November 2009 Archives

Ok, This IS weird

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You know I've been eating these herbs that have been doing *weird* things to me.  My working theory (now) is that there is some kind of symbiotic relationship between HPV and yeast, and that somehow, they are able to (most of the time) fool the immune system into letting them hang out.

I think what the herbs are doing is somehow 'marking' these cells as foreign (which is why my body is ejecting them as fast as it can--making my skin 'bubble' up with little chunks of keratin).

So, I've been looking for the 'tell'.  I think I just found it.  You see, last week, I woke up with a *horrible* gash on my leg (just the scab--mostly brown, but jet black in the center).  Now, I'd had some wine the night before, but I was pretty sure that I'd have noticed something like that happening even if I was blotto, and besides, there wasn't any blood on my pants (and from the size of the gash, there should have been plenty).

So, I just let it go, and waited.  Today, the scab started coming off in the shower, but when tugged on it, it seemed like it was stuck.  I took a forceps to it when I got out, and yano what was under it?

A bunch of seborrheic tissue!  Just like the rest.  There's a chunk about as big as a thimble sitting there (slowly being dumped out).

When I was a kid, I ripped my leg open there.  The doctor had to snip off some of the flesh that was hanging out, but he tucked the rest back in and sewed it up.  I don't believe it ever properly 'healed', but I think it's about to.

When I first noticed it, I put some of the witch hazel on it, and when I looked later, a brownish stain had leaked out of it.

A very old man lay dying in his bed. In death's doorway, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookie wafting up the stairs.  


cookies.jpg


 




















He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort forced himself down the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands. With labored breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen. Were it not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven. There, spread out up on newspapers on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite chocolate chip cookies. 

Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted wife, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man? 

Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself toward the table. The aged and withered hand, shaking, made its way to a cookie at the edge of the table, when he was suddenly smacked with a wooden spoon by his wife. 

"Stay out of those," she said. "They're for the funeral."

Real Male Violence

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I'm frankly fascinated with this show (almost as much as the 'Black Widow' stuff on Discovery/History).

I have to note, though, that this woman provokes the crap out of the guy.  She's hitting him from pretty much square one.  Nobody notices that stuff, though.

BTW, I've admitted being abusive in response when mistreated, but I've *never* even approached 'violence' (this is it, and it's freakin' *mild*--I've seen 'moderate' violence--you don't want to see *extreme* violence).  Er, she's a *girl* so it's *OK* that she hits.

You've no idea the imagery that occurs in my mind on the reverie of my last relationship.

Still, I couldn't break someone's nose.  That's freakin' harsh.

Obviously, these folks have never been to Ukiah, but the sentiment's the same:



Revolving Doors

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You might have been through one.  Neat inventions, them.  They exist for a reason, yano?

You see, a high-rise building works exactly like a chimney (hot air rises).  In the first buildings there were some problems with the doors blowing themselves open, so the revolving door was invented to prevent the airflow issue.

In later buildings, other strategies were adopted, for instance, sealing off areas of the building so that they weren't actually 'one' building, but multiple buildings (airflow wise) stacked on top of one another.

The WTC was just such a building.  It had three hermetically-sealed zones, and was constructed specifically to prevent airflow between them.

So, when they show the footage of the horrible destruction on the *GROUND* floor on 9/11, noting "It looked like a bomb had gone off", even though the 'official' explanation is that the force of the explosion propagated down the column, that *can't* be true (couldn't have blown past the top third of the building, by design), then by definition, it's a *LIE*.

That said, here's some video with that footage at the end.  Look for yourself, and then, wonder, "What happened there?"

It sure *looks* like a bomb went off.


Nutjob for Carlos Pollo

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So we were talking and I mentioned this weird ass video that Alex Jones did about the club down the road (near Mikey's).  I told him that I'd post it.  In looking for it, I found this gem:



Now, one can't take Alex's 'conclusions' too seriously, yano?  But really, the footage itself is remarkable (even if they aren't worshipping a false god, what the f*k are grown men *doing* dressed up in hoods with torches and boats and stuff???--isn't there something that needs to be done about this?).  Why do we vote for idiots like this?



Do we really need a bunch of morons ruling the world?  Couldn't we at least *try* to find better quality material?

Yes, when you aren't living inside a bubble of lies, and newspeople are allowed to 'do their jobs' (be curious on the air), this is what you get. From the Great White North:


OMNI TV Interview

Program: The Standard
Airdate: April 22, 2008
Vancouver, BC   Canada

In this 20 minute Satellite TV interview, Richard Gage, AIA, of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth lays out all the evidence for the controlled demolition of the 3 WTC high-rises on 9/11. The next day Vancouver 9/11 Truth had to turn away 50 people in this standing room only venue of 300 at the famous Vancouver Public Library. Here is the 20 minute power packed video that you can play for your friends, colleagues, and, of course, your local A&E's!

My folks sent 'enough' but I want 'More'.

This might just be the best use of time on video, ever.  It's short, to the point, poignant, and only video (no spoken words at all).  I used to play it all the time on Ragnarock & Roll, and this version is actually better quality video than I had to start with:

Via My Folks

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Recently I overheard a Father and daughter in their last moments together at the airport.  They had announced the departure.  

Standing near the security gate, they hugged and the Father said, 'I love you, and I wish you enough.'  

The daughter replied, 'Dad, our life together has been more than  enough.  Your love is all I ever needed.  I wish you enough, too, Dad.'  
two.gifThey kissed and the daughter left.   The Father walked over to the window where I was seated.  Standing there I could see he wanted and needed to cry.  I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but he welcomed me in by asking, 'Did you ever say good-bye to someone knowing it would be forever?' 

'Yes, I have,' I replied.  'Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever good-bye?'.  

'I am old, and she lives so far away.  I have challenges ahead and the reality is - the next trip back will be for my funeral,' he said.  

'When you were saying good-bye, I heard you say, 'I wish you enough.'  May I ask what that means?'  

He began to smile.  'That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations.  My parents used to say it to everyone...'  He paused a moment and looked up as if trying to remember it in detail, and he smiled even more. 'When we said, 'I wish you enough,' we were 
  wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them.'  Then turning toward me, he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory:

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.  
sun.gifI  wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.  
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.  

I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.  

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish  you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess..  


wave.gif

I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye.  



He then began to cry and walked away.  

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them; but then an entire life to forget them.  
Only if you wish, send  this to the people you will never forget and  remember to send it back to the person who sent  it to you.  If you don't send it to anyone it may  mean that you are in such a hurry that you have forgotten your friends.  

TAKE  TIME TO LIVE....  
two.gif




 

To  all my friends and loved ones, I WISH YOU ENOUGH.

Herbal Prejudice

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Now, I have to note that what I've been doing to myself, however odd, is 100% COMPLETELY natural, over-the-counter, stuff.

100%.

The fact that it's ripping my body into shreds like some kind of nano-gamma-knife (w/o hair loss, I might add, and I think some's actually growing back) isn't really that weird (as treatment).

It's just that it's home-grown with herbs, and apparently natural (and seems to be smoothing out those 'lines' in my face that came with age) that might be an 'issue'.

Right?

I suspect I'm extruding pre-cancerous cells as keratin and excess cytoplasm.  It's gross, but at least I'm doing it, naturally, and not some fucking X-ray machine or death-chemical drip.

Popcorn!

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Getting Around The Bottleneck

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Dunno how many of my friends might have listened to me drone on and on about the superiority of the Motorola chips vs. the Intel CPUs on 'massive parallel processing', but since Apple dumped the Motorola company due to heat generation issues, the fruit's been a bit pale.

On the other hand, here's a *card* you can stick in your Intel box and farm out all the massive processing.  It's $1300, but yano, it replaces a $5M room of boxes.



BTW, if you forget the Apple ad when the G4 came out and was actually prohibited from export (due to the fact that it was, technically, the first desktop 'supercomputer' capable of over a gigaflop of processing), here it is:



Who'd have thought to *tune* it?


Gross Stuff

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My mom asked me not to write about this so much, so I've backed off, but she videophoned today, and was 'warning' me about what I should do, so I figure it's fair game this time.

My skin has been turning inside out since August (on the last mix of herbs).  Now, I'm not *sure* what it means, but when you think of it (I'm eating anti-parasitic herbs, vermifuges, and I'm losing big chunks of myself), the fact that the doctors are mystified is the curious thing.

In any case, that my arthritis is being replaced (temporarily) with seborrhea is annoying (and gross) but much better than being arthritic, I assure you.

The funny thing is I was trying to treat a cough, if you recall.

In any event, I had to pass on heading down to Lodi to hang with my peeps on Tday, because the current place that the cracking/oozing/weeping/shedding thing is going on is around my mouth, and I didn't want to put my nieces in the predicament of having an obligation to kiss a festering face, or have to be sitting across from someone who had to look at me while they ate turkey and stuff.

Kinda sucks, but it's really much better overall to hang here.  Between that, and the fifty-first birthday with the swine flu I've had a banner week.

improveverywhere.com

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Grocery Store Musical

   


 I Love Lunch

  h



First Posted: 11-23-09 04:48 PM   |   Updated: 11-23-09 05:09 PM

WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?
 

Kids may seem an unlikely group to include in the medical marijuana debate, but some children with autism are reaping life-changing benefits from the drug. Mieko Hester-Perez, a mother in California, told the Early Show's Hattie Kauffman that marijuana saved her son's life.

Hester-Perez's 10-year-old son, Joey, was uninterested in food and weighed a startling 48 pounds. "Everyone that came to my home was watching me watch Joey die," Hester-Perez told Kauffman. "He was deteriorating hourly."

But that all changed with a batch of marijuana brownies. After four years of only eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Joey's appetite came to life and revived him in other ways as well.

"We're seeing Joey come out," Hester-Perez said. "He's never made noises, we didn't even know he could make noise until the first batch of brownies."

While Kauffman noted that there's no evidence of marijuana helping with autism symptoms, other parents have come out with similar success stories, as seen in Marie Myung-Ok Lee's story on Slate's Double X blog in May.

WATCH the Early Show's interview with Hester-Perez:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Memory and Imagination

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It was the name of a required course in college.  Frank S.ent me a link about what they 'know' about dreams today.  In it, they asked the question: "What are dreams and why do we have them?"  I've got a related, but different question, myself: "What are *prophetic* dreams and *how* do we have them?"

I doubt these guys will address that issue.

In a related note, I'm still wondering about my brother's experience of existence.  If you know Carole King's song, "Tapestry" (and my brother) you'd have to admit his tapestry is unravelling; however, he still seems to be able to construct 'memory' (where none should rightfully exist).  When one is able to weave together the tartan and the polka dot and get a single fabric, the results are, um, 'peculiar' at best.

Ever Dream This Man?

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 (I don't, but I wondered if anyone of my friends does).

Angel of God, my guardian dear
to whom God's love commits me here.
Ever this day/night be at my side
to light, to guard, to rule and guide.
Amen.
Spirit Guide/Guardian Angel/text goes here

It's the job, not the name that defines the entity.

War Is a Racket, yano?

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From "War is a Racket" by U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



I'm pretty sure that if Bush had had to write that many letters, the war would have been called off after a few months.  It's like doing lines for detention, yano?


Hogwarts?

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OK, I might have to rescind my ban on going to 'attractions' (I really would rather hang with my peeps than go on 'outings' anywhere, usually).  This, on the other hand, is pretty fascinating.  How many scale models of a computer generated item are there, really?

spacer

COVERED in scaffolding, magical movie school Hogwarts slowly takes shape at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park.

Star ... Daniel Radcliffe
Star ... Daniel Radcliffe

The 150ft-high castle is central to the ÂŁ160million attraction due to open in Florida next spring.

Fans can go on three thrilling rides, which are believed to feature likenesses of stars including Daniel Radcliffe as Harry.



Read more:http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2738083/Parks-Harry-Potter-castle-is-built.html#ixzz0XO3Ut2QL

Yeah, I'll be going

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I got the nephews this book.  It's a killer book.  

I Know, I told you it was fun

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But that was before I ran into the 'rogue game operators' at Ikariam.org.

It turns out that they let people make up rules there, and then throw you out of the game because of them.  In my case, I thought I'd name my cities in 'speed world' as simply the word for 'city' in various languages.  Phonetically, they were "Polay" (Greek) "Grad" (Macedonian), "Eir" (Yiddish), "Ketamiyatu" (Ethiopian) and Shahar (Farsi).

These rules about language (listed on the board, but not in the 'rules' page) are also *identical* to the rules on their .com server (the first one I was on there).  The rule in question deals with the language of correspondence, and on the .com side, it's clarified with the note that this doesn't apply to town names, or such (only correspondence).

But, due to caprice and a decidedly cavalier attitude, the GOs in .org have gone xenophobic, and are interpreting the rule as 'English Only'; however, they don't post this information in the rules.

For the record, the 'rules' are:

.com:
 

.org:


The .com rules are further clarified in the board:

(shorter version of the below)

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100 bottles of bits in the box, 100 bottle of bits, you take one down, and short it to ground ...

11 bottles of bits in the box.  11 bottles of bits in the box, 11 bottles of bits, you take one down, and short it to ground ...

10 bottle of bits in the box.  10 bottles of bits in the box.  10 bottles of bits.  You take one down and short it to ground ...

1 bottle of bits in the box.  ...

100 Bottles of Bits ...

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100 bottles of bits in the box, 100 bottles of bits, you take one down, and short it to ground ...

FF bottles of bits in the box.  FF bottles of bits in the box, FF bottles of bits, you take one down, and short it to ground ...

FE bottles of bits in the box. ...

Beyond Belief

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I go on this topic every once in a while, but today (after seeing another veg-head slam meat eaters), I thought I'd point it out again.

Belief is the act of positing as true that which (by definition) one can neither know to be true nor false.

In other words, it's an intentional delusion.

It's affirmative mental illness.

Faith, on the other hand, is merely hoping that one is right.

They are very similar up to a very simple point, and that is one of politeness.

One can have faith that other people are acting incorrectly, but to actually stand up and say so takes the 'knowledge' that one is right.

I get paid to tell people that they are incorrect a lot, so I'm familiar with the practice.

I don't ever do that if I'm not sure.

I know the difference between suspicion and certainty.

I know that anyone who bothers to tell me about 'God' isn't 'certain' of anything.

I know that anyone that blathers on about what animals have going on in their heads isn't certain, either.

In fact, one of the few things I am certain of in life is that I can't be too sure about anything.

But I am sure that I've noted a great deal of variety in the humans' ideas of life, death, and humanity, and I've met enough humans that have less going on within than many veg-heads anthropomorphize into a chicken.

Believers, whether they are believers in a religion, a way of life, a mind-set, whatever, are all just too stupid to be taken seriously.

And vegetables are life-forms, too.  Carrot sticks, if you spit them out before you've chewed them too much and put them back in some dirt will come through just fine.  Yogurt is actually alive.  The idea that you can pick and choose which life forms are too 'sentient' to eat is really somewhat ludicrous, since we've no idea how to judge the sentience of a plant or a fungus.

Spay and Neuter your pets

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I'm still stupefied by the fact that I'm living in a nation of people who are so uneducated that the failure of our election system is *not* noticed.

The fact that we don't have any kind of 'Instant Run-Off' replacing our horse-race system of 'First Past the Post' (where in a five way race, anyone over twenty percent might be the 'winner') is just the pinnacle.

That we don't use *any* proportional representation in our legislative bodies is telling as well.

But I think the start would be to allow only people (er, *PEOPLE*) to participate in politics.  If you aren't human, why should you be allowed a 'say' in matters. And even if you *are* human, why should you be able to influence races that you can't vote in? 

In any case, the basics are there.  Our system is so flawed that *nobody* can validate our elections (even the Carter Center refuses). 

Our system is so influenced by corporate money that even though the *majority* of HUMANS want a single-payer system of health care, that's not even on the table.  The only question on the  table is whether we let the humans have an out from the system they are devising of *forced* payment into *for profit* insurance companies. 

For every thousand hacking at the bramble, one hacks at the roots (Thoreau). 

The root cause is letting non-humans into the system, and the method by which they manipulate the single party with two factions that represents *them* is by dividing us. 

If we don't start by neutering the non-human entities, why bother?

Facebook, meet Book Face

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http://www.shelfari.com/
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tell-Congress-to-Go-To-Hel-by-Rob-Kall-091117-494.html



But the grassroots idiocracy is another story. These are the dumbest, most deluded, mislead lemmings in American history. They will be remembered as a movement of fools and idiots, dupes who bought the lies of Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Fox News and the right wing echo chamber that was used by corporatists to take America from First to Third world status. 
(from Dr. Blue) Sat Nov 14, 2009 7:36am EST
 

MORE NEWS

U.S. to end war on medical marijuana in legal states 
Monday, 19 Oct 2009 07:58pm EDT 

By Dan Cook

PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - The United States' first marijuana cafe opened on Friday, posing an early test of the Obama administration's move to relax policing of medical use of the drug.

The Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Oregon, is the first to give certified medical marijuana users a place to get hold of the drug and smoke it -- as long as they are out of public view -- despite a federal ban.

"This club represents personal freedom, finally, for our members," said Madeline Martinez, Oregon's executive director of NORML, a group pushing for marijuana legalization.

"Our plans go beyond serving food and marijuana," said Martinez. "We hope to have classes, seminars, even a Cannabis Community College, based here to help people learn about growing and other uses for cannabis."

The cafe -- in a two-story building which formerly housed a speak-easy and adult erotic club Rumpspankers -- is technically a private club, but is open to any Oregon residents who are NORML members and hold an official medical marijuana card.

Members pay $25 per month to use the 100-person capacity cafe. They don't buy marijuana, but get it free over the counter from "budtenders". Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., it serves food but has no liquor license.

There are about 21,000 patients registered to use marijuana for medical purposes in Oregon. Doctors have prescribed marijuana for a host of illnesses, including Alzheimer's, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and Tourette's syndrome.

On opening day, reporters invited to the cafe could smell, but were not allowed to see, people smoking marijuana.

"I still run a coffee shop and events venue, just like I did before we converted it to the Cannabis Cafe, but now it will be cannabis-themed," said Eric Solomon, the owner of the cafe, who is looking forward to holding marijuana-themed weddings, film festivals and dances in the second-floor ballroom.


Entwerks

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Record trees 

  • Tallest living tree: Hyperion (coast redwood), 378.1 feet, Redwood National Park 
  • Tallest recorded tree: Unnamed eucalyptus, 500-plus feet, recorded in 1872 in Australia 
  • Most massive living tree: General Sherman (giant sequoia), estimated weight 4 million pounds, Sequoia National Park 
  • Largest tree canopy: A great banyan in Calcutta's Indian Botanical Garden covers three acres. 
  • Oldest living tree: Methuselah (Bristlecone pine), estimated 4,650 years old, California's White Mountains 
 Source: Guinness Book of World Records

Er, the Stanford 'Color'

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I've been trying to figure these folks out almost since I got here (job interview). Yeah, the 'Tree' is menacing, but really, their mascot is an idea (a color, specifically RED (that color).

Face Saving

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PATRIOTs in Action

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Yes, it's clear that the PATRIOT Act can protect us from terrorists.  Unfortunately, due to not showing percentages less than 2 in the chart, we can't tell what percent of protection it afforded us from terrorists.  These are the sneak-and-peek warrants issued last year.  Read the full report.

On the other hand, it's clear that they use it on potheads (most of the 65% was for marijuana):

sneak-n-peek.png

The "Drug War" is doing far more harm than marijuana itself ever will

You might remember Robert McNamara's stunning mea culpa, delivered a quarter century after his Vietnam War policies sent some 50,000 Americans (and even more horrendous numbers of Vietnamese) to their deaths in that disastrous war. In his 1995 memoir, the man who had been a cold, calculating secretary of defense for both Kennedy and Johnson belatedly confessed that he and other top officials had long known that the war was an unwinnable, ideologically driven mistake. "We were wrong," he wrote, almost tearfully begging in print for public forgiveness. "We were terribly wrong."

Yes, they were, and so are today's leaders (from the White House to nearly all local governments), who are keeping us mired in the longest, most costly, and most futile war in U.S. history: the drug war. As one adamant opponent of this ongoing madness put it, "I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the War on Drugs is a failure. Americans are paying too high a price in lives and liberty for a failing War on Drugs, about which our leaders have lost all sense of proportion."

That was no ex-hippie stoner expressing himself through a haze of herbal smoke. It was America's "Uncle Walter," the journalistic icon Walter Cronkite, calling earlier this year for a new truthfulness and sanity in American drug policy.

The drug war is rife with major failures and absurdities, including the rise of a vast, murderous narco-state within Mexico, caused by U.S. consumer demand for drugs outlawed by our government; Plan Colombia, a secretive, multibillion-dollar U.S. military operation started by Bill Clinton in 2000 to eradicate coca production in that country, which now produces 15% more coca than it did before the plan was launched; the racist and grossly unjust sentencing disparity, established by lawmakers in the 1980s, between crack-cocaine users (mostly black) and powder snorters (mostly white); and the ridiculous refusal by pious federal authorities to allow our farmers to grow hemp--a useful, profitable, sustainable, and historic crop (see Lowdown, May 1999).

The rest of this article can be read only by paid Hightower Lowdown subscribers. Click here to subscribe! If you're already a subscriber, log in here.

Armistice Day

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The Eleventh hour, of the Eleventh day, of the Eleventh month.

Let us all rejoice that we staved off killing one another at least that long.

Life Summarized in Four Bottles

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bottles.jpg

AMA Lights Up!

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The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.

The nation's largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.

In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.

"Despite more than 30 years of clinical research, only a small number of randomized, controlled trials have been conducted on smoked cannabis," said Dr. Edward Langston, an AMA board member, noting that the limited number of studies was "insufficient to satisfy the current standards for a prescription drug product."

The decision by the organization's delegates at a meeting in Houston marks another step in the evolving view of marijuana, which an AMA report notes was once linked by the federal government to homicidal mania. Since California voters approved the use of medical marijuana in 1996, marijuana has moved steadily into the cultural mainstream spurred by the growing awareness that it can have beneficial effects for some chronically ill people. 

Hatemongers

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I subscribe to a number of e-newsletters (to keep current, since I disconnected the TV sometime back now).

I have to note something that I'd not noticed before.

The 'good-guys' send me mail all the time about political issues.  The 'bad guys' do too.

But the 'bad guys' *also* send me get-rich-quick schemes about every other day, too.

I think that says a lot more about the respective clientele then anything else might.

Denied

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I applied for new health insurance.  I was denied because I use medical marijuana, apparently (the insurance agent seems to think that other arthritics are covered).

denied.jpg

The D-Man (er, 'God') said:

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The playwright Euboulos, in a surviving fragment of a lost play has the god of wine, Dionysos himself, describe proper and improper drinking:

For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.


Posted by blargfrit on January 6, 2009

This satirical infomercial, which had been on YouTube for months, was pulled by Youtube, who deemed it "inappropriate content," only after it skyrocketed into the top three topics on digg.com and began accumulating tens of thousands of views. Upset by the censorship and implications, several youtube users have re-uploaded or 'mirrored' the video in protest. Watch it in full here:


Religion - watch more funny videos

The Goldstone Report

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Regardless of the demonization, the 'Goldstone' report is actually the product of *four* judges (with Richard Goldstone being the lead judge), and it criticizes Hamas as well as Israel for the various war crimes that they've committed.

Now, if you look, this is pretty freaky humor (kind of like watching Nazi TV or something).  The rest of the videos are actually worse.

BART?  Nay!

Is now open for reading to all in the Discover Magazine Archives.

Allergy-causing substances such as pollen surely pose no great threat to our well-being; neither do cat dander and dust mites. Yet contact with such allergens causes millions of us to swell, wheeze, scratch, and sneeze as though under siege. In extreme cases, in reaction to insect stings and certain foods such as peanuts, an overwhelming allergic response, called anaphylactic shock, can even kill the body our immune system is ostensibly protecting. 

Why does the immune system carry on in this misguided fashion? Allergists don't really know; the field is as replete with controversy as it is with solid science. But one thing is certain: allergy is caused by an immune reaction unlike any other--with the exception of the antiparasite response

hometop

GreenStream

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It's been days since Israel broke the truce and started murdering Palestinians again.

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