Psychedelic drugs return as potential treatments for mental illness | Moheb Costandi | Science | guardian.co.uk: “Psychedelic drugs return as potential treatments for mental illness

New research confirms that psychedelic drugs are promising treatments for depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia”

 

How does booze extend your lifespan? – By Brian Palmer – Slate Magazine: “People who drink heavily live longer than those who completely abstain from alcohol, according to a new study conducted by a psychologist at the University of Texas. How, exactly, does booze extend your lifespan?”

Offensive & Politically Incorrect Advertising & Propaganda | Crestock.com Blog: “Glaring racism, violence, murder, misogynism and a lot of smoke – In this post, we have a look at various forms of ‘politically incorrect’ advertising and propaganda from the late 1800’s up until the present. The material of our present days might not be as overt as it used to, but it’s still about in droves, and sometimes with an even fouler smell to it.”

Local Honey to Treat Allergies – iVillage: “Eating Local Honey Can Prevent or Treat Seasonal Allergies

Sniffing or sneezing? Join the club: Seasonal allergies (aka allergic rhinitis) cause congestion, runny nose and itchy eyes for 35 million Americans from spring through fall. Learn the truth behind common allergy myths:

 

Truth: This myth probably originated because pollen causes allergies and there are miniscule amounts of pollen in honey; thus, people believe that eating honey can desensitize them to pollen over time. ‘The problem is that the pollens that cause allergies, which are primarily trees, grasses and weeds, are not the plants bees use for honey,’ says Maeve O’Connor, M.D., of Carolina Asthma and Allergy Center in Charlotte, NC. ‘If you like honey, eat it. But there’s no proof it will alleviate or prevent seasonal allergies.’

Reviewed by Marc Sicklick, M.D. “

 

U.S. Grappling With Bedbugs, Misusing Dangerous Pesticides: “COLUMBUS, Ohio — A resurgence of bedbugs across the U.S. has homeowners and apartment dwellers taking desperate measures to eradicate the tenacious bloodsuckers, with some relying on dangerous outdoor pesticides and fly-by-night exterminators.

The problem has gotten so bad that the Environmental Protection Agency warned this month against the indoor use of chemicals meant for the outside. The agency also warned of an increase in pest control companies and others making ‘unrealistic promises of effectiveness or low cost.'”

 

Tea Party Rocks Primaries — RollingStone.com:

• On July 12, Glenn Beck implied that the Obama government was going to aid the New Black Panther Party in starting a race war, with the ultimate aim of killing white babies. “They want a race war. We must be peaceful people. They are going to poke, and poke, and poke, and our government is going to stand by and let them do it.” He also said that “we must take the role of Martin Luther King, because I do not believe that Martin Luther King believed in, ‘Kill all white babies.'”
• CNN contributor and Redstate.com writer Erick Erickson, on the Panther mess: “Republican candidates nationwide should seize on this issue. The Democrats are giving a pass to radicals who advocate killing white kids in the name of racial justice and who try to block voters from the polls.”
• On July 6, the Washington Times columnist J. Christian Adams wrote an editorial insisting that “top [Obama] appointees have allowed and even encouraged race-based enforcement as either tacit or open policy,” marking one of what would become many assertions by commentators that the Obama administration was no longer interested in protecting the rights of white people. “The Bush Civil Rights Division was willing to protect all Americans from racial discrimination,” Adams wrote. “During the Obama years, the Holder years, only some Americans will be protected.”
• July 12: Rush Limbaugh says Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder “protect and represent” the New Black Panther party.
• July 28: Rush says Supreme Court decision on 1070 strips Arizonans of their rights to defend themselves against an “invasion”: “I guess the judge is saying it’s not in the public interest for Arizona to try to defend itself from an invasion. I don’t know how you look at this with any sort of common sense and come to the ruling this woman came to.” That same day, Rush says this: “Muslim terrorists are going to have a field day in Arizona. You cannot ask them where they’re from. You cannot even act like we know where they’re from. You cannot ask them for their papers. We can ask you for yours. Not them.”
• July 29: The Washington Times asks “Should Arizona Secede?” and says the Supreme Court “is unilaterally disarming the people of Arizona in the face of a dangerous enemy” with the aim of creating a “socialist superstate.” The paper writes: “The choice is becoming starkly apparent: devolution or dissolution.”
• July 29, Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy continues the Radio Rwanda theme, saying, “If the feds won’t protect the people and Governor Brewer can’t protect her citizens, what are the people of Arizona supposed to do?”

• ?

• I’m beginning to wonder why effective boycotts against these hate-media channels, and particularlyFox, haven’t been organized yet. Why not just pick out one Fox advertiser at random and make an example out of it? How about Subaru and their unintentionally comic “Love” slogan? I actually like their cars, but what the fuck? How about Pep Boys and that annoying logo of theirs? Just to prove that it can be done, I’d like to see at least one firm get blown out of business as a consequence of financially supporting the network that is telling America that its black president wants to kill white babies. Isn’t that at least the first move here? It’s beginning to strike me that sitting by and doing nothing about this madness is not a terribly responsible way to behave.

 

K+5: Share your Hurricane Katrina before-and-after photos | NOLA.com: ” “

The Moneyless Man: How Did Mark Boyle Spend A Year Without Spending A Dollar? (PHOTOS): “Not being able to buy pens or paper is quite hard when you like to write! Instead, Mark made his own paper out of mushrooms that he made into a pulp and dried. A US organization recently estimated that a 12 foot-high wall, running from New York to California could be erected using just one year’s waste paper from American offices.”

Fresh Pics: Rock Stars: Then and Now: “Rock Stars: Then and Now

Many rock idols back from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s are still on stage. Some have retired from music and live a peaceful life now. Of course, they all have gone through many things and changed a lot. Take a look at famous stars then and now after the jump.”

 

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
I Have a Scheme
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Food Nutrition Facts – Healthy Living Tips at WomansDay.com: “Every child has heard the healthy-eating mantra ‘You are what you eat.’ But there may be a closer resemblance between good-for-you grub and your body than you thought. We found 10 foods that mirror the body parts they provide nutrients for—for example, brain-boosting walnuts actually look like a brain. Coincidence? Maybe. Though these healthy foods are beneficial to the whole body, the list below is a fun reminder of what to eat to target specific areas. “

Black rice is the new cancer-fighting superfood, claim scientists | Mail Online: “Black rice – revered in ancient China but overlooked in the West – could be the greatest ‘superfoods’, scientists revealed today.

The cereal is low in sugar but packed with healthy fibre and plant compounds that combat heart disease and cancer, say experts.

Scientists from Louisiana State University analysed samples of bran from black rice grown in the southern U.S. They found boosted levels of water-soluble anthocyanin antioxidants.”

 

bungandy ???: “”

Former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman Comes Out: I’m Gay: “Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter’s questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would be asked about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California’s ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8. ‘It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,’ Mehlman said. ‘Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I’ve told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they’ve been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that’s made me a happier and better person. It’s something I wish I had done years ago.'”

Can you steal a few hairs from a racehorse and clone your own? – Holy Kaw!: “A successful cloning procedure would give you a genetic double of the target, minus the su­bject’s accumulated memories and learned responses. To make your fast, underhanded fortune in the cloning business, you’d need to find an established, high-paying market for genetic material. Look no farther than professional horseracing.

There’s an enormous amount of money to be made in breeding the next Triple Crown winner. Take 2000 Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus for example. The racing stallion sold for a record $60 million following his win, and his genetic material is about as top-shelf as it gets. His stud fee is currently $150,000. That’s some pretty expensive semen.

But what if you could cut out the middlemen? By stealing a few hairs from a horse like Fusaichi Pegasus, couldn’t you do one better and simply produce the champion’s exact genetic double?”

 

 

When to use i.e. in a sentence – The Oatmeal: “”

Table Dancers Turn Tables, Show Up To Church To Protest Being Protested – The Consumerist: “The dancers at the Foxhole in Coschocton County, Ohio, are used to arriving at work to the sounds of protests from members of the nearby New Beginnings Ministries church. But the same couldn’t quite be said for the churchgoers, who showed up for services on Sunday and were greeted by the sight of bikini-clad protesters.”

 

 

 

BOYCOTT FACBOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Facebook Blocks Ads For Pot Legalization Campaign: “For a typical college student, if it didn’t happen on Facebook, it didn’t happen. That gives the social networking behemoth an out-sized influence on the confines of political debate, if that debate falls outside what Facebook deems acceptable discourse.

Proponents of marijuana legalization, which is on the California ballot in 2010, have hit a Facebook wall in their effort to grow an online campaign to rethink the nation’s pot laws. Facebook initially accepted ads from the group Just Say Now, running them from August 7 to August 16, generating 38 million impressions and helping the group’s fan page grow to over 6,000 members. But then they were abruptly removed.”

 

 

Sarah Palin Supports Dr. Laura Via Twitter: ‘don’t retreat … reload!’: “Sarah Palin has used Twitter to share some advice with Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the talk radio host who apologized and decided to retire from her highly-rated program after using the N-word on the air 11 times in 5 minutes.

Palin’s advice: ‘don’t retreat…reload!’

It’s a breathtakingly tone-deaf bit of provocation — even by Palin’s standards.

Dr. Laura, as she’s known on her radio program, quickly came under fire for her remarks of a week ago. She immediately acknowledged the mistake and soon announced that she would end the show once her contract expires later this year. She currently commands the largest audience of any woman in syndicated talk radio and overall her ratings are among the top five hosts in the nation.

Palin, once the governor of Alaska and Republican nominee for vice president in 2008, has been using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to push her messages in recent months. She fired out two messages about Dr. Laura on Wednesday night, the first reading:

 

Target, Best Buy Investors Blast Donation Supporting Minnesota Anti-Gay Rights Candidate Tom Emmer Reporting from Washington — After weeks of public protest over its financial support of an organization that backed a GOP gubernatorial candidate opposed to gay…

Sent from my iPad

Gold machine guns and pistols – most were never fired, just held for collection value.
The money and valuables found in this one house alone, would be enough to pay for health insurance for every man woman and child in the U.S.A. for 12 years! There are believed to be approximately 27 more of these houses in Mexico alone not to mention the ones in othercountries who are enriching themselves in the drug trade. These people have so much money, they make the Arab oil sheiks look like welfare recipients.
Their money can buy the best politicians, the best cops, the best judges, whatever they need they just throw down stacks of cash and it is theirs!
This is why the drug problem is so difficult to fight.

[From MEXICAN DRUG LORD’S HOME AFTER BEING RAIDED]

Courtesy of AwakeBlogger.com

Confucius, whose name literally means “Master Kong”, lived 551-479 BCE. He was a Chinese thinker and philosopher, whose teachings have deeply influenced not only Asian thought and life. He presented himself as a “transmitter who invented nothing” and he really pointed out the importance of learning, which is one reason he is seen by Chinese people as “The Greatest Master”.

One of the best known sources of Confucius are The Analects, a collection of his teachings, which was compiled many years after his death. A fountain of extremely mindful quotes springs from these ancient descriptions.

Many of them are universal and timeless in their beautiful and simple truth and they are as valid today as on the day they left Confucius’ mouth. Here we take a look at 10 of the most inspiring quotes by Confucius.

Confucius says …

1. “Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.”

It’s the “Golden Rule” and the essence of real compassion . Not compassion as in looking down on someone and have pity for another, this is no real compassion. Compassion means seeing another person 100% equal to yourself (in value, not in differentials on the surface which ultimately do not matter). In fact it is seeing yourself in every other person. And therefore you cannot harm anyone without also harming yourself.

It doesn’t mean to lose individuality or self-worth, on the contrary – but the other person earns the same gift.

2. “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

That’s my personal favorite quote since it expresses something very profound which also is very useful to know: Ignorance is a willful neglect or refusal to acquire knowledge. It is not widen one’s own perspective in order to see a broader truth. As an example it would be to have racist thoughts and not realizing that all men are equal.

The ultimate truth therefore is where there is absolutely no ignorance, meaning where the perspective or consciousness has become one with all that there is. In Buddhism ignorance (Avidy?) is seen as the primary cause of suffering. Liberation is Enlightenment. Another quote by Confucius here is “Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon and star.”

3. “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

Those quotes are just perfect. What he is expressing here is that we have to experience something ourselves in order to really understand it. If we are hearing something it might be interesting. If we are seeing something it might be beautiful. But only if we feel in happening to ourselves we can really know how it is.

Picture something nice as winning an Olympic gold medal or picture something terrifying as the loss of a loved one. Can you know this by hearing it or by seeing it? Or do you have to do it and experience it yourself to really know it?

Along with this realization comes the awareness that you cannot understand someone or his actions from hearing or seeing it from the outside. You have to feel empathic compassion for him to really know what it is like. To know and not to do is really not to know. Only by applying our knowledge we can validate it’s harmony with reality, it’s truth.

4. “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

Amazing. It calls for dropping the inner mask through which we constantly see and evaluate the world, distorted by our wants and belief-systems. Here we have to look at things as they are. Just like a newborn child would look at things. Then we are able to really see again, without instant labeling of what we see and therefore only really seeing our label. If we become able to do this – just for a second without judgment, we can see that everything in nature is as it should be. And in this natural perfection lies beauty.

5. “The Superior Man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage.”

Another quote is “The object of the superior man is truth.” It is the value of integrity: Do we act to our best knowledge of truth or do we bend ourselves and violate our integrity in order to gain an advantage? Do we play fair game or use perfidious tactics?

To be truthful to ourselves is also important to the development of (good) character. And it is the only straight way to liberation.

6. “Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.”

Whatever you do and whatever you commit to, do it fully, give your all – one hundred percent. It is the essence of Carpe Diem – Seizing the day and it’s surely the best way to be satisfied with what we do and get the best results.

7. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.”

There is no failure, there are only valuable learning experiences. Or as Thomas Edison about inventing the light bulb said: “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” The important thing is not giving up, but learning and then improving by using this feedback to get better and ultimately succeed.

A quote expressing the same principle is “A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake.”

8. “He who learns but does not think, is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”

Confucius explains the connection of learning and reflection. Reflection of that what we learned by thinking or of the results we get by applying the knowledge. “Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous” is a similar quote by Confucius. Learning is only useful if we connect the learning within our own minds, with what we already know and what is useful for us. This reflection of any knowledge also saves us from blindly following any knowledge without checking its truthfulness and validity to us.

I think everybody experienced learning when we really want this knowledge and interweave it with what we already know. If there is a need or problem we want to solve, the consume knowledge much more effective than it happens for students in many universities.

9. “He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.”

This quote calls for planning and preparation. This includes getting and improving the personal skills we need to be successful. If we want to hold speeches we have to become good with communication skills. If we want to win a race we have to train for it. If we want to do a big project we need knowledge in project management. Steven Covey calls it Sharpening the saw, read about it here.

10. “If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?”

It shows that our primary work lies within ourselves: to work on ourselves and improve will automatically take care of the outside world if we use our abilities then. “When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.” The solution to problems is not “out there”. It is the Inside-Out approach: success and happiness can only be found by working on ourselves. It also entails the spiritual message to look inside and to discover ourselves fully.

[From Confucius says: The Top 10 Quotes by Confucius – Global One TV]