Pelosi Rolls Out Trillion Dollar Obamacare Takeover of U.S. Health Care Free-Market System With Public Option, Taxpayer-Funded Abortions, Illegal Aliens Covered, Etc.

Doesn’t Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy ‘I don’t want to investigate possible ACORN child pornography ring ‘ Pelosi give Americans credit at all for NOT being deceived ALL THE TIME by Radical Socialists bent upon radically transforming America into a U.N./ G20 puppet and a socialist, big-government nanny-state?

“We have listened to the American people,” the San Francisco Democrat insisted. “We are putting forth a bill that reflects our best values and addresses our greatest challenges” Pelosi, whose approval rating is very low, and Congress’ even lower, said to an invitation-only event.

Well, there’s no Medical Liability Malpractice Reform in the bill, which could save scores of tens of BILLIONS of dollars and TRANSFORM our health care system from one of Defensive Medicine, to one more concerned with actual patient care. And didn’t Obama PROMISE to NOT SIGN A BILL that was “one dime” over cost or contained funding for abortions?

“It’s abominable,” S.E. Cupp, a columnist said on the Fox News Channel. “And frankly, PELOSI IS A LIAR,” said the regular FNC contributor.

“This is about putting forth a POLITICAL LEGACY, “explained another regular FNC contributor, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is also a FNC anchor and analyst. “IT WILL BANKRUPT THIS COUNTRY. This is NOT WELL THOUGHT-OUT. It’s ILL-CONCEIVED. And it’s quite frankly ARROGANT. They know THIS WILL NOT WORK,” further explained Guilfoyle.

“It’s not smoke and mirrors, THEY’RE LYING,” insisted Cupp. “The president simply cannot this bill because…HE MADE A PROMISE that he wouldn’t sign a bill that wasn’t budget neutral, and he wouldn’t sign a bill that has abortion funding…this bill FAILS on both counts.”

“Who’s gonna pay for it?’ asked Guilfoyle on ‘Hannity.’ “The public doesn’t support it. It’s SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and it’s MORE GOVERNMENT ENCROACHMENT. It’s a BAD IDEA.”

“It’s a MONSTROSITY,” explained House Minority Leader Republican Leader John Boehner said on the FNC. “And it’s exactly what the American people have been telling Congress for months tha they DON’T WANT.”

Boehner explained that he had been a business owner “that could compete with the Private Sector, but I could NEVER COMPETE WITH THE GOVERNMENT. They have no cost-to-capital. They WRITE ALL THE RULES. They set the premiums, and what’s going to happen is government is going to DRIVE EVERY HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY OUT OF BUSINESS,” said Boehner.

“It’s LONGER THAN ‘War and Peace,’” said Cupp. “It’s longer than ‘Atlas Shrugs,” Cupp said of the almost 2,000 page bill.

The MASSIVE 1,990 page Pelosi bill contains the following edicts:

• Employers TAXED 8% of wages for failure to meet Federal Government Demands
• Individuals without Health Care Insurance Plan would be subject to 2.5% TAX
• Imposes a 2.5% TAX on all medical devices

In other news, the Health Reform Video Challenge contest to push Obamacare Socialism for the Democratic Party’s Organizing for American campaign contains a finalist who desecrated the American flag with black graffiti until it was completely dark, with a heart monitor sounding a flat line at the end if Obamacare is not chosen. The ad then enlists young children to lie and say, “Two years from now, I’ll be diagnosed with leukemia, and I’ll die. Because we couldn’t afford health care.”

Other news has CNN’s Lou Dobbs revealing on his radio show that three weeks ago someone shot a gun just 15 feet away from his wife, and that it hit his house. “The attack on the Dobbs family home was an attack on every American who values the First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of the press,” said William Gheen of Americans for legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC).

So-Called ‘Death Panel’ Measure Survives in House Health Bill

Nearly half the members of a House panel in control of Pentagon spending are under scrutiny by ethics investigators in Congress, this according to The Washington Post on Friday, citing a leaked confidential House Ethics Committee report.

Early White House Counts Overstate Number of Jobs Created by Stimulus

Obama ‘Most Powerful Writer Since Julius Caesar,’ Says NEA Chief

Dismantling America, by Thomas Sowell

And finally, the Tea Party Express bus may be coming to an area near you. Check out the official site to see if the this SECOND BUS TOUR is coming to your area. It runs October 25-November 11, 2009.

Quote of the Day: “I don’t think his (President Obama) first priority was fixing the economy; it’s funding FUNDING RADICAL CHANGE in America. And the Stimulus Package is to fund Leftists. And the health care program is similar…I think they’re ARROGANT, INCOMPETENT and RADICAL. He’s DECLARED WAR ON HIS CRITICS; he’s DECLARED WAR ON FOX…this is FRIGHTENING.” – FNC regular contributor Charles Krauthammer on FNC’s ’Special Report.’

Please consider bookmarking, favoriting and/or subscribing to this blog to stay informed about the socialism, Marxism, insane debt spending, radicalism and corruption emanating from Washington District of Corruption.

Thank you,

777denny

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WHO Releases Report on Major Global Health Risks

Global Health Risks: Mortality and Burden of Disease Attributable to Selected Major Risks

This document, released today by the World Health Organization, provides a comprehensive assessment of leading risks to global health. This investigation focuses on 24 global risk factors and provides detailed estimates on detrimental health effects due to these risk factors.

In summary, this report found that addressing five key factors – childhood weight, unsafe sex, alcohol use, lack of clean water and sanitation, and high blood pressure – could increase global life expectancy by nearly five years.

"Inhale the web"? Sounds like one of those recurring nightmares to me

The compulsory post, again. But hopefully it’ll give you something to ponder on…

Last week we had an excellent, over-excited lecture by Dr Claire Wardle, who is leading bits of the the UGC (user generated content) and technology charge at the BBC.

One of the websites she mentioned (which I’ve been having fun with for about a week now, incidentally) was Addictomatic. It lets you see what all the social media are saying about something at once, and it’s a real insight – try the gay blood ban, for instance, which is now under review (hooray – see my last post on this).

But I must say – its slogan scares the living hell out of me. The idea that we should be inhaling the web implies that we need it to live – that Twitter, Facebook et al are the sole force that bond the whole of the world. It’s easy to forget, but – they’re not.

I was talking to my new ward councillor yesterday, and he was sceptical of Twitter’s influence. Why? Because many of the people who matter from a news and a council point of view are about as far from being on Twitter or anything else as you can get. They range from the asylum seekers, the migrant workers and those in council housing, to the petty thieves, the drug users and the neglected kids.

These are voices that most need to be heard, yet still they are comparatively invisible on the social media (in Britain, at least – I’m not referring to those who tweeted from earthquakes or dodgy elections). It’s time to use a massive cliche (if I haven’t done already!) but if we’re in inhaling the world through a site like Addictomatic, is it not a bit like inhaling the world through air conditioning?

RE: A Hot Topic

The following is a response to an argument found on Can’t Touch This.

The blog mentioned above contains a post pertaining to the subject of the legalization of marijuana. Like this blogger, I myself have never used the drug and don’t plan on it, but feel that marijuana should be legalized in the U.S. However, I’ll go a step further by saying that all drugs should be legalized. I know that may sound a little unorthodox, but hear me out on this one.

My belief that drugs should be legalized is based on the principle I hold that government should be limited in what it tells you to do with your body, but there are other factors as well. I am a strong believer in individual choice. I don’t feel it’s in the government’s interest to declare a “War on Drugs,” especially since it has backfired. Ever since Richard Nixon declared this “war” drug use has actually increased.  I don’t feel that drug use will necessarily go up if the “War on Drugs” is lifted. There cannot be a real war on drugs because people find a way to use them whether they’re illegal or not.

If drugs were legalized, it would save a ton of money on government spending on prohibition and produce an increase in state tax revenues. Marijuana more specifically could also be used for medical purposes for patients who need it.

We’ve got drugs worse than what’s illegal that’s available to Americans right now. This is where a major inconsistency is found (we don’t tell Americans they can’t smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol because they’re two of our biggest industries). It’s a bad idea for the government to decide for us what’s too harmful for us and what’s not.

Most of the problems we have in this country dealing with drugs happen because drugs are illegal. People steal to get drugs because drugs are expensive because they’re illegal. People get hooked on drugs because they can’t admit they have a problem because drugs are illegal. Why criminalize drug users and put them in the same category as murderers? We imprison over 800,000 people a year while spending $700 a second unsuccessfully trying to curb the use of drugs in this country. Incriminating these drug users does not fix the problem of drug use; it simply fills up our prisons and slows down the court systems.

Once again, I don’t plan on using drugs at any point in my life.  There are plenty of others out there like me who are personally against drug use, but feel that it’s not the government’s role to declare what we can and can’t put in our bodies. The “War on Drugs” is a form of prohibition which violates the principles of a limited government embodied in the Constitution. For too long this country has looked at the problem of drugs in society the wrong way, instating laws that do nothing but make the problem worse. With the current government attitude being “drugs are bad, so let’s throw money at the problem,” I believe a serious change is in order.

OBAMA/HOLDER WEED NATION TRAIN HAS LEFT THE STATION -- WILL THE STATES BE ABLE TO CATCH UP?

Marijuana Debate Waters Are Muddied By Obama--Holder Hands Off Weed Policy

Yeah bring me champagne when I’m thirsty.

Bring me reefer when I want to get high.

Yeah bring me champagne when I’m thirsty.

Bring me reefer when I want to get high.

Muddy Waters Blues Song

The Obama administration’s new marijuana prosecution policy has effectively “legalized” the burgeoning “medical marijuana” drug distribution system.  The new Obama/Holder drug prosecution guidelines reward criminality and dump a major policy and law enforcement problem into the laps of states already reeling from the effects of the recession.  As The New York Times puts it today (“States Pressed Into New Role on Marijuana”):

Some legal scholars said the federal government, by deciding not to enforce its own laws (possession and the sale of marijuana remain federal crimes), has introduced an unpredictable variable into the drug regulation system.

Do not be confused.  The so-called “medical marijuana” system is not that Utopian system of legally produced, quality-monitored, tax-generating, legal distribution of licit drugs that potheads and organized Libertarians (there is so infrequently a difference, how is one to know?) enthuse about.

It is rather lipstick on a pig — the same old criminals are selling the same old contaminated illegal drug through a quasi-legal, bastardized system of outlets forced onto unwary or complaisant governments by a relentless and quintessentially dishonest campaign appealing to cheap “compassion.”

In practical effect, the Obama/Holder hands-off policy has evaded honest debate about whether a hit of BC bud is any worse than a bottle of Bud.

That is fair ground to engage and, clearly, many millions of Americans favor toke over brew.  But to engage in an honest dialogue, of course, would require the Administration to take a straightforward position, up or down, and that might be difficult for two reasons.

First, this early exchange from something called “Open for Questions ” on the transitional “Change.gov” website:

Open for Questions: Response

Monday, December 15, 2008 06:05pm EST / Posted by Dan McSwain

We’ve launched several features recently that are opening up the two-way dialogue between the Transition team and the Change.gov community.

Q: “Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?” S. Man, Denton

A: President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.

On the other hand, campaigner Obama admitted partaking of the sultry smoke stuff as a “confused” teenager (“Barack Obama, asked about drug history, admits he inhaled”).  Obama did not cop to a clever Bill Clintonesque Plea (”Did not have sex, did not inhale”), but owned straight up, getting down with the voting-age kids whose jeans reek of the forbidden weed:

For one thing, he said, “When I was a kid, I inhaled.”

“That was the point,” Obama told an audience of magazine editors.

One line of serious fact-based policy analysis I heard recently goes like this:  Obama’s getting elected in spit of this admission, and the pattern of marijuana use among young people (say those under 30), makes it virtually inevitable that our drug policy will change and marijuana will be truly legalized.

That may be so.  And if it is, let’s get the debate on the table.

But do not be fooled.  This is not what the Obama/Holder policy does.  It is simply a perverse form of “don’t look, don’t enforce” in the face of rampant criminality.  And, as The New York Times suggests in today’s article cited above, a patchwork of different state laws could result:

“The next step would be a particular state deciding to legalize marijuana entirely,” said Peter J. Cohen, a doctor and a lawyer who teaches public health law at Georgetown University. If federal prosecutors kept their distance even then, Dr. Cohen said, legalized marijuana would become a de facto reality.

De facto reality?

Anyone who think drug traffickers will not seize on such a disparity of state law to set up illicit smuggling systems must be smoking something.  If Oregon, for example, completely legalizes marijuana, planes, trains, buses and backpacks will be flowing out to the rest of the United States.

This evasion is neither a good thing for policy-making nor for law enforcement.  Let’s look this pig right in the eye.

There are plenty of well-organized, well-funded advocates of outright legalization on the web.  Here, however, is a voice of experience strongly against legalization, taken from a May 22, 2009 “Freakonomics Quorum” in The New York Times, What Would Happen if Marijuana Were Decriminalized?:

Mike Braun recently retired from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as the Assistant Administrator and Chief of Operations.

In 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that an adult’s possession of marijuana for personal consumption in the home was legal. Although the ruling applied only to persons 19 and over, teen consumption of the drug skyrocketed. A 1988 University of Alaska study found that the state’s 12- to 17-year-olds used marijuana at more than twice the national average for their age group. School equivalency test scores plummeted, as work place accidents, insurance rates and drugged-driving accidents went through the roof. Alaska’s residents voted to recriminalize possession of marijuana in 1990, demonstrating their belief that legalization and increased use was too high a price to pay.

In 1985, Stanford University conducted a study of airline pilots who each consumed a low grade marijuana cigarette before entering a flight simulator involving a stressful, yet recoverable scenario. The test resulted in numerous crashes. More alarming was the fact that the pilots again crashed the simulator in the same scenario a full 24 hours after last consuming marijuana, when they all showed no outward signs of intoxication, reported feeling “no residual effects” from the drug, and each also stated they had “no reservations” about flying! Part of the problem with marijuana is that Delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that gives the user his or her high, is absorbed into the fatty tissues of the body where it remains for at least several days, and can continue to have an adverse impact on one’s ability to act capably under stress days after the drug was last ingested.

If healthy pilots can’t respond effectively in the cockpit 24 hours after smoking a low-grade marijuana cigarette, do we really want our kids transported to and from school by a school bus driver who smoked one or two joints the night before? How do we ensure the cop on the beat, who’s carrying a badge and gun, hasn’t smoked marijuana 24 hours before entering onto duty once the drug is legal? And what about those pilots?

Marijuana legalization advocates love to say that we can tax the sale of the drug and generate revenue to cover all the costs associated with legalization, but a few more questions need to be asked.

Will the taxes pay for the significant increases in health and casualty insurance the experts tell us will be levied if marijuana is legalized? Is the government going to hand out free marijuana to those who can’t afford it? If so, who pays for that? Is it O.K. with you if the government or corporate America opens a marijuana distribution center in your neighborhood, or should they only establish them in the economically depressed areas of town? Which government agency will be responsible for rigorous testing to ensure that marijuana sold in the marketplace meets the strictest of consumer standards and is free of pesticides and drugs such as LSD and PCP? Which government agency is going to be responsible for taxing your next-door neighbor when he starts growing marijuana in his back yard, adjacent to your prized roses, of course? What happens when the taxes on marijuana become so excessive from covering all the ancillary costs of legalization that the vast majority of users simply grow the product themselves? Then who will pay for all of this?

I can’t help but ask a couple final questions. What’s the legal age limit we attach to marijuana use? Is it 18; is it 21? And what do we do about the predatory narcotics traffickers who shift every “ounce” of their undivided and merciless attention to those under the authorized age limit once the drug is legalized? Folks, all we need to do is educate ourselves, ask the tough questions, and apply common sense and logic when making a decision on this issue. Most hard-working taxpayers with kids like me will come up with the same answer, which is no to legalization.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Inhaling Was The Point of a Confused Teenager -- But What Does He Think Today About This Drug for Other Confused Teenagers?

HEROIN!

Heroin…
why do you exist?
Heroin…
why can’t people resist
the bitter sweet taste of your poison.
Your a morbid curse that nobody would have chosen.

Heroin…
your like a vampires bite,
spreading evil through their veins
rushing inside, but still as night.
You torment minds, making them deranged,
but without you, they become estranged.

Your power, your fury.
Their weakness, their purity.

Dirty spike, disgusting truth,
troubled souls, innocent youth.

Heroin…
I’m enraged by your sins.
Your an intricate game
that nobody can win.

Zombifying those I know
and luring them to your potent flow.

Heroin…
why do people crave your rabid injection?
Heroin…
why do people glorify your lethal infection?

Heroin…
Why did you take him from me?
Heroin…
why do you create such misery?

Heroin…
like Satan you claimed his soul!
You possesed him, you took control!

Heroin…
you took it all, until there was nothing left!
You even took his last gasping breath!

SMACK!

You are death!

—————->> Carina Fosse

Addicts SPEAK OUT!

This is a space I created for recovering (or those trying) can come to let out their feelings about addiction (this includes alcohol), discrimination within the medical community for being an addict, the stress on families living with the disease of addiction and their treatment of their family member addicts, as well as just to vent about the hell of addiction and what it does to one’s life.

And no, you cannot buy drugs online here;)

Another Immune System Question

There is a saying among non-allopathic health care folks that goes, “You can’t heal what you can’t feel.” It’s the argument for not using analgesics unnecessarily: If you don’t really need it, don’t take a pain killer. It impairs your body’s ability to feel itself (by definition, right?) and that will impair your body’s ability to heal itself.

Is this true? Is there any evidence that taking a ibuprofin prolongs the whatever-it-is that’s causing your headache? That taking dextromathorphan makes your cough last longer? I understand that taking drugs can allow you to continue pushing your body, and that that could prolong a sickness. I understand that your liver has to deal with these chemicals, and that’s probably not good for it. But if all other things were equal–the same amount of rest and your liver is just fine, for example–would you get better faster if abstain from drugs than if you take them?

Bloated & Bitchy asks THE GoToNegro

Dear GTN,

It is PMS week for me. You know, for example, normally if I see a mouse in a trap, I don’t give a fuck, right? It’s a mouse. It can carry disease and fuck up the walls of your home as it chews through shit, you with me? Yesterday, PMS week, the mouse is in the trap and it wiggles! I am heartbroken, want to rush the fucking thing up the street to the clinic and pay to have it worked on….

Here is my question…. any good meds for this time of the month? I am not on the pill. (can’t take it after having children) makes me dry as the Sahara and girl I like my sex! Second, Midol Schmidol…my hormones beat the fuck out of Midol. Midol is like…damn this bitch is insane! I’m not a big fan of pills anyways. We will see what you come up with… I trust you!

Bloated & Bitchy

Dear I Would Like a Restraining Order from this Reader at Least Once Per Month Please,

Police protection aside, I say PMS is not a curse it is a blessing… Go with me on this one.

I believe PMS was sent to women as an outlet for our usual repressed animalistic nature. Normally women are told to be good girls, be nice, be polite, and don’t rock the boat. But, once a month everyone knows, accepts and allows women around the globe to unleash the hormonal, raging, powder keg that lurks just the bellow the surface of every female of childbearing age. Shake up the cruise ship of life like the massive iceberg of bloating water that you feel like!

If you feel the need to rescue the filthy, flea infested, dying rodent in the trap, call 911. You pay taxes. Use those services, you’re cramping. Why should you get off the couch!?!

There are many holistic remedies which work well to help quell the tidal wave of crashing menstrual hormones. I myself have made several herbal teas with combinations of dried chamomile flowers, poppy flowers and a myriad of other things that I have found in natural remedies books. It takes a bit of research and dealing with some weird people with tin foil on their heads running the local Apothecary but it might be worth it to you to check out.

PMS, besides being a blessing to women, can also be a test of a man’s true masculinity. Guys, if you really want to know how tough you are, try taking a piece of chocolate cake from a PMSing female. If you make it out alive you are Krull the Concurrer and will surely bear the battle scares for life to prove your bravery.

Speaking to the sex aspect of your PMS issue… Just before the actually red river flows, and for many during the bloody waterfall, a woman is at her horniest. PMS is often a sign of a woman’s fertile time of the month. This is a time that biologically your body says, “Hey, its time to breed and I want some NOW!”

Studies have actually shown that during this time of the month women actually prefer a more masculine male partner. This is when a women’s body directs her to good, strong healthy genes with a desire to fuck like an animal. So men, do not shy away from the site of a dangling cotton string. Dive in there without a life preserver and enjoy. If you’re just meeting the woman, don’t forget your raincoat. Side note: Blood is a natural lubricant.

Ladies, embraces you bitchiness. Revel in your mood swings. Bask in your granny panties. You are woman hear you roar, whine, bitchy, cry…

And if all else fails, smoke a joint and invest in Sara Lee.

Send me YOUR questions at: thegotonegro@yahoo.com

Leave a comment…Any comment… I wanto to hear what YOU think.

Writer's Block: Scariest Drug Experience

Question: What is the scariest incident with drugs or alcohol you’ve witnessed or personally experienced? How did it change you?

Answer: The scariest incident I have ever had with drugs is when I tried Salvia for the first time. Please take note, this is legal! Salvia is a wicked trip, and it totally fucks with your mind. If you’re going to try it, make sure you have a sitter (READ: DO NOT DO IT WITHOUT A SITTER) and make sure it’s a damn good sitter.  I tripped so far that I thought my world was ending, as if I was in the Matrix.  The world around me was literally peeling away into black, and I thought “this is it, this is real, I’ve been dreaming my reality all this fucking time. Oh shit, it’s all over”. It lasted for about 5-10 minutes, and then I was back. But shit dude… that was a wicked, scary trip.

It didn’t really change me. I know where this thought process came from. I have an overactive imagination and have sometimes thought, mainly for kicks, what if we really are in the Matrix? And we’re all just connected to this reality and it’s all a dream? I mean, what’s to say we’re not? Then I snap back to reality, haha.

Feds issue new medical marijuana policy (to Good Ol' Boy Hoops)

WASHINGTON – Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told Monday in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department.

Under the policy spelled out in a three-page legal memo, federal prosecutors are being told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law.

The guidelines issued by the department do, however, make it clear that federal agents will go after people whose marijuana distribution goes beyond what is permitted under state law or use medical marijuana as a cover for other crimes.

The memo advises prosecutors they “should not focus federal resources in your states on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.”

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

“It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.

By the government’s count, 14 states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Some medical marijuana advocates say Maryland shouldn’t be included in that group, because the law there only allows for reduced penalties for medical marijuana usage.

California stands out among those for the widespread presence of dispensaries — businesses that sell marijuana and even advertise their services. Colorado also has several dispensaries, and Rhode Island and New Mexico are in the process of licensing providers, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, a group that promotes the decriminalization of marijuana use.

Advocates say marijuana is effective in treating chronic pain and nausea, among other ailments.

Holder said in March that he wanted federal law enforcement officials to pursue those who violate both federal and state law, but it has not been clear how that goal would be put into practice.

The memo spelling out the policy was sent Monday to federal prosecutors in the 14 states, and also to top officials at the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration.

The memo written by Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden emphasizes that prosecutors have wide discretion in choosing which cases to pursue, and says it is not a good use of federal manpower to prosecute those who are without a doubt in compliance with state law.

“This is a major step forward,” said Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. “This change in policy moves the federal government dramatically toward respecting scientific and practical reality.”

The change has critics, including lawmakers who see it as a tactical retreat in the fight against Mexican drug cartels.

“We cannot hope to eradicate the drug trade if we do not first address the cash cow for most drug trafficking organizations — marijuana,” said Rep. Lamar S. Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

Administration officials said the government will still prosecute those who use medical marijuana as a cover for other illegal activity.

In particular, the memo urges prosecutors to pursue marijuana cases which involve violence, the illegal use of firearms, selling pot to minors, money laundering or involvement in other crimes.

And while the policy memo describes a change in priorities away from prosecuting medical marijuana cases, it does not rule out the possibility that the federal government could still prosecute someone whose activities are allowed under state law.

The memo, officials said, is designed to give a sense of prosecutorial priorities to U.S. attorneys in the states that allow medical marijuana. It notes that pot sales in the United States are the largest source of money for violent Mexican drug cartels, but adds that federal law enforcement agencies have limited resources.

___

On the Net:

Justice Department memo on medical marijuana: http://blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/192

Drug Enforcement Administration: http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/

Marijuana Policy Project: http://www.mpp.org/

Support to Stop Doping in Equestrian Australia Show Horses

Support to Stop Doping in Equestrian Australia Show Horses

Att: All Equestrian Australia Branches, Fellow Competitors, Media and General Public.

Re: Support to stop doping in EA Show Horses

After overwhelming support from fellow competitors, EA Officials and the General Public to try and stop doping in Show Horses, I wish to convey some of the ideas and concerns that have been raised.

I have had hundreds of people contact me through email, phone, facebook, live feed and face to face, to express their support and concern. The following points summarise the main concerns and ideas to aid in the prevention of doping.

1. That this is dealt with at a National level and that every state fall in line and work together to halt the practice of doping show horses.
2. That an independent person/body be responsible for organising random swabbing at as many EA affiliated show horse events around Australia (Dr Warwick Vale – EA National Medical Control Officer, has indicated that he is willing to set up such a program and oversee it).
3.  That the random swabs be taken from winners of either open classes or the Champion and Reserve of that open section.
4. That all swabs are tested and disciplinary action is followed through to the end with no exceptions.
5. That it is the exhibitor of the horse that is disciplined, not the rider or the owner.
6.  That the disciplinary action is; first offence 2 year ban from any EA affiliated event (this is long enough for people to really think twice about committing such an act) plus fines to cover EA legal costs. Second offence life ban from any EA affiliated event plus fines to cover EA legal costs. No deviations, just straight out bans and cost recovery.
7. That Equestrian Australia try to work with the Royal Agricultural Society’s to fall in line with swabbing procedures and disciplinary actions, and therefore any offenders are not able to participate not only in EA affiliated events, but Royal Shows and vice versa.

 

From these points it is clear that many competitors would like to see some of the current rules and regulations tightened up. I believe this is not possible as the EA run under FEI standards, but this does illustrate the frustration and passion of competitors to try and clean up the show horse community.

Many people have indicated that they are willing to help physically, but also financially to help see some of these points put into action. I understand after discussions with Dr Warwick Vale that each EA Show horse state branch will require a minimum of $10,000 per annum to run such a program. Many of the people who have contacted me want to donate money (including some companies) all that will be required will be BSB and account number for each state branch. This may be a good way to kick start a swabbing program, but then each state branch ideally should set up something similar to that in Western Australia. This is where each horse is charged a swabbing levy per performance card (an alternative may be required for SA as Show Horses do not have to have a performance card). I know that some people are opposed to this as we have many costs already, but with the support I have been given in regards to preventing doping I think the majority of people will not have a problem with this if it means it will help to stop drugging of show horses. They will be less hesitant in paying these fees if the swabbing program is made transparent to all and they can see results for their money.

It is understood that the EA have such swabbing programs in place, but the show horse competitors that are opposed to doping of show horses wish to see them in place immediately with the appropriate actions taken and followed through. The two main concerns that have arisen are that if such actions are to occur then how will it be kept confidential so that competitors do not find out where the random swabbing is to occur? What if an exhibitor’s horse is drugged unknowingly and they have not committed the offence themselves, how do you prevent that? The first of the questions can be addressed and covered appropriately if the swabbing program is set up properly. The second question is left up to the exhibitors to make sure their animals are safe and protected if they feel they are at risk.

There are many people who seem to think that is not a big problem in Australian Show Horses, but then there are many who perceive this to be a very hot topic that commands immediate attention.

Dr Warwick Vale is more than happy to help and answer any questions that you may have and is as passionate as I to see all EA disciplines follow the fundamental rationale for the FEI Equine Anti-Doping and Medication Control Rules.

Dr Warwick Vale

Mobile: 0418 903 095

Email: vale@nw.com.au

 I am looking forward to responses from all parties.

 Rachel Lawrie

Equestrian Australia SA Member 5001280

New York Judge Halts Flu Vaccine Mandate For Health Workers, Breaking News, October 16, 2009, H1N1 Vaccine, NY health care workers not forced into vaccinations

Breaking News  from CBS News 2, October 16, 2009:

“Judge Halts Flu Vaccine Mandate For Health Workers
New York Health Care Employees Won’t Be Forced To Get H1N1 Vaccine…For Now”

“Health care workers in New York will no longer be forced to get the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, CBS 2 has learned.

A state Supreme Court judge issued a restraining order Friday against the state from enforcing the controversial mandatory vaccination.

The order came as the Public Employees Federation sued to reverse a policy requiring vaccination against the seasonal and swine flu viruses, arguing that state Health Commissioner Richard Daines overstepped his authority.

Three parties – the Public Employees Federaion, New York State United Teachers, and an attorney representing four Albany nurses – challenged the order and for now the vaccination for nurses, doctors, aides, and non-medical staff members who might be in a patient’s room will remain voluntary.

The health department had said the workers must be vaccinated by November 30 or face possible disciplinary action, including dismissal. PEF said it encourages members to get flu vaccinations, but opposes the emergency regulation requiring the vaccine as a condition of employment.

A judge granted a temporary restraining order Friday morning, PEF spokeswoman Debbie Miles said. A court hearing is scheduled for October 30.

New York was the first state in the country to initially mandate flu vaccinations for its health care workers, but many health care workers quickly protested against the ruling. In Hauppauge, workers outside a local clinic screamed “No forced shots!” when the mandate came down at the end of September.

“I don’t even tend to the sick. I am in the nutrition field. They are telling me I must get the shot because I work in a health clinic setting,” said Paula Small, a Women, Infants and Children health care worker.

Small said she would refuse to be vaccinate, worried the vaccine is untested and unproven, leaving her vulnerable. In 1976, there were some deaths associated with a swine flu vaccination.

Registered nurse Frank Mannino, 50, was also angry. He said the state regulation violates his personal freedom and civil rights.

“And now I will lose my job if I don’t take the regular flu shot or the swine flu shot.”

When asked if he’s willing to lose his job, Mannino said, “Absolutely. I will not take it, will not be forced. This is still America.”"

Read more:

http://wcbstv.com/breakingnewsalerts/mandatory.h1n1.vaccine.2.1252672.html

The Dark N' Stormy Is The Best Goddamn Drink Ever

Whenever I want to kick it like a Kennedy, I always order a dark n’ stormy.  The problem is this: much like how no one outside of the Bay Area has ever drank fernet, it is a rare day in hell you meet a bartender in SF that actually knows how to make one.  I finally ordered one of these from Latin American Club the other night and it was fucking delicious!  Like all L.A.C. drinks, it was super strong, but they have Black Seal and cold, bottled ginger beer.  Topped off with a big chunk of lime, and I was stumbling out of there after a couple drinks.

Weekend at Bernie's?

Houston’s leading information source brings us this pre-Halloween tale…

A Houston man has been charged with three misdemeanor drug offenses after police found him asleep in a closet with a dead man in a vacant Cypress home Sunday.

Cody Jean Plant, 21, also was charged with abuse of a corpse after prosecutors alleged he treated the body “in an offensive manner.”

However, the charge was dropped Monday after a judge examined the allegations in a probable cause hearing. The original charging document did not elaborate on the charge.

Harris County Precinct 4 Constable deputies found Plant and the body of another man, whom they declined to identify, in a closet of a vacant house in the 15700 block of Knauff Ranch Court after the owner and his family reported voices and signs of forced entry about 1 p.m. Sunday.

“There were two guys in the closet. They appeared to be sleeping — one was snoring and the other was deceased,” said Assistant Chief Deputy Mark Herman. “It appeared that they were doing some sort of narcotics — at least the one that they woke up. He was under the influence of something, obviously.”

Plant also was arrested last May and charged with driving while intoxicated. His attorney said he has not spoken to Plant but that the situation sounds like a misunderstanding.

“Once we get to the bottom of this, I think he’ll be cleared,” said attorney Ralph Manginello.

Plant was charged with one count of possession of a dangerous drug and two counts of possession of a controlled substance of more than three grams and less than 28 grams. All are class A misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of a year in jail. Officials would not identify the substances. He remains in Harris County Jail in lieu of $15,000 bail.

marching orders

No one says to you “Sleep is out. Sleep is one of the first things to go.” Though it can be. And they don’t say “This might make you sleep through your life,” even though it could: if you follow the instructions on the label, sometimes you’ll find yourself flat out before you know it, face down into a pillow, breathing that longer breath.

“Keep your patterns regular,” they do tell you. Psychiatrist says, “A proper bedtime, a regular sleep schedule, is often half the battle;” but what is it other kinds of people say about battles and war? One is only a composite part, the other is what goes on and on.

I have finally switched medications, fully. I have traded one pill for another. Huey Lewis sang in my mother’s voice while I made the change, as I spoke to her over the phone. “I Want A New Drug.” Yes, I do indeed. And I can’t complain, now that I’ve got it; not really. The quetiapine had been rendering me nonfunctional. It had me out. Out cold. Out to lunch. Every time I got up to enter the world I was contending with the bends—that drug had been sinking me such a long way down.

But while taking it, I hadn’t been oscillating—traveling back and forth between those two poles of extreme. I had felt more-or-less constant: a relief; restful in a different way from the obliterating void of sleep. Which amounted to one battle won, but still at war.

The goal of the campaign, as I understand it—though I sometimes feel more of a foot soldier than a general—is to live somewhat normally. (What is normal you ask?) To finally access the greater world, where people emerge from the caverns of themselves to busy in the light. Make lists. Get things done. Being free from the dark of depression was good; not ricocheting off my own walls in mania, equally nice; but if you sleep too much, you hardly get anything done. So victory over this basic stability was something to be celebrated, something closer to what I imagine “feeling pretty good most of the time,” might be like; but it wasn’t it. The battlefield still stretches out: millions of neurons connected like a continent of roads, key positions still untended; some fallen to deserters and chaos.

So those pills are out of the bottle, down the drain, and ziprasidone is in. Atypical antipsychotic number three. Cue fanfare.

◊

It wasn’t supposed to be over so quickly. Psychiatrist told me to keep taking the former while I moved to the latter: a tactical retreat; the moving in of Special Forces. Bugger that, I thought. No way. Pull ‘em out. Get ‘em in.

I’m quite certain now that I consequently went a little hypo. Hypo-manic. Hypo-active.

“You are a little jazzed,” Turtle said, “but you were suppressed for a long time.”

◊

Five and a half months, to tell the truth. Almost half a year. Coming out of it, I was charged, alive, and ready for a fight. I rode that wave for a couple of weeks, upright and engaged. I bounded to work, to the gym. I started writing this blog again.

And this is where it comes to not sleeping. The troops are up. They’re ready. This is where I wake up—really wake up—and take another shot at capturing an enemy base. The conflict is civil, both sides within my boarders.

The manic tendencies are fading, perhaps have faded, to a tolerable hum in my bones; my urge to multitask every moment of my day, receded to a vague—rather than consuming—ambition; but I’ve forgotten how to sleep. My body has lost the trick. This theoretical “regular schedule” is a little beyond my ken: to bed at 12:30; asleep by 1… 30; up at 5. Not just up, roused, and aroused, feeling ready for my day. But it’s dark, dark, dark outside, and something inside me knows full well that I should be under the covers, being restful and full of dreams.

For the time being I’ve had enough. I stare at the ceiling, wiggle my toes and say, “I guess that’s it.” I’ll take this energy and make breakfast. I’ll write something down. I’ll drink coffee black as the receding nighttime and maybe crack my book. I can dream with my eyes open. I’m not asleep, and there’s a war to win.

You Can Have it All/ My Empire of Dirt: Johnny Cash, Creativity and Suffering

We heard from Johnny Cash in worship service tonight.   See, as the revised common lectionary  takes us through the book of Job, we at Lockerbie Central United Methodist, are taking an extended look at suffering and creativity.  

Johnny Cash was a country legend; an artist who outsold the Beatles in the late 1960s, hung out with Billy Graham, and had a raging drug addiction.  Despite not having the best voice or singing abilities, not being the best looking, and not being the most accomplished guitar player, he has become one of the greatest American artists; the only person in the songwriters’, country music, and rock n roll hall of fame.  

The  relationship between Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash made it into Rob Bell’s recent endeavor, Drop Like Stars:  A Thoughts on Suffering and Creativity.  During the last decade of Cash’s life, Rick Rubin, the famous music producer with roots in hip-hop, helped Cash find relevancy again.  

Without these album’s late in Cash’s life, starting with 1994’s American Recording, there might not have been no  Walk The Line, the Oscar winning movie about  Cash’s stormy relationship with eventual wife  June Carter, which grossed nearly 200 million dollars worldwide. 

In The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash, author Dave Urbanski tells of an encounter between Cash and U2 frontman Bono.  Bono was traveling the U.S. and had dinner with Cash at his Nashville home.  Bono was amazed at the dinnertime prayer that the legendary singer gave.  After Cash finished the prayer, he said, “I sure do miss the drugs though.”  

Johnny Cash had an empire. Had his own museum and even had his own zoo.  He was far from perfect but realized that all he had, thanks to Rick Rubin and the Trent Reznor song Hurt, that everything he had was nothing more than an empire of dirt.  

The song concludes: 

A million miles away 
I would keep myself 
I would find a wayIf I could start again 
A million miles away 
I would keep myself 
I would find a way

The Disease Machine

During a six-year stint as head of cancer research at Merck, genetics entrepreneur Stephen Friend tried to inject a new kind of biology, synthesized from supercomputers and reams of biological data, into a staid drug maker as it struggled to follow up breakthroughs in treating heart disease, osteoporosis and infection.

Then, in February, Merck ( MRK – news – people ) announced Friend was leaving to conduct an “ambitious and promising” new project. Over the past few months, in drips and drabs, Friend has laid out his plan: to use software tools developed at Merck to pool data from drug companies, universities and patient groups into one of the most comprehensive computer models of human biology ever created. The idea is that disease isn’t just a collection of symptoms, or even a single mishap. It’s a rippling disruption of the body’s network. Figuring out what went wrong is the way forward for biology. The name of the effort is Sage Bionetworks.

“This fundamentally changes how biologists do an experiment,” says Friend. “Disease biology will not make sense unless we can do this. But instead of reacting as if it’s sci-fi, people are saying ‘yes, this is obvious.’ We need coherent blocks of data, we need models of disease.”

Sage comes at a time when the boundaries that have confined medical research are falling. One genetic sequencing effort, the Personal Genome Project, is offering all sorts of medical and personal data about its research subjects in the hope of fostering advances. Patient groups like the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and the MPD Foundation fund researchers with the explicit demand that they share data with one another. One of these groups, CHDI (formerly the Cure Huntington’s Disease Initiative) has provided start-up funding to Sage. “There’s a lot of data that’s floating around already,” says CHDI President Robi Blumenstein. “We want to have a seat at the table to get a better understanding of how we can apply this to Huntington’s.”

Even drug companies are starting to share more and more data. In 2007, Novartis ( NVS – news – people ) made information about genetic links to diabetes publicly available. Eli Lilly ( LLY – news – people ) has made sharing research a fundamental strategy, and says it might be interested in something like Sage. Merck itself is currently Friend’s biggest backer. The drug company gave Sage $5 million in start-up funding and donated the fastest supercomputer in the drug industry to his efforts. About a dozen researchers who worked at a Seattle lab Merck closed have now moved over to Sage.

Pharma is opening up because its record of inventing things is abysmal. Last year, 22 new drugs hit the market, half as many as a decade ago. The big test for Sage will be whether creating what Friend calls “a pre-competitive space”–a sandbox in which everybody can do research–will actually end the drug discovery drought.

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Friend started his career as a doctor, treating children with cancer. But then he started thinking about developing drugs. In 1996, he co-founded Seattle-based Rosetta InPharmatics, which aimed to use computers to filter genetic data. Rosetta had a $100 initial public offering in 2000 and was bought by Merck for $620 million in 2001. Rosetta became Merck’s genetic research arm, and Friend was moved east to the company’s West Point, Pa., laboratories. In 2003, he took over basic cancer research, where Merck had lagged and where the genetic approach was likely to hold the most promise.

Enter a Rosetta researcher named Eric Schadt, who had joined Rosetta in 1999. Schadt grew up in a religious fundamentalist family thinking he would be either a farmer or a mechanic. He joined the Air Force’s physically demanding rescue team, and badly dislocated his shoulder while repelling off a cliff. He’d scored very high on his aptitude tests, and during his recovery was exposed for the first time to higher education. He became a mathematician and molecular biologist.

Schadt started working on software that would pool different types of biological data–clinical results, drug responses and genetic data–into a single model of a biological network. In 2003, he published data showing his system worked in corn. Science hailed a 2005 Schadt paper as evidence that looking at the body as one vast network might yield fruit. In 2008, Schadt and other Merck researchers used the approach to identify new genes for obesity and diabetes. (See “All Connected.”)

Friend was using Schadt’s software to work on cancer drugs. (See “Merck’s Free Radical.”) But he and Schadt were starting to realize that there was no way that Merck alone would be able to aggregate enough data to make the software really work. At the same time, Merck was cutting jobs as part of an industry-wide slump, and the Rosetta facility was going to be shut down. The technology they had brought in had helped build Merck a pipeline of early, experimental cancer drugs, and informed its research. But Friend says he regrets that he didn’t get his new approaches more deeply ingrained into the research effort there.

After starting Sage, Schadt took a second job as chief scientific officer of Pacific Biosciences, the gene sequencing start-up. He is splitting his time between the two efforts, which he sees as part of the same thing. Stephen Turner, the sequencing company’s founder, says that both of Schadt’s jobs amount to trying to understand “the grammar of genetics.” Meanwhile, Friend has been getting Sage, which he sees as an international effort, going, first from a houseboat, and now from a new house. He’s back in Seattle, in offices at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The idea is to get data in, than open up the system to the world over a period of a couple years.

“People would build what they want to build on the platform in a way that has not been possible to do in biology,” says Friend. Adds Schadt: “No one group or person understands what’s happening in Wikipedia. I see biology undergoing that same transformation. A big change is coming.”

Global Drug Infusion Pumps Market 2008-2012

Drug infusion pumps have a varied application in different environment and therapies. Due to this, a wide array of pumps are being manufactured and made available in the market. Thus, drug infusion pump manufacturers are realigning their marketing strategies and product delivery mechanism to appeal to the patients as well. With the abundant information available, patients have become more aware about healthcare issues, and can play an active role in the decision making process with their healthcare providers.

Developing countries hold potential growth prospects for drug infusion pumps market. The availability of cost effective and quality healthcare is driving the growth of medical tourism. Drug infusion pump manufacturers are focusing their strategies towards these emerging markets.
The report by TechNavio Insights forecasts the size of the Global Drug Infusion Pumps Market over the period 2008-2012. It segments the market into various geographic regions (representing the market size of each region). Further, it discusses the key market trends, driver and challenges of the Global Drug Infusion Pumps Market and profiles some of the key vendors of this market.

TechNavio Insights is a set of reports based on TechNavio – a market intelligence platform for the IT industry. It builds on the intelligence available within TechNavio, and leverages on the custom research experience of the ‘Technology Navigators’. TechNavio is built on years of experience of Infiniti Research in deep dive custom research and consulting for over 30 Fortune 500 companies and numerous large and mid-sized companies.

http://www.aarkstore.com/reports/Global-Drug-Infusion-Pumps-Market-2008-2012-19500.html

Guidance for the pharmacological management of substance misuse among young people in secure environments

Guidance for the pharmacological management of substance misuse among young people in secure environments, Department of Health, September 2009

Click on the title above to gain direct full-text access

Abstract:

Until now there has been no formal guidance to help clinicians to manage substance dependence among young people. This has left practitioners concerned that their practice may not accord with the developing evidence base.  This guidance document describes good practice on the best ways to manage a clinically complex condition.

Lancashire Care staff can request the full-text of this document: susan.jennings@lancashirecare.nhs.uk

ANGRY POST.

I promise these will end soon… once I get over my massive amounts of anger and bitterness towards the Canadian Health Care System. 

So I don’t have the effort to type in the entire workings of my day… possibly as a result of the exhaustion as a result of my day. But…

 

I HATE THESE DRUGS SO MUCH.

 

So apparently I have a respiratory infection of some glorious sort, and all of the cartilage in my ribcage is inflamed (costochondritis). Thankfully, a doctor eventually, after much prodding, gave me drugs for them.

The only issue is that these drugs must be taken with a meal. Which I did. And then I spent the rest of the day never wanting to eat food ever again. So I need to eat a meal to take the drugs, but once I take the drugs I never want to look at food ever again. And the drugs will make me feel better, but taking the drugs makes me feel like shit. 

So odd. So bitterness-inducing. 

This shit better work. 

I felt like this needed to be put somewhere before I just exploded out of sheer frustration/pain/agony/naseau/bitterness and destroyed half of Québec.

Allergan's "Botox Parties" Could Spread HIV as Single-Use Vials Are Re-Used, Suit Claims

Note: Sharing needles for ANY reason can result in transmitting HIV and other diseases.  Some believe that drug use passes HIV but it is actually the needle that puts people at risk.

From BNet.com

Allergan pushes “Botox parties” that put people at risk of HIV and Hepatitis because a “single-use” vial of the drug is used multiple times on different guests, according to a federal lawsuit filed in California. Doctors can only make a profit using Botox if they re-use the “single-use” vials that the drug comes in, the suit alleges.

Allergan denies the claims, according to Courthouse News.

• Download Goldsmith v. Allergan here.

The plaintiff is Dr. Ivan Goldsmith of Nevada, a former client of Allergan’s. He set up a business to do Botox injections but soon realized that he would be unable to turn a profit unless he used each vial of Botox more than once, he alleges.

A single-use vial of Botox contains 50 units or more of the drug, and must be thrown away within four hours of the first use. But each FDA-approved application for Botox requires only 1.25 to 20 units; the remainder is waste, Goldsmith alleges.

Further, each vial costs about $1,000, but each patient treatment costs only $500. It is therefore impossible for a doctor buying Botox to make a profit unless he uses each “single-use” vial on more than one patient, Goldsmith claims. When Goldsmith did so, the suit states:

“… his business model was in violation of the label.”

Allergan told CN:

Allergan spokeswoman Caroline Van Hove asserted that the product’s prescribing label indicates that the vial is for single-use. She added that the lawsuit serves as a reminder to patients to “consult with a trained and qualified health care professional” who uses the product “in accordance with the prescribing information included in the product package.”

“The complaint further recites alleged facts about Botox Cosmetic and its price and contains accusations concerning Allergan’s promotional and educational practices that are demonstrably false,” Van Hove said.

Allergan funds CME companies that teach doctors how to inject patients with the drug at Botox parties, the suit claims:

References to ‘Botox parties’ using a single 100-unit vial across numerous ‘party’ attendees were included in continuing medical education (’CME’) programs and other promotional forums hosted or promoted by Allergan.”

By double-dipping into each Botox vial, party guests are at risk of infection from HIV or Hepatitis, the suit claims.

Allergan has received eight warning or untitled letters from the FDA regarding its Botox promotion since 1998, the suit states.

The suit complicates Allergan’s legal situation on Botox. In addition to the Goldsmith suit, Allergan is engaged in these actions:

1. defending itself against a Department of Justice subpeona into off-label use of Botox for migraine;
2. applying to the FDA for approval to promote Botox for migraine;
3. suing the FDA for the right to make truthful off-label claims for Botox.

Cancer Man

In a dimly lit conference room in the basement of Orlando, Fla.’s swank Peabody hotel, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the richest man in the drug business, is working his magic on a dozen doctors who are in town for the year’s biggest medical conference.

Over a breakfast buffet, Soon-Shiong, 57, urges the oncologists to enroll their patients in a clinical trial of his cancer drug Abraxane, to test it against pancreatic tumors, which have resisted every new drug for decades. It’s a tough argument. The common wisdom about Abraxane, made by Abraxis Bioscience of Los Angeles, is that it’s just a souped-up version of another drug.

But Soon-Shiong soon takes another tack, saying he is going to share an idea that has been “whirling in my head for two years.” He asks the doctors to ponder one of the biggest puzzles in biology: Why is it that some cancer cells escape tumors to take up residence elsewhere in the body, allowing the disease to spread? This process, metastasis, is part of what makes cancers deadly.

Soon-Shiong argues that his decades of work on Abraxane provide part of the explanation for metastasis. And it just so happens that Abraxane is an ideal weapon against cells that have turned on their metastatic machinery. By the end of his talk the doctors are energized, if not totally convinced.

“The hypothesis is a great hypothesis,” says Ben Ebrahimi of Wilshire Oncology in La Verne, Calif., one of the doctors who was present at Soon-Shiong’s talk. “We need the clinical data to back it up.” As always, Soon-Shiong remains undaunted. “If this is real,” he says, “it is profound.”

Soon-Shiong is prone to exuberance. When Abraxane was approved in 2005, he hailed it (and still does) as a breakthrough. But it generates so-so sales of $300 million annually, roughly a tenth of what cancer drugs like Avastin and Taxotere generate–and far less than either Soon-Shiong or Wall Street projected a few years ago. In 2008 Abraxis Bioscience, the company he founded and of which he owns 80%, lost $278 million, including $159 million to dissolve a marketing partnership with AstraZeneca ( AZN – news – people ), on revenue of $345 million and is projected to lose $90 million more this year. Investors have driven down its stock by 60% this year. “I think he’s viewed as ‘What’s best for Patrick is what carries the day,’” sniffs Michael King of Merriman Curhan Ford, the only analyst covering the company.

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No matter. Soon-Shiong, worth an estimated $4 billion, has worked an age-old formula for getting rich: Don’t give up equity. He has maintained ownership of the drug he invented; until he sold it last year he gave up little equity in the hospital generic injectables business he founded in 1997. He’s the only drug researcher who’s a billionaire. The other members of The Forbes 400 to come from the drug business are an expert marketer and executive (Michael Jaharis), a venture capitalist (Randall Kirk) and the founder of a generics firm (Phillip Frost.)

Soon-Shiong was born in South Africa in 1952 to parents who had fled China during World War II. At 23 he got an M.D. from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. After a residency in surgery, he was recruited by UCLA Medical School. He soon displayed a zealousness for finding cures for illnesses that other doctors prefer to treat. He performed the school’s first pancreas transplant for a woman with diabetes, a radical–and successful–surgery for something usually treated with insulin.

Impatient with the pace of diabetes research, he left UCLA to start his first company. He performed a pioneering implant of insulin-producing cells in 1993. He gained widespread notice, but some colleagues weren’t impressed and the procedure wasn’t replicated.

Soon-Shiong soon went in another direction. His diabetes work led him to understand how to create a drug that would get directly into cancer cells, which were a lot like the stem cells he was studying in diabetes. In 1993 he invented Abraxane. It’s a variation on the well-established breast cancer drug Taxol, which works by inhibiting cell division.

Rejecting money from venture capital funds, Soon-Shiong found a different way to pay for the expensive clinical trials required to get Abraxane approved by the Food & Drug Administration. At the time, he was starting a company to sell injectable cancer drugs and antibiotics to hospitals. He used profits from that company, American Pharmaceutical Partners, to fund Abraxane’s development in breast cancer. APP went public in 2001.

Soon-Shiong said he would get Abraxane approved via an FDA rule that would let him use just one clinical trial. Wall Street was skeptical about the shortcut. At one point in 2003 the short interest in American Pharmaceutical Partners climbed to 100% of the available shares. When the FDA approved the drug in January 2005, the stock jumped 30% in a day. A gloating Soon-Shiong gives away plastic mementos displaying that day’s stock chart.

He sold APP last year to Fresenius, a German dialysis company, for $5.6 billion, of which he got $3 billion. His 80% share in Abraxis Bioscience is worth another $860 million.

A 2005 article in the Annals of Oncology called Abraxane “old wine in a new bottle.” The old wine, paclitaxel, was cancer’s first $1 billion drug and sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb ( BMY – news – people ) under the Taxol name. Since the patent expired in 2000, the market has shifted to the generic version.

Taxol comes dissolved in a solvent so potent it melts standard iv tubing. Abraxane instead coats the drug molecules in albumin, one of the main proteins in egg white. This prevents any allergic reaction and allows the drug to be given in 30 minutes instead of three hours. Abraxane’s wholesale cost is $5,100 a dose every three weeks, which is 16 times as much as generic paclitaxel. “Definitive studies to show it is better than Taxol have yet to be done,” says Eric Winer, a top breast cancer researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Nor has Abraxis finished the studies required to get Abraxane approved for use in any other cancer. Results in lung cancer are expected soon.

But Soon-Shiong says his drug is more effective than Taxol, precisely because of a quirk in the albumin coat. Therein lies Soon-Shiong’s next scientific adventure: stopping cancer from spreading from, say, the breast, where it won’t kill, to the brain, where it will.

He argues that a chemical called Sparc (secreted protein acidic and rich in cysteine) is the culprit, leading smoldering cancers to suddenly spread like wildfire. Sparc has long been implicated by researchers in the spread of colon cancer to the liver and may be similarly predictive in melanoma, breast cancer and glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor.

Soon-Shiong argues that when a cell starts making Sparc, suggesting it’s about to spread, it also starts sucking in albumin-soaked Abraxane, which, he says, will kill the tumor. By studying whether Abraxane works in pancreatic cancer, where many cells are churning out Sparc, he will be able to help solve the mystery of metastasis. “We’ve been trying to shoot cancer from across the ocean,” he says. “I think we have penetrated all the way to the heart of the tumor itself.”

Patients whose cancers are churning out the Sparc protein usually have a worse prognosis, but with Abraxane they may do just as well, Soon-Shiong argues. Preliminary analysis in four different cancers indicate that Sparc-positive patients are as much as three times more likely to benefit.

Soon-Shiong offers up a list of scientists who he says are excited by his theory of metastasis. Wishful thinking. Several protest that the evidence needs to be published and that they have not seen data but just had interesting discussions. Magic bullets for understanding metastasis “have been proposed again and again, and nothing has ever held up,” says Richard Klausner, former head of the National Cancer Institute and now a principal at the Column Group, a venture capital firm. “It’s a great idea, but it’s not like when I heard the biology of it I’ve said, ‘Aha, this makes sense.’ Let’s see the data.”

Now Soon-Shiong is starting yet another company: Abraxis Health will get a $25 million equity infusion and a $200 million line of credit from Abraxis Bioscience to delve into the diagnostics business, probably beginning with a test for his metastasis marker. “If the Sparc hypothesis proves to be true and it changes the course of medicine, it would be more satisfying than all the money we ever made,” he says.

Soon-Shiong, who is married to Michele Chan, a 1980s television actress (in shows like MacGyver), says he plans to start giving more to charity now that he has sold APP. The first big gift, of $100 million, went to Saint John’s Health Center, which is associated with UCLA.

He has given up the chief executive spot of Abraxis Bioscience to Lonnie O. Moulder, who built tiny MGI Pharma, maker of an antinausea drug, into a successful biotech. In September Abraxis Bioscience picked up analyst coverage for the first time in a decade. King, at Merriman Curhan Ford, gave the company a buy rating–predicated on the beaten-down share price and the idea that Soon-Shiong will be absent from the company he founded. Soon-Shiong shrugs and says, “I think of myself as a physician trying to solve problems.”

Special Offer: Free Trial Issue of Forbes

Shiny Adidas Tracksuits and the Death of Camp and Other Essays

SOUNDTRACK: TV ON THE RADIO-Dear Science, (2008).

The problem with TV on the Radio for me is that their first EP is so damned good that anything else they do pales in comparison.  Having said that, Dear Science, comes really close to topping that EP.  I liked Cookie Mountain (their previous disc) but I felt like they put so many elements into the mix that it detracted from the best part of the band: Tunde Adepimbe & Kyp Malone’s vocals.

And so, on Dear Science, the vocals are back up front where they belong.  This disc is a lot less busy, which may seem a little like selling out, but instead, it just heightens the complexity and originality of the band’s work.  The disc rocks hard but it also heightens some really cool jazz and dance elements.    But it all comes back to the melodies and vocals for me.  And on Dear Science, they pretty much outdo themselves.

And you can dance to it!

[READ: September 30, 2009] Shiny Adidas Tracksuits and the Death of Camp and Other Essays

After reading David Foster Wallace’s essay in this book, I looked at the other articles here and decided to read the whole thing.  And I’m really glad I did.  It’s an interesting book full of, funny and often thought-provoking pop culture articles circa 1996.  As with some of the other pop culture/political books that I’ve read several years after they were relevant, it’s often weird to look back and see what things fully occupied the popular landscape at the time.  And, when a piece is completed dated, it’s pretty obvious, and sometimes unintentionally funny.  But there are many pieces here that are timeless (or at least hold up for a decade), and those are still really good reads.

This book also does a good job of summarizing the tenor of the defunct Might magazine.  A dose of irony, a splash of humor and a lot of criticism of what’s trendy.

The strange thing to me about this book, though is the targets that they chose to go after sometimes.  Rather than critiquing right-wing attitudes or corporate shenanigans (which they do touch on), they really seem to be after pop and rock celebrity.  For instance, there are two separate articles which take a potshot at Eddie Vedder (this was around the time of the Ticketmaster fiasco which didn’t put him in the best light but which could hardly be seen as only self-serving).  This seems rather unfair, unless his sincerity could really be called into question by a bunch of ironic jokesters.  Magazines like Radar and Spy used to do snarky articles like this. I’d always thought that Might was a little better than that.  But indeed, there’s one or two pieces here that have a holier- (or perhaps indier)-than-thou attitude.   Which may have been fine in the 90s but which seem petulant now.

But aside from those, the irony-free pieces are very enjoyable. 

PHILLIP G. CAMPBELL-”Phil Campbell? Phil Campbell.  Welcome to Phil Campbell”
This fascinating piece shows a convention organized by Phil Campbell to invite every Phil Campbell in America to Phil Campbell, Alabama (one of only three towns in the country with a person’s full name).  It’s hokey and awfully silly and yet it is such a neat idea that it becomes utterly fascinating watching these people interact.  The author states that 2 more Phil Campbell conventions had happened since the article was written, which leads me to wonder if there were any more after that. (Oh, Wikipedia says no).

MARC HERMAN-”Notes on the Growing Tiresomeness of Flight”
This piece is actually about drivewaway car companies who loan you a car for free if you’re willing to drive it to where it is needed.  It’s a sunny piece about skirting the rules.  Evidently, these companies are still around.  I wish I had known about them years ago.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE-”Hail the Returning Dragon, Clothed in New Fire”
Dragon slaying as a metaphor for AIDS (full review here).

TED RALL-”College is for Suckers”
Ted Rall is one of my favorite cartoonists. He’s weird and funny and always makes a point.  I’m not all too familiar with his articles, though.  And this article was unabashedly depressing.  Basically, it states that the money you spend on college is hardly ever recouped and, circa 1996, a liberal arts degree earns you barely more than a high school diploma. I’m not going to investigate his data; I assume he’s not lying.  But I do wonder if things have changed 13 years later.

HEIDI POLLOCK-”The Sudden Unsavory Ubiquity if Faux Ceaser Salad”
This is a funny and, at first, ironic-seeming piece about Caesar salad being everywhere.  Then you realize that you can get it everywhere, even at McDonalds, except that the McCaesar doesn’t have ANY of the same ingredients.  It’s bad enough that no one use raw egg or anchovies (the real ingredients for a Caesar) but some places don’t even use romaine lettuce!  And that is just an empty embodiment of the real thing.

GLASGOW PHILLIPS-”Shiny Adidas Tracksuits and the Death of Camp”
This piece observes the Adidas tracksuit through pop culture from its invention in 1980 through to the Beastie Boys and Run DMC and then its resurgence in the early 90s.  Phillips uses this one article of clothing to observe the state of Camp in America.  It is an admittedly narrowly focused piece but it works quite well.  And it’s funny, too.

CHRIS HARRIS-”Design Intervention”
This is the most aggressively “ironic” piece and really stands out among the others as being overly silly.  The conceit is that graphic designers should redesign the map of the world because if the globe looked nicer, the people who lived there would feel better abut themselves.  Eh.

DONNELL ALEXANDER-”Cool Like Me (Are black people cooler than white people?)”
This was the cover story of the final issue of Might magazine.  And I seem to recall it causing quite a controversy.  Although apparently not enough to keep the magazine afloat.  The piece looks at the coolness that blacks have always had to bring to get through tough situations and how white people have embraced so much of it so quickly.  It’s a funny piece which seems silly at first, but real depth comes to the article by the end, showing a lot of unexpected points of view.

MARC HERMAN-”Are You on the Bus or Off the Bus?”
This is a fascinating look at the, then current, 1996 Rock the Vote campaign.  With 13 years of hindsight it is even more interesting.  Especially trying to imagine what the people interviewed (like the couple at the very end) are doing now (since they’re no longer 20somethings but are closer to 40).  When Rock the Vote first started I never really thought critically about it.  It just seemed like a good idea to get young people to vote.  And yet, seeing the details that Herman points out, you really have to wonder what the point of the whole exercise was.  They basically just want people to sign up to vote but they don’t educate them about the issues, or even why they should vote in the first place.  The one point that Herman never raises, and it is even more cynical than the arguments he does, it that this may have all just been a way for MTV to either appear more involved or important in world events or, more likely, a way to get their logo branded on the elections.  Still, 13 years later I wonder what they’re all up to.  And if they vote.  And if Rock the Vote is still around.  Huh, I guess it is.

MATTHEW GRIMM-”The Zen Rub of Alcohol”
This is easily my least favorite piece in here.  Whether it was ironic or not I can’t tell (which means the irony didn’t work if it was).  The general tenor of the piece sounds like a drunken tool rambling about something that bugs him (and given that the piece is about the glories of getting drunk, I’m not surprised).  The author is pissed because evidently new ads for Haagen Dazs seem to position it as a, god forbid, alternative to booze.  But the author points out that ice cream is no substitute for getting blitzed with your friends.   He (the author) seems like a real jerk.

KEN KURSON-”Jews in Rock”
This is is a funny piece in which the author tries to locate all of the Jews in rock (after spending a childhood obsessing over the Jews in baseball).  I don’t know if this was less obvious in 1995, but it doesn’t seem like Jews are that hard to find in the music biz.  The whole piece is funny but seems way out of touch with musical reality.

PAULA KAMEN-”Paradigm for Sale”
The whole premise–that it pays more to be a libertarian/right wing writer than a left wing/liberal writer–is, of course, maddening but also utterly true.  Sigh.

TRIPP HARTIGAN-”Green Bay”
This strangely affecting look at Green Bay was quite an enjoyable piece.  Basically, the author returns to Green Bay after many years away to find out why anyone would stay there as an adult.  He and two college friends (who still live there) revisit old places and then go to other (even older places) for the first time.  And, amazingly, they get a ton of food at an interesting restaurant for less than $5 each.  It also makes me think of That 70s Show. Oh, and someone mentions wanting to move to Missoula, Montana–which was featured so prominently in Maile Meloy’s new book.

JESS MOWRY-”Wake Up America! There Are Gangs Under Your Beds!”
A wholly ironic (or a least tongue in cheek) article about white kids being affected by black (and therefore gang) culture.  It would be funny if it weren’t so cynically right on.

DAVID EGGERS-”Never Fucked Anyone”
Eggers argues that “to fuck” as a verb implies a violence in the sex act which he has never experienced.  But then he can’t find a better alternative word.  I find this piece to be pretty right on the money.

DIMITRI ERLICH-”Babylon by Bus”
This is a frightening trip through El Salvador–replete with anti-U.S. rioting, poor hotels and almost every other cliche you can imagine.  I started off thinking “Oh, poor-white person travels to scary Central America” but by the end I was hooked and genuinely nervous for the author and his friends.

ZEV BOROW-”The Old Man and MTV”
This is the interview with Kurt Loder that I’d always wanted to see.  Why is he on MTV?  Does he “get” it?  Is he “joking.”  What’s his deal?  I can only wish I had read this back in 1997.

HEIDI POLLOCK-”This Thing About Men and Nail Polish”
This is the second piece by Pollock that addresses a minor piece of pop-culture.  This one is about well, men and nail polish.  She’s happy to see men doing it (did men really use nail polish enough in 1997 to warrant this piece?).  Mostly, though she’s happy to see that women’s accessories are actually cool.

PAUL TULLIS & ZEV BOROW-”Fare Thee Well, Gentle Friend: The Sad, Untimely, Perhaps Even Tragic Death of Adam Rich”
This seems to be the piece that Might is most known for: a fake obituary of Adam Rich (from Eight is Enough). I recollect that people honestly thought he had died after reading the piece.  However, if you read closely, the piece is clearly silly and way over the top.  And the “quotes” from authorities and people who knew him are clearly unlikely.  It’s a funny piece though (and I am quite sure that Rich was in on it).

GLASGOW PHILLIPS-”The T-shirt: More Problems of Signification in American Low Culture (Or, what am I saying?)”
A fascinating look at the history of printed T-shirts.

DAVID MOODIE-”Pardon Me, Mr. Senator…Will You Please Give Me My Goddamn Money?”
An article about “notch” recipients of Social Security.   An odd inclusion here especially since it is so very circa 1995 and no one had ever heard of it.

ERIC WESTERVELT-”The Glorious Climb of the Affluent Recreating Professional”
A funny look at people who recreate all the time: climbers, bikers, hikers, and how much it costs for them to do this new hobby.

BOB MARGOLIS & DAN KING-”The Way We Were: Outtakes from the Haldeman Diaries”
This is a patently silly piece of “left out” sections of Haldeman’s Diary.  It’s a  chance to be childish at a politician’s expense.  The Diaries were published in 1994 which explains why this article was written.

JASON ZENGERLE-”Is Michael Moore the Last, Best Hope for Popular Liberalism in America? (And more importantly, does he have a sense of humor?)”
Zengerle was at the same Michael Moore talk in Cambridge, Mass that I was at.  And he came away feeling the same way I did…more insulted than inspired.  And so, Zengerle tries to rack him down ala Roger & Me to interview him and find out what his deal is.  He uses the same tactics that Moore did, all in the hopes that Moore will appreciate the effort and the humor.  This article is also a valid criticism of Moore as a “leader” and how there is very little in the way if Inspiring Popular Liberal Voices out there.  (There’s also a comment about, now Senator, then comedian, Al Franken).

M. DOUGHTY-”Listener Appreciation: Soul Coughing Front Man M. Doughty Takes a Long Hard Look at His Fans”
M. Doughty writes a funny piece about the type of fans who are aware of his “Celebrity” status.  I am clearly the 4th kind: people “who think bands are too cool to talk to them.”

JESS MOWRY-”Any Further Questions, Mr. Mayor”
A mayor tells Mowry that his books were “good but depressing” and wonders if he’d like to help mayors across the nation with trying to help inner city youth with the problems of their lives.  Mowry’s response is well thought out and articulate but very cynical.  And it is unlikely that it elicited a response back.  He does offer many suggestions, none of which will ever be considered.  Although his argument for lowering the minimum work age is quite valid: how much better would it be for kids who want to earn a living to do so honestly through a real job, rather than through dealing drugs?

TED RALL-”Quit Your Job.  Work is a Sham”
Hot on the heels of his anti-college rant, Rall is back with an anti-work rant.  He makes several valid points about how work is bullshit and wasting 2/3 of your life doing something you hate is soul-sucking.  However, he ends the piece by describing how he quit his job because he was able to do freelance cartooning–something he always loved. So why doesn’t everyone do something similar?  As if we can all be freelance cartoonists or actually make money doing something that we all love.  Those of us with families say no, Ted Rall.  No.   On the other hand, his arguments for restructuring the way employment is handled (shorter work weeks and longer vacations) is a wonderful idea that, sadly, will never be enacted.

R.U. SIRIUS-”The Future of Indentured Servitude”
A look at President Clinton’s Sponsorship Program, which essentially allows poor people to become servants in rich folks’ homes.  I can’t find anything about this anywhere, so I don’t know what it is actually a critique of, aside from Clinton (or President Chameleon) in general.

MARC HERMAN-”Slow Boat to Grenada”
Herman hops a boat in the Caribbean to sail around the waters to Grenada.  An interesting look at life there and the hazards of professional Yachters.

MARTHA McPARLIN-”Ever Closer to the Flame: Ten Days on Tour with David Hasselhoff”
What could have been a snide look at the Hoff turns out to be a bemused (and quite funny) account of Hasselhoff’s mall tour.  Despite the preponderance of cheese associated with Hasselhoff, he remains good natured and a rather fun guy.  A very funny piece.

JIM STALLARD-”Falling Down: The Rise and Fall of Down Boye, America’s First Angsta Rapper”
A preposterous article about a “loser” MC.  The premise is funny, although it goes on a bit much.  It feels like an Onion article.   Again, I’m not sure if there was a “reason” why this article was written or if it was just funny.

DAVID EGGERS, DAVID MOODIE, PAUL TULLIS, ZEV BOROW, MATT NESS, JOE GAROFOLI, MARNY REQUA, NANCY MILLER, RACHEL LEHMAN-HAUPT-”Virtual Enlightenment”
This was the only piece in the book that made me mad.  The central premise is that gullible people are using the internet to find enlightenment with New New Age. Now, who knows what was actually happening back in 1995 and if this really was some crazy happening that was ripe for mocking.  But the tone of this piece is really quite nasty, especially coming from these guys.

I’ve never done any of the things they mock here, so I’m not defending it because it’s “my” thing.  But it’s so weird that they take a stance that “you ” people are gullible (that word pops up again and again).  As if they are so superior to the young people who are involved with these things.

The thing that is most surprising about the piece is that the authors come across as so incredibly conservative  and borderline Christian evangelical.  Or, if not quite that, then like the hall monitor kid who’s not invited to a party and then stands outside saying “You’re not having any fun.  You think you are, but you’re not.”

I agree that there’s a lot of questionable nature about New Age practices, ambient music and everything else they go on about here, but without actually giving suggestions for how else these gullible people can have fun, the article is just a big, ugly nag.  Even the tone of the introduction: “We have had the pleasure of observing…the Nw New Age phenomenon–its most ardent goals and ideals, its most embarrassing follies and mistakes.  We had fun.”  So superior!

The first thing they take on on online paganism.  And fair enough, the chat room that they quote is certainly pretty dumb, and yet where’s the harm in kids joining a chatroom and trying to communicate with people in a meaningful and unironic way.  These kids are looing for a spiritual moment with likeminded folks.  What’s the difference between this and a ouija board?  The authors even dismissively suggest that maybe it’s a way to find friends.  And so what?  What’s wrong with that?

The second example is of a New Age Post-Christian type of church.  And the authors mock the proceedings for all of its hooey, even though it’s not that dissimilar to Christian masses (in fact the proprietors are Christian).  And listen to the authors criticize the guest list: “two-time coma survivor, convicted felon and notorious speedball junkie Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.”  Wow, sorry Mr Gingrich, I didn’t know you were invited to the rave.

The third one is admittedly the most ridiculous. It is a pagan celebration involving cauldrons and fire and as Fucking the Bad Spirits Away and all that.  And it more or less devolves into a pick-up scene at the end.  And the authors bemoan the fact that it cost the gullible participants $10 to get in!   I’m left wondering how many interesting spectacles (with the possibility of a hook up at the end) would cost the authors only $10.  Just go to a bar and you’re easily out $10 and you don’t get a show.  This way, people are with other people who like this scene (weird as it may be).  And again, so what, maybe they are actually enjoying themselves.

The next thing to mock is the 8 people who are paid $50 to sit with a marketer to discuss ambient music.  When some friends of mine and I were in Las Vegas, we were offered $50 for a 30 minute survey about TV shows.  I was never going to watch any of the shows they asked us about, but hell $50 for giving my opinion..I’m there!  So, when the smart-ass particpant #8 tries to shit all over the parade, what makes him (or her) think he’s so much better than the other seven people there?  They all got $50 bucks, so what if they were honest about it and so what if they like ambient music?  This section also had the most egregious “your music sucks, mine is great” attitude.  I admit that most ambient music is pure drivel.  Yet they choose to mock Future Sound of London, a band that has actually done some interesting things in the genre.  Nyah Nyah, your music sucks.

Finally, the last story concerns a Superrave.  Participants pay $25 to get in (How gullible!) and the $25 for a hit of ecstasy (illegal drugs, the authors would never do illegal drugs!).  And for this the participant get a spectacle that lasts over 5 hours (in the article they say, hey, there’s only 5 hours left until the afterparty).

I’ve never been to a rave, and I’ll never go to a rave.  I’ve never done ecstasy.  This isn’t my sceen.  And I can see showing legitimate concern for the participants with dehydration and potentially questionable drugs and scams etc.  But to call the people who go there gullible because they spent the money for this is crazy.  $50 fora party that lasts all night long and makes you happy?  (Rave partcipants talk about feeling happy for days and weeks after the rave…sure its artificial, but still, feeling happy’s not so bad).  Let’s compare this to the above Zen Alcohol article.  The guy there talks about drinking 8 beers and hanging with your buds.  Well, you’re pretty much out $50 right there.  And, I’d all but guarantee you aren’t feeling as happy as the kids at the rave.

So, the basic gist of this article is that old fashioned values: Christianity, alcohol and rock & roll are good.  Anything new and different is bad.  What a great attitude for a hip alternative magazine!  Especially since I feel fairly certain that a few years later one writer or another might embrace Wicca after Buffy the Vampire Slayer made it okay to do so.

Thankfully, it’s only this article that is so mean-spirited.  The rest of the book is much more fun.  And, even if it is horribly out of date, I still enjoyed reading it.