Sometimes I miss it....

Sometimes I miss the outcasts, the misfits, the marginalized that the Bay Area attracts.

I'm just saying.

Repost from Shay to Pass on a Good Deed

I am reposting this because Shay, being a good person who helps good people has made the request. If you can take 3 seconds to vote, please do so. You can cast one vote per day. If you get a chance to watch this man's video, I think he would be an awesome candidate for this.

"Just a click of a button could change his life PLEASE HELP/PLEASE VOTE! "

"One of my faire family was kicked in the face while working with a horse and his teeth have never been the same. He is a really sweet guy and I know he would love to smile without feeling like he needs to cover his mouth

Anyway, 1-800 dentist is doing a contest, $30,000 for dental work for the most voted video. This is where I need YOUR help. Please go on line and vote for RJ's video. you can vote once a day until Dec 1st.

www.1800dentist.com/my-smile...st-fall09

Just a moment of your day could change his life! Vote now! Vote daily!!! Send his story out to your friends and family REPOST!!! "

No Reply to Ancient Blog Posts Without Notification

Sorry for the repeat reminder, but I thought I would repost it since I have a mysterious blog post reply somewhere. If you have replied to a post I made more than 4 entries back, send me a PM because I won't search page after page after page of the archive looking for it.


:) Sorry. :)

Nature Journal Editorial Biologists Napping While Work Militarized

www.nature.com/nature/jou...60950a.html
Opinion: Nature 460, 950-951 (20 August 2009) | doi:10.1038/460950a; Published online 19 August 2009

Biologists napping while work militarized
Malcolm Dando1

Top of pageAbstractAs researchers discover more agents that alter mental states, the Chemical Weapons Convention needs modification to help ensure that the life sciences are not used for hostile purposes, says Malcolm Dando.


J. Field

In October 2002, Chechen rebel fighters held more than 750 people hostage at a Nord-Ost production in a theatre in Moscow. The siege was broken only after special military forces used what the Russian Health Minister, Yuri Shevchenko, later described as a mixture of substances derived from fentanyl — an opiate developed in the 1950s as an anaesthetic. Widespread relief that many of the hostages were saved was tempered by 124 of them being killed by the gas.

Chemicals with effects like those of fentanyl are often known as 'incapacitating agents'. These substances affect biochemical processes and physiological systems to produce a disabling condition such as unconsciousness, and in higher concentrations can cause death. With effects that last from hours to days, they are distinct from standard riot-control agents such as CS gas, which cause sensory irritation that disappears shortly after termination of exposure.

That Russian special military forces resorted to using fentanyl in Moscow is a possible harbinger of the wider militarization of advances in the biological sciences.

Designer weapons
Attempts to exploit benignly intended research for hostile purposes are not new. After the Second World War, the international medical community began to discover compounds that alleviated symptoms of mental illnesses such as depression and mood swings. These findings weren't accompanied by a good understanding of how the drugs worked. Nevertheless, they prompted nations to ramp up their efforts to find chemicals suited to military use. In fact, in 1959, the chairman of the UK government's secret Chemistry Committee of the Advisory Council on Scientific Research and Technical Development told his colleagues that the committee was "looking for agents which would produce, not cure, psychoses"1.

Between the early 1950s and 1970s, researchers working in laboratories that eventually became the US Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense studied chemical agents that affect the central nervous system. Indeed in 1961, the US military weaponized BZ — a drug that had originally been studied as a possible therapy for gastrointestinal diseases. BZ is one of a group of chemicals that act on the brain and can cause delirium; people exposed to it may fall into a stupor, struggle to speak, show poor coordination and have difficulty processing thoughts.

Despite the long-standing interest the defence industry has shown in drugs that alter people's physiological and mental states, a lack of knowledge has hampered attempts to use them. For example, by 1966, the US military had stockpiled munitions capable of delivering BZ, but its mode and site of action were poorly understood, and its effects varied widely from person to person. This and other problems led to its abandonment. The United States destroyed its stocks by 1990, several years before the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) entered into force in 1997.

Current biochemical threats range from lethal chemical agents to traditional and genetically modified biological agents. In general, biological agents such as anthrax cause governments the most concern. Only a few pathogens are suitable for military use, however. For example, smallpox could prove useful as a weapon because it is highly contagious; anthrax because it has a life cycle that involves the production of long-lived spores. The limited range of possibilities means that there is a good chance of developing countermeasures such as vaccines or antibiotics against these agents. Even if efforts are made to modify them — for example by introducing genes that encode antibiotic resistance — the problem of designing countermeasures is potentially surmountable because the range of effective manipulations that can be made is also limited.

But recent scientific and technological advances could transform the biochemical-threat landscape. Indeed, in 2003, military analysts from the Counterproliferation and Technology Office of the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington DC predicted that emerging biotechnologies were likely to lead to a "paradigm shift" in the development of biological warfare agents2. They warned that it would soon become possible to engineer agents to target specific human biological systems at the molecular level.

This idea of identifying crucial biochemical pathways, and then designing compounds to disrupt them is a leap from the traditional model of biological-agent development. It expands the options: there are likely to be thousands of potential molecular targets and numerous ways of disrupting each one.

Frontiers of concern
Concerns about this kind of expansion of biochemical threats have since been reiterated by scientific and medical communities. For example, in 2006, the US National Academies produced a report called Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of the Life Sciences. The authors argued that recent advances in our understanding of how bioregulatory compounds work, of signalling processes and of the regulation of human gene expression — combined with developments in chemistry, synthetic biology and in technologies such as nanotechnology — have "opened up new and exceedingly challenging frontiers of concern".

More recently, a 2008 US National Academies report entitled Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies, similarly argued that in cases in which 'agonists' of a particular system have been found to enhance some cognitive trait, an 'antagonist' might be developed that could reduce it and vice versa. If dopamine agonists enhance attention, say, so dopamine antagonists might disrupt it. They also warned, among other things, that nanotechnologies could overcome the blood–brain barrier and "exploit existing transport mechanisms to transmit substances into the brain in analogy with the Trojan horse".

Some researchers are actively facilitating the development of new chemical weapons. For example, a research group from Pennsylvania State University in University Park has identified several drug classes as potential non-lethal agents or 'calmatives'3, including benzodiazepines and 2-adrenoreceptor agonists, as well as individual drugs such as diazepam and dexmedetomidine.


Similarly, at the 4th European Symposium on Non-Lethal Weapons in 2007, researchers from the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Charles University in Prague described the effects on macaque monkeys of combinations of drugs that produce a rapid loss of aggressive behaviour4. They argued that the drugs could be "used to pacify aggressive people during ... terrorist attacks". The same researchers have also investigated methods of aerosol delivery to human volunteers.

Those who support the development of incapacitating agents often argue that using them in conflict situations stops people being killed. Historical evidence suggests otherwise. At the Nord-Ost siege, for instance, terrorists exposed to the fentanyl mixture were shot dead rather than arrested. Likewise, in Vietnam, the US military used vast quantities of CS gas — a 'non-lethal' riot-control agent — to increase the effectiveness of conventional weapons by flushing the Viet Cong out of their hiding places.

Blind to misuse
The lack of engagement with this issue among life scientists in general is alarming. Some companies are already marketing oxytocin on the back of studies showing that a nasal squirt of the hormone increases trust in humans. Even though the effectiveness of commercial sprays is doubtful, such research opens up the possibility of a drug that could be used to manipulate people's emotions in a military context. Discussions with more than 2,000 practising life scientists in 13 countries over the past few years have taught me that few have considered such possible uses of their work.

There are problems with both the international conventions that protect us from the potential misuse of biological and chemicals research — the CWC and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, for instance, lacks an effective verification mechanism to ensure that nations are fulfilling their obligations.

Some have called for the CWC agreement to be amended to allow the use of novel incapacitating agents5. In the past 20 years, modern warfare has changed from predominantly large-scale clashes of armies to messy civil strife: think of Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. The chemical agents described here are particularly suited to this style of warfare; it's not hard to find people in the military world who think they would be useful5.

The CWC urgently needs modifying if it is to continue to help ensure that the modern life sciences are not used for hostile purposes. Most pressingly, the compatibility of the Convention with the development of non-lethal chemical agents for law enforcement needs careful scrutiny. Article II.9(d) states that "Law enforcement including domestic riot control" is exempt from the prohibition of the use of chemical agents. 'Law enforcement' could be taken by some to cover more than domestic riot control — which, in certain circumstances, would make it legal for the military to use agents such as fentanyl.

In my opinion, all use of novel non-lethal agents such as fentanyl for law enforcement should be prohibited, or at least heavily restricted. If, instead, we sit on our hands we must accept that new incapacitating agents are just the beginning. We will be, as the British Medical Association concluded in its 2007 study, The Use of Drugs as Weapons, "knowingly moving towards the top of a 'slippery slope' at the bottom of which is the spectre of 'militarization' of biology" including "intentional manipulation of peoples' emotions, memories, immune responses or even fertility".

See Editorial, page 933.

Harsh...

I can't describe exactly how I feel about this. Other than the days are harsh. A woman in the nieghborhood went over the deep end. She had recently separated from her husband and her eldest child [1 of 4] had left home. She has three daughters. This woman had a psychic break and had to be hospitalized. Another family immediately stepped in and took on the three girls she had. The family thought that these girl's mental health was in peril if they were to be put into foster care after having lost their brother, then their father, then their mother.

This family of four [mom, dad, son, daughter] is on a very limited income. He is on disability, she just lost her job with the state. They didn't think twice about opening their home to these three girls. I am deeply touched by the generosity without thought put out by this family.

The sad thing is, dad and eldest son could care less about these girls. On hearing that his sisters were adrift, this 22 year old 'man' said he didn't care. I saw dad last night walking the family dog, and yet he will not answer calls regarding his three daughters. I am dumbfounded.

Today, the GoodDad was distressed with now watching 5 kids and not being able to take care of the logistics he normally needs to address. I offered to watch them for a couple hours while he took care of business. After he came back, he thanked me for the favor. I felt like it was nothing in comparison to his opening his house to these girls. I asked him if they were able to make ends meet regarding food. He said that mom was supposed to have an AFDC debit card but it had gone missing. I offered to get him some staples to last a bit longer. He was uncomfortable but accepted.

I choked every time I thought if the crass indifference of two family members who could care less about these three girls. These three girls are of course going through the classic growing stages for kids, but they are great. How could they be set adrift?

GoodDad called me up after the food was dropped off and said that he was going to send me a thank you card, that he couldn't believe how generous I was. I wasn't. I am not the one opening my doors to save these girls from CPS. [for those of you who do not know, Sacramento County has been investigated for their horriffic record in CPS, children have died]. I am not the one making my life more complex and my pocketbook more scarce. How could I not support such a big heart? How could I not try to do what I could for these three girls?

Life can be so harsh. I want to badly to shield at least some of the harsh if I can from these girls.

Aesthetic and 'Gravity'

Double entendre intended. This is supposed to be a visual recreation of the physics of a super nova. To me, the image is beautiful. I find that it would be less bautiful if it were just a smattering of shapes and colors that had no descriptive property, but that it is an illustration of a super nova makes it awesome.

Envy

www.pathtofreedom.com/

www.californiaheartland.org/this...m.htm

"Jules Dervaes and his three adult children all live and work together on their family farm in Pasadena, CA. They call themselves, “eco-pioneers.” They say it’s a homegrown revolution that's taking place, a way for them to get back to a more natural, organic and better way of life. Their mission? To change the world one urban backyard at a time.

California Heartland’s Jennifer Quinonez visits the Dervaes’ home where at the helm is Jules, a man whose vision wasn't so clear 23 years ago when he bought the 1917 California bungalow for his family. All he knew was that the cost of keeping of a green, but barely usable front yard, was a waste of money and resources. He began taking action and made a shift in the way he lives in an urban city. By clearing out the grass and planting an edible garden, the change began.

In 1991, Jules discovered a way to profit from his garden. Area teahouses were in need for his edible flowers, and that's when he realized he could make money out of his hobby. But biggest change in his life happened in 2001. When buying organic food became too expensive and difficult to find, and genetically altered food started hitting the market, Jules took matters into his own hands and began “Path to Freedom.”

At this little urban homestead in the big city, the family produces 6,000 pounds of organic produce a year. It’s amazing that their home is on a 1/5 acre and their garden is only on 1/10 acre! The front yard is 95% edible and the rest of the main planters are in the backyard. Every corner is used to grow food. Jules says he doesn't need more space; he just needs to be a smarter gardener. He looks to the Japanese and Europeans for guidance, those who for thousands of years have had to grow food in a small space. In his garden, or “micro-farm” as he prefers, you'll find more than 350 different vegetables, herbs, fruits, and berries.

In addition to planning crops, the family is truly living an eco friendly lifestyle. They are proud that their energy usage is only 6.5 kilowatt hours a day, and continues to decrease. They make their own biodiesel for their one truck and they also have an outdoor shower for summertime use.

This is now a full-time job for Jules and his three children, who sell their produce to area restaurants. They've also expanded into education outreach, started an online store to sell garden & eco-friendly materials and are making it their goal to get people to change their attitude about food. They say, “Food is power, the more we grow ourselves, the better.” "

Off the Net

I'm currently mostly off the Internet right now. I'm having network difficulties, but hope to find out why my wireless router is refusing to talk to my Intel card. : \

I'm also having more problems with focusing my eyes so reading is next to impossible at times. That also is an influuence. Yea for a lack of propper medical resources. Someone mentioned last time this hapened that the repeated issue is one sign of cancer. Wouldn't that be the icing on the cake of my life.

Hey did anyone notice that Lent will be starting soon? I will be attempting my annual practice of not complaining for the full season again. So I will be a pleasure to be around for a while. :) But for now, I feel like I want to purge my Cranky McKvetcherBritches state for the next week.

Just to keep y'all updated.