Albert Hofmann, who died on Tuesday aged 102, synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in 1938 and became the first person in the world to experience a full-blown acid trip.

Hofmann called LSD “medicine for the soul” and was frustrated by the worldwide prohibition that has pushed it underground. “It was used very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis,” he said, adding that the drug was hijacked by the youth movement of the 1960s and then unfairly demonized by the establishment that the movement opposed. He conceded that LSD can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

“Because they are afraid that there is more to reality than they have confronted, that there are doors that they are afraid to go in and don’t want us to go in there either because if we go in we may learn something that they don’t know. And that makes us a little out of their control.”
-Albert Hofman Discoverer of LSD on why the government made it illegal.

* Food accounts for 13% of all Greenhouse Gas emissions.
* Red meat and dairy are responsible for nearly half of all greenhouse gas emissions from food for an average U.S. household.
* Replacing red meat and dairy with chicken, fish, or eggs in your diet for one day per week reduces emissions equal to 760 miles per year of driving.
* Switching to vegetables one day per week cuts the equivalent of driving 1160 miles per year.

We are in a state of perpetual war – with ourselves and with the eco-system that sustains us. Perpetual war breeds perpetual fear. In the present context, this fear stems from our extreme desire for authenticity and manifests itself in our collectively insatiable culture of consumption.

Deep down, we are afraid we may never be satisfied. An expanding archive of branded myths and icons feeds this fear. Designer Gas Masks is an attempt to visualize this state of mind. Because it is only by first acknowledging and then challenging fear that we will all be able to breathe a little easier.

The NYPD recorded an unprecedented 81.5 percent surge in graffiti-related complaints from 2006 to 2007. During the same period, graffiti arrests spiked nearly 28 percent.

You know ABC fucked up when the crowd actually and loudly booed Gibson. You know they blew it when Obama is asked about some badass he knew when he was 8 years-old. You know it was awful when Editor & Publisher’s Editor Greg Mitchell calls it “perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years.” You know it was bad when one of the many gotcha questions is supplied by Sean Hannity and NY right wing radio looney Steve Malzberg. You know it was terrible when Philly’s Daily News’ Will Bunch rips it not once but twice. You know it went well past weak when the “flag pin” kerfuffle and every other kerfuffle is resurrected. You know it was ugly when it took an absolutely unforgivable 51 fucking minutes for the motherf***ers moderators to bring up one policy issue(!?!). You know it was shameful when Keith Olbermann sez “The campaign may have seemed dirty. It had nothing on one of the moderators of the debate tonight.”

Banksy pulled off an audacious stunt to produce what is believed to be his biggest work yet in central London. The secretive graffiti artist managed to erect three storeys of scaffolding behind a security fence despite being watched by a CCTV camera. Then, during darkness and hidden behind a sheet of polythene, he painted this comment on ‘Big Brother’ society.

Five Philadelphia elementary schools replaced sodas with fruit juice. They scaled back snacks and banished candy. They handed out raffle tickets for wise food choices. They spent hours teaching kids, their parents and teachers about good nutrition. Schools are ideal settings for programs that target childhood obesity, the researchers noted. Children spend long hours each day at schools and eat lunch and often breakfast at school. But school-based programs have had mixed results.

The Philadelphia study put to the test a program developed by the Food Trust, a local nonprofit which works to improve access to affordable, healthy food. Ten schools enrolled in the government-funded study in 2002, and half made the changes. Since then, many of the modifications have been carried out at most of Philadelphia’s schools, according to Joan Nachmani, the district’s director of nutrition education and one of the researchers. She said such studies help people “wake up and realize it can be done on a larger scale.â€

For the study, changes were made to the food in vending machines or the cafeteria in five of the schools. Juice, water and low-fat milk replaced sodas. Snacks had to meet limits for fat, salt and sugar. Students who ate healthy snacks got raffle tickets to win prizes such as bikes and jump ropes. “We found when you give children healthy choices, they pick them,†said Grace McGinley, school nurse at Francis Hopkinson School, one of the test schools.

Staff and students had lessons on good nutrition. The message was reinforced in other subjects: Food labels were used to help teach fractions. And parents were also enlisted: A fundraiser successfully substituted fruit salad for baked goods, said another of the researchers, Sandy Sherman, the Food Trust’s director of nutrition education. She said the children were also urged to exercise at activity stations during recess. They were measured and weighed periodically and surveyed about food and exercise.

After two years, besides fewer new overweight children, the overall number of overweight students at the five schools dropped about 10 percent to 15 percent. At the no-change schools, the number of overweight children rose a quarter to 20 percent. There was no difference between school groups in new obese students (6 percent) or the overall number of obese (about 25 percent). Obese children probably benefit more from individually targeted efforts, Foster said. Mike Prelip of the UCLA School of Public Health said the study design was rigorous and the results interesting. “One intervention usually won’t work for everyone,†he said. “That’s why it’s good to have multiple approaches.

Nature released the results of an online survey in which 20 percent of respondents, largely drawn from the scientific community, admitted to using brain-enhancing drugs like Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Provigil (modafinil).

Sixty-two percent of the scientists who had taken drugs used Ritalin while 44 percent reported using Provigil and only 14 percent had tried beta blockers like propranolol.

The 1,427-person survey was launched after a duo of articles this winter touched off a storm of questions about widespread neuroenhancer use by the scientific community. Jonathan Eisen of UC-Davis, an evolutionary biologist, even successfully spread an April Fools’ rumor that the National Institutes of Health were planning to regulate the use of brain “steroids” as a condition of funding scientists.