Wild

200 Million + People Using Illicit Drugs Worldwide

✖ 200 Million People Use Illicit Drugs, Study Finds: Roughly 200 million people worldwide use illicit drugs such as marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine and opioids each year, according to a new study. The figure represents about one in 20 people between the ages of 15 and 64. Using a review of published studies, Australian researchers estimated that as many as 203 million people use marijuana, 56 million people use amphetamines including meth, 21 million people use cocaine and 21 million people use opioids like heroin. The use of all four drug classes was highest in developed countries. …The 200 million number does not include people who use ecstasy, hallucinogenic drugs, inhalants, benzodiazepines or anabolic steroids — just one reason it’s likely a vast underestimate of illicit drug use, according to lead author Louisa Degenhardt of the Sydney-based National Drug and Alcohol Research Center.
✖ Vancouver running out of free crackpipes: He said PHS, which runs InSite, has distributed monthly highs of 20,000 pipes through its own needle and pipe distribution program. The 3,000 pipes PHS received from VCH in December were exhausted in three days. “At the beginning of the study, we expressed our concerns that (the pipe supply) is a tiny number … but we were told the number’s staying the same,” Townsend said. “To meet the demand we would need around 1,000 per day.”
✖ Newt Gingrich To New Hampshire: Jefferson, Washington Would Have Cracked Down On Pot: During a town hall-style appearance in Concord, the former House Speaker said he had no interest in exploring drug decriminalization, arguing that such efforts haven’t worked in Europe. Contra Gingrich, however, Portugal has had some success with decriminalization initiatives. Pushed a bit later on the incarceration rate related to petty drug crimes, Gingrich responded, “I think the best thing is to get young people not to do drugs and then you won’t be dealing with criminals that you just described.” A third resident of the “live free or die” state argued that the founding fathers had been far more lenient about marijuana than the current political class. “I think Jefferson or George Washington would have rather strongly discouraged you from growing marijuana and their techniques with dealing with it would have been rather more violent than our current government,” Gingrich replied.
✖ Chivas Scotch Heroin Bottles Bust At Newark Airport: We hope he drank the scotch before adding the H! On New Year’s Eve customs officials stopped Miami man Wilfer Bohorquez Rojo, 53, as he allegedly tried to smuggle 25 pounds of heroin from Medillin, Colombia, to Newark Airport. At first authorities just thought he had smuggled the drugs in “packages of plastic flags and between glued photographs” but further inspection found he’d filled four Chivas Royal Salute scotch bottles with “packages of a substance that also tested positive for heroin, according to the agency.” After the discovery of the drugs—estimated by authorities to be worth at least $700,000—Rojo was turned over to authorities and now faces federal narcotics smuggling charges.
✖ Purdue: Block Disclosure Of OxyContin Documents: A long-simmering court battle over a trove of OxyContin documents has finally won the attention of Purdue Pharma. The drugmaker is belatedly seeking to intervene in a 2008 lawsuit in a Massachusetts state court, where an attempt is being made to force the state attorney general to release documents that were used to prosecute Purdue and three current and former execs several years ago. At issue are countless documents that were compiled by the US Department of Justice, which charged Purdue and the execs with misbranding – they facilitated improper use of the drug and misled patients, regulators and doctors about addictive risks. All totaled, $634 million in fines were paid, and the execs were barred from doing business with federal healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid
✖ Ron Paul: Drug War Could Be Bigger Failure Than Prohibition (VIDEO): “This war on drugs has been a detriment to personal liberty and it’s been a real abuse of liberty,” Paul said. “Our prisons are full with people who have used drugs who should be treated as patients — and they’re non-violent. Someday we’re gonna awake and find out that the prohibition we are following right now with drugs is no more successful, maybe a lot less successful, than the prohibition of alcohol was in the ’20s.”
✖ Man wants rehab over Diet Cola 42 litres a week addiction: Darren Jones wants to check himself into rehab – to cure a bizarre addiction to Diet Cola. Darren, 38, knocks back 42 litres of the drink every week. Now the 35 stone father of two is vowing to get treatment for his £100 a week habit to get fit again and save his relationship with 33-year old mother of two Paula Mullen. Darren, of Stockport, Greater Manchester, said: “I believe what I have is an actual addiction and I start to worry if I’m getting near the end of the bottle. “If I can’t get in touch with Paula to get me some more I start to panic – it’s like a drug or alcohol addiction. “I called up Diet Coke to ask them if it’s addictive and what I should do and she recommended putting water in it to dilute it, but it would taste horrid and I don’t think it would help. “We joke that I should get one of those hats with bottles either side of my head and straws straight into my mouth so I can drink it all the time. It’s like gold, it’s my fuel.”
✖ Why Ron Paul Is Right And Barack Obama Is Wrong About Iran: Obama also argues that he opposes Iran’s nukes because of proliferation in the region. At which point one must loudly cough “Ahem.” Only one country in the region has illegally, in defiance of internatinal law and the NPT and US policy, has nuclear weapons and it’s Israel, not any Arab state. More absurdly, the US government has a formal policy of never acknowledging this fact. At one point in the not-so-distant past, the US government was committed to the view that Iraq had nukes but Israel didn’t. When will the US evolve a sane policy in the Middle East? One that advances our interests, avoids a catastrophic global religious war, and bases it judgment on history and statecraft rather than religion and a US-Israel alliance that, since the end of the Cold War, has become increasingly unhealthy to both parties? Less Kennedy, more Eisenhower, please.
✖ Judge: Black church rightful owner of KKK store: After a lengthy legal battle between a black South Carolina church and members of the Ku Klux Klan, a judge has ruled that the church owns a building where KKK robes and T-shirts are sold. A circuit judge ruled last month that New Beginnings Baptist Church is the rightful owner of the building that houses the Redneck Shop, which operates a so-called Klan museum and sells Klan robes and T-shirts emblazoned with racial slurs. The judge ordered the shop’s proprietor to pay the church’s legal bills of more than $3,300.
✖ No easy way to dissolve mouse in Mountain Dew: A man in the U.S. is suing Pepsi Co. over a mouse allegedly found in a can of Mountain Dew, a claim the company rejects by saying the acid in the beverage would disintegrate the animal’s body. However, that reasoning doesn’t hold water with Canadian food experts. “There would not be enough acid in the matrix of the can to actually start causing those physical changes to the mouse,” says Massimo Marcone, an associate professor of food science at the University of Guelph. “The mouse would start to spoil; there would not be enough acid to preserve the mouse. It would start to smell bad. But to say that the mouse would actually dissolve in about 300 millilitres of soft drink, it’s pretty hard.”
✖ Free Philip K. Dick: Download 11 Great Science Fiction Stories: Although he died when he was only 53 years old, Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) published 44 novels and 121 short stories during his lifetime and solidified his position as arguably the most literary of science fiction writers. His novel Ubik appears on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 best English-language novels, and Dick is the only science fiction writer to get honored in the prestigious Library of America series, a kind of pantheon of American literature. If you’re not intimately familiar with his novels, then you assuredly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly and Minority Report. Today, we bring you another way to get acquainted with his writing. We’re presenting a selection of Dick’s stories available for free on the web. Below we have culled together 11 short stories from our collection of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books.
✖ Time Cheers the Drone War: The new issue of Time magazine promises on its cover “Essential Info for the Year Ahead.” One apparently essential report: U.S. drones are awesome. The report–written by Mark Thompson, available to subscribers only explains that a “hot military trend” this way: Today’s generals and admirals want weapons that are smaller, remote-controlled and bristling with intelligence. In short, more drones that can tightly target terrorists, deliver larger payloads and are some of the best spies the U.S. has ever produced, even if they occasionally get captured in Iran or crash on landing at secret bases. And also, you know, kill innocent civilians.
✖ Alejandro Jodorowsky Needs Your Support To Create The Autobiographical DANZA DE LA REALIDAD: Alejandro Jodorowsky – the legendary cult filmmaker behind Santa Sangre, El Topo and The Holy Mountain – needs your help. After years trying to raise funding for big new projects King Shot and Son Of El Topo, Jodorowsky is moving on to something more personal: Danza De La Realidad, an autobiographical picture based on his own childhood and teenaged years. Having had no luck with conventional film financing methods in recent years, Jodorowsky is taking this one to the streets and trying the crowd funding method. Put a hundred dollars into the film and you’ll receive a special cut of the finished movie on DVD.
✖ YOUR KID’S ON DRUGS [Video]
✖ Sea Shepherd Intercepts the Japanese Whaling Fleet with Drones: The Sea Shepherd crew has intercepted the Japanese whaling fleet on Christmas Day, a thousand miles north of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. The Sea Shepherd ship, Steve Irwin, deployed a drone to successfully locate and photograph the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru on December 24th. Once the pursuit began, three Japanese harpoon/security ships moved in on the Steve Irwin to shield the Nisshin Maru to allow it to escape. This time however the Japanese tactic of tailing the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker will not work because the drones, one on the Steve Irwin and the other on the Bob Barker, can track and follow the Nisshin Maru and can relay the positions back to the Sea Shepherd ships. “We can cover hundreds of miles with these drones and they have proven to be valuable assets for this campaign,” said Captain Paul Watson on board the Steve Irwin.
✖ ‘Supersoldier’ ants with gigantic jaws: Nightmarish ‘supersoldier’ ants with huge heads and jaws have been created by activating ancient genes. Scientists believe the monster ants may be a genetic throwback to an ancestor that lived millions of years ago. Scientists say they can create the supersoldiers at will by dabbing normal ant larvae with a special hormone – the larvae then develop into supersoldiers rather than normal soldier or worker ants.
✖ ACLU sues library for blocking Wiccan websites: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Eastern Missouri sued a local public library on Tuesday for allegedly blocking websites related to Wicca, a modern pagan religion. Anaka Hunter of Salem, Mo., said she tried to access websites about Wicca, Native American religions and astrology for her own research, but the library’s filtering software blocked the sites. According to the ACLU, the software labeled the sites as “occult” and “criminal.”
✖ Psychedelic Heroin: Grey Lodge Archives: I recently tracked down the pdf’s for nearly all of the issues of the now-deceased counterculture online zine Grey Lodge Occult Review. The site was taken down due to “legal threats and religious hackers”. To see the table of contents for the issues visit the Wayback Machine here. Along with the rabbit hole that is Deoxy, this was one of my formative sanctuaries for all things mindfuckery.
✖ Forget Stocks Or Bonds, Invest In A Lobbyist: In a recent study, researchers Raquel Alexander and Susan Scholz calculated the total amount the corporations saved from the lower tax rate. They compared the taxes saved to the amount the firms spent lobbying for the law. Their research showed the return on lobbying for those multinational corporations was 22,000 percent. That means for every dollar spent on lobbying, the companies got $220 in tax benefits.
✖ Excavator on Rooftop of 12-Story Building in Taiyuan: Shanxi province Taiyuan city Wanbailin district Yingze West Street, an excavator operates on the rooftop of the Shanxi Science and Technology Hotel, causing surrounding city residents both surprise and concern.
✖ US ‘space warplane’ may be spying on Chinese spacelab: The US Air Force’s second mysterious mini-space shuttle, the X-37B, could be spying on China’s space laboratory and the first piece of its space station, Tiangong-1. Amateur space trackers told the British Interplanetary Society publication Spaceflight that the black-funded spaceplane seemed to be orbiting the Earth in tandem with Tiangong_1, or the Heavenly Palace, leading the magazine to speculate that its unknown mission is to spy on it. “Space-to-space surveillance is a whole new ball game made possible by a finessed group of sensors and sensor suites, which we think the X-37B may be using to maintain a close watch on China’s nascent space station,” Spaceflight editor Dr David Baker told the BBC.
✖ NOT SATIRE: L.A. Tells Arrested OWS Protesters They Can Pay for “Free Speech” Classes to Avoid Court: Incredibly, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office is offering Occupy L.A. protesters arrested in recent weeks the opportunity to pay $355 for private free speech classes to avoid their court dates. As reported in the Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles Chief Deputy City Atty. William Carter said the city won’t press charges against protesters who complete the educational program offered by American Justice Associates. … Carter said the free-speech class will save the city money and teach protesters the nuances of the law. “The 1st Amendment is not absolute,” he said, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled government can regulate when, where and how free speech can be exercised. As a civil rights attorney working with some of the approximately 350 protesters who have been arrested in recent weeks noted, the offer is nothing short of “patronizing.”
✖ Toddlers and Tiaras mothers DOPING their daughters with drinks spiked with ‘pageant crack’?: No brand names are mentioned on the show, but many have speculated that the drink is Mountain Dew, a caffeinated soft drink. Others believe it even contains alcohol. Mrs Holler is filmed instructing Alana to take ‘two big gulps’ from an unlabelled drinks bottle. Within seconds the change is apparent. ‘A lot of pageant moms and people know what the special juice is – everybody has their different concoctions. Special juice is to help energise her’ The young pageant contestant starts rapidly swinging her arms over her head and spinning around on the floor, exclaiming: ‘My go-go juice is kicking in right now!’ After her drink fix, Alana takes to the stage in a plaid shirt displaying inches of stomach to perform a routine, inspired by sex symbol Daisy Duke. Describing how the drink makes her feel, she says smiling: ‘Go-go juice makes me laughy, and play-ey, and makes me feel like I want to pull my mommy’s hair.’
✖ Polar challenge: How do you cycle to the South Pole?: Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton is hoping to become the first person to use a bike to reach the South Pole. She is attempting to travel 500 miles (805km) across Antarctica and will cycle for large parts of it, as well as snowkiting and walking. She hopes to complete the trek for Sport Relief in 20 days. At this time of year, the average temperature in Antarctica is -25C, but can drop to -50C. Severe coastal winds come from cold air flowing down off the interior ice sheet. Wind speeds can reach up to 125mph (201km/h) and average about 80mph. In addition, she will be dragging 12.9st (82kg) of equipment and supplies behind her on a sledge. It’s no average ride and she is not using your average bike. The specially-built Hanebrink “ice bike” took designers in Los Angeles three months to finish. Dan Hanebrink and Kane Fortune have been building all-terrain hybrid bikes that can be used in all environments for many years.
✖ Rick Santorum is coming for your birth control: Here is an actual Rick Santorum quote: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.” And also, “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
✖ With all eyes on their ears, lobe stretchers snip: Some plastic surgeons are reporting an increase in younger clients, specifically those who are ready to undo a generational fashion statement that has left a lot of self-conscious people with a lot of sagging earlobe. Dr. David Kahn, who performed Tidwell’s surgery, was blunt in his assessment of his client’s condition. “It was unsightly, a distortion that needed to be overcome.”
✖ Miracle ‘chimeric’ monkeys made from cells of six animals spark protests: They may look like any other baby monkeys, but these two are scientific breakthroughs. Roku and Hex are the world’s first chimeric monkeys – created with genetic material from six ‘parents’. But their birth has caused an ethical storm, with critics accusing scientists of disregarding the welfare of the animals.
✖ SOPA-Supporting News Outlets Aren’t Covering SOPA [STUDY]: MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC have dedicated no time to covering the Stop Online Piracy Act in their evening newscasts since Oct. 1, according to a report by Ben Dimiero of Media Matters For America. CNN, meanwhile, has dedicated a single evening news segment to the issue. All of the companies covered in the report have either publicly supported SOPA or have parent companies that have done so. Dimiero based his report on Lexis-Nexis searches which includes transcripts of nighttime newscasts. Comcast/NBCUniversal (which owns MSNBC and NBC News), Viacom (CBS), News Corporation (Fox News), Time Warner (CNN) and Disney (ABC) are all listed as supporters of the bill. ABC and CBS are also listed as separate supporters of the bill.
✖ Japan plans futuristic farm with robot workers in disaster zone: Japan is planning a futuristic farm where robots do the lifting in an experimental project on land swamped by the March tsunami. Under an agriculture ministry plan, unmanned tractors will work fields where pesticides will have been replaced by LEDs keeping rice, wheat, soybeans, fruit and vegetables safe until robots can put them in boxes. Carbon dioxide produced by machinery working on the up to 250-hectare site will be channeled back to crops to boost their growth and reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers, the Nikkei newspaper said this week. The agricultural ministry will begin on-site research later this year with a plan to spend around 4 billion yen over the next six years, a ministry official said. Land in Miyagi Prefecture, some 300 kilometers north of Tokyo, which was flooded by seawater on March 11, has been earmarked for the so-called “Dream Project.”
✖ Newt Gingrich: ‘African-American Community Should Demand Paychecks And Not Be Satisfied With Food Stamps’: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Thursday he is willing to go before the NAACP and urge blacks to demand paychecks, not food stamps. Gingrich told a town hall meeting at a senior center in Plymouth, N.H., that if the NAACP invites him to its annual convention this year, he’d go there and talk about “why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” He also said he’d pitch a new Social Security program aimed at helping young people, particularly African-American males, who he said get the smallest return on Social Security.
✖ Pentagon-backed ‘time cloak’ stops the clock: The researchers created what they call a time lens, which can manipulate and focus signals in time, analogous to the way a glass lens focuses light in space. They use a technique called four-wave mixing, in which two beams of light, a “signal” and a “pump,” are sent together through an optical fiber. The two beams interact and change the wavelength of the signal. To begin creating a time gap, the researchers first bump the wavelength of the signal up, then by flipping the wavelength of the pump beam, bump it down.
✖ Pro skater with a love of God and psychedelic drugs goes on rampage inside Midtown hotel: A pro skateboarder with a passion for God and psychedelic drugs was arrested Thursday after he went on a drug-fueled rampage inside a Midtown hotel wearing only his birthday suit, cops said. Jereme Rogers, 26, was high on angel dust when he ran naked out of his room at the Afinia Shelburne hotel and started tearing down framed pictures lining an 11th floor hallway, sources said. “It was a rampage,” said a witness who declined to give her name. “He was screaming. We didn’t even know what he was doing. He was incoherent and belligerent.” Rogers, a heavily-tattooed Californian who has appeared in several X Games and says his skills come from God, was taken to Bellevue Hospital. He was charged with criminal mischief and unlawful possession of marijuana, cops said.
✖ DHS Training excercise startles locals: With their blue and white SUVs circled around the Main Street office, at least one official was posted on the door with a semiautomatic rifle, randomly checking identifications. And other officers, some with K-9s, sifted through the building. “I thought someone was upset about not getting there check,” said Laura Kelly, who took a friend to the office on Tuesday. According to one Homeland official in the Washington, D.C. office, Operation Shield. is an effort that uses routine, unannounced visits by FPS inspectors to test the effectiveness of contract guards, or protective security officers — “detecting the presence of unauthorized persons and potentially disruptive or dangerous activities.”
✖ Panda caught eating meat on camera [Video]: A wild panda is caught on surveillance camera eating a dead gnu in south-west China. An analyst says the bamboo-loving animals were predators millions of years ago. Although classified as carnivores, giant pandas mainly live on bamboo, but eat other foods including honey, eggs, fish, oranges and bananas when they are available

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File under Culture, Fashion, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS Links 'o Death, Sex

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on January 7, 2012

Tags: ABC, abuse, Acid, ACLU, Addiction, agriculture, alcohol, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Allegedly, Amendment, America, American, american civil liberties union, amphetamines, Ancient, Angel, Angel Dust, Antarctica, Ants, Arab, Astrology, attorney, Author, Autobiographical, baby, Bananas, Barack Obama, battle, benzodiazepines, BIG, Bike, Bikes, Birth, birthday, Bizarre, Black, block, Blunt, bust, Camera, Can, Canadian, carbon, Caught, chemical, childhood, Chinese, Christian, Christmas, Church, Civil Rights, class, Cocaine, coke, Cola, Collection, Come, community, company, Cops, corporation, Counterculture, court, cover, Crash, Crew, Criminal, criminals, Cult, Customs, D.C., Dangerous, David, Dead, dick, disaster, discovery, Disney, door, Drink, drone, Drug, Drugs, dust, Earth, Eat, Experimental, failure, Farm, Fashion, Father, Film, filmmaker, Films, Food, force, Found, Free, friend, Fruit, Futuristic, Games, Giant, Go-Go, god, Government, growing marijuana, hallucinogen, Hallucinogenic, hallucinogenic drugs, Healthcare, Heroin, High, Highs, History, Holy, Holy Mountain, Hormone, Hotel, Ice, Illicit, Incarceration, Innocent, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Japanese, judge, Justice, KKK, L.A., lawsuit, Legal, liberty, Live, Look, Los Angeles, Love, machine, Machinery, magazine, Man, Manipulate, Marijuana, Meat, Miami, Military, mischief, Modern, money, Monkeys, Monster, month, Mother, Mountain, Mouse, mouth, movie, Museum, Naked, Narcotics, Native, Newark, News, newspaper, NOT, Nuclear, Nuclear Weapons, Obama, Occult, official, Old, Online, operation, Opioids, OWS, oxycontin, Pagan, Panda, Panic, parent, person, Photograph, Picture, Pictures, pipe, piracy, plastic, possession, president, Press, Professor, prohibition, project, Proliferation, Psychedelic, Psychedelic drugs, Pursuit, Rabbit, Rabbit Hole, rampage, reason, Redneck, Rehab, relationship, Religion, Report, Research, Ride, robot, Robots, Ron Paul, Rooftop, Santa, Science, Science fiction, Secret, Security, SeMeN, SeMeNSPeRmS, Sex, Sex Symbol, Sexual, site, smell, smuggling, Social, society, soldier, Some, something, South Carolina, Southern, space, Space Station, Special, speech, Spies, Sport, Spy, Spying, Steve, Street, Streets, substance, Supreme, Supreme Court, surprise, Surveillance, SUVs, Symbol, Target, taste, technique, technology, time, Touch, treatment, U.S., Unauthorized, Union, University, Urge, US, Violent, War, war on drugs, Washington, Water, Weapons, Whale, White, Wild, Writer, WRONG, Young, Zine

Sabotage

☛ Emo Style Makeover Game: Stupendous beauty game in which you’ll be able to put makeup on a normal, common girl with the latest emo style cosmetics. You’ll be able to combine them with the most daring hairstyles and with the most stylish accessories, such as earrings, piercings, etc.
☛ Steve Jobs Action Figure: Apple Threatens Chinese Toy Maker With Lawsuit: Apple has allegedly threatened to sue Chinese company In Icons over its eerily realistic 12-inch action figure of Steve Jobs, the company’s late founder. The 1:6 scale model, which was said to be distributed by DiD Corp. in late February, comes with the clothes and accessories popularized by Jobs, such as the black faux turtleneck, blue jeans and sneakers. The figurine, which is packaged in a box that looks like Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” biography cover, also comes with a chair, a “One More Thing…” backdrop, as well as two red apples, including one with a bite in it. To make it extra creepy, the doll’s realistic head sculpt features Jobs’ famous unblinking stare.
☛ 34 Shocking Facts About U.S. Debt That Should Set America On Fire With Anger: We have all been lied to. For decades, the leaders of both major political parties have promised us that they can fix our current system and that they can get our national debt under control. As the 2012 election approaches, they are making all kinds of wild promises once again. Well you know what? It is all a giant sham. The United States has gotten into so much debt that there will be no coming back from this. The current system is irretrievably broken. 30 years ago the U.S. debt was a horrific crisis that was completely and totally out of control. If we would have dealt with it back then maybe we could have done something about it. But now it is 15 times larger, and we are adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt every single year.
☛ Vertu making ‘year of the dragon’ Signature phone…Only $20,733!
☛ Paul Supporter Likely Violated Military Conduct Code: Following a third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, Ron Paul held a boisterous rally, featuring a speech from Army Corporal Jesse Thorsen. Thorsen, who was in uniform, voiced impassioned support for Paul’s non-interventionist views. “We don’t need to be picking fights overseas,” he said, and pledged to help “make sure this man is the next president of the United States.” It was an understandable sentiment from a soldier who said he had served in the military for 10 years, which included tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the appearance likely violated the protocols for service members included in Defense Department Directive 1344.10, which states explicitly that they are not to participate in political rallies as anything more than spectators. And if they do attend a political function, they’re not supposed to do so in uniform.
☛ Arthur Lee Thompson steals police vehicle while high on crack [Video]
☛ Islam Critical Black Metal music nominated for Norwegian Grammy: Metal band Taake is nominated for the Norwegian Grammys in the category for best metal album for the album “Norway’s weapons,” which came out this fall. Besides the line of text devoted to “Moslems”, include “those who burn our flag,” called the swine in the song “Hurricane.” The text also says that hard to be against hard: “Now wake up soon Norway.”
☛ Swank sushi: Tuna fetches record $736K: A bluefin tuna caught off northeastern Japan fetched a record $736,000, Thursday in the first auction of the year at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. The price translates to $1,238 per pound — also a record, said Yutaka Hasegawa, a Tsukiji market official. Though the fish is undoubtedly high quality, the price has more to do with the celebratory atmosphere that surrounds the first auction of the year.
☛ How fracking might have led to an Ohio earthquake: The link between “fracking”-related activities and earthquakes was thrown into stark relief over the weekend when a magnitude 4.0 quake struck Youngstown, Ohio – typically not a hot bed of noticeable seismic activity. The quake triggered shaking reportedly felt as as far away as Buffalo, N.Y., and Toronto. The temblor struck Dec. 31 and was the latest and strongest of 11 minor-to-light quakes that have hit the region since March. The epicenters are clustered around a wastewater injection well for a hydraulic fracturing operation.
☛ Denver woman accused of attacking $30 million painting: A 36-year-old Denver woman, apparently drunk, leaned against an iconic Clyfford Still painting worth more than $30 million last week, punched it, slid down it and urinated on herself, according to a criminal case filed against Carmen Lucette Tisch. “It doesn’t appear she urinated on the painting or that the urine damaged it, so she’s not being charged with that,” Lynn Kimbrough, a spokeswoman for the Denver district attorney’s office, said Wednesday. “You have to wonder where her friends were.” Tisch is being charged with criminal mischief in the incident that happened at the Clyf ford Still Museum at 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 29. Damage to the painting — “1957-J-No. 2.” — is estimated at $10,000. The painting, which is nearly 9 1/2 feet tall and 13 feet wide, is estimated to be worth between $30 million and $40 million by the museum. Tisch allegedly committed the offense with her pants pulled down, according to the police report, and struck the painting repeatedly with her fist.
☛ STEVE ESPO POWERS: ESPO is legit.

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File under Music, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS Links 'o Death

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on January 6, 2012

Tags: 13, action, Afghanistan, Allegedly, America, Anger, Apple, Army, Art, atmosphere, auction, Band, bed, Black, Black Metal, Broken, Bum, Burn, Burner, Can, Case, Caught, Chinese, Clothes, Collapse, company, Crack, creep, Creepy, Criminal, crisis, damage, Damaged, Defense Department, Dragon, Earthquakes, Emo, Famous, Fights, Fire, Fish, Fracking, Giant, Girl, Grammys, Hairstyle, High, Hot, Hurricane, injection, Intervention, Iraq, Islam, Japan, Makeover, Makeup, Man, metal, Meth, Military, mischief, Museum, Music, Natural Disaster, Nature, Norway, NOT, Ohio, operation, pain, Paint, phone, Police, Popular, president, Pun, Rap, REALIST, Record, Roach, Ron Paul, Sabotage, SeMeN, SeMeNSPeRmS, Service, Shocking, Sneakers, soldier, something, speech, Steve, Steve Espo Powers, Steve Jobs, Strongest, style, System, threat, Threatened, Toronto, Turtle, turtleneck, Tween, U.S., Uniform, United States, urinate, urine, US, Water, Weapons, weekend, Wild, Woman, Young

Everyday Skank

▲ Ferret Legging – A Truly Unusual Sport: Also known as ferret-down-trousers and put ‘em down, the rules of the sport are pretty tight. Competitors have two ferrets placed inside their trousers, which are tied firmly at the ankles and belted up at the waist, thereby eliminating any point of escape for the furry creatures. The competitor then stands before judges, enduring the misery of the razor-sharp claws and teeth of the ferrets. Other rules state that competitors cannot be drunk and the ferrets must not be sedated. Also, the ferrets must have a full set of teeth that have not been blunted or filed. The man who stands the longest, wins. Sounds gruesome, doesn’t it? Well, get this – they aren’t even allowed to put on underwear, so as to allow free access to the ferrets from one leg to the other.
▲ Shoplifting Around the World [Infographic]
▲ Mountain Dew Will Dissolve Rats On Contact: According to McGill, if a mouse is submerged in Mountain Dew between four and seven days, the rodent “will have no calcium in its bones and bony structures.” During those days of soft drink immersion, “the mouse’s abdominal structure will rupture.” Additionally, “its cranial cavity (head) is also likely to rupture within that time period,” McGill noted. After 30 days exposure to Mountain Dew, “all of the mouse’s structures” would have disintegrated to the point that it would not be recognizable. In fact, “the mouse will have been transformed into a ‘jelly-like’ substance.” The only part of the rodent that could possibly survive, added McGill, was “a portion of the tail.”
▲ Lab-grown glands, eyes and brain parts: Growing a complete, functioning brain is unfeasible, but there is real potential in growing functional neural tissue containing specific types of cells, for transplantation into the human brain. This is one avenue of research that the team are investigating. Last year, they showed that ES cells can be coaxed to differentiate into functional cerebellar Purkinje cells, which integrate themselves into the brain when transplanted into mouse foetuses. “We are now attempting to generate Purkinje cells from human ES and induced pluripotent stem cells,” says Sasai. This would be useful in establishing animal models for the spino-cerebellar ataxias, to investigate their pathogenesis and to explore the possibility of gene therapy for these diseases.” The 3D culture technique could also be used to grow midbrain tissue containing neurons that synthesize the neurotransmitter dopamine, which could eventually prove to be very useful in the development of therapies for Parkinson’s Disease.
▲ No Fear: Memory Adjustment Pills Get Pentagon Push: The Pentagon hasn’t come close to solving the PTSD crisis plaguing the current generation of troops. But a cutting-edge realm of treatment might change that — by wiping away the fear that military personnel associate with traumatic memories. The Pentagon this week announced an $11 million grant for three research institutions, all of them long-time hubs for the military’s ongoing PTSD investigations. Experts at Emory University, the University of Southern California and New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center will study the effectiveness of D-Cycloserine (DCS). DCS is a pharmaceutical thought to help extinguish fearful memories. It’s usually taken right before exposure therapy, a process that involves recalling traumatic experiences in an effort to nullify the menacing associations that accompany them.
▲ Saudi son sale: $20 million price tag for a child: A failed Saudi businessman has put up his own son up for sale on Facebook. He claims that with all doors closed to him, he couldn’t see any other way to provide for his wife and daughter. Saud bin Nasser Al Shahry wants more than 73 million UAE Dirhams for the boy, a sum equivalent to almost $20 million, reports Qatar’s Al Sharq newspaper. A deal on the boy would offer “a decent life to his mother and sister rather than living in poverty.” The resourceful businessman said his debt-collecting firm had been ruled illegal by a local court and had to be shut down. When Al Shahry approached the Labor Office for financial assistance, the authorities allegedly refused him aid as the ministry does not provide help to individuals over 35 years old.
▲ 7 year old Poppy Burge gets liposuction voucher from ‘Human Barbie’ mum Sarah for Christmas: A seven-year-old who received a voucher for a boob job on her last birthday has received yet another inappropriate gift from her surgery-obsessed mother: A £7,000 voucher for liposuction. Little Poppy Burge received the gift in her Christmas stocking after her mother, a 51-year-old plastic surgery addict known as The Human Barbie, decided it would ‘come in handy’. ‘I put the voucher in her stocking – there’s nothing wrong with that,’ she said. ‘She asks for surgery all the time. She wants to look good and lipo is one of those procedures that will always come in handy.
▲ Police Shoot and Kill Armed 8th Grader in Texas: Police shot and killed an eighth grader brandishing a handgun in a Texas middle school hallway Wednesday. Police received a call around 8 a.m. saying there was someone with a weapon at Cummings High School in Brownsville, Texas, the Associated Press reported. Officers found the student with a handgun in a hallway and shot him after he “engaged” police, a district spokeswoman said in a statement. He was taken to a nearby medical center where he later died, the Brownsville Herald reported. His name has not been released. Local ABC affiliate KXXV-TV reported that police told the student to put his weapon down and fired three times after he refused to comply.
▲ Stephen Hawking admits he finds women ‘a complete mystery’: His career has shed light on the secrets of the universe, from the nature of space-time to the workings of black holes, but there is one conundrum that still baffles the world’s most famous scientist. In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women. “They are,” he said “a complete mystery.”
▲ Avoiding Facial Recognition of the Future: The main focus of the camouflage is to use makeup and hair to create a look that is a mix between organic and machine. This makes it very hard to program software that can detect facial features if the traditional lines of a person’s visage are broken up in non-organic fashion. For those wanting to take a stab at protecting their identity, there are a few basic tips offered: 1. Avoid enhancers: They amplify key facial features. 2. Partially obscure the nose-bridge: The region where the nose, eyes, and forehead intersect is a key facial feature. 3. Partially obscure the ocular region: The position and darkness of eyes is a key facial feature. 4. Remain inconspicuous: For camouflage to function, it must not be perceived as a mask or disguise.
▲ PayPal Tells Buyer To Destroy Purchased Violin Instead Of Return For Refund: a seller claims that she’s out $2,500 and an antique violin after the company told the buyer to destroy the instrument. According to the seller, who shared her tale with the aforementioned Regretsy, she had sold the old violin to a buyer in Canada, who subsequently disputed the instrument’s bona fides. It is certainly not uncommon for people in the antique musical instrument field to argue over whether or not a particular item is the real deal, and it makes sense to notify PayPal that you are disputing the purchase. But the decision as to whether or not the violin is the real deal or an impersonator is not usually left up to the company that promises the payment. Alas, someone at PayPal apparently is an expert in old violins, because the company determined the instrument was “counterfeit” and told the buyer he needed to destroy it in order to get his refund. The buyer not only smashed the violin to bits; he also snapped some pics that he sent to the seller.
▲ La Redoute Naked Man Kids PHOTO: Stylist UK reports that the image has stirred up its fair share of controversy in France — and with good reason. The photo, found on La Redoute’s e-commerce site, features four annoyingly happy looking children frolicking on the beach wearing fun (if grammatically incorrect) T-shirts. But way off in the distance behind them is a man wearing absolutely nothing. This is creepy on a number of levels — in the photo, this naked man’s presence invalidates all that childlike joy the children are experiencing. But then you have to step back a level. How did this man get here in the first place? Did La Redoute really do a children’s photoshooot on a beach where people are allowed to roam around naked? Odds are, if there was one naked guy on that beach, there were probably more.
▲ Chinese Girls Before and After Makeup: Before and after makeup comparisons, even more shocking than plastic surgery
▲ Deadly parasite turns Bay Area honeybees into zombie slaves: Infected bees go mad, abandoning their hive in a suicidal rush toward bright lights, according to a new study by San Francisco State researchers. “It’s the flight of the living dead,” said lead investigator and biology professor John Hafernik, also president of the California Academy of Sciences. The parasite, a tiny fly, has been found in bees from three-quarters of the 31 surveyed hives in the Bay Area — essentially, everywhere except Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. In a plotline similar to a George Romero horror film, the fly deposits its eggs into the bee’s abdomen, then takes over. The hapless bees walk around in circles, with no apparent sense of direction. Some are unable to even stand on their legs. “They kept stretching them out and then falling over,” Hafernik said. “It really painted a picture of something like a zombie.”
▲ India girl killed in ritual sacrifice to ensure better harvest: Police arrested two men, both poor farmers, last week and they told police they killed the girl to appease their gods and get a better harvest, Das said. Tati was walking home after watching television at a neighbor’s house when she was kidnapped, Das said. The two men confessed to cutting her open and removing her liver as an offering. Das said the police had gathered enough evidence, apart from the confessions, to charge the two with murder. They would face life in prison or even the death sentence if convicted. The men were described as “tribals,” a term referring to the region’s indigenous people, most of whom remain mired in poverty and illiteracy.
▲ ‘Lost World’ Of Sea Creatures Discovered Near Antarctica: A “lost world” of sea creatures was discovered near Antarctica, British scientists announced Wednesday. Scientists doing their first exploring of deep-sea vents in the Antarctic said it was unlike anything found around other hydrothermal vents — a world populated by new species of anemones, predatory sea stars, and piles of hairy-chested yeti crabs. It was “almost like a sight from another planet,” said expedition leader Alex Rogers, a professor of zoology at Oxford University. Even in the eye-popping world of deep-sea vents, the Antarctic discoveries stand out, with the unfamiliar species of crabs found crowded in piles around the warm waters emanating from the seafloor. Many of the animals found at the vents have never been found at hydrothermal vents in other oceans, Rogers said. “To see these animals in such huge densities was just amazing,” Rogers told LiveScience.
▲ Naked man interrupts ‘Chipmunks’ at North Riverside Mall theater: Kids and parents who paid admission to see a movie about three shipwrecked chipmunks on Dec. 29 at the North Riverside Park Mall’s Classic Cinemas theater, 7501 Cermak Rd., got a bonus show that afternoon – one that landed a 34-year-old Chicago man in Cook County Jail. About a half hour into the 4 p.m. showing of the kiddie feature Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, police say an entirely naked Edward L. Brown stood up from his seat in the front row, faced the crowd of 86 theater-goers, stretched out his hands and displayed his genitalia for all to see before sitting back down to enjoy the movie. …According to the police report, Brown told officers that he had been let inside the movie theater for free by an unknown female who allegedly told him to have a seat in the front row of the theater, take off his clothes and wait for her, so they could have sex, smoke crack and do heroin.
▲ Charlton Library Sends Police To Collect Overdue Books From 5-Year-Old: A Charlton mom says her local library crossed the line when they sent police to collect her daughter’s overdue library books. Her mom says the 5-year-old girl was so afraid that she burst into tears. Charlton Police Sergeant Dan Dowd stopped by the home of Shannon Benoit to let her know that her daughter had two books several months overdue which needed to be returned or paid for.
▲ Bonobo ape lights campfire, cooks hamburgers: Kanzi, a 31-year-old Bonobos, also known as the pygmy chimpanzee, reportedly became obsessed with the film “Quest for Fire” at an early age. “Kanzi makes fire because he wants to,” Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, his main handler at the Great Ape Trust, told the Telegraph. “The movie was released about a year after Kanzi was born and was about early man struggling to control fire. Kanzi watched this spellbound over and over hundreds of times.”
▲ Children becoming ‘addicted’ to computers: Children’s access to smartphones and computers should be limited to stop them becoming “addicted” to electronic gadgets, according to a schools’ leader.
▲ Password case reframes Fifth Amendment rights in context of digital world: Beyond the log-in screen of Ramona Fricosu’s laptop computer lies what federal prosecutors say could be the key evidence in the bank-fraud case against her. There’s only one problem: Prosecutors don’t know her password. Thus, in an extraordinarily rare move, prosecutors in Denver are seeking a court order forcing Fricosu to unlock the computer so that they can obtain files they would use to try to convict her and her ex-husband. Civil-liberties groups nationwide have taken notice, saying the case tests the strength of rights against self-incrimination in a digital world. Prosecutors, meanwhile, say that allowing criminal defendants to beat search warrants simply by encrypting their computers would make it impossible to obtain evidence in an age when clues are more likely held within a hard drive than a file cabinet.
▲ White powder sent to Fla. gov’t office sickens 4: According to the Palm Beach Post, initial testing of the white powder was “inconclusive.” WPEC mentioned that there can be psychological and physical effects or psychosomatic symptoms even if the substance is not hazardous due to the panic caused by the situation, but Emergency Manager for the City of West Palm Beach Allan Ortman told the Palm Beach Post that when tested the powder didn’t change colors, which is raising some concern. The powder has been sent to a FBI lab for further testing, and results are expected within 24 hours.
▲ Police State 2012: No Need to Wait, It’s Already Here: One of the greatest problems in talking about the police state is that all such discussion of the subject is hampered by the lack of a clear-cut definition. Given the public’s own ignorance of the true nature and function of a police state, story after story after story of intolerable levels of official oppression, secret illegal surveillance, and increasingly sophisticated technology for tracking, apprehending, incapacitating and even killing dissenters can be dismissed because these stories are reported one at a time, in a contextless and therefore meaningless way that invites the interpretation that these stories are only warnings of what is to come instead of sign posts of a reality that is already here.
▲ John Lydon’s top of the pops roots Reggae picks: Don Letts: The Rastas loved John! To them he was “THE punk rock Don from London” they were aware of all the trouble he had stirred up in London, and yeah, they were into what he stood for and his stance, and they dug it… We smoked a chalice together with U Roy for breakfast, and then went out to one of his dances, miles out in the countryside, quite a long journey by car. I remember the dreads stringing up this sound, and kicking off with some earthquake dubs. Now let me tell you this sound system was LOUD, and me and John both of us, literally passed out! I remember hours later some dreads shaking us awake, it was like, “Wake up man, dance done, dance finish now man!” Yeah, it was pretty wild for me and John out in Jamaica. We loved it. John just had a vibe you know, people were drawn to him. It was the same in London; it was the same in Kingston. John is Irish, and there is a definite affinity between Jamaicans and Irish!
▲ Pot Culture: White Punks on Dope: In fact, despite protestations to the contrary, the punks always smoked pot when no one was looking. In John Lydon’s autobiography, Don Letts explains how he became DJ at the seminal punk hang out, The Roxy: “I took the job at first for the money. I thought the punks were just a bunch of crazy white people. I didn’t really tune into it. When I became the deejay and started meeting them, I picked up on what they were doing. I got the job first, and then got all my black mates to work there. Everybody who worked there, besides Andy (Czezowski), was black. We used to make joints before we went to work to sell to the punks over the counter. The people would come up and say, ‘Give me two beers and a spliff. No, make that two spliffs and a beer.’ They couldn’t roll Jamaican cones.”