•  Do not pride yourself on the few great men who, over the centuries, have been born on your earth through no merit of yours. Reflect, rather, on how you treated them at the time, and how you have followed their teachings.
 •  It is a mistake often made in this country (USA) to measure things by the amount of money they cost.
 •  We are faced with the dismaying fact that the politicians, the practical men of affairs, have become the exponents of international ideas.
 •  Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.
 •  Democratic institutions and standards are the result of historic developments to an extent not always appreciated in the lands which enjoy them.
 •  It may affront the military-minded person to suggest a regime that does not maintain any military secrets.
 •  Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
 •  All of us who are concerned for peace and the triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
 •  One misses the elementary reaction against injustice and for justice - that reaction which in the long run represents Man's only protection against a relapse into barbarism.
 •  In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
 •  One is born into a herd of buffaloes and one must be glad if one is not trampled underfoot before one's time.
 •  One has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists. If such humility could be conveyed to everybody, the world of human activities would be more appealing.

¶ 15:02 0 comments

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be? Why?
Thomas Paine's Rights of Man | Of humble origin, self taught, Paine revered wisdon and logic; was suspicious of supertstition, bigotry, and inherited class privilege | Able to articulate the thoughts of many, a visionary, this tome was, and is a call to revolution and social change | A firebrand with a clear vision and a message of social justice | Works for me |
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Hmmm | Don't think I've had a "crush" on anyone in ages, real or fictional | But, I'll give it a go | One of the protagonists in a Robert Heinlein book; can't recall the title but the story line was that a group of explorers were teleported to a far away planet by accident | I've had crushes on a number of characters in Louis Lamour novels |
The last book you bought is:
Cass Sunstein Why Societies Need Dissent | Picked it up at the MASS MoCA bookstore |
The last book you read:
Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx
What are you currently reading?
My reading bounces around a lot | Here's things I've been working on | Flophouse: Life on the Bowery, by David Isay, Stacy Abramson and Harvey Wang | Fresh Men, New Voices in Gay Fiction, selected by Edmund White | The last [online] issue of the Grey Literature Report | Magazines: New Yorker; Colors; Planner's Web; NRA's American Hunter | I'm always reading Elizabteh Castro's HTML for the Web, does that count?
Five books you would take to a deserted island:

1- Ancient Carpenter's Tools: Illustrated and Explained, Together With the Implements of the Lumberman, Joiner, and Cabinet-Maker in Use in the Eighteenth Century by Henry Chapman Mercer | Sure as shootin, I wouldn't want to just live in a thatch hut
2- The Art of Warfare by Sun Tzu [I'll get fussy; I'd want the 1993 Roger Ames translation] | best to be prepared, never know when that desert island gets visited by hostile invaders
3- The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy or The Wild Palate by Nancy and Walter Hall | depends on whether I want to appease my inner hypochondriac or identify edibles I had not previously known
4- 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin | With the first I'd finally be able to figure out who is whom in relation to one another; with the second, I'd have the proxy companionship of a throughly interesting man
5- The thickest [# of pages] blank sketchbook [pH neutral paper, of course] I could find. I'd no doubt want to write and sketch while left there

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Van Waffle, because he's a natrualist, writer, photographer and reader; Joel Sax, a poet and author who'se seemed to enjoy memes of this sort; and Stuart Savory a peripatetic traveler of the internet's vast territories and whose perspectives I respect |

¶ 22:13 0 comments

1- The latest issue of Mother Jones describes what happens when the Drug Lords manage the mental health system | Aliah Gleason was a direct victim of the Texas juvenile mental illness promoters | They took her from her family, pumped her full of a polypharma regimen, then kept her from her family |
     Seems that she was lucky | She survived | Some sources indicate that as many as 17,000 kids in Texas are subjected to forced psychiatric drugging |
     Rhetorical question time: Why is it that when the Soviets subjected their citizens to forced drugging it was recognized as torture but here in the USA it's just treatment as usual?

2- FDA Warns Antipsychotic Drugs Dangerous to Elderly The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public health advisory to alert health care providers, patients, and patient caregivers to new safety information concerning an unapproved (i.e., “off-label”) use of certain drugs called “atypical antipsychotic drugs.” These drugs are approved for the treatment of schizophrenia and mania, but clinical studies of these drugs to treat behavioral disorders in elderly patients with dementia have shown a higher death rate associated with their use compared to patients receiving a placebo (sugar pill).

3- How Bug Spray Works | This is here because of a search I did on "paradoxical effects" of psychiatric medications | The read is interesting and relevant since the article first talks about the brain's neurons communicate with one another, and how drugs affect that communication process |
     Read down and you'll find that a chemical known as Acetylcholine is used by the neurons that control your muscles, heart, and lungs | It is also used by many neurons in the brain that are involved in memory | Acetylcholine crosses the brain synapses and tells the muscles to extend by stimulating the receptor sites on the muscles |
     When nerve signals are terminated this is called “reuptake” | Acetylcholine is rapidly broken down by a chemical called acetylcholinesterase | Have you ever looked at the fine print on a bottle of Prozac, Paxil, or Zoloft? It says in there that the drug is a “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor” (SSRI) |
     Now, read the fine print on a can of insecticide | For some of them, it says that the active ingredient is an “acetylcholinesterase inhibitor” | So, the same effect that we see with bug spray, can be facilitated by SSRIs | You do the math |
     As an FYI, nicotine directly stimulates acetylcholine receptors | Alzheimer’s disease results when these acetylcholine-using neurons in the brain die |
[As an aside, does this new info about bug spray provide us any fresh insights on the actions of former insect exterminatior Tom DeLay?]

4- Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports magazine) is working with Senators Grassley (R-IA) and Dodd (D-CT) in organizing a news conference to introduce their legislation that would create an Independent Office of Drug Safety. This media event may take place as early as tomorrow (Thursday, April 21st).
     They are looking for someone to speak at this news conference from their home states of Connecticut or Iowa that has suffered from, or has loved ones that have suffered from the side effects of prescription drugs, particularly those that have been given media attention lately (Vioxx, Bextra, Neurontin, and SSRIs, like Paxil).
     Information on the importance of this legislation is available here. Please contact Elizabeth Foley soon if you know of anyone that may be interested in working with this.

¶ 08:39 0 comments

"Our folks" in my belief, are no more or less intemperate or dogmatic, proportionatly, that the rest society. And it is, I'll agree, every bit as destructive within the group as it is within the larger society.
     I really believe that some people, not all, have trouble getting along with others because they do not want to get along with others. Intolerance of ideas that are different from our own, maintaining attitudes, beliefs and practices that show others that others are less than oneself, are destructive practices.
     If there really are mental illnesses, I would place racism, bigotry, intolerance and hatred among the diagnostic manual entries.
     Our society doesn't look at things this way. If anything, much of what is done in this society and culture is based on prejudice, bigotry, intolerance, one-upmanship, egotism, greed, vanity and pride. Those who work in the so-called mental health system reflect these things in their daily actions.
     Ultimately, some of those working in the field, believing in negative energies and forces, act and make decisions that adveresly affect others accordingly.
     More sinisterly, the wrongs perpetuated in that MH system [and within Society in general] are made all the worse by truly evil individuals whose intent is more to be able to control others and of personally being in power. Such persons could care less about social justice, equity, equinamity, fairness, compassion, concern about human rights or spiritual growth.

¶ 11:59 0 comments

1) allowed none of the 35 amendments the Democrats had proposed to be voted on;
2) ordered the Rules Committee to allocate only one hour -- far too little time -- for substantive debate on this complicated 500-page bill; and
3) ordered the House moderator to rudely interrupt every Democrat when they lined up one-by-one to register their objections in brief biting statements.

¶ 16:53 0 comments