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28 July 2006

 

Psychedelics and Cannabis are NOT "Narcotics"
Whenever you hear or read about some fascist official (who is talking about the War on Consciousness) refer to the medicines that they are so afraid of as "narcotics" you can be absolutely certain that the person using that word is basically, well, a moron.

If you take the time to look up the definition of "narcotic", you will find that it means: "An addictive drug, derived from opium, that reduces pain, induces sleep and may alter mood or behavior."

Narcotics are used in hospitals to reduce pain and keep patients more comfortable. The use of the word in law enforcement goes back to the old "Reefer Madness" mindset. But when the good citizens of Buffalo, New York began a discussion about legalizing some substances, the police commissioner said this, "Allowing for narcotic intoxicants to get further entangled in our society is not a positive and is not going to bode well for anybody," my first reaction was that Commissioner H. McCarthy Gibson is either an uneducated moron or a fascist dupe. . . . In either event, he is definitely not a knowledgeable person when it comes to these issues.

posted by Lorenzo 5:43 AM

26 July 2006

 

Those irritating animated advertisements
Am I the only one who dislikes those animated GIF files that keep distracting me from reading a Web page? While I've found it impossible to surf the world news sites without encountering one of them, I have made it a practice to note the names of the companies that use them and NEVER purchase ANY of their products. . . . It's brain pollution that they're spewing all over the place, and I'm simply not going to support them.

posted by Lorenzo 6:41 AM

23 July 2006

 

Interesting NPR Broadcast About an Approaching Technological Singularity
I saw the following on a list I'm on and went and listened to the interview. It's not overly long, and extremely interesting, IMHO. (Hopefully NPR has left the full audio available via the link above.)

Here is the message that got my attention:
"A minute ago (19:38 GMT on 23 July) I heard an NPR piece on the Singularity (through their npr.org stream), featuring interviews with Vinge and Doctorow. Very focused on the Singularity message.Couldn't find anything to fault. They even followed up their mention of the Borg by pointing out that this is a Hollywood cliche to be contrasted with serious prediction, just as if they've read Yudkowsky's warnings on the follies of fiction."

. . . and a quote from Vernor Vinge's new book:
"Much of the planetary sensing that is part of the scientific enterprise will be implicit in this new digital Gaia. The Internet will have leaked out, to become coincident with Earth. How can we prepare for such a future? Perhaps that is the most important research project for our creativity machine. We need to exploit the growing sensor/effector layer to make the world itself a real-time database. In the social, human layers of the Internet, we need to devise and experiment with large-scale architectures for collaboration. We need linguists and artificial-intelligence researchers to extend the capabilities of search engines and social networks to produce services that can bridge barriers created by technical jargon and forge links between unrelated specialties, bringing research groups with complementary problems and solutions together — even when those groups have not noticed the possibility of collaboration. In the end, computers plus networks plus people add up to something significantly greater than the parts."
-- Vernor Vinge from Rainbows End

posted by Lorenzo 5:48 PM

20 July 2006

 

Art that stretches your mind

At Burning Man this year, one of the panels at the Palenque Norte lectures will be composed of Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, Robert Venosa, and Martina Hoffmann. If you have never had the pleasure of seeing their art, just click on their names and you will be taken to their personal Web sites.

Another artist whose work I think you will enjoy is Moira Hahn. That's a sample of her work on the right. While Moira doesn't bill herself as a psychedelic artist, I think that if you check out her Web site you will agree with me that some of her work definitely has that flavor.

posted by Lorenzo 2:38 PM

19 July 2006

 

By what name will future generations know our time?

Now isn't that an interesting question? And I sincerely believe that it is the question we should all ask ourselves each and every day. The link above is to the first blog I've added to our "Peace Is Possible" section in over a year. It's not that there isn't plenty of good news to be posting. It's just that until I read this essay, nothing had hit a nerve with me like this did. I think it would be worth your time to at least check out my summary of this essay, which in turn is an overview of a new book by David C. Korten titled, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. Here is a sample quote:

Developments distinctive to our time are telling us that Empire has reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain. A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and an imbalanced U.S. economy dependent on debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life. We have the power to choose, however, whether the consequences play out as a terminal crisis or an epic opportunity. The Great Turning is not a prophecy. It is a possibility.

posted by Lorenzo 7:15 PM

18 July 2006

 

The BBC Headline Read: Judiciary 'in touch with reality'

But looking at the the photo of the judge that they included with their story sure makes me wonder about that.

Maybe that's what the Americans should do, dress their judges up to look like Disney characters. Since there isn't much justice to be found in U.S. courts these days, the least the judges could do is dress up funny so we can laugh instead of cry at the state of the U.S. system of 'justice'.

posted by Lorenzo 2:22 PM

16 July 2006

 

The Chaotic Mind of a Hopeless Senator who has Lost His Reason
In case you missed it, here is Jon Stewart on Net Neutrality.

posted by Lorenzo 6:36 PM

11 July 2006

 

Former Top Drug Official Revises Opinion about Magic Mushrooms
In case you haven't yet read the reports about the new study from Johns Hopkins, it might be worth your time to do so. Here is what former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) director, Charles R. Schuster (now Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the Wayne State University School of Medicine) had to say about the results of this ground-breaking research:

It is striking that majority of the participants reported 2 months later that the psilocybininduced experience was personally very meaningful and spiritually significant. Indeed, most of them rated the psilocybin-induced experience as one of the top five most important experiences in their life. It is especially notable that participants reported that the drug produced positive changes in attitudes and behaviors well after the sessions, and these self-observations were consistent with ratings by friends and relatives.

posted by Lorenzo 11:52 AM