Rise of the New Atheists by ronald Aronson of The Nation

Rise of the New Atheists

By Ronald Aronson, The Nation
Posted on June 16, 2007, Printed on June 16, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/54054/

What began with publisher W.W. Norton taking a chance on a gutsy, hyperbolic and idiosyncratic attack on religion by a graduate student in neuroscience has grown into a remarkable intellectual wave.

Fingerprints Can Reveal Drug Use & Disease, Study Says

Fingerprints Can Reveal Drug Use & Disease, Study Says

On May 17, 2007 @ 12:46 am In Health News | No Comments

Medical advances could be right at your fingertips. Drug test results and disease diagnose to be exact. That’s the promise of a new scientific study on antibodies.

British scientists working with David A. Russell report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, that they have now been able to use specific antibodies to differentiate between the fingerprints of smokers and nonsmokers.

The "Silent" Ninth Amendment Gives Americans Rights They Don't Know They Have

The "Silent" Ninth Amendment Gives Americans Rights They Don't Know They Have

By Daniel A. Farber, Basic Books
Posted on April 23, 2007, Printed on April 23, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50404/

The following is an excerpt from Daniel A. Farber's forthcoming "Retained by the People: The 'Silent' Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don't Know They Have" (Perseus Books, 2007), available April 30.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. --The Ninth Amendment

http://www.alternet.org/rights/50404/

Ram Dass Richard Alpert and Tim Leary preface to Alan Watts' Joyous Cosmology notes on the Ecstatic Voyage

what?
buy this book here



Joyous cosmology



let's see, so it would have been better for Cognitive Liberty if Ram Dass Richard Alpert and
Tim Leary and Alan Watt's had Not done this?
Please edit accordingly , D. Pinchbeck and Myron Storoloff, et. al. , ....

Ram Dass Richard Alpert & Tim Leary on Alan Watts
Alan Watts spells out in eloquent detail his drug-induced visionary moments. He is, of course, attempting the impossible—to describe in words (which always lie) that which is beyond words. But how well he can do it!
Alan Watts is one of the great reporters of our times. He has an intuitive sensitivity for news, for the crucial issues and events of the century. And he has along with this the verbal equipment of a poetic philosopher to teach and inform. Here he has given us perhaps the best statement on the subject of space-age mysticism, more daring than the two classic works of Aldous Huxley because Watts follows Mr. Huxley's lead and pushes beyond. The recognition of the love aspects of the mystical experience and the implications for new forms of social communication are especially important.
You are holding in your hand a great human document. But unless you are one of the few Westerners who have (accidentally or through chemical good fortune) experienced a mystical minute of expanded awareness, you will probably not understand what the author is saying. Too bad, but still not a cause for surprise. The history of ideas reminds us that new concepts and new visions have always been non-understood. We cannot understand that for which we have no words. But Alan Watts is playing the book game, the word game, and the reader is his contracted partner.
But listen. Be prepared. There are scores of great lines in this book. Dozens of great ideas. Too many. Too compressed. They glide by too quickly. Watch for them.
If you catch even n few of these ideas, you will find yourself asking the questions which we ask ourselves as we look over our research data: Where do we go from here? What is the application of these new wonder medicines? Can they do more than provide memorable moments and memorable books?
The answer will come from two directions. We must provide more and more people with these experiences and have them tell us, as Alan Watts does here, what they experienced. (There will hardly be a lack of volunteers for this ecstatic voyage.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/jcforewd.htm

Sam harris debate upcoming Sun. on C-SPAN books

what?

Book TV Programs
A Weekly Look at Selected Book TV Programs

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On Sunday, February 4 at 3:00 pm

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Debate on Religion and Reason with Sam Harris, "Letter to a Christian Nation," and Reza Aslan, "No god but God"

http://www.booktv.org/

Psychedelic ReSearch takes off in vancouver, B. C. , long history of dosing

Psychedelics Could Treat Addiction Says Vancouver Official

City's drug policy honcho sees 'profound benefits'. A special report.

View full article and comments here http://thetyee.ca/News/2006/08/09/Psychedelics/

By Danielle Egan

Published: August 9, 2006

TheTyee.ca

Vancouver's top drug policy official and B.C. public health physicians believe addicts might be treated by giving them psychedelic drugs, and they hope the city will lead in exploring the controversial approach.

In the late 1950s, New Westminster-based Hollywood Hospital was a leader in therapeutic psychedelics, almost a decade before Timothy Leary encouraged the masses to "turn on, tune in and drop out" on acid. Founded by eccentric American entrepreneur Al Hubbard, Hollywood Hospital catered to a mixed clientele of American celebrities and Canadian politicians given LSD to treat alcoholism, drug addiction and psychological burn-out. For almost a decade after LSD was criminalized in North America in the late 1960s, Hollywood Hospital served up therapeutic LSD before the provincial government pulled funding in 1975 and the hospital closed.

One Canadian Medical Association Journal paper written by University of Toronto professor Harold Kalant in 2001 discussed the varied potentially fatal risks of taking street ecstasy but he added that there was "no evidence" that taking the drug would lead to addiction and even said that the drug "may be of potential value as an aid in psychotherapy" though "similar claims were made earlier for MDA, LSD and other hallucinogens but...no lasting benefit was found in a 10-year follow-up study of patients treated with LSD" and "no comparable study has been conducted on patients treated with MDMA."

The recommendations in the reports by the city of Vancouver and the Health Officers Council of B.C. have also turned on American researchers. "Those reports touch on the vanguard of treatment efforts with substance abuse and are a common-sense approach to drug abuse treatment and harm reduction," said Dennis McKenna, an ethnopharmacologist and psychedelic drug researcher based in Minnesota who plans to return to Vancouver to research Amazonian plants this September at BCIT. McKenna, a "child of the 60s," started sampling psychedelics in the Haight-Ashbury, area of San Francisco, then split for the Amazon to sample psilocybin with his brother Terrence, who detailed their trips in the book True Hallucinations.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2006/08/09/Psychedelics/print.html