Hi!

Right now I am running an experiment. I just took 20 sleeping pills! Don't worry, they are homeopathic sleeping pills. Heehee. Next week, I am going to start a section on alternative medicine, and I want to do a demonstration that James Randi has done. I intend to be around for that.

Why would I even want to run a test, though? Well, here's the deal. These doses are absolutely tiny, of course, but they are not so vanishingly small as I would like. What I have is a concoction that is "Hyoscyamus niger 3X." This is also known as henbane, because it can kill animals. The 3X means that it started in a 1/10 mixture, then that was put into a 1/10 mixture, and that was put into a 1/10 mixture. Nonetheless, that is only 1/1000 of a dilution, which is actually detectable, even if it is not in this case dangerous at all. Seems there is a little rift in the quack community about whether there should be detectable levels of the active agent in homeopathy. Also, who the fuck knows what other filler is in these things? I think that popping 20 pills for each class should give them the idea about how useless these damned things are.

Anyway, it has been a few days since I've posted, and I apologize. Really, I am such scum. I do have an excuse, though, and it comes in the form of my parents, who came to Atlanta all the way from St. Louis to see me. Yay!

The first night they were here, I went with them to a place called ENO for dinner, a pretentious little restaurant that is absolutely not worth it. The food was skimpy, eclectic and blech. The steak was OK, but there was a lot of stuff to scrape off of it first. Good wine list, I suppose.

The next day we hit the Aquarium, which was supposedly, according to Animala, investigated by the douche-nozzle Ghost Hunters. I saw absolutely nothing ghost-like. I have a feeling that they rented the entire place out for a sleepover, which is something advertised all over the place there. Basically, it was a building they could be in overnight. Losers. But the exhibits were...stunning. Absolutely amazing. I'll have pictures and commentary in a few days, I'm sure.

Today was the World of Coke. Never do it. Pathetic. I did find out, however, that "I'd like to teach the world to sing" will be the soundtrack to my murderous rampage, should it ever come to that!

Alright. Going to go read. I'm almost through Dawkins' new book. Pretty good. A good basic science primer, I think, showing how various lines of evidence all point toward evolution. I should finish that tonight. I bet God did it. I'm just saying.

HJ