Kill Bill

Embedding Playlists from Youtube

I finally discovered how to embed playlists on this blog. I was looking in the wrong spot. Youtube is surprisingly daft on this. It took about an hour of hunting Youtube's help files to find anything about embedding playlists. Finally I found this page:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70458
The information there is completely wrong.

Further searching lead me to this page:
http://www.youtube.com/youtubeonyoursite
Here you will find this brilliant advice: "The easiest way to embed a playlist is to create a custom player."

This is the reason why you have been forced to watch those videos inside a box with an ugly border with no way to fullscreen. I have since figured it out. All is well, and I am going back and replacing the shitty custom players (of which I have had to create a separate instance for each blog post!).

End of the World Cult

Low IQ fun!

Federal Discretionary Budget for 2010

 

From Wallstats.com

Click for huge

Priest Tells Congregation to Shoplift

http://www.ananova.com/News/story/sm_3609575.html

"My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift. I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.

"I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses but from large, national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.

"I would ask them not to take any more than they need, for any longer than they need.

"I offer the advice with a heavy heart and wish society would recognise that bureaucratic ineptitude and systematic delay has created an invitation and incentive to crime for people struggling to cope."

Father Tim Jones

Christmas Messages from the Troops

Our Troops Send Holiday Wishes For Peace, Goodwill, And Body Armor

Now for some santa style relaxation

 
 

Merry Christmas Part Deux

History of Rome: Sol Invictus It's like twenty minutes but it's worth listening to. This is my kind of christmas carol.

http://a1.video2.blip.tv/4300001426031/MikeDuncan-THOR1820b903.mp3?bri=5.1&brs=87

Merry Christmas Shed Crew.

Sarah Palin's Twitter Feed

This is her old Twitter feed archived and here is her current feed. You can watch the breakdown of English as she evolves into some kind of asperger's aol speak.

Her latest tweet.

"AKs Winter Solstice=today begins season of lighter/brightr days.May it b in Washngton,too=more light so r govt's actions can lift up America"

AKGovSarahPalin Tweet Archive

Random Videos

This one has some Something Awful references but I know you guys will like most of it.

I loled at the people who bailed from their cars.

Some Stuff

This is absolutely fucking nuts, and so are the Koreans.

Al Franken draws the US like an autistic kid

I'm willing to bet he was rattling off facts about each state while he was doing this. I wonder why MPR chose to dub over him with Benny Hill music. Maybe he was real boring.

Children's Programming

Children's programming is getting out of hand lately.

Bill Dance's Classic Bloopers

Oh My FUCKING GOD!

Flying Past the Burj Dubai

Lightest Solid Ever Made

Star Size Comparison

Lynzee Stauss

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Lynzee_Stauss

Interview with Necro

I took a aesthetics class years back, and Necro actually has a sophisticated understanding of art, albeit a piss poor way of expressing this understanding.

Steve Wilkos

I watched this episode of The Steve Wilkos Show the other day with Mike. I probably didn't explain the episode too well to James the next day, because I was surprised to hear James take a hard line on 16 year old liars. Maybe bullshit in Washington has gotten everyone in a dark mood. Sorry about the rants on the last post btw.

Anyway, here is the episode. If you have time take a look.

God Damn America.

Welp, Reverend Wright was right. God damn America.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_overhaul;_ylt=AszqcLixTB1OFRlLbuu5Dp.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNuZzZsaXQxBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMjA5L3VzX2hlYWx0aF9jYXJlX292ZXJoYXVsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDMQRwb3MDMgRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDYXBzb3VyY2VzZGVt

WASHINGTON – After days of secret talks, Senate Democrats tentatively agreed Tuesday night to drop a government-run insurance option from sweeping health care legislation, several officials said, a concession to party moderates whose votes are critical to passage ofPresident Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to provide any details at a mid-evening news conference where he told reporters a "broad agreement" had been reached between liberals and moderates on the controversial issue.

With it, he said, the end is in sight for passage of the legislation that Congress has labored over for months.

In place of a government-run plan, originally designed as a way of forcing competition on private industry, officials said the Democrats had tentatively settled on a private insurance arrangement to be supervised by the federal agency that oversees the system through which lawmakers purchase coverage. Additionally, the tentative deal calls for Medicare to be opened to uninsured Americans beginning at age 55, a significant expansion of the large government health careprogram that currently serves the 65-and-over population.

The officials

described the details did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them publicly. Despite their reluctance, some senators had talked openly earlier in the day about the progress of the negotiations.

The developments followed a vote on the Senate floor earlier in the day in which abortion opponents failed to inject tougher restrictions into sweeping health care bill, and Democratic leaders labored to make sure fallout from the issue didn't hamper the drive to enact legislation. The vote was 54-45.

I'm so glad that corporate interests have convinced our duly elected representatives of the benefit of sculpting health policy based on what makes the most money instead of what alleviates the most suffering. How far along in this democratic process do we go before we decide the people have lost control and others are steering the ship of state to the detriment of the public?

About the Swiss

I began commenting on Andy's post, and I realized I was going to need to use some visual aids so I started up a post of my own...

This is a clear cut case of the majority repressing the minority. This is why places like America have adopted a constitutional republic. A representative republic governed by rule of law and a constitution act to disconnect real sovereign power from the people. It is NOT a good idea to allow people to directly govern themselves (as in a true democracy) because it leads to the majority repressing the minority. The end result of this is a powerful oligarchy. Democracies tend to always degenerate into an oligarchy, this is called the iron law of oligarchy, and there are some examples of this happening in history.

The Swiss movement to ban minarets is backed by the ultra-conservative Swiss People's Party (SVP). Who used an ad campaign based on fear.





These sorts of campaigns are undeniably effective, and it is the reason why people should not be allowed to rule directly over themselves. They are simply not qualified, and they are too easily manipulated.

As far as tolerance for religion goes... In an ideal world we would have zero tolerance for religion. As we should all individually practice a zero tolerance policy towards delusion as much as possible for the good of humanity and ourselves.

We all live in a non-ideal world however, and despite what idealists believe, no amount of ideal thinking or action with ideal intentions are going to make this world any more ideal. This is equivalent to making policy decisions based on ideology rather then physical evidence, and then having faith that it will all work out in the end.

That being said, I agree that policy that attacks religious freedom are extremely dangerous for the people living in non-ideal settings (i.e. everybody). Motivating people with fear, be it God-fear, or xenophobia, will in the end only serve to repress rather then to protect.

Minarets and such

So the Swiss people chose by popular referendum to amend their constitution the other day. It now includes a ban on the construction of minarets (Islamic prayer towers) in the country. Doesn't this sound like the sort of issue which should be handled by a law, rather than a constitutional amendment? I think the amendment's backers know full well that any such law would be struck down as unconstitutional, whereas the constitution itself cannot be unconstitutional. It can only be inconsistent. So, in fact, the Swiss constitution is currently inconsistent.

Some have claimed that Islam oppresses women. That has nothing to do with minarets. While traditional Islamic culture does proscribe certain roles to women and others to men, this is true of every traditional culture in the world. I, as a proponent of general human equality, oppose these traditions, but do not single Islam out as a special transgressor. This has nothing to do with minarets.

Some have claimed that minarets represent a threat to Swiss culture. As of their 2000 census, Switzerland had 310,800 citizens who claimed membership in a Muslim congregation. This represented 4.3% of their population at the time. All reports seem to indicate that Islam's market share of Swiss population has increased since then, with some reports going as high as 6%. Islam is therefore a (minority) part of Swiss culture. It cannot be a threat to Swiss culture. If Swiss hicks wanted to practice xenophobia, they should have done so when the Muslims were still foreigners. It is too late for these yokels to be yelling "Return from whence ye came." Switzerland is now a partially Muslim nation.

Some have claimed that predominantly Muslim nations practice more severe forms of religious persecution. Some of these nations do. This is reprehensible. In no sense does this justify the Swiss amendment. If you cite this argument, I hope you realize that you are supporting my view: religious intolerance is unacceptable.

I would like to digress for one paragraph to mention my support for the process by which this amendment was made to the Swiss constitution. I stand unequivocally for popular sovereignty. Suppression of this fundamental human right is worse than religious persecution by some margin. If the government does not serve the will of the people, then it is both the right and the responsibility of the people to remove that government and all of its officers from power. That being said, 57.5% of the Swiss people who turned out to vote on this referendum are slack-jawed buffoons. Don't take it personally, Switzerland. I think 57.5% is a low-ball for the world average of buffoonery.

Finally, I would like to ask what this amendment's backers will achieve by their success. Will they block the construction of minarets in Switzerland? Yes, at least for a time. There are, of course, hives of lawyers buzzing already to challenge this harebrained scheme. Will they open up a polite discourse throughout all of Europe on the roll of Islam? No, the discourse will be far from polite throughout most of Europe, and the rest of the world. Will they widen the rift between Islam and the rest of Western culture and further inflame hatreds from numerous sources (which were doing quite well on their own, thank you very much), all directed at their fellow man? Yep.

Some new shit.

This is an oldie.

Live TV is Awesome!

Serious lulz

Massive Rock Slide

I swear I saw this dude last week!

Do you like the Onion now?

Hidden Carmera Surprise

I still don't like The Onion

I don't like The Onion, but I thought this was clever.

for the lulz

This is for you Chris

Today is Carl Sagan's 75th Birthday.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2009/11/happy-carl-sagan-day.php

Ivan Semeniuk, contributor

Back in 1980 the US space programme was in the doldrums. Apollo was fading into history and there hadn't been a US astronaut in space for five years. The quirky space shuttle, much diminished from its initial vision, was still waiting to make its maiden flight. But that fall came Cosmos, a revolutionary documentary series with a compelling host. Both the television universe and the real one have never been quite the same. Carl Sagan, by equal measure professorial and childlike, offered space enthusiasts a new paradigm. Buck Rogers was out; refined and groovy cosmic citizen was in. Here was a visionary whose perspective dwarfed the politics of the space race and who spoke of humanity as a brotherhood with a common past and a transcendent future in the heavens. "We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands," he told us. "The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter." Sagan, who died in 1996, would be turning 75 on 9 November, an occasion which has prompted Saturday's celebration of Carl Sagan Day. Sagan's impact on science broadcasting is well known, and the Cosmos series lives on even though the celestial sights he rhapsodizes over have long since been surpassed by the Hubble telescope and planetary explorers like the Cassini mission. But what of Sagan the author? Do his printed words still ring true at a time when the cosmic journey appears to be floundering on the rocky shoals of economic realism?

Remarkably, I think they do. Sagan had a knack for big ideas that spanned human history and entire domains of knowledge. He was king of the long view. As a planetary scientist he recognised the significance of being part of the first generation to reach out to other worlds. Yet his preoccupations were not so much the technical leap or even the scientific discoveries that accompanied the dawn of spaceflight, but the transformation in consciousness it represented. Sagan's writings crossed from science to popular science gradually, starting with his academic ideas about intelligent life in the universe and his well-articulated skepticism about UFO's. Not until 1978 did his authorial voice truly come into its own, with the publication of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Dragons of Eden, about the evolution of human intelligence. Cosmos followed soon after, and then Contact, a novel about our first encounter with an alien intelligence. After that it was impossible to separate Sagan's written words from the sound of his mellow TV incantations-- a bit of a hindrance to the reader, but only a minor one. I continue to recommend reading Pale Blue Dot, which at once captures the insignificance and the preciousness of our unlikely existence. It is here that Sagan so eloquently delineates the cold joy of science, which has taught us that, "because we have a talent for deceiving ourselves, subjectivity may not reign freely." The theme is expanded in The Demon-Haunted World, a cautionary manual that arms readers against a rising onslaught of pseudoscience. What Sagan would make of the nonsense flying around the web today is anybody's guess. I imagine he would take the long view. I once had the honour of introducing Sagan during a public lecture and I botched it hilariously. After rattling off his many achievements, I said that he was, above all "a curious fellow". What I meant was that he was the quintessential scientist. The audience heard it differently and much laughter ensued. Sagan laughed too and shook my hand with a forgiving grin before proceeding to blow the roof off the place. His words managed to reach a lot of us in his 62 years. It's too bad he never got the role he was made to play: our first ambassador to another civilisation. I say this because Sagan seemed to hold all of us in his mind--our tragic past, our yearning for the sublime and our flickering hopes for something much bigger than we are today. Happy 75th, Carl. Thanks a billion. Ivan Semeniuk is Science Journalist in Residence at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto

So here is a Carl Sagan megapost.

You can watch all of Cosmos here. All episodes are there except the "fourteenth episode" which is an awesome hour-long interview of Carl Sagan by Ted Turner. I put this episode up on youtube a while ago so you can watch that here.

Carl Sagan on Ronald Reagan from The Demon Haunted World here.

Mr.X
By Carl Sagan

This account was written in 1969 for publication in Marihuana Reconsidered (1971). Sagan was in his mid-thirties at that time. He continued to use cannabis for the rest of his life.

It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life - a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences. I had become friendly with a group of people who occasionally smoked cannabis, irregularly, but with evident pleasure. Initially I was unwilling to partake, but the apparent euphoria that cannabis produced and the fact that there was no physiological addiction to the plant eventually persuaded me to try. My initial experiences were entirely disappointing; there was no effect at all, and I began to entertain a variety of hypotheses about cannabis being a placebo which worked by expectation and hyperventilation rather than by chemistry. After about five or six unsuccessful attempts, however, it happened. I was lying on my back in a friend's living room idly examining the pattern of shadows on the ceiling cast by a potted plant (not cannabis!). I suddenly realized that I was examining an intricately detailed miniature Volkswagen, distinctly outlined by the shadows. I was very skeptical at this perception, and tried to find inconsistencies between Volkswagens and what I viewed on the ceiling. But it was all there, down to hubcaps, license plate, chrome, and even the small handle used for opening the trunk. When I closed my eyes, I was stunned to find that there was a movie going on the inside of my eyelids. Flash . . . a simple country scene with red farmhouse, a blue sky, white clouds, yellow path meandering over green hills to the horizon. . . Flash . . . same scene, orange house, brown sky, red clouds, yellow path, violet fields . . . Flash . . . Flash . . . Flash. The flashes came about once a heartbeat. Each flash brought the same simple scene into view, but each time with a different set of colors . . . exquisitely deep hues, and astonishingly harmonious in their juxtaposition. Since then I have smoked occasionally and enjoyed it thoroughly. It amplifies torpid sensibilities and produces what to me are even more interesting effects, as I will explain shortly.

I can remember another early visual experience with cannabis, in which I viewed a candle flame and discovered in the heart of the flame, standing with magnificent indifference, the black-hatted and -cloaked Spanish gentleman who appears on the label of the Sandeman sherry bottle. Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.

I want to explain that at no time did I think these things 'really' were out there. I knew there was no Volkswagen on the ceiling and there was no Sandeman salamander man in the flame. I don't feel any contradiction in these experiences. There's a part of me making, creating the perceptions which in everyday life would be bizarre; there's another part of me which is a kind of observer. About half of the pleasure comes from the observer-part appreciating the work of the creator-part. I smile, or sometimes even laugh out loud at the pictures on the insides of my eyelids. In this sense, I suppose cannabis is psychotomimetic, but I find none of the panic or terror that accompanies some psychoses. Possibly this is because I know it's my own trip, and that I can come down rapidly any time I want to.

While my early perceptions were all visual, and curiously lacking in images of human beings, both of these items have changed over the intervening years. I find that today a single joint is enough to get me high. I test whether I'm high by closing my eyes and looking for the flashes. They come long before there are any alterations in my visual or other perceptions. I would guess this is a signal-to-noise problem, the visual noise level being very low with my eyes closed. Another interesting information-theoretical aspects is the prevalence - at least in my flashed images - of cartoons: just the outlines of figures, caricatures, not photographs. I think this is simply a matter of information compression; it would be impossible to grasp the total content of an image with the information content of an ordinary photograph, say 108 bits, in the fraction of a second which a flash occupies. And the flash experience is designed, if I may use that word, for instant appreciation. The artist and viewer are one. This is not to say that the images are not marvelously detailed and complex. I recently had an image in which two people were talking, and the words they were saying would form and disappear in yellow above their heads, at about a sentence per heartbeat. In this way it was possible to follow the conversation. At the same time an occasional word would appear in red letters among the yellows above their heads, perfectly in context with the conversation; but if one remembered these red words, they would enunciate a quite different set of statements, penetratingly critical of the conversation. The entire image set which I've outlined here, with I would say at least 100 yellow words and something like 10 red words, occurred in something under a minute.

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights - I don't know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate. For example, I have spent some time high looking at the work of the Belgian surrealist Yves Tanguey. Some years later, I emerged from a long swim in the Caribbean and sank exhausted onto a beach formed from the erosion of a nearby coral reef. In idly examining the arcuate pastel-colored coral fragments which made up the beach, I saw before me a vast Tanguey painting. Perhaps Tanguey visited such a beach in his childhood.

A very similar improvement in my appreciation of music has occurred with cannabis. For the first time I have been able to hear the separate parts of a three-part harmony and the richness of the counterpoint. I have since discovered that professional musicians can quite easily keep many separate parts going simultaneously in their heads, but this was the first time for me. Again, the learning experience when high has at least to some extent carried over when I'm down. The enjoyment of food is amplified; tastes and aromas emerge that for some reason we ordinarily seem to be too busy to notice. I am able to give my full attention to the sensation. A potato will have a texture, a body, and taste like that of other potatoes, but much more so. Cannabis also enhances the enjoyment of sex - on the one hand it gives an exquisite sensitivity, but on the other hand it postpones orgasm: in part by distracting me with the profusion of image passing before my eyes. The actual duration of orgasm seems to lengthen greatly, but this may be the usual experience of time expansion which comes with cannabis smoking.

I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I've had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor. Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds. A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feelings for what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word 'crazy' to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us. In the Soviet Union political dissidents are routinely placed in insane asylums. The same kind of thing, a little more subtle perhaps, occurs here: 'did you hear what Lenny Bruce said yesterday? He must be crazy.' When high on cannabis I discovered that there's somebody inside in those people we call mad.

When I'm high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won't attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights.

There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we're down the next day. Some of the hardest work I've ever done has been to put such insights down on tape or in writing. The problem is that ten even more interesting ideas or images have to be lost in the effort of recording one. It is easy to understand why someone might think it's a waste of effort going to all that trouble to set the thought down, a kind of intrusion of the Protestant Ethic. But since I live almost all my life down I've made the effort - successfully, I think. Incidentally, I find that reasonably good insights can be remembered the next day, but only if some effort has been made to set them down another way. If I write the insight down or tell it to someone, then I can remember it with no assistance the following morning; but if I merely say to myself that I must make an effort to remember, I never do.

I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social issues, an area of creative scholarship very different from the one I am generally known for. I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. Because of problems of space, I can't go into the details of these essays, but from all external signs, such as public reactions and expert commentary, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.

But let me try to at least give the flavor of such an insight and its accompaniments. One night, high on cannabis, I was delving into my childhood, a little self-analysis, and making what seemed to me to be very good progress. I then paused and thought how extraordinary it was that Sigmund Freud, with no assistance from drugs, had been able to achieve his own remarkable self-analysis. But then it hit me like a thunderclap that this was wrong, that Freud had spent the decade before his self-analysis as an experimenter with and a proselytizer for cocaine; and it seemed to me very apparent that the genuine psychological insights that Freud brought to the world were at least in part derived from his drug experience. I have no idea whether this is in fact true, or whether the historians of Freud would agree with this interpretation, or even if such an idea has been published in the past, but it is an interesting hypothesis and one which passes first scrutiny in the world of the downs.

I can remember the night that I suddenly realized what it was like to be crazy, or nights when my feelings and perceptions were of a religious nature. I had a very accurate sense that these feelings and perceptions, written down casually, would not stand the usual critical scrutiny that is my stock in trade as a scientist. If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I'm high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say 'Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!' I try to show that my mind is working clearly; I recall the name of a high school acquaintance I have not thought of in thirty years; I describe the color, typography, and format of a book in another room and these memories do pass critical scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs. Such a remark applies not only to self-awareness and to intellectual pursuits, but also to perceptions of real people, a vastly enhanced sensitivity to facial expression, intonations, and choice of words which sometimes yields a rapport so close it's as if two people are reading each other's minds.

Cannabis enables nonmusicians to know a little about what it is like to be a musician, and nonartists to grasp the joys of art. But I am neither an artist nor a musician. What about my own scientific work? While I find a curious disinclination to think of my professional concerns when high - the attractive intellectual adventures always seem to be in every other area - I have made a conscious effort to think of a few particularly difficult current problems in my field when high. It works, at least to a degree. I find I can bring to bear, for example, a range of relevant experimental facts which appear to be mutually inconsistent. So far, so good. At least the recall works. Then in trying to conceive of a way of reconciling the disparate facts, I was able to come up with a very bizarre possibility, one that I'm sure I would never have thought of down. I've written a paper which mentions this idea in passing. I think it's very unlikely to be true, but it has consequences which are experimentally testable, which is the hallmark of an acceptable theory.

I have mentioned that in the cannabis experience there is a part of your mind that remains a dispassionate observer, who is able to take you down in a hurry if need be. I have on a few occasions been forced to drive in heavy traffic when high. I've negotiated it with no difficult at all, though I did have some thoughts about the marvelous cherry-red color of traffic lights. I find that after the drive I'm not high at all. There are no flashes on the insides of my eyelids. If you're high and your child is calling, you can respond about as capably as you usually do. I don't advocate driving when high on cannabis, but I can tell you from personal experience that it certainly can be done. My high is always reflective, peaceable, intellectually exciting, and sociable, unlike most alcohol highs, and there is never a hangover. Through the years I find that slightly smaller amounts of cannabis suffice to produce the same degree of high, and in one movie theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the cannabis smoke which permeated the theater.

There is a very nice self-titering aspect to cannabis. Each puff is a very small dose; the time lag between inhaling a puff and sensing its effect is small; and there is no desire for more after the high is there. I think the ratio, R, of the time to sense the dose taken to the time required to take an excessive dose is an important quantity. R is very large for LSD (which I've never taken) and reasonably short for cannabis. Small values of R should be one measure of the safety of psychedelic drugs. When cannabis is legalized, I hope to see this ratio as one of he parameters printed on the pack. I hope that time isn't too distant; the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

Thanks Carl.

Funny Music Videos

Chicken Fucker!

*EDIT* The original Chickenfucker video, and all the YouTube copies have had thier embedding disabled. I've instead uploaded this version which is a clever little remix.

Don't let this happen to you!

Lol, they sent it to Youtube, thats who. Over a million people saw that shit.

Just lol

Camino Del Rey

This is video of one of the most dangerous footpaths in existence. Construction of the Camino Del Rey was started in 1901 and finished in 1905. It follows the contour of a sheer cliff face 900 feet high somewhere in Spain. It has since fallen into disrepair, and has closed. This doesn't stop the tourists though. There have been many deaths on the Camino Del Rey, and you should be able to see why. Enjoy, don't get vertigo.

You'll notice the wire that has been put up for harnesses. It is sorely needed, however I doubt the cameraman is using it as you can see a fellow with a harness in the middle of the video and it would clearly require you to stop at intervals to reengage the clamps. Also, I have read that the steel wire is dubious as to it effectiveness. Nobody seems to really trust it, and they recommend that you stay far behind anyone else who is using it in case they fall. The cable probably wouldn't hold that much weight. There are plans and funding to repair the path.

Water jetpack motherfuckers!

It only costs 186 thousand dollars to do this.