Posts Tagged ‘LSD’
“Here’s to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life”*…
“As ‘cocktail,’ so I gather, has become a verb, it ought to be conjugated at least once,” wrote the author of The Great Gatsby in a 1928 letter to Blanche Knopf, the wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Who better to first lay out its full conjugation than the man who, as the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center puts it, “gave the Jazz Age its name”? Given that his fame “was for many years based less on his work than his personality—the society playboy, the speakeasy alcoholic whose career had ended in ‘crack-up,’ the brilliant young writer whose early literary success seemed to make his life something of a romantic idyll,” he found himself well placed to offer the language a new “taste of Roaring Twenties excess.”…
More at “F. Scott Fitzgerald Conjugates ‘to Cocktail,'” (where one will also find a larger image of the letter and an audio version).
* F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
###
As we descend to declension, we might spare a thought for Albert Hofmann; he died on this date in 2008 (at the age of 102). As a young chemist at Sandoz in Switzerland, Hofmann was searching for a respiratory and circulatory stimulant when he fabricated lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD); handling it, he absorbed a bit through his fingertips and realized that the compound had psychoactive effects. Three days later, on April 19, 1943– a day now known as “Bicycle Day”– Hofmann intentionally ingested 250 micrograms of LSD then rode home on a bike, a journey that became, pun intended, the first intentional acid trip. Hofmann was also the first person to isolate, synthesize, and name the principal psychedelic mushroom compounds psilocybin and psilocin.
“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves”*…
One of 29 maps from WomanStats, plotting the status of women around the world. Visit Landesa for more on this particular issue, and for what you can do to help.
* Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
###
As we realize that the greater good is in out self-interest, we might send transcendental birthday greetings to Albert Hofmann; he was born on this date in 1906. As a young chemist at Sandoz in Switzerland, Hofmann was searching for a respiratory and circulatory stimulant when he fabricated lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD); handling it, he absorbed a bit through his fingertips and realized that the compound had psychoactive effects. Three days later, on April 19, 1943– a day now known as “Bicycle Day”– Hofmann intentionally ingested 250 micrograms of LSD then rode home on a bike, a journey that became, pun intended, the first intentional acid trip. Hofmann was also the first person to isolate, synthesize, and name the principal psychedelic mushroom compounds psilocybin and psilocin.
He died in 2008, at the age of 102.
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself”*…
From Lapham’s Quaterly, a timeline of time-keeping…
* Andy Warhol
###
As we adjust our dials, we might send transcendental birthday greetings to Albert Hofmann; he was born on this date in 1906. As a young chemist at Sandoz in Switzerland, Hofmann was searching for a respiratory and circulatory stimulant when he fabricated lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD); handling it, he absorbed a bit through his fingertips and realized that the compound had psychoactive effects. Three days later, on April 19, 1943– a day now known as “Bicycle Day”– Hofmann intentionally ingested 250 micrograms of LSD then rode home on a bike, a journey that became, pun intended, the first intentional acid trip. Hofmann was also the first person to isolate, synthesize, and name the principal psychedelic mushroom compounds psilocybin and psilocin.
He died in 2008, at the age of 102.
Your web… Your web on drugs…
Spiders routinely spin the sort of web pictured above. When they are doing drugs, however, spiders’ webs become really interesting…
a web on marijuana
Cannabinoid receptors have been found in non-human mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and even some invertebrates, so there are plenty of animals that react to marijuana. Most of those reactions aren’t that surprising, or all that interesting, though. Dogs and cats act kind of funny and groggy after eating weed (please don’t feed them your stash, no matter how YouTube famous you want to be, though—the stuff can be toxic to them, especially dogs), and monkeys exposed to THC keep wanting more.
Spiders, though, are infinitely interesting when they get stoned because the effects of the drug are clear in the odd-looking webs they build afterwards.
Getting spiders high for science started in 1948, when German zoologist H.M. Peters got fed up with trying to study web-building behavior in spiders who wouldn’t do him the courtesy of working on his schedule. His garden spiders tended to build their webs between two and five a.m., and he asked his pharmacologist friend P.N. Witt if there might be some chemical stimulant that would coax the spiders into building their webs at a more reasonable time.
Witt tried giving the spiders some amphetamine and, while they kept building at their usual hour (to Peters’ dismay), the two scientists did notice that those webs were more haphazard than normal. Over the next few decades, Witt continued to dose spiders with a smorgasbord of psychoactive substances, including marijuana, LSD, caffeine and mescaline, to see how they reacted. Since spiders can’t use tiny bongs or drink from little mugs, Witt and his team either dissolved the drugs in sugar water or injected them into flies and then fed the spiders with them.
The drugs affected the size and shape of the spiders’ webs, the number of radii and spirals, the regularity of thread placement and other characteristics. By comparing photographs and measurements of normal and “drug webs,” Witt and other researchers could see how the different substances affected different aspects of the web and, by extension, the spiders’ motor skills and behavior.
Read the full story– and see webs spun on caffeine and chloral hydrate– at “What Does Marijuana Do to Spiders?”
###
As we commune with our inner monkey, we might recall that it was on this date in 490 BCE – ironically, as this year it’s Labor Day – that Pheidippides of Athens set out on the run that inspired the Marathon. Pheidippides was on a mission seeking military support from Sparta in defense against the invading Persian army. Tradition (that’s to say, Herodotus) holds that he ran the ran 246 km (153 miles) between the two city-states in two days. The Spartans, constrained by religious law, were unwilling to help until the next full moon. So two days later, Phidippides ran the return leg alone.
Pheidippides then ran the 40 km (25+ miles) from the battlefield to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon; he uttered the word Nenikékamen (“We have won”), collapsed, and died on the spot from exhaustion.
The Impossible City…
Mark Lascelles Thornton is underway on a massive drafting endeavor: a fully-realized skyscraper city that spans an 8 foot by 5 foot spread. “The Happiness Machine,” as he is calling the project, collects the world’s most iconic superstructures and lines them up along a monumental axis that forms the spine of the imaginary metropolis…
Thornton’s impossible skyline borrows towering landmarks new and old from eight major cities, including New York, Chicago, London, Shanghai, and Taipei. The Willis Tower (aka the Sears Tower) and Taipei 101 bookend the piece, while its center is occupied by the likes of One World Trade Center, the Gherkin, and the Shard…
Read the whole story at Architizer; and see more of Thornton’s work on his Tumblr (from whence, the illustartions above).
###
As we reorient ourselves, we might recall that it was in this date in 1967 that the first Human Be-In was held in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Announced on the cover of the first issue of the The Oracle as “A Gathering of the Tribes”– and occasioned by a new law banning the use of LSD– it featured performances by the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, and speeches and readings by Richard Alpert (AKA “Ram Dass”), Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Dick Gregory, Lenore Kandel, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Jerry Rubin. “Refreshments”– “White Lightening,” specially formulated tabs of acid– were supplied by “peoples’ chemist” Owsley Stanley. Hell’s Angels handled security, which amounted to reuniting lost children with their parents.
The Be-In of 1967 kicked off the Summer of Love.
You must be logged in to post a comment.