"The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a small congregation in New Mexico may use hallucinogenic tea as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God.
Justices, in their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, moved decisively to keep the government out of a church's religious practice. Federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church, Roberts wrote in the decision.
The tea, which contains an illegal drug known as DMT, is considered sacred to members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, which has a blend of Christian beliefs and South American traditions. Members believe they can understand God only by drinking the tea, which is consumed twice a month at four-hour ceremonies. more......
Court Allows Church's Hallucinogenic Tea
Ubersite - The Ultimate MS Paint: It Will Make You Cry
Ubersite - The Ultimate MS Paint: It Will Make You Cry: "This drawing was done entirely in MS Paint with a Logitech laser mouse. I did not use the copy and paste tool, or the text tool. There was no color sampling or pasting from other images, but I did view some seperate images as reference, as do most artists. "
NPR : Restoring Kesey's Famed 'Acid Test' School Bus
NPR : Restoring Kesey's Famed 'Acid Test' School Bus: "Four years after Ken Kesey's death, a restaurateur in Los Angeles has stepped forward in a serious bid to restore the author's famed bus 'Further' -- the vehicle that carried the Merry Pranksters on their 1964 'acid test' trip across the country. Alex Chadwick talks to Kesey's son Zane about the legacy of the 1939 International Harvester and what it will take to restore it. It sat for years in a swampy area of Kesey's Oregon farm, rusting and covered with moss."
Ten reasons why you should never accept a diamond ring
Ten reasons why you should never accept a diamond ring: "1. You've Been Psychologically Conditioned To Want a Diamond
The diamond engagement ring is a 63-year-old invention of N.W.Ayer advertising agency. The De Beers diamond cartel contracted N.W.Ayer to create a demand for what are, essentially, useless hunks of rock.
2. Diamonds are Priced Well Above Their Value
The De Beers cartel has systematically held diamond prices at levels far greater than their abundance would generate under anything even remotely resembling perfect competition. All diamonds not already under its control are bought by the cartel, and then the De Beers cartel carefully managed world diamond supply in order to keep prices steadily high.
3. Diamonds Have No Resale or Investment Value
Any diamond that you buy or receive will indeed be yours forever: De Beers’ advertising deliberately brain-washed women not to sell; the steady price is a tool to prevent speculation in diamonds; and no dealer will buy a diamond from you. You can only sell it at a diamond purchasing center or a pawn shop where you will receive a tiny fraction of its original 'value.'
4. Diamond Miners are Disproportionately Exposed to HIV/AIDS
Many diamond mining camps enforce all-male, no-family rules. Men contract HIV/AIDS from camp sex-workers, while women married to miners have no access to employment, no income outside of their husbands and no bargaining power for negotiating safe sex, and thus are at extremely high risk of contracting HIV.
5. Open-Pit Diamond Mines Pose Environmental Threats
Diamond mines are open pits where salts, heavy minerals, organisms, oil, and chemicals from mining equipment freely leach into ground-water, endangering people in nearby mining camps and villages, as well as downstream plants and animals.
6. Diamond Mine-Owners Violate Indigenous People's Rights
Diamond mines in Australia, Canada, India and many countries in Africa are situated on lands traditionally associated wit"
Wired News: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug?
Wired News: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug?: "'It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain. Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used, ' said Herbert, 42, an early employee of Cisco Systems who says he solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead -- who were among the many artists inspired by LSD."
DOWN FOR THE COUNT - Los Angeles CityBeat
DOWN FOR THE COUNT - Los Angeles CityBeat: "Late Monday, word came that Mischelle Townsend, Riverside County’s Registrar of Voters, had abruptly quit her job mid-term. She said she wanted to spend more time with her family, and nurse her father-in-law through his impending knee surgery. Worthy sentiments, for sure. But she didn’t mention anything about a controversial March 2 election for county supervisor that was still being contested, and the recount that had become entangled in problems attributable, in part, to the county’s electronic voting machines. Nor did she mention anything about potentially explosive new details regarding the possible manipulation of those machines. Likewise, no mention of the big list of questions to this effect from Los Angeles CityBeat sitting on her desk since last Saturday.
Instead, the state’s most outspoken champion of e-voting machines, who was leading a lawsuit against Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to try to revoke a list of 23 improved voting security measures imposed last month, is stepping down and vanishing. Townsend leaves not only a mass of unresolved questions about the contested supervisor seat, but also about the fate of e-voting in this state."
The Epoch Times | Henan Man Impossible to Photograph
The Epoch Times | Henan Man Impossible to Photograph: "On January 6, 2006, Henan Province's Dahe Daily newspaper reported that the local police department was unable to take an ID photo of Ye Xiangting from Yelou Village in the Yangzhuang Township of Wugang City, Henan Province. No image of Ye Xiangting showed up in the computer photos, and there is still no clear explanation for the result.
Ye Xiangting told the reporter about his recent visit to the Yangzhuang police station to get a photo taken for a new ID card. He sat in front of the camera, but no image of him would show up in the photo. The staff checked the camera very carefully, but found no problems. He retook photos of Ye Xiangting, but no photos of Ye Xiangting was found on the computer images.
The staff had Ye Xiangting carefully check his clothes to be sure he did not carry anything that would interfere with the equipment. Finally, Ye sat in front of the camera and was photographed from every angle. The staff still failed to get any images of him.
The staff could not find a reason. They took images of Ye Xiangting with other people. They were stunned when the other people showed up in the computer images, but not Ye. Ye Xiangting seemed to have 'disappeared' from the photos. In the end, the staff had to give up. Ye Xiangting said that he has never encountered this kind of problem before. Normally, he could be photographed.
The police station chief told the reporter they have encountered two similar cases. They are unclear about the cause and hope the experts can offer an explanation."
Ten Failed Tech Trends for 2005
Ten Failed Tech Trends for 2005: "High Fidelity Digital Audio
Most digital audio on portable players is highly compressed. For the majority of pop and rock music, that's not a big deal. Recordings are often 'too hot' even for CDs, and compressing already distorted audio doesn't have much audible impact. But compressed MP3, WMA, and AAC files often will throw away too much.
This isn't exactly a new argument. The iPod and its camp followers in the digital audio player business seem to be the modern incarnation of the 1960s transistor radio. Way back then, audiophiles complained vociferously about how the transistor radio was creating a generation of consumers who couldn't appreciate quality audio. That lament is echoed by industry pundits (me included) who yearn for even higher-fidelity sound than current CD technology can deliver.
While a scant few players do support lossless compression formats (mostly FLAC), lossless formats are generally unavailable for portable players. As the storage capacity of these players increases, the designers seem to think you want to watch tiny video, rather than listen to clean, pristine, losslessly compressed music. So we get ten gazillion songs in 128KB format, rather than a few hundred encoded with lossless compression."
Shut Him Up, Shut Him up!
MichaelMoore.com! : Latest News: "THE bound and bullet-riddled body of an Iraqi student leader has been found, a few days after he led a campus march alleging fraud in last week's election, a students' group said.
The body of Qusay Salahaddin was found close to a hospital in the northern city of Mosul with his hands bound behind his back and marks of strangling on it, a hospital source said.
Gunmen took Mr Salahaddin, president of Mosul University's students' union, from his house last week and bundled him into the trunk of a car before driving off, said Mohammed Jassim, a friend of the victim. He said Mr Salahaddin used his mobile phone to make last-ditch pleas for help.
'Save me, the Peshmerga have kidnapped me,' Mr Jassim quoted Mr Salahaddin, a Sunni Arab, as saying before the line went dead, apparently referring to Kurdish militia groups operating in northern Iraq.
Residents of ethnically mixed Mosul frequently blame rival Arab and Kurdish groups for the city's daily staple of murders, assassinations and kidnappings.
No group has claimed responsibility for the killing."
Top News Article | Reuters.com
Top News Article | Reuters.com: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Get ready for a minute with 61 seconds. Scientists are delaying the start of 2006 by the first 'leap second' in seven years, a timing tweak meant to make up for changes in the Earth's rotation.
The adjustment will be carried out by sticking an extra second into atomic clocks worldwide at the stroke of midnight Coordinated Universal Time, the widely adopted international standard, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology said this week.
'Enjoy New Year's Eve a second longer,' the institute said in an explanatory notice. 'You can toot your horn an extra second this year.'
Coordinated Universal Time coincides with winter time in London. On the U.S. East Coast, the extra second occurs just before 7 p.m. on New Year's Eve. Atomic clocks at that moment will read 23:59:60 before rolling over to all zeros.
A leap second is added to keep uniform timekeeping within 0.9 second of the Earth's rotational time, which can speed up or slow down because of many factors, including ocean tides. The first leap second was added on June 30, 1972, according to NIST, an arm of the U.S. Commerce Department.
Since 1999 until recently, the two time standards have been in close enough synch to escape any need to add a leap second, NIST said.
Although it is possible to have a negative leap second -- that is, a second deducted from Coordinated Universal Time -- so far all have been add-ons, reflecting the Earth's general slowing trend due to tidal breaking.
Deciding when to introduce a leap second is the responsibility of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, a standards-setting body. Under an international pact, the preference for leap seconds is December 31 or June 30.
Precise time measurements are needed for high-speed communications systems among other modern technologies. "
Mentally Unstable Man Killed on Airplane
Mentally unstable man shot dead by US Feb Air marshalls. The flight was coming from Columbia and landed in Miami. It's understandable that these federal agents are there to protect people from "Terrorists" post 9/11. But did they act too fast? The time line on the events leading up to the shooting will probably be different on every outlet of news today. But ultimately-was this use of force necessary?
Anarchism
Anarchism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Thomas Jefferson said the native American Indians 'never submitted themselves to any laws, any coercive power, any shadow of government. Their only controls are their manners, and that moral sense of right and wrong, which, like the sense of tasting and feeling in every man, makes a part of his nature...' and 'I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government, enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments' (Notes on Virginia and Letter to Colonel Carrington)."
Creative Component :: design, development & consulting � Music Selling Dilemma : iTunes NOT TO BLAME
Creative Component :: design, development & consulting � Music Selling Dilemma : iTunes NOT TO BLAME: "In 1999, I released my CD, Flashlight Tag at Midnight on my own label, Poetic Wax Records. I chose to press 1500 copies through DiscMakers. I was thrilled when Discmakers offered free internet distribution through a company called The Orchard. The Orchard had a strong partnership with the great CDNOW.com. Like I said, I was thrilled.
The way the plan worked was: I sent The Orchard a box of 20 CD’s, which they would distribute for me. If anyone ordered from CDNOW.com [now Amazon.com], The Orchard would mail the CD to the recipient. I know this because I tested it.
I know for a fact that I sold more than 20 CD’s through CDNOW.com. It wasn’t a hot seller, but I watched the ranking and the sales, which was public information.
I let the whole issue go, but out of curiosity, I searched on Amazon.com, and my CD is still out there. I then went to iTunes, and my CD is out there too! Now this is really the crooked part. So you’re telling me that anyone can buy my music at iTunes, and I won’t see a penny of it!?
How do I know this? Because the CD’s are out in my garage. I signed-up for physical distribution of my CD — to move product, yet my CD’s are still here at home."
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