so many drugs to try,
so few brain cells to fry

as much as i hate to agree with any argument that even brings up having sex with one's kids, I have to agree with the following:

what is considered "deviant" sexual behavior is less to do with whats harmful, and more to do with what the normative sexual practices of society in question

take homosexuality for example. fifty years ago, it was considered sick, depraved, and unhealthy. it was actually ILLEGAL even here in canada. now, its practically mainstream. so everything you say now about what noah is saying, you'd probably be saying the same things about homosexuality, had you been born 50 years ago.

ahahaha HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Big up to Valerie and Seb! Everyone I know is soo happy to hear about this, me included!

scottyp; couldn't agree with you more!

simon; i beleive so, not 100% sure though.

hype hype hype!

two days away

i find this whole thread to be profoundly sickening on so many levels

i am willing to go out on a limb and suggest, optimistically, that what happened was caused by the situation (being desperate, broke and with addictions to feed) as opposed to the disposition of the person we are talking about

that said, there are people who have been victimised whose anger is completely understandable

its a sad reality about drugs that when you NEED them to function, getting high becomes more important then everything else, including who you screw over

and once you screw over enemies and strangers for drug money, the only people you have the ability to get money from is your friends, since you have a trust built up with them

so thats when you screw over your friends

and thats the saddest thing of all, because for the people who get screwed over its not just a matter of the lost money, but the fact that they trusted someone who then violated that trust

meth, crack, smack - these are the drugs with the highest addition potential. if you are addicted to these drugs and can't feed your addiction, there is a very good chance you will lie, steal, and cheat to prevent urself from going into withdrawel.

its happened many times before, and will happen again as long as people continue to use these drugs

i'll drink to that!

(p.s if anyone wants to start drinking really early thursday this is an open bar at Living from 5-7 and no cover with a flyer i can provide, message me if you want one)

well the smallest order you can make is 500mg which is about CND$150

but considering 500mg is the equivalent of 50 strong doses of one of the most powerful psychedelics on this planet, i'd rather split the cost and quantity among a few people, hence this thread

i find it quite interesting that on the board where this was originally posted, many people replied that drugs had influenced them in profoundly positive ways, while here post of the replies have been along the lines of "wtf, drugs don't make u any better"

personally, the only reason i decided to do most drugs was PRECISELY the fact that I beleived that drug use could expand my mind and emotions in positive ways, so perhaps the expectations and beleifs you have regarding drugs influence what you do with the experiences.

if anyone is curious to read the responces from the other board (its interesting stuff) it is here: [ www.bluelight.nu ]

much of the dialogue is very witty and the costumes kick ass, but overall its a superficial movie about superficial people

5-meo-dmt is an unscheduled (ie legal) tryptamine present in several hallucinogenic S. american plant brews. it is available for order over the internet. however, you must buy in large quantity, so i was wondering if any of you would like to split the costs and amount. among 5 people, everyone would have to pay around CD$30 for 100mg, which works out to 10-20 doses smoked ($1.50-3 per dose). it may be scheduled in the near future, so now is the time to buy. message me or e-mail me if you are interested. here is some information from erowid:

The Experience:

The smoked 5-MeO-DMT experience is short, but generally incredibly intense. Onset is fast and furious, sometimes compared to being launched from a cannon. It is a fully engaging and enveloping experience of visions and visuals which varies greatly from one individual to the next. Users report profound changes in ontological perspective, experiencing the void, the shattering of the universe, frightening and overwhelming forces, complete shifts in perception and identity followed by an abrupt return to baseline. Because of the nature and intensity of the experience, users are almost always seated or lying down with someone nearby to take the pipe as the experience begins. Unlike with N,N-DMT, few users report significant visuals of any kind.

aww i thought it went till noon

my dosing schedule needs a revision

i had a wonderful time, the hippie vibe was in full effect. not only no shoes but even a coloring room was present. for me, it was one of those nights where i met many people and had great conversations, which happens as a result of everyone having a great time and wanting to exspress themselves to others.

mike really knows how to throw great parties, it was truly a transformative experience.

i shoulda gone, but i had to catch up on sleep after pulling pre-exam allnighter

[This thread idea came from another board. Some really interesting discussion followed, so I though I'd try it here. This was my reply]

Drug-induced experiences have defintely changed me, and I beleive these changes have been overwhelmingly for the better.

MDXX - helped me to overcome shyness, appreciate others, made me much more aware of mine and others' emotions, in general improved my attitude towards other people and the world

psychedelics - made me realize how subjective my viewpoint is, helped me to "unlearn" religious dogma that I had been brought up with, made me aware that behind the illusion of ego we are all connected, increased my interest in poetry and philosophy, and helped me to beleive that i have enourmous potential

some other changes i've noticed in myself: increased apathy towards material goods, much more likely to engage in deep conversations, more "self-directed" (as opposed to influenced by society), almost complete calmness and abscense of anxiety

so overall i'm incredibly grateful for the experiences that drugs have induced, and how i have changed as a result of these experiences

i saw him about a month ago in front of foufounes, but i don't have a clue where he's at now

i like hhc when in the right mood, but usually not a full night of it, i prefer it sandwiched between freeform

it took me at least 10 minutes to notice...whaaa, the DJ is over THERE now?!?!

nimi was sooo drunk she spilled beer all over my statistics notes. now i'm trying to study and all i can think of is booze.

yeah and the music kicked ass

i swinged by amnesia at 2:45 on the way to skool and there didn't seem to be anyone there, did people forget to go (pun INTENDED)

okay back to trying to figure out what the hell is the correlation covarient between x and y (meh)

"fits of uncontrollable plur"

LOL

that would be great!

..but i think one of the other problems with amnesia was its location in the middle of the crescent street scene, i just can't stand going anywhere near there

last night at Saphir was alot of fun, i didn't expect much but had a great time

now its 4:38AM and i got an exam at 10, hmmmmmmmmmmmm

my ears are bleeding already ;)

just in time for your son, seb :)

wow..this is incredible :)

seb, all the best!

Monkeys Control Robotic Arm With Brain Implants


By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 13, 2003; Page A01


Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts, marking the first time that mental intentions have been harnessed to move a mechanical object.

The technology could someday allow people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries to operate machines or tools with their thoughts as naturally as others today do with their hands. It might even allow some paralyzed people to move their own arms or legs again, by transmitting the brain's directions not to a machine but directly to the muscles in those latent limbs.

The brain implants could also allow scientists or soldiers to control, hands-free, small robots that could perform tasks in inhospitable environments or in war zones.

In the new experiments, monkeys with wires running from their brains to a robotic arm were able to use their thoughts to make the arm perform tasks. But before long, the scientists said, they will upgrade the implants so the monkeys can transmit their mental commands to machines wirelessly.

"It's a major advance," University of Washington neuroscientist Eberhard E. Fetz said of the monkey studies. "This bodes well for the success of brain-machine interfaces."

The experiments, led by Miguel A.L. Nicolelis of Duke University in Durham, N.C., and published today in the journal PLoS Biology, are the latest in a progression of increasingly science fiction-like studies in which animals -- and in a few cases people -- have learned to use the brain's subtle electrical signals to operate simple devices.

Until now, those achievements have been limited to "virtual" actions, such as making a cursor move across a computer screen, or to small two-dimensional actions such as flipping a little lever that is wired to the brain.

The new work is the first in which any animal has learned to use its brain to move a robotic device in all directions in space and to perform a mixture of interrelated movements -- such as reaching toward an object, grasping it and adjusting the grip strength depending on how heavy the object is.

"This is where you want to be," said Karen A. Moxon, a professor of biomedical engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "It's one thing to be able to communicate with a video screen. But to move something in the physical world is a real technological feat. And Nicolelis has taken this work to a new level by quantifying the neuroscience behind it."

The device relies on tiny electrodes, each one resembling a wire thinner than a human hair. After removing patches of skull from two monkeys to expose the outer surface of their brains, Nicolelis and his colleagues stuck 96 of those tiny wires about a millimeter deep in one monkey's brain and 320 of them in the other animal's brain.

The surgeries were painstaking, taking about 10 hours, and ended with the pouring of a substance like dental cement over the area to substitute for the missing bits of skull.

The monkeys were unaffected by the surgery, Nicolelis said. But now they had tufts of wires protruding from their heads, which could be hooked up to other wires that ran through a computer and on to a large mechanical arm.

Then came the training, with the monkeys first learning to move the robot arm with a joystick. The arm was kept in a separate room -- "If you put a 50-kilogram robot in front of them, they get very nervous," Nicolelis said -- but the monkeys could track their progress by watching a schematic representation of the arm and its motions on a video screen.

The monkeys quickly learned how to use the joystick to make the arm reach and grasp for objects, and how to adjust their grip on the joystick to vary the robotic hand's grip strength. They could see on the monitor when they missed their target or dropped it for having too light a grip, and they were rewarded with sips of juice when they performed their tasks successfully.

While the monkeys trained, a computer tracked the patterns of bioelectrical activity in the animals' brains. The computer figured out that certain patterns amounted to a command to "reach." Others, it became clear, meant "grasp." Gradually, the computer learned to "read" the monkeys' minds.

Then the researchers did something radical: They unplugged the joystick so the robotic arm's movements depended completely on a monkey's brain activity. In effect, the computer that had been studying the animal's neural firing patterns was now serving as an interpreter, decoding the brain signals according to what it had learned from the joystick games and then sending the appropriate instructions to the mechanical arm.

At first, Nicolelis said, the monkey kept moving the joystick, not realizing that her own brain was now solely in charge of the arm's movements. Then, he said, an amazing thing happened.

"We're looking, and she stops moving her arm," he said, "but the cursor keeps playing the game and the robot arm is moving around."

The animal was controlling the robot with its thoughts.

"We couldn't speak. It was dead silence," Nicolelis said. "No one wanted to verbalize what was happening. And she continued to do that for almost an hour."

At first, the animals' performance declined compared to the sessions on the joystick. But after just a day or so, the control was so smooth it seemed the animals had accepted the mechanical arm as their own.

"It's quite plausible that the perception is you're extended into the robot arm, or the arm is an extension of you," agreed the University of Washington's Fetz, a pioneer in the field of brain-controlled devices.

John P. Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University developing a similar system, said paralyzed patients would be the first to benefit by gaining an ability to type and communicate on the Web, but the list of potential applications is endless, he said. The devices may even allow quadriplegics to move their own limbs again by sending signals from the brain to various muscles, leaping over the severed nerves that caused their paralysis.

"Once you have an output signal out of the brain that you can interpret, the possibilities of what you can do with those signals are immense," said Donoghue, who recently co-founded a company, Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., to capitalize on the technology.

Both he and Nicolelis hope to get permission from the Food and Drug Administration to begin experiments in people next year. Nicolelis also is developing a system that would transmit signals from each of the hundreds of brain electrodes to a portable receiver, so his monkeys -- or human subjects -- could be free of external wires and move around while they turn their thoughts into mechanical actions.

"It's like multiple cellular phone lines," Nicolelis said. "As my mother said, 'You can dial your brain now.' "

Significant challenges remain if the technology is to find widespread application in people. Although earlier experiments suggest the electrodes are safe and able to continue functioning for three years or more, longer-term safety studies are needed, and implants with far more electrodes may be required to accomplish anything more than the simplest tasks.

"For something basic like grasping a cup of coffee or brushing your teeth, apparently you could do almost all of this with this kind of prosthesis," said Idan Segev, director of the center for neurocomputation at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "If you were a pianist and had a spinal cord injury and you wanted to play Chopin again, then 500 neurons is not enough."

Still, Segev expressed astonishment at how much the monkeys were able to do with signals from only a few hundred of the brain's 100 billion or so nerve cells -- evidence, he said, that "the brain uses a lot of backup and a lot of redundancy."

That may explain one of the more interesting findings of the Duke experiments, he and others said: that neurons not usually involved in body movements, including those usually involved in sensory input rather than motor output, were easily recruited to help operate the robotic arm when electrodes were implanted there.

Asked if the monkeys seemed to mind the experiments, Nicolelis answered with an emphatic "No."

"If anything, they're enjoying themselves playing these games. It enriches their lives," he said. "You don't have to do anything to get these guys into their chair. They go right there. That's play time."

Wow Sam that's awesome!

I know it sounds strange, but I value bad trips just as much, if not more, than good ones

yes, mushrooms have the potential to bring out your worst fears, your darker side

but if you allow that side to come out, I think you can learn so much about yourself and emerge better as a result

on my 2nd to last mushroom trip, an intensely beautiful experience took a dark turn when a stranger approached me and asked if I was okay, clearly worried

his worry became my worry, multiplied a thousand times over. I literally was convinced I had lost complete control of myself, I was sure I had pissed and shit in my pants (neither of which was true) and that this would never end, I was insane, I would wake up in a hospital locked in a sterile room with doctors looking at me through a video monitor and shaking their heads.

and yet, this was my best experience with mushrooms.

yeah, personally i don't mind the taste at all

you wanna taste something really bad? try san pedro. i've tried it 3 times, and 2 out of the 3 times I threw up just from the taste

I've been following a certain train of thought over the past few days, and here's where it's at for the moment (nowhere near completion):

People wonder whether the world in which we live is "real" or some fabricated, imaginary world created due to perceptions of the mind. Movies like "the Matrix" touch in such themes. In a sense, however, the answer is very obvious. All you have to do is look around you:

What do you see? cities, computers, cars, highways, technology, etc etc. What is the source of all these creations?

Simply put, the source of most of what is around us is the human imagination, the human mind. Collectively, as a species, humans have gone about imagining extraordinary possibilities, then gone about creating them. For example, the dream of flying was realized with the invention of the airplane.

hence, as a species, we ARE living in a world constructed mostly of the imagination, that has at its source the mind

it is as if as a species, we have turned our minds inside out, and what existed previosly within our minds has manifested itself in the outside world

of course, at this moment we are not completely seperated from our source, our mother, the Earth

we inhabit her space, use her resources, are constrained by her environment, etc etc

however, if we continue on this path, it is only a matter of a relatively short time before we inhabit an environment created entirely out of our imagination

how could this exist? perhaps the creation of an artificial planet after we obliterate planet earth? who knows

is Britney Spears even still alive??

pfffftt

Studios Killing (but Carefully) for an R Rating
By LAURA M. HOLSON

OS ANGELES, Oct. 20 — The color red is making a spectacular showing this fall, at least at the box office. Two violent and blood-soaked films, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," a remake of the 1974 slasher film, and Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 1," attracted the most moviegoers to theaters last weekend. Both are rated R, and both are illustrations of the lengths to which filmmakers will go to garner that more audience-friendly designation.

"Chainsaw Massacre," a relentlessly gory tale replete with twitching limbs and splattered brain matter, earned an estimated $29 million in its first weekend, while "Kill Bill," in its second week of release, earned $12.5 million to tally about $43.3 million so far. And while both R-rated films pour on the violence, critics noted that "Chainsaw Massacre" plays it straight while "Kill Bill" takes a stylized approach.

Even Jack Valenti, the chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America, which rates movies, seemed blasé about the "Kill Bill" deadly fare. Mr. Valenti said that at one point while watching the main character, the Bride, stab, decapitate or cut the limbs off of at least 100 gangsters in a 20-minute sword fight, he said he thought: "Why didn't one of those men take out a gun and just kill her? I think even an impressionable child would go in and say they've seen worse on Wile E. Coyote."

That stylized look was instrumental in making sure that what some critics have called the most violent movie ever made would earn an R rating from the movie industry's ratings board rather than NC-17, which could prove costly at the box office.

Violence is not the main factor in whether a movie gets an R or an NC-17 rating. "It's bad language and graphic nudity," said Nick Browne, professor of critical studies at the University of California, who studies ratings.

In fact, though few films get an NC-17 rating, those that do usually have a strong sexual theme. For example, "Kids," released unrated in 1995, was the story of New York teenagers, H.I.V. and sexuality. It was originally given an NC-17 rating.

These days the reason most filmmakers depend on an R, no matter how violent, is that NC-17 movies are severely limited in how they can be marketed. "I don't think any film made by the American film industry can economically tolerate an NC-17," Mr. Browne said.

An R rating means a child cannot be admitted to a movie without an adult or guardian. An NC-17 rating means no children are admitted. With such a rating, most mainstream newspapers will not run ads. But more important, video stores like Blockbuster will not offer the DVD's on store shelves. And mass-market retail chains like Walmart, where studios can earn as much as 50 percent of a movie's revenue, will not sell them, either.

Russell Schwartz, president of domestic marketing at New Line Cinema, said the studio had to trim "Chainsaw Massacre" twice to get an R rating. In particular, the ratings board was concerned about one graphic scene in Leatherface's lair, where characters die on meat hooks at the hands of the chainsaw-wielding killer. "There was too much impaling," Mr. Schwartz said. Despite that, he said that the movie was equally attended by both men and women and that 75 percent of the audience was under 25.

Mr. Tarantino said he used several film techniques to ensure that his movie was rated R and not NC-17, including tempering the bloody red with grainy black-and-white film and sequences hand-drawn in cartoonish Japanese anime.

"Black-and-white did make the movie go down easier" with the motion picture association, Mr. Tarantino, who was traveling, said through a spokeswoman when asked about the movie's rating. "Something I've noticed is that when it comes to Americans, it's not so much they have a problem with blood; they have a problem with the color red."

Mr. Tarantino said he intentionally gave each scene a different look to break up the long fight scenes, fearing audiences would grow weary of seeing too much violence.

In the movie's first scene, filmed in black-and-white, the Bride is shot in the head, her body left bloodied. In a later scene, hand-drawn in Japanese anime, a young girl witnesses her parent's execution, then stabs the killers. And when the Bride battles more than 100 gangsters, blood spurts fountainlike out of sliced necks and shoulder sockets.

"I could have taken out the geysers of blood, but that would make the scenes more brutal, make it more violent as opposed to stylized," Mr. Tarantino said.

Mr. Valenti, who spoke on behalf of the motion picture association's rating board, said the violence was cartoonish. "I think the whole thing was fantasy violence," he said. "I think the rating was correct. I didn't see anything to avert my eyes."

Mr. Tarantino, who fashioned "Kill Bill" on spaghetti westerns and martial arts movies, submitted the movie more than once for review by the rating board because the first cut was unacceptable.

"They said to me, `Quentin, it's too much,' " Mr. Tarantino said. " `Half of us think it's an R, the other half thinks it's too tough.' So I worked at it again and I brought it back again."

He was not specific about what cuts were made, but Harvey Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax Films, which financed the film, said in an interview that Mr. Tarantino shaved seconds off certain scenes to get rid of violence deemed to be gratuitous. "As long as it was cartoonish and fun they were fine with it," Mr. Weinstein said.

The experience of "flashbacks" is not an indicator of brain damage. Anyone who has experienced an exetrememly traumatic or disturbing event can experience intense flashbacks. Bad trips can be so traumatic as to induce flashbacks.

Then again, it has not been conclusively proven that flashbacks aren't a result of brain damage. Its just that no form of brain damage from psychedelics has ever been found as of yet, and there is a very plausible psychological explanation for flashbacks.

yah SERIOUSLY keep the Israel/Palestine stuff off this thread

its supposed to be about discussion boards for chrissakes

[ purerave.com ] can be fun, though not really a message board, you need to know the people there for it to be worthwhile

ektoplazm is also a good one, i visited it quite a few times when i was living in toronto, though it doesn't have too many posters

i defintely want to check out some of the movies you guys mentioned..

one of my favorite fucked up movies is the Takoshi Miike (sp?) film "Audition"

plot: a film director sets up a fake audition as a means to find a wife. however he ends up getting a whole lot more then he bargained for...

Not trying to belittle ravewave or anything, but I'm just wondering what other message boards (if any) you people visit. Not neccesarily having anything to do with parties.

the one message board i've found that has some of the most insightful discussion ever is

[ www.bluelight.nu ]

i'll be there, i'm looking forward to the peaceful-friendly shalom vibe

Can you reference your first point?

"As a good psychedelic should, psilocybin, psilocin and psilocybian mushrooms have low toxicity -- in tests with mice, doses up to 200 mg of psilocybin/kg of body (in average human terms (65 kg) 13 grams) have been injected intravenously without lethal effects. The ED50 : LD50 ratio is 641 according to the NIOSH Registry of Toxic Effects; compare this with 9637 for vitamin A, 4816 for LSD, 199 for aspirin and 21 for nicotine. Poisoning, at least physically, is thus not a problem"

[ www.shroomery.org ]

As for tolerance...

"There is a short period of tolerance after Mushroom use. Using Mushrooms two days in a row is likely to lead to a diminished experience the second day, though spaced 5-7 or more days apart, this effect is nearly non-existent."

-Erowid, [ www.erowid.org ]

"Tolerance builds up rapidly with mushrooms. For 24 hours after a trip you have to take twice as much to repeat the same effect. Tolerance lasts about three to four days."

[ www.thegooddrugsguide.com ]

I'm not discounting your experience, if you can provide any reference that contradicts the above I'd like to see. But I'm defintely going to look into the issue of tolerance, thanks for bringing it up.

Yeah, I do love mush. It can be soo many things...a catalyst for the imagination, an expander of counsciousness, a revealer of hidden beauty, a voyage into the further reaches of the mind, an ego-killer, a great substance for music appreciation and dancing, a self-therapy session, a giggle-fest, a purely enjoyable trip, I could go on and on...

And what's more, it's possibly the least harmful drug, think about it...

-it's not physically addictive nor likely to cause psychological dependence (most people have decreased desire to use the next day)

-there are no physical comedown or day after effects

-its nearly impossible to overdose

-no evidence of any harm to the brain or body

-it is not tolerance building (assuming you wait a few days between doses)

-indigenous communities in which shamanism and mushroom consumption is an integral part of beleifs have LOWER incidence of mental illness then western, non-shamanic societies

ps. if anyone wishes to dispute me on any of the points above I can give you so many references you'll be choking on them

ps. I LOVE MUSH!!!

can we get like a parental control or some shit on ravewave?

i think everyone in my school's library just saw nter's cock