If Marijuana Production Were Legal: Projected Tax Revenues, by State

If Marijuana Production Were Legal: Projected Tax Revenues, by State: "

A great chart from SloshSpot:

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2,000fps Slo-Mo Video of Water Drops

2,000fps Slo-Mo Video of Water Drops: "

So it turns out that when a drop of water falls into a pool of water, some very weird things happen. Rather than merging directly with the pool of water beneath, the drop very briefly becomes a sphere resting atop the pool, with an air layer between. When the sphere touches the water below (because of gravity, it forces the air layer away), most of the drop joins the water below and a second sphere is created, which again “floats” briefly on the pool. The cycle continues until eventually the water drop is actually fully subsumed by the water puddle below. Who knew? Check it out in this video clip, apparently from the Discovery show Time Warp, which is all about ultra-slow-mo (this video is shot at 2,000 frames per second, which is about 67 times more than normal 30fps video).

(Via Kottke.org.)

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Wall Street bonuses to rise 40%

Wall Street bonuses to rise 40%: "

There has been plenty of evidence that firms like Goldman Sachs (GS) have had such huge profits that their bonus payouts may be at all-time highs.

The federal government has systematically begun to control bank pay packages. The Treasury “pay czar” is effectively controlling compensation at companies which still owe TARP money. The Fed is pressuring other large financial firms to tie pay to risk.

None of those efforts seems to be working well, because bankers are ignoring the signals from Washington.

A new compensation survey described in The Wall Street Journal predicts that Wall Street incentive pay will rise 40% this year. For those in the fixed-income part of the industry, the increase could be closer to 60%.

MSN Money: Wall Street bonuses to rise 40%

(via Braincrowbar)

Related posts:

1. The Big Takeover: How Wall Street Insiders are Using the Bailout to Stage a Revolution
2. Dean Baker: Wall Street Follows the Path of the Steel Industry in Pittsburgh
3. Wall Street Gambles on Old People Dying

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Recipes to Make Your Own Soap, Lotion and More

Recipes to Make Your Own Soap, Lotion and More: "

You can easily make safe, effective toiletries - including lotion and deodorant - at home, using simple, healthy ingredients.

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Lucifer’s Friend: The Best Seventies Metal You’ve Never Heard

Lucifer’s Friend: The Best Seventies Metal You’ve Never Heard: "Lucifer’s Friend was a seventies prog-metal band that… OK, you stopped reading at “prog-metal.” I know, I know. But hear me out… these guys were one of the best of the whole lot, and are criminally underrated. I heard their album Banquet a couple years ago, and it’s irresistible, like Sammy Davis Jr. fronted Traffic or something.

Allmusic gives the backstory:

A German outfit fronted by a British singer, Lucifer’s Friend first gained minor notoriety, and later major cult status, as both early practitioners of heavy metal and progressive rock. Formed in 1970 Hamburg, by former German Bonds members Peter Hesslein (guitar), Peter Hecht (keyboards), Dieter Horns (bass), and Joachim Rietenbach (drums), the group was initially dubbed Asterix and recorded an entire album’s worth of material before connecting with singer John Lawton, whose then band, Stonewall, was playing a residency at the city’s famed Top Ten Club. Lawton’s vocals would grace Asterix’s only, eponymous album later the same year, and all involved were excited enough by the results that they immediately began collaborating on more material with which to relaunch the band under the provocative new moniker of Lucifer’s Friend…

Click the sample track below—the first from the album—for an epically uncool yet absolutely compelling fusion voyage to the Nether Side.

(Lucifer’s Friend: Banquet)"

The Fast Food-Depression Connection

The Fast Food-Depression Connection: " 
Before you order that 1400-calorie Hardee’s Monster Burger, consider this: a research team at London-based University College has found (surprise?) a link between depression and a diet rich in processed foods.  They also (bigger surprise?) found a link between a lack of depression and a diet rich in fish, fruits and vegetables. 

The team split the study participants into two groups.  After accounting for such factors as age, gender, and education, it was determined that the whole food-eating group would have a 26% lower risk for future depression.  The group eating a diet rich in sweets, fried food, processed meat, refined grains and high-fat dairy products had a risk of depression 58% higher than their whole food-eating counterparts.

Study author Dr. Archana Singh-Manoux added, “It is not yet clear why some foods may protect against or increase the risk of depression, but scientists think there may be a link with inflammation as with conditions such as heart disease.”

BBC News: Depression Link To Processed Food"

Revel and Ritual in the Post-Prosperity Age (UPDATE)

Revel and Ritual in the Post-Prosperity Age (UPDATE): "

In America, one of the lingering legacies of our Puritan roots is a simultaneous mistrust and economic exploitation of holidays and festivals. It really wasn't until the late 19th Century that holidays like Christmas and Halloween became popular- or even tolerated in some quarters. But there's still a strange sense of impropriety about it all, as if we should feel guilty about the act of celebration.

In addition, our holidays have become a minefield of commercial exploitation, which -surprise, surprise - only feeds into our alienation. Christmas has all but been destroyed by commercialism and sectarianism. It needs a major makeover and will probably get one if the economy continues to tank. Given the current political climate, it would probably need to be some kind of generic Winter Solstice festival, but that's where most of the familiar Christmas trappings- the cool ones, at least- originally come from anyhow.

At their roots all of our holidays are keyed into the rhythms of nature, which we have almost completely divorced ourselves from in our denatured existence. But there are signs of change. A lot of this is bleedover from the gay community, a lot of is coming from the neopagan and goth communities. You also have the equivalent of holidays-slash-pilgrimages with the convention circuit in different fan communities as well.

When you think about how we go through the workaday week, you realize it's these kind of holidays that give structure to our day to day life. It may be counterintuitive, but I don't see why Christmas and Easter (read: Ishtar) can't be celebrated by everybody, since they are in fact impossibly ancient holidays that were Christianized solely for political reasons.

I'm very encouraged by the Halloween revival and all of the Burning Man offshoots out there. The Super Bowl, Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, St. Paddy's, Easter, Cinco De Mayo, Summer Solstice, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve- hell, bring it on. Get together and dress up and celebrate and drink and screw and eat and laugh and puke. It may end up being the closest thing to a social glue we have.

Meanwhile, I'll just sit in my space capsule here and try to parse the meaning of it all. And one meaning I've parsed is that not only are these festivals increasingly independent of belief systems, they may actually be better off without them. The meaning is the act of the celebration itself. But again, at their core these festivals are based in those rhythms of nature that religious narratives were later imposed on.

The corporatization of our culture breeds alienation and isolation, and the result of that is paranoia. The cure for that debilitating disease is community, gathering, interaction, networking. And this new model of holiday gives these processes a compelling structure. The gay community has traditionally used festival and celebration as a way to deal with alienation and isolation, as have marginalized immigrant communities.

Now that we are all made to feel alien and expendable, it's only natural for this process to spread into the mainstream.

In their purest form, holidays give us an opportunity to reconnect with symbol and with ritual, which can't help but feed the Dreaming Mind. But only if these rituals are taken back from the pimps and ripoff artists who've been controlling them for the past hundred years.

UPDATE: This is interesting. Cheers to Astronut.

UPDATE: Please tell me this is a joke:

Earlier this week the Catholic Church in Spain also condemned the growing popularity of Halloween, saying it threatened to overshadow the Christian festival of All Saints' Day.

The Bishop of Siguenza-Guadalajara, Jose Sanchez, said there was a risk that Halloween could 'replace Christian customs like devotion to saints and praying for the dead.'

Uh, excuse me, your holiness but don't you have it the wrong way round?

"

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

This is from Boingboing:

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

Why Do Some People See Ghosts And Others Don’t?

Why Do Some People See Ghosts And Others Don’t?: "

Science Blog writes:

People seeing ghosts? There may be a genuine mind-body foundation for such anomalous perceptions, according to two researchers, Michael Jawer and Marc Micozzi, MD, PhD. Their book, The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion, suggests that sensing a presence, seeing an apparition, or feeling energy around a person or place may be related to the workings of the limbic system — the “emotional brain” — as well as a personality type that rapidly registers feelings.

As surveys consistently show that anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of the public say they’ve had an extra-sensory experience — with nearly 25% of respondents stating they’ve actually seen or felt a ghost — anomalous perceptions are nothing to shrug off. “People have had these experiences down the ages and across all cultures,” comments Micozzi, a physician and anthropologist. “They’re quite universal. What we’ve begun to document is that there’s a certain type of person most likely to experience them.”

That person is environmentally sensitive, according to Jawer, an expert on the condition known as Sick Building Syndrome. “Our data show that anomalous perceptions parallel other forms of environmental sensitivity, such as having pronounced or longstanding allergies, migraine headache, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, irritable bowel, even synesthesia (overlapping senses) and heightened sensitivity to light, sound, touch, and smell. Women make up three-quarters of this sensitive population but there are other markers as well: being ambidextrous, for instance, or recalling a traumatic childhood. The more we look at the people who say they’re psychic, or who have recurring anomalous experience, the more it seems there’s a mix of nature and nurture that predisposes them.”

The researchers posit that brain and body are effectively unified — a perspective taken by the pioneering field of psychoneuroimmunology — and that highly sensitive people react more strongly than others to what they’re feeling as well as to incoming environmental stimuli. This raises the possibility, Jawer and Micozzi assert, that subliminal feelings and other environmental nuances could be picked up by individuals who are sufficiently sensitive. A reputedly “haunted” place, therefore, could exhibit stimuli that register more with certain people and less with others.

More on Science Blog

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“Bones” in the Money Pit

“Bones” in the Money Pit: "

By Robert Singer

“Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.”—JFK.

Our consumer society didn’t just happen, it was planned. Not in 1910, or 1954, but in the year 1832, the year William Huntington Russell and fellow classmate Alphonso Taft at Yale University founded the Skull and Bones society, a branch of the Bavarian Illuminati.

According to most of the available biographical data on its early members, the money required to sustain the secret order’s campus affairs and its broader role in placing its members into key positions of influence upon their graduation from Yale was derived from the opium trade in the Far East.

Members, known as “Bonesmen,” include Rockefeller, Kuhn, Loeb and Morgan all connected to the House of Rothschild’s global financial empire. They are founders of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, France, and Germany or, for that matter, any central bank anywhere in the world. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913, one of the most important domestic acts in the nation’s history, took the power to create money from the people and gave it to the Bonesmen, in theory, for profit.

Russ Baker’s new book, “Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, And What Their Influence Means for America,” is about George H. W. Bush’s secret intelligence work with the CIA many years before he became the Agency’s director. Bush Sr. had played a powerful but hidden role in determining the direction of the U.S. government.

It’s common knowledge that the Bushes sit at the intersection of America’s business and intelligence communities, but it not so common knowledge that the Bush Family, Bush Sr., Jr. and grandfather Prescott Bush, were all Bonesmen. Prescott Bush’s initiation in 1918 is said to have included robbing the grave of the Native American warrior, Geronimo. Prescott Bush helped Henry Ford, Averell Harriman and others finance Adolph Hitler.

Russ Baker suggests the strong possibility that Bush Sr. was connected to the assassination of President Kennedy because “Lyndon Johnson would be more obedient to Texas oil men.”

A more plausible connection is Abraham Lincoln was killed for the Legal Tender Act of 1862 and Kennedy for Executive Order 11110.  Lincoln’s “greenbacks” would have prevented the Federal Reserve from creating $500 trillion of money out of thin air, money that Warren Buffett and Marketwatch say financed our global consumer society.

And, JFK’s “United States notes” backed by silver, which were withdrawn the day he was shot, would have put the Federal Reserve out of business and returned to the Treasury Department the Constitutional power to create and issue a debt-free currency.

Anyone who spoke against the “Creature from Jekyll Island” (Federal Reserve banking cartel exposed by G. Edward Griffin) was silenced. Presidents Garfield and McKinley, outspoken champions of “sound” money and a central bank, were silenced permanently.

In 1908, President William Howard Taft, a second-generation Bonesmen, sent Congress a Constitutional amendment authorizing the Federal Income Tax, the foundation for the Federal Reserve System that was signed into law furtively by Taft’s successor, Woodrow Wilson, on Christmas Eve of 1913.

Robert Owens, a co-author of the income tax act, later testified that the banking industry had conspired to create a series of financial panics throughout the 19th century in order to rouse the people to demand “reforms” that served the interests of the financiers. The public became convinced that the country needed a central banking system to stop future panics, and helped the Bonesmen pass legislation that allowed  the nation’s money to be issued by a private central bank.

The Rothschild Brothers of London observed, “The few who understand the (Federal Reserve) system will either be so interested from its profits or so dependent on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that class.”

In 1980 Ronald Reagan is elected president of the United States and he and George H. W. Bush move into the White House.

Two weeks after taking office, Reagan addressed the nation on the economy.

“By 1960 our national debt stood at $284 billion. Today the debt is $934 billion. We can leave our children with an un-repayable massive debt and a shattered economy, or we can leave them liberty in a land where every individual has the opportunity to be whatever God intended us to be. Together we can forge a new beginning for America.”

In the same speech Reagan displays his innocence of Federal Reserve politics, “Now, in all of this we will, of course, work closely with the Federal Reserve System toward the objective of a stable monetary policy.”

On March 26, 1981 Reagan signs Executive Order 12301 establishing the Presidential Council on Integrity & Efficiency to review federal programs for inefficiencies and corruption.

Predictably, four days later, the Federal Reserve and H.W. Bush “works with” John Hinckley Jr. to instruct Reagan on the first lesson of Federal Reserve politics. A president can be more popular than the vice president, but not always more powerful.

Although the Bush and Hinckley family had long, close ties overlooked by the press— the brother of the man who tried to kill the president was acquainted with the son of the man who would have become president if the attack had been successful—the family connection between Scott Hinckley and Neil Bush did not escape Alexander Haig, who, after the Reagan assassination attempt, temporarily prevented Vice President Bush from taking control of the White House.

Reagan learned the lesson: he was a figurehead relegated to witnessing the growth of America’s hyper-consumer society and national debt from the sidelines.

Directly and indirectly, the Bonesmen orchestrated the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the stagflation of the 1970’s and the dot-com and the housing market bubbles.

One of the more absurd notions that has found its way into the history books and the writings of economic experts is that somehow these men were made wealthier from the Monopoly money they printed, the same money that enabled consumers to buy houses, second houses, cars, RVs, TVs and DVDs, i.e. the cheap “stuff” we use on a daily basis. Let’s not forget the fact that in 1910 these men already controlled one-sixth of the world’s wealth. And that was real wealth—gold, silver and raw materials—not the fiat currency we call money. Don’t forget the world they owned and controlled in 1910 had a mostly balanced ecology.

The Skull and Bones society and the Federal Reserve were critical to the growth of our industrial and consumer society, but responsible for much of the financial and environmental damage done to the planet.

We perceive our Country as a constitutional republic, a government representative of the people and accountable to them; but it now seems that premise is nothing more than an illusionary, sentimental belief.

Want to know what steps must be taken to take our country back?  Watch the informative documentary, “How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.”

__________________________________________________________

Robert Singer is an Entrepreneur and the author of a forthcoming book on the Federal Reserve. His articles cover politics and the financial and environmental implications of our consumer society.  The articles have been main headlined and can be found on numerous popular websites: Marketoracle, Silverseek, Goldseek, disinformation.com, Daylife, LAprogressive, Canadafreepress, Opednews, Daily.pk and many of the Wordpress sites. Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru, proclaimed him a Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR).

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brittymhoward:(via thesecretpostcards)

brittymhoward:(via thesecretpostcards): "

brittymhoward:(via thesecretpostcards)

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Woof

Woof: "

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Manly P. Hall - The Love of Truth

Manly P. Hall - The Love of Truth: "

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