moonbuggy

‘One compound, cannabidiol, or CBD, made people more relaxed. But even small doses of another component, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, produced temporary psychotic symptoms in people, including hallucinations and paranoid delusions, doctors said.

The results, to be presented at an international mental health conference in London on Tuesday and Wednesday, provides physical evidence of the drug’s damaging influence on the human brain.

“We’ve long suspected that cannabis is linked to psychoses, but we have never before had scans to show how the mechanism works,” said Dr. Philip McGuire, a professor of psychiatry at King’s College, London.

In analyzing MRI scans of the study’s subjects, McGuire and his colleagues found that THC interfered with activity in the inferior frontal cortex, a region of the brain associated with paranoia.

“THC is switching off that regulator,” McGuire said, effectively unleashing the paranoia usually kept under control by the frontal cortex.’

‘[..] That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “After one hour,” he says, “we couldn’t see evidence the cells had died. We thought we’d done something wrong.” In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later.

But if the cells are still alive, why can’t doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. It was that “astounding” discovery, Becker says, that led him to his post as the director of Penn’s Center for Resuscitation Science, a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine’s newest frontiers: treating the dead.’

‘A gang stripped a South African man before supergluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report Thursday.

SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg.

“The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut,” SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying.’

‘This is the video taken by Taylor the sixteen year old daughter of David Hasselhoff which shows the actor extremly drunk.’

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‘A new study by Indiana University media researchers finds that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly calls “a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.”

The study documented six months worth, or 115 episodes, of O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo” editorials “using propaganda analysis techniques made popular after World War I.” Researchers found that O’Reilly “was prone to inject fear into his commentaries and quick to resort to name-calling. He also frequently assigned roles or attributes — such as ‘villians’ or downright ‘evil’ — to people and groups.’

‘A disgruntled wife has admitted feeding her estranged husband a curry containing dog excrement after their relationship broke down.

Jill Martin, 47, pleaded guilty at Paisley Sheriff Court to culpable and reckless conduct against husband Donald Martin. [..]

Depute Fiscal Margaret Dunnipace told the court that on 13 March, after placing the dinner in front of her husband Donald and watching him start to eat it, Martin had burst out laughing. [..]

The couple have now begun divorce proceedings.’

‘American soldiers discovered a girls school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged “death trap,” the U.S. military said Thursday.

The plot at the Huda Girls’ school in Tarmiya was a “sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims,” military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.

The military suspects the plot was the work of al Qaeda, because of its nature and sophistication, Caldwell said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

The plot was uncovered Saturday, when troopers in the Salaheddin province found detonating wire across the street from the school. They picked up the wire and followed its trail, which led to the school. Once inside, they found an explosive-filled propane tank buried beneath the floor. There were artillery shells built into the ceiling and floor, and another propane tank was found, the military said.’

Hey, I’m the king of the world. You ought to hear my song.

You come on and measure me, I’m 20 inches long.

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There are apparently images of break dancers, taken to make it appear as if they’re falling.

‘How do you get rid of the body of a dead astronaut on a three-year mission to Mars and back?

When should the plug be pulled on a critically ill astronaut who is using up precious oxygen and endangering the rest of the crew? Should NASA employ DNA testing to weed out astronauts who might get a disease on a long flight?

With NASA planning to land on Mars 30 years from now, and with the recent discovery of the most “Earth-like” planet ever seen outside the solar system, the space agency has begun to ponder some of the thorny practical and ethical questions posed by deep space exploration.’

‘This real estate agent will likely do a house check before letting her prospective customers tour on their own from now on, after a couple happened upon a homeowner dead in bed.

Linda Chabucos-Galow, a real estate agent with Shorewest, stood in the dining room while Justin and Colleen McKeen walked through a house Monday night.

Before long, she heard Colleen scream as the couple stood at the doorway.

“I thought, ‘What’s wrong?’ Maybe it was a dead mouse or something,” Chabucos-Galow said.

But then she peered into the bedroom and saw the body of Linda L. O’Leary, 55, the owner of the home. She had been dead for about two weeks, officials say.

“It looked like a Halloween prop,” Chabucos-Galow said.’

Yippee kai aye, motherfuckers.

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‘A Jetstar call centre operator was allegedly told the budget airline had “just created a terrorist” after it charged excess baggage fees to a disgruntled Brisbane passenger.

Denis William Malizani, 30, of Morayfield in Brisbane’s north, was yesterday charged with making a threat to destroy an aircraft after being told he had to pay the baggage fee while checking in for a flight to Adelaide on April 26. [..]

He allegedly rang Jetstar’s call centre at a later stage and became “aggressive” when he was referred to the operator’s supervisor to further discuss the fees.

Prosecutor Clive Porritt said Malizani had told the operator “I will take it fucking further. I will tell you what I’ll do – I’ll blow up your fucking aircraft. You’ve just created a terrorist.”‘

‘A 29-year-old man wearing a purple wizard outfit was taken into custody in Daytona Beach and charged with abandoning his fiance’s 4-year-old son in a booth at a Denny’s restaurant, according to police. [..]

Workers at Denny’s restaurant located off International Boulevard said Nathan Sierbrasse, 29, left the 4-year-old asleep in one of the booths.

When officers investigated, they found a note for law enforcement with the boy’s name and contact information.’

‘A Chinese judge charged with corruption died in his cell from “adult sudden death syndrome”, Xinhua news agency said today.

Investigators said Li Chaoyang, 38, had been unco-operative while in detention in Xing’an county in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southwestern China.

“Cuts on his face and other injuries” had been caused by a fall during an escape attempt, they said. [..]

“Li Chaoyang’s sudden death conforms with adult sudden death syndrome,” said Mr Shi, citing a forensic report.’

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‘When AACS was revealed as the encryption format of choice for HD DVD and Blu-ray, bets were placed on how long it would take for it to be cracked. Since the first HD DVD and Blu-ray discs began shipping, hackers have been hard at work figuring out how to break the encryption; DVD Jon even registered DeAACS.com. We’ve covered both crackers’ efforts and the attempts by the AACS Licensing Authority to keep those cracks from seeping into the public consciousness. Yesterday, all of that came to a head.’

‘A woman accused of holding police at bay by brandishing poisonous snakes was sentenced to house arrest and probation.

“I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind that night,” said Terry Jackson, 36, at her sentencing Monday.

Officers were trying to prevent the despondent woman from harming herself with a hunting knife when the confrontation took place October 25, police said.

Jackson picked up two western diamondback rattlesnakes, a pigmy rattlesnake and two copperheads to try to keep police from taking her into custody, authorities said.

Jackson, who was raising the snakes for laboratories, received several bites during the standoff and was taken to a hospital after police subdued her with a stun gun.’

Children don’t like to fly as much as they think they do. :)

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‘What they found surprised them — corkscrew-shaped oviducts, with plenty of potential dead-ends.

“Interestingly, the male phallus is also a spiral, but it twists in the opposite, counterclockwise, direction,” said Yale ornithologist Richard Prum in a statement.

“So, the twists in the oviduct appear designed to exclude the opposing twists of the male phallus. It’s an exquisite anti-lock-and-key system.”

Brennan believes females evolved convoluted oviducts to foil the male rapists.

“You can envision an evolutionary scenario that, as the male phallus increases in size, the female creates more barriers. You get this evolutionary arms race,” Brennan said.’

‘Carson admitted to police that he had been “making it hard for her to get far in the game.” He said that after repeated online threats from the woman, she sent her husband and friends over to his house to “take care of him.” Carson later said that he had made the mistake of telling her where he lived and “if her husband was man enough to just come meet me to settle this.”

2 weeks leading up to the assault he said he had been harassed by a few characters constantly during game play. “I knew that I might be messed with in the game but I didn’t really expect her husband to come looking for me. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”‘

‘A Utah County Republican delegate may not be catching hell for calling illegal immigration a satanic plot, but he isn’t gaining any converts, either.

Utah County GOP Chairwoman Marian Monnahan says District 65 Chairman Don Larsen’s resolution – asserting that illegal immigration is the devil’s plan to destroy the nation by “stealth invasion” – “in no way” is endorsed by the Republican Party.

“It’s just free speech,” Monnahan said Thursday. “It’s Don’s right to do that.”

Provo Mayor Lewis Billings, a prominent Utah County Republican, says he understands Larsen’s frustration with the federal government’s slow response to immigration issues, but he doubts “there will be a lot of support for the resolution in its current form.” [..]

Members of Utah’s Latino community searched for diplomatic words to respond to the measure.

“It sounds like someone who is way out in left field, living in some fantasy world,” [..]’

‘Electronics giant Sony has sparked a major row over animal cruelty and the ethics of the computer industry by using a freshly slaughtered goat to promote a violent video game.

The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centrepiece of a party to celebrate the launch of the God Of War II game for the company’s PlayStation 2 console.

Guests at the event were even invited to reach inside the goat’s still-warm carcass to eat offal from its stomach.’

I don’t quite understand how he managed that.

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‘From the moment of birth, we begin the battle against death — against the inevitable. Statistics say that a newborn child can expect to live an average of 76 years. But averages may not be what they use to be.

In 1786, life expectancy was 24 years. A hundred years later it doubled to 48. Right now, it’s 76.

“Over half the baby boomers here in America are going to see their hundredth birthday and beyond in excellent health,” says Dr. Ronald Klatz of the American Academy of Anti-Aging. “We’re looking at life spans for the baby boomers and the generation after the baby boomers of 120 to 150 years of age.”‘

‘Underworld figure turned author Mark “Chopper” Read appeared in a Melbourne court today where he was fined $300 for careless driving. [..]

His lawyer Bernie Balmer told the court his client – who appeared to be sleeping at times in court – admitted bumping the other car while trying to get into a tight carpark.

However, he disputed the claim that the collision caused $1,500 damage to the other car, saying when Read inspected the cars he could not see any damage to either vehicle.

In a lighter moment, after the court was told Read had no relevant priors, Mr Balmer joked it was a “wonderful day” when you could say in court no priors for Mr Read.’