Festo – Air Inversion
27-Apr-12
Festo makes some amazing stuff. As someone once said “”That thing looks like it could origami
through time”.
Slowly, public opinion is changing. I think there will be a tipping point in the next 5-10 years, and most drug laws will be relaxed.
“Recent studies at Harvard, U.C.L.A. and my alma mater John Hopkins have now made it plain that doctors should—as soon as proper safeguards can be put in place—be free to offer illicit drugs to patients who are terminally ill, in order to ease their emotional suffering and potentially offer them new perspectives—fueled by drug-induced insights—into issues like their own mortality.
At Harvard, Dr. John Halpern (as reported in the New York Times) tested MDMA (the street drug Ecstasy) to determine if it would ease the anxieties in two patients with terminal cancer. At U.C.L.A. and Hopkins, Drs. Charles Grob and Roland Griffiths used psilocybin (the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms) to help cancer patients past their paralyzing, debilitating fears.
The results are reportedly consistently good. In many cases, patients are able to cope with their physical pain and psychological turmoil better than before. Some, no doubt, feel the drugs opened doors of perception previously closed to them, allowing them to make peace with their lives and the impending end of their lives.
The truth is that the likelihood of creating an MDMA or psilocybin addict out of a terminal cancer patient is exactly zero. And, while we all know the obvious risks during early and mid-life of using drugs to excess (including driving under the influence), those risks aren’t really present in substantial measure in the population of folks ending their days on this earth. And, I would argue, they are at the time when experimenting with what they can “see” and feel when freed from their anxieties and preconceptions and routine by hallucinogens or mood-altering substances like Ecstasy makes sense.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/04/24/doctors-consider-using-street-drugs-to-ease-suffering-dying-patients/#ixzz1t49Qnsx8
Portrait of Lotte
22-Apr-12
Lotte Time Lapse: Birth to 12 years in 2 min. 45. from Frans Hofmeester on Vimeo.
Not a clubber
20-Apr-12
I went to the Bicycle Day celebration at 1015 Folsom last night. It was much more of a club scene than I was expecting, and it really illustrated my fundamental introversion. The club was packed with people, and the music was so loud that the furniture visibly vibrated. Very difficult to have a conversation, even shouting. How do people connect in an environment like that? I suppose the protocol is you dance, and if you connect physically with someone on the dance floor, you retreat to somewhere quiet for more conversation. But I feel very self-conscious dancing, unless chemically enhanced. And the music was too loud for me to really enjoy it. And there were very few quiet places in the club–I eventually retreated to the smoker’s corral outside, and was able to strike up a conversation with a friend of a friend. I also suppose the experience is very different for a cute young girl, than it is for a non-photogenic, overweight, 35+ year old guy. Not my best environment overall. Those of you who enjoy clubs, what do you enjoy about it? Any tips for getting more from the experience?
Via io9:
Don’t use a lawnmower on the carpet. Don’t mix Coke and chainsaws. Don’t light fireworks inside the house. Don’t microwave bottles of red wine. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.
The folks at Danish TV show Dumt & Farligt got sick of being told what not to do, so they went and did it. All of it. And filmed it with a high-speed super-camera.
Enjoy.
Cute!
19-Apr-12
Best Dad Ever
16-Apr-12
Cob Window in Somerset England
14-Apr-12
