In 1997, BBC science programme Horizon broadcast a legendary edition on the use of psychedelic drugs in medicine. Luckily, it's been uploaded to Google Video and you can now watch the whole thing online.

It came at an interesting time in psychedelic drug research - when the authorities were still touchy (they'd only raided Shulgin's licensed lab three years earlier) but were just starting to allow some stirrings of research since they'd shut it down almost completely in the 1960s.

The programme looks at the history of psychedelic drug research when it was still easily possible, focusing on Osmond and Hoffer's early work on using LSD in treating addiction and facilitating psychotherapy.

It's also got loads of great historical footage from the early research but also talks to the new generation of researchers looking at compounds such as ayahuasca and ibogaine, who are now the senior figures in this growing area.

Unfortunately, the video is a bit grainy in places but it's quite watchable and it's got a great soundtrack. The producers used Future Sound of London, Massive Attack and a number of tracks from the Ninja Tune label to give the programme a trippy feel.

Link to 'Psychedelic Science' edition of Horizon.

Mind Hacks: Psychedelic Science online

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.

If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

This bizarre picture is the outcome of a recent series of calculations that take some of the bedrock theories and discoveries of modern cosmology to the limit. Nobody in the field believes that this is the way things really work, however.

The only thing that is real is in your mind and that is not verifiable.

Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs? - New York Times

A particularly wild project is Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, or SyNAPSE. "The program will develop a brain inspired electronic 'chip' that mimics that function, size, and power consumption of a biological cortex," DARPA promises us. "If successful, the program will provide the foundations for functional machines to supplement humans in many of the most demanding situations faced by warfighters today" -- like getting usable information out of video feeds, and starting tasks. The agency is looking to spend $3 million next year, to get started on its faux brain effort. My guess is that it will take considerably more cash to get it done.

DARPA 2009: Brains-on-a-Chip, Transparent Displays | Danger Room from Wired.com

When it comes to big business, appearances it seems, matter a lot. Companies tend to be more profitable if they have a chief executive with a face rated by observers as being more competent, dominant and mature.

Similarly, companies with a chief executive judged to be a good leader, based purely on his facial appearance, also tend to be more profitable. These associations still hold even after controlling for the influence of age and attractiveness.

I wonder if the same applies to presidents.

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: A company's profits are linked to the facial appearance of its chief executive

Thinking it was about my stolen wallet, I let the mid-40s, ripe-bellied officers into my apartment, the whole time thinking, 'Wow, your wallet gets stolen in Denmark and the cops visit to make sure you're OK. The service.' After they sat down in the kitchen, I asked what was up, and was told, 'Well, you stole a credit card and ordered a bunch of shit online. And we know about it.'

Coppa what?

'What? Wait. Wait. What. What?!' I said. 'Can we do this in English? I thought you just said I stole a credit card.'
'Your Danish is fine,' the dough-faced one said in Danish. 'We know you stole it, we know what you did. We're here to take your computer.'
'My computer, why?'
'We traced the transaction back to the wireless network in this apartment.'
'But we have an open wireless connection. It's unsecured.'
'The internet doesn't work that way.'
'What? Wait. What?'

This conversation repeated itself three or four times, and somehow moved into the bedroom, in front of my laptop.

How the team at 'CSI: Denmark' stole my computer - Vox

Our friends at Improv Everywhere recently completed their latest mission “No Shirts”, where they organized 111 shirtless men of all shapes and sizes to go shopping at the Abercrombie and Fitch store on 5th Avenue in New York. As it turns out, in a store that celebrates the shirtless male, shirtless men are not allowed to buy shirts.

LOL

111 Shirtless Men Go Shopping at Abercrombie and Fitch | Laughing Squid

A pair of suicide bombers struck in the Israeli town of Dimona yesterday -- the first strike of its kind in more than a year. Once it was all over, a bomb disposal robot removed one of the attacker's jacket, to make sure there were no more explosives on him. (His bomb failed to go off, and police shot and killed him.) Then the machine rolled over him, to double-check. The likely NSFW picture is after the jump.

Picture: Israeli Robot Crushes Suicide Bomber (Updated) | Danger Room from Wired.com

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Sometime next year nurses may put active band-aids on hospital patients to wirelessly monitor as many as three vital signs. Startup Toumaz Technology (Abingdon, U.K.) described its custom chip to power such a disposable device at the International Solid State Circuits Conference here Monday (Feb. 4).

The chip is one of an emerging group of smart wearable devices that ultimately aim to help patients get medical monitoring from the comfort of home.

"We not only have an aging society, but one that does not have healthy lifestyle,"

I wonder if they will now have to make tin foil bandaids too.

EETimes.com - Startup puts wireless monitor on a band-aid

JACKSON, Miss. - A state lawmaker wants to ban restaurants from serving food to obese customers — but please, don't be offended. He says he never even expected his plan to become law

Congratulations! We needed another profiled discrimination group.

Miss. law would ban serving obese diners - Yahoo! News

My Own Kind of Freedom
A Firefly Novel
by Steven Brust

My Own Kind of Freedom has been released under a creative commons license. You are free to download it and share it with your friends as long as it is not used for commercial purposes.

The novel is currently available in two formats. Click below to download in:

Whoo Hoo! I've been looking forward to reading this. Its an unofficial sequel to Serenity by the author of the Jhereg series.

My Own Kind of Freedom: A Firefly Novel by Steven Brust -- The Dream Caf�