9.30.2009
9.28.2009
9.25.2009
Los "Baby Boomers" se elevan nuevamente
En Europa desde hace tiempo se han vuelto comunes las conversaciones entre padres de universitarios y sus hijos sobre la selección de cannabis del momento. Imagínate un desayuno familiar donde se comparan datos sobre la potencia, el sabor y el precio de la cannabis, o un “afternoon tea” donde se dan el placer de degustar los distintos néctares disponibles.
En Estados Unidos se recolectó data de 51,474 adultos nacidos entre 1943 y 1962, y de 16,656 adultos de entre 50 y 59 años que respondieron al Estudio Nacional sobre el uso de Drogas y Salud del 2002 al 2007.
Con esa información se llegó a la conclusión que el uso de las drogas ilegales entre los adultos de 50 a 59 años iba en aumento. Casi 90% de los adultos en esas edades que consumió drogas recientemente ya las había probado antes de los 30 años. El uso de drogas ilegales en ese rango de edades aumentó de 2.7% a 5.0% entre 2002 y 2007, es decir se duplicó
A raíz de este estudio también llegaron a la conclusión de que las características generales asociadas con el uso continuo de drogas ilegales en los “baby boomers” son:
Genero masculino, soltero, probaron las drogas a temprana edad, viven en la región del oeste de Estados Unidos, tienen poca escolaridad y bajo ingreso, desempleados por problemas físicos, uso de alcohol y tabaco, han estado deprimidos en los años pasados, no van a misa?!?
¿No será más bien que el telón cae poco a poco?
¿Qué el control se pierde?
¿Que la gente desea escaparse cada vez más de la realidad que los rodea, o más bien transformar su realidad sin saber cómo hacerlo con certeza por que han comido glutamato monosódico en demasía?
via pijama surf
9.24.2009
Reality
"Reality" like "illusion", "art", "stoned", "straight", "normal", "abnormal", "fantasy" "mask", "hallucination", "the truth behind the mask", "the mask behind the mask" etc. designates a judgment or evaluation by the observer and has no meaning apart from the observer-observed transaction.
9.23.2009
it all falls into place.
if one listens.
being true blue
in times of light multiply
in the eternal quest for balance... i am fire.
you bless me.
I feel uplifted...
we are light under the rain in autumn equinox.
no more weight on my shoulders... next.
i build the way as i go.
i listen.
i love.
i believe.
9.22.2009
9.21.2009
9.19.2009
9.16.2009
9.15.2009
9.14.2009
Patrick is gone...
tonight, on monday the 14th of september, he died @ home next to his family.
he was a B-movie action/romance star, and i will always remember him, an essential part of my teens.
here a selection of the moments i will never forget:
Patrick Swayze - Chippendale Cargado por tressage. -
and most of all:
"nobody puts baby in a corner"
rest in peace patrick.
9.13.2009
Domingo...
otra vez domingo...
me desperté tarde para el partido... again!
sólo metimos un gol y nos metieron 2... again!
coordinar comida a la familia con 5 llamadas de celular, más dinero a slim que tanta falta le hace,y aún así llegar sola y 15 mins antes al Bajío...
momento del día:
amaya cantando el ABC en inglés.
regreso a casa después de haber tragado como cerdos y hecho super.
- hay que sacar la basura.
- vamos.
- oooooooooooooof
- que? te da miedo mojarte?
- nooo... se me cerró la puerta!!!
oooooooooooooooooof...
que llueva! que llueva! la vieja no está en la cueva...
Tocamos en la puerta de los vecinos, típica casa mexicana en domingo en la noche, un poster del Cervantino en la entrada, una sala con pantalla plana, amabilidad extrema...
Esther y Mauricio al rescate!
un paraguas, el teléfono de un cerrajero 24 horas y 27 pesos para hablarle de la esquina...
todo se resuelve con paciencia y buen humor...
y así pasó una hora bajo la lluvia.
y todo se resolvió con:
300 pesos
30 pesos
unos kisses
muchas
muchas
muchas
gracias!
ducha caliente...
y cerrar el día oyendo Tujiko Noriko calientitos en la cama mientras la lluvia sigue cayendo.
Faltan sólo 7 días para que vuelva a ser domingo.
9.12.2009
Ganesha Chaturthi in 2009
Ganesha Chaturthi/Vinayaka Chaturthi
Ganesha, son of Shiva and Parvati celbrates his birthday.
The festival is in the month of Bhaadrapada, starting on shukla chaturthi (fourth day of the waxing moon period) and ending on Anant Chaturdashi. For 10 days, from Bhadrapad Shudh Chaturthi to the Ananta Chaturdashi, Ganesha is worshipped. On the 11th day, the statue is taken through the streets in a procession accompanied with dancing, singing, and fanfare to be immersed in a river or the sea symbolizing a ritual see-off of the Lord in his journey towards his abode in Kailash while taking away with him the misfortunes of his devotees. All join in this final procession shouting "Ganapathi Bappa Morya, Purchya Varshi Laukar ya" (O father Ganesha, come again early next year). After the final offering of coconuts, flowers and camphor is made, people carry the statue to the river to immerse it.
According to the legend, Lord Shiva, the Hindu God of resolution, was away at a war. His wife Parvati, wanted to bathe and having no-one to guard the door to her house, conceived of the idea of creating a son who could guard her. Parvati created Ganesha out of the sandalwood paste that she used for her bath and breathed life into the figure. She then set him to stand guard at her door and instructed him not to let anyone enter.
In the meantime, Lord Shiva returned from the battle but as Ganesha did not know him, stopped Shiva from entering Parvati's chamber. Shiva, enraged by Ganesh’s impudence, drew his trident and cut off Ganesha's head. Parvati emerged to find Ganesha decapitated and flew into a rage. She took on the form of the Goddess Kali and threatened destruction to the three worlds of Heaven, Earth and the subterranean earth.
Parvati was still in a dangerous mood. Seeing her in this mood, the other Gods were afraid and Shiva, in an attempt to pacify Parvati, sent out his ganas, or hordes, to find a child whose mother is facing another direction in negligence, cut off his head and bring it quickly. The first living thing they came across was an elephant. That elephant was facing north (the auspicious direction associated with wisdom). So they brought the head of this elephant and Shiva placed it on the trunk of Parvati's son and breathed life into him. Parvati was overjoyed and embraced her son, the elephant-headed boy whom Shiva named Ganesha, the lord of his ganas. Parvati was still upset so Lord Shiva announced that everyone who worships Ganesha before any other form of God is favoured. So Ganesh is worshipped first in all Hindu occasions and festivals.
"Ganapathi Bappa Morya, Purchya Varshi Laukar ya"
pictures via
Technocalyps
A three-part documentary by Frank Theys
Technocalyps is an intriguing three-part documentary on the notion of transhumanism by Belgian visual artist and filmmaker Frank Theys. The latest findings in genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, bionics and nanotechnology appear in the media every day, but with no analysis of their common aim: that of exceeding human limitations. The director conducts his enquiry into the scientific, ethical and metaphysical dimensions of technological development. The film includes interviews by top experts and thinkers on the subject worldwide, including Marvin Minsky, Terence McKenna, Hans Moravec, Bruce Sterling, Robert Anton Wilson, Richard Seed, Margareth Wertheim, Kirkpatrick Sale, Ralph C. Merkle, Mark Pesce, Ray Kurzweil, Rabbi Youssouf Kazen, Rael and many others.
Part 1: Transhuman
Part 1 gives an overview of recent technological developments (biogenetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, implants, nanotechnology,…) and prognoses made by leading scientists about the impact of these developments in the near future.
Part 2: Preparing for the Singularity
In this part advocates and opponents of a transhuman future are weighed against each other; prognoses are done when we can expect the transhuman revolution and how people are preparing for it already now.
Part 3: The Metaphysics of Technology
This part covers the metaphysical consequences of the new technological revolution. On the one hand scientist start to use metaphysical concepts to describe the impact of their research, on the other hand, a surprisingly large number of scientific projects is inspired by religious aspirations and more and more theologians from any religious or spiritual belief are getting interested in these aspirations of new technology, making the discussion inextricable complex.
9.11.2009
The father of LSD
The HIGH TIMES Interview: ALBERT HOFMANN:
1938, Albert Hofmann, a young Swiss chemist employed by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company in Basel, Switzerland, was working with lysergic acid in the hopes of developing a stimulant for blood circulation. On the twenty-fifth experiment in the series he produced lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a product he was certain was the stimulant he was seeking. He gave it to the laboratory’s medical department, which tested it and told him he’d once again failed.
Five years later, after new and more precise tests had been developed, Hofmann decided to resynthesize and resubmit his lysergic acid diethylamide for pharmacological scrutiny. But something funny happened in the last stages of his procedure: a minute amount of the product somehow entered his bloodstream and Hofmann found himself the first human guinea pig on LSD.
When HIGH TIMES contacted him in honor of the golden anniversary of his invention, Hofmann, now in his eighties, was quick, good-humored, and still fascinated with the effect his problem child—as he calls LSD—has had on us all.
Albert Hofmann has published several books, including LSD, My Problem Child, The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens, and Plants of the Gods.
HT: Let’s start with a brief summary of your work at Sandoz and why you ended up synthesizing LSD. What were you working on and looking for when you crystallized that compound?
HOFMANN: I was working with ergot, a fungus which contains many, many interesting substances, alkaloids, trying to synthesize a stimulant for blood circulation. That was the idea.
Now as a model I had koramine, which was already a famous circulation stimulant. And because lysergic acid, with which I was working, has a structure similar to koramine, I expected that lysergic acid diethylamide would also be a blood circulation stimulant. That was my plan.
HT: What happened?
HOFMANN: Well this substance, lysergic acid diethylamide, which I first synthesized in 1938, was given to the pharmacological-medical department at Sandoz laboratories for testing. But they didn’t find anything special. The animals that were used for the test had no special reaction with this compound and further research was stopped with this substance.
Five years later, in 1943, I decided to prepare a new batch of the lysergic acid diethylamide for more extensive testing because from the very beginning I thought this substance was something special. It was just a feeling I had, when I was working and preparing substances. So I had the intention to provide it again to the medical department.
Then, at the end of the synthesis, when I was crystallizing the LSD, I suddenly went into a very strange, dreamlike state. Everything changed, everything had another meaning, unexpectedly. I went home and lay down and closed my eyes and had some very, very stimulated fantasies. I would just think something and that was what I saw. It was wonderful.
But I didn’t know why I was having this strange experience. I had not ingested anything, I had not taken anything, and I didn’t know why that had happened to me. The only explanation I could see was that I had used a compound similar to chloroform in the synthesis, and I thought maybe some vapors from this compound, which was dichlorafilin, could be the reason.
And then three days later I experimented and inhaled some of this solvent, but nothing happened. So then I thought that maybe in some strange way I’d gotten some of this lysergic acid diethylamide in my body and I decided to experiment on myself with it. So I made a water solution with five milligrams.
HT: You didn’t take anywhere near that though, did you?
HOFMANN: No. I started by taking the equivalent of only one-quarter of a milligram, two hundred and fifty micrograms.
HT: How did you take it?
HOFMANN: I drank it. And within half-an-hour I began to experience similar symptoms to those I’d had three days earlier. But quite quickly they became very strong, very intense, and I became anxious, so I asked my laboratory assistant to accompany me home.
As it was wartime and I had no car, we went home by bicycle, and the bicycle ride was strange. And this bicycle ride, which was only about six kilometers from the lab to my little village, has been so important to the story of LSD. I don’t know why.
HT: Tell us about that ride and that first induced LSD experience.
HOFMANN: I had the feeling that time was standing still. It was a very strange feeling, one I’d never had before. There was a change in the experience of life, of time. But it was the most frustrating thing. I was already deep in the LSD trance, in LSD inebriation, and one of its characteristics, just on this bicycle trip, was of not coming from any place or going anyplace. There was absolutely no feeling of time.
At home I asked my assistant to call for a doctor. And as my wife and children were away for a few days, I also asked him to ask the neighbors for milk. Milk, you know, is known as an antitoxin in general.
HT: Did it help?
HOFMANN: Not at all. I was in a very odd state of consciousness. The outer world had changed. The room seemed to be full of life in the light, and colors were more intense. But I also had the feeling that I was changed, that my ego had changed. And then it became such a strange experience that I was afraid that I had gone insane. And sometime during that experience, at the climax, I had the feeling I was out of my body.
In the meantime the doctor my assistant called arrived and he tested my blood pressure and my head and such and he could not find anything abnormal, with the exception that the pupils of my eyes were enlarged. But nothing else.
HT: Did the doctor’s visit and his assurance that you were alright calm you down?
HOFMANN: No. I had the feeling I was going to die. I had no feeling in my body and thought I’d already left it, was already out of my body, which was something I couldn’t explain to the doctor. I couldn’t really speak rationally to explain that I had made an experiment, either. He wouldn’t have understood that.
So he sat with me through that very difficult experience—horribly difficult—and after about four or five hours the feeling began to change. I felt that I was coming from this very strange other worldback to our normal world. And I had the feeling, when I came back from this strange world, that our normal world, which ordinarily we don’t think is wonderful, was a wonderful world. I saw it in a new light. It was a rebirth.
But this happy feeling was only at the end of the experience. And when I came back I closed my eyes and had beautiful, colored visions. It was of course very strange. There was a transformation of every sound in optical figures. Each noise produced a corresponding colored figure, which was very enjoyable.
Finally I went to sleep, and in the morning I was completely fresh. I had the feeling that I was seeing the world as it was on the very first day of creation.
HT: When did you first record that experience?
HOFMANN: I wrote these things down for the head of the Sandoz pharmaceutical department, Professor Stoll, and for the head of our pharmacological department. And they did not believe me. They said I must have made a mistake with the dosage, that it was impossible that such a small quantity could have any effect. But then some people in the pharmacological department at Sandoz made experiments with other people which confirmed the enormous potency of this substance. They took only one-fifth of what I had taken and they still had very strong experiences.
HT: Why were they skeptical about the dosage?
HOFMANN: Because nothing so small has such an effect. Even today, LSD is the most potent of the psychoactive substances. With psilocybin, for example, you need one hundred times more; for mescaline you need five thousand times as much. With one gram of crystallized LSD you can have 10,000 to 20,000 doses! And that is absolutely unique among compounds. Which is why I always laugh when I read stories saying a gram of LSD makes 100 doses or even 1,000 doses.
Now this is very significant pharmacologically, because to produce such a profound effect on your consciousness, your senses, from such a small dose, meant LSD must attack the very center of our consciousness, where all these things come together. Which means LSD works very specifically on our brain, on the very center of our psychic core.
HT: Because it is so potent, are there any physical dangers connected to it’s use?
HOFMANN: LSD changes our consciousness. That is the most important thing about it. The bodily effects are almost nothing. We have yet to discover the lethal dose. People have had hundreds of times the active dose and they have not died. No one has died from a toxic dose of LSD. Not one case. All the fatal cases have come from accidents due to the disturbances of the consciousness.
HT: How did LSD begin to be utilized by psychologists and psychiatrists?
HOFMANN: We immediately knew it would be a very important instrument in psychiatry because of this action on our consciousness, so at Sandoz we began supervised psychological experiments with volunteers. Based on those tests it was first investigated in psychiatry by Werner Stoll, the son of my boss at that time, who was at the psychiatric clinic in Zurich. He performed the very first study with LSD, giving it to both normal persons and different kinds of mentally ill persons. It was a very fundamental investigation, but based on his first paper, which appeared in 1947 in the Swiss psychiatric journal, Sandoz began distributing LSD—with the label Delucit—to investigators. It came with a leaflet of instructions.
And then it found enormous interest worldwide for many years at the end of the forties and in the fifties. I think it appeared in many thousands of medical journals, and all things went well.
HT: What were your feelings when the United States army and the Central Intelligence Agency began to use it as a military tool?
HOFMANN: I was not happy at all that the people of war, the army laboratories, were interested in LSD. And I heard that it was not only the United States but that Russia also experimented with this substance. But I think the title of the army publication from the United States that discussed this was War Without Death. Instead of killing our enemies they planned to incapacitate them. They believed they would be able to use incapacitating drugs, and in this case it wouldn’t be so bad. That does not mean that I sanction this sort of use. I don’t. But many experiments were made by the army. That is already known and published. I think you will find many of these things in that new book called Storming Heaven.
HT: Did the military ever contact you directly?
HOFMANN: Yes, people from the Chemical Warfare division of the US Army came to my lab twice, asking if I could advise them on the synthesis of LSD. Which I could not do. You see, we had already published the synthesis in journals and in the patent, so that was not the problem. The problem was you needed the ergot fungus as a starting product, and that was difficult to get since ergot must be grown on a grain field. So it could not be made on a commercial scale at that time. Eli Lilly was able to make it finally, starting with other things, benzene, chlorine and some other simple products, but that process was so complicated, so complex, that that formula was never used. But then a special strain of ergot fungus was discovered which can be grown in tanks, and that was the breakthrough for commercial lysergic acid use.
And there are many other products derived from lysergic acid, some of which I invented. But these were not my problem children. That was LSD, which was the most important.
HT: What about your isolation of psilocybin from the magic mushrooms of Mexico. How did you get involved in that work?
HOFMANN: There was a man, Gordon Wasson, who had been to Mexico and spent time with some Indians and he reported he’d had visions from eating mushrooms. His colleagues did not believe him, so he had the mushrooms investigated at the Merck-Chemie Laboratories and in the University of Paris, with Professor Heime. But they were not able to isolate any active principles.
Then professor Heime heard that our lab in Basil was producing something that gave the same psychic effects as the mushrooms produced, so he asked us if we would investigate the mushrooms. So we studied the mushrooms, made extracts, and isolated the active principles.
But the question is why did we have success so quickly when the other laboratories didn’t? I’ll tell you. Because we tested the extracts on ourselves. We ate the extracts and had the experience, and then later we were able to concentrate extracts and finally crystallize them. These were also distributed by Sandoz, like LSD, to researchers.
HT: Did you ever get to meet Mr. Wasson?
HOFMANN: Gordon Wasson was so enthusiastic when he heard of this success that he came to visit my lab. And when I showed him the psilocybin crystals and explained them to him he was very happy. But then he said, “There is another magic plant in Mexico, used by the Indians, called ololuiqui, that has not yet been chemically investigated. You should also start to investigate this.”
So I studied the literature and found a publication by Dick Schultes (Harvard botanist, the father of ethnobotany. Editor.) about ololuiqui, in which he described it as seeds of a certain type of morning glory. We later met at a congress on medicinal plants in Berlin about 1960, and I began working with him.
HT: Were you ever able to investigate those seeds?
HOFMANN: Yes. In ololuiqui seeds—which I got via Wasson who got them from a Zapotec Indian—we found as active principle, listen now, lysergic acid amide. Very closely related, of course, to lysergic acid diethylamide. That was extraordinary! Nobody could believe it, because lysergic acid had previously been found only in fungi, in very low, very primitive plants. But ololuiqui are the seeds of flowering plants, and it is a very exceptional thing to find the same active principle in fungi and flowering plants.
This shows us that LSD is not just a laboratory product. It is closely related, chemically, pharmacologically and psychologically with an old, Indian magic drug. That means that LSD belongs to the group of the sacred magic plants of Mexico. That’s a very important finding. And I think this is very strange that you find a compound which is very similar to LSD to be the active principle of an ancient magic plant.
HT: That was the discovery which provided the basis of your theory of the Mysteries of Eleusis—initiation rights in ancient Greece, in which people were said to commune with the Gods after drinking an intoxicating beverage—wasn’t it?
HOFMANN: Yes, Gordon Wasson and I were convinced that the Mysteries of Eleusis used, in their holy potion, an hallucinogen which would produce visions for hundreds of people at the same time, all having the potion. Which means there must have been a psychoactive ingredient.
So we made an hypothesis, very well founded, that it was an LSD thing that could have been there. Because there is a special ergot that grows in the Mediterranean basin in the environment of Eleusis, that contains the same alkaloids as ololuiqui, namely, lysergic acid amide and hydroxy ethyl amide, and the priest of Eleusis had only to pick up the grains of this special ergot, drain it and dissolve it in the potion and they had an LSD-like preparation. And that is the hypothesis that this was the drug of Eleusis.
HT: Very different from our system of personal initiation.
HOFMANN: I think in antiquity they had institutions where people who wanted to be initiated could, under well elaborated conditions, have a beneficial effect from it. But we don’t have this. Maybe the psychiatrists that use LSD as a tool in psychoanalysis or psychotherapy prepare a setting which comes near to something which was used in Eleusis, but a medical environment is not the same as a spiritual one. That is a problem which our society has not yet solved.
HT: When people like Leary began to popularize LSD, what were your feelings?
HOFMANN: I was quite astonished, because the very deep effects of LSD are not at all just pleasurable, there is always a confrontation with our deepest ego. So I was quite astonished by this development. I wondered what happened. And at the very beginning I thought that it would be very dangerous when it began to get on the streets in the United States.
It turned out that my fear was well founded because so many people were not conscious enough, they did not have the respect which the Indians in Mexico had. The Indians believe you should only take the mushrooms if you have prepared by praying and fasting and so forth, because the mushrooms bring you in contact with the gods. And if you are not prepared they believe it can make you crazy or even kill you. That’s their belief based on thousands of years of experience.
HT: What did you think of Leary himself?
HOFMANN: People say I was the father of LSD and he was the prophet of LSD. When I met him in Switzerland, in Basel, I was quite impressed by how full of life he was, and with his devotion to his LSD and mushroom research. At the same time I was a bit anxious that he would get too impressed with himself, so I told him to be wise. But he was so enthusiastic about the effects of LSD and psilocybin that he threw my opinion away and was telling everyone to use it. But we were still on very good terms.
HT: A lot of us took his advise, and came out alright somehow. Most of us even say we’ve come out better for it...
HOFMANN: Yes. Many, many people have contacted me and confessed that this experience was very important to their lives, really. But thousands have been brought into the hospitals and clinics because of psychological breakdowns and so on. That was the reason it was withdrawn from the medical fields, which was absolutely illogical. If something is used unwisely on the streets why would you forbid its use in the medical field where it never had done any harm?
HT: What about the people doing the raves and acid-house these days, doing LSD and dancing for two or three days non-stop. What about that?
HOFMANN: I have not heard about this at all. I don’t know.
HT: In terms of it’s street use, since some people are going to use it anyway, what should these people know to protect themselves. Is there a simple antidote for people who have a toxic reaction?
HOFMANN: Yes. They could get an injection with a tranquilizer. But in psychiatric treatment we say you should not interrupt this. If you have a little care it will pass. It is only dangerous if you have a horror trip or something and you cannot stop it, and then you make an injection with a tranquilizer.
HT: I was hoping there was something simpler. We cannot carry around tranquilizers and syringes...
HOFMANN: Yes, and when you go to the hospital for the tranquilizer that itself is very frightening. Of course. But I don’t know what to say for another answer.
HT: Do you think it was a grave mistake on the part of those of us who used it on our own to use it at all?
HOFMANN: No. Not at all. We also, before it was banned, tried it. We made these sessions, which were very important.
HT: Looking back at 50 years of LSD use, what are your thoughts?
HOFMANN: I finally look back and say it was good that it happened. The hippie period of American history is very important. Of course, it could have been even better if LSD had not been used unwisely and uncautiously. That was the disaster. But the bad reputation came from those things which failed. There were a few, a few, compared with millions who used it in the good way. That is regrettable, very regrettable. We could have had another development. But I don’t think the story of LSD is finished yet.
HT: What did you mean?
HOFMANN: I think LSD and other psychedelics should be available for psychiatry. Other doctors have access to morphine, they have access to cocaine, but they have no access to LSD. This must change. And once LSD can be legally used in medicine it will be possible to accumulate more knowledge about how to use it and how to get the best of it. But you need a legal situation. If we learn to use it with respect and under the right conditions the beneficial effects would be enormous.
HT: Do you know Sasha Shulgin, author of the book Pihkal?
HOFMANN: Yes. He is an old friend of mine.
HT: What about the new analogues he discusses? Have you an opinion about them?
HOFMANN: All of these new drugs that are being synthesized are derivatives of mescaline or amphetamine. Or between them. But they are nothing like LSD. The chemistry is quite different, but they are also derived from magic plants of Mexico. Shulgin has made hundreds of derivatives of mescaline combined with the structure of amphetamine, which is closely related to mescaline.
HT: What about Ecstacy? Have you tried it?
HOFMANN: I have tried Ecstacy. It is quite different from LSD, it doesn’t go so psychologically deep. You have the feeling that you must kiss or embrace the whole world. But it is not as dramatic an experience as going deep into the various stages of your psyche with LSD.
HT: Do you continue to experiment on yourself with LSD?
Hofmann: No. I do not believe I need to get new insights from LSD because I got it. I got it. And with that insight I must do what Huxley wrote me once in a letter. “What you take in by visionary experience you must give out by intelligence in daily life.” That is now my task. I would like to be part of the Universe, which is the feeling I got from the LSD experience. This feeling is always present in my life, and therefore I do not need to repeat the experiment. It was also Huxley’s idea that a man should only take it three times in his life. In antiquity they went to Eleusis only once to have the initiation. It is not necessary to use it often. Maybe you should use it for a special experience.
HT: What about those who take it dozens, or even hundreds of times?
HOFMANN: I cannot understand people who say they took it hundreds of times. It is known that it loses its effect, its potency, with use. If you use it every day for just four days, on the second day it is less active than the first, the third less than the second, and on the fourth day there is no effect at all. You must stop at least one week to have the full activity again.
That is quite different from all the drugs which produce addiction. That is also important, that LSD does not produce any addiction. That is a difference that generally the health authorities don’t respect and don’t understand. And that is a very important thing, because all the drugs which are a problem in society are addiction producing and addiction is the problem. Not one experiment with heroin. That doesn’t matter. The danger is in the addiction. That is an enormous difference in these compounds.
HT: Anything you would like to add?
HOFMANN: I hope that we will learn in time to use it in the proper way. I am sure it can open, as Huxley would say, our doors of perception.
9.10.2009
9.09.2009
ce soir.
je pense à toi.
comme tous les soirs.
je t'aime.
et tous les jours un peu plus.
depuis le jour que je t'ai connu je l'ai su...
mon coeur est perdu .
9.08.2009
Kangaroo, Big Star
another rainy day/night listening to wwoz...
tonight I discovered Kangaroo
a touch of velvet in a noisy urban landscape...
A peek into the future
Wireless electricity, touchable holograms, grown-up slot cars, elevators to space and more: Who knows whether they'll pan out, but they're in the works.
Of all the predictions made during the future-happy 1950s -- when it was declared we'd soon have flying cars, robot butlers, rocket-delivered mail and food made from wood pulp -- there was one forward-looking statement that was completely validated.
It was delivered by Criswell, a self-described soothsayer and TV personality, who said, "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives."
Otherwise, predicting the future, certainly in the realm of technology, is a risky endeavor.
Still, billions of dollars are spent every year in trying to do just that: predict which products will spark new businesses or even whole new industries.
Here's a look at proposed technological wonders that are under development in the fields of energy, transportation, television and medicine. Some are far enough along to be aimed at the near term, others are more in the pipe-dream category, but all are serious enough to be funded by corporate, government or academic dollars.
Keep in mind, however, that the most important new technologies for the coming decades might not even have been thought of yet. After all, 1950s futurists didn't foresee the biggest game changer of our era -- the Internet. It's where so many of us are spending much of our lives.
Energy
* Smart meters: Global warming and volatile energy prices have spurred development of digital meters that provide real-time reports of energy usage. They're already in use in some parts of the country.
This year, Southern California Edison Co. will begin installing 5.3 million of them for all its residential and small-business customers. The cost: $1.63 billion, to be offset by a 1.5% rate increase until implementation is complete in 2012.
Once they're in place, consumers will be able to monitor their electricity use via the Internet.
Next up: remote-controlled thermostats and appliances. That can happen as soon as manufacturers agree to a single standard for the control chips, according to Paul Moreno of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., which is installing 9.8 million smart meters in Northern California.
* Wireless electricity: Electricity that travels through the air to power lights, computers and other devices sounds like one of those 1950s-style fantasies. But WiTricity Corp., a company spun off from research at MIT, says it's time to cut the cord. Wireless electricity products using its technology will be available by 2011.
Funded by $5 million from Stata Venture Partners and Argonaut Private Equity, the company has developed a system based on a technology already used in transformers (such as the block-shaped thing on your cellphone charger).
In transformers, power jumps across a tiny gap between two coils. The scientists increased that distance between coils to as much as 7 feet by having them both resonate at the same frequency.
The energy that travels between them is in the form of a magnetic resonance that's harmless to living beings, WiTricity Chief Executive Eric Giler said.
"To the magnetic field," Giler said, "you look like air."
One of the main obstacles will be skepticism about safety. When a post about WiTricity appeared on the latimes.com technology blog, a reader who wears a pacemaker said she'd never get close to one, and a man writing from Japan wondered whether the system might "nuke someone by mistake."
Transportation
* Ground: Cars are getting smarter. We drivers remain, well, about as smart as we ever were.
Researchers are pushing to provide drivers with better, faster information to avoid crashes and speed traffic flow.
One major effort is dubbed IntelliDrive. Funded by the federal government and major automobile manufacturers, and overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the program will begin tests of a traffic warning system in San Francisco next month.
Participating drivers will receive signals on their cellphones alerting them to bottlenecks approximately 60 seconds ahead. The phone will say, "Slow traffic ahead" through its speaker phone or headset, and a message will appear on its screen.
"We call it situational awareness," said Jim Misener, executive director of California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways. "It's not for braking hard but for warning you in advance."
The operators of the program will use traffic information from several existing sources, including Caltrans, and crunch it to provide the real-time warnings. Only cellphones using Windows-based operating systems will be able to download the software to take part in the test -- which leaves out iPhones and BlackBerrys, among others.
A video showing how it works is at www.intellidriveusa.org/library/videos.php. The ultimate goal is a dashboard warning system, fed by sensors in cars and along highways, to alert drivers of potential hazards all around them, including blind spots.
Far more radical programs take at least some control of cars away from drivers. The proposed RUF system based in Denmark is called a dual-mode program because a vehicle incorporating its design can be driven like a regular car or joined to a mass transit system reminiscent of kids' slot-car toys.
In that system, elevated monorail-style tracks would be built alongside major freeways, but instead of carrying trains, they'd ferry cars. Motorists would drive onto the tracks that fit into slots cut into the bottoms of their cars. That's when the automated system takes over, whisking the vehicles in single file as if they were on a fast-moving conveyor belt.
The RUF system's name comes from a Danish expression denoting fast movement. But in an investment brochure aimed at English speakers, inventor Palle Jensen said it could also stand for Rapid Urban Flexible.
No matter what the name, RUF would be a difficult sell to a city government. A study on building the system infrastructure in Los Angeles estimated the cost would be $10 billion. The proposed system can be viewed at www.ruf.dk.
* Commercial aviation: NASA allocated $12.4 million in research grants last year to Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and others to develop so-called N+3 concepts -- proposed aircraft designs for three generations, aeronautically speaking, in the future. That would put them into operation in the 2030-35 period.
Instead of focusing on building bigger, faster commercial jets, most of these efforts are aimed at designing aircraft that will be quieter, less polluting and more fuel efficient.
One NASA-funded project, which is experimenting with natural gas as fuel, is designing an aircraft that will fly at speeds approximately 10% slower than current norms.
Other projects are looking at biofuels. Earlier this year, Continental Airlines Inc. powered a test flight in part with a blend of fuel derived from algae and the jatropha weed.
* Space elevator: What if you could get to the final frontier by simply pressing an "Up" button?
It's in the gee-whiz category of future tech, but two university research groups have done work that could lead to elevators stretching from Earth to the edge of space.
At the University of Cambridge, scientists are developing carbon-based fibers far stronger than anything on the market. A practical use would be for lightweight bulletproof vests.
But some dreamers say it's so strong, it could be used to make the ultimate elevator.
Meanwhile, a group at York University in Toronto says a better way to go is an inflatable tower, 9 miles high, made of already available materials filled with helium and other gases. The York team built a 2,000:1 scale model in a stairwell.
So why an elevator?
Because launching a vehicle from terra firma, as we now do it, is tremendously expensive and requires massive amounts of energy. An elevator would eliminate that step by delivering humans and materials to the edge of space, where the pull of gravity is far weaker. Waiting spaceships could then take over for the second leg of the journey.
Let's just hope the arrival and departure announcement system at this transport station in the sky would be better than at most bus stations. A years-long flight to Neptune would be no fun if you meant to instead take the red-eye to Mars.
Television
* 3-D TV: Plenty of experiments have been staged in presenting television programming in 3-D, but they've been novelties.
Manufacturers hope that high-definition imagery and electronic shutter glasses will make 3-D palatable enough to make it a regular part of viewing. Indeed, in Britain, the satellite-delivered Sky TV service said it would launch an all-3-D channel next year.
But is the average person ready to don dorky glasses to watch TV (without them, the 3-D picture is just a blur)? Especially when said glasses, even if digital, can bring on feelings akin to seasickness?
That's what happened when Panasonic Corp. showed off its new 3-D system at the Consumer Electronics Show this year. Hopefully the nausea problem will be solved before the product makes it into homes.
* Laser plasma: Using a powerful, pulsed laser, Burton Inc. in Japan has made a projector that produces 3-D images that hang in the air. So far, it can show only points of light that can be combined to spell out letters or make a geometric pattern, and glasses are needed to view them.
But Burton Chief Executive Hidei Kimura said the company hopes to soon demonstrate "real 3-D images inside of the closed space covered by [a] glass dome."
* Touchable holograms: This is real "Star Trek" territory.
At the Siggraph trade show in New Orleans in August, a University of Tokyo research group demonstrated holographic images that could be touched. Sort of.
The images were made, as with all holograms, of light. But as you reached in to touch them, an electronic tracking system (adapted from a Wii game controller) and ultrasound generator worked together to provide a tactile sensation where the object appeared.
One of the most clever demonstrations involved holograms of raindrops that participants could feel dropping on their hands.
It has been often noted that the porn industry drives a lot of the innovation in high-tech entertainment. No more need be said about what one day it could do with this.
Medicine
* Robot instruments: At the University of Nebraska, doctors Dmitry Oleynikov and Shane Farritor developed a set of surgery instruments so small, they can be inserted into the body and then remote-controlled from outside.
Oleynikov is used to the comparisons to the sci-fi movie "Fantastic Voyage," in which a team of doctors gets miniaturized to go inside a patient.
"Except with us," Oleynikov said, "the surgeon does not get shrunk."
One use, he said, would be to send an instrument through a patient's mouth and down the esophagus to make a small hole in the stomach. From there it could remove the gallbladder or appendix. Light could be provided by a second mini-robot.
The idea is to make surgery far less invasive.
The researchers have raised $1 million so far. They're looking to raise about $10 million more to fund greater miniaturization and refinements to get the instruments ready for human trials.
* Nanosurgery: If this works, it could revolutionize the practice of medicine.
The idea is to be able to practice surgery so precisely that a cell or even molecule could be repaired or manipulated.
It's not a new idea. In 1959, Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman suggested that tools be used to make smaller tools, and then those tools used to make yet smaller tools and so forth.
Eventually, tools would be created so small, they could target individual diseased cells while leaving healthy cells alone.
Dreamers of the future have imagined that this could lead to triumphing over a foe as horrific as cancer.
And that would be a whole lot better than any flying car.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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