Who says kids don't know any better?

High school students in Florida are more likely to smoke marijuana than tobacco, according to a new report on adolescent health from the state Health Department.

About 16 percent of Florida high school students said they used marijuana in the past month versus 15.5 percent who said they smoked cigarettes, according to a 2006 government survey..

Okay, It's only a slight difference, but who knew the underground marketing of chronic could outweigh the corporate marketing of big tobacco? I guess kids don't think it's "cool" to smoke cigarettes anymore, might as well smoke weed.

Time magazine has a brave new proposal for the American people: Lower the drinking age"

Every year around this time, millions of American kids graduate from high school, throw massive parties and get drunk. Police end up arresting a lot of these kids, causing them legal trouble for months or even years. So, every year around this time, there's a new debate about whether we should lower or even abolish the legal drinking age.

In the wake of the UK's new guidelines for parents with drinking kids, I think we may be onto something here, especially since we have another story today about "21 for 21", the game where peers try to pressure their legal-age friends to kill themselves with alcohol poisoning.

It's called "21 for 21," a college drinking ritual with deadly consequences.

Students down 21 alcoholic drinks on their 21st birthday, and, according to the largest study of its kind, researchers at the University of Missouri determined that many students jeopardize their health -- and their lives.

...

"We have reports of people dying from this going back several years," said Rutledge. "One young man, Brad, who died on his 21st birthday, consumed 21 shots in under 24 hours."

Okay, kids do stupid things, alcohol makes the stupider. Shouldn't Darwin have something to say about this? On another note, my school had a "Century Club", where you had to do 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes. It was ugly. Much puking and passing out. No one died though, I think most were underage. Woot!

It's pretty off topic, i know, but this slots nicely into a series of articles i've been trying to put together that basically document how we're all of a sudden living in the future. Cigarettes that don't kill you, air that does, nano-particle implants and NOW, now ladies and gentlemen: GAS WARS. you got it here first. It's mad max time motherfuckers, now where's my dean kamen water filter?

Uh oh, the animatronic candidate bot called John McCain has disclosed his prior use of Ambien. Problem? Ambien is WEEEEIIIRRD! What if a stoned commander in chief wakes up while hallucinating wildly about elves and garden gnomes and decides the only thing to do is nuke Sherwood Forest? Yikes!

In a presidential race marked by references to preparedness in the face of the 3 a.m. call, the revelation that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain has taken the sleeping pill Ambien during his travels raises concerns that the rare side effects of the medication could impair his judgment.

"Taking more than the recommended dosage of Ambien or combining it with other sedative-hypnotics — for example, alcohol — may result in amnesia, fugue states and sleep walking," said Dr. Peter A. Fotinakes, medical director of the St. Joseph Sleep Disorders Center in Orange, Calif.

Good Christ! Just what we need - a commander in chief who sleep walks into a fugue state of pushing the big red button over and over again and then wakes up with amnesia about it.

PRESIDENTS SHOULD JUST SLEEP SOUNDLY LIKE ALL NORMAL 'MERICANS! Or something.

Things are feeling all future-y, and this doesn't appear to be solely due to my chronically hypofunctional NMDA receptors:

Scientists have trained a group of monkeys to feed themselves marshmallows using a robot arm controlled by sensors implanted in their brains, a feat that could one day help paralyzed people operate prosthetic limbs on their own, according to a study out Thursday.

Lead researcher Andrew Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh said he believes it won't be long before the technology is tested in humans, although he predicts it will be longer before the devices are used in actual patients with disabilities.

"I think we'll be doing this on an experimental basis in two years," said Schwartz, professor of neurobiology at the university's School of Medicine.

The results were appeared in the journal Nature's online edition on Thursday. The arm is controlled by a network of tiny electrodes called a brain-machine interface, implanted into the motor cortex of the monkeys' brains -- the region that controls movement.

It picks up the signals of brain cells as they generate commands to move and converts those into directional signals for the robotic arm, which the monkeys eventually used as a surrogate for their own.

I am one step closer to my dream of becoming a world-eating Dyson Sphere.

And you thought their collaboration would be bollocks?

I'm all about trendy topical drugs, but this one is purely cosmetic, and sort of stupid:

Of all the drugs young people can use at clubs, the latest trend in New York may be the least hip among all circles: Preparation H.

New York bouncer, blogger and author Rob Fitzgerald has noticed a trend among many of the macho young men waiting outside his clubs. He says the guys are slathering up their torsos with the hemorrhoid cream Preparation H to make themselves look "ripped" for the ladies.

Yes, you may file this under WTF?

If we don't teach our kids, who will? From the UK:

Parents are to be given advice about how much alcohol their children can safely drink, under government plans aimed at curbing binge drinking.

In an effort to stamp out excessive teenage drinking, they will be advised at what age their children could be allowed to drink at home and how often, Children's Secretary Ed Balls said.

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Parents of drunk youths could also be jailed and youths who "persistently possess" alcohol could receive criminal records while licensed premises would be required to ask identification from anyone who looks 21 years or younger.

The proposals were unveiled just hours after a chaotic party involving thousands of revellers to mark the last day of drinking alcohol on the London Underground turned ugly.

...

"There is a small minority of parents who ... actually give them alcohol and send them out to drink it in public places — that is wrong," he told BBC radio.

Meanwhile, here in America, if you accidentally give your kid a hard lemonade they take him away and put him in foster care. What the dilly yo?

Hi. Welcome to the Placebo Store. I'm Jen. I am a mommy. It's what I love. It's my job to make owies go away. Whether it's a kiss or a big hug, the magic happens immediately. This is the power of placebo. I have a baby girl and two sons. One of them always needs my comfort and the knowledge that I will make them feel better. I invented Obecalp when I realized that children might need a little more than a kiss to make it go away. Obecalp fills the gap when medicine is not needed but my children need something more to make them feel better. You'll know when Obecalp is necessary.

Thanks tsuga.

From JamieB:

This is from a steampunk webcomic I'm rather fond of. This particular page is from a minor storyline where the main character fixes a coffee machine and makes it a little TOO good.