Zut Alors!

1919 LA BESTIONI FIRE TRUCK HOTROD

nobody@vox.com(Xtine) — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:35:20 -0700

LOT #724.1 - NO RESERVE
Barrett-Jackson Auctions
2006 Palm Beach Classic Car Auction
SOLD FOR $167,400

OPTIONS
COLOR - RED
TRANS - 4 SPEED
CYLINDERS - 6
ENGINE SIZE - 14 LITRE
VIN - N02526

LaBestioni-640x384

This is viagra on wheels!

1919LABESTIONI604316

The beast is SPEED. Nobody has tamed the beast.

La Bestioni is a two man race car.

1919LABESTIONIfront

NO CREATURE COMFORTS. (Extra storage compartment for enormous nads.)

Hide, hide the women and children.

Gary Wales honors the heroic pioneers from the era of Monster racers. Mercedes Blitzen Benz 26.5 litre/ 6 cylinder - 1910 (125 mph); Fiat's The Beast of Turin 28 litre/4cylinder - 1912 (145mph - no brakes). These cars were meant to go: not stop!!!

La Bestioni is a 14-litre, 6-cylinder, two-man boat-tail racer with power steering AND power brakes. Chassis/engine is based on a pre-1920's American La France firetruck.

Gary Wales says, with over 40 years and hundreds of cars under his belt, this car has been "the most fun automobile I have ever owned. The public response everywhere I go in this car is humbling and overwhelming."

Faint of heart need not apply.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

English "self-important and irritating"

nobody@vox.com(Xtine) — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:42:16 -0700

by Paul Majendie
Fri May 9, 2008

LONDON (Reuters) - England is an irritating and insular country full of overweight, binge-drinking, reality TV addicts, a new guide warns tourists.

But in the new Rough Guide to England, the English are also hailed as a nation of animal-loving, tea-drinking charity donors who love nothing better than forming an orderly queue.

Gone, it seems, is the image of a genteel country awash with Englishmen politely tipping their bowler hats, groping through the London fog and being kinder to pets than kids.

The writers confess to bafflement over the quirky English, concluding that of the 200 countries the guide reviews there is none "so fascinating, beautiful and culturally diverse yet as insular, self-important and irritating as England."

They said the English are proud of their multi-culturalism and are united by one thing -- their sense of humour.

But there are constant contradictions. In a country priding itself on patriotism, they have a Scottish Prime Minister, an Italian football coach and a Greek married to the Queen.

They are gently mocked as voracious consumers of celebrity chit-chat and "as a glance at the tabloid newspapers will confirm, England is a nation of overweight, binge-drinking reality TV addicts."

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Woman fired for giving 16-cent treat to toddler

nobody@vox.com(Xtine) — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:31:54 -0700

by Claire Sibonney
Thu May 8, 2008

TORONTO (Reuters) - An attendant at a Canadian restaurant who was sacked for giving a bite-sized doughnut, worth 16 cents, to an agitated toddler was given her job back on Thursday after the case received wide media attention.

Nicole Lilliman, a single mother, said she was dismissed from a London, Ontario, outlet of the Tim Hortons coffee and doughnut chain after video cameras captured the 27-year-old giving a Timbit to a toddler.

"It was just out of my heart, she (the toddler) was pointing and going 'ah, ah...' I should have gone to my purse and got the change, but it was busy," Lilliman told the Toronto Star newspaper.

Tim Hortons said on Thursday that the firing was a mistake.

"It was the unfortunate action of one manager who unfortunately made an overzealous decision, and thankfully we were able to rectify the situation," said company spokeswoman Rachel Douglas.

Douglas said the company, a Canadian icon with stores on virtually every high street across the country, told Lilliman that she could have her job back, and Lilliman had accepted.

A single Timbit sells for 16 Canadian cents (16 U.S. cents), but most shoppers buy boxes of 10, 20 or 40 of the deep-fried goodies, which come in a variety of flavors.

Douglas said Tim Hortons had received a number of complaints. "Thankfully we're able to go back to them and say we were able to fix the situation," she said.

It is my sincerest hope that "manager who unfortunately made an overzealous decision" lost its job and won't be asked back.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Doubts Raised on Big Backers of Mortgages

nobody@vox.com(Xtine) — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:19:15 -0700

By CHARLES DUHIGG
The New York Times
Published: May 6, 2008

20080505_FANNIE_GRAPHIC.jpg

As home prices continue their free fall and banks shy away from lending, Washington officials have increasingly relied on two giant mortgage companies — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — to keep the housing market afloat.

But with mortgage defaults and foreclosures rising, Bush administration officials, regulators and lawmakers are nervously asking whether these two companies, would-be saviors of the housing market, will soon need saving themselves.

The companies, which say fears that they might falter are baseless, have recently received broad new powers and billions of dollars of investing authority from the federal government. And as Wall Street all but abandons the mortgage business, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now overwhelmingly dominate it, handling more than 80 percent of all mortgages bought by investors in the first quarter of this year. That is more than double their market share in 2006.

But some financial experts worry that the companies are dangerously close to the edge, especially if home prices go through another steep decline. Their combined cushion of $83 billion — the capital that their regulator requires them to hold — underpins a colossal $5 trillion in debt and other financial commitments.

The companies, which were created by Congress but are owned by investors, suffered more than $9 billion in mortgage-related losses last year, and analysts expect those losses to grow this year. Fannie Mae is to release its latest financial results on Tuesday and Freddie Mac is to report earnings next week.

The companies are sitting on as much as $19 billion in additional losses that they have not yet fully acknowledged, analysts say. If either company stumbled, the mortgage business could lose its only lubricant, potentially causing the housing market to plummet and the credit markets to freeze up completely.

And if Fannie or Freddie fail, taxpayers would probably have to bail them out at a staggering cost.

“We’ve taken tremendous risks by loosening these companies’ purse strings,” said Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida and a former secretary of housing and urban development. “They could cause an economywide meltdown if they got into real trouble and leave the public on the hook for billions.”

Concerns over the companies’ finances have prompted a fierce behind-the-scenes battle between nervous government officials and the two companies. Bush administration officials, the Federal Reserve and lawmakers all believe that the companies’ financial safety cushion is far too thin and have pleaded with them to raise more capital from investors.

Freddie and Fannie, which are enjoying new growth and profits, have largely resisted those pleas, people briefed on the talks say, because selling new shares could dilute the holdings of existing shareholders and drive down their stock prices. Though executives have promised to raise money this year, they refuse to specify how much and when.

Moreover, the companies are using their newfound clout to push Congress and their regulator to roll back the limits that were imposed after recent scandals over accounting and executive pay, according to participants in those conversations.

More Capital Sought

As a result, high-ranking government officials are now quietly threatening to publicly criticize the two companies if they do not soon raise large amounts of capital, people with firsthand knowledge of those threats say. William Poole, a president of a Federal Reserve bank who has since retired, has warned that companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are “at the top of my list of sources of potentially serious trouble.”

A report last month by the agency overseeing the companies said that they pose “significant supervisory concerns” and that Freddie Mac suffers “internal control weaknesses.”

Lawmakers are pushing to rein in the companies with new legislation. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who leads the Banking Committee, will soon take up legislation giving the government broad authority over the companies. Lawmakers say it is likely a bill will pass this year.

“They are on real thin ice financially,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Banking Committee. “And the way the law is written right now, there is very little we can do to correct that.”

The companies say such criticisms are without merit. Their latest regulatory filings, they note, show a combined financial safety net that exceeds required minimums by $7 billion. The companies raised $13 billion from investors last year and say any future losses will be offset by new revenue and by money they have already set aside.

Criticisms Rejected

“The irony is that right now I’m seeing the best opportunities since I’ve been in this business,” said Daniel H. Mudd, chief executive of Fannie Mae, in an interview conducted last month.

The companies also say that they have not demanded anything. Rather, they say, the limitations have been dropped because of the companies’ commitment to financial transparency and aiding the housing recovery.

But others remain concerned. Though the companies’ main regulator, James B. Lockhart III, director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, has voiced strong confidence in the companies, a high-ranking member of his staff said some officials had begun considering the worst.

“It’s not irrational to be thinking about a bailout,” said that person, who requested anonymity, fearing dismissal.

Fannie and Freddie do not lend directly to home buyers. Rather, they buy mortgages from banks and other lenders, and thereby provide fresh capital for home loans. The companies keep some of the mortgages they buy, hoping to profit from them, and sell the rest to investors with a guarantee to pay off the loan if the borrower defaults.

Because of the widespread perception that the government would intervene if either company failed, they can borrow money at lower interest rates than their competitors. As a result, they have earned enormous profits that have enriched shareholders and managers alike: from 1990 to 2000, each company’s stock grew more than 500 percent and top executives were paid tens of millions of dollars.

Those profits were threatened earlier this decade, however, when new competitors emerged and after audits revealed that both companies had manipulated their earnings. The companies were forced to replace top executives, pay hundreds of millions in penalties and consent to strict growth limits.

To keep profits aloft and meet affordable-housing goals set by Congress, the companies began buying huge numbers of subprime and Alt-A mortgages, the highly profitable loans often taken out by low-income and riskier borrowers. By the end of last year, the companies had guaranteed or invested in $717 billion of subprime and Alt-A loans, up from almost none in 2000.

Then the housing bubble burst. In February, the companies revealed a $6 billion combined loss in the fourth quarter of 2007, and both companies’ stock prices fell more than 25 percent in less than two weeks. Freddie Mac fell to $17.39 on March 10 from $24.49 on Feb. 28, while Fannie Mae declined to $19.81 on March 10 from $27.90 on Feb. 28.

Despite those troubles, lawmakers had few alternatives to asking Fannie and Freddie to buy more and riskier mortgages.

“I want these companies to help with affordable housing, to help low-income families get loans and to help clean up this subprime mess,” said Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. “Otherwise, why should they exist?”

Demands for Repeals

But now that the government depends on Fannie and Freddie to keep markets humming, the companies are making demands of their own — namely, repealing some of the limits created after the scandals and even some established by law.

Last year, in return for buying billions of dollars of subprime mortgages to help stabilize the market, executives won the right to expand their investment portfolios. In March, the companies agreed to raise more capital within the year. In exchange, they received an additional $200 billion in purchasing power.

Last month, the companies promised to pump money into the more expensive reaches of the housing market. In return, Congress temporarily raised the cap on the size of the mortgages they can buy to almost $730,000 from $417,000.

“We have to bow and scrape and haggle each time we need help,” said a senior Republican Senate assistant who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

Each time Congress or regulators have given the companies new room for growth, their stock prices have risen. But so far the companies have balked at raising more capital. That hesitation has lawmakers concerned that when the companies raise money this year, it will not be enough.

In a March meeting, Freddie Mac’s chairman, Richard F. Syron, bolstered those fears by saying the company would put shareholders’ interests first. Michael L. Cosgrove, a spokesman for Freddie Mac, said Mr. Syron is committed to both satisfying the company’s public mission and creating shareholder value. Fannie Mae, which is in a regulatory-imposed quiet period because it will soon release financial information, declined to comment on capital-raising issues.

As worrisome as the need for new capital, some analysts say, are the companies’ books.

A report released earlier this month by Mr. Lockhart, the regulator, noted that although Freddie and Fannie had a combined $19.9 billion of “unrealized losses” on mortgage-related investments, neither company had reduced its earnings to reflect those declines. That is because they judged the losses to be temporary — in essence wagering that the mortgage market would recover before those assets were sold. Such a wager is permitted by the rules but difficult for outsiders to analyze.

Fannie Mae declined to discuss unrealized losses. Mr. Cosgrove, the Freddie Mac spokesman, said the company discloses all financial choices and downgrades all potentially impaired securities when appropriate.

The regulator’s report also noted that Freddie used accounting choices that gave it an immediate $1 billion capital increase. While those and other tactics are technically permitted, the regulator said, they deserve scrutiny.

“Companies can make assumptions that cause very large differences in what they report,” Mr. Lockhart said in an interview. He has repeatedly said that the companies are making good progress and have fixed many of their problems. But at least one accounting choice, he said, “concerns us.”

Mr. Cosgrove said Freddie Mac’s accounting choices had been the best way to reflect financial realities.

Both companies have also recently changed their policies on delinquent loans, which they previously recorded as impaired when borrowers were 120 days late. Now, some overdue loans can go two years before the companies record a loss.

Fannie Mae declined to discuss the accounting of impaired loans. A representative of Freddie Mac said marking loans as permanently impaired at 120 days does not reflect that many of them avoid foreclosure. But the biggest risk, analysts say, is that both companies are betting that the housing market will rebound by 2010. If the housing malaise lasts longer, unexpected losses could overwhelm their reserves, starting a chain of events that could result in a federal bailout.

A version of those events began in November, when Freddie Mac’s capital fell below congressionally mandated levels. The company stemmed the decline by selling $6 billion in preferred stock. But it might not manage that again if there is another unexpected loss, analysts say.

“The last two years have shown the real need for a stronger regulator,” Mr. Lockhart said. If his agency did not curb the companies’ growth earlier this decade, he added, “they would be part of the problem right now instead of part of the solution.”

Fannie Mae Posts Another Loss (May 6, 2008)

Bernanke Urges Flexibility in Mortgage Regulation (May 6, 2008)

Times Topics: Fannie Mae

Times Topics: Freddie Mac

Times Topics: Mortgages and the Markets

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

It's About Nothing

nobody@vox.com(Xtine) — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:44:56 -0700

By Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Dispatches from the twilight of a presidency:

7:13 a.m.: The South Lawn. President Bush, determined to dispel doubts about his relevance, grants an early-morning interview to Robin Roberts of ABC News's "Good Morning America." Joined by the first lady, he fields hard-hitting questions about . . . the White House grounds. "It's a beautiful place," the president discloses. "In the spring, the flowers are fantastic. In the fall, the -- it's just such a -- kind of a place that's so fresh. In the winter, of course, it's got a lot of snow. [Laughter.] Summer is real hot, but it's -- we love it out here. It's beautiful."

* * *

7:58 a.m.: By e-mail, the White House Communications Office sends out its "Morning Update." It lists two events on Bush's schedule for the entire day: a "Social Dinner in Honor of Cinco de Mayo" and, an hour later, post-dinner entertainment. To react to the main news of the day -- thousands of deaths from the cyclone in Burma -- Bush sends his wife out to make a statement. She criticizes the Burmese government for its failure "to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path" and "to meet its people's basic needs." Reporters, too tactful to draw parallels to New Orleans, quiz her instead about daughter Jenna's wedding, and the names of future grandchildren. "George and Georgia, Georgina, Georgette," the first lady says.

* * *

12:39 p.m.: The White House Briefing Room. On the podium, the understudy to the understudy to the substitute to the understudy to Bush's first White House press secretary is giving a sparsely attended briefing on what he knows about Burma blocking relief efforts ("I am not aware of that report"), about the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal to a Burmese dissident ("no announcements at this point"), and about word that the Saudi crown prince is dying ("I have not seen those reports"). The news of the day thus dispensed with, the questioning turns to why West Point allows its graduates to play pro football immediately but the Naval Academy does not.

* * *

Eight months before the end of his second term, President Bush is forgotten but not gone. Power has shifted to Congress, attention has moved to the campaign trail, and the White House seems at times to be just going through the motions. For many reporters who remain on the White House beat, it has become a time to phone it in -- literally.

Four minutes after the scheduled start time for yesterday's White House briefing, only 14 of the 49 seats were occupied -- and the 14 included flamboyant radio host Lester Kinsolving, who sat in the Bloomberg News seat; Raghubir Goyal of an obscure Indian American publication, who occupied the New York Times chair; and a foreign journalist in the back row, perusing the White House's Cinco de Mayo dinner menu. Though attendance eventually swelled to 28, many of the nation's leading news outlets left their chairs empty, among them National Public Radio, the Washington Times, the New York Daily News, the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune and the Politico.

The White House regarded the briefing with an equal level of ennui. The press secretary, Dana Perino, was away, having given the commencement address on Saturday at her alma mater, Colorado State University at Pueblo. White House aides left vacant three of the five seats designated for their use. Behind the lectern, Perino deputy Scott Stanzel took 20 minutes to exhaust all questions from the diminished field of questioners.

Stanzel began with the news that the United States had provided a whopping $250,000 to relief efforts in Burma -- a figure one reporter termed "a drop in the bucket." After just 12 minutes of questions about gas prices, Iraq and Iran, the reporters in the front rows had had their fill. Stanzel turned to Goyal, who wore a sparkling silver blazer and asked a question about India, then one about the governor of Louisiana.

Reporters busied themselves with personal tasks: rubbing eyes, cleaning eyeglasses, reading the newspaper, fiddling with BlackBerrys or studying the blank pages of their notebooks. One of the deputy press secretaries, Gordon Johndroe, rested his chin in his hand. There was nothing left to be said -- which was the cue for Kinsolving, who demanded to know Bush's view on the disparity in pro-football eligibility for players from the military academies.

Stanzel punted. "I'm not sure that that is something that he's occupied his time with," the spokesman said.

Of course not. He has been busy preparing for the Cinco de Mayo dinner. And the session with "Good Morning America," where Roberts pressed Bush on his daughter's wedding at the ranch.

"So, what have you done to make it special there?" the anchor asked. "I know that it's always special at the ranch, but for this wedding?"

"We put a giant cross made out of Texas limestone that will serve as the altar," the president replied.

"That's beautiful," Roberts said. She went on to note that a beagle named Uno, the 2008 Westminster Kennel Club's Best in Show, would visit the Rose Garden later in the day.

"Uno is coming," Laura Bush confirmed.

Roberts was impressed. "Big day here at the White House," she said.

Or what passes for one nowadays.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Civilise the City

nobody@vox.com(Xtine) — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:07:27 -0700

London, October 2004

A large band of tweedy revolutionaries toasted Mr. Beau Brummell with their hip flasks at his memorial on Jermyn Street, SW1, before proceeding northwards, with a pause to admire the fine wares in the windows of Jermyn Street's stores. Reaching the Oxford Street, they sought to draw attention to the appalling lack of gentlemanly services available on Britain's high streets. Several operatives entered the premises of Mr. R. McDonald, where they requested devilled kidneys, kedgeree and vintage champagne. Needless to say, they left empty-bladdered.

Other flashpoints were Starbucks (where pots of oolong and china cups were not forthcoming); Specsavers (no monocles); All Bar One (cocktails off the menu); the final straw was when an operative entered an emporium named Carphone Warehouse, and found that it was neither a warehouse nor did it sell telephones for cars. Even a simple request for a walnut encasement for the telephone in an Alvis Speed Twenty was met with a blank stare.

The band of protesters then sauntered down Regent Street, where their spontaneous hat doffing and jovial greetings to all and sundry were much appreciated. The only exception were the constabulary, who for some reason saw several dozen polite, immaculately dressed Chaps and Chapettes as a threat, and by the time the party had reached Piccadilly Circus, the number of officers outnumbered the protesters.

At tea time, Piccadilly Circus was declared a Doffing Zone. Anyone entering hatless or sporting unsuitable headwear was gently offered doffing instruction; curious tourists wearing baseball caps were offered more dapper alternatives such as trilby, fedora and homburg. Afternoon tea was served in delightful china cups on the steps of the statue of Eros, while more advanced techniques, such as moustache growing, were demonstrated to curious members of the constabulary, who failed to see the connection between hirsute constables and a happy citizenry.

The very foundations of vulgar society and homogenized chainstore Britain were not brought to their knees, and Parliament did not call an emergency meeting to deal with the situation. However, the Chaps all had a jolly good time, no-one was hurt, and, who knows, perhaps the likes of Mr. Starbucks really will consider putting some loose leaf teas on his menu, purely to entice a more civilised customer in future.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

A Psychedelic ‘Problem Child’ Comes Full Circle

nobody@vox.com(Xtine) — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:22:57 -0700

By BENEDICT CAREY
The New York Times
Published: May 4, 2008

ON the afternoon of Jan. 11, Albert Hofmann, the chemist who discovered LSD, had about a dozen friends and family up to his glass-walled home in the mountains near Basel, Switzerland, for a party. It was his 102nd birthday and, in an important sense, also a homecoming.

John Loengard/Time & Life Pictures — Getty Images

MOVING SLOWLY A Boston-area housewife considers a Buddha statue in 1963 after taking LSD as part of an experiment by Timothy Leary.

Related - Albert Hofmann, the Father of LSD, Dies at 102 (April 30, 2008)

Dr. Hofmann, who died last week, spent the latter part of his life consulting with scientists around the world who wanted to bring his “problem child,” as he called the drug, back into the lab to study as a therapeutic agent. Not long before his last birthday, he learned that health officials in his native Switzerland had approved what will be the first known medical trial of LSD anywhere in more than 35 years — to test whether the drug can help relieve distress at end of life.

“It was something to be there, in that house,” said Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a nonprofit group that supports research into LSD and related compounds. “He was walking around the place, telling jokes, being a host. He seemed ... I don’t know, peaceful somehow, comfortable to let the next generation carry on his spirit. And he was expressing how completely grateful he was that that we’d been able to restart LSD research — that his problem child had come home, had become a wonder child.”

Most drugs that capture the imagination of the wider culture seem at first to soothe the unease or gloom of their times, like Valium in the 1970s or Prozac in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But lysergic acid diethylamide, the substance Dr. Hofmann accidentally ingested in 1943 while working at the Swiss drug firm Sandoz, did exactly the opposite. It inflamed people’s hopes and fears, powerfully so.

LSD, it turns out, is one of the most potent consciousness-altering substances known; an amount the size of a grain of salt can induce swirls of emotion, and shimmering clear senses in which the ordinary becomes extraordinary, luminous, meaningful. It can infuse a person with creative energy or overwhelm the brain with a swarming feeling of loss and fear. Sometimes both: Even Dr. Hofmann had at least one bad trip, recalling in his autobiography, “Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms.”

Looking back, scholars say, it’s hard to imagine that such a drug, once in circulation, could not have taken Western culture for a wild ride, especially given the forces at play in the postwar United States.

“It was probably inevitable, and I think the reason is that the common denominator, the common ground shared by all the various groups who made use of LSD, was that they got instantly excited about it as potentiator of their own agenda, whatever that was,” said Martin A. Lee, co-author of “Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The C.I.A., the ’60s and Beyond.” “It’s a terrible phrase, but I think of LSD as a potentiator of possibilities. It just evoked these grandiose possibilities with people.”

Scientists in the 1940s and 1950s, for instance, thought it might be the key to providing healing insight, a window on the soul, a way to transcend psychosis, mania, depression. Dr. Hofmann thought it could awaken a deeper awareness of mankind’s place in nature. About 1,000 studies crowd the medical literature of that era, many of them sloppy, a few tantalizing and some disastrous for the people being “treated” with an acid trip. The C.I.A. tested the drug as an aid to interrogation, a kind of truth serum. The Army modeled the possibility of using it as a madness gas, of dosing the enemy to gain quick advantage.

And this was all before acid met the counterculture on Haight Street in the 1960s.

But meet they did, and it was love at first sight. Dr. Hofmann’s child was no hustler from a shotgun lab in Tijuana, after all, but a bourgeois revolutionary, born into establishment medicine and able to travel the world and enter societies from the top down, through their most hallowed institutions.

The English novelist Aldous Huxley, who struck up a friendship with Dr. Hofmann, was one of the first prominent proponents of LSD use for personal transformation. Timothy Leary, LSD’s pied piper, was a Harvard professor whose public raptures over the drug were a strong cocktail of mystical and scientific jargon. Ken Kesey, founder of the protoraves known as acid tests, was at age 30 already an acclaimed novelist, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” He likened taking acid to “putting a tuning fork on your whole body.”

Not that acid was a hard sell to young people in the early 1960s, at least to those who longed not only to shake free of mainstream suburban-corporate culture but also to transform it, and themselves. They weren’t looking for an angry fix but something far grander. “To put matters bluntly: the hippies were an attempt to push evolution, to jump the species toward a higher integration,” wrote Jay Stevens in his 1987 book, “Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream.”

A joint is not going to get you there.

Nor, in the end, did LSD. By 1966 a raft of toxic knockoffs were on the street, and the authorities recognized that, whatever its upside, acid had become part of a self-devouring drug culture that exposed many users to a poisonous menu of illicit drugs. The government outlawed distribution of LSD, and research into its effects soon ground to a near halt. Where some saw a long-overdue crackdown on abuse, others saw an overreaction.

“Once the drug illegalization crowd gets hold of it, that’s that,” said Alexander Shulgin, a former Dow chemist who discovered the effects of MDMA, or ecstasy, which has also been made a controlled substance. “People start talking about protecting little children, and worrying about whether someone’s going to jump out the window, and meanwhile we have these substances — MDMA and LSD — that may be of tremendous value in psychotherapy and couldn’t be explored.”

They can now; several trials testing psychedelics are in the works, thanks in part to the steady example set by Dr. Hofmann. “I think people in this country, when they see a patient in pain, will not deny that person a medication just because the drug has abuse potential,” said Dr. John Halpern, a Harvard psychiatrist who is testing the effect of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in late-stage cancer patients. “LSD is always going to be a touchy subject but I think it’s kind of fallen back to earth.”

The trip is over, the hangover gone, and the prodigal child arrived home, just in time to say goodbye.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Horse racing = Multi-death industry

nobody@vox.com(Xtine) — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:11:11 -0700

To hell with horse racing. It's too heartbreaking. Too many brave and beautiful horses - and jockeys - are killed and crippled by it so that rich men can get even richer.

It's hardly surprising, given that racehorses are first ridden at a year old; a 3-y-o's running in the Belmont is the equivalent of a ten-y-o human's running the Boston Marathon. It's surprising there aren't more breakdowns.

Since Barbaro died I haven't watched any races or read any articles about racing and have no intention of doing so ever again. I've simply had it.

I gave up on baseball when it became steroidal and simultaneously expensive and cheap; I can give up racing. The fact that so much of racing is fixed just increases my disgust.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Déja vu all over again.

nobody@vox.com(Xtine) — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:07:10 -0700

The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum)
Fun Boy Three
1981

I see a clinic full of cynics
Who want to twist the peoples' wrist
They're watching every move we make
We're all included on the list

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

No nuclear the cowboy told us
And who am I to disagree
'Cause when the madman flips the switch
The nuclear will go for me

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

I've seen the faces of starvation
But I just can not see the point
'Cause there's so much food here today
That no one wants to take away

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

The lunatics have taken over the asylum
Take away my right to choose

The lunatics have taken over the asylum
Take away my point of view

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

The lunatics have taken over the asylum
Take away my dignity
Take these things away from me

The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum

Take away my family
Take away the right to speak

The lunatics have taken over the asylum
Take away my point of view
Take away my right to choose

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

White House undermines EPA on cancer risks, GAO says

nobody@vox.com(Xtine) — Fri, 02 May 2008 21:12:18 -0700

By H. JOSEF HEBERT
28 Apr 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration is undermining the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to determine health dangers of toxic chemicals by letting nonscientists have a bigger — often secret — say, congressional investigators say in a report obtained by The Associated Press.

The administration's decision to give the Defense Department and other agencies an early role in the process adds to years of delay in acting on harmful chemicals and jeopardizes the program's credibility, the Government Accountability Office concluded.

At issue is the EPA's screening of chemicals used in everything from household products to rocket fuel to determine if they pose serious risk of cancer or other illnesses.

A new review process begun by the White House in 2004 is adding more speed bumps for EPA scientists, the GAO said in its report, which will be the subject of a Senate Environment Committee hearing Tuesday. A formal policy effectively doubling the number of steps was adopted two weeks ago.

Cancer risk assessments for nearly a dozen major chemicals are now years overdue, the GAO said, blaming the new multiagency reviews for some of the delay. The EPA, for example, had promised to prepare assessments on 10 major toxic chemicals for external peer review by the end of 2007, but only two reached that stage.

GAO investigators said extensive involvement by EPA managers, White House budget officials and other agencies has eroded the independence of EPA scientists charged with determining the health risks posed by chemicals.

The Pentagon, the Energy Department, NASA and other agencies — all of which could be severely affected by EPA risk findings — are being allowed to participate "at almost every step in the assessment process," said the GAO.

Those agencies, their private contractors and manufacturers of the chemicals face restrictions and major cleanup requirements, depending on the EPA's scientific determinations.

"By law the EPA must protect our families from dangerous chemicals," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the Senate committee's chairman. "Instead, they're protecting the chemical companies."

The EPA's risk assessment process "never was perfect," Boxer said in an interview Monday. "But at least it put the scientists up front. Now the scientists are being shunted aside."

The GAO said many of the deliberations over risks posed by specific chemicals "occur in what amounts to a black box" of secrecy because the White House claims they are private executive branch deliberations.

Such secrecy "reduces the credibility of the ... assessments and hinders the EPA's ability to manage them," the GAO report said.

The White House said the GAO is wrong in suggesting that the EPA has lost control in assessing the health risks posed by toxic chemicals.

"Only EPA has the authority to finalize an EPA assessment," Kevin F. Neyland, deputy administrator of the White House budget office's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote in response to the GAO. He called the interagency process "a dialogue that helps to ensure the quality" of the reviews.

One EPA scientist with extensive knowledge of the changes in the agency's risk assessment policies ridiculed the claim that the EPA still has the final say.

"Unless there is concurrence by other agencies, ... things don't go forward. It means we stop what we are doing," said the scientist, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of endangering his career.

"The (EPA) scientists feel as if they have lost complete control of the process, that it's been taken over by the White House and that they're calling the shots," the scientist said.

The GAO investigation focused on the EPA's computerized database, known as IRIS — the Integrated Risk Information System. It contains data on the human health effects of exposure to some 540 toxic chemicals in the environment. New chemicals are being proposed constantly for inclusion under a complicated assessment process that can take five years or more.

After years of stops and starts, the GAO said, the EPA has yet to determine carcinogen risks for a number of major chemicals such as:

- Naphthalene, a chemical used in rocket fuel as well as in manufacturing commercial products such as mothballs, dyes and insecticides.

- Trichloroethylene, or TCE, a widely used industrial degreasing agent.

- Perchloroethylene, or "perc," a chemical used in dry cleaning, metal degreasing and making chemical products.

- Formaldehyde, a colorless, flammable gas used to making building materials.

Environmentalists say these chemicals have been widely found at military bases and Superfund sites and in soil, lakes, streams and groundwater.

The findings, after an 18-month investigation by the congressional watchdog agency, come at a time of growing criticism from members of Congress and health and environmental advocates over alleged political interference in the government's science activities.

Last week, a confidential survey by an advocacy group of EPA scientists showed more than half of the 1,600 respondents worried about political pressure in their work.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend