Mr Hofmann first produced LSD in 1938 while researching the medicinal uses of a crop fungus.
He accidentally ingested some of the drug and said later: “Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror.”
He argued for decades that LSD could help treat mental illness, but in the 1960s it became a popular street drug.
‘Turn on, tune in, drop out’
BBC news
Organized crime may have brought in more than $2 trillion in revenue last year, about twice all the military budgets in the world combined, according to the “2007 State of the Future” report, published by the Millennium Project of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, by Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon.
The report called organized crime one of the most pressing global issues that needs to be addressed in the next 10 years, along with global warming, terrorism, corruption, unemployment, and income disparities.
But the report noted success in tackling other issues, saying the world has made progress on ending poverty, improving access to education and settling conflicts. It also says the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Africa has begun to level off.
A stove that uses acoustic technology to cook and cool, and generates its own electricity, is being designed for developing communities in Africa and Asia.
The Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity, or SCORE, could help improve the health and quality of life for the 2 billion or so people in the world who cook over open fires, its developers say.
When used in enclosed places, smoke from open fires can cause health problems. And the stoves can be notoriously inefficient.
A person can spend two hours a day collecting wood to burn in a fire that is so wasteful that 93% of the energy generated, literally, goes up in smoke.
“We make the burning more efficient so that they use less wood and have more time to spend on other things like education,” says Paul Riley, the project director at the UK’s University of Nottingham.
The efficiency comes from a technology known as thermoacoustics, which produces sound waves from heated gas and then converts them to electricity.
What is Magick? Several definitions float into my mind, but none of them do it full justice. The world is magical; we might get a sense of this after climbing a mountain and looking down upon the landscape below, or in the quiet satisfaction at the end of one of ‘those days’ when everything has gone right for us. Magick is a doorway through which we step into mystery, wildness, and immanence.
We live in a world subject to extensive and seemingly, all-embracing systems of social & personal control that continually feed us the lie that we are each alone, helpless, and powerless to effect change. Magick is about change. Changing your 
circumstances so that you strive to live according to a developing sense of personal responsibility; that you can effect change around you if you choose; that we are not helpless cogs in some clockwork universe. All acts of personal/collective liberation are magical acts. Magick leads us into exhiliration and ecstacy; into insight and understanding; into changing ourselves and the world in which we participate. Through magick we may come to explore the possibilities of freedom.
Surely this is simple enough? But no, magick has become obsfucated under a weight of words, a welter of technical terms which exclude the uninitiated and serve those who are eager for a ‘scientific’ jargon with which to legitimise their enterprise into something self-important and pompous. Abstract spiritual spaces have been created in the midst of which tower the Babel-like lego constructions of ‘inner planes’, spiritual hierarchies and ‘occult truths’ which forget that the world around us is magical. The mysterious has been misplaced. We search through dead languages and tombs for ‘secret knowledge’, ignoring the mystery of life that is all around us. So for the moment, forget what you’ve read about spiritual enlightenment, becoming a 99th level Magus and impressing your friends with high-falutin’ gobbledygook. Magick is surprisingly simple.
Read the rest of this introduction to Chaos Magick in PDF form here.
Most Congressmen are lawyers, and many others are businessmen. They know what “fiduciary responsibility” is. For Members of Congress, fiduciary responsibility means reading each word of every bill before they vote.
But Congress has not met this duty for a long time. Instead . . .
RTBA requires that . . .
The effects of these provisions will be profound . . .
Flagstaff, AZ—On Monday, March 12th the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling to protect a mountain held holy by more than 13 Native American Nations. The slopes of the San Francisco Peaks, located in Northern Arizona, have been at the center of a historical and lengthy battle that has pitted economic interests on public lands against environmental integrity, public health and cultural survival..A local ski resort planned to expand and use treated waste effluent to make snow.
Yesterday, a federal court appeals panel issued the unanimous decision written by Judge William A. Fletcher. “We reverse the decision of the district court in part. We hold that the Forest Service’s approval of the Snowbowl’s use of recycled sewage effluent to make artificial snow on the San Francisco Peaks violates [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] RFRA, and that in one respect the Final Environmental Impact Statement prepared in this case does not comply with NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act].”
More than 100 supporters gathered at an afternoon press conference near the base of the Sacred Peaks to celebrate. Tribal Leaders, Environmental Groups and representatives of the community based group the Save the Peaks Coalition spoke of the victory.
“This is a very important decision that sets great precedent for people who are concerned with Native American rights and religious freedom” said Howard Shanker, of the Shanker Law Firm, PLC, representing the Navajo Nation, the White Mountain Apache Tribe, the Yavapai-Apache Tribe, the Havasupai Tribe, Rex Tilousi, Dianna Uqualla, the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Flagstaff Activist Network.
“Because of this decision in the 9th circuit, other tribes throughout the nation could have the ability to rely on this case to help protect sites that are sacred to them and culturally and religiously important” Mr. Shanker said.
Bushmen from the Kalahari desert have won a court case in which they accused Botswana’s government of illegally moving them from their land.
The court said the bushmen – or San people – were wrongly evicted from their ancestral homeland in 2002.
A panel of three judges ruled by two-to-one in their favour in the major issues in the case.
It is seen as a wider test of whether governments can legally move people from their tribal and ancestral lands.
The leader of the bushmen, Roy Sesana, emerged from court wearing traditional headdress and smiling broadly.
Protesters in Paraguay have staged a public crucifixion calling for a jailed former army general to be set free.
Tomas Velazquez, a supporter of General Lino Oviedo, popular among Paraguay’s indigenous people, was tied and nailed to a cross outside the Supreme Court.
Mr Velazquez called on the court to review Gen Oviedo’s 10-year jail sentence for plotting a 1996 coup.
Deep in the most remote jungles of South America, Amazon Indians (Amerindians) are using Google Earth, Global Positioning System (GPS) mapping, and other technologies to protect their fast-dwindling home. Tribes in Suriname, Brazil, and Colombia are combining their traditional knowledge of the rainforest with Western technology to conserve forests and maintain ties to their history and cultural traditions, which include profound knowledge of the forest ecosystem and medicinal plants. Helping them is the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), a nonprofit organization working with indigenous people to conserve biodiversity, health, and culture in South American rainforests.
Women told that female under-achievement in mathematics is due to genetic factors perform much worse on maths tests than those told that social factors are responsible.
These new findings could have serious implications not only for the way the subject is taught in schools, but for public discussions about genetic influences on behaviour. It may also inform debates about why women are under-represented in university mathematics and science departments.
The question of whether there might be gender differences in mathematical ability remains contentious. Earlier this year, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University, Massachusetts, US, resigned in response to an outcry over his speculation on the topic. He said one reason women are under-represented in science and engineering jobs could be because of a “different availability of aptitude at the high end”.
by Neil p Corkeran
THE TERM ‘POSTMODERNISM,’ variously defined by different `representatives,’ has garnered the quality of a catch-all term describing new directions in architecture, art, literature, social science theory, critical philosophy and other disciplines that all seem to be cross-fertilizing, with often revolutionary effects. It is used to describe a socio-cultural condition of postmodernity growing out of the forces of late-Modernism, which is in turn inextricable intertwined with the expressed desires of late-Capitalism, as well as the interpretation and critique of that constructed condition.
With a (de)focus to ‘pluralism’ and a multitude of individual and community ‘voices,’ postmodernist thought can be seen as reacting to, and growing out of positivist aims and the universalist structural tendencies of Modernism. The ‘agenda’ of postmodernism (if only expressed unconsciously through the individual actions and contributions of its participants) can be seen ``to challenge monolithic elitism, to bridge…one discourse and interpretive community [with] another…so that different cultures acknowledge each other’s legitimacy. The motives are equally political and aesthetic.’’ The ``essential goal: [is] to further pluralism, to overcome the elitism inherent in the previous paradigm’’ (Jencks 12-13).
While we don’t generally speak our mind here at Nerdshit or try to solicit anything from our readers other than, hopefully, a gradual broadening of your mind and worldview, this is a great exception. Robert Anton Wilson, the philosopher, writer, comic, mystic trickster (and on and on), is set to relinquish his body to a disability he has had all his life, and he needs a bit of help to comfortably make that transition. R.A.W. has been monumentally influential in our lives. I can say with certainty that I would be a completely different, and I dare say, more constricted personality, had that influence not touched me.
So here’s the news…
Note from Robert’s friend, Denis Berry: Sadly, we have to report that wizard-author-intelligence increase agent is in trouble with his life, home and his finances. Robert is dying at his home from post polio syndrome. He has enough money for next months rent and after that, will be unable to pay. He cannot walk, has a hard time talking and swallowing, is extremely frail and needs full time care that is being provided by several friends-fans-volunteers and family. We appeal to you to help financially for the next few months to let him die at his home in peace.
Robert’s writing has enlightened-educated many and if you can please commit to help pay a portion of his expenses until his passing which sadly won’t be that long. All monies will go directly to Robert and can be sent to his PayPal address olgaceline@gmail.com. You can also send a check to RAW c/o Futique Trust, P.O. Box 3561, Santa Cruz, Ca 95063.
Much love,
The nerdshit crew
notes via futurehi
MEXICO CITY – Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through the Mexican capital on Sunday to demand a manual recount in the disputed presidential election, led by a leftist candidate who says fraud cost him the presidency.
As a precaution, the Roman Catholic Church canceled Mass at the city’s downtown cathedral as supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador began to overwhelm the central plaza to the sound of firecrackers and bands. Police officials in the pro-Lopez Obrador city government estimated the crowd at 900,000.
Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon, of President Vicente Fox’s National Action Party, won by about 244,000 votes in the official count after the July 2 election.
Lopez Obrador’s Democratic Revolution Party has appealed to the federal electoral court to overturn the official count, alleging illicit government and corporate help for Calderon, ballot stuffing and other irregularities. The former Mexico City mayor says he will stop the protests only if there is a ballot-by-ballot recount.
National Action has also filed its own challenges, seeking to stretch Calderon’s tiny vote advantage. Calderon has said he believes is no legal basis for a complete recount, and has called on Lopez Obrador to respect official vote tallies
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