctly.
The metafilters are happy.
posted by cmoj at 11:54 AM on August 9, 2008

Seriously, does this stuff actually work?

Not really. This idea has been around long enough that I experimented with it via DOS programs I downloaded from HyperReal in 1995 or so. Next to nothing happens, and I'm pretty sure anything that does happen is simple suggestion/placebo effect. There was a similar sort of thing that used flashes of light at a certain frequency to "tune" your brain waves, and that doesn't really work either, but it could be used to enhance the effects of disassociatives like DXM or K.
posted by DecemberBoy at 12:12 PM on August 9, 2008

"I've tried some of these 'digital drugs.' One of them helps me go to sleep."

Some Brian Eno would do the trick.
posted by sourwookie at 12:24 PM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Seriously, does this stuff actually work?

Before Oprah anointed him America's Doctor, Dr. Oz spearheaded a "complementary care center" out of what was then Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. (My husband worked with him there.) The center worked with mostly cardiac surgery patients (including patients on LVADs -- pump devices used by people waiting for a transplant) researching whether or not alternative therapies had any effect on recovery/recuperation. It was an interesting blend of hard-core western medicine (heart surgery) and modalities from yoga and acupuncture to energy healing and nearly everything in between. Anyway, one of the things they used that actually did appear to have an effect on outcome was the Hemi-Sync "surgical support" series -- a set of what was then cassette tapes (now on CD, of course) using binaural beat technology that patients would listen to pre-surgery, post-surgery, and even during surgery.

There were a couple of different series that were used, and I tried out one of the ones for restorative sleep -- mostly because I was a skeptic. I am here to tell you, as both a skeptic and someone with "prolonged sleep latency" (that is, it takes me a long time to fall asleep), it really worked. Even when I was actively trying to resist it and stay awake. It's hard to explain how it feels, but you really can feel it when the sounds shift to induce a different brain state. (I don't know whether it's actually doing that, but I can tell you it made me sleepy -- even now, once in a while when I can't sleep, I'll dig up the old cassette tape and give it a go.)

Anyway, the binaural beat tapes were very helpful for the patients who used them. Even just for the way they helped to ease stress, both physically and emotionally -- living in a hospital awaiting surgery and not knowing if a transplant would come through before the pump no longer worked is incredibly stressful; having heart surgery and recovering from it is incredibly stressful. There were a few other things that seemed to have positive effects (yoga, mindful breathing), but the hemi-sync tapes were at the top of the list.
posted by mothershock at 12:27 PM on August 9, 2008 [9 favorites has favorites]

They've caused countless fatal accidents, like traffic collisions.

If you're driving with headphones on, you've already got problems beyond whatever you're listening to.

I haven't tried this "binaural beat" stuff - nor have I tried illegal drugs (really!) - but there's no doubt in my mind that some electronica produces drug-like effects or temporarily alters the brain in some way. I definitely feel a high when listening to certain music, and I had wondered if there was research out there demonstrating this. I mean, if music doesn't make the listener feel a certain way, why the hell bother with it?
posted by desjardins at 12:37 PM on August 9, 2008

nor have I tried illegal drugs (really!)

You should. They're awesome.
posted by basicchannel at 12:39 PM on August 9, 2008 [11 favorites has favorites]

i've just discovered a new form of drugs - legible drugs - reading them can make you smart, stoned or stupid

guess which the one i linked to does?
posted by pyramid termite at 12:43 PM on August 9, 2008

"I've tried some of these 'digital drugs.' One of them helps me go to sleep."

Some Brian Eno would do the trick.

I remember when Music for Airports was enough to get me real nice and sleepy. Now I have to listen to the hard stuff to even feel a little drowsy.
posted by Bookhouse at 1:26 PM on August 9, 2008

Look, Kim Kommando is a computer expert, not a brain wave expert. Having said that it is really easy for me to see how sound waves could affect brain waves. I'm a musician and I AIM for that.

Heck, look at the story in the Bible where King Saul was having demonic insanity fits-his courtiers recommended he find a minstrel to play to soothe him. They went out and found David (yes, the same David who slew Goliath) and brought him in to play. At least to start with, it did calm Saul down.


I'm a parent myself (kids are grown now) and I do get sick and tired of all these "oh noes-something new! It's DANGEROUS" stories. Just give us the facts and let us figure out what we need to do about them.
posted by konolia at 1:32 PM on August 9, 2008

Yes, a parable in the Bible is obviously a solid data point in favor of the efficacy of binaural beats.
posted by proj at 1:44 PM on August 9, 2008 [8 favorites has favorites]

Personally, I think this article is brilliant. Because, if you take the "reporter's" word for it, there is nothing you can do about it. Your son sitting there with his headphones on, doing his homework, listening to Fallout Boy...or is he really tripping to binaural beats??? That girl at the bus stop listening to her iPod...is she just listening to innocent music, or is she getting whacked out to digital drugs??? How do you know if those mp3s on your son's laptop are normal music or binaural beats? You'd have to listen to them to know...but then you might get high!

This will end in much mirth.
posted by Jimbob at 1:50 PM on August 9, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

This reminds me strongly of this, and it doesn't seem that people in the South are trippin' balls.
posted by roygbv at 1:58 PM on August 9, 2008

Look, Kim Kommando is a computer expert, not a brain wave expert.

Credentials on that "computer expert" thing, please. She sounds like a fucking idiot across the board.
posted by Mikey-San at 2:13 PM on August 9, 2008

Drastic: "

Some sites provide binaural beats that have innocuous effects. For example, some claim to help you develop extrasensory powers like telepathy and psychokinesis.

Lost all credibility right there. Everyone who pays the slightest attention knows that when a child develops psychokinetic powers, a horrifying bloodbath at the school prom will follow with adolescence, as surely as more body hair and pimples do."

I love that quote, too. There's nothing as innocuous as superhuman magical mind powers!
posted by PontifexPrimus at 2:22 PM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Is one of the effects anger? Because after listening to that second Wikipedia sample for a couple minutes I kind of want to punch somebody.
posted by nanojath at 2:26 PM on August 9, 2008

"They could also create a placebo effect. The expectation elicits the response. Again, this is unsafe."

It's about time someone looked at the danger of the placebo effect.
posted by chemoboy at 2:27 PM on August 9, 2008 [5 favorites has favorites]

Also, the author of the article has a cool name.
posted by chemoboy at 2:28 PM on August 9, 2008

just imagine how zonked out people get if they live near the railroad tracks
posted by pyramid termite at 2:29 PM on August 9, 2008

My understanding of the CD's with binaural beats is that they have underlying tracks that get lost or ruined if you convert them to MP3. Maybe some sound/recording experts can confirm this. I also thought you had to listen to them on a regular basis to get any effect and I think the article on the drug effect is hype and sensationalism. That's like saying chemicals are bad. Our bodies are made up of chemicals. So are they bad too?

There are also doses of a sexual nature. I even found ones that supposedly simulate heaven and hell.

And where does she get off implying that sex is bad? She wouldn't be here if it weren't for her parents enjoying sex at least once. I'd have to actually believe in heaven and hell to make that last bit, ooooh, so scary for me. Maybe I could use those as a study guide for Dante or something.

But, there's no cite, so maybe she made it all up.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 2:30 PM on August 9, 2008

Yeah Marie Mon Dieu; binaural beats rely accurate phasing and stereo separation to work, and encoding as a standard MP3 can mess with them. However, if you encode them at a high bitrate, and with fully separate stereo channels, in my experience they still seem to work.
posted by Jimbob at 2:35 PM on August 9, 2008

Kan't kount on kontent from anyone named Kim Kommando.
posted by nax at 2:38 PM on August 9, 2008

Don't you mean kan't kount on kontent kreated by kooks kalled Kim Kommando?
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 2:51 PM on August 9, 2008

So I'm trying one of the beatz right now. I know this feeling, it's not really a beat, more like a pulse inside your head. It totally isn't dangerous in any way, and I am so relaxed now. And I have to go receive orders from the Star People to sleep now.
posted by Laotic at 2:54 PM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

She's on am talk radio on weekends talking to people about computers. That's how I have heard of her.
posted by konolia at 2:56 PM on August 9, 2008

yes dnbb, that is exactly what I meant. (Kurse you!)
posted by nax at 2:58 PM on August 9, 2008

She's on am talk radio on weekends talking to people about computers.

Email forwards: Are yours patriotic enough?
How to insert animated Thomas Kinkade gifs anywhere!
Could Islamist pedophiles make your child's keyboard emit pheromones?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:05 PM on August 9, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

"The sounds combine in your brain to create a new frequency"

Bullshit.
posted by Xoebe at 3:05 PM on August 9, 2008

This reminds me strongly of this, and it doesn't seem that people in the South are trippin' balls.

I dunno, roygvb. I played both those cicada clips at once and I got this kinda rush - felt like I should run out naked in the hot sun and rub two structures against one another.
posted by binturong at 3:23 PM on August 9, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

[04:49] ripper is trippin out on binaurals turned up loud
[04:49] I told u I was hardcore
posted by bjork24 at 3:26 PM on August 9, 2008 [6 favorites has favorites]

it doesn't seem that people in the South are trippin' balls.

You ain't from 'round these parts, are yuh? We got folks fallin' down foamin' at the mouth seein' the Lord every Sunday mornin' before piggin' out at the Old Country Buffet.

People on the poverty line who think that the GOP has their best interests at heart and that the Earth was created in seven days by an old white guy who hates gays and dinosaurs.

We are ALL trippin' balls, dude.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:45 PM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

"The sounds combine in your brain to create a new frequency"
Bullshit.

No actually, they do do this. That's one of the least contentious things about binaural beats, and certainly one of the ones you can experience yourself if you download them. You cease hearing the rhythm of the separate channels of left/right and begin to hear what seems to me to be the space in-between the beats. It has to do with the way the wave-patterns interact.
posted by tybeet at 3:49 PM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I can't wait for her to find out that if you watch the bottom of a clear, fast-flowing stream while breathing slowly for a minute and then look up, you get a marvelous LSD-like melting effect moving in the opposite direction of the running water.

Really, what she's upset about is the notion that kids might want to alter their consciousness at all. Next in her sights, I'm sure, is spinning around in chairs.
posted by mediareport at 3:51 PM on August 9, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Having done a bit of research on this phenomenon it looks like the whole thing is from i-doser.com, who are obviously marketing geniuses. They're selling noise as drugs to idiots for $3 to $4 dollars a go. They claim to have sold 10,000 of them in a year. And now they have someone writing about them in USA Today warning parents of the dangers of their product, while driving even more impressionable and gullible youths to their site.

One of their top sellers is Orgasm for $3.75. I don't know about you, but I don't need to listen to random sound to experience that particular sensation. Look at the way they describe it:

Contractions of muscles occur, a world of pleasures and vibrations envelope your entire body and soul, and there is a release unlike anything you have ever experienced. You shake, quiver, and a sensation unlike any other in the world happens over every inch of your pleasured body. Orgasms are one of those things that are difficult to describe, but if you have one, you'll know it. With out orgasm dose, you'll know it!

Unlike anything you have ever experienced? Uh...

The hilarity continues. For just under $200 you could get 30 minutes of The Hand of God:

Only 5 people have ever witnessed the power of this dose, and it was put away in the I-Doser vault for fear of release. Fluttering eyelids, great and almost supernatural clairvoyance, rings of light and great insight, but all this comes with a price. It could also bring fear, an unknowing realization of self, and a breakdown of all senses. Weeping, fear, anger: you need to realize with such insight could come bad consequences.

Ah, another fun fact - I-Doser's software violates the GPL.
posted by xchmp at 4:00 PM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Um, will someone tell Kim Komando that anything that can be experienced affects the brain otherwise it couldn't be experienced?

and, that, well, you can't believe everything on the internets, especially from people who are trying to sell something?

Wait till she hears about psychedelic music!!!!! It replicates the effects of LSD-- and it's been playing on mainstream radio for about, I dunno, 40 years?

Oh and what about reading? and television? and theatre? and creative visualization? And exercise... OMG! Endorphins, they're like heroin!!!
posted by Maias at 5:19 PM on August 9, 2008

almost supernatural clairvoyance,

If you think about it, that's some pretty shitty clairvoyance.
posted by Bookhouse at 5:32 PM on August 9, 2008 [9 favorites has favorites]

The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous headphones. The trunk of the car looked like an orgy of patch cables, toggle switches and potentiometers. We had two sets of analog alpha tones, seventy-five tracks of delta, five programs of high-powered telekinesis tracks, a nord modular half full of 100 Hz and 500 Hz carriers without recognizeable Delta, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored low frequencies, idowners, iscreamers, ilaughers and also all the beta frequencies, supposedly everything above 13 Hz. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious ibeat-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
posted by isopraxis at 5:45 PM on August 9, 2008 [17 favorites has favorites]

Email forwards: Are yours patriotic enough?
How to insert animated Thomas Kinkade gifs anywhere!
Could Islamist pedophiles make your child's keyboard emit pheromones?

Actually, she talks about gigabytes and harddrives and all of that geeky stuff that thrills most of you and makes my eyeballs glaze over. They call her "America's Digital Goddess." Or at least her publicists do.
posted by konolia at 5:52 PM on August 9, 2008

So, you're argument that she knows what she's talking about is that she calls herself "America's Digital Goddess"?
posted by dirigibleman at 6:56 PM on August 9, 2008

*Sigh* your argument. I am talking the English with good.
posted by dirigibleman at 6:57 PM on August 9, 2008

I'm simply saying that she stepped out of....shall we say, her level of expertise with the article that was posted here.

She understands computers themselves and seems to be good at telling people how to do things with them. I frankly was shocked to see she had authored this particular piece.
posted by konolia at 7:15 PM on August 9, 2008

Why does this lady feel the need to put her picture everywhere? Is it so that if I ever see her on the street, I can punch her in the face? I hope so.
posted by !Jim at 7:16 PM on August 9, 2008

How did this woman get a paying job? She writes like an 8th grade mongoloid.
posted by sharksandwich at 8:45 PM on August 9, 2008

Business opportunity: create a website with audio tracks that either immunize from or cure the effects of exposure to digital drugs, and market directly to concerned parents who can either surreptiously and openly make their children listen to the antidote.
posted by tkolar at 8:47 PM on August 9, 2008

Hmm, either/or not either/and.
posted by tkolar at 8:47 PM on August 9, 2008

REMIX!!!!!!!!!!!
posted by vurnt22 at 9:23 PM on August 9, 2008

Analog hugs not digital drugs.
posted by I Foody at 9:39 PM on August 9, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Goddamn it that dealer sold me a half-hour of hiss.
posted by Ritchie at 9:55 PM on August 9, 2008

Heck, look at the story in the Bible where King Saul was having demonic insanity fits-his courtiers recommended he find a minstrel to play to soothe him. They went out and found David (yes, the same David who slew Goliath) and brought him in to play. At least to start with, it did calm Saul down.

[blink]

I suppose we might also say something like "Heck, look at the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, where the giant has a magic harp with which to lull himself to sleep."

The reason we don't say things like that is that it is weird. A non sequitural quasi-anecdote.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:44 PM on August 9, 2008

Oh and what about reading? and television? and theatre? and creative visualization? And exercise... OMG! Endorphins, they're like heroin!!!

You'll have to pry my endorphins from my cold dead pituitary before I'll give 'em to you! When endorphins are criminalized, only criminals will have endorphins! Semper fie!
posted by five fresh fish at 10:49 PM on August 9, 2008

There are other dangers, too. Listening to binaural beats can lead to listening to Enya, which we all know is a gateway to lesbianism.
posted by TechnoLustLuddite at 11:04 PM on August 9, 2008

Why does this lady feel the need to put her picture everywhere? Is it so that if I ever see her on the street, I can punch her in the face? I hope so.

I call this the Rachael Ray Effect.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 11:06 PM on August 9, 2008

Seriously, does this stuff actually work?


I haven't looked into any of the commercial products we're talking about here. This thread brings back a bizarre memory, though. I was a teenager experimenting with audio, I accidentally made some audio that had distinct sustained effects on your perception of other sounds for a few minutes after you stopped listening to it.

After you listened to this (120-second) audio, for at least the next 3 minutes (effect was mostly faded after 4+ mins for all people who tried it), you would hear any sound around you in this total warbly distortion. This was only useful for SCARING THE LIVING SHIT out of me and then out of my friends (hey, I warned them beforehand :)). It's hard to describe how unnerving it is to feel your perception that altered when you weren't expecting it.

Basically, making the audio involved gradually detuning and amplifying the highest partials (harmonics) of a sustained stereo tone (no curve, just linear over the whole 120 seconds) in just one channel (so L ear was hearing unmodified and R ear was hearing gradually-detuning, or vice versa).
posted by kalapierson at 5:20 AM on August 10, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

After you listened to this (120-second) audio, for at least the next 3 minutes (effect was mostly faded after 4+ mins for all people who tried it), you would hear any sound around you in this total warbly distortion.

Ooh-er. I've never heard of anything like that and I'm really into this sort of thing. I don't suppose you still have a recording of it?

There are well-known visual effects like the Tri-zonal Space Warper but nothing audio and nothing that lasts for minutes rather than seconds.

I've had some good effects involving disorientation with bass notes through a long, deep flange with feedback but they don't last long after the sound is shut off and they don't distort other sounds either.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:33 AM on August 10, 2008

I could sure look into reproducing it, or anybody else could experiment (Projects, anyone? :)). The most important step was radically (and evenly, over the course of the 120 seconds) amplifying the higher partials relative to the fundamental. (Basically, gradually transforming what felt like a pure sine into a sound that was almost an inverse of anything that could exist in the physical world [a sound where the highest partials are strongest].)

Lemme see if I have more explicit instructions in the "ancient" part of my virtual file drawers (especially since you're now the third person to ask...). It has been more than a decade. But I'll never forget the effect. After this audio stopped, the world sounded (I guess logically enough) like it was passing through a nice fast wet flanger. And by 4 minutes I mean 4 minutes until the effect had faded away, not 4 mins all at the same strength. We got maybe 30 to 45 seconds of the really solid, terrifying "can't even understand the words when I talk" effect, then a few mins of gradual ramp-off til the world was back to normal.
posted by kalapierson at 11:24 AM on August 10, 2008

Credentials on that "computer expert" thing, please. She sounds like a fucking idiot across the board.
posted by Mikey-San

she talks about gigabytes and harddrives and all of that geeky stuff that thrills most of you and makes my eyeballs glaze over. They call her "America's Digital Goddess." Or at least her publicists do.
posted by konolia

She's not a computer expert. Does she know more than the average computer user? Sure. But she gives some of the worst advice I've ever heard nightly. So bad it's actually entertaining.

But because her voice comes out of a box and she calls herself America's Digital Goddess those that know no better actually take her seriously.

So this doesn't surprise me. She's no stranger to nonsense.
posted by justgary at 1:58 PM on August 10, 2008

You know what I blame this on the collapse of?
posted by turgid dahlia at 2:59 PM on August 10, 2008

I'm listening to the so-called headache helper over there in Idoze, right now, and if anything - it's making my headache worse. SCREW YOU SCIENCE - I'M GONG BACK TO RELIGION.
posted by cerulgalactus at 10:51 PM on August 10, 2008

It just so happens that I was drafting my own MeFi post on this when I came across yours. And kudos on the title, that was better than anything I could come up with. My entry: "The Internet is a series of tubes...that your children are smoking drugs out of!!!" I was kind of disappointed to find out it wasn't a real threat, sounded like something from a William Gibson novel.
posted by mattholomew at 12:28 PM on August 11, 2008

Oh, I also wanted to point out that one of the 'links to other stories' goes to an article titled "Overthinking may help against dementia".
posted by mattholomew at 12:39 PM on August 11, 2008

The last time I listened to the MeFi podcast, it made me have to poop. Pretty sure they're sneaking the brown note in there...
posted by inigo2 at 1:56 PM on August 11, 2008