Oh, those cuddly tobacco companies - what with their conscientious worldviews, and their loving, warm embrace of humanity's potential, its future:

Their latest idea is a shorter, more potent smoke that will dose you faster and get you back inside to work. What a concept: quicker addiction for greater productivity.

The new cigarette is Marlboro Intense. The chief executive of Philip Morris International was proudly smoking one of them for a Wall Street Journal story this week about its new products and strategies. Right now, it's available in Turkey, but don't be surprised if it turns up in this country too.

In the United States, Philip Morris tries to portray itself as a responsible company that will somehow both sell you cigarettes and help you quit smoking. At the same time, however, it is spinning off Philip Morris International as a separate company from the parent Altria Group, to gain more flexibility in lucrative, wide-open foreign markets. The future of nicotine addiction is in countries such as China and Indonesia. In that island nation, they sell Marlboro Mix 9, a flavored cigarette with double the normal jolt of the drug.

D'oh!

For no apparent reason, please to enjoy this ridiculous clip of Paul Reubens appearing on The Gong Show, as part of an act that simulates sound effects records.

Via MilkandCookies.

Memo to self: do not collect thousands of bottles of alcohol and then try to sell them. It is illegal.

A man who has been indicted on charges of illegally possessing up to $1 million worth of Jack Daniel's whiskey claims he is a collector who was trying to sell the vintage bottles they came in, not the spirits....

Officials seized 2,400 bottles last October after receiving a tip that someone was selling alcohol without a license.... [The man's] attorney, Raymond Fraley Jr. of Fayetteville, said his client was singled out for selling one bottle for approximately $350 and charged with illegally possessing all the others.

Yes, it's not just illegal drugs that can get you busted for dealing. Alcohol: your legal but heavily regulated intoxicant of first resort!

On a related note, people are dying much less often in Russia now thanks to the increased availability of alcohol that doesn't, uh, kill you:

As more and more Russians avoid taking homemade self-distilled spirits and industrial alcohol in favour of cheap, legal alcohol, the death toll from alcohol poisoning dropped for the second consecutive year, in 2007.... The increase in the number of alcohol poisoning deaths from 2000 to 2005 were a result of consumption of self-distilled spirits (in Russian samogon) and perfume, aftershave products, cleaning liquids and various technical fluids....

Mmm... various technical fluids...

I can't remember how I first came across the blog Xenolinguistics, but I've been meaning to post about it ever since. Its author, mazerunner, is apparently "working toward a Ph.D. on psychedelics and language," and the topics of the blog would seem right at home here (although the blog's deeply analytical approach might seem a little out of place next to our random assortment of YouTube vids, but there you go). Here's the introduction to a recent post on "Virtual Reality and Hallucination: A Technoetic Perspective":

Virtual Reality (VR), especially in a technologically focused discourse, is defined by a class of hardware and software, among them head-mounted displays (HMDs), navigation and pointing devices; and stereoscopic imaging. This presentation examines the experiential aspect of VR. Putting “virtual” in front of “reality” modifies the ontological status of a class of experience—that of “reality.” Reality has also been modified [by artists, new media theorists, technologists and philosophers] as augmented, mixed, simulated, artificial, layered, and enhanced. Modifications of reality are closely tied to modifications of perception. Media theorist Roy Ascott creates a model of three “VR’s”: Verifiable Reality, Virtual Reality, and Vegetal (entheogenically induced) Reality. The ways in which we shift our perceptual assumptions, create and verify illusions, and enter “the willing suspension of disbelief” that allows us entry into imaginal worlds is central to the experience of VR worlds, whether those worlds are explicitly representational (robotic manipulations by VR) or explicitly imaginal (VR artistic creations). The early rhetoric surrounding VR was interwoven with psychedelics, a perception amplified by Timothy Leary’s presence on the historic SIGGRAPH panel, and the Wall Street Journal’s tag of VR as “electronic LSD.” This paper discusses the connections—philosophical, social-historical, and psychological-perceptual between these two domains.

It's surprisingly entertaining to see a 2008 discussion of VR, now that the heyday of the Mondo 2000 years has long since passed us by. Other topics covered by mazerunner include "The Noetic Connection: Synesthesia, Psychedelics, and Language"; "The Nomenclature of Psychedelic Experience" (a favorite topic of mine); and "Alien Downloads" (a quick tour through the worlds of PKD, Terence McKenna, and John Lilly). The blog is rarely updated, but the signal to noise ratio is quite high. Dig it!

Entheogenic Reformation hipped us to the latest internet fad: LOLentities.

Erik Davis recently posted his 2007 introduction to a new volume that collects highlights from the first four issues of The Psychedelic Review, a print zine created by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Gunther Weil in 1963. The intro is a great read, whether or not you're familiar with the Review:

The Psychedelic Reader is a time capsule, a message in a bottle—or better yet, a fistful of messages, rolled up tight like reefers and slipped into small vials labeled Sandoz LSD-25. Like those vials, the articles come from another time: the middle of the 1960s, the last span of time in modern history when psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin, and DMT were studied, and consumed, legally in the West. The psychonauts whose writings are contained within these pages—psychologists, ethnobotanists, biologists, poets, seekers—were convinced that psychedelics offered an unparalleled opportunity to explore and understand the human psyche—its heights and depths, its integral capacities and self-made hells. They also believed, with decent evidence, that psychedelics could heal. Today, when official psychedelic research is making a quiet if substantial comeback, these documents speak to us like the voices of long-lost ancestors—not the feathered lords of jungle sorcery, but the elders of Harvard and the Hollywood hills, in lab coats and smoking jackets, talking their way through a modern mystery in the light of day.

What their conversation looks like, at least to judge from this collection of articles cherry-picked from the first four issues of the Psychedelic Review, is the very opposite of the specialized jargon spats that characterize so many fields of knowledge today. Instead, we have a crazy-quilt collage of poems and plant histories, of third-person protocols and first-person experiences, of law and heresy. This kaleidoscope of voices and perspectives is, it seems, an appopriate reflection of the conundrum presented by the psychedelics themselves, which so emphatically insist on the many dimensions that must be traversed on the way to the One—if, indeed, the One can ever be reached. But the Psychedelic Reader’s collection of views and viewpoints also reflects the very particular and peculiar time and place that shaped the journal, not to mention the operating assumptions of the psychedelic counterculture just beginning to dawn.

In the ongoing caffeine chronicles, researchers have determined that caffeine seems to increase the levels of glucose in the blood, which is non-ideal for diabetics:

Giving caffeine to a small group of people with type 2 diabetes caused their levels of the blood sugar glucose to rise through the day, especially after meals, researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, found.

"Caffeine appears to disrupt glucose metabolism in a way that could be harmful to people with type-2 diabetes," James Lane, a Duke medical psychologist who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

My first reaction when I read this was, "We're just now finding this out about caffeine? Isn't caffeine one of the most studied substances given its prevalence in society?" {Yes, these are the kinds of questions that arm chair commentators often ask, without bothering to crack open a new Firefox tab to actually take a deeper look.) Turns out, this particular issue had been studied before, but to different results:

The new findings seem to run counter to previous research regarding diabetes and caffeine. Earlier studies indicated that people who drank coffee had a reduced risk of type-2 diabetes, and those who drank the most coffee had the lowest risk.

Hmm, so how do you wind up getting completely opposite results while studying the same thing? Answer: the wonders of modern technology!

The researchers used new technology -- a tiny glucose monitor embedded under the abdominal skin -- to monitor the glucose levels continuously in 10 people, average age 63.

On days when the participants were given four tablets containing caffeine equivalent to four cups of coffee, their average daily sugar levels rose 8 percent compared to days when the same people were given four placebo tablets, the researchers reported in the journal Diabetes Care.

Unfortunately, four placebo tablets are not going to make it possible to get through work in the morning; if it's not one thing, it's twenty-three others...

Here's a pretty unpleasant reminder that, as bad as the war on drugs is here in the States, it can get even uglier elsewhere. The partner of one of Coilhouse's founders recently traveled to Dubai and wound up in unexpected trouble:

On Saturday morning Diz flew into Dubai airport and was detained at immigration. We kind of knew he would be profiled because he has long hair and looks oriental (they are very racist against Asians in Dubai, and ultra-conservative). He knew the score going in: prescription drugs are illegal, dress conservatively and detox for a week (even trace amounts of either illegal or prescription drugs in the urine are prosecuted as 'drug smuggling'. I'm not joking).

They found melatonin on him, which he bought over the counter in the US. Legally, you can even buy it over the counter in Dubai.

They arrested him, anyway.

He was strip searched, forced to do a urine test and thrown in jail. In their search they dug into the bottom of his bag and came up with a few fragments of dirt, which they allege is hashish, a total and utter fabrication. They also claimed that the melatonin was actually drugs, which was clearly a lie.

The sentence if convicted is a blanket four years, with a minimum of six months in prison in one of Dubai's squalid, third world facilities.

After detaining him for three days, the melatonin was determined to be just that, and his urine was clear. Now they've asked for a seven day extension to test the dirt, and we trust that he will be on his way home after that.

They've been psychologically abusing all of us. One minute we're told they'll let him go as soon as they test the pills, the next we're told they are going through and pressing charges against him.

Diz could use your support in various ways, which are detailed over here.

Back when we were publishing Trip magazine, we used to run a regular feature that took a look at drug war casualties around the world. You'd get the (sadly) typical round up of how many hundreds of thousands of Americans and westerners wound up in jail due to the war on drugs, and then, oh yeah, how many people had their hands and their heads chopped off in other parts of the world for similar offenses. But Diz is in a special little Bizarro world; the idea that you can get melatonin OTC in Dubai and he still got harassed for it seems like something the US State Department should be getting completely up in arms about.

And if that doesn't work, we should invade Dubai and rescue him. It seems like a perfect opportunity to try out the arsenal of high velocity scopolamine flechette rounds, for purposes of ironic justice.

I've been eagerly awaiting the online publication of a pair of articles from last summer's print edition of Erowid Extracts, the newsletter sent to Erowid members (which should be everyone reading this blog, wouldn't you think?), on the topic of a gaseous mixture called carbogen:

"Carbogen" refers to a gaseous mixture of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and oxygen (O₂), most often administered via a mask attached to a regulator connected to a high-pressure cylinder. The ratio of 30% CO₂ and 70% O₂ is known as "Meduna's mixture", after Ladislas J. Meduna, a psychiatrist who pioneered its use as a therapeutic tool in the 1940s and 1950s. Although carbogen—sometimes described in the medical literature as a "panicogen"—is perhaps best known for inducing anxiety, sensations of suffocation, and unconsciousness, this extremely simple gas can cause surprisingly complex psychoactive effects when inhaled for even a few breaths. Reports of discomfort and anxiety experienced while breathing carbogen may be partially explained by the set and setting of traditional carbogen administration rather than properties inherent in the substance itscarbelf. Recent reports of positive, or even glowing experiences suggest carbogen may be more properly described as a unique psychedelic.

I was at a loft party once where a group of folks were doing carbogen in one corner, and I couldn't work up the courage to even consider inserting myself into that circle. Apparently the experience can cause a fair bit of anxiety:

When inhaling carbogen, it is common for subjects to feel that they are not getting enough oxygen. A recent experimenter said, "It's like feeling like suffocating". One of Meduna's patients reported: "In every case, when inhaling the gaseous mixture I experienced a terrifying smothering sensation; and before the moment of narcosis I had to exert every bit of my will power to keep from fighting the mask."

These feelings of suffocation can cause mild to severe anxiety, fear, or panic, as described by another patient: "After three or four inhalations, the feeling of suffocation becomes intense. And then it becomes necessary to breathe fast. About this time I start praying, 'Oh, God, please help me to go under this quick,' and it usually helps. However, there are times when nothing helps, I am so filled with panic."

In a similar spirit, Dale Pendell captures the flavor of a very unpleasant experience: "It's bad from the first lungful. It tastes sour. Alarm bells go off immediately. 'This is bad.' Will power is required to take even one full inhalation. By the second lungful, if you haven't ripped the mask off, full panic has set in. You need AIR! People start gasping at this point, faces flushed and sucking in the carbogen furiously."