Albert Hofmann, the father of LSD, is dead at age 102. Freaky.
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My first thoughts were 1) What’s freaky, the fact that a 102 yr old man died? or 2) He lived to be a 102 yrs old, after hitting on the LSD?
Read the linked story and WOW, what a freaky story! Interesting history, worth the read.
Now on a Happy Note:
Her forced resignation letter is a hoot!
Lurita Doan finally forced out at GSA
http://www.politico.com/blogs/.....t_GSA.html
April 29, 2008
“Lurita Doan, head of the General Services Administration, was forced to offer her resignation tonight, according to an e-mail she sent out this evening.
Doan was appointed in late May, 2006, becoming the first woman to serve as GSA Administrator. With 12,000 empioyees and a $20 billion annual budget, GSA has responsibilty for overseeing the thousands of building and properties owned by the federal government.
Doan became the subject of congressional scrutiny last year for allegedly using GSA to help Republican lawmakers win re-election. Doan denied the allegation, but her appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was disastrous. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the panel, called on Doan to resign over the allegations, but Doan refused to do so.
Here is the text of the e-mail that Doan sent out earlier this evening announcing her forced resignation:
“Dear Friends and Colleagues at GSA,
… check the link
Perhaps this should be on his tombstone:
“What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Turns out that school vouchers are on their way out as a conservative litmus test issue (despite the number of the faithful in here who get their talking points by Pony Express and are thus a little late to the game). It’s a funny thing–vouchers apparently enable black kids to get into white schools. Who Knew? So anyway, the humble and noble grass roots conservatives who would shoot their own kis before letting them rub shoulders with the dusky spawn of our ebony brethren are up in arms.
Heck, it doesn’t matter that vouchers don’t improve outcomes, but when the “others” start attending schools with our little girls, it’s time to give it up!
See, It’s like my mother always said, doing drugs is bad for you and will lead you to an early grave…
Oh, no, wait….. (I’m so confused now).
His longevity can be attributed to his personal outlook; he’s said to have pictured himself in a boat on a river, with marshmellow trees and marmelaid skies.
One of my favorite jokes:
A reporter for a small-town newspaper had the duty of writing the obligatory story on every person who reached 100 years of age. It was a boring job, since the questions were always the same, and usually the answers were, also.
One day he trudged off to a remote farmhouse to interview the latest centurian. He visited with him for a while, had a cup of tea, and asked him the usual questions. How many children do you have? What are the biggest changes you have seen in your lifetime? To what do you attribute your longevity?
In answer to the last question, the old man pulled himself up straight, and replied: “I’ve reached my present age due to clean living. In all my life, I’ve never touched a drop of alchohol, smoked a cigarette, cavorted with impure women, or otherwise done anything to bring dishonor upon me!”
Just then there was a huge crash from the ceiling. The reporter jumps up, and exclaims: “What was THAT???”
The old man just waives his hand dismissivly. “Ignore that ruckus”, he says. “That’s just my granddad. He gets roaring drunk everytime his girlfiends come over”.
“What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
I think Jerry Garcia, formerly of The Grateful Dead, has that on his tombstone now. Would it be plagiarism to to put that phrase on Professor Hofmann’s tombstone?
I can’t help but think of the thousands of people who took his invention and never came back from their trip and are locked into a permanent nightmare.
Here’s another long, strange trip; they’re shippin uranium contaminated soil from Kuwait, down the Columbia to be disposed of in Idaho. WTF?
http://www.tdn.com/articles/20.....559743.txt
Troll @ 9,
Yeah…it’s something akin to the “bad trip” of hundreds of thousands of people being sent into a war zone (based on lies) with tens of thousands coming back missing limbs, missing an eye or two, or psychologically scarred and unable to fully cope….
@11, I knew someone was going to post an Iraq war analogy comment to answer my comment. Very predictable. Yawn.
9,12 Troll
Well, how about this, then? How many “thousands” of people “never came back from their trip?”
First, adequately define your terms, and second, provide a reliable citation that backs up your assertion. Otherwise, it sounds like total pulled-out-of-your-dumb-ass bullshittium to me.
Oh, yeah. Fuck.
There were “958,000 new users [of LSD] in 2000” (www.drugabusestatistics.samhsa.gov/ecstasy.htm#List )
How many of them “never came back from their trip?” “Troll” apparently knows, but won’t share. It’s just not fair.
My guess? None.
@13
If this were my Doctoral Thesis, I would define terms, provide citations, etc., but this is JUST A BLOG! But hey, if you want to footnote your blog comments, be my guest.
@9
What a stupid remark. Sounds like you’ve been watching too much Fox News and embracing Drug War propaganda.
And shouldn’t we limit our counting to those who are not already schizophrenic or psychotic before taking LSD? Seems only fair.
15 Troll
Nope. Refuse to cite, and you’re just spouting bullshit. And this is a comments thread, not a blog. If you want to blog, go start one.
And I DO cite. Extensively. Things like the US Census, US NIH, US DOL and US DOJ, University studies, etc., to make my points.
Well, then, I guess we don’t need to worry ourselves overly about those poor, poor, imaginary “thousands” in Troll’s head. How can you even think with all of them wailing away in their LSD psychosis?
Suddenly Troll appears at the turnstile, the boy with kaleidoscope eyes.
13 – ..second, provide a reliable citation that backs up your assertion. Otherwise, it sounds like total pulled-out-of-your-dumb-ass bullshittium to me.
You mean like this?
4 – Turns out that school vouchers are on their way out as a conservative litmus test issue …..Heck, it doesn’t matter that vouchers don’t improve outcomes, but when the “others” start attending schools with our little girls, it’s time to give it up!
You should catch up on your reading..
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_52.htm
Albert Hoffman was a fantastically great man. I last saw him speak when he was in his 90’s, incredibly lucid and not at all apologetic for his career, and still going strong. To blame him for any supposed abuse of LSD is absurd; he was a scientist who discovered a naturally-occurring ergot chemical with a potential that has never been fully explored, thanks to the ignorance of drug warriors. As for thousands of people “locked into a permanent nightmare”, give me a break. Name one. That’s utter nonsense, kind of like the non-existent crack babies that William Bennett used to espouse anytime he was challenged with an argument he couldn’t refute.
http://www.homesteadbook.com/blog
DL @ 4
That’s a good one. Got a link for that? Anything to do with vote coming up in Florida?
22 Joedirt
Hmm..they make the really weird claims that mildly disabled children who remain in public schools “benefit” from “exposure” to a voucher system. I’ll dig into their methodology, but that’s a really weird claim to make that does not asy a whole heck of a lot for vouchers. And, of course, Jay Greene is a famous voucher proponent who spends all of this time talking them up and devising studies he can use to show how great they are. I was sure you were going to mention Paul Peterson, though.
But evidence of voucher programs improving outcomes is slim.
Private Schools no better than public shools: Dept. of Education
“Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling ”
Put this back together:
nces.ed.gov/
pubsearch/
pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006461
Kim Metcalf, director of the Indiana Center for Evaluation, conducted an analysis of student achievement in the Cleveland voucher plan:
Put this back together:
http://www.indiana.edu/
~iuice/forms/
rprt_rqs.html
Conclusion: students learn in public and private schools
John Witte’s analysis of Milwaukee voucher program
Put this back together:
http://www.questia.com/
read/
103282718?title=The%20Market%20Approach%20to%20Education%3a%20An%20Analysis%20of%20America’s%20First%20Voucher%20Program
Conclusion: parents are happy but students are doing about the same.
But the REAL issues here is the one I was quoting: voucher programs are going down in flames when placed before voters, most recently in Michigan, California, and Utah, where they lost by 2-1 or better margins.
Put this back together:
http://www.nea.org/
vouchers/
vouchervotes.html
As I said, it looks like those nice white surburban parents don’t want the inner-city kids mixing it up in their schools. It’s a real loser of a issue for Republicans, so they’re quietly back-burnering it.
24 YLB
The article it comes from is at http://www.washingtonmonthly.c.....anrig.html
I have a longer post I am currently tring to get though the spam filter, regarding outcomes.
While I do that, I should mention Sol Stern’s article School Choice Isn’t Enough
city-journal.org/2008/18_1_instructional_reform.html
22 Joedirt
Hmm..they make the really weird claims that mildly disabled children who remain in public schools “benefit” from “exposure” to a voucher system. I’ll dig into their methodology, but that’s a really weird claim to make that does not asy a whole heck of a lot for vouchers. And, of course, Jay Greene is a famous voucher proponent who spends all of this time talking them up and devising studies he can use to show how great they are. I was sure you were going to mention Paul Peterson, though.
But evidence of voucher programs improving outcomes is slim.
Private Schools no better than public shools: Dept. of Education
“Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling ”
Put this back together:
nces.ed. gov/
pubsearch/
pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006461
Kim Metcalf, director of the Indiana Center for Evaluation, conducted an analysis of student achievement in the Cleveland voucher plan:
Put this back together:
http://www.indiana. edu/
~iuice/forms/
rprt_rqs.html
Conclusion: students learn in public and private schools
John Witte’s analysis of Milwaukee voucher program
Put this back together:
http://www.questia. com/
read/
103282718?title=The%20Market%20Approach%20to%20Education%3a%20An%20Analysis%20of%20America’s%20First%20Voucher%20Program
Conclusion: parents are happy but students are doing about the same.
But the REAL issues here is the one I was quoting: voucher programs are going down in flames when placed before voters, most recently in Michigan, California, and Utah, where they lost by 2-1 or better margins.
Put this back together:
http://www.nea. org/
vouchers/
vouchervotes.html
As I said, it looks like those nice white surburban parents don’t want the inner-city kids mixing it up in their schools. It’s a real loser of a issue for Republicans, so they’re quietly back-burnering it.
@22:
Umm – that site promotes vouchers and so do the authors. It is not peer reviewed. Here is the summary of the cleveland voucher program:
The Ohio Department of Education commissioned an evaluation of Cleveland’s voucher program beginning in April 1997. Among the findings of Dr. Kim Metcalf, et al., at Indiana University:
Voucher students had been achieving at higher levels than their public school peers prior to receiving the vouchers.
After accounting for prior achievement and demographics, there were no significant differences in third-grade achievement between voucher students and their public school peers at the end of the first year, but significant and positive effects in language and, less clearly, in science, at the end of two.
Students attending the two newly established private schools were achieving at significantly lower levels by the end of the second year than either their public school or private school peers.”
Vouchers did not work in : Milwaukie, Cleveland and elsewhere. One non-peer reviewed article where they select a group of students (disabled) and try to show it works for this selct group of student….when these students could be turned down by most other schools with most other voucher programs….shows the complete lack of intellectual integrity by the authors.
@27: Thank goodness for Daddy Love – you are there to refute the right wing BS – so many times I type something up just to find out you are already there.
Troll,
If this were my Doctoral Thesis, I would define terms, provide citations, etc.”
Of course you would. Likely because Liberty University is the only graduate school you’d have any shot of getting into.
There is only one citation needed (and allowed) there.
Hell…even a Wingding troll could manage to provide that citation.
Troll @ 12,
“I knew someone was going to post an Iraq war analogy comment to answer my comment. Very predictable. Yawn.”
So…I guess your real “concern” wasn’t about the degradation of people’s lives after a bad trip (whether via LSD or Bush’s Bestest Military Adventure)…you only wanted to take potshots and a dead man, eh?
Every class has its clown.
“Thousands of people locked in a permanent nightmare.” Who’s that again? Sounds kinda like the right-wing 29 percenters.
As I understand it, most “bad trips” on LSD are related to the drug’s tendancy to greatly amplify the individual’s consciousness of the worst aspects of his or her own true nature.
No wonder the right-wing nutcases are so down on such a thing. They’d be scared shitless of such an experience.
The right wing including Nixon were big promoters of CIA induced acid trips. Too bad none of it was used on Nixon or Reagan
PI @ 8:
Even if he were still alive, I doubt Jerry would mind……….