For all of your cyborg-becoming needs

This is the perfect segue toward singularity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7TB8b2t3QE

of course this most likely won't catch on until Apple "invents" it again, but still

Modern Day Colonialism

Monsanto in the Medical Weed Game - Another Reason NOT to Use Medical Marijuana

Not sure why we would need weed killer and fertilizer for something that grows all over my yard accidentally, but here it is - read "High Hopes at Miracle-Gro in Medical Marijuana Field" as published in the Wall Street Journal...

If medical marijuana does make its way into the mainstream, I hope folks are at least smart enough to grow it themselves WITHOUT chemicals. It takes a special kind of moron to believe any chemicals would be needed to grow "weed."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304665904576383832249741032.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThir

Are You an Addict?

David Gutierrez, staff writer for Natural News wrote a gripping piece on how Junk food-addicted rats chose to starve themselves rather than eat healthy food which puts scientific study behind what many of us already suspected - that junk food is essentially a highly addictive drug .

Here is a copy of the article verbatim:

(NaturalNews) A diet including unlimited amounts of junk food can cause rats to become so addicted to the unhealthy diet that they will starve themselves rather than go back to eating healthy food, researchers have discovered.

In a series of studies conducted over the course of three years and published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Scripps Florida scientists Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny have shown that rats' response to unlimited junk food closely parallels well-known patterns of drug addiction -- even down to the changes in brain chemistry.

"What we have are these core features of addiction, and these animals are hitting each one of these features," Kenny said.

In their first study, the researchers fed rats on either a balanced diet or on the same diet plus unlimited access to junk foods purchased at a local supermarket, including processed meats and cakes. Within a short time period, the rats on the junk food diet began to eat compulsively and quickly became overweight.

"They're taking in twice the amount of calories as the control rats," Kenny said.

The researchers hypothesized that the rats were eating compulsively because, like drug addicts, they had become desensitized to smaller amounts and needed more and more for the same rush of pleasure.

Many recreational drugs work by directly stimulating the brain's pleasure centers, particularly the dopamine receptor known as D2. Overstimulation of this receptor causes the body to start producing less dopamine, leading the addict to compensate by taking more of the drug.

Since dopamine can also be released by pleasurable activities such as food or sex, Kenny and Johnson speculated that food addiction could develop in the same way. To test whether the rats had, in fact, become habituated to dopamine, the researchers took the rats from the first experiment and hooked their brains up to a device that would directly stimulate their D2 receptors when they ran on a wheel.

Rats eating a junk food diet ran on the wheel significantly longer than rats fed a normal diet, suggesting that their receptors had indeed become desensitized. This "profound" desensitization occurred after just five days on a junk food diet.

"They're not experiencing rewards the way they should," Kenny said. "When you experience that, one way of feeling better is to go back to the junk food."

"They lose control. This is the hallmark of addiction."

In another test of their addiction hypothesis, the researchers used a virus to block the D2 receptors in healthy rats. All those rats soon became compulsive eaters.

"This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neurobiological underpinnings," Johnson said.

Having established that the junk food rats had become addicted, Johnson and Kenny wanted to know how far this addiction would push them. So they took both junk-food addicted rats and rats that had not previously been exposed to such food, and exposed them to electrical shocks whenever they ate junk. Rats that had just been introduced to junk food quickly stopped eating it, while the addicted rats ignored the discomfort and kept eating.

Perhaps the most shocking finding came when the researchers took away the addicted rats' access to junk food and started feeding them only healthy rat chow again -- the same diets the rats had eaten as pups. When junk food was no longer available, the rats simply refused to eat for two weeks.

"They actually voluntarily starved themselves," Kenny said.

"It's almost as if you break these things, it's very, very hard to go back to the way things were before. Their dietary preferences are dramatically shifted."

The research strongly suggests that many modern humans also suffer from junk food addictions. Kenny notes, however, that unlike the rats, all humans with access to junk food do not become obese. He attributes this difference to the influence of health knowledge and social pressure in moderating people's natural eating habits.

"The rats don't suffer from the same social pressures that we do," he said.

The idea of junk food addiction is not a new one, and the dopamine-junk food connection was actually put forward by former FDA Commissioner David Kessler in his best-selling book, The End of Overeating.

"Certainly, we see this addictive pattern in humans," nutritionist Sandy Livingston said. "They know they shouldn't overeat, but they do it anyway."

Livingston expressed hope that better knowledge about the biochemical side of food addiction might result in lessened guilt and judgment surrounding obesity.

"A lot of people blame themselves -- 'Why don't I have any willpower?'" she said.

"Food can be highly addictive," said author and nutritional supplement producer Jordan Rubin. "When people describe overeating and weight loss as a battle, this is why."

He called for more research into which individual components of junk food, such as MSG, might be behind its addictive effects.

Obesity researcher Ralph DiLeone of Yale University noted that more research is needed into the long-term effects of such addiction, even if an animal later switches its diet and loses weight.

"They might be a normal weight, but how they respond to food in the future may be permanently altered," he said.

Suggesting yet another area for future research, Kenny has expressed hope that better biochemical understanding of food addiction might someday enable the development of a drug or vaccine as a treatment for compulsive eating.

Johnson and Kenny's research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Bank of America and The Margaret Q. Landenberger Research Foundation.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/health
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48605/titleJunk_food_turns_rats_into_addicts

The Story of Stuff

It's been said that the only way to accurately predict the future, is to create it. Just ask Victor Lebow who said,

"Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption...we need things, consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate." ~ Economist Victor Lebow 1955

If that's no indication of how we were blindfolded and led to our current state of being, then you're already dead. In case I have your attention, check out the following presentation:




Some of the loudest quotes I heard were:

The U.S. has less than 4% of our original forests left.
In the U.S. 40% of the water ways have become undrinkable

The U.S. makes up 5% of the population yet we use up 30% of the Earth's resources, creating %30 of the world's waste!

Happy Shopping!

The Trials of Henry Kissinger

This film documents most eloquently, the effect of The United States foreign policy as well as the covert (and very illegal) operations continuous;y carried out by our national intelligence agencies.

It also shows in detail, how corporate interests influence these policies (i.e. ITT and Pepsi's influence on Pinochet's coup that orchestrated to the original 9/11)

Monsanto GMO Ignites Big Seed War

Read the NPR column called
Monsanto GMO Ignites Big Seed War
(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122498255)

World Health Organization Accused of Mass Murder

The Healing of The Nation

Hemp could provide us with Food, Clothes, Shelter, Paper, Medicine, Essential oils, hell even cars. Because of it's classification as a "weed" it requires no pesticides or weed killers to grow so it never harms the earth like many of today's genetically engineered agricultural products do (such as cotton). (Not to mention tt is completely biodegradable.)

In fact, up until DUPONT made hemp growth illegal to promote it's cotton, hemp was a major help to the economy of the U.S. and beyond. It even helped the country get through several wars. The growth and use of hemp is as important to American history as, well, the Declaration of Independence – which was written on hemp paper. Or Levi’s jeans, originally made with hemp fiber. Or from the very beginning, say the Jamestown or Plymouth Rock colonies where it was illegal NOT to grow hemp. Even the first flag was hemp fabric.

For some further reading, here's what The Bible has to say:

Who covereth the heaven with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth. Who maketh grass to grow on the mountains, and herbs for the service of men.
Psalm 147 verse 8

Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
Genesis 1:29

Blessed are those who made these Little Debbie snack cakes for they are the righteous bringers of happiness.
Matty 5:12pm

(Okay, I made that one up - but you get the point)

If you'd like to get involved with the advocacy of hemp you can get on board here:
http://www.votehemp.com/

or check out http://blog.mpp.org/