31.3.11

Show Me the Money!



This brilliant chart connects the "tax breaks"
for corporations and the uber-rich
with what the rest of us have to do without
as a result, dollar-for-dollar.









It's not that there isn't the money - choices are made that favour some at the expense of others.

These numbers are for the US, but it's easy to imagine a similar chart done for Canada would show a similar state of affairs.



- 30 -



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27.3.11

Death - it's like that...




but hey, if you can't laugh
at death...
































































...what can you laugh at?









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26.3.11

Lobotomies





LOBOTOMY   from the Greek lobos,
meaning lobes of the brain,
and tomos, meaning cut.






In England at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were, perhaps, a few thousand 'lunatics' in a variety of disparate institutions.
By 1900, that figure had grown to about 100,000.

In the 50 years between 1840 and 1890, the population of hospitalized mentally ill in the US grew from 2,561 to 74,000
patients. The number of mental hospitals, private and public, leaped from 18 in 1840 to 139 in 1880.

Facilities built with the best of intentions were over-crowded and getting worse, with no cures
on hand or in sight.










In the era before psychiatric drugs – when state institutions were over-flowing with mentally ill patients often living in snakepit conditions – hospitals, families, and the press were eager to embrace "miracle" cures like the "ice pick" lobotomy.

It was a doctor named Walter Jackson Freeman who stepped forward with this solution. Freeman's motto, "lobotomy gets them home," opened the door at state-run facilities.










Lobotomy is defined as a type of brain surgery that involves the removal of a portion of the brain. Doctors use an instrument called a leucotome. The open wire loop was retracted to cut the bundles of nerve fibers connecting the frontal cortex to the thalamus.









Freeman developed a quick and easy method of lobotomizing a patient:
the transorbital lobotomy, which involved thrusting a surgical knife through the eye sockets and “swiggl[ing] it around,” as Dr. Louis Hatcher, of Georgia, once so eloquently explained.

For his first transorbital lobotomies, Walter Freeman used an actual icepick from his kitchen. Freeman performed about 3,500 lobotomies during his career, of which 2,500 were his ice-pick procedure.










Out of 50,000 people who received lobotomies in the United States between 1949 and 1952, about 10,000 had transorbital lobotomies and the rest were prefrontal lobotomies.

Surgeons received fees as high as $1500 for the so-called miracle operation. U.S. newspapers reported that lobotomies were no more invasive than a visit to the dentist’s office.










Women were subjected to lobotomy more frequently than men. The available data shows that they made up 74% of cases from 1948-1952.








Lobotomized patients often acted very primitively when it came to sexual matters. Freeman advised spouses to enjoy the “exhilarating if unconventional experience,” though he also noted that learning self-defense techniques might come in handy.












One of the best-known women patients was a successful film actress from Seattle named Frances Farmer. Her story has been the subject of several films, as well as a song by Nirvana called "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle".









Rosemary Kennedy, who's siblings included Robert (Bobby) above and JFK underwent a lobotomy in 1941 which left her incapacitated and institutionalized from 1949 until her death in 2005,was another.








Around 1950, protests to the lobotomy crystalized. It turned out that only 1/3 of the lobotomies worked. This fraction is equal to the number of patients that would get better on their own.











Be that as it may, an article in Wired magazine states that lobotomies were performed “well into the 1980s” in the “United States, Britain, Scandinavia and several western European countries.”






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25.3.11

50 ways to say 'You're Crazy'



actually, over 150...some old, some new,
some that are kinda funny
& some that mean other things too!



"What's in a name?
That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."






*
crazy        1570s, "diseased, sickly," from craze + -y (2). Meaning "full of cracks or flaws" is from 1580s; that of  "of unsound mind, or behaving as so" is from 1610sJazz slang sense "cool, exciting" attested by 1927.










bluto

head case

beeper (bipolar)

schizo

mentally interesting

psych case















nutbag

cuckoo clock

off my rocker

psycho

loony

nuts

crazy

bats













bojangle

bonkers

buggy

bugging

certifiable

squirrelly

manic

unhinged

wing nut

'flicted
















cock-eyed

crackpot

crunk

duck soup

tetched

dippy

flipped out

jumped the couch

lunachick

lunched

nerts

potty

shell

wig out

wiggity-wack

nutjob















mentally challenged

disturbed

screw loose


mental

demented

weird   

freak

retard

















spastic
   
spaz


split personality

nutcase   

nutter   

halfwit   


















bimbo

strange

bonkers

brain damage

oddball


brain dead   


out of it

thick

head banging


head case


crackers
  

idiot   




















troubled

twisted


demented

deranged   

irrational  


disoriented

loony

unstable























disturbed   

psycho   

lunatic   

psychopath

retard   

dizzy   



























mental   

scary 
 


schizo   


wacky


wally


dulally   


weird


screw loose


weirdo
























flid


fruit cake   


f*ck knuckle   



















brainsick

daft


demented


disordered


insane


lunatic


maniac


maniacal


moonstruck




off






















touched

unbalanced

unsound

wrong


bonkers


cracked


daffy


gaga




















bananas

batty

buggy

cuckoo

fruity

loco

crackers





















crackpot

eccentric

crank

ding-a-ling

kook

screwball




















nut case

lulu head


wack job
















sick

demented

zoid

wacko

looney

looney Bird












jacko

crack head

barking


touched

daft


bat shit crazy

Britney Spears

doe

funky monkey

goober

head case

j-cat

looper

psycho-bitch

quack

seven thirty

wall out




























radio rental (Cockney for 'mental')


not all there

doolally

off your head

off your trolley

round the twist

up the pole

buckwilin'

on one

















Patrick Swayze (Cockney for 'crazy')

Chicken Jalfrezi  (Cockney for 'crazy')


apeshit

barmy

bent

deranged

gone

goofy

haywire

kook

mad

moron

screwy

schizoid

schizy



























screwy

sick

sicko

sociopath

stark raving mad

touched

twisted

unbalanced

unglued



















bedlamite

unhinged

wigged out

pixilated

damaged goods

high strung

looney-tunes

basket case

non compos mentis




















feel lucky? learn more
at these fine sources











http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1925070/


http://www.alphadictionary.com/slang/?term=crazy&beginEra=&endEra=&clean=true&submitsend=Search


http://onlineslangdictionary.com/thesaurus/words+meaning+crazy,+insane,+weird,+strange+person.html


http://onlineslangdictionary.com/thesaurus/words+meaning+to+act+wild,+strange,+crazy.html


http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=crazy&searchmode=none






















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Marijuana - Evil Drug Menace of the Ages!




Tea... ganja...grass...  no matter what name
you know it by, marijuana is a scourge
and a plague- one that the appropriate
authorities have long been trying to stamp out.


These articles, from an amazing site
called Modern Mechanics,
date back
to 1936 and make it clear that marijuana
is a killer weed and a danger
to the youth of every generation.












Learn more about the life
of a dope-head here











*


















Learn more about this
terrifying menace here




*













read the rest of this
terrifying tale right here!








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