The Cassini spacecraft detected warmth, water and organic chemicals, the basic ingredients for life on Saturn’s small moon, Enceladus, reinforcing scientists’ believe that our solar system has favorable conditions appropriate for living organisms to develop. full story

Shocking!

Amazing!

This solar system may actually have life in it!

I hear there is this place called Earth that they should check out.

I sincerely doubt that any chemist, psychiatrist, or dope peddler could find a more effective antidepressant than a good cigar.

Why is cigarette smoking banned in most public places, while heavy perfume use remains completely acceptable? Most perfumes contain a mess of toxic chemicals known to cause a variety of health problems from weakening the immune system to cancer.

"Freedom of expression" isn't anymore valid with perfume than it is with smoking. Some people think smoking looks cool, some people think smoke smells good (I personally love the smell of tobacco smoke). So "personal expression" just doesn't cut it. The only difference I can see between air-choking perfume and second-hand smoke is political.

I am against psychiatry because psychiatrists are now giving hard-core antipsychotics to kindergarteners and Prozac to toddlers. I'm against psychiatry because much of their drugs have nasty permanent debilitating side effects such as tardive dyskinesia, and deadly side effects such as significantly increased diabetes risk and neuroleptic malignant syndrome. I'm against psychiatry because no psychiatrist can adequately explain what a "chemical imbalance" looks like or what a proper "chemical balance" would be. I am against psychiatry because there are no objective tests for mental "illnesses", all diagnoses are made subjectively based on the opinions of individual psychiatrists who regularly come to differing conclusions regarding the same patient. I am against psychiatry because if mental "illness" actually is biological in origin, neurologists should be handling it on a medical basis. I am against psychiatry because psych drugs simply mask the symptoms and don't actually help patients get better. I am against psychiatry because a friend of mine was told that her son could no longer attend school unless he took addictive amphetamines. I am against psychiatry because of the ongoing campaigns to force dangerous drugs and electroconvulsive therapy on adults that have committed no crime. I am against psychiatry because the psychiatry has become more about selling drugs than helping patients.

I haven't fallen down once since the rapture I experience a little over a week ago. Not once. Something was awakening. The unwinding of the Kundalini. I have noted much symbolic significance in what I have called my cane. It is more than a cane, it is my staff. I realize now that I did not need my staff because I had trouble walking, but that I had trouble walking because I needed my staff. Now I have found it and seen what it is, I do not need it to walk around, but I do need it for my journey. It was meant for me.

I have come to see my staff in the form of a serpent, the handle being the serpent head. The serpent is not an animal I would have picked out to associate myself with. The squirrel, the skunk, the Canadian goose, and the raccoon. Those have been the animals I have felt kinship with. But now I walk a new path. Not really new a new path, as I've always walked my path, it's just I realized before that I was walking.

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Today is the first day I have been able to take my staff outside since I sealed it with polyurethane 6 days ago. I put the coating on it so that I would not have to worry about taking it outside in the elements. I was worried that snow and rain would take their toll on it, and it would not be long before it crumbled of rot.

Putting the polyurethane on proved to be more adventure than I had anticipated. More accurately: putting the polyurethane on the staff was easy, getting it off myself was difficult. I don't have any paint thinner, and not much else works as a solvent for polyurethane. I tried water and soap. I tried rum. My hands were sticky and the stick was spreading. The brushes I placed in a plastic bowl of soapy water and I hope that they are still able to be fully cleaned when I do get paint thinner. However, my hands and my arms were my more immediate concern and I lacked the correct solvent.

It then occurred to me that there was another approach to solve the problem. I needed the polyurethane would take hold of rather than something that would take hold of the polyurethane: flour. I worked the flour over my hands and arms and between my fingers letting it form a thick paste with the polyurethane. That paste I could then simply scrape off my skin. It worked, and I am now free of the stick of the polyurethane. I will, however, make sure I have paint thinner on hand if I try this again, so that I can do the clean-up the proper way.

i saw a quiz in a friend's journal that said earth was a quiet, shy, and kind planet. earth is none of those things. earth is a rough, survival of the fittest kind of place that's been twisted up into a complex game run by money which is largely ill-gotten gains by the richest. outshing the sun in radio emissions, earth is hardly quiet or shy. do people really think of earth as a happy fun place where squirrel and deer live happy little lives? no, they're terrified. afraid of everything. because they have to be. even top predators have to worry about defending their territory and not starving to death as humans encroach more and more on their lands.

i choose to believe that life has sprouted elsewhere in the solar system. i believe life is probably commonplace. life arose quickly on earth after it cooled down enough to be hospitable. i think titan is still a good candidate for life. it wouldn't be life like we know it, but who knows what different chemical reactions could have occurred in it's cold organic slurry.

I just made an odd discovery: baking soda and cat urine fizzes.