poortaste:

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of psilocybin, the active ingredient of psychedelic mushrooms, in pilot clinical trials to treat end-of-life distress. [Credit: Rohan523, wikimedia.org]

PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY: New research shows psychedelics might hold therapeutic potential for those dealing with death

“As doctors, we’re good at saving lives,” said Ross. “But we have not learned the art of helping patients have a good death.”

A 2007 study published by the American Cancer Society found that up to 50 percent of patients with advanced or terminal cancer are diagnosed with a major psychiatric disorder, and less than half of those with depressive symptoms receive any psychiatric medication. New treatment models could go a long way to help the over 500,000 Americans expected to die this year of cancer.

According to the researchers, psilocybin can achieve in one session what might otherwise take months or years, time some of these patients may not have.

Psilocybin binds to two types of serotonin receptors in the brain that are highly associated with mood and anxiety. Even more interesting to psychiatrists, brain imaging studies from the Heffter Research Center in Switzerland show that the drug appears to affect areas of the brain thought to mediate consciousness and spiritual feelings.

The effects of psilocybin last about four to six hours, during which time the subjects’ brain activity resembles that of people in spiritual states, such as meditating monks. Like people who practice meditation, the patients in the psilocybin trials reported feelings such as a greater connectedness to others, relief from fear and anxiety, and the ability to internalize their limited time as opportunities for personal growth.

▶ Read More at Science Line

(Thanks and love to Don for sharing.)

This truly a promising step in the right direction. Fills me with hope.

via quantumpossibility

darksilenceinsuburbia:

patriciawayne:

jenclone:

eachdayaflower:

A woman buys produce at a neighborhood market in France. 1949. (via)

americansatori:

faccc:

(via tumblrsloveweed)

Logorama, France, 16 min, Directors: Franςois Alaux, Hervé de Crécy, Ludovic Houplain

vruz:

h/t @brainpicker

Kucinich Forces Congress To Debate Afghanistan

—via afghanibanani

(via vruz)

azspot:

A piece in the latest issue of Science shows that there’s a considerable amount of methane (CH₄) coming from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, where it had been trapped under the permafrost. There’s as much coming out from one small section of the Arctic ocean as from all the rest of the oceans combined. This is officially Not Good.

Here’s why: methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, significantly more powerful than carbon dioxide. There are billions of tons of methane trapped under the permafrost, and if that methane starts leaking quickly, it would have a strong feedback effect — warming the atmosphere and oceans, causing more methane to leak, and on and on. The melting of methane ice (aka “methane hydrates” and “methane clathrates”) is probably the most significant global warming tipping point event out there. If we see runaway methane from underneath the Siberian permafrost, we could see temperatures increasing far faster than even the most pessimistic CO₂-driven scenarios — perhaps as much as 8-10° C, very much into the global catastrophe realm. To put it in context: rapid methane releases have been implicated in extinction events in Earth’s geologic past.

lushlight:

liquidnight:

Robert Stivers - Self-portrait in water, 1991, Gelatin silver print

[via The Metropolitan Museum of Art]

jenclone:

zengiraffe:nrkn:eachdayaflower:

“Three-dimensional maps of coastlines were carved of wood as long as three hundred years ago. These Inuit charts were usually carved from driftwood and are made to be felt rather than looked at. The Inuit hold this map under their mittens and feel the contours with their fingers to discern patterns in the coastline. The land is very abstract. It is limited to “edges” that can be felt on a dark night in a kayak.”

(link)

aminotes:

Salvador Dalí, The Ship, 1943 

The Ship is Surrealist Salvador Dali’s watercolor reworking of renowned maritime artist Montague Dawson’s classic painting forged with his own enigmatic imagery. Dali (1904 – 1989), using a technique called Paranoiac-Critical , portrayed these objects and scenarios in meticulously realistic detail, depicting a dream world in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed and transformed in a bizarre and irrational fashion. Blazing innovative trails in Surrealism, Dali used his exceptional imagination to fuel his contributions to sculpture, theater, fashion and photography.

uncertaintimes:

rhea137:

M S Hove - Rope Work

Bluto and Star Knot (Annunciation), knot diameter is 33”,
overall length is 18’

“This body of oversize sculptural knots and rope installations arose from my side careers as traditional ship rigger and tug boat deckhand. The elegant functionality of knots, along with the ancient traditions they embody and the high degree of craft necessary to create them, translate well in a fine arts context. The installations rely on the distribution of tension to hold their tight shape, much like the rigging of a ship.”
Scott Hove

Random fake ad from Mad Magazine #36

montycantsin:

fluxdinthehead:

pareidoliac:

“In Hegel’s reproach to Spinoza – that he ignored the negative and its power – lies the glory and innocence of Spinoza, his own discovery. In a world consumed by the negative, he has enough confidence in life, in the power of life, to challenge death, the murderous appetites of men, the rules of good and evil, of the just and unjust. Enough confidence in life to denounce all the phantoms of the negative… In Spinoza’s thought, life is not an idea, a matter of theory, it is a way of being. It is only from this perspective that his geometrical method is fully comprehensible. In the Ethics, it is opposition to everything that takes pleasure in the powerlessness and distress of men, everything that feeds on accusations, on malice, on belittlement, on low interpretations, everything that breaks men’s spirits. The geometrical method ceases to be a method of intellectual exposition but is rather a method of invention…Spinoza did not believe in hope or even in courage; he believed only in joy, and in vision. He let others live provided they let him live. He wanted only to inspire, to awaken, to reveal.”

Deleuze on Spinoza