The Slog recently hipped us to a pretty wild breakthrough, which the NYT described as "Turning Homosexuality On and Off" in their piece describing the finding:

What if you could take a drug that would quickly alter your sexual orientation from straight to gay, or vice versa?

To their surprise, neurobiologists have discovered that homosexuality can be turned on or off in fruit flies. They’d known that sexual orientation can be genetically programmed, but they didn’t realize it could also be altered by giving a drug that changes the way the flies’ sensory circuits react to pheromones.

Within hours of the treatment, previously heterosexual male fruit flies would be courting other males, and treatment could also cause flies who had been engaging in homosexual behavior to become exclusively heterosexual, the neurobiologists report in Nature Neuroscience. You can read a summary of it here from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the home of one of the researchers, David Featherstone.

Naturally, both the NYT and the Slog (and now us, yay!) go on to ask the ethical question of what should society do with this uncanny new power, should we someday see pills that accomplish this neat trick in humans?

Dan Savage's take:

When we talk about parents attempting to “regulate” their children’s sexual orientations, we’re almost always talking about straight parents wanting to make sure their kids turn out straight. But what about the growing numbers of gay parents out there? Would we be within our rights as parents to chemically alter our children’s sexual orientations? I don’t know a gay parent that would do such a thing, of course. But if this drug becomes available we may have to threaten to give it to our straight kids to prevent bigoted straight parents doing it to their gay kids.

Naturally I'm curious what the DoseNation crowd might think of such societal mayhem...

Researchers have known for a while that exercise improves mood (actually, I suspect exercisers have known this for a while too), although the link isn't particularly clear yet. However, some new research seems to indicate that the mood-enhancing benefits of exercise might someday translate into a better form of antidepressant:

The latest research focuses on an area of the brain called the hippocampus, which is already established as a target for antidepressant drugs.

The team developed a test to see which genes in this region were made more active during exercise, and highlighted one called VGF.

This gene is linked to a "growth factor" chemical involved in the development of nerve cells.

This fitted with their theory that, for depression to lift, changes in the actual structure and links between brain cells are needed, not just changes in the chemicals surrounding the cells.

The next step was to make a version of that chemical, and to test it on mice, where it showed an effect on their behaviour that roughly equated to antidepressant effects in humans.

The researchers believe that a drug based on VGF could offer "possibly even superior efficacy" to current antidepressants.

Of course, when I saw the phrase "exercise pill" in the headline of the article, I immediately thought of a pill that would tone my body and help me lose weight while I sat on the couch playing video games, but I guess I'll settle for antidepressants with "superior efficacy."

And now, for a completely different style of psychedelic mayhem, please to enjoy this surreal experience of a video, which just calls out how much better the world would be if marauding baby dolls actually did roam our forests.

Erik Davis pinged me with a heads up to this pretty devastating article in the Guardian, about the post-Katrina drug war aftermath in New Orleans. It almost defies commentary to see things like:

Interviews with more than 100 drug dealers and users in New Orleans and Katrina turned up stories like: white crystal meth cookers instructing black crack dealers on how to cook up the drug on their kitchen stoves; an explosion in heroin use and availability that has resulted in the drug being consumed in all manner of strange and fascinating ways from heroin-laced gumbo sold for $10 a cup, to tightly-rolled marijuana blunts packed with the drug; dealers from storm-wracked neighborhoods moving into surrounding areas and clashing with established dealers (this may go far in explaining the current murder epidemic in New Orleans); and, perhaps most disturbingly, thousands of "emancipated youths" (teenagers returning to New Orleans to live on their own, with absolutely no parental supervision) entering into the drug game in order to support themselves financially.

And:

Since the storm, dealers have grown so bold that they sell directly to just about anyone on the streets, a big break in tradition in the drug business - particularly crack - in which selling to unfamiliar customers is verboten as they often turn out to be informants or undercover cops. "The dealer does not think there is any likelihood of arrest or conviction," explained DPRI's Stanley Hoogerwerf, "so he has eliminated the intermediary, who is now added to the ranks of unemployed in New Orleans".

Actually, the Guardian makes the same point in terms of commentary that immediately sprang to my mind: didn't we see the macro version of this piece in Rolling Stone's mind-boggling "How America Lost The Drug War" article? Why yes, yes in fact we did. There's nothing so outrageous in New Orleans that you can't find something equally outrageous in Columbia or Mexico or in a downed CIA airplane, after all.

While browsing through the Invisible College PDF I came across the work of Eddy Millan, AKA Semigod. There is a nice gallery of Seimgod goods at the semigod.com site. From the looks of it there appears to be some kind of semigod factory and art movement as well. Maybe?

Invisible College 3rd Edition is out in PDF and print-on-demand format. Here's some of what's featured in this issue:

A. Andrew Gonzalez is our featured artist gracing our front and back covers with his amazing art... Poetry from Allen Cohen of The San Francisco Oracle... Tim Daly graces us once more with stories from his home in Ireland... Will Penna takes us back over Summers of Love with his entry... Diane Darling writes on the festival of Lughnasdh... Find out how Salvia divinorum was kept legal in Oregon... Poetry from Tomas Brawley and Aleister Crowley... The Sumerian Connection is examined in ' The Serpent and The Light' from Hermetic Magician LyterPhotos... We also have the art of Eddy Andres (Semi-God) and Dodie's "World of Art"... Walter Maderos announces a new book of Willifred Sattys' illustrations: "Visions of Frisco"... Also of note is a very interesting interview: "The Flowery Path: One Man's Journey on the path of the sacred plants"... This edition is rounded off by a photojournal of Modern Tribalism by Kyle Hailey....

Thanks Gwyllm!

A reader tells us the following:

Take a look at Skot Olsen's recent psychedelic inspired artwork.

I believe all his new work was destroyed (December 11) in a fire at the Harold Golen Gallery - Among the hundreds of works destroyed in the 'Subjective Reality' (Art Basel Miami) group show at the gallery. Details here

Thanks for the news Andrew. It is sad that these amazing paintings are no longer with us...

Not as happy as the Color Dance, but definitely more directly about drugs. A video that I've watched so many times, it prompted me to paint a hot pink wall in my livingroom with a giant aztec inspired god head on it. People were confused.

BCI, or brain-computer interfaces, are here to stay. Connecting neural tissue or direct brain feedback to digital circuits is a reality, and the technology for making such devices cheaper and cooler is well underway.

But BCI? Do we really need to call it that? Can't we find a better term for this technology, like "Bluetooth" did for short-range wireless appliance interfaces? How about "Wetlink" devices, or say, "Neurolink" devices, or even something as stupid as "Panther" would be better than BCI. Please get a clue science people.

Check the link for more on how these devices are being explored and used throughout the world, including tasty tidbits like China leading the way on advanced algorithm development for EEG-based systems. Woohoo!

The Seattle NPR station, KUOW, had a great program on drug policy this morning on the Weekday program. Instead of regurgitating all the old myths about drugs and crime, the conversation kept turning back to the dangers implicit in prohibition, and how the drug war creates more risk and casualties than the drugs themselves. A very informed discussion from people in law enforcement and prevention.

Grab the MP3 here.