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Zeitgeist
A DVD exposing Christianity, the Banking System and 9/11

from CNN --
Rapid-fire TV news bulletins or getting updates via social-networking tools such as "twitter" could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering.

Scientists at the University of Southern California say updates on networking tools such as Twitter are often too quick for the brain to fully digest. New findings show that the streams of information provided by social networking sites are too fast for the brain's "moral compass" to process and could harm young people's emotional development.

Before the brain can fully digest the anguish and suffering of a story, it is being bombarded by the next news bulletin or the latest Twitter update, according to the study. "If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people's psychological states and that would have implications for your morality," said USC researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.

The report, to published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, studied how volunteers responded to real-life stories chosen to stimulate admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain

Marijuana to Help Financial Crisis?

from alternet.org --
According to a study by Harvard University senior lecturer Jeffrey Miron -- and endorsed by over 500 distinguished economists -- replacing pot prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcohol would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year.

A separate economic analysis conducted by George Mason University professor Jon Gettman estimates that the total amount of tax revenue derived from cannabis could be far higher. According to Gettman, the retail value of the total U.S. marijuana market now stands at a whopping $113 billion per year. Using standard tax percentages obtained from the Office of Management and Budget, he calculates that the diversion of this market from the taxable economy deprives taxpayers of over $31 billion annually.

Likewise, lawmakers in Massachusetts and California are debating statewide measures to tax and regulate the production and sale of cannabis to adults. Both state proposals would impose a fixed excise tax on the retail production of marijuana -- non-retail cultivation would remain untaxed -- as well as sales taxes on the commercial sale of cannabis to anyone 21 years and older.

Finally, taxing and regulating cannabis would have the added bonus of taking the production and trafficking of pot out of the hands of criminal enterprises and, increasingly, drug gangs.

According to the Associated Press, marijuana is the "biggest source of income" for Mexican drug cartels. Legalizing pot would eliminate this primary income source for these cartels and, in turn, eliminate much of the growing violence and turf battles that currently surround the drug's illegal importation from Mexico. Any way you look at it, legalizing cannabis just makes sense. So why aren't we doing it?

Hospitals Adopting Holistic New Age Treatments

from HolisticFuture.com --
Massage therapy…acupuncture…Reiki…spiritual counseling…music therapy…guided imagery…sounds like a New Age spa retreat. In actuality, these are alternative therapies you can now find in an increasing number of hospitals across the country. Numerous hospitals now incorporate a holistic vision of treating the whole person — mind, body, and spirit — into their mission statements.

Such therapies are used to help treat anxiety, depression, and chronic pain, and reduce the need for medication, lower blood pressure, improve stroke patients’ memories, aid sleep, and speed recovery.

Many patients, who are demanding such added services to their treatment and recovery experience, feel a deeper level of personal healing when receiving such patient-centered care; this has added to overall patient satisfaction. It is so successful that 93% of patients feel they benefited from the complementary therapies.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) acknowledges that approximately 37 percent of hospitals across the U.S. have now added such offerings because of high patient demand and the lucrative potential of tapping into the $19 billion spent on complementary medicine each year, even though these services are paid out-of-pocket by patients.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn...
No, In A Moscow Lung!

From Novosti Russian News Service --
Surgeons found a 5-centimeter tall spruce growing inside a Russian man's lung on Monday. Doctors discovered the tree while Artyom Sidorkin, 28, of Izhevsk, Russia was undergoing surgery. His doctors suspected cancer after he'd complained of extreme chest pain and had been coughing up blood. "I blinked three times and thought I was seeing things," Izhevsk surgeon Vladimir Kamashev told the Komsomolskaya Pravda, a newspaper in the region. The surgeons suspect Sidorkin must've inhaled a seed that later sprouted inside his lung. Doctors removed the spruce that had been touching his capillaries, causing extreme pain. "It was very painful," Sidorkin told the newspaper. "But to be honest I did not feel any foreign object inside me."

 

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