Sox Sweep

Tonight the Chicago White Sox won their first World Series since 1917 by sweeping the Houston Astros. It was a good series with tight games, but the Sox were clearly the better team. With the Red Sox winning last year, White Sox this year, perhaps the Cubs will be next in line to win that long sought after World Series.

Cindy Sheehan Being Ridiculous

According to this article from ABC news, Cindy Sheehan is going to tie herself to the fence of the White House and not come down until the occupation in Iraq concluded.

She said, "I'm going to go to Washington, D.C. and I'm going to give a speech at the White House, and after I do, I'm going to tie myself to the fence and refuse to leave until they agree to bring our troops home. And I'll probably get arrested, and when I get out, I'll go back and do the same thing."

This just smacks of idiocy to me and it is really frustrating that she and her PR outfit (led by True Majority, a non-profit set up by Ben Cohen -- of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream fame) keep up with these stunts. Ben Cohen, speaking for True Majority had this to say: "People are willing to listen to her and we want to do as much as we can to make her voice heard."

I disagree. Her voice, her stunts, and her overall publicity are doing nothing productive nor supportive to ending our occupation in Iraq. I agree with them that the troops should probably leave. Its not our problem over there and there is little point in risking American lives for a bunch of ungrateful Iraqis. Furthermore, we would be much better off spending money on more pressing domestic issues such as for the poor citizens of Louisiana, Mississippi, and now Florida. I am sick of hearing about young men killed, one of which was a friend of mine. Enough is enough. However, pulling ridiculous stunts is certainly not the way to go about expressing your message.

"Sir, I would rather be right than President"

- Henry Clay

UK Lands Stevenson

Per the Lexington Herald Leader:

Kentucky added a front court player to this year's recruiting haul yesterday when Perry Stevenson committed to the Cats.

Stevenson is a 6-foot-9, 194-pound forward from Lafayette, La. He chose UK over Texas Tech, Texas, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and Miami.

The Prep Stars recruiting service rates Stevenson at No. 57 among the nation’s top high school seniors. He has a reputation as a defender and shot blocker who will need to further develop his offensive game.

Cell Phone Etiquette

Here's a nice little article from CNN about being polite with your cell phone, as well as the other wireless gadgets. Its nice to know I am not the only person who is offended by jerks yelling into their phones and disregarding others. Look at these people above in the picture...it about makes you sick to your stomach.

The Adderall Advantage

Here's a rather long excerpt from something that always interests me...college kids and amphetamines. This comes from the NY Times, and you can read it in its entirety here, if you have a subscription. If not, you can read below.

It was finals week at Columbia University and Angela needed a miracle. Like many of her classmates, Angela, a bleary-eyed junior, had already pulled a pair of all-nighters to get through a paper on "Finnegans Wake," a French test and an exam for her music humanities class. All that remained was a Latin American literature final, but as midnight approached, her stamina was beginning to fade. "This week is killing me," she said, taking a cigarette break in front of the school library. "At this point, I could use a little help."
Thanks to a friend, the tiny orange pill in her purse would provide the needed miracle. Angela, who asked that her last name not be published for fear of alarming her family and angering university officials, popped a 30-milligram tablet of Adderall into her mouth, washed it down with coffee and headed back to the library for another night of cramming. The next morning, she sailed through the exam confidently and scored an A. "I don't think I could keep a 3.9 average without this stuff," she said afterward.

At many colleges across the country, the ingredients for academic success now include a steady flow of analeptics, the class of prescription amphetamines that is used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Since Ritalin abuse first hit the radar screen several years ago, the reliance on prescription stimulants to enhance performance has risen, becoming almost as commonplace as No-Doz, Red Bull and maybe even caffeine. As many as 20 percent of college students have used Ritalin or Adderall to study, write papers and take exams, according to recent surveys focused on individual campuses. A study released this month by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia found that the number of teenagers who admit to abusing prescription medications tripled from 1992 to 2003, while in the general population such abuse had doubled.

Dr. Robert A. Winfield, director of University Health Service at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, sees a growing number of students who falsely claim to be A.D.H.D. so they can get a prescription. At least once a week, a jittery, frightened, sleep-deprived student who has taken too many tablets for too many days shows up at his office. "Things have really gotten out of hand in the last four to five years," he said. "Students have become convinced that this will help them achieve academic success."

On campus, the drugs are either sold or given away by people with prescriptions, or they are procured by students who have learned to navigate the psychiatric exams offered by campus health centers, which usually provide the drugs at a discount. Unlike Ritalin, two newer members of the family of analeptics - Adderall and Concerta - come in time-release forms and can keep a patient medicated an entire day.

Much like performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports, the spread of analeptics among college students is raising issues of competitiveness and fairness. But interviews and e-mail exchanges with two dozen Columbia students suggest that the prevailing ethos is that Adderall, the drug of choice these days, is a legitimate and even hip way to get through the rigors of a hectic academic and social life. "The culture here actually encourages people to use stimulants," said Barak Ben-Ezer, a computer science and economics major who prefers Red Bull, a caffeinated beverage, and cigarettes over prescription drugs. But pure recreational use of the drugs, which sometimes includes crushing and snorting a tablet, is generally frowned on, he and others said.