Episode24
From Technolotics
Contents |
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Psilocybin Mushrooms Banned
- They grow naturally on earth
- They've been used to religious, meditative, and personal insight for thousands of years
- They are completely non addictive
- But the 'loophole in the law' has been closed - and they've become a class A drug
- Tainaiste (vice president / deputy prime minister) Mary 'Jabba' Harney - has banned the sale or even possession of this naturally growing plant
- Harney alleged that several people have died from mushroom use [1]..
- 1,500 aprox [2] of yearly deaths from alcohol abuse and alcohol related illnesses - and €2.65 billion annual cost to economy
- 48% estimated (healthpromotion.ie) of criminal offences related to alcohol
- 6000 [PDF - health promotion.ie http://www.healthpromotion.ie/uploaded_docs/hput00091.pdf] tobacco related deaths per year
- subject which should be close to the tainaistes heart the 2,500 deaths from obesity related diseases ** have not lead to the prohibition of alcohol, tobacco, or fatty foods
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Shock Therapy 2.0
- The highly controversial psychiatric treatment ECT (Electron convulsive therapy) [3]
- works by literally scrambling the brain - stimulating massive depolarization across the brain, and possibly destroying large amounts of neurons - mechanism of efficacy is largely a mystery
- still used in treatment of severe depression
- serious side effects - long term & short term memory loss - provoked large anti-ect movement [4]
- ECT, like pharmaceutical interventions, is a cheap alternative to long term therapy
- New 'kinder' alternative [5] - specificially directs magnetic fields through the skull directly to brain circuts thought to be responsible for specific disorders
- Supporters claim no cognitive deficits or negative side effects
- But as the theraputic mechanism is unknown - some psychiatrists have expressed concearn
- The danger is that the brain 'circuts' which are involved in modulating disorders like depression, OCD, and schizophrenia - don't just do one thing
- like all of the neocortex they also store memories
- OCD - orbito frontal cortex - regulates behaviour - anteriour cingulate - regulates drive, motivation and emotional processing => stimulating or inhibiting these areas could have enormous consequences for the regulation of emotion and behaviour
- temporal parietal cortex - schizophrenia - also processing of memory
- prefrontal cortex - depression - also altertness, fight or flight, and sexual functioning
- This sort of intervention - without extensive research and animal models to back up its use - is potentially extremely irresponsible & even dangerous
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Google News
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Googleblogger: Is google evil?
- Google struck the news this week - having created a special chinese portal
- lacking gmail, blogger, and with censored results [6]
- This may be a competitive move against Baidu.com - a home grown search company, which is gaining market share in China against Google
- Chinese authorities had in the past blocked access to the chinese language version of google
- Executives have stated that this is 'the ethical price they have to pay' to have servers on the Chinese mainland, improving speed and quality of service
- Sites such as BBC news, and Amnesty international - and any references to contensious issues like Tibet, Tiwan, or the Tienamen Square massacre - are filtered out by the 30,000 strong army of censors employed to patrol the 'great chinese firewall'
- Google has always been censored by China - but will now actively work with the Chinese government to censor freedom of speech and access to information within China
- Googles move has been widely criticed by organisations like 'Reporters without Borders' and Amnesty International
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Goobuntu?
- IT online magazine The Register has reported that a Google is working on a desktop Linux varient, based on the Ubuntu distrobution [8]
- Sources within Google deny such plans exist [9]
- Why would google bother with a local OS - server side use maybe - but they already have a Google OS for their data centers
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Bush silenced climate expert
- Nasas top climate expert claims he's been pressured into silence since calling for reductions in green house emissions [10]
- James E. Hansen - claims officials are attempting to restrict and censor his communications
- NASA officials deny the censorship - stating that the agency does not allow its staff to make public policy statements - and needed to centrally co-ordinate the dissemination of information
- Hansen heads global climate simulations at NASA - and has been calling for emission reductions since the late 80's
- Media outlets considered as too liberal - such as NPR - are being refused interviews with the leading scientist
- Similar muzzling of scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
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Catch the Fat
- Is obesity contagious? [11]
- Obesity may be linked or even caused by viruses
- 2 viruses - Ad-36, and Ad-37, which have been found to cause obesity in animals - may have the same effects in human carriers
- screening and vaccination are still a long way off - as is a certain knowledge of the extent and proportion of obesity caused by viral vectors
- what is certain, is that culture and national diets have an enormous impact on obesity levels
- the contagin theory is still controversial - but supporting scientists point out that its only in recent years ulcers have been identified as viral in origin (the helicobacter virus was eventually found to be responsible)
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Short Stories
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Who has your STD?
- inSpot - a site funded by the San Francisco dept of public health, allows you to anonymously inform your sexual partners you may have given them an STD - via e-cart [12]
- the humourous cards (e.g.: ' I got screwed while screwing, you might have it too') could be construed as reducing the intimidation factor of the message, or making light of a serious situation
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Wireless *10
- Super Fast wireless on the way [13]
- IEEE have approved a proposal for 802.11n wireless standard
- Aims for maximum speed of 600mbps - with more data rate consistency - fast enough and reliable enough for high bandwidth applications like multiple HD video streams with surround sound
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Media Pimp
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