Straight From The Hip
4.28.02
Chip Shots
The Swedish National Food Administration reported last week that heating carbohydrate-rich foods at high temperatures produces the potential carcinogen
acrylamide in foods such as potato chips, bread, pasta, breakfast cereals, biscuits, etc.. The press went wild on a headline binge, neglecting, as usual, a balanced response. Medline citation of note:
Tareke E, Rydberg P, Karlsson, P,
Eriksson S, Tornqvist M.
Acrylamide: a cooking carcinogen?
Chem Res Toxicol. 2000 Jun;13(6):517-22.
PMID: 10858325
Numbers/stats relevant to preliminary interpretation of the alert (Fox article):
"The researchers claim that a single potato chip may contain as much as one-millionth of a gram (a microgram) of acrylamide.
Assuming for the sake of argument that the lab animal tests are relevant to humans, the lowest dose in lab animals at which a slight increase in cancer incidence was reported is 500 micrograms per kilogram of rodent bodyweight per day, according to the EPA.
For the average 70 kilogram adult (about 154 lbs.), that would be an equivalent dose of acrylamide of 35,000 micrograms. To get an equivalent daily dose of acrylamide as the lab animals, someone of average bodyweight would have to eat 35,000 potato chips (about 62.5 pounds) per day."
The June 2000 Swedish abstract concludes that background levels of acrylamide are of concern.
I posit that these specific concerns should be almost completely muted with general antioxidant and anticarcinogenic "shielding" in place to guard against dietary insult.
Pass the "Jays".
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4.23.02
Got "Red Bull"?
In his 4.19.02 "Boondocks" comic strip, Aaron Mcgruder gives a tacit endorsement for "Red Bull" energy drink.
I'll add to that: it works.
There's strong research backing its use to enhance information processing, exercise performance and mood.
$2.00 a pop is a bit much, though; look for price breaks via volume purchase.
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4.17.02
Purple "Hazed"
Amazing footage in the VH-1 "Legends" episode featuring Jimi Hendrix.
Jimi, "forced" by a promoter into touring with the Monkees -that's right: I said "Monkees"- in 1967, is playing before a crowd of totally-weirded-out 7- to 13-year-old girls.
The kids in the front row are all turning to each other in bewilderment, not knowing what to make of the whole "'cuse me, while I kiss the sky" experience; Jimi has not deviated from his psychedelic signature one bit. ;) In two weeks' time, the Daughters of the American Revolution got on Jimi's ass "((act) too erotic for 12-year-old girls...") and forced his departure.
Hendrix and Peter Tork did bond, though (!):
"Jimi hit it off with Peter Tork...stayed with Tork at his Laurel Hills, CA mansion...met David Crosby, Joni Mitchell..."
VH-1 must have access to a lot of film covering the brief time Hendrix was playing with the Monkees, and I think it would make for an excellent "Behind The Music" episode.
"...all that bubblegum popping was messing with my vibe, man..."
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4.11.02
Lesbians In Wonderland
"`But I don´t want to go among mad people,´ Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can´t help that,´ said the Cat: `we´re all mad here. I´m mad. You´re mad.´
`How do you know I´m mad?´ said Alice.
`You must be,´ said the Cat, `or you wouldn´t have come here.´
Alice didn´t think that proved it at all; however, she went on` And how do you know that you´re mad?´
`To begin with,´ said the Cat, `a dog´s not mad. You grant that?´
`I suppose so,´ said Alice.
`Well, then,´ the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it´s angry, and wags its tail when it´s pleased. Now I growl when I´m pleased, and wag my tail when I´m angry. Therefore I´m mad.´"
"Deaf couple tailor-make child in their own image"
Marina Jimenez /// National Post /// 4.9.02
"'A hearing baby would be a blessing. A deaf baby would be a special blessing'.
"The two women are part of a movement that view deafness as an identity, such as being black or Hispanic, instead of as a medical problem that afflicts a disabled minority."
Deliberately creating a defect in a child is a crime by _any_ stretch of the imagination or law. Duchesneau and McCullough (both deaf lesbians) have made an outrageous decision for an unborn child based on _their_ beliefs.
If this isn't prosecuted, why couldn't couples induce or select for schizophrenia in an unborn to produce "artists"?! How about deaf _and_ sightless for a "special, special blessing"??! Autistic "super-engineers" or "musicians", anyone?? "Perfect soldiers"?? Pandora's Box hasn't merely been opened; we're now inside it. [ Usenet Discussion ]
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4.8.02
ID Implantation
While watching a re-run of "Law & Order" on A&E, I saw a blurb for "The View" which prompted me to tape it. In one of the last segments, Meredith Viera was interviewing Dr. Keith Bolton of Applied Digital Solutions, and they were trying like heck to give positive spin to APS' series of implanted ID's and "digital angels" (implants containing global positioning satellite devices):
Viera: "...designed to save lives...would help me find my child..."
Bolton: "...kids should be implanted with tracking devices...Do we love our cars more than we love our children?!" I'm not going to preach about the dangers of implanted IDs and trackers; I've posted about it before. But I would hope people don't abandon common sense in misguided attempts to appear "sophisticated" (i.e., not tied to the "666"/Apocalypse groups or mindsets).
"...the potential for abuse is so ludicrously high that it's almost impossible to overstate."
The recent spate of attempts at positive spin for implants eleucidates a "tipping point". First, execs and their families in South America concerned about kidnapping join the company chorus, then families in the US, then talk show hosts, performance artists, etc..
Once the Army and law enforcement put their muscle behind implanted ID (tracking troops in battle; tracking prisoners, parolees, child abusers, sex offenders, drunk drivers...), look for attempts at "digital birth certificates" --- implanted, of course.
The next few years are crucial for intervention; the true victims will be your children's children.
William Safire NYT column \\\ "Plastic" discussion
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4.4.02
Beyond Your Nose: "Sniffer" Technology and Medicine
"It is estimated that dogs can smell 220 million times better than humans."
Aided by their astounding olfactory (and other (!)) abilities, dogs
have demonstrated that they can:
* reliably identify urine samples from cancer patients
* detect malignant moles by sniffing skin
* detect epileptic seizures before they happen
Jump-started by the tragic events of 9-11, "sniffer" technologies based on the canine model (mainly used to detect bio-hazards and explosive markers) are now being targeted toward identifying disease and pre-disease states in humans.
Non-invasive means of detecting problems before they manifest themselves as disease will transform current approaches to the practice of medicine. The layman will also be empowered. Joel White, Ph.D., Dept. of Neuroscience, Tufts U. is among many researchers developing an "artificial nose".
Dr. William Hanson, an intensive care specialist at the U. of Penn. Med. School, has developed a machine for sniffing out (pre) pneumonia in his patients: "The Electric Nose".
Flip Side
It is inevitable that "sniffer" technology will spread to, um, innovative uses in short order: the detection of emotional states, sexual excitement, fertility in women, etc.. I forsee business using sniffers routinely on employees to obtain heads-up on health problems, drug use, etc..
These deployments will undoubtedly spawn "blocker" technology to thwart employers and prospective mates, for example. And on it goes. From one dog sniffing another's butt, to Star Trek-like medical scanners.
C'est la vie.
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4.3.02
Has Huffington Earned Her "Vulcan Ears"?
Woo! The Huff-ster Speaks! Want some, get some, bad enough take some. In "What Has The Supreme Court Been Smoking?", Arianna Huffington rips the Supreme Court a new one over their extraordinarily illogical, mean-spirited and outright life-threatening ruling concerning drug use and public housing tennancy.
It seems the Court feels that tennants can be evicted if someone living with them uses drugs _away from_ the apartment, and even if the non drug-using occupants had no knowledge of the illegal act(s).
That's not a ruling --- that's an attack on black and poor people. Period. Ann Coulter's 3.27.02 column "I Like Black People Too, Julia!" was also interesting.
Coulter's conservatism aside (I rarely agree with the woman's sentiments), her pit-bull style is engaging.
Halle Berry was definitely "frontin'" at the Oscars, and it was generally considered politically incorrect to call her on it.
No prisoners, here.
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4.2.02
A Protected Cult?
"It's wrong to wonder about the thousands of innocent priests because of the guilt of a few. But we're not going to help you out by telling you who those few are."
--- fr. Tom Toles political cartoon, 4.1.02
The church isn't going to supply law enforcement with complete lists of accused sex abusers or priests transferred to other parishes because of their involvement in abuse cases --- the lists are too large.
Not only would hundreds (if not thousands) of priests be subject to prosecution, but also the bishops and archbishops who approved the transfers.
"1,400 priests since 1985 (number of priests estimated by some psychologists to be as much as 3x higher) have undergone a treatment regimen of 5-7 months that hope to alter abusive behaviors...
...80% of U.S. priests treated for sexual disorders pass through one of five treatment centers: church-run facilities in Maryland, Pennsylvana, Missouri, Ontario and a secular hospital in Connecticut..."
---from "Church finds sex abuse has no guarranteed cure"
Chicago Tribune, 4/3/02, Evan Osmos/Jeremy Manier
A Freedom of Information suit by the Boston Globe opened secret church files that contained the names of 80 priests identified by Cardinal Bernard Law's office as having been named in complaints.
Now imagine all the secret files of all the dioceses in all the states being opened and scrutinized by civil authorities. Church abuse takes many forms: sexual, psychological and socio-political. The sins of the church are interwoven into everyday life.
Thus, earnest, in-depth and pandemic investigations into abuse allegations would uncloak the true religio-political nature of Roman Catholicism.
Translation: too many people have too much to lose by bringing the church's criminals to justice en masse. Law enforcement is in the damnable position of "protecting" a cult precisely because it has almost always been manipulated into doing so.
Millions will tolerate the sacrifice of their children on the altar of the church because of fear of losing their crutches and illusions; they are unwilling or unable to open their eyes and see that that the roman catholic church's teachings and rituals and finery and dogma have little or nothing to do with God:
"Cleave wood and I am there; lift up the stone and you will find me there."
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Come On,
Sir Paul:
Third Time's
The Charm
I was watching Paul McCartney clown around with Terry Bradshaw (both singing) during the last SuperBowl, and mentally segued to the positive effect marijuana apparently had on Sir Paul's -and the Beatles'- music.
He seems to have spoken out (publicly) twice about legalization ('64 / '97), but has not been heard from since. What a waste of power.
McCartney and his famous peers (actors, writers, etc. among them) are in their 50's and 60's, most powerful and financially secure, have generous (if not unique) media access, and could afford on all levels to begin a serious, coherent drive for marijuana legalization. Clearly, marijuana and other drugs have had a major impact on the arts and artists, one reason perhaps being the drug's abillity to improve/heighten sensitivity to the juxtaposition of ideas. Marijuana appears to facilitate "thinking outside of the box"; mj may enable some users to step ouside of the self and gain larger perspectives:
"This was the America—confident, stable, risk-taking, with tiny fissures of doubt opening here and there—in which the Beatles, for the first time, got high. In which McCartney, according to a firsthand account of the afternoon, "seems to have had an out-of-body experience"; he "declared that he was 'really thinking' for the first time and ordered road manager Mal Evans to write down everything he said."
Really thinking meant what?
This is a question about the effects of psychedelics, but it is also a question about the needs of the young people who found in them something (what is exactly the question) that would help them get by. "There's no question," remembers writer Annie Gottlieb, "that the shift from alcohol to grass and acid manifested an enormous break in sensibility between us and our parents."
[...]
From the moment the Beatles smoked pot and started "really thinking for the first time," they joined Dylan in creating an entirely new kind of popular music—popular music saturated with an intense awareness of itself, of its paradoxical cultural functions, and of the relationship, at once symbolic and intimate, between rock performers and the rock audience.
Suddenly, rock would strive to be adequate not just to the angst of teenage romance but to a world composed of blue whales near extinction, police cars overturned by anti-racist anger, sex experts pontificating on breasts and brains, Vietnamese Buddhists and Catholics fighting one another in Saigon, tired American policy-makers driving home from the Pentagon on an August afternoon, DDT settling in clouds over American lawns, policemen on horseback struggling to maintain order against a mob of shrieking starlings, The Naked Society lying next to Candy on a bedside table, the muffled sound of traffic, the thrum of air conditioning pulling power from a distant nuclear plant, and deep down in the heart of Texas President Lyndon Baines Johnson folksily defending his recent decision to send planes over the Gulf of Tonkin with the fateful lie that would cost so many lives..."
---fr. "Tomorrow Never Knows": Rock and Psychedelics in the 60s" by Nick Bromell
I posit that marijuana isn't banned because of its euphoric attributes, but because its use, over time, can enable effective non-linear thinking and open empathic lines of query.
Perhaps the powers that be are afraid that millions, momentarily freed of "government time", will look at the society -and world- around them --- and scream in terror. Such a scream would inevitably turn to Entreaties; such pleas may be heard.
We live in a time where women can legally abort fetuses (re: rights governing one's own body), and yet, the right to use marijuana (etc.), the right to ingest a naturally-occuring plant substance, a right which does not impact upon or cause others harm, a fundamental "body right" --- is denied; illegal. This is a logically and morally absurd state of affairs. We live post- 9.11, and under the death umbrella of bombings, shootings and biological and (dirty) nuclear terrorist attacks. Since anyone can potentially commit acts of terror, will the current "war against terror" ever see sunset?.
The USA Patriot Act (and the threats against personal freedoms it contains) will inevitably be turned inward; used domestically. Let me be clear: preemptive strikes against terrorist plots must be employed. But how creative can we be in conceiving modes of self-defense? When hearts change, so do acts.
If there was ever a time for general "thinking outside of the box" by the citizenry, it's now.
That's right; in the name of homeland security, I'm calling for the legalization of marijuana.
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