Are you people out there doping yourself up digitally every time I turn my back? First, Digital Goddess Kim Komando warns us that Web sites are targeting our kids with so-called digital drugs, audio files that have the same effect as drugs:
There are different slang terms for digital drugs. They're often called "idozers" or "idosers." All rely on the concept of binaural beats.
It is incorrect to call binaural beats music. They're really ambient sounds designed to affect your brain waves.
For binaural beats to work, you must use headphones. Different sounds are played in each ear. The sounds combine in your brain to create a new frequency. This frequency corresponds to brain wave frequencies.
There are different brain wave frequencies. These frequencies are related to different states like relaxation and alertness.
Digital drugs supposedly synchronize your brain waves with the sound. Hence, they allegedly alter your mental state.
Binaural beats create a beating sound. Other noises may be included with binaural beats. This is intended to mask their unpleasant sound.
Then I see this:
Evidently the reason that Michael Phelps is so fast has nothing to do with his 6'7" wingspan or his double jointed knees and ankles or his monster heart ... according to Alexei Koudonov at The Doping Journal in an article from 2004 titled "Doping by the pool" and comments in a Baltimore Sun piece from earlier this week from several other scientists, Phelps is guilty of "doping" by using his iPod on the pool deck to artificially increase his performance.
If you didn't feel like wading through that - the basic summary is that there is some research in human infants that shows that listening to music might help the blood carry more oxygen for some indeterminate period afterwords. How long that period of extra oxygen carrying capacity lasts could vary from seconds to minutes, no one is sure. In his original article, Koudonov opines that Phelps listening to his iPod is tantamount to using a product specifically designed to increase his performance.
These whippersnapper kids today, I tell ya. They have no idea how easy they have it. Why, when I was young, we had to take actual drugs, and we had to walk through the snow barefoot for two miles, and then the drug dealer would make us shovel his walk before we could score, and sometimes he even made us sleep with his girlfriend first. Boy, if all I had to do to get high or have turn my blood into an oxygen-carrying dynamo was pop on a set of headphones, I'd be wasted all the time, man.
Oh, well. Back when I was a yoot, there was a time or two when I just had to try something unknown, despite the risks, just to find out what it was like. I suppose I'm still a little bit like that today, because I just had to go to I-Doser, where they have "digital simulations" of drugs with a couple of free download doses. I'm playing the one called "Sedative" right now.
Man, what a rip-off. Nothing! It's the digital equivalent of smoking oregano. I mean, I can see where some might feel, but you know, it's just, well, I don't know, it just seems that everywhere there is something, but some places just aren't good enough, and the face is always there and I daskl;fsdfuqweoprjdfkadsfjasd;lfkdjasfkl;djas
