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tagonist June 28 2010, 12:45:38 UTC
The hard part is when it vibrates/chimes with a message. Do people think "wow, all this BS about sending Elana Kagan and Jeff Sessions to the gulf for an American-Idol-Style nationally-broadcast pelican washing competition [or whatever people talk about in bars] is awesome, whoever is buzzing in my pocket can wait!"

That's a very good list of rewards, by the way. I appreciated that the article included "curiosity that drives exploration" as a gratification circuit, because that sure explains wikipedia.

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joanhello June 29 2010, 00:19:28 UTC
I showed the article on whacking and dopamine to a friend who has a certificate in Chinese traditional medicine and has also studied Asian spiritual practices a fair bit. He says that this is exactly what the Taoists and the Tantrics are getting at with their sexual practices that encourage arousal but discourage orgasm; they're playing with their dopamine levels. He actually tried the Taoist version for a few months some years ago when he had a girlfriend who was willing to try it with him. He found that it made him more socially confident, just as the researchers predicted, and he was nearly always calm and happy, but also spacey and forgetful. At the same time, he knows that the negative effects are not inevitable, that the monks who do this practice include some of the greatest martial artists in the world; he guessed that they did some other (not necessarily sexual) practice that kept them grounded.

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eatthosediapers June 29 2010, 04:23:44 UTC
here in sf we have a relatively high population of older queers and radicals. i was talking to a woman who had been working at a local bookstore for something like 30 years. we talked about how cell phones and the internet have taken over our interpersonal lives. she said "it used to be when something happened in the community, everyone just automatically met on church and market st." can you imagine anything like that even being possible now?

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Aaron anonymous July 24 2010, 23:43:57 UTC
We have a cell phone on our house but only so that we can communicate with text addicted friends, and it's so dilapidated that it only works if it's plugged into the wall :-) Can't claim any superiority though because where I got hooked by technology is with the internet. Personally I blame Ran - if his blog hadn't of been so good ( ... )

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Re: Aaron anonymous July 24 2010, 23:48:20 UTC
Oh dear, if you're wondering why I put my name where the subject title is, it's because I can't understand the all Russian instructions that I get with this blog.

Aaron

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