Monthly Archives: October 2014

articles, i am a terrorist, links, mushrooms

Mushroom-induced brain rewiring could hold the key to fighting mental illness

Mushroom-induced brain rewiring could hold the key to fighting mental illness
Scott Kaufman
31 Oct 2014

Psychedelic mushrooms dramatically increase connectivity between otherwise uncommunicative parts of the brain, according to researchers from Imperial College London in an article to be published in the November edition of the Royal Society’s journal Interface.

Paul Expert and his team analyzed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from two groups of people — one who had ingested a small amount of the active agent in hallucinogenic mushrooms, psilocybin, and another group who was given a placebo.

They found that the main effect was the creation of stable connections between parts of the brain that, under normal conditions, only communicate with each other in dream states — such as the hippocampus (which deals with short term memory and spatial recognition) and anterior cingulate cortex (which regulates rational cognitive functions).

The result of this stable cross-wiring is a more interconnected brain, as shown on the diagram below:

brain rewiring on mushrooms

On the left is a data visualization of a brain administered the placebo; on the right, one that has been subjected to a mild dose of psilocybin.

“We can speculate on the implications of such an organization,” Dr. Expert said. “One possible by-product of this greater communication across the whole brain is the phenomenon of synaesthesia” — which is the experience of having senses overlap, such that certain smells are accompanied by flashes of color, or certain sounds are accompanied by tastes.

It is also believed that rewiring the brain in this manner may allow scientists to find more effective ways to treat depression or help smokers and alcoholics battle their addictions.

This research is only possible thanks to a a recent loosening on the regulations regarding the study of psychedelic drugs for medical purposes. This is a positive measure, said study co-author Giovanni Petri, who told Wired that “in a normal brain, many things are happening. You don’t know what is going on, or what is responsible for that. So you try to perturb the state of consciousness a bit, and see what happens.”

india, pictures

i always enjoy getting packages from india

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package from indiapeople who send packages from india seem to have an entirely different attitude than people (including myself) who send packages from the united states… this one, for example. if i were to wrap a package, i would probably stop before i got to the pillow-case wrapper, secured with red embroidery floss.

package from indiait also had a return address that was different from the return address that i got on the “official” computer printed UPS tracking label, which was from somebody who operates a mail-forwarding service in jamaica, new york… booorring!… 😐

after carefully removing the cloth wrapping around the outside of the package (because you never know, with packages from india, whether or not the cloth wrapping may be used for some esoteric, indian purpose that won’t become clear until after the rest of the package is opened), i discovered this, package from india which was a little bit more like how i would expect a package to be wrapped… although, in my, personal, opinion, they went just a little bit overboard with the shipping tape that covered the entire package. it’s my understanding, in this case, that it may be an “extra precaution”, since what is contained inside the package is of a somewhat sensitive nature, but that’s getting ahead of myself… 😉

package from indiathis is another reason why i enjoy unwrapping packages from india: they inevitably wrap whatever is inside the package in newspaper which, depending on which part of india it comes from, is written in hindi (devanagari), or tamil, or sinhalese, or punjabi, or urdu, or something other than english american… it’s really interesting to me to try to read the articles (i usually fail miserably, because i only know sanskrit, and not very much of that), but i can usually make out ayurvedic terminology, or dates — in this case अक्टूबर “akṭubara” or “october”…

it takes so little to amuse me… 😎 i haven’t even gotten to the contents of the package…

parad (solid mercury) mala

parad (solid mercury) mala

this is the contents of the package: a parad mala. i know that the main component of parad is mercury, and i’m aware of the fact that there is some mystical process by which they turn liquid mercury into a solid object (Mercury mouth closed with Aghor Vidhya, Murthi-Badhha/Agnibadha — sustain the heat) but i’m not exactly sure how it’s done, although it is my impression that it is mixed with herbal substances and strained through a cloth mesh.

generally you don’t get such exciting, exotic packages from the united states… 😎

aparajita

apara-squeeeeeeEEEEE-ta!!

so, about this time last year, or thereabouts, i got an order for aparajita from a customer who wanted to resell it. i made a deal to sell half of my existing stock to them at cost, but that left me with a quickly diminishing stock, and, because of the fact that i had bought the aparajita (in the “old” box) from a दस्यु who sent me 170 boxes of a 240-box order, and then vanished into the ethernet, leaving no forwarding address or any other way of contacting him, i was, once again, DESPERATELY searching for a new supplier of my best-selling incense.

shortly after that, i found one(!!), and ordered more aparajita at a cost that allowed me to reduce my price from $7.00 a box to $4.00 a box. 😀

fast forward to yesterday.

i decided, because of the fact that i was down to 4 dozen boxes, that it was time to order more aparajita. i figured i would duplicate my previous order, because, while aparajita is my best-seller, i don’t have any indication that it’s becoming more popular — i did have a supplier tell me that they didn’t carry aparajita any longer, because it has a “too medicinal” smell that “people don’t like”…

so i ordered 7 dozen boxes, and figured that would be good enough…

then, this morning, i got another email from the lady who originally wrote me back in the first sentance of this post, and she wants to order 50 boxes, like last time…

so i wrote her back with the good news about the new supplier, and she changed her order from 50 boxes (a little more than 4 dozen) to 100 boxes (around 8 dozen)…

which meant that i, then, had to call the supplier(!!) and change my order from 7 dozen to 15 dozen…

squeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! 😎

moe, moisture festival, NOTC, snake suspenderz / alive

bluh

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i was up until 1:30 this morning… i had a snake suspenderz gig at a benefit for the moisture festival, which didn’t get out until 10:00, which meant that i didn’t get home until about 11:30, and then i spent 2½ hours preparing and uploading a bunch of files for a guy from the moisture festival… i probably didn’t have to stay up that late, but it took me a while to realise that, despite the fact that my computer said that they uploaded almost instantly, they were actually taking a considerable amount of time to upload (because they were actually fairly large files), and i deleted them and started over several times because it was late and i didn’t realise that, in reality, they weren’t uploading instantly.

there were a bunch of chautauquans at the gig last night: stephan freelan (formerly freeman) was the stage manager, and nanda was there — all five of them this time (there were only four of them when we performed on vashon last week). there were a lot more folks there, but stephan and nanda are the only ones whose names i can reliably remember…

moe has been in spokane since wednesday… alledgedly, this is the last of her travelling out of town for a while (she claims that she doesn’t have to travel again until january), which, if it’s true, would be a very good thing indeed.

NOTC, pictures

NOTC

Image

141019 vashon island amanita muscariai played with the fighting instruments of karma in mt. vernon on friday, olympia on saturday, and vashon island on sunday. i left my top hat in mt. vernon, but i didn’t notice it until saturday, when i was in olympia and getting ready for the show… so i had to go to mt. vernon to pick it up today. for all the time i lived in mt. vernon, the first time i have ever been in the lincoln theater was friday…

141019 vashon island amanita muscariaon vashon, i arrived very early… we caught the 9:10 ferry, and we weren’t actually supposed to show up until 12:00, so i got a chance to wander a little bit on vashon, and i found a whole bunch of amanita muscaria… truly a cup of wonder… i took a bunch of pictures…

141019 vashon island amanita muscaria
141019 vashon island amanita muscaria
141019 vashon island amanita muscaria

i’m seriously considering applying to go on tour with the chautauqua next year. it starts with performances at the oregon country fair, and (this year) procedes to southeast alaska during the three weeks immediately following the fair. it sounds like A LOT of fun, and it would be a great way to re-connect with a bunch of people from my karass with whom i have been out of contact for far too long… 😎

forward into the past, videos

bob larson

Video

okay, this is going to be another one of those “forward into the past” posts that contains, among other things a possibly amusing, possibly appalling story from my distant past, and a link to how it all plays into what is happening today. procede at your own risk.

in 1980, or thereabouts, i began listening to religious freaks preachers on AM radio… it was either that, or listen to gawd-awful music or mindless conservative babble on the AM-only radio that was in the taxi that i drove, and religious freaks preachers were the only thing i could stand to listen to. in the afternoons, i listened to one particular preacher — bob larson — with great amusement because of the ridiculous things he would say. eventually i adopted a persona, sort of an alter-ego, named Wraith Ugly (alternately spelled Ralph Ewggleigh), with whom i called him up (remember, this was before cell phones, when you actually had to have a wire connecting the telephone to the wall) and taunted him mercilessly, while recording the conversations. after several years, i got tired of this merciless taunting, and had a friend of mine call bob and tell him that “wraith” had committed suicide. then, about a year later, when bob had all but forgotten me, i called and told him that i had been brought back to life by The Church of Tina Chopp, who had held a secret ceremony where they planted cucumbers, in accordance with the Word of Tina…

all of this is documented, more or less, at The Church of Tina Chopp web site, and on a 2-CD set called “The Wacky Adventures of Bob Larson, Ralph Ewggleigh, Osiris Ranebo, and Other Freaks, Live, On The Air” which is finished, but hasn’t been released on bandcamp yet, because it mostly contains tracks that are larger than i can upload to bandcamp… 😐

every now and then i think that it might be fun to renew my acquaintance with bob… actually, what i’d really like to do is get somebody else, possibly somebody with whom bob is already familiar, outfit them with a hidden camera and recording device, and have them approach bob and ask him if he has heard anything about wraith ugly recently, just to see what he does… 👿

but then i realise that doing so would very likely cause me more stress, and i really don’t need that in my life these days… especially when jon stewart is doing such a fantastic job of harrassing bob without me… 😎

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nKQUiKgYK0

oh, by the way, “Reverend” bob larson isn’t really a reverend, or, if he is, he was ordained by the Universal Life church, or something like it. when bob and i were “palling around”, he was not only not a reverend, but held the title in disdain, because it was so easily abused… 😐

And More, bellingham, forward into the past, kenyth freeman, OM, pictures

nooze

i went to bellingham saturday, and came back today. there are a number of interesting developments that came about as a result:

apparently there is a “bullet shuttle” that runs from downtown bellingham to downtown seattle and back, that only costs $11… which means that there’s a good chance that i will be taking it to bellingham, and/or whitley will be taking it to seattle more regularly, for the purposes of, basically, getting And More back together. along the same lines, whitley and kamalla have offered to house my keyboards in their house, which means that when i go to bellingham, my keyboards will be set up and ready to go, and when i’m not there, other people will be playing them. the piano (which is missing three tines) has been packed up in a box and sitting behind the couch for about 7 years, and before that it was in a box in the hallway… i haven’t actually had it set up since we moved in to this house… so putting it to good use again is most desirable, and this seems like a prime opportunity.

while i was on my way to bellingham, yesterday, i took sort of a detour through mount vernon, so that i could go by the places i used to live. while i was in mount vernon, it started to rain, and then, quite suddenly, it started to rain so hard that, after slowing down, and slowing down, and turning my windshield wipers to their highest settings, i still could not see, and was forced to take refuge in a parking lot for about half an hour, until the rain let up. as i was pulling out of the parking lot, i saw a building across the street that was, literally, pouring water, tens of gallons a minute, from all of the downspouts… and the streets were flooded in several places, to the point where, when i had to drive through a flooded part, i was concerned because it was over the floorboards of my car… i haven’t seen it rain that much in that short a period of time more than once or twice before in my entire life.

the main reason i went to bellingham in the first place was that kenyth’s 80th birthday was last week, and i went to deliver a birthday present (Operation Mindfuck) on monday. while i was there, i heard that there was going to be a music jam (which is what they’re calling the stairway jam these days), and it was suggested that i come up for it, so i did. another thing that we discussed while i was there was the fact (in my opinion) that kenyth really needs a wikipedia page… a fact that is complicated by the fact that kenyth has kept absolutely ZERO archives of the work that he has done, class notes from classes he has taught, personal correspondence, and that sort of thing, and further complicated by the fact that, to be a wikipedia page that isn’t deleted immediately, a lot of the information posted has to be backed up by stuff that is publically available from internet, which, in this case, would be practically impossible in anything like a realistic way. the upshot is that i am going to help the community of people who want to see this happen, by registering a domain (how about http://KenythFreeman.dance/ or http://JosephPFaddlefum.name/ or something like that? 😉 ) and pointing that domain name towards a blog that i can set up, and then give to the people who actually know what content there is, and can organise it the way it’s supposed to be.

on my way back, today, i mostly took surface streets, and only hit the freeway once or twice. i was north of burlington on what i think was Highway 99, and i found the new location of “The Music Shoppe”, which was a place i worked a couple of times a VERY long time ago: the first time was right after i graduated from the tech school, and ended when i got fired for telling sam, the owner, that the “chemical tank” that he bought, ostensibly to “dip musical instruments”, was full of the chromic acid that he bought and then discovered he couldn’t use because it’s carcinogenic (and, generally, only used as a “bright dip” for brass instruments before they are buffed and refinished), and it was beginning to leak, because it wasn’t really a “chemical tank” but, rather, a stainless steel dairy tank with a bright brass stopper… and the chromic acid was dissolving the bright brass stopper, because, well… chromic acid dissolves brass… 😐

anyway, the second time, he actually subcontracted my musical instrument repair business to repair musical instruments for “The Music Shoppe”, and that ended when he refused to pay me for an instrument that i had fixed, that his customer had refused to pay for. basically i said that, until i got paid i wasn’t going to fix any more instruments for him. he said that he hadn’t paid me because his customer hadn’t paid him, and i pointed out that his customer was HIS customer, and that MY customer was him, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. they apparently moved from their shop in the fountain district in north bellingham, some time in the past, and they are, as of 1st november, moving in to burlington. i left Operation Mindfuck in the front door for them to find when they open up tomorrow. 👿

articles, brain injury, cannabis, links

Cannabis use associated with lower death rates in patients with traumatic brain injuries

Cannabis use associated with lower death rates in patients with traumatic brain injuries
2 October, 2014

Surveying patients with traumatic brain injuries, a group of Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) researchers reported today that they found those who tested positive for THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, were more likely to survive than those who tested negative for the illicit substance.

The findings, published in the October edition of The American Surgeon, suggest THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, may help protect the brain in cases of traumatic brain injury, the researchers said. The study included 446 patients who suffered traumatic brain injuries and underwent a urine test for the presence of THC in their system. The researchers found 82 of the patients had THC in their system. Of those, only 2.4% died. Of the remaining patients who didn’t have THC in their system, 11.5% died.

“Previous studies conducted by other researchers had found certain compounds in cannabis helped protect the brain in animals after a trauma,” said David Plurad, MD, an LA BioMed researcher and the study’s lead author. “This study was one of the first in a clinical setting to specifically associate THC use as an independent predictor of survival after traumatic brain injury.”

The researchers noted that the timing of their study was “pertinent” because of current efforts to decriminalize cannabis and other research that has shown THC can increase appetite, reduce ocular pressure, decrease muscle spasms, relieve pain and alleviate symptoms associated with irritable bowel disease. But they noted that their study has some significant limitations.

“While most — but not all — the deaths in the study can be attributed to the traumatic brain injury itself, it appears that both groups were similarly injured,” Dr. Plurad said. “The similarities in the injuries between the two groups led to the conclusion that testing positive for THC in the system is associated with a decreased mortality in adult patients who have sustained traumatic brain injuries.”

Additional data available from the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

spam

do not send email via spamcop.net to contact me any longer!

effective IMMEDIATELY, my email address is NO LONGER @spamcop.net…

there has apparently been a pretty extreme change of attitude at Cisco (the owner of spamcop), resulting in two things that are very bad, both for me, and for the internet at large. the first is that they are no longer providing email service @spamcop.net, and the second is that they are arbitrarily deleting “false-positives” — a message that appears to be spam, but actually is a legitimate message — without allowing me to check and forward those messages which are legitimate.

the result is that i am NO LONGER receiving email @spamcop.net they SAY that they will forward “legitimate” mail for one year, but they also say that they will delete any mail which appears to be spam, according to their “Cisco reputation system”, which i know to occasionally find false positives among people who occasionally email me… so i HIGHLY RECOMMEND that, from now on, if you want to contact me personally, you send mail to salamandir at hybridelephant dot com (ganesha at hybridelephant dot com is still good for business related issues),

it’s been more than 10 years… it’s the end of an era. 🙁