Friday, 22 January 2010
A Common Cut in Cocaine May Prove Deadly
It was a medical mystery. In the summer of 2008, a man and woman, both in their 20s and both cocaine users, were separately admitted to a Canadian hospital with unremitting fevers, flulike symptoms and dangerously low white-blood-cell counts. Their symptoms were consistent with a life-threatening immune-system disorder called agranulocytosis, which kills 7% to 10% of patients and is rare except in chemotherapy patients and those taking certain antipsychotic medications.
Neither of the Canadian patients fit that bill, but they did have one thing in common: illegal drug use, says Dr. Nancy Zhu, who treated the patients during her hematology fellowship at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton. "We were theorizing that maybe it was something in the cocaine," she says.
he medical literature didn't contain any studies linking agranulocytosis with cocaine. However, in April of that same year, a New Mexico lab had identified a small number of unexplained cases of the disorder, also in people who had snorted, injected or smoked cocaine. Later, in 2009, a few cocaine addicts in San Francisco — crack smokers, mostly — began displaying even stranger symptoms, like dead, darkened skin. "It looked like people were getting burns all over their body," says Dr. Jonathan Graf, a rheumatologist at the University of California, San Francisco. "[Their skin was] black, as if you had taken a cigarette butt to it. In some people, it was all over, on their legs and bellies."
By that time, back in Canada, a toxicologist at Alberta Hospital had noticed an unusual chemical in the urine of the two cocaine-using patients: levamisole. Zhu contacted him, and they put the puzzle together. Further research revealed that levamisole, a drug that was once used to treat colon cancer but is now reserved for veterinary use as a medication to get rid of worms, can cause agranulocytosis in humans. The "burns" seen on Californian patients, who also were suffering from agranulocytosis, were the result of skin infections related to patients' compromised immunity. There have now been several dozen cases of cocaine-related agranulocytosis reported in North America — and one known death. "For some reason, this drug called levamisole keeps popping up," Zhu says.
Where is it coming from? According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, levamisole has become increasingly popular as a "cut," or diluting agent, in cocaine and possibly some heroin. It is now found in 70% of all cocaine seized in the U.S., up from 30% in 2008. Unlike most cuts — usually inert or relatively harmless substances like the B vitamin inositol, which are added by lower-level dealers looking to stretch supplies — levamisole appears to be added to cocaine from the outset, in the countries of origin. The substance has been found in various concentrations in cocaine analyzed in countries around the world, from Switzerland to Australia. And urine tests of cocaine users attending a drug clinic at San Francisco General Hospital in 2009 — one floor above Graf's office — found that 90% of samples were positive for levamisole; similar tests in Seattle revealed that 80% of cocaine users there had levamisole in their systems.
"If it's showing up in all those different places, that's a prima facie indicator that it's happening at the highest levels of production," says Craig Reinarman, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has long studied cocaine. But since cocaine is illegal, there's no easy way to remove levamisole from the supply chain. Law enforcement could instead target large purchasers, possibly putting pressure on dealers to switch to other cuts.
Levamisole is cheap, widely available and seems to have the right look, taste and melting point to go unnoticed by cocaine users, which may alone account for its popularity. "Ease of availability seems likely to be important," says Reinarman. "Let's remember that producer countries are widely agrarian." Levamisole is used on farms, and its cost per gram is minimal.
An understanding of how levamisole affects the body, however, may better explain its explosive popularity. A 1998 paper found that levamisole relieved symptoms of heroin withdrawal in rats and also raised levels of various brain chemicals related to drug highs. "It may increase dopamine and by so doing may enhance cocaine effects," speculates Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Research conducted by Eldo Kuzhikandathil, assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, suggests that levamisole may indirectly increase the number of D1 dopamine receptors in the brain by affecting gene expression there. "Cocaine increases D1 expression," he says, "and this would probably accentuate that," which could enhance both highs and craving.
Levamisole also affects acetylcholine receptors throughout the body, which can boost heart rate — and studies of cocaine users show that they associate jumps in heart rate with getting high, spurring good feelings even before the drug hits the brain. A cut that accelerates heart rate might make them think they're getting the real thing. In the brain, levamisole may affect the same acetylcholine receptors activated by nicotine, another addictive drug that raises dopamine levels — which may be another clue to levamisole's lure.
But despite the wide use of levamisole, cases of agranulocytosis are relatively uncommon. According to government surveys, nearly 2 million Americans have used cocaine at least once in the past month. "Why aren't 90% of cocaine users [in San Francisco] getting sick?" wonders Graf, who says he sees about one case every few weeks, mostly in women. He suspects that men are less likely to be affected because they are less vulnerable to autoimmune disorders than women, but says the truth is that no one really knows why certain users become ill. Zhu and Graf urge users who are suffering from fever or unexplained infections to seek medical help immediately — the sooner agranulocytosis is treated, the greater the odds of survival.
To both physicians, the biggest mystery may be the power of cocaine addiction itself. Some of Graf's patients waited months before seeking help, as patches of painful, blackened skin continued to grow — and some continued to use cocaine despite learning that it caused their immune problems and that they could require plastic surgery to avoid permanent disfigurement. Zhu has treated several patients with life-threatening infections, some needing breathing tubes and intensive care. "It's quite sad — every time they use [cocaine], it happens. They wind up in the hospital for several weeks and almost die. But as soon as they go home and back into that environment, the cycle begins again."
To Dray
Your hotmail inbox appears to be full...was trying to send you something and that was the message that came back!
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Scientists Show How Brain Tumors Outsmart Drugs
Researchers at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Moores UCSD Cancer Center have shown one way in which gliomas, a deadly type of brain tumor, can evade drugs aimed at blocking a key cell signaling protein, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR),that is crucial for tumor growth. In a related finding, they also proved that a particular EGFR mutation is important not only to initiate the tumor, but for its continued growth or "maintenance" as well...
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Drexciya: The Countdown Has Begun/Liquid Dystopia
Drexciya drains the claps, cowbells and tomtoms, siphons off the salsa from Electro. With the vocoder id deleted, 90s Electro becomes even more enthralling, even more inhibiting. Such tracks as '93's Danger Bay and Positron Island are monsters from the low end which submerge you in liquid dystopia. Acrid frequencies clench the nerves like tazers, oscillations wince across the body in wave motion, abrasive tones remove cotton wool from your ears and vigorously scour inside the brainpan. Jagged snare velocities pinch the nerves until you're locked uptight. Sea Snake's scorching deathray sweeps the seacraters with its acoustic searchlight of astringent 303.
Each Drexicya EP -- from '92's Deep Sea Dweller, through Bubble Metropolis, Molecular Enhancement, Aquatic Invasion, The Unknown Aquazone, The Journey Home and Return of Drexciya to '97's Uncharted -- militarizes Parliament's 70s and Hendrix's 60s Atlantean aquatopias. Their underwater paradise is hydroterritorialized into a geopolitical subcontinent mapped through cartographic track titles: Positron Island, Danger Bay, The Red Hills of Lardossa, The Basalt Zone 4.977Z, The Invisible City, Dead Man's Reef, Vampire Island, Neon Falls, Bubble Metropolis. The Bermuda Triangle becomes a basstation from which wavejumper commandos and the 'dreaded Drexciya stingray and barracuda battalions' launch their Aquatic Invasion against the AudioVisual Programmers.
Marine Mutation across the Black Atlantic
Every Drexciya EP navigates the depths of the Black Atlantic, the submerged worlds populated by Drexciyans, Lardossans, Darthouven Fish Men and Mutant Gillmen. In the sleevenotes to The Quest, their '97 concept double CD, the Drexciyans are revealed to be a marine species descended from 'pregnant America-bound African slaves' thrown overboard 'by the thousands during labour for being sick and disruptive cargo. Could it be possible for humans to breathe underwater? A foetus in its mother's womb is certainly alive in an aquatic environment. Is it possible that they could have given birth at sea to babies that never needed air? Recent experiments have shown mice able to breathe liquid oxygen, a premature human infant saved from certain death by breathing liquid oxygen through its underdeveloped lungs. These facts combined with reported sightings of Gillmen and Swamp Monsters in the coastal swamps of the Southeastern United States make the slave trade theory startingly feasible.'
Drexciyans are 'water breathing, aquatically mutated descendants,' webbed mutants of the Black Atlantic, amphibians adapted for the ocean's abyssal plains, a phylum disconnected from the aliens who adapted to land. As Mark Sinker argued in '92, 'The ships landed long ago: they already laid waste whole societies, abducted and genetically altered whole swathes of citizenry. Africa and America -- and so by extension Europe and Asia -- are already in the various ways Alien Nation.' Drexciya use electronics to replay the alien abduction of slavery with a fictional outcome: 'Did they migrate from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi River Basin and to the Great Lakes of Michigan? Do they walk among us? Are they more advanced than us?'
Sinker's breakthrough is to bring alien abduction back to earth, to transfer the trauma from out there to yesternow. The border between social reality and science fiction, social fiction and science reality is an optical illusion, as Donna Haraway has pointed out. They have been here all along and they are you. You are the alien you are looking for.
Fictionalizing Frequencies
Drexciya fictionalize frequencies into sound pictures of unreal environments -- what Kraftwerk termed tone films -- not filled with cars, bikes or trains but rather UAOs, soundcrafts. In '93's Bubble Metropolis, Lardossan Cruiser 8-203 X prepares to dock. The tones of a hydrothermal turbine engine shift gears. They fictionalize the psychoacoustic volume of a giant submersible: 'This is Drexciyan Cruise Control Bubble 1 to Lardossan Cruiser 8 dash 203 X. Please decrease your speed to 1 point 788 point 4 kilobahn. Unknown turbine engine slows down. Thank you. Lardossan Cruiser 8 dash 203 X please use extra caution as you pass the aqua contruction site on the side of a aquabahn. I repeat: Proceed with Caution. Lardossan Cruiser 8 dash 203 X you are now cleared for docking. Have a nice stay here on Drexciya. I'm Drexciyan Cruiser Control X 205. If you have any problems let me know. Bubble Control Out.'
In a War without Weapons
The Black Atlantean depths are as lethal as the Red Planet or The Rings of Saturn. With the Molecular Enhancement EP, the ocean floor becomes the 5th front in The Forever War. Drexciyan technology solidifies the ocean into hydrocubes. These blocs of solid water are part of the electrofictional arsenal of Antivapor Waves, Aquatic Bata Particles and Intensified Magnetrons.
The magnetron is the heart of the radiowave transmitter, used to power airborne microwave radar sets during WW2. As Arthur C. Clarke explains, 'When the first experimental magnetron was carried to America, the face of war changed over a weekend. Japanese scientists had made and tested an identical device a year before the British. If they had followed up their invention we would now be living in a very different world.'
Technology generates the process Sun Ra terms an AlterDestiny, a bifurcation in time. The magnetron migrates across the mediascape, changing scale from Marvel Comics 60s supervillain Magneto, leader of the Evil Mutants, to Drexciya's Intensified Magnetron, to Killah Priest's 'magnetron which puts your arteries back apart'.
From 'More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures In Sonic Fiction' by Kodwo Eshun, pp. 06[083] - 06[085] (Quartet Books, London, 1998). Reprinted with a permission.
Pimp Daddy!
"I want a chastity belt on this man. I want his every move watched in Washington. I don't trust this guy. This one could end with a dead intern. I'm just saying. It could end with a dead intern."
Glenn Beck on Scott Brown
Read this list and weep
BRIT's Best Album of 30 Years Shortlist:
Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head
Dido - No Angel
Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
Duffy - Rockferry
Keane - Hopes & Fears
Oasis - (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
Phil Collins - No Jacket Required
Sade - Diamond Life
The Verve - Urban Hymns
Travis - The Man Who
Nothing to say...
Crass: There Is No Authority But Yourself
There is No Authority But Yourself is a Dutch film documenting the history of anarchist punk band Crass. The 'anarcho-punk' band Crass never compromised, was very political and never had faked some sort of appearance. They were honest. Real. And extremely popular. Some of the members are still living together in Dial House, a quiet place in the countryside just outside London. 'Permaculture' workshops ('living ecologically and sustainable') are organized there. Penny Rimbaud (drummer) en Gee Vaucher (art works) are still living up to Crass' ideals. They are trying to live an authentic life 'outside the framework'
FACT mix 116: Shed
FACT Mix 116 is by the one, the only, Shed.
The Berlin-based producer and DJ, real name Rene Pawlowitz, has steadily built a reputation as one of the most consistent and imaginative techno artists of the contemporary era. Despite the adulation, he remains a humble and reserved fellow, one who seems to revel in his outsider status and the freedom it affords – it’s not for nothing that his label, launched in 2004, is called Soloaction.
He’s existed on the periphery of our vision since the mid-noughties, thanks to classic Delsin, Styrax and particularly Soloaction releases like the Looking Back EP and ‘These Kinky Dudes From Germany’, but it was in 2008 that Shed really grabbed us by the nads. First came the remarkable single ‘Warped Mind’, and then his quietly monumental debut album, also released on Ostgut-Ton (home to Marcel Dettmann, Ben Klock et al). Shedding The Past found this producer coming to terms with techno’s charged history while also doing everything in his power to nourish and dictate its future, matching melancholy, serotonin-depleted synth melodies to impeccably swung rhythms derived not just from straight techno but dubstep, garage and hardcore. Not for nothing was it ranked as one of FACT’s albums of the decade.
Since then, Pawlowitz has become an ever more vital presence in, and agent of, forward-thinking dance music: his remixes for the likes of Peverelist, Substance, Radio Slave and particularly Taho (‘Energy Fields’) have been genuinely adventurous while also sating the demands of the dancefloor, and his two ongoing, “anonymous” 12″ series, Equalized and Wax – both distributed by the Hardwax store where he works – are remarkable for their elegant subversion of modern techno’s rhythmic givens. And for just being, well, lip-bitingly brilliant.
In summary, and in case it’s not obvious by this point, we love Shed; in fact, when he first floated the idea of recording a FACT Mix we had to have a gin-and-tonic and a lie-down before responding. The mix reflects its makers ongoing interest in dubstep and post-garage forms, with tracks from the likes of Peverelist, Martyn, Joy Orbison, Zomby and Skream (the oft-overlooked ‘One For The Heads’) enjoying prominence, but that’s just one strand of a diverse and hugely rewarding selection: look out for hard and raw techno from Surgeon and Underground Resistance, deadly warehouse minimalism from Pan Sonic and Marcel Dettmann, and out-and-out rave anthems from Aphex Twin, Drexciya and Link.
Tracklist:
Moving Ninja – Uranium – Tectonic
Distance – Empire – Hotflush
Peverelist – Esperanto – Punch Drunk
Elemental – Metal Funk – Runtime
Moderat – Rusty Nails – Bpitch
Black Pocket – U’re A Sta (Martyn Remix) – Fat City
Skream – One For The Heads – Tempa
Elemental – Shiner – Urban Graffiti
Aphex Twin – Digeridoo (Live in Cornwall) – R&S
Drexciya – Water Walker – Submerge
Link – The Augur – Evolution
UR- The Seawolf – UR
Surgeon – Dry – Dynamic Tension
Joy Orbison – Wet Look – Hotflush
Loefah - Twisup Vip (RMY by Youngsta & Task) DMZ
Pan Sonic – Vampina 2 – Blast First
MDR – Rerun – MDR
Zomby – Strange Fruit – Ramp
Shed – Supa – Soloaction.
Download: FACT mix 116 – Shed
@'FACT'
The Berlin-based producer and DJ, real name Rene Pawlowitz, has steadily built a reputation as one of the most consistent and imaginative techno artists of the contemporary era. Despite the adulation, he remains a humble and reserved fellow, one who seems to revel in his outsider status and the freedom it affords – it’s not for nothing that his label, launched in 2004, is called Soloaction.
He’s existed on the periphery of our vision since the mid-noughties, thanks to classic Delsin, Styrax and particularly Soloaction releases like the Looking Back EP and ‘These Kinky Dudes From Germany’, but it was in 2008 that Shed really grabbed us by the nads. First came the remarkable single ‘Warped Mind’, and then his quietly monumental debut album, also released on Ostgut-Ton (home to Marcel Dettmann, Ben Klock et al). Shedding The Past found this producer coming to terms with techno’s charged history while also doing everything in his power to nourish and dictate its future, matching melancholy, serotonin-depleted synth melodies to impeccably swung rhythms derived not just from straight techno but dubstep, garage and hardcore. Not for nothing was it ranked as one of FACT’s albums of the decade.
Since then, Pawlowitz has become an ever more vital presence in, and agent of, forward-thinking dance music: his remixes for the likes of Peverelist, Substance, Radio Slave and particularly Taho (‘Energy Fields’) have been genuinely adventurous while also sating the demands of the dancefloor, and his two ongoing, “anonymous” 12″ series, Equalized and Wax – both distributed by the Hardwax store where he works – are remarkable for their elegant subversion of modern techno’s rhythmic givens. And for just being, well, lip-bitingly brilliant.
In summary, and in case it’s not obvious by this point, we love Shed; in fact, when he first floated the idea of recording a FACT Mix we had to have a gin-and-tonic and a lie-down before responding. The mix reflects its makers ongoing interest in dubstep and post-garage forms, with tracks from the likes of Peverelist, Martyn, Joy Orbison, Zomby and Skream (the oft-overlooked ‘One For The Heads’) enjoying prominence, but that’s just one strand of a diverse and hugely rewarding selection: look out for hard and raw techno from Surgeon and Underground Resistance, deadly warehouse minimalism from Pan Sonic and Marcel Dettmann, and out-and-out rave anthems from Aphex Twin, Drexciya and Link.
Tracklist:
Moving Ninja – Uranium – Tectonic
Distance – Empire – Hotflush
Peverelist – Esperanto – Punch Drunk
Elemental – Metal Funk – Runtime
Moderat – Rusty Nails – Bpitch
Black Pocket – U’re A Sta (Martyn Remix) – Fat City
Skream – One For The Heads – Tempa
Elemental – Shiner – Urban Graffiti
Aphex Twin – Digeridoo (Live in Cornwall) – R&S
Drexciya – Water Walker – Submerge
Link – The Augur – Evolution
UR- The Seawolf – UR
Surgeon – Dry – Dynamic Tension
Joy Orbison – Wet Look – Hotflush
Loefah - Twisup Vip (RMY by Youngsta & Task) DMZ
Pan Sonic – Vampina 2 – Blast First
MDR – Rerun – MDR
Zomby – Strange Fruit – Ramp
Shed – Supa – Soloaction.
Download: FACT mix 116 – Shed
@'FACT'
Illustrations for 69 Love Songs
Meet our new favorite blog: How Fucking Romantic, a project by an ever-growing group of (mostly) London-based artists bent on illustrating every song on the Magnetic Fields’ epic 3-disk classic 69 Love Songs. Like these artists, we grew up falling in and out of love to these melodies, so each of these artistic interpretations is like a forgotten love note we just now found tucked inside an old binder covered in scribbles. Not that they had anything to do with it, but it’s almost enough to make us forgive the Fields for opening every episode of The Real World D.C.
At this point, most of the songs in the set have been nabbed by artists — though not necessarily rendered into art — but if you’re an illustrator you might be able to call dibs on one of your own. Some of the ones we we kind of can’t wait for are “Papa Was a Rodeo“, “Time Enough for Rocking When We’re Old“,”(Crazy for You But) Not That Crazy” and “I Shatter.”
“I Think I Need A New Heart” by Mark Gamble.
“A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off” by Todd Humberstone.
“Underwear” by Julia Scheele.
“I Can’t Touch You Anymore” by Huw “Lem” Davies.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Bloody hell!
LATEST:Magnitude 6.1 aftershock hits Haiti as aid efforts continue
(Death toll now stands at 200,000!)
austinheap Are you kidding me? A porn star that defends water boarding just won Mass? Thank god I left that hell hole. (Sorry, not trying to offend.)
UK teacher sets new world record for a throw in (inna different stylee)
Teacher Danny Brooks has set a new world record for the longest throw-in, launching a ball more than half the length of a football pitch.
Photos: BULLET7 / GUINNESS RECORDS
The PE teacher, from Halifax, West Yorkshire, has perfected a forward flip that enables him to throw a football legally with both feet on the ground, generating maximum arm speed in the build-up.
Mr Brooks, a former gymnast, used his athletic skills to send the ball 49.78 metres (163ft 3.8in) – the length of five double-decker buses – and set a new Guinnessworld record.
He said he got the idea from watching Stoke City fullback Rory Delap, who has achieved cult status for his enormous throw-ins, and honed his technique before beating the record of 48.17m, recorded by Michael Lochner of the USA in 1998.
Mr Brooks, 28, said: "I realised I could do a flip while holding the ball. I thought if I could get the angles and timing right I could beat the record."
He sent off a film and photographic evidence of his throw, and a Guinness World Records spokesman confirmed the new record on Monday night.
Mr Brooks said: "When it was confirmed it suddenly hit home. I can't believe I'm the best in the world at something."
SashaGrey
*sigh*
Any musicians want to put their music in an SG movie?looking for a guitar sound similar to the beginning of this http://tinyurl.com/yal47h2 about 1 hour ago from web
Scottish doctors criticise ‘reckless’ drug abuse guidance
A group of doctors and drug experts has attacked the “reckless” advice given by a government agency that heroin addicts should quit the drug after the recent spate of anthrax deaths among users.
The group demanded in a letter to Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon that the Government take emergency action to stop the outbreak from claiming more lives.
It claimed Health Protection Scotland was wrong to suggest abusers give up the drug and that further deaths were inevitable unless they could get access to substitutes such as methadone.
The letter said waiting times for these opiate replacement drugs were as high as 12 months in Scotland, the longest in Britain.
In addition to the seven fatalities, another seven people are in hospital after contracting anthrax from infected heroin.
The letter said: “It is unacceptable for those responsible for public health to issue advice to those using heroin to simply stop, or access treatment which in practice is not available.
“It is clear that this kind of approach can only lead to the death of more vulnerable people.” It continued: “An immediate public health plan must be initiated – part of this plan must provide for rapid access and low threshold prescribing of appropriate alternatives to street heroin.”
The letter was organised by drugs campaign group Release and signed by academics, international drugs experts and doctors.
Gary Sutton, head of drug services at Release, said the group’s UK-wide helpline fielded 16% of calls from Scotland, a “disproportionate” number of calls.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Ministers have confidence in the public health advice being given to drugs users.”
Australian liquor industry paints itself as defender of the people by Jeremy Bass
On Australia Day, I'll be sitting down with family and friends for our traditional barbecue lunch. My mates and I will have a beer as I turn the meat; the ladies will have a sparkling white as they prep the garlic bread and salads indoors.
That's what the liquor industry has us doing anyway. According to it, it's our right to rejoice in the pleasures of Aussie family life and mateship over a drink or two, and we should resent having that right trampled by do-gooder politicians and nanny-state troopers on account of a few mischief makers.
Such is the response to police suggestions to restrict full-strength liquor sales on the public holiday. ''We seem to be targeting everybody for the actions of a few and I just don't really understand why that's the case,'' Darren Pearson, who runs four bottle shops on the North Coast, bleated to the ABC.
The acting Queensland Premier, Paul Lucas, said he hadn't seen any such problems with Australia Day: ''I wouldn't want to be saying to mums and dads that you can't have a beer."
Buried under the romantic imagery of such responses to the threat of clampdowns is an alcoholic's argument: the notion of the right to imbibe alcohol uber alles. Notwithstanding the well-documented short- and long-term socio-economic costs, such polemics expose an element of our drinking culture that's less visible but pregnant with portent.
There's a couple of fundamental flaws to the argument in favour of a silently-sipping majority's right to a drink or two. The first lies in an inherent Catch-22: the more vehemently one argues one's right to consume alcohol, the stronger the evidence of an unhealthy love of the stuff, and the more likely it is that one shouldn't be touching it.
The liquor industry shares the tunnel vision attitude of its more dangerously loyal customers, that nothing is more important than unfettered access to full-strength alcohol. The whole stance is predicated on the idea bad apples can be easily identified and corralled away, leaving the rest of us to sip politely and chatter away in peace and harmony about the kids and the house renovations.
But this fails to take into account the random way in which personal responsibility dissolves in alcohol. On any given night, we don't know who's going to be a bad apple and who's not. There aren't many people who can seriously guarantee their good behaviour after one or two drinks. And that's not just the manifestly alcoholic ones. Many teens have visited casualty for a charcoal stomach-pump before maturing into a polite, moderate adult drinker.
Here's what the liquor industry, and the governments guzzling the excise, expediently fail to notice: the world is not neatly divisible into upright, responsible citizens and yobbos who can't hold their piss. Human nature is fluid at the best of times. Under the influence of alcohol, it is extremely so.
After a vicious glassing attack last October at the Chalk Hotel, near the Gabba in Brisbane, hotelier Jason Titman announced he was looking into civil actions against those involved (including the victim) for damage to his business's reputation and costs connected with investigation and legal compliance.
In the online trade publication The Shout, Titman has argued the tough-on-grog case fails to acknowledge that fewer than a quarter of serious assaults occur on licensed premises. This, he concluded, makes it safer to be inside licensed premises than not. "When was the last time we saw the media or politicians quoting these kind of numbers?" he asked.
Presumably what happens at 2.30am on the footpath outside a pub, and on the way to the other licensed premises nearby, doesn't count.
Such nonsense bears all the sincerity of those microscopic reminders on bottle labels to ''enjoy in moderation''. And those bourbon billboards admonishing consumers to ''please, drink responsibly''.
The blatant conflict of interest in all such reminders is evident in the wording. If they meant it, they would say ''please, drink less''. But there is not a liquor distiller or retailer in the capitalist world who would not prefer that you bought two bottles of its product rather than one.
No doubt, to answer such accusations, they would retreat into that old tobacco defence, the one about taking market share from competitors rather than increasing it overall. Rubbish. While one bourbon distiller is no doubt keen to wrest market share from another, both want to maximise the wider bourbon market and their share with it.
After that, the bourbon distillers might argue that they are working to wrest a bigger share of the wider spirits market, by persuading scotch and vodka drinkers as to the virtues of bourbon, and then they might say they are trying to turn existing wine and beer drinkers to bourbon.
But at the bottom of all such arguments is the laughable idea of a concrete ceiling on the number of drinkers and how much they will drink, and that no amount of persuading will get them to buy more and no amount of suggestive advertising will increase that ceiling. But any advertising worth its cost will expand not just the advertiser's share of the market, but the market itself.
It is common practice among barristers to emphasise a point by way of extreme analogy. Heroin users have been known to burgle, bash and rob others for money to feed their habit and avoid the pain of withdrawal. Such is the intense discomfort, they lose the ability to balance their interests against those of others.
The liquor industry displays the same kind of self-centredness - and on Australia Day as on every other, the fairest game for all these desperadoes is the drunk community.
A week after Haiti quake, aid for all is elusive
Even as U.S. troops landed in Seahawk helicopters Tuesday on the manicured lawn of the National Palace, the colossal efforts to help Haiti are proving inadequate because of the scale of the disaster and the limitations of the world's governments. Expectations exceeded what money, will and military might have been able to achieve so far in the face of unimaginable calamity.
"God has abandoned us! The foreigners have abandoned us!" yelled Micheline Ursulin, tearing at her hair as she rushed past a large pile of decaying bodies.
Three of her children died in the quake and her surviving daughter is in the hospital with broken limbs and a serious infection.
Rescue groups continue to work, even though time is running out for those buried by the quake. A Mexican team created after that nation's 1985 earthquake rescued Ena Zizi, 69. She had survived a week buried in the ruins of the residence of Haiti's Roman Catholic archbishop, who died. Other teams pulled two women from a collapsed university building.
But most efforts are focused on getting aid to survivors.
"We need so much. Food, clothes, we need everything. I don't know whose responsibility it is, but they need to give us something soon," said Sophia Eltime, a 29-year-old mother of two who has been living under a bedsheet with seven members of her extended family. She said she had not eaten since Jan. 12.
It is not just Haitians questioning why aid has been so slow for victims of one of the worst earthquakes in history — an estimated 200,000 dead, 250,000 injured and 1.5 million homeless. Officials in France and Brazil and aid groups such as Doctors Without Borders have complained of bottlenecks, skewed priorities and a crippling lack of leadership and coordination...
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Oh-No's at it again!
Billboard reports that U2 and Jay-Z, two of the biggest musical entities on the planet, are teaming up to record a charity song for Haitian earthquake relief. Speaking to the Irish radio station 2FM, U2's the Edge confirmed reports that Swizz Beatz was producing the collaboration: "Last night, we wrote a song... Bono got a call from a producer, Swizz. He and Jay-Z wanted to do something for Haiti. So Bono came up with the phrase on the phone, and last night we were here. We wrote a song-- finished, recorded, and sent it back to them. So that might be the next thing you hear from us!" Billboard reports that the collaboration will probably be sold on iTunes.@'Pitchfork'
Please Bono stick to your mediocre rock'n'roll (that you do SO well) and don't be such a disaster whore. You want to help? Well you know all that money that you have saved by basing your (tax)self in The Netherlands...
The people of Haiti have suffered enough!
Please Bono stick to your mediocre rock'n'roll (that you do SO well) and don't be such a disaster whore. You want to help? Well you know all that money that you have saved by basing your (tax)self in The Netherlands...
The people of Haiti have suffered enough!
Aides Graffiti
It is my job, as this copyranter character, to try my hardest to type caustic hatred about every ad ever produced by anybody. Usually, it’s easy. Occasionally, I have to fake it. But sometimes, rarely, I can’t muster much real or synthetic bile. Like with this new French AIDS awareness video
The spot, via TBWA in Paris, is for France’s AIDES Foundation. It’s irresponsible because: 1.) it’s promoting random underground Metro bathroom sex; 2.) the silly animation belittles the sacred act of fucking; and, 3.) the penis does it with all those orifices while wearing the same condom. There. That’s the best I can do. Actually, it’s a fun video that effectively delivers a simple message. You really want to see some terrible AIDS awareness ads, here you go. Btw, TBWA Paris also produced one of the best AIDS print campaigns I’ve seen. |Video: Creativity|
The spot, via TBWA in Paris, is for France’s AIDES Foundation. It’s irresponsible because: 1.) it’s promoting random underground Metro bathroom sex; 2.) the silly animation belittles the sacred act of fucking; and, 3.) the penis does it with all those orifices while wearing the same condom. There. That’s the best I can do. Actually, it’s a fun video that effectively delivers a simple message. You really want to see some terrible AIDS awareness ads, here you go. Btw, TBWA Paris also produced one of the best AIDS print campaigns I’ve seen. |Video: Creativity|
Copyranter@'Animal NY'
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