Monday, December 28, 2009
Idiots swim into baited croc trap
NADJA HAINKEDecember 27th, 2009
THE reckless idiots pictured have taken croc trap surfing to a dangerous new level - swimming into the cage.
The image of the three drongos risking their lives and limbs surfaced yesterday after they were posted on Facebook.
It is believed the picture was taken at Manton Dam - about 75km south of Darwin. The photo shows one man atop the floating metal cage - designed to capture 4m long salties.
His two mates are pulling faces from inside the baited trap.
It follows a series of photos - published in the Northern Territory News - which show wannabe thrillseekers captured on top of crocodile traps in the Territory.
Darwin girls Ally Pettifor and Bonnie Keogh became the laugh of the nation when they were photographed dancing on top of a croc trap - wearing nothing but bikinis and using champagne bottles as microphones.
The photo, published last month, went around the world and attracted hundreds of reader comments.
"From my understanding, crocodiles like to eat brain - so these two are safe," one reader said in a text message to the editor.
That photo came only a few months after three young men were pictured with their thumbs up while standing on a floating cage.
Territory Parks and Wildlife rangers have labelled the latest act as "absolute stupidity".
"It won't be tolerated any more," senior ranger Peter Phillips said.
"We will investigate this case and if we find out who they are, they will be fined.
"The agency has zero tolerance with people interfering with croc traps.
"It's totally irresponsible.
"The traps are there for a very important safety reason."
Offenders could be fined up to $55,000 or jailed for five years for the reckless act, the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act states.
From: http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2009/12/27/111921_ntnews.html
Aurora man arrested for trying to steal meat in pants
December 26, 2009
SUN-TIMES MEDIA WIRE
A man was charged with retail theft after allegedly trying to steal more than $60 worth of meat by putting packages down his pants at an Aurora store, police said.
Anthony Collman, 47, 100 block of North East Avenue, Aurora, was charged with retail theft at 1 p.m. Wednesday at a store on the 1200 block of North Lake Street, Aurora police said.
Police said Collman tried to steal more than $60 worth of meat by putting the packages down his pants.
According to police, Collman was reported to have taken meat from the store on at least two different occasions in November.
From: http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1959430,aurora-meat-pants-thief-122609.article
SUN-TIMES MEDIA WIRE
A man was charged with retail theft after allegedly trying to steal more than $60 worth of meat by putting packages down his pants at an Aurora store, police said.
Anthony Collman, 47, 100 block of North East Avenue, Aurora, was charged with retail theft at 1 p.m. Wednesday at a store on the 1200 block of North Lake Street, Aurora police said.
Police said Collman tried to steal more than $60 worth of meat by putting the packages down his pants.
According to police, Collman was reported to have taken meat from the store on at least two different occasions in November.
From: http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1959430,aurora-meat-pants-thief-122609.article
Miracle or hoax?
Russians puzzled as phrases from the Koran start appearing 'spontaneously' on baby's skin
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 10:17 PM on 19th October 2009
A baby is sparking a wave of speculation in Russia after phrases from the Koran allegedly began appearing on his skin.
Sayings from the Muslim holy book are said to appear on nine-month-old Ali Yakubov's back, arms, legs and stomach - before apparently fading away and being replaced with new sayings.
Russian medics claimed they are puzzled over the cause of the marks on a baby's skin, which started when the word Allah apparently appeared on his chin within weeks of his birth.
One of the markings on the child's skin, which medics and his family say are genuine apparitions
Medics deny that the marks are from someone writing on the child's skin.
His mother, Madina, said that she and her husband were not religious until the writings started appearing on his skin.
Initially they did not show anyone the unexplained writings, she said, until revealing them to their doctor and the imam in their village of Red October which is in a strongly Muslim region.
Now the boy has become a focus of Muslim homage in his troubled home province of Dagestan, close to war-ravaged Chechnya in the south of Russia.
Local MP Akhmedpasha Amiralaev said: 'This boy is a pure sign of God. Allah sent him to Dagestan in order to stop revolts and tension in our republic.'
The boy's mother claimed: 'Normally those signs appear twice a week - on Mondays and on the nights between Thursdays and Fridays.
'Ali always feels bad when it is happening. He cries and his temperature goes up. It's impossible to hold him when it's happening, his body is actively moving, so we put him into his cradle. It's so hard to watch him suffering.'
The phrases regularly replace each other on the baby's skin, she said.
Local imam Abdulla has told locals that the Koran forecasts that before the end of the world, there may be people with its sayings on their bodies.
He said that one sign read: 'Don't hide these signs from the people.'
The story has attracted considerable attention from the Russian media and online.
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1221481/Russians-left-puzzled-Koran-phrases-start-appearing-spontaneously-babys-skin.html
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 10:17 PM on 19th October 2009
A baby is sparking a wave of speculation in Russia after phrases from the Koran allegedly began appearing on his skin.
Sayings from the Muslim holy book are said to appear on nine-month-old Ali Yakubov's back, arms, legs and stomach - before apparently fading away and being replaced with new sayings.
Russian medics claimed they are puzzled over the cause of the marks on a baby's skin, which started when the word Allah apparently appeared on his chin within weeks of his birth.
One of the markings on the child's skin, which medics and his family say are genuine apparitionsMedics deny that the marks are from someone writing on the child's skin.
His mother, Madina, said that she and her husband were not religious until the writings started appearing on his skin.
Initially they did not show anyone the unexplained writings, she said, until revealing them to their doctor and the imam in their village of Red October which is in a strongly Muslim region.
Now the boy has become a focus of Muslim homage in his troubled home province of Dagestan, close to war-ravaged Chechnya in the south of Russia.
Local MP Akhmedpasha Amiralaev said: 'This boy is a pure sign of God. Allah sent him to Dagestan in order to stop revolts and tension in our republic.'
The boy's mother claimed: 'Normally those signs appear twice a week - on Mondays and on the nights between Thursdays and Fridays.
'Ali always feels bad when it is happening. He cries and his temperature goes up. It's impossible to hold him when it's happening, his body is actively moving, so we put him into his cradle. It's so hard to watch him suffering.'
The phrases regularly replace each other on the baby's skin, she said.
Local imam Abdulla has told locals that the Koran forecasts that before the end of the world, there may be people with its sayings on their bodies.
He said that one sign read: 'Don't hide these signs from the people.'
The story has attracted considerable attention from the Russian media and online.
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1221481/Russians-left-puzzled-Koran-phrases-start-appearing-spontaneously-babys-skin.html
Student found dead in Aichi apartment with rubbish bag over head
(Mainichi Japan) December 28, 2009
NISSHIN, Aichi -- A female university student was found dead in her apartment here on Sunday, police said.
Police identified the woman as Kanako Ono, 20, a third-year student at Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences. Ono was found lying on her back with her legs under a low table, and a plastic garbage bag over her head. There were no visible wounds on her body, and police are set to conduct an autopsy to determine her exact cause of death.
Ono lived by herself. On Sunday she was absent from a university seminar, prompting the university to call her mother, who lives in another prefecture. The mother asked the apartment caretaker to check on her, which led to the discovery of her body.
The door of the home was not locked when the caretaker entered, police said.
From: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20091228p2a00m0na002000c.html
NISSHIN, Aichi -- A female university student was found dead in her apartment here on Sunday, police said.
Police identified the woman as Kanako Ono, 20, a third-year student at Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences. Ono was found lying on her back with her legs under a low table, and a plastic garbage bag over her head. There were no visible wounds on her body, and police are set to conduct an autopsy to determine her exact cause of death.
Ono lived by herself. On Sunday she was absent from a university seminar, prompting the university to call her mother, who lives in another prefecture. The mother asked the apartment caretaker to check on her, which led to the discovery of her body.
The door of the home was not locked when the caretaker entered, police said.
From: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20091228p2a00m0na002000c.html
The 20,000 snooper army
By James Slack, Home Affairs Editor
Last updated at 12:12 AM on 28th December 2009
As many as 20,000 town hall snoopers have assumed powers to enter people's homes without a warrant and search for information, a survey revealed last night.
The research details for the first time how a raft of intrusive laws has allowed council staff to barge into homes and businesses uninvited.
The bureaucrats are benefiting from the 1,043 state powers of entry in primary and secondary legislation – more than 400 of which have been created by Labour.
These include checking for fridges which do not have the correct eco-friendly energy rating, making sure a hedge is not too high and inspecting a property to ensure 'illegal or unregulated hypnotism' is not taking place.
Alex Deane, director of Big Brother Watch, which carried out the research, said: 'Once, a man's home was his castle. Today, the Big Brother state wants to inspect, regulate and standardise the inside of our homes.
'Councils are dishing out powers of entry to officers for their own ease, without giving due thought to the public's right to privacy and the potential for abuse. There needs to be a much closer eye kept on the number of officers granted the right to barge into private premises without a warrant.'
Using Freedom of Information laws, Big Brother Watch, a new privacy campaign group, asked councils in Britain to reveal the number of staff they had authorised to conduct property searches.
The research, entitled 'Barging In', found there were at least 14,793 officers with that power – the equivalent of 47 officers in every local authority in Britain. More than a quarter of councils either refused or failed to answer the FOI requests.
But based on the responses given by other town halls, there are 20,000 snoopers with the power to enter a person's home or business.
The survey relates only to town hall staff. If police officers, paramedics and firefighters are included, the total would be in the hundreds of thousands.
Northamptonshire County Council and Glasgow City Council have the most officers able to enter your home, with almost 500 each.
Councils have been handing out the powers despite the fact Gordon Brown has expressed concern about the practice.
In 2007, the Prime Minister said: 'I share the concerns about the need for additional protections for the liberties and rights of the citizen.'
Town halls are also carrying out thousands of 'spying' missions under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The law was passed nine years ago to fight terrorism, but access to the spy powers has been extended to 653 state bodies - including 474 councils.
Cases uncovered by the Mail include Kent County Council carrying out 23 telephone subscriber checks as part of probes into storing petrol without a licence and bringing a dog into the UK without putting it into quarantine.
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1238800/The-20-000-snooper-army-Vast-number-town-hall-bureaucrats-power-enter-home-warrant.html
Last updated at 12:12 AM on 28th December 2009
As many as 20,000 town hall snoopers have assumed powers to enter people's homes without a warrant and search for information, a survey revealed last night.
The research details for the first time how a raft of intrusive laws has allowed council staff to barge into homes and businesses uninvited.
The bureaucrats are benefiting from the 1,043 state powers of entry in primary and secondary legislation – more than 400 of which have been created by Labour.
These include checking for fridges which do not have the correct eco-friendly energy rating, making sure a hedge is not too high and inspecting a property to ensure 'illegal or unregulated hypnotism' is not taking place.
Alex Deane, director of Big Brother Watch, which carried out the research, said: 'Once, a man's home was his castle. Today, the Big Brother state wants to inspect, regulate and standardise the inside of our homes.
'Councils are dishing out powers of entry to officers for their own ease, without giving due thought to the public's right to privacy and the potential for abuse. There needs to be a much closer eye kept on the number of officers granted the right to barge into private premises without a warrant.'
Using Freedom of Information laws, Big Brother Watch, a new privacy campaign group, asked councils in Britain to reveal the number of staff they had authorised to conduct property searches.
The research, entitled 'Barging In', found there were at least 14,793 officers with that power – the equivalent of 47 officers in every local authority in Britain. More than a quarter of councils either refused or failed to answer the FOI requests.
But based on the responses given by other town halls, there are 20,000 snoopers with the power to enter a person's home or business.
The survey relates only to town hall staff. If police officers, paramedics and firefighters are included, the total would be in the hundreds of thousands.
Northamptonshire County Council and Glasgow City Council have the most officers able to enter your home, with almost 500 each.
Councils have been handing out the powers despite the fact Gordon Brown has expressed concern about the practice.
In 2007, the Prime Minister said: 'I share the concerns about the need for additional protections for the liberties and rights of the citizen.'
Town halls are also carrying out thousands of 'spying' missions under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The law was passed nine years ago to fight terrorism, but access to the spy powers has been extended to 653 state bodies - including 474 councils.
Cases uncovered by the Mail include Kent County Council carrying out 23 telephone subscriber checks as part of probes into storing petrol without a licence and bringing a dog into the UK without putting it into quarantine.
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1238800/The-20-000-snooper-army-Vast-number-town-hall-bureaucrats-power-enter-home-warrant.html
Jesus image appears on banana peel
By Lauren Dickson From: The Daily Telegraph December 22, 2009 4:02PMSITTING down for an after lunch snack turned into a brush with all things holy when Lisa Swinton saw the face of Jesus on her banana peel.
‘‘I was like ‘Oh my God! It’s Jesus on a banana!’’
‘‘I got it out of the fruit bowl and was about to peel it and eat it when I saw his face,’’ she told The Daily Telegraph.
The impact of seeing Christ pressed into the banana did not stop the 39-year-old of Haberfield from still eating the fruit and depositing the holy peel.
‘‘I put some photos up on Facebook – one of my friends said it looked like a monkey.’’
Ms Swinton is not a stranger to holy visions appearing in day to day household objects.
‘‘One of my friends said they saw the Holy Mother on their bathroom door and another saw an apparition of Mary on the mould of their shower floor,’’ she said.
The fateful placing of her banana bunch underneath other fruit, Ms Swinton believes was the cause of the sacred imprint.
‘‘It definitely wasn’t that way when I bought it from Leichhardt Woollies,’’ she said.
From: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/jesus-image-appears-on-banana-peel/story-e6freuy9-1225812846613
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Man Kills Self After Grocery Store Shooting
POSTED: 3:59 pm EST December 26, 2009
UPDATED: 4:14 pm EST December 26, 2009
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Police said a central Kentucky man shot two women at a grocery store, then killed himself.
The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that the two women, who were not identified, were taken to Ephraim McDowell Fort Logan Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
According to Casey County 911 dispatcher Scott Wilkerson, 59-year-old Marshall "Ray" Brown walked into a Down Home grocery store in Walltown around 1:45 p.m. on Christmas Day and shot two women.
Wilkerson said that Brown then went to the Walltown Christian Church where he was found dead of an apparent of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
From: http://www.wlky.com/news/22063415/detail.html
UPDATED: 4:14 pm EST December 26, 2009
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Police said a central Kentucky man shot two women at a grocery store, then killed himself.
The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that the two women, who were not identified, were taken to Ephraim McDowell Fort Logan Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
According to Casey County 911 dispatcher Scott Wilkerson, 59-year-old Marshall "Ray" Brown walked into a Down Home grocery store in Walltown around 1:45 p.m. on Christmas Day and shot two women.
Wilkerson said that Brown then went to the Walltown Christian Church where he was found dead of an apparent of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
From: http://www.wlky.com/news/22063415/detail.html
Pa. pastor shoots son during fight
21-year-old dies after ‘very good man’ intervenes in Christmas Day dispute
updated 2:40 a.m. ET Dec. 27, 2009
DARBY, Pa. - A pastor fatally shot one of his eight children on Christmas Day during a dispute at the family home, where more than a dozen relatives had gathered to celebrate the holiday, police said.
Kirk Caldwell killed 21-year-old Jordan Caldwell after intervening in a violent confrontation between the son and a woman at around 2 p.m. at their home in suburban Philadelphia, Darby Borough police said Friday.
Kirk Caldwell fired a single shot, striking his son in the chest, police Chief Robert Smythe said. Jordan Caldwell died at a hospital shortly afterward, police said.
Smythe, who noted he had met Caldwell a couple of times, called the pastor a "very good man" and said he was "quite surprised."
"I find this is not something I would expect this guy to do," Smythe said.
'Retaliation is never the answer'(???)
As a pastor at End Times Harvest Mission for Christ in Philadelphia, Kirk Caldwell had spoken against violence at a vigil for a slain teen in Darby last summer.
"Retaliation is never the answer. Retaliation is only going to make it worse," Caldwell said, according to the Daily Times of Delaware County.
Donald Mosby, 81, who has lived next door to Caldwell for a couple of years, said the pastor also worked as a plumber and seemed "like a moderate man."
He said Caldwell used to shuttle parishioners to and from church in his vans.
The 44-year-old Caldwell had not been charged as of Friday evening. The gun was legally registered to him, Smythe said.
There was no answer at the Darby Borough Police Department on Saturday. A woman who answered the phone at Caldwell's home Saturday declined to comment.
From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34599611/
updated 2:40 a.m. ET Dec. 27, 2009
DARBY, Pa. - A pastor fatally shot one of his eight children on Christmas Day during a dispute at the family home, where more than a dozen relatives had gathered to celebrate the holiday, police said.
Kirk Caldwell killed 21-year-old Jordan Caldwell after intervening in a violent confrontation between the son and a woman at around 2 p.m. at their home in suburban Philadelphia, Darby Borough police said Friday.
Kirk Caldwell fired a single shot, striking his son in the chest, police Chief Robert Smythe said. Jordan Caldwell died at a hospital shortly afterward, police said.
Smythe, who noted he had met Caldwell a couple of times, called the pastor a "very good man" and said he was "quite surprised."
"I find this is not something I would expect this guy to do," Smythe said.
'Retaliation is never the answer'(???)
As a pastor at End Times Harvest Mission for Christ in Philadelphia, Kirk Caldwell had spoken against violence at a vigil for a slain teen in Darby last summer.
"Retaliation is never the answer. Retaliation is only going to make it worse," Caldwell said, according to the Daily Times of Delaware County.
Donald Mosby, 81, who has lived next door to Caldwell for a couple of years, said the pastor also worked as a plumber and seemed "like a moderate man."
He said Caldwell used to shuttle parishioners to and from church in his vans.
The 44-year-old Caldwell had not been charged as of Friday evening. The gun was legally registered to him, Smythe said.
There was no answer at the Darby Borough Police Department on Saturday. A woman who answered the phone at Caldwell's home Saturday declined to comment.
From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34599611/
Woman Kills Thug, Then Flees on Subway
NBCNewYork.com
updated 11:50 p.m. ET Dec. 26, 2009
A woman who was harassed by a group of up to eight thugs as she tried to get to the subway stabbed one of them to death before fleeing on the F train, according to published reports.
Police say the men swarmed around the woman outside a chicken restaurant near the Queensbridge station at about 9 p.m., where they proceeded to begin grabbing her and engaging in other unwanted sexual advances, according to the Daily News.
Eventually, the woman broke free of the circle of men, raced down to the platform and hopped onto a train. But the men followed.
"They tried to physically drag her off the train, but she fights back," one cop told the News.
The woman was pulled off the train and dragged up the stairs. Then she pulled out a knife and stabbed one of them multiple times in the chest before racing back down to the platform, getting on another train and escaping her attackers.
Cops responded to a 911 call of a man stabbed inside the F train station at 21st Street and 41st Avenue. The 29-year-old man, identified as Thomas Winston, of Queens, was stabbed in the torso, cops say. He was rushed to Cornell Hospital, where he died.
From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34591403/ns/local_news-new_york_ny/
updated 11:50 p.m. ET Dec. 26, 2009
A woman who was harassed by a group of up to eight thugs as she tried to get to the subway stabbed one of them to death before fleeing on the F train, according to published reports.
Police say the men swarmed around the woman outside a chicken restaurant near the Queensbridge station at about 9 p.m., where they proceeded to begin grabbing her and engaging in other unwanted sexual advances, according to the Daily News.
Eventually, the woman broke free of the circle of men, raced down to the platform and hopped onto a train. But the men followed.
"They tried to physically drag her off the train, but she fights back," one cop told the News.
The woman was pulled off the train and dragged up the stairs. Then she pulled out a knife and stabbed one of them multiple times in the chest before racing back down to the platform, getting on another train and escaping her attackers.
Cops responded to a 911 call of a man stabbed inside the F train station at 21st Street and 41st Avenue. The 29-year-old man, identified as Thomas Winston, of Queens, was stabbed in the torso, cops say. He was rushed to Cornell Hospital, where he died.
From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34591403/ns/local_news-new_york_ny/
Body Found Wrapped in Plastic Under Car
BY STEPHANIE BARISH wpix.com
12:53 PM EST, December 25, 2009
GREENWOOD HEIGHTS, N.Y. (WPIX) - A driver -- pulling out of a parking spot -- found the body of a dead teenager wrapped in plastic underneath his vehicle, police said.
The incident occurred in the Greenwood Heights section of Brooklyn early Thursday.
Ashraf Ali, 27, told police he felt something under his car when he attempted to pull out of a parking spot on 27th Street. Ali said he at first thought it was a prank when a friend told him there was a leg sticking out from the car. However, he told authorities when he looked down he discovered a human hand.
Emergency officials pronounced 19-year-old Daniel Vargas dead at the scene. The Medical Examiners office said Vargas was strangled and suffered multiple skull fractures.
An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
From: http://www.wpix.com/news/local/wpix-body-found-brooklyn-car,0,2586186.story
12:53 PM EST, December 25, 2009
GREENWOOD HEIGHTS, N.Y. (WPIX) - A driver -- pulling out of a parking spot -- found the body of a dead teenager wrapped in plastic underneath his vehicle, police said.
The incident occurred in the Greenwood Heights section of Brooklyn early Thursday.
Ashraf Ali, 27, told police he felt something under his car when he attempted to pull out of a parking spot on 27th Street. Ali said he at first thought it was a prank when a friend told him there was a leg sticking out from the car. However, he told authorities when he looked down he discovered a human hand.
Emergency officials pronounced 19-year-old Daniel Vargas dead at the scene. The Medical Examiners office said Vargas was strangled and suffered multiple skull fractures.
An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
From: http://www.wpix.com/news/local/wpix-body-found-brooklyn-car,0,2586186.story
My dead son has miraculous powers, says Lina Tannous
By Clementine Cuneo From: The Daily Telegraph December 22, 2009 12:00AMA SYDNEY couple believes their son - "hand-picked by God" - could be Australia's first male saint.
Mike Tannous died three years ago but a mysterious oil that weeps from the walls of his bedroom has been hailed by his parents, George and Lina, as having helped heal dozens of people.
The oil started to appear in the Guildford home just weeks after the 17-year-old died in a car accident in September 2006.
"Mike is a messenger between us and God. He has healed so many people," Mrs Tannous said.
Extensive scientific testing of the oil has failed to identify exactly what it is but that has not stopped hundreds praying at the home.
The Tannous' push for sainthood for their son emerged as Mary MacKillop fever swept the nation.
Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell suggested yesterday crusader for convicts Caroline Chisholm and Sydney's first Archbishop John Bede Polding to be considered as "would-be saints" after Mother MacKillop's canonisation.
But Mr Tannous said the next saint would be his son, and the family was documenting his healing powers.
"Our boy is a saint. This is him talking to us, talking to other people," he said.
Last year a woman who lived near the Tannous' house was told by doctors she could not have the third child she desperately wanted.
"She came here and prayed . . . one month later she came with a box of chocolates and said 'Guess what, I am pregnant'," Mike's aunt Susan Sawan said.
Since Pope Benedict XVI confirmed Mother MacKillop's second miracle, scores of people have flocked to the Tannous' house.
And the oil has continued to weep, now appearing on almost every wall of the three-bedroom house, as well as on framed photos of Mike and other religious icons.
"Over the weekend we had people everywhere, we even had to close the street . . . they want to experience a miracle," Mr Tannous said.
As word of the alleged healing powers inside the house have spread, people have travelled from overseas and interstate.
Siblings Pauline and Paul Matti came from Melbourne.
"That is the first miracle I've seen in my life," an excited Pauline said as she left the house. "It feels like I've been touched by something."
Each day the doors to the Tannous' "miracle house" are open, but the family does not take donations, instead just seeing people's reaction to what they see inside.
To sceptics and non-believers, the family's response is simple: "Come and see for yourself."
Cardinal Pell said, while there were no "saints in waiting", Chisholm and Polding were worthy.
Chisholm was instrumental in helping female convicts in Sydney in the 19th century, while Polding was Sydney's first Archbishop.
"Cardinal Pell said he could easily see those two people worthy of being put forward," a spokeswoman said.
As part of the canonisation process, parishioners in the diocese where the person died have to nominate them to the local bishop.
But the wheels could already be in motion. During last year's World Youth Day celebrations, a group of pilgrims from Northampton in England - where Chisholm died - followed her trail in Australia as part of their documentation of her life.
"There is obviously a groundswell from the parishioners, who must then go to their bishop," the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, Mother MacKillop is being credited with playing a part in the successful separation of conjoined Bangladeshi twins Trishna and Krishna, who were last night due to spend their first night at home.
The girls' carer Moira Kelly said she believed her prayers to Mother MacKillop helped with the surgery.
"Mary MacKillop has certainly, I believe, played a big role in this," Ms Kelly said.
From: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/my-dead-son-has-miraculous-powers-says-lina-tannous/story-e6freuy9-1225812574412
Dad jailed after girl, 10, was shot to death at home
Posted Friday, Dec. 25, 2009By DOMINGO RAMIREZ JR.
A 10-year-old Denton County girl was shot in the face Christmas Eve night and died on a dining room table, authorities said.
Her father was taken into custody early Christmas morning, a Denton County official said Friday.
The girl, identified as Ashley Watrous, was pronounced dead at her home in the 500 block of Naylor Road in Oak Point, which is in Denton County on the shore of Lake Lewisville.
"The brother of the victim called authorities and said she had been shot by her father," said Tom Reedy, a spokesman for the Denton County Sheriff’s Department.
Authorities did not provide any other details of the shooting.
Oak Point police and Texas Ranger Tracy Murphee are investigating the case, and the Sheriff’s Department provided a crime scene team, Reedy said.
Authorities identified Ashley’s father as Duke Lawrence Watrous, 36, who was booked into the Denton County Jail about 3 a.m. Friday.
Watrous remained in jail with bail set at $200,000.
According to Denton County criminal court records, Watrous has an injury to a child charge pending against him. He was booked into the Denton County Jail on that charge April 1 and was released on bail the next day, records show.
From: http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1853941.html
Robot roaches would be a benefit, not a pest
David Downs, Special to The Chronicle
Saturday, December 26, 2009
One day a tiny robotic cockroach could save lives.
UC Berkeley engineers driven by such a vision are ebullient this winter over DASH - a cheap, lightweight, six-legged robotic cockroach that can survive a four-story drop, crawl over objects twice its height and run for an hour on special watch-size batteries.
"It's something remarkably simple that does something remarkably complex - just like nature," said Erico Guizzo, a robotics expert and associate editor at the engineering publication IEEE Spectrum.
Built by a UC graduate student with grant money from the National Science Foundation, the speedy, boxy, 16-gram beast consists of just paperboard and Radio Shack electronics. His descendants will eventually crawl through collapsed buildings and freeways, searching places too dangerous for first responders to tread.
DASH stands for dynamic autonomous sprawled hexpod. It is the latest invention of the university's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, a research center famous for its work with geckos. The lab discovered that geckos can run up vertical surfaces thanks to millions of tiny little hairs on their feet. Now they're enhancing nature's technique for human needs, a goal at the heart of biomimetics.
At a time when UC budgets are shrinking, the field of biomimetics is exploding. The lab will add staff in 2010, working toward robots that could be used for the next conflict, Bay Bridge malfunction or the Big One.
Inspired by a quake
Dr. Robert Full, UC professor of integrative biology who did the basic animal research that went into DASH's gait, said the inspiration for such work goes back to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the search-and-rescue operations that followed.
"That's one of the first things that motivated me," Full said. "You'd see these people climbing into these dangerous areas not even knowing if a person's in there - this incredible heroism - and I thought, 'Why don't we get robots that can do this?' "
Paul Birkmeyer, the UC graduate student who made DASH out of less than $50 worth of materials, envisions pouring a garbage can of hundreds of small, cheap robotic cockroaches into the rubble of a catastrophe. They'd seek the lowest ground, and their sensors would sniff for carbon dioxide, the telltale signature of survivors.
"Basically, right now, you just have to randomly dig and hope you find people," Birkmeyer said. "If you could send these tiny robots in who say, 'Hey, we found this person. Dig at this exact spot and you'll find them' - who cares if the robots don't make it back?"
DASH represents a startlingly successful step down that path, said Professor Ron Fearing, head of the Millisystems lab. DASH is simpler, lighter and more rugged than anything in development.
"It worked great. Usually, we make things and they don't work as well as we expect," he said. "It's a combination of the design choices that Paul made, plus the materials, plus the underlying physics that made this thing work in a really cool way."
A precision, computer-guided laser cuts DASH from a single piece of paperboard. Birkmeyer then hand-folds the paperboard into a shape like an origami insect. The folds create six legs, a boxy body and a simple drive that attaches to a DC motor. The first motor came from a toy bat at Radio Shack called Vamp. The final design evolved over 18 months and about three dozen versions, Birkmeyer said.
An animal discovery
DASH gains its speed and stability from locomotion principles extracted by Full from real cockroaches. Using high-speed cameras and animal treadmills, Full discovered that all animals - from insects to man - have the same leg stiffness relative to their weight. Adjust stiffness to weight and you gain the inherent stability of living legged systems.
"When we first discovered this, we said, 'We don't know why this is true, but we should try this in robots,' " Full said.
In 2010, Fearing intends to shrink DASH to just 2.5 grams, while Birkmeyer goes to work on getting small robots to scale vertical walls. Simple-legged automatons should be doing mankind's dangerous work in three to five years, Fearing said.
"I think it's just the beginning," Full said. "We're going to see running robots, flying robots, robots swimming and doing everything else."
From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/26/BALE1B9FJ4.DTL
Saturday, December 26, 2009
One day a tiny robotic cockroach could save lives.
UC Berkeley engineers driven by such a vision are ebullient this winter over DASH - a cheap, lightweight, six-legged robotic cockroach that can survive a four-story drop, crawl over objects twice its height and run for an hour on special watch-size batteries.
"It's something remarkably simple that does something remarkably complex - just like nature," said Erico Guizzo, a robotics expert and associate editor at the engineering publication IEEE Spectrum.
Built by a UC graduate student with grant money from the National Science Foundation, the speedy, boxy, 16-gram beast consists of just paperboard and Radio Shack electronics. His descendants will eventually crawl through collapsed buildings and freeways, searching places too dangerous for first responders to tread.
DASH stands for dynamic autonomous sprawled hexpod. It is the latest invention of the university's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, a research center famous for its work with geckos. The lab discovered that geckos can run up vertical surfaces thanks to millions of tiny little hairs on their feet. Now they're enhancing nature's technique for human needs, a goal at the heart of biomimetics.
At a time when UC budgets are shrinking, the field of biomimetics is exploding. The lab will add staff in 2010, working toward robots that could be used for the next conflict, Bay Bridge malfunction or the Big One.
Inspired by a quake
Dr. Robert Full, UC professor of integrative biology who did the basic animal research that went into DASH's gait, said the inspiration for such work goes back to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the search-and-rescue operations that followed.
"That's one of the first things that motivated me," Full said. "You'd see these people climbing into these dangerous areas not even knowing if a person's in there - this incredible heroism - and I thought, 'Why don't we get robots that can do this?' "
Paul Birkmeyer, the UC graduate student who made DASH out of less than $50 worth of materials, envisions pouring a garbage can of hundreds of small, cheap robotic cockroaches into the rubble of a catastrophe. They'd seek the lowest ground, and their sensors would sniff for carbon dioxide, the telltale signature of survivors.
"Basically, right now, you just have to randomly dig and hope you find people," Birkmeyer said. "If you could send these tiny robots in who say, 'Hey, we found this person. Dig at this exact spot and you'll find them' - who cares if the robots don't make it back?"
DASH represents a startlingly successful step down that path, said Professor Ron Fearing, head of the Millisystems lab. DASH is simpler, lighter and more rugged than anything in development.
"It worked great. Usually, we make things and they don't work as well as we expect," he said. "It's a combination of the design choices that Paul made, plus the materials, plus the underlying physics that made this thing work in a really cool way."
A precision, computer-guided laser cuts DASH from a single piece of paperboard. Birkmeyer then hand-folds the paperboard into a shape like an origami insect. The folds create six legs, a boxy body and a simple drive that attaches to a DC motor. The first motor came from a toy bat at Radio Shack called Vamp. The final design evolved over 18 months and about three dozen versions, Birkmeyer said.
An animal discovery
DASH gains its speed and stability from locomotion principles extracted by Full from real cockroaches. Using high-speed cameras and animal treadmills, Full discovered that all animals - from insects to man - have the same leg stiffness relative to their weight. Adjust stiffness to weight and you gain the inherent stability of living legged systems.
"When we first discovered this, we said, 'We don't know why this is true, but we should try this in robots,' " Full said.
In 2010, Fearing intends to shrink DASH to just 2.5 grams, while Birkmeyer goes to work on getting small robots to scale vertical walls. Simple-legged automatons should be doing mankind's dangerous work in three to five years, Fearing said.
"I think it's just the beginning," Full said. "We're going to see running robots, flying robots, robots swimming and doing everything else."
From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/26/BALE1B9FJ4.DTL
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Cobb 2-month-old has 20 broken bones, skull fracture; parents in custody
Kevin Straight, 32, of Marietta is charged with second-degree cruelty to children in the beating of his 2-month-old daughter. Police charged Antoinette White, 22, with aggravated battery, felony cruelty to children and second-degree cruelty to children. She is being held on $100,000 bond. By Larry Hartstein
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Marietta woman and her boyfriend are in jail after their 2-month-old daughter was found to have 20 broken bones and a skull fracture, Cobb County Police said.
A Children's Healthcare of Atlanta employee called police after the child was examined at the hospital Tuesday.
Police charged Antoinette White, 22, with aggravated battery, felony cruelty to children and second-degree cruelty to children. She is being held on $100,000 bond. Her boyfriend, Kevin Straight, 32, was charged with second-degree cruelty to children. He is being held on $50,000 bond.
"Horrible doesn't begin to describe this tragic case," Police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce said.
Investigators interviewed the couple at the Crimes Against Children Office, then arrested them. Authorities took a 1-year-old child from the home into protective custody.
From: http://www.ajc.com/news/cobb/cobb-2-month-old-253843.html
Girl pleads not guilty in torture attack
Attempted murder among the charges
By Greg Moran, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Friday, December 25, 2009 at 12:08 a.m.
A 14-year-old Escondido girl pleaded not guilty to charges of torture and attempted murder yesterday and was ordered held in custody on $2 million bail.
Kristina Amador is accused of attacking and stabbing an Escondido teenager last May, an attack prosecutors say was motivated because both Amador and the victim liked the same boy.
Amador was ordered Tuesday to face the charges as an adult by a Superior Court judge, who found her unfit to be tried in the juvenile system, where penalties are less severe and there is an overriding emphasis on rehabilitation.
As an adult Amador faces life in prison if convicted of the charges.
Deputy District Attorney Kristie Nikoletich said Amador attacked the victims as she opened up the back door of her home on the evening of May 3. She was helped by two other juveniles, a boy and girl. The boy is being tried in juvenile court.
The other girl, Jovana Gudino, also 14, faces the same charges as Amador and is also being tried as an adult. She too has pleaded not guilty.
Nikoletich said that once inside the victim’s home, Amador attacked the girl with a knife. She is accused of stabbing her several times and carving the victim on the back, arm and face.
The victim was the dragged into the bathroom and instructed by Amador to wash off the evidence, Nikoletich said. The victim was stabbed five times and suffered a collapsed lung.
Amador is also charged with a separate count of assaulting the girl a week before the attack.
From: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/25/girl-pleads-not-guilty-torture-attack/
By Greg Moran, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Friday, December 25, 2009 at 12:08 a.m.
A 14-year-old Escondido girl pleaded not guilty to charges of torture and attempted murder yesterday and was ordered held in custody on $2 million bail.
Kristina Amador is accused of attacking and stabbing an Escondido teenager last May, an attack prosecutors say was motivated because both Amador and the victim liked the same boy.
Amador was ordered Tuesday to face the charges as an adult by a Superior Court judge, who found her unfit to be tried in the juvenile system, where penalties are less severe and there is an overriding emphasis on rehabilitation.
As an adult Amador faces life in prison if convicted of the charges.
Deputy District Attorney Kristie Nikoletich said Amador attacked the victims as she opened up the back door of her home on the evening of May 3. She was helped by two other juveniles, a boy and girl. The boy is being tried in juvenile court.
The other girl, Jovana Gudino, also 14, faces the same charges as Amador and is also being tried as an adult. She too has pleaded not guilty.
Nikoletich said that once inside the victim’s home, Amador attacked the girl with a knife. She is accused of stabbing her several times and carving the victim on the back, arm and face.
The victim was the dragged into the bathroom and instructed by Amador to wash off the evidence, Nikoletich said. The victim was stabbed five times and suffered a collapsed lung.
Amador is also charged with a separate count of assaulting the girl a week before the attack.
From: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/25/girl-pleads-not-guilty-torture-attack/
Former Employee Kills Two, Injures One in Deadly Workplace Shooting
Posted: Dec 24, 2009 05:48 PM
East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Detectives have a suspected shooter in custody following a deadly shooting at Grady Crawford Construction at 12290 Greenwell Springs Road this afternoon. The shooting left two dead and one injured.
Richard Matthews, 53, of 1107 Country Breeze Slaughter, LA will be booked into parish prison on two counts of First Degree Murder and two counts of Attempted First Degree Murder.
According to reports, Matthews, a former employee of Grady Crawford Construction, showed up at the business today and began firing on employees. Matthews allegedly shot three employees, two of which were pronounced dead on the scene, and fired at a fourth employee and missed before being tackled by others on scene. The first victim was transported to a local hospital and is in stable condition.
Dianna Tullier, 44, of 33520 Percy Young Road, Walker, LA and Cheryl D. Boykin, 55, of 9911 Gene Buckner, Denham Springs, LA were both pronounced dead on the scene. They were both clerical workers in the construction office.
The call came into the Sheriff's Office at approximately 1:50 p.m. The first Sheriff's deputy made it on scene at 1:54 p.m. this afternoon. Upon the deputy's arrival, the employees were still struggling with the alleged assailant. Deputies took Matthews into custody and transported him to the Sheriff's Office for questioning. Detectives are still on scene collecting evidence.
Matthews employment and dismissal from the company are currently under investigation.
From: http://www.klfy.com/Global/story.asp?S=11728158
East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Detectives have a suspected shooter in custody following a deadly shooting at Grady Crawford Construction at 12290 Greenwell Springs Road this afternoon. The shooting left two dead and one injured.
Richard Matthews, 53, of 1107 Country Breeze Slaughter, LA will be booked into parish prison on two counts of First Degree Murder and two counts of Attempted First Degree Murder.
According to reports, Matthews, a former employee of Grady Crawford Construction, showed up at the business today and began firing on employees. Matthews allegedly shot three employees, two of which were pronounced dead on the scene, and fired at a fourth employee and missed before being tackled by others on scene. The first victim was transported to a local hospital and is in stable condition.
Dianna Tullier, 44, of 33520 Percy Young Road, Walker, LA and Cheryl D. Boykin, 55, of 9911 Gene Buckner, Denham Springs, LA were both pronounced dead on the scene. They were both clerical workers in the construction office.
The call came into the Sheriff's Office at approximately 1:50 p.m. The first Sheriff's deputy made it on scene at 1:54 p.m. this afternoon. Upon the deputy's arrival, the employees were still struggling with the alleged assailant. Deputies took Matthews into custody and transported him to the Sheriff's Office for questioning. Detectives are still on scene collecting evidence.
Matthews employment and dismissal from the company are currently under investigation.
From: http://www.klfy.com/Global/story.asp?S=11728158
Man, 66, shot dead in Lynn apartment
By Jack Nicas
Globe Correspondent / December 25, 2009
LYNN - A man was shot to death in his Lynn apartment just before noon yesterday, according to Essex County prosecutors.
Police found Bennett Halprin, 66, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds in his second-floor apartment at 23 Atlantic St. Halprin, an MBTA bus driver for the past 13 years, died about 30 minutes later at North Shore Medical Center’s Union Hospital in Lynn, the Essex district attorney’s office said.
Neighbors gathered outside on a chilly Christmas Eve afternoon as State and Lynn police snapped photos, shot video, and led dogs around the property on the corner of Baltimore Street.
Bob Bergeron, 46, lives across the street from the shooting and said he used to work with the victim’s wife.
“He was a nice guy, just a very jolly, happy guy,’’ Bergeron said of Halprin.
Mack Peters, 65, said he was a family friend and had walked to the house yesterday because Halprin was not answering his phone.
“I called his house a few minutes ago because I’m having some people over,’’ Peters said. “He was a good man . . . It’s a horrible, horrible thing to happen on Christmas Eve.’’
Peters said Halprin was shot through the front door of his apartment, but police would not confirm that. Police would not release details yesterday on the shooting.
Shawn King, 39, who lives around the corner, said police confiscated video footage from one of his surveillance cameras pointed toward Baltimore Street. He said two people could be seen running down the street at about the time of the shooting.
Aaron Rial, 27, who has a home below Halprin, said the victim lives with his wife and an adult son. The son was at home at the time, but it is not known whether the wife was.
“There’s a lot of activity there all the time,’’ Rial said. He was planning to spend Christmas in his apartment but was now worried. “I don’t what I’m going to do now.’’
Paul Perakis, 51, who lives across the street from the shooting, said he was not surprised the white house with blue shutters was the sight of a shooting.
“There’s a lot of cars and a lot of traffic coming in and out of that house," he said. “I’m in fear for my life right now. I’m going to move out."
From: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/25/man__66_shot_dead_in_lynn_apartment/
Globe Correspondent / December 25, 2009
LYNN - A man was shot to death in his Lynn apartment just before noon yesterday, according to Essex County prosecutors.
Police found Bennett Halprin, 66, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds in his second-floor apartment at 23 Atlantic St. Halprin, an MBTA bus driver for the past 13 years, died about 30 minutes later at North Shore Medical Center’s Union Hospital in Lynn, the Essex district attorney’s office said.
Neighbors gathered outside on a chilly Christmas Eve afternoon as State and Lynn police snapped photos, shot video, and led dogs around the property on the corner of Baltimore Street.
Bob Bergeron, 46, lives across the street from the shooting and said he used to work with the victim’s wife.
“He was a nice guy, just a very jolly, happy guy,’’ Bergeron said of Halprin.
Mack Peters, 65, said he was a family friend and had walked to the house yesterday because Halprin was not answering his phone.
“I called his house a few minutes ago because I’m having some people over,’’ Peters said. “He was a good man . . . It’s a horrible, horrible thing to happen on Christmas Eve.’’
Peters said Halprin was shot through the front door of his apartment, but police would not confirm that. Police would not release details yesterday on the shooting.
Shawn King, 39, who lives around the corner, said police confiscated video footage from one of his surveillance cameras pointed toward Baltimore Street. He said two people could be seen running down the street at about the time of the shooting.
Aaron Rial, 27, who has a home below Halprin, said the victim lives with his wife and an adult son. The son was at home at the time, but it is not known whether the wife was.
“There’s a lot of activity there all the time,’’ Rial said. He was planning to spend Christmas in his apartment but was now worried. “I don’t what I’m going to do now.’’
Paul Perakis, 51, who lives across the street from the shooting, said he was not surprised the white house with blue shutters was the sight of a shooting.
“There’s a lot of cars and a lot of traffic coming in and out of that house," he said. “I’m in fear for my life right now. I’m going to move out."
From: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/25/man__66_shot_dead_in_lynn_apartment/
Friday, December 25, 2009
Man firebombs wrong house
December 23, 2009 - Robert Holt, 25, was determined to exact revenge on his ex-girlfriend by tossing a Molotov cocktail through the window of her home. He did manage to throw a firebomb through the window of a house—just not the one where his ex resides.
Holt is now facing the following felony charges: Arson in the first degree, four counts of aggravated assault, and possession of an explosive device.
Firefighters responded to a fire call at the residence in question—on Dell Drive, in Thomson, Georgia. The house was damaged, but no injuries were reported.
Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John W. Oxedine said in a statement that Holt mistook the house for the one where he believed his estranged girlfriend to be living.
Holt was taken into custody yesterday and is being held without bond at the McDuffie County Law Enforcement Center.
Authorities say he has been arrested on a variety of other charges in recent months.
From: http://failuremag.com/index.php/failure_analysis/article/man_firebombs_wrong_house/#
Holt is now facing the following felony charges: Arson in the first degree, four counts of aggravated assault, and possession of an explosive device.
Firefighters responded to a fire call at the residence in question—on Dell Drive, in Thomson, Georgia. The house was damaged, but no injuries were reported.
Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John W. Oxedine said in a statement that Holt mistook the house for the one where he believed his estranged girlfriend to be living.
Holt was taken into custody yesterday and is being held without bond at the McDuffie County Law Enforcement Center.
Authorities say he has been arrested on a variety of other charges in recent months.
From: http://failuremag.com/index.php/failure_analysis/article/man_firebombs_wrong_house/#
Beaver Attacks Boy In Southern Okla.
State Health Department Officials Testing Animal For Rabies
POSTED: 1:22 am CST December 23, 2009
UPDATED: 1:30 am CST December 23, 2009
DURANT, Okla. --
The Oklahoma State Health Department is preparing to test a beaver for rabies after it bit a small boy near Durant.
The incident happened on Saturday outside an apartment complex in Durant.
Tammy Lane said her 5-year-old son went outside to get the family cat. Instead of finding a feline, however, he was attacked by a beaver.
"I heard screaming. I went to see what was happening. His leg was pretty bad," she said.
Lane said when her son tried to pet the beaver, it bit him. She rushed him to a local hospital and called police.
"They didn't believe it was a beaver. They thought it was a raccoon," Lane said.
However, Lane's boyfriend took a photo of the beaver after he beat it with a crowbar.
A Durant Police Department spokeswoman said this was the department's first report of a beaver attack.
"We get our share of dog bites, cat bites. This is our first one for beavers," said Lt. Carrie Wyrick.
Lane said the 60-pound beaver was bigger than her 42-pound son and could have easily carried him away. The animal bit a chunk out of the boy's calf.
"My biggest worry is that he has rabies, and I don't know. Nobody knows," Lane said.
Health department officials said rabies in beavers is rare. Workers will test the beaver on Wednesday.
From: http://www.koco.com/news/22042422/detail.html
POSTED: 1:22 am CST December 23, 2009
UPDATED: 1:30 am CST December 23, 2009
DURANT, Okla. --
The Oklahoma State Health Department is preparing to test a beaver for rabies after it bit a small boy near Durant.
The incident happened on Saturday outside an apartment complex in Durant.
Tammy Lane said her 5-year-old son went outside to get the family cat. Instead of finding a feline, however, he was attacked by a beaver.
"I heard screaming. I went to see what was happening. His leg was pretty bad," she said.
Lane said when her son tried to pet the beaver, it bit him. She rushed him to a local hospital and called police.
"They didn't believe it was a beaver. They thought it was a raccoon," Lane said.
However, Lane's boyfriend took a photo of the beaver after he beat it with a crowbar.
A Durant Police Department spokeswoman said this was the department's first report of a beaver attack.
"We get our share of dog bites, cat bites. This is our first one for beavers," said Lt. Carrie Wyrick.
Lane said the 60-pound beaver was bigger than her 42-pound son and could have easily carried him away. The animal bit a chunk out of the boy's calf.
"My biggest worry is that he has rabies, and I don't know. Nobody knows," Lane said.
Health department officials said rabies in beavers is rare. Workers will test the beaver on Wednesday.
From: http://www.koco.com/news/22042422/detail.html
Teens' Blow Jobs Made Him "Lucky" at Casino
By R. Scott Moxley in Crime & Sex, MoxleyWed., Dec. 23 2009"Oral sex gives me good luck when I gamble at the casino."
--Actual excuse Little Saigon's 5-foot-2 and 110-pound Hung Van Phan gave to police in hopes of rationalizing why as a 28-year-old he demanded and received blow jobs and intercourse from two underage Orange County girls, one 14 and the other 15. Phan met the girls on the Internet while posing as a 16-year-old. Over a period of many months, he committed 17 sex crimes in the case and was sentenced to spend 17 years and eight months in a California prison. Phan recently complained that his punishment is unfairly harsh. A state appeals court agreed. They reduced his sentence by, no joke, a single day and closed the file.
From: http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/crime-sex/oral-sex-casino-hung-phan/
Pope knocked down by woman at Christmas Mass
Last updated at 11:01 GMT, Friday, 25 December 2009
A shaken Pope Benedict has celebrated Christmas Eve Mass in St Peter's Basilica shortly after being knocked over by a female spectator.
The woman, said to be mentally unstable, managed to grab him by his vestments near the neck as a security guard tried to overwhelm her.
The Vatican said she had also tried to jump at the Pope last year.
French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, 87, was standing a few metres away and fell and broke his hip during the incident.
Proceeding with the Mass, Benedict looked shaken and stumbled over some words.
The Vatican later said the Pope was unharmed and would give Mass on Christmas Day as planned.
"It was an assault, but it wasn't dangerous because she wasn't armed," said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.
The BBC's David Willey, in Rome, says the woman is now undergoing checks at a medical facility in Rome.
Vatican officials named her as 25-year-old Susanna Maiolo and said she held dual Swiss and Italian nationality.
The Christmas Eve service in the Vatican started two hours early because officials did not want the pontiff, 82, to get tired.
Repeat incident
Dressed in a red hooded sweatshirt, the attacker leaped over the barrier towards the Pope, prompting gasps from the crowd.
Eyewitness Marybeth Burns, a US tourist, told the Associated Press the woman "sort of flew over the barricade".
"The Holy Father went down and all of a sudden all the security people were all on top of it, you know the whole pile there, getting her off and pulling him back up," she said.
Security officials rushed down the main aisle to detain the woman, who was later arrested by police.
Vatican security staff said they recognised the woman as being the same person who had tried to jump a barricade to get close to the Pope at the same service last year.
The Pope had to be helped up by his master of ceremonies.
The pontiff had earlier appeared briefly at nightfall at the window of his studio to light a candle in a sign of peace.
Tourism boom
Meanwhile in Bethlehem thousands of pilgrims saw Latin Patriarch Foud Twal, the most senior Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, deliver his Christmas message.
"The wish that we most want, we most hope for, is not coming - we want peace," he said after arriving in Bethlehem after the traditional holiday procession from nearby Jerusalem.
Festivities in Bethlehem began with a traditional boy scout band and ended with midnight Mass in St Catherine's Church, next to the Church of the Nativity.
Arriving in Bethlehem, the Latin Patriarch said people in the region wanted freedom of movement.
"We don't want walls, we don't want separation fences."
Addressing worshippers, he added: "[This land's] inhabitants are brothers who see each other as enemies.
"This land will deserve to be called holy when she breathes freedom, justice, love, reconciliation, peace and security."
The Mass was said next to a church built over the stall where Mary is believed to have given birth to Jesus.
Some 300 Christians over the age of 35 from the Gaza Strip were given permission by the Israeli military to leave the territory and come to Bethlehem for 24 hours to celebrate Christmas.
A total of 15,000 tourists are expected in the town during this period, in a year that has seen a record number of visitors - some 1.6 million.
From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8430118.stm
A shaken Pope Benedict has celebrated Christmas Eve Mass in St Peter's Basilica shortly after being knocked over by a female spectator.
The woman, said to be mentally unstable, managed to grab him by his vestments near the neck as a security guard tried to overwhelm her.
The Vatican said she had also tried to jump at the Pope last year.
French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, 87, was standing a few metres away and fell and broke his hip during the incident.
Proceeding with the Mass, Benedict looked shaken and stumbled over some words.
The Vatican later said the Pope was unharmed and would give Mass on Christmas Day as planned.
"It was an assault, but it wasn't dangerous because she wasn't armed," said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.
The BBC's David Willey, in Rome, says the woman is now undergoing checks at a medical facility in Rome.
Vatican officials named her as 25-year-old Susanna Maiolo and said she held dual Swiss and Italian nationality.
The Christmas Eve service in the Vatican started two hours early because officials did not want the pontiff, 82, to get tired.
Repeat incident
Dressed in a red hooded sweatshirt, the attacker leaped over the barrier towards the Pope, prompting gasps from the crowd.
Eyewitness Marybeth Burns, a US tourist, told the Associated Press the woman "sort of flew over the barricade".
"The Holy Father went down and all of a sudden all the security people were all on top of it, you know the whole pile there, getting her off and pulling him back up," she said.
Security officials rushed down the main aisle to detain the woman, who was later arrested by police.
Vatican security staff said they recognised the woman as being the same person who had tried to jump a barricade to get close to the Pope at the same service last year.
The Pope had to be helped up by his master of ceremonies.
The pontiff had earlier appeared briefly at nightfall at the window of his studio to light a candle in a sign of peace.
Tourism boom
Meanwhile in Bethlehem thousands of pilgrims saw Latin Patriarch Foud Twal, the most senior Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, deliver his Christmas message.
"The wish that we most want, we most hope for, is not coming - we want peace," he said after arriving in Bethlehem after the traditional holiday procession from nearby Jerusalem.
Festivities in Bethlehem began with a traditional boy scout band and ended with midnight Mass in St Catherine's Church, next to the Church of the Nativity.
Arriving in Bethlehem, the Latin Patriarch said people in the region wanted freedom of movement.
"We don't want walls, we don't want separation fences."
Addressing worshippers, he added: "[This land's] inhabitants are brothers who see each other as enemies.
"This land will deserve to be called holy when she breathes freedom, justice, love, reconciliation, peace and security."
The Mass was said next to a church built over the stall where Mary is believed to have given birth to Jesus.
Some 300 Christians over the age of 35 from the Gaza Strip were given permission by the Israeli military to leave the territory and come to Bethlehem for 24 hours to celebrate Christmas.
A total of 15,000 tourists are expected in the town during this period, in a year that has seen a record number of visitors - some 1.6 million.
From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8430118.stm
By Thought Alone: Mind Over Keyboard
Written By: Surfdaddy OrcaDate Published: December 21, 2009
Why bother to type a document using a keyboard when you can write it by simply thinking about the letters you need to type?
A brain wave study presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society shows that people with electrodes in their brains can “type” (input data into a computer) using just their minds. Neurologist Jerry Shih, M.D. Shih and other Mayo Clinic researchers worked with Dean Krusienski, Ph.D., from the University of North Florida in an experiment involving two patients with epilepsy. Both patients were already being monitored for seizure activity using electrocorticography (ECoG), in which a sheet of electrodes is laid directly on the surface of the brain. This procedure requires a craniotomy, a surgical incision into the skull. Dr. Shih and colleagues hypothesized that feedback from electrodes placed directly on the brain would be much more specific than data collected with EEG (electroencephalography) alone, in which electrodes are placed on the scalp. Most studies of mind-machine interaction have occurred with EEG. "There is a big difference in the quality of information you get from ECoG compared to EEG. The scalp and bony skull diffuses and distorts the signal, rather like how the Earth's atmosphere blurs the light from stars," says Dr. Shih. "That's why progress to date on developing these kinds of mind interfaces has been slow."
Dr. Shih’s patients at the Mayo Clinic were asked to look at a computer screen containing a 6-by-6 matrix with a single alphanumeric character inside each square. Every time the square with a certain letter flashed, the patient focused on it and a computer application recorded the brain's response to the flashing letter. The computer software calibrated the system with the individual patient's specific brain wave patterns. When the patient then focused on a letter, the letter appeared on the screen. "We were able to consistently predict the desired letters for our patients at or near 100 percent accuracy," Shih explains. "While this is comparable to other researchers' results with EEGs, this approach is more localized and can potentially provide a faster communication rate.”
A recent h+ article, “Mind Reading (Neuro Decoding) Goes Mainstream” (see Resources) describes a similar study by Dr. Gerwin Schalk, who worked with patients using ECoG at the Wadsworth Center, in Albany, NY. The patients were asked to say or imagine words flashed on a screen while their brain activity was recorded. Schalk’s team then used specially designed decoder algorithms to predict the vowels and consonants of the word, using only the pattern of brain activity. They found that both speaking and imagining the word gave roughly the same level of accuracy.
In addition to the ability to “mind read” vowels, consonants, and individual letters, brain wave applications also include algorithms to turn brain waves into music and even “tweeting” (using the popular Twitter Internet application) by thought alone. Brain music therapy is a form of neurofeedback using EEG based on a variable ratio of fast and slow rhythms –- it can be used to turn a person’s brain waves into music notes using a computerized mathematical formula. Dr. Galina Mindlin, a neuropsychiatrist with the Brain Music Therapy Center in New York City brought this to the U.S. from Moscow in 2006 as a form of entrainment therapy. Interviewed on NBC’s Today Show, she said, “Brain waves are translated into music digitally with a special algorithm. Once the brain waves are converted into musical sounds, they are placed on a CD with a relaxing file and activating file and instructions on how to use them.” What does this mind-machine interface sound like? “It sounds like classical piano music,” says Dr. Mindlin. Here’s a video showing the use of an EEG mind-machine interface to control sampled sound clips on a piano:
In addition to his ECoG research at the Wadsworth Center, Dr. Gerwin Schalk and his colleagues also worked with University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineering doctoral student Adam Wilson to develop an interface that involves a keyboard displayed on a computer screen that interprets brain waves to send Twitter messages (tweets). "We started thinking that moving a cursor on a screen is a good scientific exercise," said Justin Williams, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of biomedical engineering and Wilson's adviser. "But when we talk to people who have locked-in syndrome or a spinal-cord injury, their number one concern is communication."
Using the EEG-based interface, "All the letters come up, and each one of them flashes individually," explains Williams. "And what your brain does is –- if you're looking at the 'R' on the screen and all the other letters are flashing – nothing happens. But when the 'R' flashes, your brain says, 'Hey, wait a minute. Something's different about what I was just paying attention to.' And you see a momentary change in brain activity."
Wilson was able to tweet by thought alone using EEG. Here’s a video showing the brain-Twitter interface:
Tweeting by thought alone is a somewhat slow process using this prototype technology –- we speak at approximately 120 words per minute. But, as with texting, users can improve as they practice using the interface. "I've seen people do up to eight characters per minute," Wilson says.
Brain wave applications in the laboratory –- whether using EEG or the more invasive ECoG –- now include the ability to “mind read” vowels, consonants, and individual letters; algorithms to turn brain waves into musical scores; and even twittering by thought alone. Who needs a keyboard when you can simply think about what you want to say (or play musically) and have it recorded and/or communicated?
From: http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/neuro/thought-alone-mind-over-keyboard
Soul Medicine: Ecstasy (MDMA) as Therapy
Written By: Oliver Hockenhull
Date Published: December 23, 2009
In 1912, Jung publishes Transformations and Symbols of the Libido. The book introduces the concept of the collective unconscious and furthers his position regarding the mytho-poetic nature of the psyche; in 1912, ambient trance music has never been heard; in 1912, the German pharmaceutical company Merck files a patent that includes an aside about two new molecules that will spawn 100,000 raves, fortify the cult of the “Burning Man” celebration, and just possibly be the cure for at least one undeniably debilitating affliction. The molecules:
3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) &
3, 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)
— also known as the street drug Ecstasy
MDA reached the psychedelic underground in the mid- '60s. Nicknamed the love drug, it reportedly induced a feeling of sensuous euphoria. It was declared useless as medicine and dangerous for citizens, (though many of those citizens wanted it), and made illegal in the United States by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. MDMA however remained under the radar until well into the ‘80s and underground chemist continued to manufacture and distribute the drug.
In 1978, Dr. Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin (who had synthesized the drug in 1976) with Dr. David Nichols of Purdue University) published the first human study of MDMA in the scientific literature. He described the MDMA experience as “an easily controlled altered state of consciousness with emotional and sensual overtones.”
Dr. Shulgin completed his Ph.D in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1954. He completed his postdoctoral work in the fields of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco. It was while working as a senior research scientist with Dow Chemicals that he created the world’s first biodegradable insecticide and was thus given free range to pursue his own research by the chemical giant.
Highly influenced by that perennial of psychedelic literature, Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, in which Huxley analyzed and praised the effects of mescaline, a psychoactive alkaloid of the peyote cactus, the young Dow Chemicals scientist decided he too had to experience first hand the wondrous "Heaven and Hell" of psychedelics. One mescaline trip was enough to transport the chemist on the journey of his life. His life's purpose would be to study, synthesize and experiment with some of the most powerful and intriguing psychoactive molecules on this and probably any other planet. MDMA, which is structurally similar to both mescaline and to amphetamine, particularly tweaked his interest.
Dr. Shulgin was in contact with many practicing psychotherapist in and around the San Francisco Bay area. He suggested they try out this new phantastica of personal discovery, a short acting, non-addictive drug with apparently few undesirable side effects that seemed to invoke a most agreeable experiences of empathetic understanding and blissful bodily sensations. An enticing additional effect -- Shulgin found that the drug triggered the recall of emotionally charged memories.
The therapists were intrigued and started their own investigations. They quickly ascertained that the pill did act as the research scientist suggested -- it could be used quite handily in relationship therapy, and its ability to facilitate access to traumatic emotional content, when contextualized within the right setting and support, advanced the healing process many fold.
Handled with Care
Though there was excitement about this new drug, the attitude held by the research community was tempered by experience. Mainstream psychiatry had been seriously burnt when it had embraced psychedelic drugs in the ‘60s, as the media broadcasted the remarkable findings with sensational and bizarre but enticing tales that spooked conservatives. Before Dr. Timothy Leary took centerstage and the youths swallowed up the message to experiment with these powerful substances, psychiatry was making use of them to treat alcoholism and neurosis, to study creativity and to understand how the mind works. (They also occasionally misused them, as in the criminal behavior of the McGill University hospital in Montreal, where psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron had been pioneering a technique called "psychic driving.” Supported with money from the CIA money, Cameron experimented on patients, literally driving them insane by dosing them with LSD, confining them to isolation chambers and bombarding them with looped taped suggestions. Later, Charlie Manson and his crew became the most cogent example of how psychedelics could be used to help fuel the realization of demented, violent fantasies.)
Even mainstream religion tripped to nirvana. One of the most remarkable documents of the early history (1957) of psychedelia comes from a monsignor at Vancouver's Holy Rosary Cathedral, Vancouver’s central Catholic church. He wrote a prayer for those about to embark on a LSD journey: “We therefore approach the study of these psychedelics and their influence on the mind of man anxious to discover whatever attributes they possess respectfully evaluating their proper place in the Divine Economy. We humbly ask our Heavenly Mother the Virgin, help of all who call upon her to know and understand the true qualities of these psychedelics, the full capacities of man's noblest faculties and according to God's laws to use them for the benefit of mankind here and in eternity.”
MDMA, aka Ecstasy, though considered by some a psychedelic, has singular effects that place it within a subset of that genre of drug, or even within its own completely novel category. Dr. Ralph Metzner, an elder pioneer of the psychedelic therapy movement and one time student of Dr. Leary, christened MDMA as an “empathogen” -- a drug that encourages empathy. Dr. Nichols, considered by many as the foremost psychedelic researcher has called it an “entactogen”, — "entactogen" is derived from Greek and Latin roots and means being able to touch within.
Ecstasy might be old news to you, but it is big news to civilization. Humankind does not come up with a psychoactive drug with unique properties every day. The rough, addictive depressant alcohol has been in use since at least 10,000 B.C. People have been stinking up their caves with cannabis from the 3rd millennium BC. People have been tripping on psilocybin mushrooms at least since the domestication of cattle, And humans were, of course, impatient to start using stimulants, which have been around for just as long.
MAPing the Way to Medicalization
Rick Doblin, a 5' 6' man with the bearing of a guy who wrestled for the high school team, has a doctorate from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and is the founder and director of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. MAPS is Rick’s brain child, the driving force behind a worldwide movement to encourage medical professionals to study the prudent therapeutic application of MDMA with the goal of rescheduling it for medical use — the current tag lines in MAPS publications is “MAPS: Putting the MD back in MDMA”.
The only completed study of MDMA assisted psychotherapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (which was sponsored by MAPS) created headlines in 2008 throughout the media landscape, from Dr. Gupta on CNN suggesting that “people will be amazed at the results”, to a double spread article in The Economist that stated that “MDMA assisted patients showed statistically significant improvement of their PTSD symptoms compared with those who received the same day-long therapy sessions with an inactive placebo.”
A patient under the influence of MDMA, remains calm, centered, and can speak clearly. Relative to LSD, it is an extraordinarily gentle delving into one’s own psyche, rather than a wrenching toss into dimensions unknown. Depression, anxiety and any sense of suffering are usually lifted completely. The burden of trauma and stress gone — the patient is made profoundly at ease with herself, and the sense of self -- rather than being lost or dissolved (as with the temporary "ego loss" sometimes experienced under other psychedelics) is made reflective -- meditative, calm and loving. Dr. Julie Holland, of Bellevue Hospital, Faculty, NYU School of Medicine, and editor of Ecstasy: The Complete Guide wrote: “Any psychiatric disorder that can be ameliorated by psychotherapy can be treated more quickly and more profoundly with MDMA-assisted therapy.”
The Use and Misuse of this Technology
A profitable way of understanding MDMA and psychedelic drugs is to think of them as technologies.. These technologies are reflectors of self, of the complexity of one’s own mind -- the abstract mind, the rational mind and the emotional mind all twined together permitting us to see our emotional history, and the present state of our psyche, our self. At the peak of these experiences, the psychedelics can show the world as an unconditioned given, as the world is without firm tags of language, yet it is imminently poetic and symbolic. Contradictory? Sure. But I would claim that psychedelics provide a glimpse into the soul.
During the late ‘70s and early ‘80s the therapists thought it best to keep the lid on. Not wanting to see a repeat of the clampdown on LSD in the late 1960s, they did not talk to the media about MDMA at all. The drug underground had other ideas. MDMA was taken up by countercultural activists and entrepreneurs (drug dealers, by another name). Quite consciously rebranded as Ecstasy, a black market encouraged casual use and a whole new music culture came into existence. Overreacting, in 1985, the state made MDMA Schedule One (illegal and with no medical use. MDMA... Ecstasy is now a demonized substance in the USA, slurred as a narcotic. It cannot be prescribed by a physician, and is prohibited for every application under threat of incarceration.
Prohibition has created a much more dangerous but quite massive underground use and abuse, creating problems with adulterated, sometimes poisonous ‘product,’ use of the drug in circumstances that don’t support the value of the experience, overuse, and use with other drugs. Meanwhile, the lawful community of therapists and researchers have lost a surpassingly valuable tool. Professor David Nutt, (past) chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, U.K, wrote in the Journal of Psychopharmacology: ‘There is not much difference between the dangers of horse-riding and the dangers of ecstasy.’
Few deaths have been linked to the use of the millions of tabs of MDMA throughout the decades (125 tonnes of E is consumed annually world wide according to the UN). But most of those few can be attributed to the setting of specific raves and the miscalculation of users. Dehydration, overhydration and heat stroke are real dangers, but one does have to put to rest the idea that MDMA was the principal cause of death in most of these cases. MDMA does increase body temperature; dancing all night while high without supplying the body with fluids is not a good idea, but neither is drinking water excessively. There are a few cases of individuals on MDMA who -- heeding the advice to keep hydrated --drank an excessive amount of water and died of water intoxication. In other words, cause of death: water intoxication. The point is critical; it brings home the most central dictum of pharmacology, quoting from the father of the science, Paracelsus: “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison. For example, every food and drink, if taken beyond its dose is poison; the result proves it. I admit that poison is poison; that it should, however be rejected is impossible.“
The most grievous misuse of MDMA is related to overuse and improper attention to the set and setting of the user while under the influence. The normal dose is between 100-125 mg., and generally, the dose should not be repeated to extend the length of the trip unless supervised by a therapist. Also, one trip every three to four months is a reasonable maximum use window, permitting the individual enough time to integrate the knowledge gained by the psyche's refocusing (initiated by the drug) and permitting the body and brain neurochemistry sufficient time to return to normal baseline functioning. There is no physical craving for MDMA; it is not an addictive substance. MDMA should not be used by anyone with cardiac problems, or with a history of seizures. Swallowing it every weekend for partying is not at all wise and can prove to be dangerous for long-term mental health. It’s also highly ineffective. The drug provides quickly diminishing returns with repeat use.
The peak engagement is short acting, 3 to 4 hours, as compared to the 8 or more hours of a high dose LSD experience. Incredibly and importantly, most pain -- even chronic pain disappears during an MDMA session. These effects are consistently reported and observed with the majority of patients.
The Pusher Man
Sales of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, and remains on an upward swing. In 2008, sales of these drugs totaled $9.6 billion in the US alone. Direct to consumer advertising for them is about 122$ million per year. These pushers are busy, busy, busy; one company spent $34.7 million to pay 2,000 psychiatrists and primary care doctors to deliver 15,000 lectures to market their product to their peers. These legal, corporate mind drugs are meant to be used on a daily basis for as long as the patient is considered unwell, which could be the rest of his or her life. That's quite a fantastic cash cow, as people return for their prescription refills. Conversely, in psychedelic therapy, the drugs are used on rare occasions. They are combined with psychotherapy and -- with luck -- within a supportive community and there are no patents on the molecules. No one is going to finance a villa in Venice on magic mushrooms when it can grow in a field strewn with organic sheep manure.
It’s a long road from prohibited drug, and one with little market value, to a prescribed medicine. Doblin is confident that MAPS will be able to move forward with the final phase of research -- one requiring many more subjects. Because of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the government to investigate the harms that MDMA might cause, there are over 3,000 scientific papers on the subject all in the public domain. This state sanctioned and financed groundwork will allow MAPS to jump the hurdles of the FDA’s approval process for about $10 million dollars — that’s a third of what the Ang Lee movie about Woodstock cost and a hell of a lot more true to the heritage of the psychedelic experience.
Because of ignorance and fear, psychedelic medicines have been left to languish in the underground and are still refused entry into polite society. No corporation can make a dollar on them. The patents have expired and they are still taboo. But prohibition against these non addictive drugs -- these mind manifesting enhancers -- is a law against our own nature. We crave -- and even desperately need -- to feel the fullness of ecstatic mind states; the disappearance of the bounds that constrict us to our day to day identities, and to fully experience the condition of grace -- the condition of being grateful for life.
Our entire society is under constant, ever-increasing stress. Trauma is prevalent and the old standbys of family and social order are, for many, inadequate. Civilization is in a chaotic flux. Only the steady heart of the Self, the emotional self that sees and appreciates our common humanity, in empathy and humility, can right the imbalance. As we face upsetting economic, social and cultural changes globally and locally, should we not be making use of every technological advancement?
From: http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/enhanced/soul-medicine-ecstasy-mdma-therapy
Date Published: December 23, 2009
In 1912, Jung publishes Transformations and Symbols of the Libido. The book introduces the concept of the collective unconscious and furthers his position regarding the mytho-poetic nature of the psyche; in 1912, ambient trance music has never been heard; in 1912, the German pharmaceutical company Merck files a patent that includes an aside about two new molecules that will spawn 100,000 raves, fortify the cult of the “Burning Man” celebration, and just possibly be the cure for at least one undeniably debilitating affliction. The molecules:
3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) &
3, 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)
— also known as the street drug Ecstasy
MDA reached the psychedelic underground in the mid- '60s. Nicknamed the love drug, it reportedly induced a feeling of sensuous euphoria. It was declared useless as medicine and dangerous for citizens, (though many of those citizens wanted it), and made illegal in the United States by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. MDMA however remained under the radar until well into the ‘80s and underground chemist continued to manufacture and distribute the drug.
In 1978, Dr. Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin (who had synthesized the drug in 1976) with Dr. David Nichols of Purdue University) published the first human study of MDMA in the scientific literature. He described the MDMA experience as “an easily controlled altered state of consciousness with emotional and sensual overtones.”
Dr. Shulgin completed his Ph.D in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1954. He completed his postdoctoral work in the fields of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco. It was while working as a senior research scientist with Dow Chemicals that he created the world’s first biodegradable insecticide and was thus given free range to pursue his own research by the chemical giant.
Highly influenced by that perennial of psychedelic literature, Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, in which Huxley analyzed and praised the effects of mescaline, a psychoactive alkaloid of the peyote cactus, the young Dow Chemicals scientist decided he too had to experience first hand the wondrous "Heaven and Hell" of psychedelics. One mescaline trip was enough to transport the chemist on the journey of his life. His life's purpose would be to study, synthesize and experiment with some of the most powerful and intriguing psychoactive molecules on this and probably any other planet. MDMA, which is structurally similar to both mescaline and to amphetamine, particularly tweaked his interest.
Dr. Shulgin was in contact with many practicing psychotherapist in and around the San Francisco Bay area. He suggested they try out this new phantastica of personal discovery, a short acting, non-addictive drug with apparently few undesirable side effects that seemed to invoke a most agreeable experiences of empathetic understanding and blissful bodily sensations. An enticing additional effect -- Shulgin found that the drug triggered the recall of emotionally charged memories.
The therapists were intrigued and started their own investigations. They quickly ascertained that the pill did act as the research scientist suggested -- it could be used quite handily in relationship therapy, and its ability to facilitate access to traumatic emotional content, when contextualized within the right setting and support, advanced the healing process many fold.
Handled with Care
Though there was excitement about this new drug, the attitude held by the research community was tempered by experience. Mainstream psychiatry had been seriously burnt when it had embraced psychedelic drugs in the ‘60s, as the media broadcasted the remarkable findings with sensational and bizarre but enticing tales that spooked conservatives. Before Dr. Timothy Leary took centerstage and the youths swallowed up the message to experiment with these powerful substances, psychiatry was making use of them to treat alcoholism and neurosis, to study creativity and to understand how the mind works. (They also occasionally misused them, as in the criminal behavior of the McGill University hospital in Montreal, where psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron had been pioneering a technique called "psychic driving.” Supported with money from the CIA money, Cameron experimented on patients, literally driving them insane by dosing them with LSD, confining them to isolation chambers and bombarding them with looped taped suggestions. Later, Charlie Manson and his crew became the most cogent example of how psychedelics could be used to help fuel the realization of demented, violent fantasies.)
Even mainstream religion tripped to nirvana. One of the most remarkable documents of the early history (1957) of psychedelia comes from a monsignor at Vancouver's Holy Rosary Cathedral, Vancouver’s central Catholic church. He wrote a prayer for those about to embark on a LSD journey: “We therefore approach the study of these psychedelics and their influence on the mind of man anxious to discover whatever attributes they possess respectfully evaluating their proper place in the Divine Economy. We humbly ask our Heavenly Mother the Virgin, help of all who call upon her to know and understand the true qualities of these psychedelics, the full capacities of man's noblest faculties and according to God's laws to use them for the benefit of mankind here and in eternity.”
MDMA, aka Ecstasy, though considered by some a psychedelic, has singular effects that place it within a subset of that genre of drug, or even within its own completely novel category. Dr. Ralph Metzner, an elder pioneer of the psychedelic therapy movement and one time student of Dr. Leary, christened MDMA as an “empathogen” -- a drug that encourages empathy. Dr. Nichols, considered by many as the foremost psychedelic researcher has called it an “entactogen”, — "entactogen" is derived from Greek and Latin roots and means being able to touch within.
Ecstasy might be old news to you, but it is big news to civilization. Humankind does not come up with a psychoactive drug with unique properties every day. The rough, addictive depressant alcohol has been in use since at least 10,000 B.C. People have been stinking up their caves with cannabis from the 3rd millennium BC. People have been tripping on psilocybin mushrooms at least since the domestication of cattle, And humans were, of course, impatient to start using stimulants, which have been around for just as long.
MAPing the Way to Medicalization
Rick Doblin, a 5' 6' man with the bearing of a guy who wrestled for the high school team, has a doctorate from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and is the founder and director of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. MAPS is Rick’s brain child, the driving force behind a worldwide movement to encourage medical professionals to study the prudent therapeutic application of MDMA with the goal of rescheduling it for medical use — the current tag lines in MAPS publications is “MAPS: Putting the MD back in MDMA”.
The only completed study of MDMA assisted psychotherapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (which was sponsored by MAPS) created headlines in 2008 throughout the media landscape, from Dr. Gupta on CNN suggesting that “people will be amazed at the results”, to a double spread article in The Economist that stated that “MDMA assisted patients showed statistically significant improvement of their PTSD symptoms compared with those who received the same day-long therapy sessions with an inactive placebo.”
A patient under the influence of MDMA, remains calm, centered, and can speak clearly. Relative to LSD, it is an extraordinarily gentle delving into one’s own psyche, rather than a wrenching toss into dimensions unknown. Depression, anxiety and any sense of suffering are usually lifted completely. The burden of trauma and stress gone — the patient is made profoundly at ease with herself, and the sense of self -- rather than being lost or dissolved (as with the temporary "ego loss" sometimes experienced under other psychedelics) is made reflective -- meditative, calm and loving. Dr. Julie Holland, of Bellevue Hospital, Faculty, NYU School of Medicine, and editor of Ecstasy: The Complete Guide wrote: “Any psychiatric disorder that can be ameliorated by psychotherapy can be treated more quickly and more profoundly with MDMA-assisted therapy.”
The Use and Misuse of this Technology
A profitable way of understanding MDMA and psychedelic drugs is to think of them as technologies.. These technologies are reflectors of self, of the complexity of one’s own mind -- the abstract mind, the rational mind and the emotional mind all twined together permitting us to see our emotional history, and the present state of our psyche, our self. At the peak of these experiences, the psychedelics can show the world as an unconditioned given, as the world is without firm tags of language, yet it is imminently poetic and symbolic. Contradictory? Sure. But I would claim that psychedelics provide a glimpse into the soul.
During the late ‘70s and early ‘80s the therapists thought it best to keep the lid on. Not wanting to see a repeat of the clampdown on LSD in the late 1960s, they did not talk to the media about MDMA at all. The drug underground had other ideas. MDMA was taken up by countercultural activists and entrepreneurs (drug dealers, by another name). Quite consciously rebranded as Ecstasy, a black market encouraged casual use and a whole new music culture came into existence. Overreacting, in 1985, the state made MDMA Schedule One (illegal and with no medical use. MDMA... Ecstasy is now a demonized substance in the USA, slurred as a narcotic. It cannot be prescribed by a physician, and is prohibited for every application under threat of incarceration.
Prohibition has created a much more dangerous but quite massive underground use and abuse, creating problems with adulterated, sometimes poisonous ‘product,’ use of the drug in circumstances that don’t support the value of the experience, overuse, and use with other drugs. Meanwhile, the lawful community of therapists and researchers have lost a surpassingly valuable tool. Professor David Nutt, (past) chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, U.K, wrote in the Journal of Psychopharmacology: ‘There is not much difference between the dangers of horse-riding and the dangers of ecstasy.’
Few deaths have been linked to the use of the millions of tabs of MDMA throughout the decades (125 tonnes of E is consumed annually world wide according to the UN). But most of those few can be attributed to the setting of specific raves and the miscalculation of users. Dehydration, overhydration and heat stroke are real dangers, but one does have to put to rest the idea that MDMA was the principal cause of death in most of these cases. MDMA does increase body temperature; dancing all night while high without supplying the body with fluids is not a good idea, but neither is drinking water excessively. There are a few cases of individuals on MDMA who -- heeding the advice to keep hydrated --drank an excessive amount of water and died of water intoxication. In other words, cause of death: water intoxication. The point is critical; it brings home the most central dictum of pharmacology, quoting from the father of the science, Paracelsus: “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison. For example, every food and drink, if taken beyond its dose is poison; the result proves it. I admit that poison is poison; that it should, however be rejected is impossible.“
The most grievous misuse of MDMA is related to overuse and improper attention to the set and setting of the user while under the influence. The normal dose is between 100-125 mg., and generally, the dose should not be repeated to extend the length of the trip unless supervised by a therapist. Also, one trip every three to four months is a reasonable maximum use window, permitting the individual enough time to integrate the knowledge gained by the psyche's refocusing (initiated by the drug) and permitting the body and brain neurochemistry sufficient time to return to normal baseline functioning. There is no physical craving for MDMA; it is not an addictive substance. MDMA should not be used by anyone with cardiac problems, or with a history of seizures. Swallowing it every weekend for partying is not at all wise and can prove to be dangerous for long-term mental health. It’s also highly ineffective. The drug provides quickly diminishing returns with repeat use.
The peak engagement is short acting, 3 to 4 hours, as compared to the 8 or more hours of a high dose LSD experience. Incredibly and importantly, most pain -- even chronic pain disappears during an MDMA session. These effects are consistently reported and observed with the majority of patients.
The Pusher Man
Sales of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, and remains on an upward swing. In 2008, sales of these drugs totaled $9.6 billion in the US alone. Direct to consumer advertising for them is about 122$ million per year. These pushers are busy, busy, busy; one company spent $34.7 million to pay 2,000 psychiatrists and primary care doctors to deliver 15,000 lectures to market their product to their peers. These legal, corporate mind drugs are meant to be used on a daily basis for as long as the patient is considered unwell, which could be the rest of his or her life. That's quite a fantastic cash cow, as people return for their prescription refills. Conversely, in psychedelic therapy, the drugs are used on rare occasions. They are combined with psychotherapy and -- with luck -- within a supportive community and there are no patents on the molecules. No one is going to finance a villa in Venice on magic mushrooms when it can grow in a field strewn with organic sheep manure.
It’s a long road from prohibited drug, and one with little market value, to a prescribed medicine. Doblin is confident that MAPS will be able to move forward with the final phase of research -- one requiring many more subjects. Because of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the government to investigate the harms that MDMA might cause, there are over 3,000 scientific papers on the subject all in the public domain. This state sanctioned and financed groundwork will allow MAPS to jump the hurdles of the FDA’s approval process for about $10 million dollars — that’s a third of what the Ang Lee movie about Woodstock cost and a hell of a lot more true to the heritage of the psychedelic experience.
Because of ignorance and fear, psychedelic medicines have been left to languish in the underground and are still refused entry into polite society. No corporation can make a dollar on them. The patents have expired and they are still taboo. But prohibition against these non addictive drugs -- these mind manifesting enhancers -- is a law against our own nature. We crave -- and even desperately need -- to feel the fullness of ecstatic mind states; the disappearance of the bounds that constrict us to our day to day identities, and to fully experience the condition of grace -- the condition of being grateful for life.
Our entire society is under constant, ever-increasing stress. Trauma is prevalent and the old standbys of family and social order are, for many, inadequate. Civilization is in a chaotic flux. Only the steady heart of the Self, the emotional self that sees and appreciates our common humanity, in empathy and humility, can right the imbalance. As we face upsetting economic, social and cultural changes globally and locally, should we not be making use of every technological advancement?
From: http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/enhanced/soul-medicine-ecstasy-mdma-therapy
Cognitive Commodities in the Neuro Marketplace
Written By: James Kent
Date Published: December 23, 2009
The science of cognitive enhancement is evolving, which means the business of cognitive enhancement is evolving. Supplying cognitive enhancement to the masses can be viewed through the lens of any commodities marketplace. Human experience is already commoditized through drugs that pack mood and performance into portable units — pills or doses — that can be easily traded and consumed, and the drug market is one of the biggest on the planet. The same can be said for audio and visual experience. The platforms and hardware for trading audiovisual experience — TVs, computers, media players, telecomm, cell phones, software — are huge markets with influence over every facet of our lives. The media and drug markets are built upon the ideal of commoditizing consumer moods and experiences. The cognitive enhancement industry is now poised to undergo a similar market revolution.
The cognitive revolution has already begun, as concepts of enhancement move from counterculture and science fiction into mainstream media. Within the last year, the mainstream press has embraced off-label use of Adderall and similar pills as cognitive enhancers for students seeking to better their grades. Soon there will be research to confirm if students using off-label pharmaceuticals get better grades than their peers. The fact that Teva Pharmaceuticals is the corporate supplier of Adderall is rarely mentioned, nor is the fact that these “enhancement” drugs are all copyrighted blends of amphetamines and stimulants marketed to fidgety children. A similar mainstream embrace of students using methamphetamine or cocaine to get better grades will never be seen, because it‘s in the interest of the media to drive the market for regulated cognitive enhancers and beat the drum against unregulated generic alternatives. All forms of cognitive enhancement — whether a drug or a technology — will face a similar inherent media bias.
Anyone wanting to get into the business of selling moods, memories, and cognitive solutions to the public must first have the interest of the media to help shape market demand. For instance, the same neurostim device that uses electric impulses from a brain implant to treat people with Parkinson‘s Disease can be tweaked by a few millimeters and pulse rates to make cocaine addicts feel like they are high all the time. Neurostim isn‘t a cheap commodity yet, but in the future it could be. The “off label” demand for designer neurostim does not exist today, but if the implant procedure was automated and the price was reduced, it could be a very marketable alternative to long-term drug therapy. Cheap neurostim would then fuel an off-label market for cosmetic and personal use with subsidiary markets for designer software upgrades, patches, and applets to customize functionality. But first there needs to be consumer demand for the product, and that has yet to materialize.
The cognitive enhancement revolution may ultimately fail. Comparisons can be made to the Virtual Reality market, which promised a bold age of cyber-living but was encumbered with wonky gear and appealed only to a small number of consumers. Most people prefer watching a very large TV to being goggled into VR — the novelty of a platform doesn‘t change human preference. VR was clunky, disorienting, and it gave people headaches, motion sickness, and vision problems. Pills with worse side effects are sold by huge corporations, but ultimately VR had no real mass-market application other than coolness. The lesson here is that the success of the platform does not depend on the coolness factor, it depends on consumer demand once the technology becomes affordable. Will the average consumer embrace being implanted, or even crave non-invasive tinkering with memory and intelligence? Modern consumers have embraced taking whatever pill or procedure their doctors recommend, so all perspective next-gen neurotech should take a page from Big Pharma‘s playbook and pressure MDs to prescribe invasive cognitive solutions to patients for cosmetic and off-label purposes (and pressure insurance companies to cover the costs). Cosmetic therapeutic applications are the doorway to the mainstream consumer market. On the bleeding edge of this field, scientists are already doing research on neurostim to treat depression and sexual dysfunction.
Neural implants and neurostim, like any form of cognitive enhancement, face some challenges with regard to public opinion. The implant procedure is delicate and expensive and could have some unforeseen effects like improper healing or infection. The same can be said of cosmetic surgery or implanting a pacemaker, and the public has adopted those procedures. There are recurring problems with implant interface, hardware, batteries, and security, but the same can be said of iPhones and the public has adopted those. Mix the glamour of surgical self-improvement with the geekiness of high-tech gadget fetishism and you have a niche cosmetic neurostim market waiting to be tapped. The hardware for the neurostim platform is ultimately cheap and automating the procedure is feasible. The applications could enhance memory, intelligence, and mind-to-mind communication. Automating the neural surgery is not impossible — it just takes research grant money and investors. This may seem like science fiction, but in twenty years it may be considered essential consumer technology. It all depends on how the market plays out.
From: http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/neuro/cognitive-commodities-neuro-marketplace
Date Published: December 23, 2009
The science of cognitive enhancement is evolving, which means the business of cognitive enhancement is evolving. Supplying cognitive enhancement to the masses can be viewed through the lens of any commodities marketplace. Human experience is already commoditized through drugs that pack mood and performance into portable units — pills or doses — that can be easily traded and consumed, and the drug market is one of the biggest on the planet. The same can be said for audio and visual experience. The platforms and hardware for trading audiovisual experience — TVs, computers, media players, telecomm, cell phones, software — are huge markets with influence over every facet of our lives. The media and drug markets are built upon the ideal of commoditizing consumer moods and experiences. The cognitive enhancement industry is now poised to undergo a similar market revolution.
The cognitive revolution has already begun, as concepts of enhancement move from counterculture and science fiction into mainstream media. Within the last year, the mainstream press has embraced off-label use of Adderall and similar pills as cognitive enhancers for students seeking to better their grades. Soon there will be research to confirm if students using off-label pharmaceuticals get better grades than their peers. The fact that Teva Pharmaceuticals is the corporate supplier of Adderall is rarely mentioned, nor is the fact that these “enhancement” drugs are all copyrighted blends of amphetamines and stimulants marketed to fidgety children. A similar mainstream embrace of students using methamphetamine or cocaine to get better grades will never be seen, because it‘s in the interest of the media to drive the market for regulated cognitive enhancers and beat the drum against unregulated generic alternatives. All forms of cognitive enhancement — whether a drug or a technology — will face a similar inherent media bias.
Anyone wanting to get into the business of selling moods, memories, and cognitive solutions to the public must first have the interest of the media to help shape market demand. For instance, the same neurostim device that uses electric impulses from a brain implant to treat people with Parkinson‘s Disease can be tweaked by a few millimeters and pulse rates to make cocaine addicts feel like they are high all the time. Neurostim isn‘t a cheap commodity yet, but in the future it could be. The “off label” demand for designer neurostim does not exist today, but if the implant procedure was automated and the price was reduced, it could be a very marketable alternative to long-term drug therapy. Cheap neurostim would then fuel an off-label market for cosmetic and personal use with subsidiary markets for designer software upgrades, patches, and applets to customize functionality. But first there needs to be consumer demand for the product, and that has yet to materialize.
The cognitive enhancement revolution may ultimately fail. Comparisons can be made to the Virtual Reality market, which promised a bold age of cyber-living but was encumbered with wonky gear and appealed only to a small number of consumers. Most people prefer watching a very large TV to being goggled into VR — the novelty of a platform doesn‘t change human preference. VR was clunky, disorienting, and it gave people headaches, motion sickness, and vision problems. Pills with worse side effects are sold by huge corporations, but ultimately VR had no real mass-market application other than coolness. The lesson here is that the success of the platform does not depend on the coolness factor, it depends on consumer demand once the technology becomes affordable. Will the average consumer embrace being implanted, or even crave non-invasive tinkering with memory and intelligence? Modern consumers have embraced taking whatever pill or procedure their doctors recommend, so all perspective next-gen neurotech should take a page from Big Pharma‘s playbook and pressure MDs to prescribe invasive cognitive solutions to patients for cosmetic and off-label purposes (and pressure insurance companies to cover the costs). Cosmetic therapeutic applications are the doorway to the mainstream consumer market. On the bleeding edge of this field, scientists are already doing research on neurostim to treat depression and sexual dysfunction.
Neural implants and neurostim, like any form of cognitive enhancement, face some challenges with regard to public opinion. The implant procedure is delicate and expensive and could have some unforeseen effects like improper healing or infection. The same can be said of cosmetic surgery or implanting a pacemaker, and the public has adopted those procedures. There are recurring problems with implant interface, hardware, batteries, and security, but the same can be said of iPhones and the public has adopted those. Mix the glamour of surgical self-improvement with the geekiness of high-tech gadget fetishism and you have a niche cosmetic neurostim market waiting to be tapped. The hardware for the neurostim platform is ultimately cheap and automating the procedure is feasible. The applications could enhance memory, intelligence, and mind-to-mind communication. Automating the neural surgery is not impossible — it just takes research grant money and investors. This may seem like science fiction, but in twenty years it may be considered essential consumer technology. It all depends on how the market plays out.
From: http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/neuro/cognitive-commodities-neuro-marketplace
Scientists Harness Bacteria to Turn Microscopic Gears
By Adam Hadhazy, TopTenREVIEWSposted: 22 December 2009 09:27 am ET
Scientists have demonstrated a way to harness the motion of swimming bacteria to turn tiny gears. This bacteria-driven mechanism could someday power micro-machines that combine living organisms and man-made materials.
To build their rudimentary device, the research team first fashioned silicon gears measuring a mere 0.01 inches (380 micrometers) across and 0.002 inches (50 micrometers) thick. With their slanted teeth, the gears look rather like tiny ninja stars.
The microgears were then placed into a nutrient broth swarming with the microbe Bacillus subtilis, the workhorses in this setup. When supplied with nutrients and oxygen the bacteria scoot about randomly.
When their concentration becomes high enough, though, the microorganisms exhibit what is known as collective swimming.
“Once they cross a certain threshold, the bacteria make a flow as they swim and other bacteria get pulled into this flow,” explained study team member Igor Aronson, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
In the experiment, some of these self-propelled bacteria got caught behind the gear’s teeth but still continued to push forward. Though the gear weighed millions of times as much as an individual bacterium, the cumulative force of hundreds of the little swimmers succeeded in getting the gear to rotate.
Crucially, the researchers found that by adding oxygen they could increase the bacteria’s pace, making the gears turn faster, while adding nitrogen slowed things down. “This lets us control the system,” said Aronson.
This spinning was also demonstrated using two gears, whose teeth ratcheted the other gear along as cogs might in a full-fledged machine.
Real-life micro-machines
Even at full tilt, however, the gears achieved only a couple of revolutions per minute with power generation on the scale of quadrillionths of a watt – orders of magnitude below what real-world machines need.
But scaled-up versions could power biomechanical micro-machines and have the ability to adapt to their environment and even repair themselves, Aronson told TopTenREVIEWS.
Anita Goel, chair and scientific director of Nanobiosym, a nanotechnology company, thinks the new study is promising. “It provides tools and approaches to harness and even employ biological machines to achieve desired tasks on small scales,” said Goel, who was not involved in the research.
Study author Aronson points out that yoking microorganisms as miniature beasts of burden may not be the best route for developing real-life applications. Instead, scientists may prefer to design tiny robots that swim in the same way as the bacteria.
The research was detailed in a recent issue of the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
From: http://www.livescience.com/technology/091222-bacteria-microgear-machines.html
Belief in Witchcraft Leads to Murders in Africa
By Benjamin Radford, LiveScience's Bad Science Columnistposted: 09 December 2009 09:42 am ET
While many Westerners think of witches and witchcraft as being relics of the Middle Ages (or relegated to modern tourist traps in Salem, Massachusetts), in many countries belief in witches is common, and black magic is considered part of everyday life.
In Africa, witch doctors are consulted not only for healing diseases, but also for placing curses on rivals (or removing curses placed by rivals). Magic (or at least the belief in magic) is used for personal, political and financial gain.
America, of course, has its own version of witch doctors: the thousands of independent fortunetellers and psychic soothsayers with hole-in-the-wall shops occasionally arrested for scamming desperate or gullible customers. (Their victims are often led to believe that a curse has been placed upon them and that it can be removed with a generous "donation.") While fortunetellers usually do only financial and emotional harm, belief in black magic has led to dozens of murders.
In Tanzania, East Africa, at least 50 albinos (people with a rare genetic disorder that leaves the skin, hair, and eyes without pigment) were murdered for their body parts last year, according to the Red Cross. An albino's arms, fingers, genitals, ears, and blood are highly prized on the black market, believed to contain magical powers. People with albinism anywhere often stand out because of their distinctive features; in a continent of dark-skinned Africans, albinos are often the subject of fear, hatred, and ridicule.
The belief and practice of using body parts for magical ritual or benefit is called muti. (Science fiction fans may recall that muti was featured in the hit South African film "District 9," in which the hero's body parts were sought after by a local warlord who believed that the limbs would give him magical powers. That horrific scene was based in fact, not the screenwriter's imagination.)
The muti murders are particularly brutal, with knives and machetes used to cut and hack off limbs, breasts, and other body parts from their screaming victims—including children. Many of the albinos were beheaded, their heads carefully collected and preserved as gruesome good luck charms or for use in rituals.
While many suspects have been arrested for carrying out the albino murders, so far the persons who commissioned the killings (or offered huge sums for human body parts) have not been arrested. Some believe that because belief in witchcraft and muti is so accepted and widespread in East Africa, police, politicians, and judges are hesitant to pursue the criminals too vigorously. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of African albinos live in fear of their lives, shunned and hated because of the color of their skin. To those who believe in science, albinism is merely a rare medical condition; to those who believe in witchcraft and magic, it is a reason to murder and mutilate the innocent.
From: http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/091209-bad-witchcraft.html
How One Odd Duck Says 'No' to Sex
By Jeanna Bryner, Managing Editor
posted: 23 December 2009 09:11 am ET
When it comes to sex, some female ducks have taken "no" to a new level. They have evolved vaginas with clockwise spirals that keep out the oppositely spiraled penises of undesirable males, scientists have discovered.
When the female wishes to say "yes," she has some tricks that make it easier for her preferred mate to slip his corkscrew-shaped penis easily inside and achieve fertilization.
"In species where forced copulation is common, males have evolved longer penises, but females have coevolved convoluted vaginas with dead-end cul-de-sacs and spirals in the opposite direction of the male penis," said lead researcher Patricia Brennan of Yale University. "This coevolution results from conflict between the sexes over who is going to control fertilization."
The upshot: In the constant battle between the sexes over who's in charge, females win among these Muscovy ducks (Cairina moschata). The findings are detailed in the Dec. 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Odd sex organs
Back in 2007, Brennan's team described the strange morphology of this duck's sexual organs. Most male birds don't sport phalluses, and instead have sex by bringing together their so-called cloaca (opening to such regions as the reproductive tract) in order for the male to transfer sperm to the female. Not only does C. moschata have a penis, but it's a relatively large, flexible penis (even when erect) extending up to nearly 8 inches (20 cm) inverted inside the body.
(For comparison, the average human erect penis extends just 6 inches, or 15 cm.)
When mating, the male everts its penis to extend the length of the female's vagina.
Being so well-endowed is supposed to give the male a reproductive advantage in forced mating when a male essentially jumps the female with no consent. But Brennan hypothesized that females, with their complex genitalia, could turn the tables and make copulation difficult for such macho males.
First the team used high-speed video to see how the odd organs get the job done, finding the eversion process was explosive — taking about a half-second. The results came from ducks at a commercial duck farm in which the animals were trained to provide semen for artificial insemination.
Then they examined how duck penis eversion worked in a set of glass tubes with different shapes — a straight tube, one with counter-clockwise spirals (to mimic the male penis), and another with clockwise spirals (matching that of females).
The glass tubes with clockwise spirals could completely stop the penis from extending all the way in. That wasn't the case for the straight tubes or counter-clockwise ones, which didn't slow down eversion.
The results suggest the female vaginal shape can impede copulation with males.
"Female ducks are subjected to forced copulations by unwanted males and usually they cannot escape," Brennan told LiveScience. "The genital morphology allows them to regain control of reproduction by making it difficult for these unwanted males to achieve fertilization."
Females in charge
So how do these birds procreate?
For those males that do a pre-copulatory ritual and get the go-ahead from the potential mate, that female will assume a receptive posture, the researchers found. In this posture, the opening to her vagina gets lifted and begins to pulsate as if laying an egg.
"The female oviduct is very elastic," Brennan said, "and we think that a combination of this pulsating and receptive posture help to relax the oviduct during copulations with the female's own mate, therefore allowing him to fully evert his penis."
From: http://www.livescience.com/animals/091223-duck-screws.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
posted: 23 December 2009 09:11 am ET
When it comes to sex, some female ducks have taken "no" to a new level. They have evolved vaginas with clockwise spirals that keep out the oppositely spiraled penises of undesirable males, scientists have discovered.
When the female wishes to say "yes," she has some tricks that make it easier for her preferred mate to slip his corkscrew-shaped penis easily inside and achieve fertilization.
"In species where forced copulation is common, males have evolved longer penises, but females have coevolved convoluted vaginas with dead-end cul-de-sacs and spirals in the opposite direction of the male penis," said lead researcher Patricia Brennan of Yale University. "This coevolution results from conflict between the sexes over who is going to control fertilization."
The upshot: In the constant battle between the sexes over who's in charge, females win among these Muscovy ducks (Cairina moschata). The findings are detailed in the Dec. 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Odd sex organs
Back in 2007, Brennan's team described the strange morphology of this duck's sexual organs. Most male birds don't sport phalluses, and instead have sex by bringing together their so-called cloaca (opening to such regions as the reproductive tract) in order for the male to transfer sperm to the female. Not only does C. moschata have a penis, but it's a relatively large, flexible penis (even when erect) extending up to nearly 8 inches (20 cm) inverted inside the body.
(For comparison, the average human erect penis extends just 6 inches, or 15 cm.)
When mating, the male everts its penis to extend the length of the female's vagina.
Being so well-endowed is supposed to give the male a reproductive advantage in forced mating when a male essentially jumps the female with no consent. But Brennan hypothesized that females, with their complex genitalia, could turn the tables and make copulation difficult for such macho males.
First the team used high-speed video to see how the odd organs get the job done, finding the eversion process was explosive — taking about a half-second. The results came from ducks at a commercial duck farm in which the animals were trained to provide semen for artificial insemination.
Then they examined how duck penis eversion worked in a set of glass tubes with different shapes — a straight tube, one with counter-clockwise spirals (to mimic the male penis), and another with clockwise spirals (matching that of females).
The glass tubes with clockwise spirals could completely stop the penis from extending all the way in. That wasn't the case for the straight tubes or counter-clockwise ones, which didn't slow down eversion.
The results suggest the female vaginal shape can impede copulation with males.
"Female ducks are subjected to forced copulations by unwanted males and usually they cannot escape," Brennan told LiveScience. "The genital morphology allows them to regain control of reproduction by making it difficult for these unwanted males to achieve fertilization."
Females in charge
So how do these birds procreate?
For those males that do a pre-copulatory ritual and get the go-ahead from the potential mate, that female will assume a receptive posture, the researchers found. In this posture, the opening to her vagina gets lifted and begins to pulsate as if laying an egg.
"The female oviduct is very elastic," Brennan said, "and we think that a combination of this pulsating and receptive posture help to relax the oviduct during copulations with the female's own mate, therefore allowing him to fully evert his penis."
From: http://www.livescience.com/animals/091223-duck-screws.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
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