Sleep disorder induced thingie

Elbonia is having another grey rainy day, which means that my Net connection is almost as slow and patchy as my morning mind. In vain hopes of finding a brain stimulant, I stumbled through the stairwell to the coffee machine, dodging boss-creatures and ignoring door-waiters, but to my surprise and horror, the coffee machine was spectacularly out of order, with pools of slowly congealing brown liquid spread all over the carpet. A horrified witness gibbered something about coffee exploding through the paper cup jammed just inside the machine dispenser while someone was shaking the whole machine, probably caught in instant coffee-deprivation rage when he discovered that his hard earned coins did not produce immediate gratification. Dodging boss-creatures and ignoring door-waiters, I stumbled back to my office.

Dejectedly searching for some other way of waking up, I found out that fatherhood affects dendritic spines and vasopressin V1a receptors in the primate prefrontal cortex, through the mechanism possibly connected to either its diuretic properties* or modification of male sexual behaviour and aggression, while also finding out that arginine vasopressin is present and active in suprachiasmatic nucleus, part of our brain that regulates circadian rhythms. I also found out that DARPA is spending about 100 million $ a year on sleep-related research, in hopes of finding a way to make soldiers "less dependent on sleep", while also contemplating civilian spin-offs for people "who need an edge". Methods used to achieve that goal range from low-power DC pumped through subject's head, changing magnetic fields from a MI, to certain legal and experimental drugs (Modafinil, Ampakine CX717 ). On the way I also stumbled on an ethical questions arising from afore mentioned research - namely, if poorer cognitive environment actually diminishes our minds (or stops their development), then such poverty is not only a social dimension, but also a condition that undermines our biological basis of being. Should we not then spend more effort on changing such conditions?

At approximately this point in my readings my boss came in and asked me to go and get him some coffee from nearby caffee, since he accidentally bumped the coffee machine in the morning and it mysteriously stopped working.

Quote of the morning:

"The viability of postsingularity economy of scarcity is indicated by the transition from an indirection-layer-based economy using markers of exchange of goods and services to a tree-structured economy characterized by optimal allocation of productivity systems in accordance with iterated tit-for-tat prisoner's dilemma."

7th Sister of Stratagems of the Clade of Critics, Criticizing a leader of a rebellion.



* A very bad attempt at a peeing joke.