[E.O.M.S.]

Sleeping insects covered in dew by Miroslaw Swietek

These remarkable photographs were taken by physiotherapist Miroslaw Swietek at around 3am in the forest next to his home in Jaroszow, a village in Poland around 30 miles from the city of Wroclaw.

Using a torch, the 37-year-old amateur photographer hunts out the motionless bugs in the darkness before setting up his camera and flash just millimetres from them.

@'Daily Mail'

George Carlin - Religion is Bullshit! (Thanx Stan!)

Exciting new way of cooking Bacon (with pictures)

I've discovered a new way of cooking bacon. All you need is: bacon, tin foil, some string, and.. oh whats it called?... oh yeah, an old worn out 7.62mm machinegun that is about to be discarded, and about 200 rounds of ammunition.
You start by wrapping the barrel in tin foil. Then you wrap bacon around it, and tie it down with some string.
http://imgur.com/Qzt4t.jpg
you then wrap some more tin foil around it, and once again tie it down with string.
http://imgur.com/fuY3J.jpg
It is now ready to be inserted into the cooking device. I ripped the tin foil a little bit getting the barrel inserted. that part of the bacon got severely burned by hot gasses.
http://imgur.com/q75AR.jpg
After just a few short bursts you should be able to smell the wonderful aroma of bacon.
http://imgur.com/H8fmZ.jpg
I gave this about 250 rounds. but I think around 150 might actually be enough. But then again I don't mind when bacon is crispy. Ahh the smell of sizzling bacon mixed with the smell of gunpowder and weapon oil.
http://imgur.com/FEeq3.jpg
And the end result: Crispy delicious well done bacon.
http://imgur.com/AOjRS.jpg
Oelund @'Reddit'
(Tip o' the hat to JoshS!)

The Pain Relief Scandal

“Opium has been recently made from white poppies, cultivated for the purpose, in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.... comparatively large quantities are regularly sent East from California and Arizona, where its cultivation is becoming an important branch of industry, ten acres of poppies being said to yield, in Arizona, twelve hundred pounds of opium.”

--Massachusetts Government Health Report, 1871

By the mid-1800s, as many people know, opium could be legally purchased in the United States as laudanum, patent medicines, and various elixirs. Less well known is the fact that opium was a godsend during the bloody years of the Civil War. Maimed and disabled soldiers found relief in morphine, the potent alkaloid of opium named after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. Used against constant, intractable pain, opium and its derivatives were among the most humane medical drugs ever discovered. How could a physician withhold them?

Today, after countless drug wars have merged into a single, inflexible federal stance on “drugs,” morphine and its derivatives remain so stigmatized, so entangled in drug wars and global narco-politics, that the danger of losing sight of their humanitarian applications looms larger than ever.

At least half of all cancer patients seen in routine practice report inadequate pain relief, according to the American College of Physicians. For cancer patients in pain, adequate relief is quite literally a flip of the coin...

Continue reading

Dirk Hanson @'Blogcritics'

Court Says Bush Illegally Wiretapped Two Americans

Tell Me Easter's On Friday

The Associates - Tell Me Easter's On Friday

(Thanx to My Friend Stan!)

Johann Hari on drugs, royals and the lousy laws being rushed through before the election

"...Yet you have been told that this drug is a new and unique menace. It has killed 27 people in Britain, makes teenagers try to "rip off their scrotum", and a ban will stop the harm it causes. Each of these claims is false.

The first mephedrone death was reported last November, when a 14-year-old girl called Gabrielle Price died in Brighton after apparently taking the drug. Immediately, there were calls for a ban. Three weeks later, the autopsy found the drug had nothing to do with her death: she was killed by "broncho-pneumonia which resulted from a streptococcal A infection". But the campaign didn't pause. They were now identifying deaths from mephedrone everywhere – mainly among clubbers who had taken a huge cocktail of different drugs washed down with alcohol. In truth, one death has been found to be caused by the drug. That's one. This makes jmephedrone somewhat less dangerous than peanuts, which kill 10 people a year by causing an allergic reaction.

What about the drug's other effects? The excellent New Scientist magazine tracked down the origins of The Sun's claim that it made a teenager "try to rip off his testicles", which rapidly became an established fact in news reports. They discovered it was based on a claim that circulated on internet chatrooms, and had been written as a joke. The drug isn't even called "Meow-Meow" by anyone: that term was randomly inserted into Wikipedia just before the hysteria broke, and picked up by journalists..."

HERE

Just remember...

'Socilism'

*snigger*

More @'Teabonics'

HERE

The RNC fugs up again...

The Republican National Committee sent a fundraising mail piece earlier this month with a return number that leads to a phone-sex line offering "live, one-on-one talk with a nasty girl who will do anything you want for just $2.99 per minute."

At the bottom of a piece designed to resemble a census form, a toll-free number is listed next to the national party's address.

A voter in Minnesota received the mailer and called the number intending to complain about the attempt to raise money with a form that looks like a government document.

But the Minnesotan was instead directed to a second toll-free number that greets callers as "sexy guy" before offering them the chance to talk with "real local students, housewives and working girls from all over the country."

The individual then forwarded the mail piece to the voter's congressman, a Democrat, who shared it with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

A spokesman for the RNC declined to say how many copies of the census-style mailer were sent out.

"The number in question was a typographical error by a vendor used on this particular mailer — using 1-800 instead of 202," said RNC Communications Director Doug Heye.

Heye e-mailed different direct-mail pieces that included the correct RNC phone number, writing: "This is an isolated incident and will not be repeated in the future."

He said the vendor responsible for the mistake "will not be used for the foreseeable future."
AUDIO: HERE

Ben Smith @'Politico'

Information is beautiful: war games

Who really spends the most on their armed forces?

Info is beautiful: defence budgets Photograph: David McCandless

Amid confusion over the rise in defence cuts, I was surprised to learn that the UK has one of the biggest military budgets in the world - nearly £40bn ($60 bn) in 2008.

But I was less surprised to see who had the biggest.

Info is beautiful: war chests. Graphic: David McCandless

Yep, the United States spent a staggering $607bn (£402 bn) on defence in 2008. Currently engaged in what will likely be the longest ground war in US history in Afghanistan. Harbourer of thousands of nuclear weapons. 1.5m soldiers. Fleets of aircrafts, bombs and seemingly endless amounts of military technology.

Here's that bloated military budget in context.

Info is beautiful: the US military budget. Graphic: David McCandless

The defence budgets of the other top nine countries can be neatly accommodated inside the US budget.

So the US is an aggressive, war-mongeringing military machine, right? And the numbers prove it.

But is that true? Is that the whole picture?

Military units

First of all, the enormity of the US military budget is not just down to a powerful military-industrial complex. America is a rich country.

In fact, it's vastly rich. So its budget is bound to dwarf the others.

Info is beautiful: defence budgets compared. Graphic: David McCandless

(This is a reworking of an image from the blog ASecondHandConjecture.com)

It doesn't seem fair to not factor in the wealth of a country when assessing its military budget.

So, if you take military budgets as a proportion of each country's GDP, a very different picture emerges.

Info is beautiful: the biggest spenders. Graphic: David McCandless

The US is knocked down into 8th place by such nations as Jordan, Burundi and Georgia. The UK plunges to 29th.

Why are these other nations spending so much on their military?

• Myanmar (Burma) is a military dictatorship, so that must bias their budgets a little.
• Jordan occupies a critical geographic position in the Middle East and has major investment in its military from the US, UK and France. In return, it deploys large peace-keeping forces across the world.
• The former soviet republic of Georgia was invaded by Russia in 2008. Relations remain extremely tense.
• Saudi Arabia spends heavily on its air force and military capabilities. Why is not clear.

The stories behind Kyrgyzstan, Burundi and Oman's spending are also not clear. (If you have any ideas, please let us know).

Soldiers

A country's military investment is not just dollars and cents. It's also about soldiers and infantry.

When it comes to sheer number of soldiers, you can guess the result.

Info is beautiful: active forces. Graphic: David McCandless

But, as ever, using whole numbers creates a skewed picture. China obviously has a huge population. Their army is bound to be huge.

If you adjust the parameters to a proportional view, the image shifts dramatically.

Info is beautiful: proportional forces. Graphic: David McCandless

North Korea tops the league with the most militarised population, while China plummets to a staggering 164th in the world league table.

The US barely scrapes the top 50. The UK's armed forces look tiny.

This re-ordering creates some surprises too. Israel and Iraq you could perhaps predict. But Eritrea and Djibouti?

All soldiers

To give the fullest picture of armed forces, reservists, civilian and paramilitary should also be included.

This again gives a different picture and perhaps a more revealing one. One that suggests combat readiness, primed forces and perhaps paranoia too? Who's expecting to be invaded?

Info is beautiful: total armed forces. Graphic: David McCandless

Here again, when all the numbers are added up, the US infantry is ranked a lowly 61st for size in the world.

So is the US an "aggressive, war-mongering military machine" obsessed with spending on defence and plumping up its armed forces? Perhaps, the numbers say, not.

David McCandless @'The Guardian'