Saturday, September 25, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
BIXI - public bike sharing system coming to Toronto?
They need 1,000 subscribers to bring the program to Toronto. Check it out.
UPDATE
600 sign up for BIXI bike share
400 more subscribers needed in the next couple of months to reach the goal of 1,000 and then they can set up and start in Toronto.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
7.5% of Canadians have serious food allergies
...
She noted that the only practical protection available to those with
food allergies is avoidance of allergens so they are very dependent on
food labels.
...
LSD in Hollywood in the 1950s
This is a long and very interesting article detailing the history of LSD in Hollywood in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Flu shot may cut heart attack risk
Excerpts:
A British study suggests getting a seasonal flu shot can not only
prevent the flu — it may also prevent heart attacks in some people.
...
It’s believed that inflammation caused by influenza may cause plaque
inside coronary arteries to break off and cause a heart attack.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
What makes antidepressants work
Excerpt:
Most antidepressants don't show an immediate effect - instead, they
take about three weeks to kick in. For the longest time, scientists
couldn't actually explain this delay. They knew the antidepressants had
to somehow "adapt" themselves to the neural pathways, but what that
actually meant was anyone's guess. Now a team of French researchers have
figured it out: antidepressants need three weeks to shut down a
particular chemical regulator of microRNA.
This particular microRNA, designated miR-16, is in charge of making
the serotonin transporter, and is generally found in the serotonergic
neurons that produce serotonin. However, miR-16 is also found in neurons
responsible for making the neurotransmitter noradrenaline. Here, miR-16
has precisely the opposite purpose - it completely blocks the
production of serotonin in these neurons.
When drugs like Prozac go to work, they cause the serotonergic
neurons to release signals. These signals cause the miR-16 to die off,
which frees up the noradrenaline neurons to start making the serotonin
transporter as well. Thus, Prozac both directly boosts the production of
serotonin in the serotonergic neurons and indirectly causes the
noradrenaline neurons to start making it as well.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Duke Nukem Forever coming out in 2011 - really this time.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
We can torture you with immunity, but you have to pay if you torture us
Excerpt:
So, to recap: the U.S. creates a worldwide regime of torture,
disappearances and lawless imprisonment. Then, the Bush administration,
the Obama administration, and the American federal judiciary all
collaborate to shield the guilty parties from all accountability (Look Forward, Not Backward!),
and worse, to ensure that not a single victim can even access American
courts to obtain a ruling as to the legality of what was done to them,
let alone receive compensation for their suffering, even while
recognizing that many of the victims were completely innocent and even
though other countries have provided the victims with compensation for their much more minor role in what happened. Our courts even ensure that Blackwater guards are shielded from prosecution for the cold-blooded murder of Iraqi citizens.
But we invade, occupy and destroy Iraq -- while severely abusing, torturing
and killing their citizens -- and then demand, as a condition for our
allowing the end of crippling sanctions, that they fork over hundreds of
millions of dollars in compensation to American torture victims, even
though it all happened 20 years ago, under an Iraqi regime that no
longer even exists. They hate us for our Freedoms.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
10 Reasons You're Not Losing Weight
(read the link for the full article)
You Don't Have Enough Muscle
Genetics
You're getting older
Your body can't keep up
Your medicine cabinet is to blame
You underestimate portions and calories
You eat mindlessly or when distracted
You deprive yourself
You're usually good, but ...
You overestimate your calorie burn
Of course Jimi Hendrix was a big science fiction fan
Excerpt from above link:
Night of Light was a science fiction book that in 1966 inspired
Jimi to eventually write 'Purple Haze.' Farmer's story had to do with
sunspots having a disorienting effect on a distant planet's population.
Jimi wrote pages and pages of lyrics for 'Purple Haze,' originally an
epic tale of the history of warfare for the control of the planet
Neptune.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Monsters coming soon
Check out the trailer.
This looks to be something like a blend of District 9 and Cloverfield and ...
Caprica returns to TV
The 2nd half of season one will begin Oct 5th instead of in January 2011.
No news yet on a season 2 or not.
Wind Farms and Health in Canada
A report from Dr. Arlene King, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health, states that there is not any direct causal link between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects.
An Angus Reid survey has shown that most people support renewable energy generation, including wind power. Most opposition comes from people in the locations where wind farms are to be built. I occasionally see posts about negative health effects, but they seem to be unsubstantiated claims without proof. You would think that, with all the wind farms around the world, especially in Europe and Britain, where they have had large wind farms for many years, if there were adverse health effects, then they would have come to light by now.
From what I have seen and read about the dangers of different kinds of energy production, I'll take wind power over nuclear or coal power generation any day.
Anyway, read the link at the top for more information on the health report.
Here is a list of Wind Farms in Canada.
Calling "Bullshit" on the Wind Power Witch Hunters
The Disaffected Lib gets into more detail about the anti-Wind Power people.
All the FRESH MEAT posts on Wind Power
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Doctor's determine a way to reduce risks from ovarian cancer
Excerpt:
Removing fallopian tubes as part of hysterectomies and tubal
litigations would “have an immediate impact on saving lives,” said
Dianne Miller, a gynecologic oncologist with the Ovarian Cancer Research
Program of the B.C. Cancer Agency.
That is because,
paradoxically, the most deadly form of ovarian cancer originates in the
fallopian tubes – where eggs travel from the ovaries to the womb – not
the ovaries per se, she said.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Warning: LSD turns hot dogs into screaming trolls with 7 children!
Watch the video
Far out.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Cary Grant loved LSD
"I knew Cary Grant very well and he loved ... what did they call it? Acid! LSD. He said he liked to take the trip." - Debbie Reynolds
"I learned many things in the quiet of that room ... I
learned that everything is or becomes its own opposite ... You know, we are all
unconsciously holding our anus. In one LSD dream ... I imagined myself as a
giant penis launching off from earth like a spaceship." - Cary Grant
The secret history of psychedelic psychiatry
ON August 15th, 1951, an outbreak of hallucinations, panic attacks and psychotic episodes swept through the town of Saint-Pont-Esprit
in southern France, hospitalizing dozens of its inhabitants and leaving
five people dead. Doctors concluded that the incident occurred because
bread in one of the town's bakeries had been contaminated with ergot, a
toxic fungus that grows on rye. But according to investigative
journalist Hank Albarelli, the
CIA had actually dosed the bread with d-lysergic acid diethylamide-25
(LSD), an extremely potent hallucinogenic drug derived from ergot, as
part of a mind control research project.
Although we may never learn the truth behind the
events at Saint-Pont-Esprit, it is now well known that the United States
Army experimented with LSD on willing and unwilling military personnel
and civilians. Less well known is the work of a group of psychiatrists
working in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, who pioneered the use
of LSD as a treatment for alcoholism, and claimed that it produced
unprecedented rates of recovery. Their findings were soon brushed under
the carpet, however, and research into the potential therapeutic effects
of psychedelics was abruptly halted in the late 1960s, leaving a
promising avenue of research unexplored for some 40 years.
...
Continue reading at the link above.
Posts
