There are thousands of known psychotropic substances available from nature — plants, fungi and WalMart all supply chemical substances that have an impact on the brain and brain function. Chocolate, which comes from an orchid native to Mexico is a good example, though not yet outlawed. The focus today is on Salvia divinorum, another Mexican native said to have LSD-like effects when smoked, eaten or drunk in a tea. Effects last only about an hour, but can be highly subversive to the Establishment, such as uncontrolled laughter or hallucinogenic effects.
Nicknamed Salvia, Sally-D, Magic Mint, Diviner’s Sage (Salvia de los Adivinadores), Maria Pastora, Sage of the Seers, Lady Salvia, Purple Sticky, and/or Sage, this plant and products produced from it have been outlawed in eight states in the U.S., and 16 more states are considering legislation to protect us from this noxious weed. No need to wait for any scientific research, or evidence that it might be harmful in some way — people like it — that is reason enough to outlaw it. Land of the free, home of the rave…
Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have photographed a white killer whale off the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Not quite Captain Ahab’s giant, it is only about eight meters long and 4500 kg, typical size for an adult of that species. Nor is it a true albino, apparently, as parts of its body has a light yellowish-brown tinge.
I suppose some Japanese whaling boat will slaughter this poor beast (for research purposes only, of course…) before it reaches its potential old-age of 70 or 80 years. Killer whales are normally black and white, so the white is really not so odd — it is that yellowish part, which should be black, that is the anomaly. Moby Dick was probably not a killer whale (i.e. Orca species), though he was a killer of a whale with an appetite for sailor hors d’oeuvres.
Samantha Power resigned as Obama’s foreign policy adviser after calling Hillary Clinton a monster. What’s this, an attempt to re-introduce civility into political campaigns? Power made the slip in an interview with The Scotsman, saying:
… in Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only places they can win. She is a monster, too- that is off the record- she is stooping to anything.
Well, well … Power’s job was an unpaid, volunteer sort of position, so I guess she won’t be put out on the street. Now if we could just get the politicians themselves to clean up their acts!
In an effort to stem the degradation of the Grand Canyon ecosystem, the government has decided to try a little experiment — if you can call 1.3 billion gallons of water ‘little’. Nature created periodic floods in the canyon until man came along and built huge hydro-electric dams along the river course. Glen Canyon Dam, for example, has been blocking the natural floods since the early 1960s, and since then the sandbars along the river have gradually washed away without being replaced.
Today the government opened the spigots on that dam, releasing 300,000 gallons of water per minute, with a plan to leave the flow open for three days. They hope this will help restore the sandbars and other flood-dependent features of the environment. It will also help wash out the accumulating sediment from behind the dam, which in time would fill the reservoir if left unchecked. I suspect they must have started the paperwork in the 1970s to get such an unorthodox project approved.