Weekend Thoughts - 10.24.15

Image by Benjamin Balázs, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. In a harrowing tale about the NSA and surveillance, Waltern Kirn at The Atlantic suggests that if you're not paranoid, you're crazy. The story is fairly lengthy, but definitely worth a read—it explores the surveillance techniques and technology that are currently used to sell us products as well as policies. A bit bone-chilling, to say the least, and a perfect fit for the Halloween month of October.

2. In another heartbreaking example of United State law enforcement's zero tolerance demand to receive 100% compliance from its citizens, an unarmed 17 year-old named Deven Guilford was fatally shot by a Michigan police officer for flashing his high-beams at the patrol SUV to let the driver know that the vehicle's high-beams were activated. In a dash of irony, Sergeant Jonathan Frost pulled him over for violating a state law that requires drivers to "use a distribution of light or composite beam so aimed that the glaring rays are not projected into the eyes of the oncoming driver." In surveillance footage from Frost's body camera, Deven is shown to have been laying face-down on the ground shortly before being tased by a stun gun. Seconds later, the video goes black and gunshots and screams are heard from the teenager. Frost will not be reprimanded by the police department for his actions and was deemed to have acted within the limits of Michigan's self-defense law. However, Deven's family has initiated a lawsuit to sue him. In a statement from the boy's mother, she asks, "Whatever happened to protect and serve?" Whatever happened, indeed—this situation was utterly unconscionable and entirely avoidable.

3. There is an assumption being promoted by Fox News and others in the lamestream media that there is a "War on Cops" occurring simultaneously to the "War(s) on People" that the cops are waging against us. However, that point of view is entirely incorrect. In fact, violence against police officers has been steadily trending downward rather than upward, with 2013 being the lowest level of violence against United States police in recorded history. Although the number of police officer deaths caused by civilians is up since the all-time low in 2013, that doesn't take away the fact that being a police officer is safer than it ever has been before. Don't let the mainstream media distort the facts and mislead you into believing their fictive stories.

4. Caffeine and technology are often blamed for poor sleeping experiences, but is it possible that our judgment of sleep is tainted by the fact that we just don't know what an average night of sleep looked like for pre-technology humans? Some new scientific research has showed that pre-industrial peoples sleep an average 6.5 hours per night, and their bedtimes are regulated by temperature, rather than daylight.

5. A rigorous landmark government-funded study found that people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia are better off with less drugs and more therapy. Specifically, the article states that "patients who received increased drug counseling along with individual talk therapy, family training, and support for employment and education experienced a greater reduction in symptoms, were more likely to resume work and school, and reported a higher quality of life than those receiving current standard treatments". Current treatments require lifelong use of antipsychotic drugs, which have side effects so severe that three out of four patients stop taking their prescriptions after a year and a half. In the new treatment program (called NAVIGATE), doses are reduced by 20%-50%, the families are given "psychoeducation", and the patient participates in resilience-focused individual therapy before progressing to an employment and education program. This is excellent news because it means that our society now has the evidence that supports changing the approach to helping people diagnosed with schizophrenia, although it makes me wonder if psychedelic medicines could also play a role, as in the case of a schizophrenic drug addict who was able to reclaim his life with help from the root bark iboga. In fact, many other cultures treat the people who are now diagnosed with schizophrenia differently, by encouraging them to pursue practices like shamanism, rather than forcing them to think and behave more like the normal population.

6. The Nintendo Entertainment System (the first console I owned) turned 30 this week! I spent countless hours playing and learning with video games, which certainly helped shape the person I have become today. Happy Birthday NES!

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 10.17.15

Image by Amre, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. I hope I will see some of my local readers at the second annual TriVegFest in Raleigh, NC later today! There will be an impressive collection of vendors, speakers, and an amazing community to take part in. If you are able to make it out and see me, feel free to say hello!

2. A tropical mushroom that grows on lava flows gives one in three women spontaneous orgasms from smelling it. Naturally, all of the men tested found the smell abhorrent. 

3. Turns out that over the past ten years, the DEA has spent millions of undisclosed dollars on cell phone tracking. However, the organization refuses to release acquisition documents even though the fact that it is operating like this is publicly-known.

4. A photography project that removed cell phones from pictures of people engaged with them, which results in an eerie commentary depicting mobile phone addiction. They're definitely worth looking through.

5. For the collectors out there, here are some coins that have been carved to reveal skulls underneath the faces.

6. One of my favorite food bloggers, Gena Hamshaw of the site formerly known as Choosing Raw, will be changing the blog's name to The Full Helping in an effort to have the name reflect the site's main content a bit better. While Gena was originally a raw foods, she has evolved the blog to include more than just raw-focused posts. I highly recommend reading her blog for recipe recommendations, healthy journey guest posts, and a weekly link roundup that focuses on food, health, and nutrition.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 10.10.15

Image by Wonderland, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. After watching mycologist Paul Stamets' inspiring TED Talk presentation "6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save The World" seven years ago, I have been interested in the awesome powers of the humble mushroom, and impressed by Stamets' innovative mycelium-based techniques that clean up nuclear waste, fight pest invasions, and more. I found an article this week from Vice's Munchies that explores the new technological ability to create batteries out of portabello mushrooms that will be able to power mobile phones and electric cars. These batteries use the mushrooms in place of the synthetic graphite that usually acts as the anode component of a lithium-ion battery. The best news is that the combination of the naturally-high levels of porosity and concentration of potassium salt in the portabello leads to improved performance of the battery over time, as opposed to the way batteries typically run out of juice after a while.

2. From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

"New law enforcement technologies are raising new questions about what civil rights abuses look like in the digital age. Historically, allegations of police misconduct were based on visible behavior: people generally know when they have been assaulted, detained unjustly, or had their property searched or seized without due process. Today, civil rights violations occur on computer screens, amplified by automated processes, or exacted invisibly and indiscriminately on large populations. These problems are exacerbated by a lack of transparency, with journalists and researchers unable to access records critical to an informed public debate.

That's where civilian oversight bodies may have a role."

With that in mind, EFF published a law enforcement technology primer for civilian oversight bodies. The primer focuses on new technologies that officers are using to spy on us, including IMSI catchers (i.e. Stingrays), automated license plate recognition, drones, and mobile biometrics. The document details methods that police are using to analyze and infiltrate online social networks, and explores emerging civil liberties issues, actions that oversight boards should take, and what questions they should ask regarding local law enforcement surveillance.

3. KrebsOnSecurity tackles the question, "What's in a boarding pass barcode?" The answer?: "A Lot". It turns out that the data stored inside a boarding pass barcode include your name, frequent flyer number, record locator, and other personally identifiable information. A nefarious person would be able to use the information to gain access to your entire account and view, change seats, and cancel future scheduled flights. I highly suggest reading the article linked above, but at any rate, your next used boarding pass should probably find its home in a document shredder rather than an airport waste bin.

4. Fans of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy may enjoy looking at the sketches that J.R.R. Tolkien used to build Middle-Earth. The accompanying article explains how Tolkien's process of drawing the story out was an important part of writing the books. Definitely worth a peek if you are a fan of his works.

5. I quite enjoyed this collection of Americans who purport to love English but have a very hard time expressing that in writing.

6. Bikram Choudhury, the millionaire (and accused serial rapist) who is best-known for making hot yoga popular in America, sued other hot yoga studios in 2003 for violating a copyright Choudhury claimed to hold regarding the sequence of poses in his class. The United States Federal Appeals Court for the 9th circuit has ruled that his copyright claim in invalid, making this classy Choudhury quote from earlier in the court proceeding even more hilarious: "I have balls like atom bombs, two of them, 100 megatons each. Nobody fucks with me." Sounds like the court system just did, buddy.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 10.3.15

Image by Hernán Piñera, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. The search for extraterrestrial life is one of my favorite topics. Scientists have been attempting to find water on Mars, and this week NASA announced that evidence for liquid water on Mars has been found. That's pretty big news, because that means there could be life on Mars, and the planet could support human life in the future. 

2. Some politicians have recently proposed that beneficiaries of the social welfare system should have their names published for all to see. An article from ATTN: proposes that the government also publish the names of companies who receive monies from the corporate welfare system (the top five are McDonald's, Olive Garden, the NFL, oil companies, and agricultural companies). After all, if people want to scrutinize impoverished citizens at the lower end of the economic scale who receive help, why not also scrutinize the privileged business folk at the top who are essentially doing the same thing? 

3. When skateboarding became emerged in the 1950s, the media was confused. Ratter put together an amusing collection of newspapers that just didn't the sport at all.

4. Something that I have long held as a personal hunch, it turns out that the FBI really does have the methods to spy on any Internet activity they want to, whether it is encrypted or not. Although they may not legally be able to do so, the organization has the means to hack devices and get past the levels of encryption that provide the infrastructure for technological innovations like the Dark Web. In addition, the FBI has been pushing for the ability to install spying malware directly into operating system updates, which the article covers in detail. They are already able to decrypt our communication, and I believe that side of the war has already been won. This is why I have been arguing for a movement toward two-way transparency, rather than an insistence on personal privacy.

5. Wired has its eyes set on the future horizon in its piece about platform blogging, which they have dubbed plogging. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are planning to release features that will allow their users to publish long-form posts on the platforms, essentially enabling the option to blog on a social media platform. The concept is interesting, and it may just work—there are fascinating things that everyone has to share with the world, and it is easier for the average Internet user to read content produced in a social media platform feed than to go directly to a blog or news website. The tradeoff here—from what I can see—is that the content would be published on the social media platform, so the writer wouldn't have control over it the same way she would if it was published on a personal website. We'll have to see if it kicks off. Maybe it's time for more people to start thinking about the possibility of creating long-form content for other people to read?

6. The concept of universal basic income has been a fascinating and inspiring idea to me for a while, and it turns out that offering money to citizens regardless of employment is an idea that is becoming increasingly accepted by both sides of the political divide. Could it be the end to poverty that we are looking for?

7. Would you like to eat less plastic? Maybe you should reduce or eliminate your consumption of fish, since a recent study found that one-in-four fish consumed contains plastic. In addition to taking this into consideration for your own health, don't forget about the health of your extended family—your pets!

8. This most likely doesn't come as a surprise to Think Wilder readers, but it turns out that DARE—the anti-drug "educational" program—was not effective. At all. I remember receiving DARE "education" classes during my elementary schooling in the 1990s, and they fed me with undeserved fear and paranoia about all drugs that remained unchecked until the mid 2000s, during my college years. It was at that time that I learned about amazing resources like Erowid, NORML, and MAPS by listening to the Psychedelic Salon podcast. Since then, I have learned that educating myself is more fruitful and valuable than anything the establishment could ever shove down my throat. I believe that the best education for children is to be honest about the potential dangers and the potential benefits that some drugs have to offer. Outright dishonesty and political propaganda does nothing but embed a feeling of distrust in our youth. They will eventually find out that, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, much of the anti-drug rhetoric that is taught in schools is false. And when that happens, it is possible that they will make bad decisions—which could have been prevented with accurate information—because they assume the entire message was false.

9. Finally, local readers may enjoy this brief history of cannabis legislation in North Carolina from 1977 to 2015.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 9.26.15

Image by Ron Shoshani, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. This may be a long shot, but the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead coincides with the NFL's 50th Super Bowl, and a petition has been created asking for the band to play the halftime event. Please consider signing to show your support for the band!

2. An argument that Western universities do not adequately cover Chinese (and other non-Western) philosophers in their philosophy programs. I'm of the opinion that the issue extends outside of universities and into the realm of everyday life. The average person I run across is not well-versed in schools of thought external to the Western tradition, and ought to peruse some of the highly-influential and important works penned by Eastern philosophers.

3. Musicians (and advertisers, I suppose), rejoice! At last, the "Happy Birthday" song is finally in the public domain. In one of the most stunning reversals of copyright claims, presiding Judge George H. King ruled that the original copyright filing only pertained to specific arrangements of the music, not the actual song. "Because Sunny Co. never acquired the rights to the Happy Birthday lyrics," he wrote, "Defendants, as Sunny Co.'s purported successors-in-interest, do not own a valid copyright in the Happy Birthday lyrics."

4. E-book sales have taken a dip, leading many to believe that print is far from dead. As someone who much prefers to read books on paper rather than digitally, I breathed a sigh of relief after reading this article. Although I consume large amounts of digital content, I firmly believe that long-form books are best read on paper, with the ability to notate by hand if desired. I have gotten rid of many other forms of physical media—CDs, DVDs, magazines, etc.—but I don't plan to get rid of my print book collection anytime soon, if ever.

5. A Michigan man died in jail after 17 days of disregard and lack of care from the officers on staff. He was brought to jail for a 30-day sentence after neglecting to pay a traffic ticket, and was forced to suffer in a brightly lit cell. Although he was a drug addict, he was misdiagnosed as mentally unstable and his withdrawal symptoms were not addressed. He was denied clothing, lost 50 pounds, and suffered convulsions and hallucinations from his lack of treatment. The entire experience was caught on jail surveillance footage, and he was supposed to be under self-harm watch. Either the jail officials weren't watching him or they simply didn't care. His family is suing the county, but a lawyer for the county said that the suit "lacks legal merit". This is both an example of the broken "justice" system and pure evil.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.