The 507 Effect

Humanity and Technology promise many marvels.  The power lying dormant at our fingertips is enough to power the world forever, or destroy it in a nuclear fission.  The technological promises of tomorrow are even more wondrous and amazing.  it seems that humanity, after billions of years of evolution, has reached a break point.  A point at which using the powers of its own mind, and the resources of its own planet, we will finally create tools allowing us to leave behind our primitive and violent past, and have abundance for all creation.  Already the tech exists for all humans to have electricity and clean water.  Already there are enough junk computers and cell phones for everyone on earth to be connected.  But the divide is in the profit motive.  I understand that people who develop new paradigms want to be compensated.  Even more so paradigms that are God-Like.  But never before has humanity truly had the opportunity to feed and cloth everyone.  Never before has humanity had the chance to make everyone healthy.  Never before have we had the chance to explore and colonize the galaxy.  This window may be closing rapidly.  An oil based society is doomed to collapse.  Currently we have an economic and cultural engine unheard of before in history.  We are on the launchpad, poised for a Grand Horizon.  But already the barbarians are looming on the borders.  Already the inmates run the asylum. 
Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.*  The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.*  Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.*  The stats are alarming because we are reaching a point of intelligence explosion.  As the gap between poor, uneducated people and enhanced intelligence grows wider, can we trust that there will not be some type of enslavement?  Can we trust that smaller more powerful technologies and weapons won’t be used in a host of ways against humanity and our culture?
If we navigate this narrow course, and prevent the train from derailing, humanity may be entering a phase where intelligence truly “flowers”, and we come into the great promise that we seem so capable of.  There appear to be no other signs of our form of intelligence in the observable Universe, meaning that either we are very very special, or that all societies that reach our level of development destroy themselves, and so we are also destined.  How we navigate this course will depend on each and every human.  No one can be left out or behind.  It the profit motive continues, then people will be left out, and there will be two classes.  Those enhanced and those not enhanced.  Enhanced humans already exist.  If you have a cell phone, use the internet, own a gun.  You are enhanced by technology.  It is all a matter of degree.  If the profit motive disappears, then there is enough for everyone.  All of earths resources will be directed at uplifting our minds, and harvesting the best ideas of the world so that we don’t miss this crucial window in time.  Everyone on earth will be provided for easily, and instead of the haves and the have nots, there will only be The Haves and The Have Mores.

*Thanks to GlobalIssues.org for the facts.

There’s blood in the water, and the sharks are circling.  Why is it that when you mess up in this world, there is always someone there to make money?  Why is it that when you are sick, there is always someone there to make money?  Why is it that when God touches your heart, there is always someone there to make money?  Our worlds belief structure creates a self perpetuating vicious cycle of greed and fear.  Everyone alive has had a moment where they were down, whether physically or spiritually.  Its what you do when you are down that this is all about.  Most people break when they are down.  They give up, succumb to control, and admit defeat.  They allow their lives and energy to be leached off of by the vampires who set this whole system up.  Most people become bitter, dwelling on what could have been, or stewing with envy and rage at someone who threw them off course.  They forget that light kills Vampires…  To have someone tell you about climbing a mountain is one thing, but to climb the mountain yourself, that is a whole other story.  Tribulation brings understanding, and understanding brings true compassion.  And The Compassionate ONE is what this world is starving for.  The Compassionate ONE drives the sharks and vampires away with the power of thought, voice, and action.  The power of inner light.  Cry not for yourself, cry for the millions oppressed worldwide.  Sing the Song of Their Liberty!  Take the fear and greed of the vampires and sharks and let it fire up your will to succeed!  For the Greatest Revenge is Success!

omegaprojectmusic.com

Will computers think for themselves?  Will humans be able to reprogram our own biology, making us “super human”?  Will our kids be born into a world where every item is “smart”.  Michio Kaku, another one of my favorite modern philosophers and Great Minds tackles these questions in “Visions of the Future: The Intelligence Revolution“

This video does a great job illustrating the vast changes underway on our world.  By 2020 a microchip with the computing power of a modern cellphone will cost about $.01.  As this draws nearer, chips will begin to be embedded in everything truly leading to the “ubiquity era” with thousands of computers per user.  Humans will then (if not already) begin hard-wiring our minds with more processing power and altering our DNA to dramatic results.  Humans may no longer be Homo Sapien and may self selectively evolve into Cyber Sapiens.

THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR!

Question of the Day:
Do you think humans will achieve this great change in our very essence?

Microsoft just released the report on their 2007 conference Being Human: Human-Computer interaction in the year 2020.  When a heavyweight like Microsoft throws their weight behind a concept, no longer does Ray Kurzweil seem so “fringe”.  Human-Computer interaction is indeed going to change Microsoft argues, going from the Mobility Era (with multiple computers per user) into the Ubiquity era (with thousands of computers per user).   This is a landmark report. Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar a year company, and with them openly touting a new OS called “Singularity” and releasing reports on “Human-Computer Interaction”, it is now only a matter of time before the public at large acknowledge and accept the undergoing changes worldwide.  Have no doubt my friends, THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR…

Read Being Human: Human Computer Interaction in the Year 2020

Are supercomputers on the verge of creating Matrix-style simulated realities? Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, thinks so. He says that virtual worlds realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing are just a few years away.

In 1950, Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, proposed the ultimate test of artificial intelligence – a human judge engaging in a three-way conversation with a machine and another human should be unable to reliably distinguish man from machine.

A variant on this “Turing Test” is the “Graphics Turing Test”, the twist being that a human judge viewing and interacting with an artificially generated world should be unable to reliably distinguish it from reality.

“By interaction we mean you could control an object – rotate it, for example – and it would render in real-time,” McGuigan says.

Photoreal animation

Although existing computers can produce artificial scenes and textures detailed enough to fool the human eye, such scenes typically take several hours to render. The key to passing the Graphics Turing Test, says McGuigan, is to marry that photorealism with software that can render images in real-time – defined as a refresh rate of 30 frames per second.

McGuigan decided to test the ability of one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers – Blue Gene/L at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York – to generate such an artificial world.

Blue Gene/L possesses 18 racks, each with 2000 standard PC processors that work in parallel to provide a huge amount of processing power – it has a speed of 103 teraflops, or 103 trillion “floating point operations” per second. By way of comparison, a calculator uses about 10 floating operations per second.

In particular, McGuigan studied the supercomputer’s ability to mimic the interplay of light with objects – an important component of any virtual world with ambitions to mimic reality.

He found that conventional ray-tracing software could run 822 times faster on the Blue Gene/L than on a standard computer, even though the software was not optimised for the parallel processors of a supercomputer. This allowed it to convincingly mimic natural lighting in real time.

Not there yet

“The nice thing about this ray tracing is that the human eye can see it as natural,” McGuigan says. “There are actually several types of ray-tracing software out there – I chose one that was relatively easy to port to a large number of processors. But others might be faster and even more realistic if they are used in parallel computing.”

Although Blue Gene/L can model the path of light in a virtual world both rapidly and realistically, the speed with which it renders high-resolution images still falls short of that required to pass the Graphics Turing Test.

But supercomputers capable of passing the test may be just years away, thinks McGuigan. “You never know for sure until you can actually do it,” he says. “But a back-of-the-envelope calculation would suggest it should be possible in the next few years, once supercomputers enter the petaflop range – that’s 1000 teraflops.”

But others think that passing the Graphics Turing Test requires more than photorealistic graphics moving in real-time. Reality is not ’skin deep’ says Paul Richmond at the University of Sheffield, UK. An artificial object can appear real, but unless it moves in a realistic way the eye won’t be fooled. “The real challenge is providing a real-time simulation that includes realistic simulated behaviour,” he says.

Fluid challenge

“I’d like to see a realistic model of the Russian ballet,” says Mark Grundland at the University of Cambridge. “That’s something a photographer would choose as a subject matter, and that’s what we should aim to convey with computers.”

Grundland also points out that the Graphics Turing Test does not specify what is conveyed in the virtual world scene. “If all that is there is a diffusely-reflecting sphere sitting on a diffusely-reflecting surface, then we’ve been able to pass the test for many years now,” he says. “But Turing didn’t mean for his vision to come true so quickly.”

McGuigan agrees that realistic animation poses its own problems. “Modelling that fluidity is difficult,” he says. “You have to make sure that when something jumps in the virtual world it appears heavy.” But he remains optimistic that animation software will be up to the task. “Physical reality is about animation and lighting,” he says. “We’ve done the lighting now – the animation will follow.

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Thanks for the amazing article to Technology.NewScientist.com

If you enjoy eating exotic mushrooms, are interested in their nutritional and medicinal value and if you would like to learn how to establish mushrooms in your yard, garden or woods, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets will not disappoint you.

If the subtitle How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World intrigues you, it should. Paul Stamets’ thirty years of experience in “engaging fungi”, his original theories and research will reveal a world that many of us never knew existed. He calls Mycelium Running “A mycological manual for rescuing ecosystems”.

The text is divided into three parts with a foreword by the author’s long time friend Dr. Andrew Weil. 360 high quality photos and concise, useful graphs and charts enrich the text. You will see mushrooms the likes of which you never imagined.

Mr. Stamets has a wonderful writing style; friendly, funny and scientific all at the same time. He describes fungi as the “grand recyclers” of nature, their cobweb like growth under logs as “mycomagicians”.

Part One, The Mycelial Mind, contains four chapters:

* Mycelium as Nature’s Internet

* The Mushroom Life Cycle

* Mushrooms in Their Natural Habitat

* The Medicinal Mushroom Forest

Stamets describes mycelium as “the neurological network of nature” that can “expand to thousands of acres in size in cellular mats achieving the greatest mass of any individual organism on this planet”.

Mycelium is a single-celled organism that travels several inches a day. That means there is only one cell wall that protects this organism from pathogens, yet it thrives more prolifically that any plant or animal on the planet.

In fact, it is mycelium’s vast structural network that is responsible for decomposing plant debris, at the same time providing nutrients to the plant and animal kingdoms. In other words, mycelium is earth’s life support system and should be understood, respected and protected as such.

A mushroom is the fruit of mycelium. They produce spores capable of traveling great distances on the wind, on clothing, in animal feces and even on envelopes and packages in our mail.

There are four types of fungi: saprophytes, parasites, mycorrhizal and endophytes. The saprophyte subtype is largely responsible for recycling organic debris and providing nutrients to the plant and animal world.

Mycorrhizal fungi are vital to the health of forests because it transports nutrients to different species of trees.

The chapter The Medicinal Mushroom Forest discusses the ancient knowledge of the value of mushrooms to both the human body and the forest ecosystem with useful charts of commonly collected wild edible mushrooms from NW North America including chanterelles, matsutake and hedgehogs.

Various mushroom varieties possess potent anti-microbial properties. The author notes that a “moldy cantaloupe sent to an army research lab in 1941″ led to the identification and extraction of strains of penicillium chrysogenum that led to the commercial synthesis of penicillin.

Mr. Stamets’ own research led to the discovery that the extract of mycelium from the mushroom Fomitopsis officinalis “protects human blood cells from infection by orthopox viruses including the family of viruses that includes smallpox.”

Specific varieties of mushrooms possess antiviral activity against such viruses as hepatitis B, herpes simplex, HIV, influenza, pox, and tobacco mosaic virus. A useful table lists various mushrooms and their antiviral activities.

Several varieties of mushrooms are sources of other medicinal compounds including triterpenoids and glycoproteins. Pages 38-39 provide a cross index of Mushrooms and Targeted Therapeutic Effects including mushroom activity against specific cancers.

Mr. Stamets presents strong evidence that fungi from old growth forests have potential as sources for new and vital medicines. And he emphasizes the essential importance of preserving this priceless resource.

Part II - Mycorestoration

In Mycorestoration the author presents his original thought, theories and research into how mycelium and their fruit, mushrooms, can be harnessed for uses that support the health of humans and our ailing planet. In this fascinating section of the book, the author presents the reader with “fungal opportunities underfoot”.

These original concepts are presented in four forms: Mycofiltration, Mycoforestry,Mycoremediation and Mycopesticides.

Mycorestoration is defined as the selective use of fungi to repair or restore the weakened immune systems of environments.

Mycofiltration uses mycelium as a membrane to catch and filter upstream contaminants including microorganisms, pollutants and silt. Talk about filtration capacity, Mr. Stamets says that “more than a mile of mycelial cells can infuse a gram of soil”.

The text illustrates how we can use mycelium on farms, in our own urban and suburban environments, in watershed districts, in factories, on roads and other stressed habitats to filter protozoa, bacteria, viruses, bacteria, silt and chemical toxins.

Mycelial mats, called “bunker spawn” mature in months and can be used for years to prevent downstream pollution. Mr. Stamets discusses his own research in microfiltration and presents directions for building and installing mycelium microfilters.

Mycoforestry is the use of fungi to sustain forest communities by preserving natural forests, recycling woodland debris, sustaining replanted trees with the goal of strengthening the forest ecosystem.

Mr. Stamets emphasizes that contrary to conventional thought our forests are not “renewable” resources and discusses how carbon cycles that fuel the food chain can take centuries, if not thousands of years to establish.

For example, in Oregon a honey mushroom mat found on a mountaintop covered over 2400 acres and is thought to be about 2200 years old. “Nurse” logs in this forest increase soil depth and enrich the habitat for the fungi, plant and animal kingdoms.

The reader must wonder how many regions like this exist on planet earth today.

According to the author, acceleration of this process is possible by using wood chips as a spawning medium for fungi. This method has the potential to prevent forest fires because as mycelium grows on the wood chips they draw moisture to the forest floor in a sponge like way.

Mr. Stamets urges forest pathologists to develop strategies that utilize mycelium to improve forest health.

Mycoremediation is the use of fungi to degrade or remove toxins from the environment. According to the author fungi can be used to degrade heavy metals including lead, and mercury, industrial toxins including chlorine, dioxin, PCBs and organophosphates.

This potential is viewed in the perspective of the hierarchy of organisms in the fungi, plant, bacterium and animal kingdoms, a hierarchy which begins and ends with fungi.

Photos in this chapter illustrate diesel contaminated soil “under attack” by oyster mushrooms which thrive on the contaminated soil and regenerate it by neutralizing the contaminant. When they die and rot they provide a healthy environment for new plant growth. The contaminated soil in which mushroom growth was not introduced remained just that, barren and contaminated.

The goal of mycorestoration is to match fungi species to contaminants to enable the “destruction of toxins that enable other restoration strategies”.

Mycopesticides involve the use of fungi to control pest populations, including carpenter ants and termites. Mr. Stamets relates a personal story of how he used mycelium as a natural pesticide to rid his house of carpenter ants.

He has applied for patents to use this biotechnology which protect groundwater and habitats from damage by conventional toxic pesticides, as a natural method of eliminating termites, ants and flies. He calls the technology “green mycotechnology”.

Part III - Growing Mycelia and Mushrooms includes six chapters:

* Inoculation Methods: Spores, spawns and stem butts

* Cultivating Mushrooms on Straw and Leached Cow Manure

* Cultivating Mushrooms on logs and stumps

* Gardening with Gourmet and medicinal mushrooms

* Magnificent Mushrooms: The Cast of Species

* Nutritional properties of mushrooms

This section introduces readers to methods for inoculation, cultivation and gardening with mushrooms. Excellent photos, graphs and charts help the reader to visualize and practically apply the processes.

Mr. Stamets says that the key to growing mushrooms is to first grow mycelium and that the most important technique is learning how to use wild, or natural spawn because it has the advantage of being acclimated to its habitat.

The mycelium grower is described as a “herdsman” and the mycomotto is “move it or lose it”. The author explains that no matter how successful you may be at getting mycelium to grow it will “consume its habitat” and will move on, if not supplemented with its basic nutrient needs.

Stamets explains that “Your job is to become embedded into the mind-set of this digestive cellular membrane, to run with mycelium”.

Using fungi in the garden builds soil, improves yield and decreases fertilizer requirements. Photos illustrate the increased size of vegetables grown in mycelium rich soil.

Edible mushrooms are good sources of protein, are very low in simple carbohydrates and fats and are high in antioxidants, selenium, potassium, copper, B vitamins and fiber.

Nutritional content of mushrooms depends on variety and where they are grown. For example, button mushrooms grown in Texas and Oklahoma contain higher levels of selenium than those grown in Florida and Pennsylvania.

Pages 198-199 provide a very useful chart listing the nutritional properties of 16 edible mushrooms.

Mushrooms are rich sources of enzymes including cellulose, lignan peroxidases, laccases, manganese superoxide dismutases, enzymes known for their ability to decompose plant fiber.

According to the author, enzyme inhibitors in mushrooms are protective against breast and prostate cancer. Aromatase inhibitors that interrupt the conversion of androgens to estrogens are significant to those at risk for breast cancer. 5 alpha reductase inhibitors are significant to those at risk for enlarged prostate and prostate cancer.

Graphs provide additional information on mushroom variety and content of these valuable nutritional compounds.

The final chapter of the book is Magnificent Mushrooms: The Cast of Species

This section provides in-depth descriptions, distribution, habitat, harvesting hints, nutritional profile, medicinal properties, flavor, preparation and cooking tips, mycorestoration potential and comments for a long list of mushrooms including shiitakes, oyster, and morels.

This is valuable, useful information for anyone interested in utilizing the benefits of mushrooms for health, both human and planetary.

Certainly Paul Stamets book Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Save the World will grow the ranks of mycophiles world wide. Because the science of mycorestoration is in its infancy, Mycelium Running will likely inspire a new generation of mycologists to implement the author’s original discoveries and make future discoveries of their own, discoveries that benefit both mankind and the environment.

As Dr. Andrew Weil said in the introduction “I find this book exciting and optimistic because it suggests new, nonharmful possibilities for solving serious problems that affect our health and the health of our environment”.

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets - Ten Speed Press, 2005. 339 pp 360 color photos

Other books by Paul Stamets:

* Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (2000)

* The Mushroom Cultivator with coauthor Jeff Chilton (1983)

Founder of fungiperfecti @ (http://www.fungi.com/) and (http://fungi.com/mycomeds/info.html)

(Book Review) by Teri Lee Gruss, MS Human Nutrition (see all articles by this author)

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Full disclosur, the above article is from NaturalNews.com - Keep up the great works! Thanks for the article!

A prominent Health Organization has warned that there is an ongoing semi-covert movement by state and federal governments to claim ownership of every newborn baby’s DNA for the purpose of genetic research without the consent of individual citizens.

A pending bill on the floor of the Minnesota House and Senate will strip citizens of genetic privacy and DNA ownership rights, The Citizens Council on Healthcare has warned.

“Today, a state genetic privacy law requires informed parent consent for government testing, ownership and research on the DNA of the newest Minnesota residents. The Minnesota Department of Health wants to eliminate the informed consent requirements. A bill to remove consent requirements for government ownership and genetic research will soon be voted on by the Minnesota House and Senate.” The CCHC website explains.

“Thus far, the state of Minnesota has illegally collected and claims ownership to the DNA of 780,000 children (soon to be voting adults) and has provided the DNA of 42,210 children to genetic researchers without parent consent. Approximately, 73,000 children are born in Minnesota every year. About 4.2 million children are born across the nation. All of them are losing their genetic privacy and DNA ownership rights.” the organization’s report continues.

The state treats the activity as an “opt out” program, whereby if the parents of the newborn infant do not specifically opt out of the process, the state presumes its has “informed consent” and that the parents have opted in.

CCHC President Twila Brase has warned that the databases housing the DNA could form the basis for a new eugenics movement, the practice of “perfecting” the human race through genetic manipulation, previously endorsed by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and toyed with by the likes of Adolf Hitler.

Ms. Brase explained in a statement last month that state Health Department officials are now seeking exemption for the so called “DNA Warehouse” from Minnesota privacy law. This would enable state officials to continue to take the DNA of newborn infants without consent.

Essentially this would mean that eventually every person’s DNA would be collected at birth, warehoused by the state in what is known as a “genomic biobank”, and sold or given away to private or governmental genetic researchers, who may manipulate, alter or splice the DNA in any way they see fit.

Such information would represent a goldmine to employers, insurance companies, medical institutions, and big pharma.

Under such conditions we are faced with the prospect of a society that is literally the mirror image of the nightmarish vision outlined by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 novel Brave New World, where individuals are categorized in a social hierarchy according to their genetic traits.

Watch Twila Brase explain the possible consequences of the pending DNA profiling legislation:

Ms. Brase has been warning of the ongoing move for a a number of years. In January 2007 she issued a written testimony to the Minnesota legislature on the unethical and hidden uses of harvested DNA by the state.

Read the 18 page PDF document here.

Recently, Minnesota based researcher and activist Marti Oakley revealed that, according to her polling, the majority of parents or grand parents of newborns have no idea that this is happening.

She writes:

Further, not one knew that they had the right to demand the blood and tissue samples be destroyed after 45 days per written request. Even had they known, and the samples were destroyed (you would have no way of knowing if they really were) the information gleaned from them would still be available and on file…..in perpetuity.

Also unknown to at least the new parents in Minnesota, is that once that 45 days has lapsed, the state now claims that they “own” the DNA of that child.

Though the Minnesota case has received recent public attention, such DNA harvesting is not restricted to that state and is being undertaken nationwide.

The National Conference of State Legislatures lists for all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the various statutes or regulatory provisions under which newborns’ DNA is being collected.

DNA of newborns has been harvested, tested, stored and experimented with by all 50 states. In addition, all 50 states are now routinely providing these results to the Department of Homeland Security.

In the UK, a similar DNA harvesting program was rejected in 2005 by The Human Genetics Commission, who cited cost and ethical problems in a report to government ministers.

However, DNA profiling of all newborn babies has since been called for by lawmakers and most recently by senior police officers.

Oppose the Minnesota Department of Health’s refusal to fully inform parents

Currently, there is a monumental effort under way by The Citizens Council on Health Care to petition the state to oppose illegal State government ownership of the blood, DNA and genetic test results of newborn citizens in Minnesota. http://www.cchconline.org/petition/babyDNA2007.php

The CCHC is calling on Governor Tim Pawlenty to direct the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) to comply with Minnesota state privacy law, to fully inform parents of the genetic testing process and their legal rights–and to dismantle MDH’s illegal warehouse of newborn citizen DNA. (Contact Sue Jeffers directly at: S1U2E3@aol.com )

For more resources on this issue visit the CCHC website.

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Thanks to infowars.net for a great article!

Marijuana “addiction is bull sh*t , and here is why.

“The U.S. government believes that America is going to pot — literally.

Earlier this month, the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse announced plans to spend $4 million to establish the nation’s first-ever “Center on Cannabis Addiction,” which will be based in La Jolla, Calif. The goal of the center, according to NIDA’s press release, is to “develop novel approaches to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of marijuana addiction.”

Not familiar with the notion of “marijuana addiction”? You’re not alone. In fact, aside from the handful of researchers who have discovered that there are gobs of federal grant money to be had hunting for the government’s latest pot boogeyman, there’s little consensus that such a syndrome is clinically relevant — if it even exists at all.

But don’t try telling that to the mainstream press — which recently published headlines worldwide alleging, “Marijuana withdrawal rivals that of nicotine.” The alleged “study” behind the headlines involved all of 12 participants, each of whom were longtime users of pot and tobacco, and assessed the self-reported moods of folks after they were randomly chosen to abstain from both substances. Big surprise: they weren’t happy.

And don’t try telling Big Pharma — which hopes to cash in on the much-hyped “pot and addiction” craze by touting psychoactive prescription drugs like Lithium to help hardcore smokers kick the marijuana habit.

And certainly don’t try telling the drug “treatment” industry, whose spokespeople are quick to warn that marijuana “treatment” admissions have risen dramatically in recent years, but neglect to explain that this increase is due entirely to the advent of drug courts sentencing minor pot offenders to rehab in lieu of jail. According to state and national statistics, up to 70 percent of all individuals in drug treatment for marijuana are placed there by the criminal justice system. Of those in treatment, some 36 percent had not even used marijuana in the 30 days prior to their admission. These are the “addicts”?

Indeed, the concept of pot addiction is big business — even if the evidence in support of the pseudosyndrome is flimsy at best.

And what does the science say? Well, according to the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine — which published a multiyear, million-dollar federal study assessing marijuana and health in 1999 — “millions of Americans have tried marijuana, but most are not regular users [and] few marijuana users become dependent on it.” The investigator added, “[A]though [some] marijuana users develop dependence, they appear to be less likely to do so than users of other drugs (including alcohol and nicotine), and marijuana dependence appears to be less severe than dependence on other drugs.”

Just how less likely? According to the Institute of Medicine’s 267-page report, fewer than 10 percent of those who try cannabis ever meet the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of “drug dependence” (based on DSM-III-R criteria). By contrast, the IOM reported that 32 percent of tobacco users, 23 percent of heroin users, 17 percent of cocaine users and 15 percent of alcohol users meet the criteria for “drug dependence.”

In short, it’s the legal drugs that have Americans hooked — not pot.

But what about the claims that ceasing marijuana smoking can trigger withdrawal symptoms similar to those associated with quitting tobacco? Once again, it’s a matter of degree. According to the Institute of Medicine, pot’s withdrawal symptoms, when identified, are “mild and subtle” compared with the profound physical syndromes associated with ceasing chronic alcohol use — which can be fatal — or those abstinence symptoms associated with daily tobacco use, which are typically severe enough to persuade individuals to reinitiate their drug-taking behavior.

The IOM report further explained, “[U]nder normal cannabis use, the long half-life and slow elimination from the body of THC prevent[s] substantial abstinence symptoms” from occurring. As a result, cannabis’ withdrawal symptoms are typically limited to feelings of mild anxiety, irritability, agitation and insomnia.

Most importantly, unlike the withdrawal symptoms associated with the cessation of most other intoxicants, pot’s mild after-effects do not appear to be either severe or long-lasting enough to perpetuate marijuana use in individuals who have decided to quit. This is why most marijuana smokers report voluntarily ceasing their cannabis use by age 30 with little physical or psychological difficulty. By comparison, many cigarette smokers who pick up the habit early in life continue to smoke for the rest of their lives, despite making numerous efforts to quit.

So let’s review.

Marijuana is widely accepted by the National Academy of Sciences, the Canadian Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and others to lack the severe physical and psychological dependence liability associated with most other intoxicants, including alcohol and tobacco. Further, pot lacks the profound abstinence symptoms associated with most legal intoxicants, including caffeine.

That’s not to say that some marijuana smokers don’t find quitting difficult. Naturally, a handful of folks do, though this subpopulation is hardly large enough to warrant pot’s legal classification (along with heroin) as an illicit substance with a “high potential for abuse.” Nor does this fact justify the continued arrest of more than 800,000 Americans annually for pot violations any more than such concerns would warrant the criminalization of booze or nicotine.”

Thanks to Paul Armentano, AlterNet for a great article!

This article is worth quoting at length. My comments are in green.

“After four years of deliberation (4 whole years?), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today that meat from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat.But despite public unease and lingering scientific uncertainty, the FDA won’t require such meat to be labeled or tracked.

Food producers say they’re not about to put cloned meat on American dinner plates, as the procedure is too expensive and inefficient, and a third of U.S. adults say they won’t eat cloned meat regardless of its approval. Instead, farmers will purchase cloned animals to serve as breeding stock for their entire herds.

People tend to feel less repulsed at eating the offspring, so it’s clone descendants that we’ll eat — though we probably won’t know for sure. The FDA says clone-derived products don’t need to be labeled. (That’s governments speak for ‘You will be eating clones and clone derived products’)
“There’s no way for the consumer to know whether they’re getting cloned meat or their offspring,” said Will Rostov, a senior attorney at the Center for Food Safety, a agricultural advocacy group.

According to Rostov, the FDA should have treated cloned animals as a new animal drug, thus requiring a higher level of scrutiny and testing. “Anything that’s changed the structure of the cell is a new animal drug. Cloning changes that structure. We filed a petition, but the FDA said they were using their discretion, that all they needed to do was some sort of risk assessment.” The risk assessment, said Rostov, is based largely on conflicted industry data.

Cloning indeed causes genetic alterations: the extraordinary rates of early and horrible deaths among cloned animals testify graphically to that. The FDA counters that a clone capable of reaching breeding maturity is safe, and that genetic alterations caused during cloning aren’t passed to their offspring. (This is just inhumane, plain and simple. Why must we send generations of life through ‘early and horrible deaths’? We already have plenty of livestock worldwide. What is the ultimate aim here?)
But would it really be so hard to require cloned food products to be labeled? The FDA says ethical and economic issues aren’t the purview of the new study — but those words could be easily be turned against them, as the only argument against mandatory labeling is an economic one.

Among the other economic issues unconsidered by the FDA’s report is food security. Critics say that cloning farm animals will produce genetic uniformity in US herds, leaving them prone to disease outbreaks or even bioterrorism. In addition to that, said Rostov, “The whole idea, to take the prize bull and say that we have the best genetics — that freezes the genetics. With traditional breeding, you’re trying to improve the genetics. Cloning freezes it at one moment.” (!!!!!!! , read that last paragraph again.)

Aside from a single throwaway line — “Further, care needs to be taken not to rely excessively on a few apparently superior sires so as not to reduce the genetic diversity of the resulting herds” — this concern doesn’t arise in the report.

But given how utterly reliant the industry already is on in-vitro fertilization using sperm from a few prize steers, that’s understandable. And in light of that, the issue of labeling seems less problematic. Yes, as a matter of principle, people have a right to know where their food comes from. But at this point, meat that doesn’t come from small farms with an organic label is almost certain to originate in an industrial farming system defined by pollution, steroids and a dangerous overreliance on antibiotics.

Clones or no clones, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Thanks for a great article Wired! Check it out at: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell on Cloned Meat

The reason this is such a huge deal is that like GMO seeds, cloned meat is something that is new to humanity and the planet. Nature is such a delicate balance that took so long to come to homeostasis, it is dangerous to disrupt is so fundamentally and abruptly. Motives today (at least on the corporate level) are so driven by greed that almost never are the are the long term costs to the planet and our health seriously considered. Cloning is so new that to start eating the meat this early is dangerous and crazy. Beef, its not whats for dinner…

Freecycle.org is a place to post items that you want to get rid of but don’t want to throw away, allowing whoever wants it to come and pick them up for free. It is a great alternative to throwing away items that are still good.