Check out alevo’s latest:

We must think globally in order to stop the influence the tobacco industry has in developed countries like Canada and the United States. Local health legislation may curb tobacco use in our communities, but it does not reduce the economic growth potential for the tobacco industry worldwide.

Tobacco manufacturers have a business model with one objective: to replenish the ranks of people addicted to their products. Every day, tens of thousands of their customers die and thousands quit.

Unlike any other business, the tobacco industry manufactures a product that it knows will eventually kill most of its current customers, and their business model reflects that knowledge. The tobacco industry requires new customers every day in order to stay in business; it needs new markets and new customers daily.

You can read the full article on Raise the Hammer. If you wish to comment, please do so there.

[tags]health, tobacco, regulation[/tags]

Scientific American recently reported on a recent study of psilocybin mushrooms, commonly called magic mushrooms. Neuroscientist Roland Griffiths and his team at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore recruited 36 middle-aged Americans with no previous psychedelic drug experience and gave them the trip of their lives:

[T]he subjects lay down on a couch in a comfortable, living room-like environment and were encouraged to use an eye mask to block out visual distraction and headphones that offered classical music. […]

Immediately following the roughly eight-hour sessions, the participants were asked to fill out a series of questionnaires designed to probe the nature and quality of the experience. Twenty-two out of the 36 volunteers described a so-called mystical experience, or one that included feelings of unity with all things, transcendence of time and space as well as deep and abiding joy.

In follow-up interviews conducted two months later 67 percent of the volunteers rated the psilocybin experience as among the most meaningful of their lives, comparing it to the birth of a first child or the death of a parent, and 79 percent reported that it had moderately or greatly increased their overall sense of well-being or life satisfaction. Independent interviews of family members, friends and co-workers confirmed small but significant positive changes[.]

The use of psychedelic drugs dates back millennia. The psilocybin mushrooms used in the John Hopkins study are revered in some Central and South American cultures, and stone carvings depicting the mushrooms that date back to 500-1000 BC have been found there.

The brightly colored Amanita muscaria, pictured above, also has a long cultural history. Its common name is fly agaric because of the old practice of soaking pieces of it in milk and then leaving the milk out for flies, which drink the milk and die.

This mushroom belongs to the same family of mushrooms as some of the most toxic mushrooms in the world, like the Destroying Angel, and can be found in many parts of North America, including Southern Ontario, but it is not deadly like its relatives.

It does contain a number of hallucinogenic compounds, and like psilocybin mushrooms has been used by some cultures as a ritualistic or shamanistic drug, especially in Siberia. Some believe that the Berserkers, Norse warriors who swore allegiance to the sky god Odin, may have worked themselves into murderous fury before battle with its help.

In spite of their ancient, mystical history – or perhaps because of it – the use of psychedelic drugs is stigmatized in most modern societies. Mystical, spiritual experiences achieved through drugs are ersatz compared to Jesus’ work in one’s soul, a Christian may comment.

In fact, few religions have any regard for spiritual experiences achieved in ways other than the doctrinal ones. (Interestingly, Griffiths intentionally chose “spiritual” people for the study because, he said, “volunteers who had some engagement with prayer, meditation, churchgoing, or similar activities would be better equipped to understand and consolidate any mystical-type experiences they might have”.)

But most people, religious or not, are apt to dismiss drug-induced mystical revelations – “transcendence of time and space”, for example – as not real, or at least, not as real as experiences achieved without the use of substances. But in the mind, what is a real experience?

I had a conversation with a friend who recently ceased taking anti-depressants, which he had successfully used for several years to treat his moderate depression. Some of the symptoms started to return soon after stopping treatment, causing him to reconsider his decision. “But I don’t want starting taking it again,” he said. “Maybe the real me is supposed to be down, and the drugs are just turning me into someone I’m not.”

But who is the “real” you, or I, or him? Is someone anyone else than themselves when they are under the influence of a psychoactive medication?

I was at the Montreal Jazz Festival last weekend. We hadn’t traveled there for that reason, we were just there to have a good time. On Friday night we stumbled on one of the stages and caught the last 8 minutes of a fabulous performance. Unfortunately, that little scrap of a performance was all we managed to see that night.

I love live music, and when I went to bed that night I felt really disappointed to have missed it. I started imagining what it would have been like to arrive at that stage an hour-and-a-half earlier. I could picture it vividly – the orange and blue lights, the lead singer flailing her arms around, the percussionist beating out his complex rhythms, me grooving a bit at first and then dancing full out, smiling and sweating and bumping into people, hands moving to the beat, whoops of appreciation. I felt like I was there.

The next day, I still felt that way, as though I’d seen the full set and danced my ass off. I felt almost but not quite satisfied, the way you feel after dreaming of sex. If it was with someone you know, you might look at them a little oddly the next time you see them. It wasn’t real…but in the mind, what is a real experience?

[tags]drugs, science, religion, mysticism[/tags]

I went to Hamilton’s It’s Your Festival in Gage Park on the weekend.

We were strolling down a grassy laneway between rows of tents set up to peddle various wares when a fluttering red banner caught my eye: The Revolution Starts Here.

The tent with this banner was deserted. But there were two toilets sitting out front.

I’m not accustomed to seeing toilets outside of washroom facilities at festivals, so I decided to take a closer look. There was a brochure taped to the top edge of the tent. I held it down so I could take a photo.

Here’s a closeup of the device, the NEW FB-3:

The brochure explains its features in detail:

The woman in the brightly-coloured tent next door was selling children’s toys. I started to realize why she looked so irritated.

[tags]humour[/tags]

It’s a frequent sight right now in Southern Ontario: trees carrying loads of fruit that look like elongated blackberries. The ground underneath is littered with crushed fruit and stained a deep purple.

When I was a kid I was walking home from school one day with some friends. There was a massive tree of this sort on the route, and a large branch had broken off and fallen to the ground. It was covered in fruit. We didn’t know what it was, but we feasted on it like kings.

I arrived home with face and hands stained purple, and my parents immediately demanded to know what I had been eating. My explanation – “berries off a tree” – alarmed them, and they gave me a stern lecture about how we could have been poisoned.

Even now, when I stop for a moment to grab a bunch, I get odd looks from people who seem to be wondering if I have a death wish as I gobble the fruit no one else seems to want. But mulberries are delicious, and until our culture started mistrusting any food not found in grocery stores, people ate them all the time.

Big, black and juicy: just the way I like ’em

If people grew big stands of raspberries right next to city sidewalks, I imagine the ripe fruit would not last long as passers-by furtively helped themselves. But mulberry trees by the side of the road – even those whose branches dip low enough for easy harvesting – go untouched.

I can only assume this is because people don’t know what they are, because it’s certainly not due to their taste, which is like a rich, sweet blackberry. You owe it to yourself to try them if you haven’t before!

I wonder just how much free food grows right under our noses. Hamilton has a tree-planting program and I requested a serviceberry for it’s gorgeous spring-time flowers. A friend noticed it and pointed out that its berries are edible. As it turns out, not just edible, but delicious!

A favourite of robins, serviceberries taste the way they look: like red blueberries

The origins of its name are interesting:

The name serviceberry is derived from the practice of isolated mountain communities in early America to postpone funeral services for those who died in the winter until the spring when the ground was no longer frozen. The flowers of the tree, the first to bloom in the spring, were gathered for church services.

Both of these trees are in season right now, so go eat some berries!

[tags]nutrition, cooking, botany[/tags]

I saw part of a documentary last night about four children in the United Kingdom who suffer from Harlequin type ichthyosis. This is a serious, hereditary skin disease that causes skin to become abnormally thick and cracked, as well as eyes, ears and noses to be stunted.

Because the skin is the body’s way of keeping moisture in and bacteria out, people with this disease can become dehydrated very quickly and the risk of infection is also very high. For this reason, babies born with this disease never used to survive the first few hours or days after birth.

The disease can now be managed to some extent by an intensive regimen of bathing and “creaming” – smearing thick, greasy cream all over one’s body three or more times a day. In spite of these treatments, few people with this painful, disfiguring disease live into adulthood.

A diagram showing symptoms of harlequin ichthyosis in a baby. Copyright Foundation for Ichthyosis and Related Skin Types.

When Dana Bowen, one of the children with this disease that was featured in the documentary, was born, her condition was obvious. Her parents cared for her over the next seven years, becoming intimately familiar with the debilitating disease and what it was doing to their child.

They were told that if they had another child, the chance of it being born with the same disease were one in four (twenty-five percent). They decided to risk it. When Lara Bowen was born, she had the disease too. Seeing the tiny child’s reddened skin covered in scales was heartbreaking.

Is it ethical to have a child when the risk of it having a severe hereditary disease are so high?