January 2008 | Page 9 of 17

MonthJanuary 2008

Recreational Drugs FAR Less Likely to Kill You than Prescribed Drugs

January 15, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“Recreational drugs, including cocaine and heroin, are responsible for an estimated 10,000-20,000 American deaths per year [1,2]. While this represents a serious public health problem, it is a “smokescreen” for America’s real drug problem. America’s “war on drugs” is directed at the wrong enemy. It is obvious that interdiction, stiff mandatory sentences, and more vigorous enforcement of drug laws have failed. The reason is simple. Cause and effect have been reversed.

[…] While approximately 10,000 per year die from the effects of illegal drugs, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that an estimated 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs which, by medical standards, are properly prescribed and properly administered. More than two million suffer serious side effects. [3]

An article in Newsweek [4] put this into perspective. Adverse drug reactions, from “properly” prescribed drugs, are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. According to this article, only heart disease, cancer, and stroke kill more Americans than drugs prescribed by medical doctors. Reactions to prescription drugs kill more than twice as many Americans as HIV/AIDS or suicide. Fewer die from accidents or diabetes than adverse drug reactions. It is important to point out the limitations of this study. It did not include outpatients, cases of malpractice, or instances where the drugs were not taken as directed.”

(via Mercola)

(Thanks Kaos829!)

Brain scans reveal that inflation gets you hot

January 15, 2008 / Fell

From io9:

Inflated prices trigger the pleasure centers in your brain more than fair ones. Not only is the idea of buying something expensive more exciting than buying something on sale, but you’ll actually get more genuine pleasure out of something expensive — even if it’s not worth the cost. A group of social scientists at CalTech and Stanford discovered this not-entirely-unexpected fact when they stuck people into MRI brain scanners and gave them several glasses of wine, assigning each one a random price.

In point of fact, all the wines were exactly the same. But the results of the MRI scans showed greater neurological activity in people’s pleasure centers when they were told they were drinking expensive wine. The best (creepiest?) part of all this is that the authors of the study hope to use these findings to manipulate consumers. The authors write:

Our results show that increasing the price of a wine increases subjective reports of flavor pleasantness as well as blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex, an area that is widely thought to encode for experienced pleasantness during experiential tasks. The paper provides evidence for the ability of marketing actions to modulate neural correlates of experienced pleasantness and for the mechanisms through which the effect operates.

Yes, marketing can modulate your neurological system. You already knew that, but somehow finding out that there’s an objective truth to it in a brain scanner makes it feel more like Big Brother than Brooks Brothers.

Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness

Study: Monkeys ‘Pay’ for Sex by Grooming

January 14, 2008 / Klint Finley

Male macaque monkeys pay for sex by grooming females, according to a recent study that suggests the primates may treat sex as a commodity.

“In primate societies, grooming is the underlying fabric of it all,” Dr. Michael Gumert, a primatologist at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said in a telephone interview Saturday.

“It’s a sign of friendship and family, and it’s also something that can be exchanged for sexual services,” Gumert said.

Full Story: AP.

(via Nerdshit).

Mike Huckabee, apocalyptic theocrat

January 14, 2008 / Klint Finley

I’ve spent a lot of time ragging on Ron Paul, so for some balance here’s a frightening article about the race’s other theocrat, Mike Huckabee:

Huckabee routinely warns of the threat of “Islamofascism” at campaign rallies and is perhaps the first major presidential candidate in American history to essentially call for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Huckabee declared during a New Hampshire fundraiser in October that a Palestinian state should only be established outside of biblical Israel, possibly in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, according to the Jewish Russian Telegraph. He reiterated this position during an appearance on Face the Nation in November.

Huckabee’s advocacy of forcibly transferring the Palestinians to other Arab nations reflects his close association with some of America’s most prominent End Times theological proponents. Among Huckabee’s leading evangelical backers is Pastor John Hagee, head of a Pentecostal congregation in San Antonio, Texas, with 18,000 members and the executive director of Christians United for Israel, a national lobbying group that organizes against a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis and in favor of a military strike on Iran.

Hagee’s zealous support for Israel is kindled by his belief that Jesus will one day return to “biblical Israel” to usher in a kingdom of Heaven on Earth. “As soon as Jesus sits on his throne he’s gonna rule the world with a rod of iron,” Hagee told his congregation in a sermon this December. “That means he’s gonna make the ACLU do what he wants them to. That means you’re not gonna have to ask if you can pray in public school…. We will live by the law of God and no other law.”

Full Story: the Nation.

This confirms for me that the worst possible outcome of this year’s election would be a Huckabee presidency.

links for 2008-01-14

January 14, 2008 / Klint Finley

On the Campaign Trail in Pakistan

(tags: global politics)

Dead Woman Blogging: Theresa Duncan at 10 Zen Monkeys

January 14, 2008 / Klint Finley

Interesting tidbit:

But a strange mystery lingers over one detail of Theresa’s story – the fact that rock star (and Scientologist) Beck pulled out of Theresa’s Alice movie. New York Magazine found a curious inconsistency in Beck’s statement to Vanity Fair that he’d “never met to discuss doing her film.” Blogger Emmanuelle Richard says she found an Italian interview where in fact, Beck gushes excitedly about preparing for his upcoming movie debut. (“It will be full of energy and full of characters: some kind of Alice in Wonderland set in the 70s… The director is a friend of mine and it will be her directorial debut. We will begin shooting in the Fall.”)

Full Story: 10 Zen Monkeys.

Previous coverage:

Vanity Fair article.

The Blame Game.

Crackpot historian Adam Gorightly interviewed at Waking the Midnight Sun

January 14, 2008 / Klint Finley

When I first came up with that ‘Crackpot Historian’ title, I didn’t really give it much thought, as these are the types of phrases that sometimes just pop into my head…But what I think I intended to convey was that I enjoy writing about strange and colorful characters-what some would term ‘crackpots’-and that I also fit that category myself, at times. And yes, as you noted, I don’t take myself too seriously-so don’t you, either!

Perhaps the funniest anecdote I have regarding this ‘Crackpot Historian’ business occurred at the 2006 Retro UFO Convention. I had a table set up there with Greg Bishop, author of Project Beta and Weird California. And I made a couple name tags for us. Greg’s read: ‘Greg Bishop-U-fool-ologist’. Of course, I asked him if he minded being jokingly referred to in such a manner and he just laughed. And, of course, my name tag said: ‘Adam Gorightly-Crackpot Historian.’ Anyway, at one point a fellow approached me who started going on about crockpots. I just nodded my head, not knowing how to respond. So I guess now I’m a ‘crockpot historian’, as well! Hail Eris!

Full Story: Waking the Midnight Sun.

9/11 Truth Movement in Radar Magazine

January 14, 2008 / Klint Finley

Given how many minds, young and otherwise, he’s shaped with his gospel-kids like Luke Rudkowski who’ve adopted this worldview and shaped their lives to answer its call to noble resistance-does Jones ever worry that maybe, just maybe, he’s got it wrong? That maybe the buildings did fall because they were hit by planes? That maybe
it was Osama bin Laden who masterminded the attack? “Sure,” he says, sounding deeply annoyed at the premise of the question. “But the evidence is just too strong.” (Which calls to mind the famous Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”)

For Jones, the layers of conspiracy are so thick that they almost eclipse the possibility of any large-scale event occurring naturally. When the Cold War comes up in conversation, he interjects: “Yeah, and it turns out the whole thing was staged!” As were Pearl Harbor, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, the AIDS epidemic, the Civil War, global warming, and so on, and on-all have been orchestrated and preplanned by our secret rulers. Asked to name a major historical event that was not a conspiracy, Jones thinks for a long time, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips. “Little Bighorn,” he growls at last. “I don’t think anyone was planning to see Custer get killed that day.”

Full Story: Radar.

The Jones Report has a response:

The magazine opted instead to include some of the truth movement’s least represented and most implausible ideas, including kooky sounding notions like “energy beams from outer space, holographic jets and mini-nuclear bombs” (though Radar also includes more likely suspicions of government crime and complicity that Reed acknowledges some 40% of the U.S. population shares in regards to 9/11).

Radar also managed to colorize its language as it played up the paranoia and presented the extreme. Alex Jones is outright portrayed as the commanding general of a dank conspiracy bunker “fighting an all-encompassing battle” against “the globalists and their myriad schemes.” His focus on serious issues such as depopulation are ill-explained and presented in poor context seemingly meant to heighten the sensation of wild word-play and hyperbole in which Jones is meant to be viewed.

Full Story: Jones Report.

In Radar’s defense, the article was meant to be about the more fringe elements of the 9/11 truth movement, so omitting the saner elements of the movement makes sense. I also thought the portrayal of Jones was pretty fair – they had several quotes defending him.

My column on truthers as alt culture is here.

What Is He Capable Of? The Presidential Psychology at the End of Days

January 14, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“In defiance of his circumstances as an unpopular, lame duck president with a minority party in Congress, George W. Bush pursues a sharply autocratic tone. He has intimidated both parties in Congress and violated the Constitution. Through dissimulation and delay, he has forced the nations of the world to conclude they must wait until his term ends to negotiate any serious treaty on the imminent perils of climate change.

A sort of thousand-mile stare has descended on the country. Frank Rich writes, “we are a people in clinical depression” as a result of Bush’s leadership. Perhaps, a more apt diagnosis would be “dissociation.” Like a child or spousal victim of a psychological abuser, Bush’s “victims” try to mentally compartmentalize him; they attempt to get on with their lives – even as he keeps on being abusive. You can hear the dissociation when Congressional leaders talk about their inability to make Washington work as it should. Some, including Daniel Ellsberg, who challenged the autocratic aspirations of Richard Nixon by releasing the Pentagon Papers, suggest Bush has already created a “presidential coup.” Ellsberg has said, “If there’s another 9/11 under this regime, it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed.”

We would like to answer several questions here. Is the president psychologically capable of such treasonous behavior? Why and how does his psychology make it so difficult for Democrats and others to stand up against his negativity and destructiveness (what he thinks of as his optimism)? How might they neutralize his psychology, which seems geared to inflict harm?”

(via TruthOut)

(Thanks Pat!)