AdamSmith

Agree too. Thank goodness this movement is finally beginning to win acceptance. U.S. medical practice still has a hard time even bringing itself to medicate sufficiently for terminal pain.

So long as you promise to take me along. I can pose as your manservant. (Your 'gentleman's gentleman.' ) After all you know what will happen if you leave me home alone.

Hmm! ...wonder if a tick or flea that ingested supernatural blood would become a were-tick, or a vampire flea? And could they then pass it on? If so, all those flies buzzing Barnabas and Maggie on the Dark Shadows set would have posed quite a public menace.

Assuming you meant "get humped all the time" -- well, I for one am not quite dead yet. At least until they get tired of having less sex, and start sneaking out on the prowl. As I did.

Aha -- As I have long suspected! Always flitting off to black-site countries that he doesn't name. Excuses of censored & policed Internet there. The innocent-seeming N.C. home base. Now, luring us to funny URLs ... Our hitoallusa is a double agent! How exotic.

A new expression for our favorite pastime

In high school I was a journalism rat. (Surprise.) Tradition was for the upcoming kids who were going to run the newspaper the following year as seniors (that was us) to put together the April Fool's edition in their junior year. Our edition hit the mark, I still think, by being sufficiently (1) personally insulting, by name, to assorted asshat teachers and, indeed, the principal himself -- of course presented as "satire" on "public" figures; ah, what you could get away with in those blessed '70s, (2) absurdist in the Python/Firesign/Goon Show mode, and (3) overflowing with toilet humor. I thought that last aspect was really more self-indulgent than funny, until the next year when I walked into a college-application-prep meeting with the school's spinsterish, normally veddy proper guidance counselor. She was glancing through the new April Fool's issue just published by our successors-to-be, and nearly made me faint with the remark, "You know, yours was a lot funnier. You really need to teach these kids about scat."

If you have to ask... Tsk, tsk!

Since you ask... http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071202165255AAGufF9

LOL Gross!

P.S. So I see that NYC restaurant The Meatball Shop opened a downstairs bar called, of course, Underballs.

Update... Daniel Radcliffe Talks Gay Sex Scene In 'Kill Your Darlings'The Huffington Post | By Christopher Rudolph Posted: 05/19/2013 11:10 am EDT In "Kill your Darlings," slated for release later this year, Daniel Radcliffe plays Allen Ginsberg, who befriends writers William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac while in college. The "Harry Potter" veteran, 23, didn't shy away from exploring his character's bisexual side in the movie, which is based on a true story of a murder that entangles the three writers. On next week's episode of "The Graham Norton Show," Radcliffe reveals how director John Krokidas gave him "step-by-step instructions," including kissing critiques, before the controversial gay sex scenes were shot. “I was doing a gay sex scene and the director was giving step-by-step instructions," Radcliffe toward Norton, as quoted by Pink News. "And the favorite note I have ever had was when we were kissing and the director shouted, ‘Not like that. Crazy sex kissing!’" "The Graham Norton Show" airs stateside on BBC America Thursdays at 10. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/19/daniel-radcliffe-gay-sex-scene_n_3294202.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Quotes by Julia... “The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook.” ― Julia Child “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” ― Julia Child “If you're afraid of butter, use cream.” ― Julia Child “Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” ― Julia Child “You'll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.” ― Julia Child “This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “I think every woman should have a blowtorch.” ― Julia Child “Life itself is the proper binge.” ― Julia Child “How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex?” ― Julia Child “...nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “Everything in moderation... including moderation.” ― Julia Child “Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need.” ― Julia Child “You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.” ― Julia Child “Fat gives things flavor.” ― Julia Child “It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it.” ― Julia Child “...no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “Until I discovered cooking, I was never really interested in anything.” ― Julia Child “Remember, 'No one's more important than people'! In other words, friendship is the most important thing--not career or housework, or one's fatigue--and it needs to be tended and nurtured.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made,' [Chef Bugnard] said. 'Even after you eat it, it stays with you - always.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.” ― Julia Child “I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate” ― Julia Child “Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again” ― Julia Child, Julia's Kitchen Wisdom: Essential Techniques and Recipes from a Lifetime of Cooking “One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed. Eh bien, tant pis. Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile, and learn from her mistakes.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which caused me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, 'scientific' thought. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “We had a happy marriage because we were together all the time. We were friends as well as husband and wife. We just had a good time.” ― Julia Child “Just speak very loudly and quickly, and state your position with utter conviction, as the French do, and you'll have a marvelous time!” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “Just like becoming an expert in wine–you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford–you learn about great food by finding the best there is, whether simple or luxurious. Then you savor it, analyze it, and discuss it with your companions, and you compare it with other experiences.” ― Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking “But I was a pure romantic, and only operating with half my burners turned on.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “You are the butter to my bread,and the breath to my life” ― Julia Child “I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.” ― Julia Child “She was my first cat ever, and I thought she was marvelous. ” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “...small helpings, no seconds, no snacking, and a little bit of everything.” ― Julia Child “Bon A Petiet" -Julia Child” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “The sweetness and generosity and politeness and gentleness and humanity of the French had shown me how lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “...the waiters carried themselves with a quiet joy, as if their entire mission in life was to make their customers feel comfortable and well tended.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “We ate the lunch with painful politeness and avoided discussing its taste. I made sure not to apologize for it. This was a rule of mine. I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make... Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is vile,...then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile- and learn from her mistakes.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one's hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as "Oh, I don't know how to cook...," or "Poor little me...," or "This may taste awful...," it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one's shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings), and make the other person think, "Yes, you're right, this really is an awful meal!" Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed -- eh bien, tant pis! Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, as my ersatz eggs Florentine surely were, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile -- and learn from her mistakes.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry- architecture being perhaps the least banal derivative of the latter.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “I admired the English immensely for all that they had endured, and they were certainly honorable, and stopped their cars for pedestrians, and called you “sir” and “madam,” and so on. But after a week there, I began to feel wild. It was those ruddy English faces, so held in by duty, the sense of “what is done” and “what is not done,” and always swigging tea and chirping, that made me want to scream like a hyena” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “We hit it off immediately, especially Helene, who was a 'swallow-life-in-big-gulps' kind of person.” ― Julia Child “We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper.” ― Julia Child “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” ― Julia Child “A party without cake is just a meeting” ― Julia Child “The more you know, the more you can create. There's no end to imagination in the kitchen.” ― Julia Child, Particular Passions Talks With Women Who Have Shaped Our Times “I would far prefer to have things happen as they naturally do, such as the mousse refusing to leave the mold, the potatoes sticking to the skillet, the apple charlotte slowly collapsing. One of the secrets of cooking is to learn to correct something if you can, and bear with it if you cannot.” ― Julia Child “...operational proof...it's all theory until you see for yourself whether or not something works.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “It was fun, although we felt like pawns, or prawns, in the maelstrom.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “Ye gods! But you're not standing around holding it by the hand all this time. No. [...] [T]he dough takes care of itself. [...] While you cannot speed up the process, you can slow it down at any point by setting the dough in a cooler place [...] then continue where you left off, when you are ready to do so. In other words, you are the boss of that dough. ” ― Julia Child “To be a good cook you have to have a love of the good, a love of hard work, and a love of creating.” ― Julia Child, PARTICULAR PASSIONS P “You don’t spring into good cooking naked. You have to have some training. You have to learn how to eat.” ― Julia Child, PARTICULAR PASSIONS P “If you don't pick your audience, you're lost because you're not really talking to anybody.” ― Julia Child, Particular Passions Talks With Women Who Have Shaped Our Times “Was it a sign of Creeping Decrepitude?” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “Standing up through the Citroen's open sunroof, my six-foot-three-inch, red-cheeked sister pointed a long, trembling finger at the perpetrator and with maximum indignation yelled: 'Ce merde-monsieur a justement crache dans ma derriere!' Her intended meaning is obvious, but what she said was, 'This shit-man just spat out into my butt!” ― Julia Child, My Life in France “I had a lack of confidence, which caused me to back down from forcefully stated positions; an i was overly emotional at the expense of careful, "scientific" thought. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was” ― Julia Child http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3465.Julia_Child?page=2

P.S. Terminology... Trekkie vs. Trekker Trekkie is "frequently depreciative",%5B44%5D thus, "not an acceptable term to serious fans",%5B45%5D who prefer Trekker. The distinction existed as early as May 1970, when the editor of fanzine Deck 6 wrote: ...when I start acting like a bubble-headed trekkie (rather than a sober, dignified—albeit enthusiastic—trekker).%5B2%5D:4%5B46%5D By 1976, media reports on Star Trek conventions acknowledged the two types of fans:%5B47%5D One Trekkie came by and felt compelled to explain, while paying for his Mr. Spock computer image, that he was actually a Trekker (a rational fan). Whereas, he said, a Trekkie worships anything connected with Star Trek and would sell his or her mother for a pair of Spock ears.%5B28%5D In the 1991 TV show Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Special, Leonard Nimoy attempted to settle the issue by stating that the term 'Trekker' is the preferred term; during an appearance on Saturday Night Live to promote the 2009 Star Trek film, Nimoy—seeking to assure Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, the "new" Kirk and Spock, that most fans would embrace them—initially referred to "Trekkies" before correcting himself and saying "Trekkers", emphasizing the second syllable.%5B48%5D In the documentary Trekkies, Kate Mulgrew stated that Trekkers are the ones "walking with us" while the Trekkies are the ones content to simply sit and watch Star Trek. According to Stewart, the actors dislike being called Trekkies and are careful to distinguish between themselves and the Trekkie audience.%5B49%5D The issue is also shown in the film Trekkies 2, in which a Star Trek fan recounts a supposed incident during a Star Trek convention where Gene Roddenberry used the term "trekkies" to describe fans of the show, only to be corrected by a fan that stood up and yelled "Trekkers!" Gene Roddenberry allegedly responded with "No, it's 'Trekkies.' I should know — I invented the thing." Other fans[who?] have recounted a tale that the term "Trekkies" was the original term that was adopted with the first Star Trek convention in 1972. However, by the second convention so many people had "jumped on the bandwagon" that the fans present at the second convention adopted the term "Trekkers" in order to distinguish themselves as the true fans, versus the fad fans who continued to use the term "Trekkies"[citation needed]. Another theory on the Trekkie vs. Trekker is that the term "Trekkie" is reserved for fans of the original Star Trek cast only (show and movies), whereas "Trekker" is a fan of all Star Trek fandom[citation needed]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekkie#Trekkie_vs._Trekker

The new link works. Several propositions come to mind. As the site is copyright 2007, by now he must look all of 24 years old!

A galaxy of choices: http://uss-marathon.bluefirestorm.net/index.php?page=database&entry=92

But then they, by definition, are not the problem. Grateful to TY for expending the effort to articulate -- yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more -- the principles here. For what good it may do. Hope, per RA1, springs eternal.

Yum! And those others don't come with Victoria attached.

Friends in Cambridge said she loved pulling out that SNL tape and playing it for guests after dinner at her house. She thought it was hilarious.

Her memoir My Life in France is a delight. You can just hear her voice on every page. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/books/review/08grim.html?_r=0

Baylor is closely associated with the Baptist church (specifically the Baptist General Convention of Texas) and doubtless much alumni giving depends on keeping the faith, as it were. Or, rather, being seen to do so.

Too lazy to cook much today, think I'll just watch this instead... http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=BldO4OFoA8U

I want to do this. Embracing the Void The profound, ecstatic state of nothingness I achieved while floating naked in a sensory deprivation tank. By Seth Stevenson|Posted Wednesday, May 15, 2013, at 5:20 AM|Slate Sensory deprivation is as close as you can get to a drug-induced experience without the drugs. lllustration by Robert Neubecker How did I end up naked in a stranger’s apartment—floating in a saltwater tub, surrounded by darkness and silence—realizing that for the first time in my life I had achieved total mindfulness? Let’s begin our story in 1961, when Peter Suedfeld was a first-year psychology graduate student at Princeton. Another scholar in the department was running a “sensory deprivation” study that offered $20 to volunteer subjects. Suedfeld wanted the cash, so he agreed to be shut inside a pitch-black, soundproofed room for 24 hours, with only a bit of sustenance and a toilet to keep him company. He couldn’t handle it. “I was nervous, and I got itchy and jumpy,” he says now. So he left early. He wasn’t the only one. Many subjects panicked, and some even reported they’d had hallucinations. Though (or perhaps because) he’d gotten spooked, Suedfeld became intrigued by isolation chambers. Sensory deprivation was a sexy field of study in the ’50s and ’60s, and Suedfeld began to organize chamber experiments of his own. Soon enough, he became aware of another isolation technique. A man named John C. Lilly—first at the Naval Institute, later at the National Institute of Mental Health—had pioneered the use of an immersion water tank. In early trials, the subject was completely submerged, wearing a breathing mask, with an air hose connected to a pump. In a later iteration, the subject simply floated in saltwater, on his back, in a coffin-like tank that was completely dark and silent. Lilly became a cultish, Timothy Leary-like figure as his experiments grew more outlandish. He made attempts to communicate with animals (later dramatized in the Mike Nichols film The Day of the Dolphin) and became famously fond of entering his flotation tanks only after he’d dosed himself with powerful hallucinogens (later dramatized in the Ken Russell film Altered States). Suedfeld met Lilly and was impressed with his tanks—but not his methods. “He started out as a straight scientist,” says Suedfeld. “But he got into taking drugs and thought he’d made contact with some sphere of consciousness beyond the normal. Thought he’d had conversations with Shakespeare and such. We didn’t see eye to eye on how the tanks should be used. I always ran standard experiments with control groups and data and objective tests.” I had long ago seen Altered States, in which William Hurt devolves into a glowing, primordial beast after he indulges in a little too much tank time. But until I read a trend story about floating in the Wall Street Journal this February, I’d never realized it was possible to float in a non-scientific setting. Nor had it occurred to me that anyone would want to. I was suddenly intrigued: What could sensory deprivation do for me? There are only a few places to float in New York City. I first tried La Casa, a day spa near Union Square, which features a tank in large part because co-owner Jane Goldberg loves to float.* On a weekday morning, I climbed the stairs to La Casa, took off all my clothes, and, after showering, stepped into a large tub inside an enclosed chamber. I slid the blackout door closed behind me, eased down into the water, and touched a button that switched off the lights. I was floating in total darkness and silence. The saturation of Epsom salts in the water made me unnaturally buoyant—my face, stomach, and knees an archipelago of islands amid the tub’s ocean. For what must have been the first 15 minutes, I wondered what I was doing there. I thought about my plans for that evening, stories I was working on, whether there was any food in the fridge back at my apartment. I felt bored. I felt silly. Like Peter Suedfeld in that chamber in Princeton, I even got jumpy. I had a brief urge to stand up, water dripping everywhere, and walk out. Then a transformation began. If you’ve ever taken psychedelic mushrooms (and come on, who hasn’t?) you might recall a certain feeling that arises as the drugs take hold. “Something is happening, something is happening,” your body says to your brain, with mild urgency. I got a feeling akin to that while floating. My brain went a little haywire. When the storm passed, I found myself in a new and unfamiliar state of mind. * * * Suedfeld’s studies have, over the years, shown that tank sessions can be used to treat autonomic nervous system problems like chronic pain, high blood pressure, and motion disorders. They can improve perceptual and motor skills in athletes, and creativity in artists. Suedfeld also claims that the tank shifts our brain’s focus from its dominant to its nondominant hemisphere, which has various benefits. “But God only knows why hemisphere balance is affected,” says Suedfeld. “We can’t yet fit a brain scanner in a tank, or get the scanner wet for that matter.” For a tank newbie like me, not looking to cure physical disorders or win an Olympic medal, the more intriguing aspects of floating include 1) its possibly imagined, Lilly-esque potential to reveal hidden layers of consciousness within, and 2) its proven capacity to chill people out. Suedfeld happily acknowledges point two. “Anything related to psychological stress,” says Suedfeld, “whether it’s chronic tension headaches, insomnia, things with no known physical cause … after several floats, they really seem to improve.” It’s the meditative, relaxing qualities of floating—even non-hallucinogen-enhanced floating—that eventually moved the practice beyond academia and into retail. Glenn Perry is perhaps the forefather of recreational tank use. Perry was a computer programmer in 1972 when he read Lilly’s book The Center of the Cyclone and, soon after, saw an ad for a Lilly-backed floating workshop. “The first time I floated,” says Perry, “I got out and I found that time had changed and my senses were totally different. I instantly knew I had to build my own tank. By the end of the week, I decided to build tanks not just for myself but for other people. John gave me the name Samadhi—which is a Sanskrit word meaning the state in which a meditator becomes one with the object of meditation.” After trying out several models, Perry settled on a tank that used 10-inch-deep water saturated with Epsom salts. He and his wife Lee opened a float center in Beverly Hills in 1979, renting out their five tanks largely to entertainment industry types. Michael Crichton came in to float when he had writer’s block. Eventually, Crichton bought a tank of his own. Between the Perrys’ float center, John Lilly’s 1977 book on the joys of floating titled The Deep Self, and the 1980 release of Altered States, flotation entered the popular consciousness. A November 1981 New York Times trend story was titled “Relaxation Tanks: A Market Develops.” It quoted representatives from Samadhi and other tank companies, noting that the industry was raking in $4 million a year on sales and rentals. It reported that new float centers were opening across the country. It also listed a few notable private tank owners: Robin Williams, Yoko Ono, and the training staffs of the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles. One happy “tanker” the Times spoke to described the practice as “a self-development kind of thing that allows you to get in tune with yourself.” In the mid-1980s, the AIDS scare changed everything. People were frightened of contracting HIV from infected water in float tank centers. The business dried up. New Agers switched to yoga. Even the academic work fell out of favor. “Radical students began to equate isolation studies with torture and brainwashing,” says Suedfeld. “People got hassled out of the field.” By the time John Lilly died in 2001, it seemed that floating was over and done. Turns out it was unsinkable. The February story in the Journal that caught my eye—titled “Float Centers Gaining Steam”—is pretty much a wormhole straight back to that Times trend piece from 30 years before. It notes a new wave of tank enthusiasm, crediting comedian Joe Rogan (a ) and stressed out, chillaxation-hungry Bay Area techies for spreading the word. Further evidence of floating’s resurgence: a float center in Portland, Ore., has inaugurated an annual float conference. Peter Suedfeld—who, after receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton, headed the psychology departments at Rutgers and the University of British Columbia and ran tank studies for years in his own labs—was a featured speaker. And now I’m part of the movement. Once I’d settled into my first tank session at La Casa, I understood why all these people get jazzed about floating. For the first time in my waking life, I had zero thoughts. It was a mental quietude I’d never known existed. * * * “We had a Zen master who visited my lab once,” says Suedfeld, “and he asked to go in the tank for an hour. Most of his life he had meditated every day for four or five hours or more. And he thought the depth of meditation he reached in the tank was on par with a level he reached maybe once a year in his normal meditation environment—which was not exactly the middle of Times Square. He was amazed.” The water and air in the float chamber are skin temperature, the darkness is identical with eyes open or closed, and there is no sound—thus there is no external input. In turn, my brain decelerated until its output also slowed, and then stopped. I was suspended in a place with no space, or time, or purpose. Once in a while, some quotidian thought would begin to surface at the edges—did I respond to that email?—and then bounce around in the lonely void of my skull for a moment or two. But it would soon melt away as my brain realized it didn’t care. Back to the void. When my one-hour La Casa session ended with a gentle tapping on the wall—the prearranged signal from the spa—I emerged in a profound daze. I spoke slowly and quietly, like a smooth-jazz DJ, to the person at the spa desk who inquired how my session had gone. I felt more rested than if I’d slept for 16 hours on a pile of tranquilized chinchillas. Outside, colors were saturated; sounds were vivid. I had to try this again, as soon as possible. For my second session, I went to Blue Light Floatation, on 25th Street in Chelsea. This turned out to be a loft apartment belonging to a tank owner named Sam Zeiger. But the setup was not nearly as weird as you might imagine: Zeiger cordons off a private area in which you float, shower, and change. Having floated before, my transition happened more quickly this time. It took just a few minutes before I felt my brain and my body slowing, my restless thoughts fading out. If I chose to, I could purposefully focus on one idea at a time, roll it around in isolation, examine some part of my life with no distractions. Or I could just revel in the strangely exhilarating emptiness. At one point, I nodded off in the tank. The only way I knew this was that my limbs lightly spasmed—making a small splash—in that way limbs do when you’re at the edge of sleep. There was no clear line between consciousness and unconsciousness. (I had no fear of drowning, as my buoyancy was such that it would be nearly impossible to roll over accidentally.) Afterward, as Zeiger handed me a cup of herbal tea, he recounted his own conversion story. “My first time was supposed to be a one-hour session,” he told me, “but the guy forgot about me and left me in the tank for several hours. I had a life-altering experience. I can’t describe it to you now in a way that wouldn’t devalue its meaning.” Zeiger eventually felt compelled to get his own tank and install it in his apartment. Floating in this tank—and maintaining the tank in perfect order, and renting the tank out to other people for $80 an hour—is now his full-time passion. I went back to La Casa for a final tank session and I knew, as I emerged, that I was hooked. (Disclosure: La Casa gave me my two sessions on the house; Slate paid for the one in Zeiger’s apartment.) This is the closest you will ever come to having a drug-like experience without taking drugs. Though you will have no crazy hallucinations (at least, I didn’t have any—your hallucinatory mileage may vary), you will understand your brain in an entirely new way. Consider: Right now there are dozens of thoughts pinballing through your mind. When’s lunch? This monitor is too bright. Should I ask her on a second date? My crotch itches. What is the person in the next cubicle saying on the phone? I should be more assertive. I’ll get a burrito at lunch. Am I a good person? These thoughts are all occurring more or less simultaneously. There is a cacophony—a noisy din—in your head. The absence of the din is a genuine revelation. I highly recommend you find that out for yourself. Peter Suedfeld is now using his accrued wisdom about isolation to consult with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency regarding the effects of long-duration space flight in confined, monotonous environments. Glenn Perry still sells his Samadhi tanks, and says sales are on the rise—you can buy your own starting at about $8,900. The annual float conference is running again this August (motto: “Looking Forward to a Whole Lot More Nothing”). As for me, I plan to climb back in a tank at least three or four times a year. Just thinking about the feeling I get from floating makes me crave it. I’m not sure I can fully explain why—but I’d love to ponder that question while buoyed by a tub full of warm, salty water. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/anything_once/2013/05/sensory_deprivation_flotation_tanks_i_floated_naked_in_a_pitch_black_tank.single.html