A very funny news satire about the UK's current Mephedrone scare.

Scary scary moophiedroone. A name that hunts the children of the nation. It is bought 'online'; over the internet, the international web, tabloid pariah, paedo-inabler and lately a drug dealer. The news hounds the use of Meow Meow, a murderous plant food raping and murdering the youth of our country. Sweden have banned it, along with Germany and Denmark, and Home Secretary Alan Johnson has pronounced it guilty of media obsession in the first degree."

"It is of course called Mephedrone. And it is wanted for participating in murder. Jersey hospital have put out a warning, a clamour across the whole rural constituency, after teenagers staggered into triage with side effects including; anxiety, panic attacks, palpitations, and seizures. Pupils in Leicestershire have apparently gone off sick after taking it. Humberside Police believe it contributed to the deaths of Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19, a chef in North Lincolnshire....

This video is entitled, simply, "Girl High On LSD Acts A Fool At Logan Airport Before Her Flight." There's something poetic seeing this happen against the backdrop of a Starbucks counter.

Erik Davis alerts us to this diabolical conspiracy happening on the streets of Egypt:

The biggest news on people’s minds in Egypt is not last week’s pro-democracy demonstrations in front of parliament during which some 90 people were arrested. It’s not Mohamed ElBaradei’s shakeup of the political scene. It’s not the president’s health, which remains ambiguous. It’s not even spiraling meat prices.

The biggest topic of conversation here in Egypt is the disappearance of hashish from the local market, a shortage that has become known, at least in some quarters, as “the hash crisis.”....

Official estimates put the number of hash smokers in Egypt at seven million, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the real number was much higher. It’s not uncommon to see the butcher in a local market smoking a fat joint while he takes a tea break. Cabbies will occasionally drive around Cairo’s congested streets with a little spliff held under the steering wheel. The smell of hash often drifts from the seats of the doormen who sit in front of Cairo apartment buildings....

But over the past month or so, hashish has all but disappeared from this North African country. Nobody knows why.

Originally published in 2009 ‘Being human – An entheological guide to God, evolution and the fractal energetic nature of reality’ is an attempt at explaining and guiding one through the fundamentals of reality. The author, Martin W. Ball, describes the text as being a treatise for the ‘radical non-dualism of the entheological paradigm.’

Ball’s underlying foundation, on the surface at least, is taken from the mathematical sciences. The two principle points being that firstly, the single substance of the universe is ‘energy’ and secondly that this energy is organized in fractals. God, he posits, is then essentially the total energetic being.

Unlike traditional pantheism however, which some of the more mystic scientists ebb toward, Ball take a more panentheistic conception. That is to say, God is not simply a totality but a self-aware being. Being ‘self-aware’ and in a constant state of flux, God is, according to Ball, also equal to evolution, the Now or, more succinctly, self-actualization. The universe then, is the actualization of God into physical being, which it must be noted, is only one degree of the infinite potentiality of energy...

The Jefferson County Attorney’s office has dismissed all criminal charges against the owner of a botanical plant distribution warehouse that was at the center of the K2 controversy.

Lawrence resident Jonathan Sloan, owner of Bouncing Bear Botanicals in Oskaloosa, was arrested in February and charged with eight felony drug offenses, including the unlawful manufacture and distribution of controlled substances.

The arrest came after federal, state and local authorities raided Sacred Journey, 1103 Mass. in downtown Lawrence, seizing the marijuana-like substance K2.

Sloan’s warehouse, which supplied Sacred Journey with K2 and a number of other herbal products, was also raided.

Investigators seized more than $700,000 in cash from the business and bank accounts and took several items from the warehouse, including thousands of cactus plants and 20 toads.

Sloan was scheduled to appear in Jefferson County court for a preliminary hearing in the case on Tuesday. Sloan did not return calls seeking comment.

Jefferson County Attorney Caleb Stegall said while the charges are dismissed, the investigation is on-going.

Woot!

[Thanks Jim and Cosmic Mike!]

Left-leaning political blogger Josh Marshall commented yesterday on the idea that drug choices play out differently at different parts of the political spectrum, commenting on recent inside memos from the Teabaggers, as well as reports that the nutjobs of the Christian Hutaree militia were into crack cocaine:

But any kind of cocaine, crack or otherwise, just wasn't what I was figuring. (Just as a side note, perhaps we can all agree that the 2nd amendment shouldn't apply to coke addicts. Who's with me on this?) Not that coke ain't a thing on the right, just not that right. That's more your Wall Street/libertarian supply side type...

Today, another comment was added from a reader who seems to have partied all around the political landscape:

First of all, in my experience, Marijuana is used by all political stripes. The leftist hippie protester could easily buy some really high quality outdoor grown "kind buds" from a militia member. I had a formative experience getting high in Bozeman MT with some scary right wing militia types. I have met a lot of conservative people that would have no problem dropping acid or taking shrooms if they wanted "party". A big supporter of Obama here in Mt Pleasant was also married to a coke dealer, and I have a few hippie friends that have back problems that seem to require a lot of oxy's. Pills are rampant across many demographics, adderall, oxycotin, etc.
In my opinion, if you want to get high, you only are supporter of the party you are having at that time.

And that seems like some real wisdom there.

To correspond with the MAPS conference in San Jose this week, I am releasing the final version of 'Psychedelic Information Theory' online.

'Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason' is an examination of the nonlinear dynamics of hallucination and altered states of consciousness. By deconstructing the systems of human perception and memory, 'Psychedelic Information Theory' quantifies the limits of psychedelic perception and describes the methods by which psychedelics alter consciousness, create new information, and affect human culture. By presenting these methods in physical terms 'Psychedelic Information Theory' offers a rational and objective model for shamanic transformation and psychedelic therapy in modern clinical practice.

I thank you for your patience.

Next week, the brightest lights of the psychedelic cognoscenti will gather in San Jose, California. Leaving swirls of tracer visions in their wakes, they will converge from around the world at an incongruously bland Holiday Inn, 50 miles south of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that once served as the pulsing capital of Psychedelistan. There, several hundred turned-on and tuned-in doctors, psychologists, artists and laypeople will participate in the annual conference of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). For four days, they will explore -- through workshops and lectures, nothing more -- the widening gamut of clinical inquiry into the uses of the psychedelic experience, a global resurgence of which has led to hopeful talk of a "psychedelic revival."...

One of the most significant figures attending the conference in San Jose is a man largely unknown to the general public. Years before Leary made headlines for his Ivy League adventures, and years before Ken Kesey held the first acid parties in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a young doctor named Stanislav Grof was conducting rigorous clinical experiments involving LSD in the most unlikely of places: a government lab in the capital of communist Czechoslovakia. It was there, at Prague's Psychiatric Research Institute in the 1950s, that Grof began more than half-a-century of pioneering research into non-ordinary states of consciousness. While he is frequently marginalized in, if not completely left out of, popular psychedelic histories, it is not for any lack of contribution to the field. "If I am the father of LSD," Albert Hoffman once said, "Stan Grof is the godfather."

[Thanks Soma Junkie!]

From the New York Times:

As a retired clinical psychologist, Clark Martin was well acquainted with traditional treatments for depression, but his own case seemed untreatable as he struggled through chemotherapy and other grueling regimens for kidney cancer. Counseling seemed futile to him. So did the antidepressant pills he tried.

Nothing had any lasting effect until, at the age of 65, he had his first psychedelic experience. He left his home in Vancouver, Wash., to take part in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school involving psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in certain mushrooms.

Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs' potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness.

[Thanks Dave and 23 Wolves!]

This paper caught my eye while compiling papers for a chemistry literature survey. This paper was in the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Bulletin of Japan 2010, vol 58, issue # 2. It has a very detailed experimental section. It's not very often you see a Volcano vaporizer cited in a scientific paper.