Transcendental Medication

CNN on the lasting positive effects of "magic mushrooms":



I haven't shroomed in years. Now I'm tempted...

Sweet Dreams

Sleeping late is good for you.

Until the invention of the lightbulb (damn you, Edison!), the average person slumbered 10 hours a night.

Water From Air

Can this machine produce drinking water from air?

Unhappy Hour

Britain considering a ban on happy hour in an effort to curb drinking related deaths.

Britain is considering a ban on "happy hour" discounts at bars and restaurants to curb drinking, a spokesman said Saturday, as health advocates warned that a rise in liver-related deaths among young people may signal a future epidemic.

Moving Images

A couple photos that changed the world.





There's a nice collection of thought-provoking photographs at the link above. Just watch out for some of the nastiest, most ignorant, xenophobic and racist douche bags on the web in their comment sections.

via

No Stresspassing

China: the world's most stressful society?

SkyFi

How about a video skylight to spruce up the joint?

SkyV is a ceiling-mounted system of HD LCD screens integrated into a patent-pending, faux skylight framework. The system includes multi-channel graphics processors and specialized synchronization software for display of its terabytes of proprietary HD content. SkyV simulates a real skylight, presenting hours of visual content captured from beneath beautiful skies and trees world-wide.

No Going Home

The number of American homeless is "alarming".

"Everywhere I go, I hear there is an increase" in the need for housing aid, especially for families, says Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates federal programs. He says the main causes are job losses and foreclosures.

Other factors have been higher food and fuel prices hitting families with "no cushion," says Nan Roman of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Rock, Roll, & Roast Beef

"For less than the cost of a Big Mac, fries and a Coke, you can buy a loaf of fresh bread and some good cheese or roast beef, which you will enjoy much more."

Steve Albini

Grow Your Own

Turn your lawn into a garden with the 10 most easy to grow veggies.

Growing Blood

Could stem cell technology help us grow blood?

Blood donations could one day become unnecessary, after the discovery of a way to grow potentially unlimited supplies of blood in the lab.

Immune Tunes

Can listening to music boost your immune system?

Prison Fat Camp

Fat kids in the UK should be taken from parents?

Grossly overweight children may be taken from their families and put into care if Britain’s obesity epidemic continues to escalate, council chiefs said yesterday.

Superfood

Another reason to finish your broccoli.

Superbug

The next generation of resistant infections impossible to treat?

Where Will They Go?

The thought of growing old, ending up alone, disabled, and in a nursing home is awful enough... then you read this.

Since Jasmine Nguyen collapsed nine years ago, apparently from a seizure, the 32-year-old has lived in a nursing home in Lodi, Calif., dependent on a ventilator to breathe and the facility's staff for her daily needs.

But since early this year, the nursing home has been seeking to evict Ms. Nguyen and a dozen other residents in similar situations, potentially replacing them with shorter-term residents likely to bring more revenue.

Across the country, nursing homes are forcing out frail and ill residents. While federal law permits nursing-home evictions in some circumstances, state officials and patient advocates say facilities often go too far, seeking to evict those who are merely inconvenient or too costly. Residents with dementia or demanding families are among the most vulnerable, particularly if -- like Ms. Nguyen and the other Lodi residents -- they depend on Medicaid to pay their bills, the officials and advocates say.

Rebirth

Scientists revive "ancient glacier creatures".

Creatures that once lived eight million years ago have been successfully thawed from the ice of an Antarctic glacier, in an experiment that sounds like a scene from a science fiction film.

The feat of revival was managed with as yet unidentified single-celled microbes and should pose no health issues, say the scientists.

Yeah, should pose no health issues. Heard that one before. Captain Trips here we come...

Blood Money

Suicide spreads as a solution to overwhelming debt.

Suicide is becoming an increasingly popular response to debt. James Scurlock's brilliant documentary, Maxed Out, features the families of two college students who killed themselves after being overwhelmed by credit card debt. "All the people we talked to had considered suicide at least once".

The article points out the violence wasn't always directed inward.

...in the early 30s, a number of cities were so shaken by the resistance that they declared moratoriums on further evictions. A 1931 riot by Chicago tenants who had fallen behind on their rent, for example, had left three dead and three police officers injured.

According to Piven, these actions were often spontaneous. A group of unemployed men would get word of a scheduled eviction and march through the streets, gathering crowds as they went. Arriving at the site of the eviction, they would move the furniture back into the apartment and stay around to protect the threatened tenants. In one instance in Detroit, it took 100 cops to evict a single family. Also in Detroit, Piven said, "two families protected their apartments by shooting their landlord and were acquitted by a sympathetic jury."

Less Happy

They're saying women end up less happy than men.

Food for the Rats

Approved GM corn toxic?

"Laboratory rats, fed with a genetically engineered (GE) maize produced by Monsanto, have shown signs of toxicity in kidney and liver, according to a new study. This is the first time that a GE product which has been cleared for use as food for humans and animals has shown signs of toxic effects on internal organs.

Why are the people who made Agent Orange making us dinner?

Coincidence?

Power outage at CDC germ lab and stockpiles of plastic coffins?

Falling Behind

American life expectancy ranks 42nd.

Despite spending $230m (£115m) an hour on healthcare, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country. And while it has the second-highest income per head in the world, the United States ranks 42nd in terms of life expectancy.

These are some of the startling conclusions from a major new report which attempts to explain why the world's number-one economy has slipped to 12th place - from 2nd in 1990- in terms of human development.

The American Human Development Report, which applies rankings of health, education and income to the US, paints a surprising picture of a country that spends well over $5bn each day on healthcare - more per person than any other country.

Bull Ban

France ends the ban on Red Bull energy drink.

The drink had been banned in France for twelve years due to health authorities' concerns about unknown consequences of the ingredient taurine, a chemical forbidden in several countries.

The Hurt

Study concludes many young girls find self harm a "normal way of managing stress".

We Are What We Smoke

Does our skin grow its own pot?

Marijuana-like substances made by the skin are necessary for a healthy complexion, a new study concludes. Back up. We've got pot growing out of our skin?

We're Worth Less

An American life is dropping in value. What does this mean for you?

It's not just the American dollar that's losing value. A government agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be.

The "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million in today's dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May - a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago.

The Associated Press discovered the change after a review of cost-benefit analyses over more than a dozen years.

Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.

When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution.

Go to Your Happy Place

Is the world becoming happier?

Toxic Voyage

India is the shipping industry's toxic waste dump.

Modern Life Blues

The modern world is bringin' me down, man...

...it's hard to join a community when you have to fight congestion to get to the nearest coffee shop, when you're too tired from a long commute to do much more than watch the tube, and when the pervasive voice of advertising proclaims that "it's all about you."

[environmentalist Bill] McKibben predicts that a less-centralized approach to the economy, far from being an archaic throwback to a simpler time, has a rosy future. The new rush to locally grown produce and jobs within walking distance of residences could be a harbinger of the future.

The government could help, says McKibben, by cutting off subsidies to giant enterprises, like those that control farming. But the real change will come when individuals reach a tipping point and decide to change their lifestyles.

Read more here.

Are You Negative?

NYC wants every Bronx adult to have an HIV test.

False Positives

It's being reported hundreds of people in New York were given false positives on HIV tests. Oops, our bad!

A Bad Wrap

Well, if the food isn't toxic, its packaging probably is. How long exactly until we become mutants?

Net Addict

Do you spend a lot of time online? You may be suffering from a clinical disorder. You may be a webhead. Hello, my name is Blue Skies and I'm a webhead.

Obsessive internet use is a public health problem which is so serious it should be officially recognised as a clinical disorder, according to a leading psychiatrist.

Sufferers spend unhealthy amounts of time playing online games, viewing pornography or emailing.

They suffer four symptoms: They forget to eat and sleep; they need more advanced technology or more hours online as they develop 'resistance' to the pleasure given by their current system; if they are deprived of their computer, they experience genuine withdrawal symptoms; And in common with other addictions, the victims also begin to have more arguments, to suffer fatigue, to get lower marks in tests and to feel isolated from society.

OK, OK, I may not be that bad. I never skip a meal. Read more here.

Blowjobs Cause Cancer

Is oral sex to blame for a rise in throat cancer?

Urban, Organic, Cuba

But while none of these slogans are household words in Cuba, 70 percent of the vegetables and herbs grown on the island today are organic and the urban gardens where they are raised are usually within walking distance of those who will consume them. So in one blow Cuba reduced the use of fossil fuels in the production and transportation of food. And they began doing this nearly 20 years ago.

Read more here.

Shiny Herpe People

1 in 4 NYC residents have herpes?

Apocalypse in the Oceans

Have the oceans met their demise?

...the globe's oceans have transformed over the last several decades, transforming even as we sit here into wastelands, ghost worlds, desolate deathscapes that could be filmed in situ for sci-fi films about the post-apocalypse. You won't find this out from a day at the beach. The smiling sea captain depicted on the fish-sticks box is keeping mum.

Oh, and a large percentage of coral reefs worldwide are dying or already dead. Oh, and those bluefin tuna and halibut steaks you like? Say it with me: Mercury. Those jumbo fried shrimp battened on pesticides and antibiotics in bacteria-riddled Chinese farms, their decomposing flesh treated with borax? How's your health insurance?

Wide Ride

Fat people = fat ambulances

Too Fat for Jail

Can't deal with jail? Just get fat and get out early!

Lapointe's lawyer says chair and tables were too small and the poor prison diet made Lapointe gain 50 pounds forcing the con to take more than 20 pills of medication.

Shopping List

Seven tips to avoiding genetically modified foods.

Going Green, Eating Green, Saving Green

Vegetable gardens are sprouting up in the city. I'm hoping to get my own garden going one of these years.

Refreshing

Coca-Cola is set to phase out a "controversial chemical linked to hyperactivity and gene damage".



This the first I've heard of it. Read more here.

Fat Chance

Seems someone's been spiking the Olsen Twins' coffee with full fat milk in order to fatten them up a bit. Oh, the horror! Personally I need to go the other way. I have been slacking big time with the fitness routine and have packed on a few pounds. My fat ass really needs to get back on this new treadmill here...