The reason we can’t end the war on drugs is that if we did so then we’d have to fund the CIA fully with tax dollars.

     If we funded the CIA fully with tax dollars, the CIA would be forced to be accountable to congress and indirectly to citizens.

     Since that can’t happen in todays world, neither can an end to the drug war which keeps drug prices high enough that thousands of people are willing to kill for market share and the CIA can continue to generate sufficient revenue to fund all of it’s off the book projects such as the overthrow of foreign governments.

     Prohibition was an expensive and failed experiment, and so is the war on drugs.  In Washington State, more than a year after marijuana was legalized, the results have been very positive.  In Portugal where ALL drugs have been decriminalized since 2000, it has been a very successful experiment and one that should be replicated here.

     One very negative effect of the drug war here is that many substances which have substantial medical potential get placed on schedule one in spite of meeting NONE of the requirements of being on that schedule and can’t even be studied in the United States.

     A good example are hallucinogenics.  Hallucinogenics work by increasing serotonin often selectively in a way that doesn’t cause serotonin syndrome as excessive SSRIs can.  At sub-hallucinogenic doses they can be extremely effective as antidepressants and generally lift mood, creativity, and functionality in depressive individuals.  The increase in serotonin also causes an increase in neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons in the brain. They can also be very effective at eliminating addictions to other substances ranging from alcohol to heroin.

     Some hallucinogenics, particularly psilocybin, have been shown to increase neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus resulting in improvements in memory and mood, and the effects are not just immediate but long term in nature.

     Likewise, cannabinoids have been shown to promote neurogenesis.

     There are many other substances that end up on schedule 1 that clearly have medical uses but these can’t be adequately proven because schedule 1 prevents even research uses.  Some of these substances might help people with serious diseases such as Parkinsons, Alzheimers, and other forms of dementia if they could be studied.  Even where these substances can’t be used because of side effects, often subtle tweaking of molecules can eliminate those but this is prevented by the analog drugs act.

    With a rapidly aging population, cures and prevention of dementia in the elderly should be a priority.  Our current drug laws place a significant restraint in finding and developing these cures.

    Another area where some of these substances may have application is in the arena of improving fluid intelligence and brain plasticity.  As we age these things decline, but our environment is changing rapidly and the need for these capacities is greater than ever.  We often say that old people are set in their ways.  What this really means is that they have a difficult time creating new memories and eliminating outdated information.  Some of these substances show great promise in those areas.

     Our current drug policies are insane.  End the needless violence, death, and inability for research to be conducted.  End the break-up of families caused by people being imprisoned for possessing a substance.  This is NOT something that should be happening in the land of the “free”.

     Stomach and intestinal discomfort again last night which has been a frequent experience since the course of Doxycycline.

     And with those have come disoriented strange nightmares again.  Between 1978 and 1995, I worked for Pacific Northwest Bell / US West / Qwest (now eaten by CenturyLink).  I’ve been gone from that company for twenty years, still it haunts me.

     In downtown Seattle, they had three buildings, 1101 Forth Avenue (now a Hotel), 1122 Third Avenue (this used to be known as “Main” and housed much of the central office equipment for the downtown area), and 1200 Third Avenue (which I believe is now some sort of retail complex).

     The three buildings were connected by underground tunnels.  Inside the tunnels there were cables on the wall connecting equipment in one building to another.

     The tunnels also had some mysterious doors my key did not open.  Early on I had a key that would open any central office doors and most other things but not these.  I later found out one of them was to the battery room for part of the complex, which was odd, as I had access to the power room of every other central office.  Another lead down to the train tunnel that goes under Seattle.

     But there were others that remained a mystery.  Some of the old timers told me there was a nuclear reactor run by the military down there but I think they were just messing with me.  There may well have been some military installation as many military circuits ran through the facility and the train tunnel provided a perfect supply route that allowed loading and unloading of cargo totally incognito.

     Anyway, in this dream, I was back at the telephone company but when I went into one building and then attempted to use a tunnel to get to another, everything had been re-routed and I came up in strange buildings that were unfamiliar, they had ground level entrances onto streets that were unfamiliar, and I was totally lost and disoriented.  And oddly in downtown Seattle it seemed completely devoid of humans that could assist.

     It was almost as if I went down into the tunnels in one reality and came back out in some parallel but very different reality.

     Had a strange dream where I was on the side of a steep gravelly mountain side.  At the bottom of the mountain side there was a crystal clear blue lake.

     I was riding a surfboard down the mountain side, it slid over loose gravel, and into the lake at the bottom.

     Nice to be blessed with a fun non-nightmarish dream for a change.

     Behind every religious war is an economic or political war.  The religious beliefs of the people are merely a convenient and effective means of motivating them to do what they otherwise would not, murder, torture, steal, to the benefit of their leaders.

     Cortés leveraged Christianity to steal the gold belonging to the Aztecs.  Bush used Christianity to steal oil belonging to Iraqis.

     Islam is being used in the same manner except perhaps with even more ambitious goals.

     This is why people need to be in touch with their God on a personal level, through prayer and meditation and careful thoughtful consideration of scripture, because they will be mislead by their fellow man if they are not.  Man will mislead them as to the meaning of scripture, take it out of context, and do whatever else necessary to mislead people into going opposite of what God commands.

     For myself, when I am in doubt I remind myself of Jesus’s words:

     Been off Doxycycline for a week but still alternating between diarrhea and constipation.  I’ve read some people are affected for up to two months.

     Energy levels seem to be down.  Probably from not properly digesting foods.

     I try to put these pleasantries into the context of Romans 8:28, but I’ve got to admit it’s difficult to see how this can possibly be used for good.

     Just watched a Star Trek Next Generation episode, “Brothers”.

     Brothers Forgive…  Wouldn’t know, I was adopted out at three days.  It’s my understanding I have three brothers somewhere.  I’ve never met much less known them.  I wonder how they get along and how they’ve faired in life and how much we might have in common.

     Apparently Sisters, Sons, and Daughters don’t.

     I just turned 57 on the fourth.  I figure at least 2/3rds of my life is over, maybe more.  Perhaps it’s for the best.

     The God I know is a loving God.

     My God would not instruct his creations to strap themselves with explosives and go in and blow up more of his creations, AKA Isis in France.

     My God would not instruct his creations to go bomb his creations in other countries such as Iraq, AKA George Bush.

     My God wants to use us for his purposes, which are loving and life affirming.  My God doesn’t want us to use God for our purposes, which are greedy and hateful.

     Prior to Adam and Eve partaking of the forbidden fruit, it would seem that the second law of thermodynamics didn’t exist.  I suggest this because there is no way that I can imagine an incorruptible world in which increasing entropy exists.

     God’s world was ordered perfectly, perhaps the entire universe, and Satan has been eating away at that order ever since.

     You can’t have increasing entropy and not have corruption, so God’s original uncorrupted and incorruptible world, and presumably the universe in which it sat, must have had no entropy, else entropy, increasing disorder, would have lead to corruption.

     With no entropy, there was no arrow of time, since it is increasing entropy only that distinguishes the direction of time.

     And this forbidden fruit was of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  And when Adam and Eve ate of this fruit, they gained this knowledge, and God didn’t want this.

     This is hard for me to fathom since our religious leaders today want us to know what is good and what is evil.  Why would God not want us to know this?  Why would God give us ten commandments if he didn’t want us to know good and evil?  Why did he give us his word in the form of the Bible?

     God also after banishing Adam and Eve from the garden, protected it with Cherubim with flaming swords, lest Adam and Eve then eat of the tree of life and live forever.

     Yet, God promises eternal life to us, if we have faith in him, repent, and accept his gift of his Son’s life, eternal life.  It is difficult for me to understand why he wants us to have eternal life if he didn’t want Adam and Eve to have it.

     Genesis is an interesting book but one that is so full of metaphor that it is difficult for me to grasp.

     The Gilbert O’Sullivan Song, “Alone Again (Naturally)”, is stuck in my head, going round-n-round, reminding me of one of my life’s greatest fears.

     ARRRGGGHHH!

     It is rare that I dream of technical issues but this morning I had a dream where the case fan had failed on our main server and the temperature sensors were saying it was like 1000°F but I knew that was impossible because at that temperature the CPU would be slag.

     However, the core temperatures on the CPU was only around 200°F which while too hot and will cause them to throttle, isn’t hot enough to turn them into slag.

     So the delimma was, “do I let it run in crippled mode, or do I shut it down until I can get a replacement fan.”

     The reality is our servers have multiple case fans and the case is pretty much at ambient so the failure of one fan would not be catastrophic and fans are readily available at Fry’s, etc, so not that big of a deal.  But it sure seemed like a catastrophe in the dream.