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News Briefs 06-08-2008

So many news updates recently, do you have room for more?

Cheers Greg, Ross, and Kat.

Quote of the Day:

So here are people without electronic microscopes who choose, among some 80,000 Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush containing a hallucinogenic brain hormone, which they combine with a vine containing substances that inactivate an enzyme, which would otherwise block the hallucinogenic effect. And they do this to modify their consciousness.

Jeremy Narby – The Cosmic Serpent (Amazon US & UK).

  1. Amazing Amazon coincidence?
    What we don’t know is how many other combinations of the 80,000 Amazonian plant species may have similar effects on consciousness. Possibly quite a few, which would bring the odds of discovery of one combination down a bit.

    If the two plants in Ayahuasca brew are relatively common species, that would explain why this particular combination has been discovered, rather than any others.

    ——

    I don’t believe in belief!

    Perceval

  2. Animal cruelty in China
    Really disturbing. What intrigues me is how this desensitivity towards animal suffering translates later in other aspects of life.

    Of course, our western mentality would assume that being compassionate to animals is a clear sign of kindness and decency… But we musn’t forget the deeds of a very famous dog-lover: Adolf Hitler :-/

    Also, remember that “Lethal Weapon 3” part, where Reese refuses to shoot a guard dog? (Here’s the video in case you forgot):

    “I can’t shoot a dog. People are OK, but not dogs.”

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

    1. animal rights
      In the West there are also animal rights activists who burn houses and kill people to defend animals. They defend abstract animal rights, not individual animals.

      Also these kinds of people (PETA in particular) kill more animals than they save.

      They release animals that are seriously sick from research laboratories.

      It seems like another case when a basically good cause results in a runaway reaction. The good cause is taken over by people who just want to fight. Oh and of course also by people who make money off the fighting – they have no interest in coming to a reasonable solution.

      —-
      It is not how fast you go
      it is when you get there.

      1. My point exactly
        It is funny how in Western films, you can put as many human murders as you want, but people react more viscerally when they see a dog or a horse being killed in a movie. There’s definitely something wrong about that.

        Remember that part about the third movie in “The Planet of the Apes” saga, how the female chimpanzee explains that humankind began to turn apes into trained pet/slaves because for some reason all the dogs went extinct? “Man wouldn’t mistreat his best friend, but he can abuse of a being that is more similar to him”… or soemthing like that-

        For the record I love animals. Hate bull-fighting and that sort of things. Can’t stand to see a dead or stray dog in the street. But I’m no vegan.

        —–
        It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
        It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

        Red Pill Junkie

    2. Its not cruel to Chinese to eat heathy!
      Traditional Chinese believe one should eat what is good for your “Qi”. Cats, dogs and other meats are either “HOT” or “COOL” for the body and it depends on one’s “Qi” and how to balance it according to season depends what should be eaten.

      Chinese medicine and what they eat are the same thing! You will see in China English menus listing dishes with “Chinese medicine”.

      Quite often in China people will eat a certain food or meat depending on what is required for one’s health. If that means stir frying up a cat to balance one’s “Qi”, its off to the market – fresh is best as Chinese think.

      So much “alternative medicine” takes its cue from China, balancing one’s “Qi”, acupuncture et al. So who can pick and choose what is acceptable or not? You have to embrace all of it.

      New from China – “Tuck into Tabby”! Balance your “Qi” and be healthy! Ready to eat – from freezer to your plate in 10 minutes! Look for “Tuck into Tabby” in your favourite supermarket’s frozen food section.

      Gee….whiz!

      Cheers

      PS I am a cat lover – and I live in China.

  3. Sailing space on solar winds
    [quote]Scientists at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., within a week plan to test their solar sail, which will travel to space onboard a Falcon 1 rocket developed by Space Exploration Technologies [/quote]

    …Ooops! 🙁

    Seems solar sails are kind of jinxed. Considering another experiment with solar sails, this one developed by the Planetary Society & Carl Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan, also suffered a simmilar fate 3 years ago.

    Or maybe it is a conspiracy to maintain the monopoly of chemical rockets 😉

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

    1. there is hope
      But we have to consider that testing new technologies is always tricky. How many attempts did it take to make a working airplane? Or a working chemical rocket that does something useful?

      How many attempts does it take to make a non-trivial computer program work, today? These things practically never work the first time.

      How many people can eat spaghetti without making a mess? Noodles have been around for centuries.

      So I say, let us give these people some time.

      Also, I probably made some typos in this very post, even though I checked it.

      —-
      It is not how fast you go
      it is when you get there.

  4. I’m insulted too
    A Leprechaun-alien where? All I see is some out-of-focus woodland debris, and sunlight that glinted off the camera lens.

    But Rick’s right about that pot of gold! Get out those digital cameras folks. There’s a fortune to be made if you can come up with a caption that’s outlandish enough.

    Kat

  5. New Ice Age – In a Year
    Its interesting to think that during the last Ice Age most of Europe and North America was under kilometres of Ice.

    Something to think about.

    If there was an advanced civilisation which gave rise to other ancient civilisations as postulated by Graham Hancock it is reasonable to assume they could might been located in Europe and North America +12,000 years ago and not on one location re: Atlantis. I think that the idea that there was only ONE high civilisation like “Atlantis” while everyone else were “knuckle draggers” is flawed as the world does not work that way – look around today.

    This thriving “high” civilisation spanning Europe and America could of have had all evidence of its existence effectively erased and scoured off not only by being under kilometres of ice but by the subsequent melting and flooding of same.

    It has been postulated that the Grand Canyon was created by a tremendous flood of melt water which broke out from an ice dam at the end of the last ice age.

    If a city like Banda Aceh (Indonesia) could be effectivly wiped off the map by a tsunami in 2005 what would happen if a “tsunami” hundreds of meters high washed across the US?

    Therefore finding “Atlantis” is impossible. What evidence there is would have been ground away by Ice and then swept and dumped into the ocean when it melted. Even now under Antarctica – what could be found after a millennia of kilometres of ice grinding away at it?

    There is more to this obviously but, as I said, just something to think about.

    Yes, I do have the capacity to think of “alternative views”. 🙂

    Cheers

    1. Wow!
      [quote]Yes, I do have the capacity to think of “alternative views”. :)[/quote]

      Well, you certainly are a bag full of cats… er, surprises I mean 😉

      —–
      It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
      It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

      Red Pill Junkie

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