gregladen | December 4, 2007
While smoking toad venom might sound extreme, an even more disturbing method to get high possibly includes sniffing fermented human waste. Vicky Ward, manager of prevention services at Tri-County Mental Health Services in Kansas City, said she has read e-mail warnings about a drug called jenkem.
The drug is made from fermented feces and urine.
"We work with a lot of youths and we ask them whether anyone has tried it and they said no," Ward said. "They (the youths) have heard about it because of the Internet."
But whether people actually use of jenkem has not been determined, Ward said,…
gregladen | December 4, 2007People in Kansas City, MO are smoking toads. This, apparently, is better than licking toads. Either way, you apparently get high.
Look out toads.
"Toad smoking," which is a substitute for "toad licking," is done by extracting venom from the Sonoran Desert toad of the Colorado River. The toad's venom -- which is secreted when the toad gets angry or scared -- contains a hallucinogen called bufotenine that can be dried and smoked to produce a buzz.
Hopefully, they kill the toads before they transport them, or this is going to be a big problem when we start getting Toad Funguses and stuff all…
gregladen | December 4, 2007The yahoos at Yahoo report:
Donnie Register has a new reason to be thankful he's married ... his wedding band deflected a bullet and probably saved his life.
Police Sgt. Jeffrey Scott says two men walked into Register's shop at The Antique Market on Saturday and asked to see a coin collection.
When Register retrieved the collection, one of the men pulled a gun and demanded money.
A shot was fired as Register threw up his left hand, and his wedding ring deflected the bullet, police said.
...
[Fiancee Darlene Register] gives God all the credit.
Police were searching for the robbers, who Scott…
gregladen | December 4, 2007All I have is the press release, but it's fun:
Cosmopolitan microbes -- hitchhikers on Darwin's dust
Scientists have analysed aerial dust samples collected by Charles Darwin and confirmed that microbes can travel across continents without the need for planes or trains - rather bacteria and fungi hitch-hike by attaching to dust particles.
In a paper published in Environmental Microbiology, Dr. Anna Gorbushina (Carl-von-Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany), Professor William Broughton (University of Geneva, Switzerland) and their colleagues analysed dust samples collected by Charles…
gregladen | December 4, 2007A recent paper in PLoS Biology examines the role of the so called "language gene" in neural development related to vocalization. It was previously found that FOXP2 gene is up-regulated in a certain area of the brain that is important for neural plasticity related to vocalization. The present study reduces the levels of expression of FOXP2 gene using "FOXP2 Knockdown" individuals (individuals with a somewhat broken FOXP2 gene) in this area prior to an important stage in brain development that is related to vocalization. The effect on learning vocalization, is negative.
This experiment was…
gregladen | December 3, 2007Well, not worth it to you, but possibly to the Gordian Worm growing out of your head!
gregladen | December 3, 2007Where the White-Tail Roam
There certainly are plenty of deer. Wildlife experts estimate 32 million white-tails -- by far the country's dominant species of deer -- roam America's woods, fields and backyards. Last year, hunters killed 6.6 million of them.
My friend Kathy has this story: She was raised in, if I recall correctly, the farmlands of Illinois. Back in the 1930s (this is not Kath's recollection... this comes from her dad) her uncle caught a white tail deer. He actually captured it alive. He built a pen for it and put it on display. This was near the train station, and people…
gregladen | December 3, 2007In the latest round of conflict over anthropologists' cooperation with the U.S. military, members of the American Anthropological Association voted on Friday to ban certain kinds of secrecy in ethnographic work. In a motion passed by a voice vote during the organization's annual business meeting here, members decreed that "no reports should be provided to sponsors [of research] that are not also available to the general public and, where practicable, to the population studied."
[source]
Anthropologists are so full of shit.
This quote from a CHE news blog is the tip of an iceberg that has…
gregladen | December 3, 2007I came across this interesting post by PortlyDyke:
Trying to Get White People to Talk About Racism is Like . . . .
. . . . . well, like trying to get white people to talk about Racism.
...
I mention this because I read a wide variety of blogs, and I notice that while a number of my favorite bloggers do write posts on race and racism, there is this interesting thing that happens in comment threads to these posts -- if the blog is not frequented mostly by people of color, the comment threads very often stray from anything remotely touching on race or racism, and quickly become about "oppression…
gregladen | December 3, 2007According to Think Progress
The Center for Constitutional Rights recently produced an ad called "Rescue the Constitution" that criticizes the Bush administration for "destroying the Constitution" through the use of tactics like renditions and torture. Fox News is refusing to air the ad,
gregladen | December 3, 2007There is a fight going on regarding the Internet Infidels Discussion Board. Details can be found here, at A Load of Bright. I'm not privy to any details, and I don't think I want to be. Those folks just need to learn to get along.
From Daylight Atheism:
Here's my conclusion, and if you read nothing else of this post, read this:
So long as the current management persists, I will no longer be supporting the Internet Infidels organization (www.infidels.org). I will also no longer participate in or support the Internet Infidels discussion board (www.iidb.org). I strongly recommend that all my…
gregladen | December 3, 2007The Minnesota Citizens for Science Education has special search engines that might be helpful for people doing research on Evolution and related issues.
There are two good reasons to use one of our special search engines. First, they're based on the standard Google search engine, so they're fast and efficient. Second, they can deliver search results that suit your tastes, especially when you've had it with non-science clogging up your browsing. So give our three offerings a try (we'll understand if you don't use the third one a lot)
The search engines are here. Have fun!!!
gregladen | December 3, 2007Sex differences in certain abilities, which have persisted for decades in various psychological tests, are now widely believed to be the result of conditioning that is in turn shaped by cultural factors. This applies to math abilities, spatial skills, and a range of other activities. Neural plasticity is key, and widely misunderstood or ignored. (Indeed, this is at the heart of the race discussion. Some people really want genes to "cause" different levels or kinds of intelligence, but are unable to explain how a few thousand genes wire up a few billion neurons ... but that is the subject…