[Infographic] Combating Mass Incarceration - The Facts June 17, 2011 The war on drugs has helped make the U.S. the world's largest incarcerator. America’s criminal justice system should keep communities safe, treat people fairly, and use fiscal resources wisely. But more Americans are deprived of their liberty than ever before - unfairly and unnecessarily, with no benefit to public safety. Especially in the face of economic crisis, our government should invest in alternatives to incarceration and make prisons options of last – not first – resort. Download the graphic here » View the plain-text version » Learn More: Safe Communities, Fair Sentences: Combating Mass Incarceration Recent coverage: Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights References
Asemeni focului, asemeni panicii, asemeni iubirii “Poezia este incompatibilă cu cea mai minimă îngrădire dogmatică. Imensul ei spațiu demonstrează cât este de insuficient tot ce poate fi imaginat ca formă sau figură. Sensul ei este “sensul a ceea ce trebuie relevat, sensul miracolului necesar” (Novalis). Poezia este un avans, un promiţător avans, o profeţie a gândirii noi şi reale. În jocul magnific de umbre şi de lumini al perturbaţiunii, verbul îşi regăseşte funcţia reală de realizare, omul speriat, bântuit de propriile lui creaţii, îşi regăseşte posibilităţile de intervenţie şi de legătură. POEZIA este o ştiinţă a acţiunii. Gellu Naum, 1946, Castelul orbilor Scriitorul Gellu Naum (1 august 1915 – 29 septembrie 2001) este considerat ca fondatorul curentului suprarealist în România și unul dintre ultimii mari reprezentanți europeni ai acestui curent. Newton – desen realizat de Gellu Naum în anul 1944 (sursa: GelluNaum.ro)
Steve Jobs FBI File Reveals Bomb Threat, 'Tendency To Distort Reality' And More Though sections have been redacted and more than two dozen interviews are narrated in dry officialese, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 191-page file on Steve Jobs, released Thursday, reveals numerous lively details about the Apple co-founder's personal life and professional past, as recounted to FBI agents by his colleagues, neighbors and friends. The document confirms much of what is already known about Jobs, including his drug use, spartan lifestyle and the intense managerial style that created friction between him and some of his colleagues. Yet it also sheds light on Jobs' relationship with the government, revealing that he was given top secret clearance between 1988 and 1990 and was being considered by President George H. W. Bush's administration for a position on the president's Export Council. Several pages of memos and handwritten notes also provide a glimpse into a $1 million bomb threat that was made against Apple on Feb. 7, 1985, several months before Apple fired Jobs.
Revolutionary Spirit In May 1968, the Situationist-inspired Paris riots set off a chain reaction of refusal against consumer capitalism. First students, then workers, then professors, nurses, doctors, bus drivers and a piecemeal league of artists and anarchists took to the streets. They erected barricades, fought with police, occupied offices, factories, railway depots, theaters and university campuses, sang songs, issued manifestoes, sprayed slogans like “Live Without Dead Time” and “Down with the Spectacular-Commodity Culture” all over Paris. The first wildcat general strike in history spread rapidly, first around Paris, then France and then to hundreds of cities and campuses around the world. For a few heady weeks a tantalizing question hung in the air: What if the whole world turned into Paris? But the moment passed. But now the embers of insurgency are beginning to smolder again. Young people in the West are pissed off as they stare into an increasingly empty and precarious future. Kalle Lasn
Citizenship in a Republic: The Man in the Arena - Theodore Roosevelt @ LeadershipNow It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into a fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. My position as regards the moneyed interests can be put in a few words.
Methaqualone (Quaalude) Vault: Basics Methaqualone (Quaalude) is a sedative/hypnotic central nervous system depressant similar to barbiturates. It is most often taken orally in tablet and produces a range of effects including light sedation, euphoria and sleep at lower doses to unconsciousness and sometimes seizures at high doses. Some users may take 75 mg doses throughout the day, while others may take 300 mg once a day. A common dose for recreational use is reported to be 300 mg. However tolerance develops quickly and some users may take up to 1,000 mg - 2,000 mg per day to achieve the same effects. Pills mostly range from $5-$7 per 300 mg pill in 2003 in the United States. Methaqualone is illegal to possess without a license in the United States (Schedule I). Methaqualone, 2-methyl-3-(2-methylphenyl)-4(3H)-quinazolinone is one of the most powerful sedative/hypnotic compounds ever produced. Pharmacology Summary Needed. Methaqualone was first synthesized in India by a man named M.I. Brand Names: The Substance: The Experience:
Consumable Youth Rebellion Over the past 30 or so years, most people have chosen to pursue the rewards of conformity instead of the fruits of revolt. What they have been left with are ugly and stupid lives, ugly and stupid places and a planet pushed to the very edge of destruction by capitalism’s efforts to keep feeding them new promises of consumable happiness. But the thought that one is wasting one’s life is not a cheerful one, and respectable citizens everywhere have gone to considerable lengths to avoid it. They cling to these illusions with ferocious desperation; but the whole house of lying ghosts and grim parodies is a fragile one, and it is threatened by the depredations of delinquency. Since the Second World War, advanced capitalism – and the quest for contentment through consumption that it fosters – has generated a long series of consumable youth rebellions. “It probably had a little to do with the gangster films we saw. Wayne Spencer, significantfailure.blogspot.com
"M-am luat pe mine însumi ca duhovnic şi psihanalist" - interviu cu Mircea CĂRTĂRESCU - interviu cu Mircea CĂRTĂRESCU - În jurnalul tău faci figura unui personaj deseori nemulţumit, deprimat, anxios... Dar aceea e o carte, iar eu te întreb aici, într-un interviu, dacă ai frici sau anxietăţi în viaţa personală şi/sau legate de scris, în faţa paginii albe, spre exemplu, sau după terminarea unei trilogii? N-am ştiut pînă acum că fac figura asta în jurnalul meu, îmi pare rău pentru cititor, n-am avut intenţia să-l plictisesc cu problemele mele, ci dimpotrivă, să-l instruiesc şi să-l amuz... Nu ştiam nici că jurnalul meu nu e creditabil pentru că una sînt cărţile (chiar şi jurnalele intime) şi alta viaţa. Păi, hai să ficţionalizez în prelungirea cărţilor şi a jurnalului, de vreme ce n-am nici un alt adevăr de oferit, nici măcar mie însumi (ca să ştiu ce e cu mine, „ca să-mi înţeleg situaţia“, cum scria Kafka, trebuie să scriu, n-am nici o altă cale). Da, generaţia mea e acum praf şi pulbere, mult înainte de vreme. „Nu-mi place această societate“ Nu, n-au nici un interes.
Ayahuasca - National Geographic Adventure Magazine or centuries, Amazonian shamans have used ayahuasca as a window into the soul. The sacrament, they claim, can cure any illness. The author joins in this ancient ritual and finds the worlds within more terrifying—and enlightening—than ever imagined. I will never forget what it was like. The overwhelming misery. The certainty of never-ending suffering. Suddenly, I swirled down a tunnel of fire, wailing figures calling out to me in agony, begging me to save them. "The darkness will never end," he said. "I can," I replied. All at once, I willed myself to rise. "Welcome back," the shaman said. The next morning, I discovered the impossible: The severe depression that had ruled my life since childhood had miraculously vanished. The jungle camp where our shamanistic treatment will take place is some 200 miles (322 kilometers) from the nearest town, Iquitos, deep in the Peruvian Amazon. And so I am back again. I've told no one this time—especially not my family. Then, there's the impatience.
FBI: If We Told You, You Might Sue Often when the government tries to suppress information about its surveillance programs, it cites national-security concerns. But not always. In 2008, a few years after the Bush administration's warrantless-wiretapping program was revealed for the first time by the New York Times, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act. That act authorizes the government to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications without meaningful oversight. As we've explained before (including in our lawsuit challenging the statute), the FISA Amendments Act is unconstitutional. In 2009, we also filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government's interpretation and implementation of the FISA Amendments Act. Two weeks ago, as part of our FOIA lawsuit over those documents, the government gave us several declarations attempting to justify the redaction of the documents. There you have it.
For Those Who Want to Lead, Read - John Coleman by John Coleman | 10:00 AM August 15, 2012 When David Petraeus visited the Harvard Kennedy School in 2009, one of the meetings he requested was with author Doris Kearns Goodwin. Petraeus, who holds a PhD in International Relations from Princeton, is a fan of Team of Rivals and wanted time to speak to the famed historian about her work. Apparently, the great general (and current CIA Director) is something of a bibliophile. He’s increasingly an outlier. This is terrible for leadership, where my experience suggests those trends are even more pronounced. Note how many business titans are or have been avid readers. The leadership benefits of reading are wide-ranging. Reading can also make you more effective in leading others. Finally, an active literary life can make you more personally effective by keeping you relaxed and improving health. Reading more can lead to a host of benefits for business people of all stripes, and broad, deep reading can make you a better leader.
lp.higherbalance.com/ibtwn333?twog_id=3d4d7a4d34636a4d664a6d5a Psychiatrist Rick Strassman, author of the ground breaking book DMT: The Spirit Molecule(2001) asserts that DMT is produced and stored in the human brain and is an active agent in a variety of altered states, including mystical experiences. This chemical messenger profoundly links body and spirit, pineal activation in the brain, and may awaken normally latent synthetic pathways. A few rare and select meditation techniques have been observed being practiced by indigenous cultures that naturally release DMT through the pineal gland. Visionary experiences with symbolic or religious content that are beyond ordinary explanation have been reported and documented in both Western and Eastern religions. These experiences vary depending on the recipients personal beliefs and can be described as a dazzling lights of illumination and states of surreal mystical experiences.
A Culture of Fear - Jonathan M. Finegold Catalan Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soviet foreign spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov warned the United States, "We have done the most terrible thing to you that we could possibly have done. We have deprived you of an enemy." For nearly half a century, the elusive threat posed by the Soviet Union formed the basis of American foreign and domestic policy. The United States has a long history of exploiting fear for the purpose of legitimizing its growth. As Gerasimov suggested, the fall of the Soviet Union left the US government without a justification for its existence. Unfortunately, this situation did not last long. While support of American imperialism, otherwise termed "counterterrorism," has recently waned, the government is now reinforcing its legitimacy by once again intervening on behalf of the common man against the capitalist system. Our government's authority is based on the notion that only the state can protect the American people from the vices of greed and opposing ideologies.
A Lively Mind: Your Brain On Jane Austen : Shots - Health Blog hide captionMatt Langione, a subject in the study, reads Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. Results from the study suggest that blood flow in the brain differs during leisurely and critical reading activities. L.A. Cicero/Stanford University At a recent academic conference, Michigan State University professor Natalie Phillips stole a glance around the room. A speaker was talking but the audience was fidgety. Phillips, who studies 18th- and 19th-century literature, says the distracted audience made something pop in her head. "I love reading, and I am someone who can actually become so absorbed in a novel that I really think the house could possibly burn down around me and I wouldn't notice," she said. For Phillips, Jane Austen became both a literary and a neuroscientific puzzle. Could modern cognitive theories explain character development in one of Austen's most famous heroines — Pride and Prejudice's Elizabeth Bennett? She decided to conduct a study, looking at how reading affects the brain.