This is weird: yesterday I found a reference to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash on Banana Oil; looking around I found his Cryptonomicon, which I checked out from the library, only to find Eugene Volokh mentions the book I checked out. Is he spying on me?

Actually I've read a couple of books thanks to the internet. One was Nigel Barley's The Innocent Anthropologist, which I found discussed here. He's amazingly funny and honest. I should really try some of his other books. One thing that sticks in my mind was how bureaucratic the Cameroon gov't. was.

The other was Tom Carnwath and Ian Smith's Heroin Century, mentioned here. One wonders how much to believe of their argument, but I was struck by their contention that a part of addiction is often the ceremony and social context associated with the habit. If I recall correctly, they claim that when American soldiers addicted in Vietnam during the war found that they would not be allowed to return to the US unless they were drug-free, the vast majority of them went cold turkey and never took up their addiction again. Apparently not only is giving up heroin far less painful than generally imagined, it's easier to stay off a drug when it's not so much a part of the social setting. As far as the ceremony goes, I seem to remember a cigarette smoker saying a large part of what s/he missed was the whole business of lighting up (and looking cool?).