[zackattack]

1. You don't see Dick Cheney living it up like Bill Clinton because he can afford to kill his hookers after he finishes with them, and then kill the people who dispose of the bodies. He's smart enough to avoid publicity.

2. The rewards you are referring to (email, HN, MMORPG) have to do with dopaminergic pathways, dopamine release, and the nucleus accumbens.

[dkimball]

You're right, it was the dopamine system I was thinking of -- the phrase had escaped me.

On Cheney: I think it's possible to say when someone's having a sybaritic lifestyle and when they're not; certainly someone who's as eagerly discussed by the media as Cheney now is (while Clinton's allowed to live his rather un-Presidential post-Presidential years in media silence).

This isn't a defense of Cheney, though. I would call him less nightmarish if he had the excuse of wanting money as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. It seems to be a common vice, this thinking of life as Donkey Kong, and if you die with a high enough score you get to leave your initials on the machine at the end...