[Quote]:

Many individuals who took a single dose of psilocybin — the active ingredient in what the drug culture calls “magic mushrooms” — showed alterations in personality characteristics, largely for the better, that persisted for more than a year, a prospective scientific study showed.

Participants who reported “mystical experiences” during the hallucinogen sessions tended to show increases in the personality dimension known as openness, according to Katherine A. MacLean, PhD, and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University.

They found no adverse effects from the drug exposure.

Openness is generally considered a positive characteristic and includes such traits as aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity, imagination, intellectual engagement, and awareness of feelings in themselves and others, the researchers indicated in an online report in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Action Points

• Explain that many individuals who took a single dose of psilocybin showed alterations in personality characteristics, largely for the better, that persisted for more than a year.
• Note that participants who reported “mystical experiences” during the hallucinogen sessions tended to show increases in the personality dimension known as openness (aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity, imagination, intellectual engagement, and awareness of feelings in themselves and others).

The findings were consistent with previous studies and anecdotal reports from psilocybin users, who have said the drug changed their interactions with the world long after the acute effects wore off, MacLean and colleagues said.

“Although there is still much to learn about the mechanisms by which hallucinogens might produce positive changes, the increases in openness observed in the present study indicate novel avenues of future research into the biological and psychological mechanisms of psilocybin treatment,” they wrote.

So what Cooper is saying is that CNN can be judged by any of the comments/perspectives of any of its guests? CNN is a racist, sexist, murder and terrorism-glorifying hellhole?

Even Animal couldn’t stop this guy:

[Quote]:

There are many forms of protest, many ways to express an objection to particular events, situations, policies, and even people. Protests can also take many forms – from individual statements to mass demonstrations – both peaceful and violent. In the last 30 days, there have been numerous protests across the globe in many countries. The following post is a collection of only some of those protests, but the images convey a gamut of emotions as citizens stand up for their political, economic, religious and lifestyle rights. — Paula Nelson (51 photos total)

3
Police subdue a Bolivian from the Isiboro Secure indigenous territory after he and dozens of other protesters blocked an airport runway on Sept. 26. The demonstrators had been on a 370-mile protest march from Trinidad in the northern lowlands to the government seat in La Paz in an attempt to draw attention to the government’s plan to build a highway through their territory. President Evo Morales ordered police to stop the march. As police were herding the protesters onto a plane at Rurrenbaque airport to return them home, a large group broke away and blocked the runway with burning wood and tires. (David Mercado/Reuters) #

[Quote]:

n what appears to be a crucial false-positive, Microsoft’s security tools are removing Chrome from Windows machines, marking it as a variant of the notorious Zeus (Zbot) malware family.

*grabs popcorn*

[Quote]:

There’s the old saying that we, as skeptics and people constantly bombarded by digital manipulation, take to heart: If something it too good to be true, then it probably is. This picture is just too good. It immediately led to a thread on Reddit and on various blogs, where people questioned the authenticity and claimed that it is fake. There were a variety of arguments posed by other people:

• The RPG would knock over a guy on crutches.
• The shadows are missing.
• He’s not firing at anything. (What’s he trying to do, kill trees?)
• The back-blast from an RPG is bigger than that.
• The RPG flame has a blurry edge and was pasted.

The key word in the adage is “probably”. Probably is not the same as absolutely. I rarely rely strictly on my eyes to evaluate images. Instead, I use a suite of algorithms and methods. In this case, the critics at Reddit are wrong. This picture passes every test I have thrown at it as if it is real. It is not a splice, edit, or digital manipulation. There is a little color correction and sharpening, but it is well within the reasonable amount allowed by Reuters.

[Quote]:

You may have heard about the Cellebrite cell phone extraction device (UFED) in the news lately. It gives law enforcement officials the ability to access all the information on your cell phone within a few short minutes. When it became known that Michigan State Police had been using the tool to access cell phones during traffic stops, it raised concern with the ACLU. Now, everyone is wondering if cops will be using devices like this elsewhere. Will this new law enforcement tool be abused, or will it be used responsibly in the pursuit of justice?

Call us paranoid, but we obtained a law-enforcement-grade software extraction tool for the iPhone to see exactly what data is up for grabs. You’d be surprised to see just how much data today’s smartphones can store — and police can access.

The weird thing is, it can also insert data. See: http://www.cellebrite.com/images/stories/ufed%202/UFED_PA_user_guide.pdf Staring under “Create a new call”

What court would ever accept anything by this software as evidence?

I guess I’ll have to start carrying around a second phone so I can hand over innocent data…

[Quote]:

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) should apply copyright protection to the functions of computer programs, a software company has told it, according to media reports.

SAS Institute Inc claims that World Programming Ltd infringed its copyrights by developing a rival software program it designed using information published in manuals for SAS software. It wants the ECJ to apply copyright protections to the functions of computer programs.

"[Exempting computer program functions from copyright protection would] deprive the copyright owner of a significant part of the value of the protection given to computer programs," SAS’s lawyer said, according to a report by news agency Bloomberg.

"There is no warrant for excluding that type of intellectual creativity," he said.

Hell yes there is – are you really sure there’s room for only one program allowed to print “Hello World” to the screen for the next 75 years?

[Quote]:

According to Daily Kos, The New York Transit Workers Union (TWU) voted to support the Wall Street Protestors at their meeting last night.A member of TWU Local 100 told a reporter that they would join the protest Friday at 4PM.

Here’s more about them from their website:

The TWU has four main divisions: Railroad; Gaming; Airline; Transit; and Utility, University and Service. The Union has 114 autonomous locals representing over 200,000 members and retirees in 22 states around the country.

Occupy Wall Street has been picking up some decent support from unions in the past few days. Yesterday we reported that the Teamsters Union declared their support for protestors, and we also found out that the United Pilots Union had members at the protest demonstrating in uniform.

Today we learned the Industrial Workers of the World put a message of support on their website as well.

UPDATE: Verizon union workers have joined the protestors in NYC.

[Quote]:

A 16-year-old girl has been placed on a nationwide airport watch list to stop her being sent to Lebanon against her will for an arranged marriage.

In what a magistrate has called an ”act of great bravery”, the girl sought a court order to stop her parents taking her out of Australia to marry a man she has met only once.

The girl, who cannot be named, approached the Legal Aid Commission in Sydney after her parents organised the wedding despite her saying she did not want to marry the man.

In the Federal Magistrates Court yesterday, magistrate Joe Harman granted an ex parte application and placed the girl on the PACE Alert system at all points of departure from Australia to prevent her parents spiriting her out of the country.

[Quote]:

Oracle seems a little confused about the sequence of events and origins of the data it has received, something that would suggests it needs better management of and insight into the unstructured data on its internal systems. We would be delighted to help."

Ouch.

Refers to this and this

[Quote]:

SIR – Given the turmoil that Yahoo! is currently experiencing, and its uncertain future, I suggest the company be rebranded as Yahoo? (“Portal exit”, September 10th). After all, relevance is a key characteristic in its business.