Messages are Double Spaced for the Recipient | Slipstick Systems

Messages are Double Spaced for the Recipient | Slipstick Systems:

Edit the Template

In Outlook 2007:

Close Outlook. (If you get a message that the template is read only, Outlook is not closed.) Locate NormalEmail.dotm and open it for editing. You'll find it in the templates folder at C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates (Vista), To easily access this folder in Windows XP or Vista, paste

%appdata%\Microsoft\Templates\

in the Start search dialog (Vista) or the address bar of Windows Explorer.

1. Right click on NormalEmail.dotm and choose Open. This will open the template in Word as a template.
2. Right click on the Normal style button in the ribbon and chose Modify.
3. Click Format in the lower left and choose Paragraph.
4. In the Spacing section, change the After value to 12 points.
5. Save and close the template.

Now when you write a new message you'll press enter once and have white space when recipients read the message in any client or web browser. Replies will use the style sheet of the original message.

The 10 Most Seductive Drugs -- And Their Fascinating History | | AlterNet

The 10 Most Seductive Drugs -- And Their Fascinating History | | AlterNet: The 10 Most Seductive Drugs -- And Their Fascinating History

The 10 Most Seductive Drugs -- And Their Fascinating History

A brief journey through time, from ancient Sumeria to modern New Jersey, uncovers the mysterious origins of the world's most beloved substances.

February 9, 2012 |

Want to get the latest on America's drug & rehab culture? Sign up for The Fix's newsletter here.

1) Alcohol: Ancient Sumeria

Fans of alcohol are in good company; this is a drug that's been in use since the dawn of human time—if carbon dating of jugs found in Jiahu, China to around 8,000 BC is to be believed. But it wasn’t until we settled into agricultural societies that the wine really got flowing. Written records from ancient Sumeria document the uses and quantity of the beer—called "kash"—that was brewed. They even indicate that Sumerians had regulated drinking places similar to modern-day bars. The booze, for its part, was considered worthy of offering to the gods, and even thought to have a civilizing effect: The Epic of Gilgameshmentions a wild man named Enkidu who was seduced to join civilization after he drank seven jugs of beer, “became expansive and sang with joy.” (A harlot was also, apparently, involved.)

2) Peyote: Mexico

Mescaline—the psychoactive ingredient in the peyote plant that's native to Mexico and the Southwest US—has probably been used in religious ceremonies since 3780–3660 BC, according to carbon dating of dried buttons found in a cave on the Rio Grande in Texas. Written records began once Catholic Spanish conquerors arrived in Mexico and were alarmed by the practice of eating or drinking peyote during religious festivals. In an effort to discourage use, priests were in the habit of asking their new congregationalists to confess to having experienced the drug’s hallucinogenic effects, right after they asked “Have you eaten the flesh of man?” and “Do you suck the blood of others?”

3) Marijuana: Siberia

Think medical marijuana is a new phenomenon? Not exactly. Chinese emperor Shen Nung first recommended brewing the leaves into a tea to relieve the symptoms of menstrual cramps, rheumatism, gout, malaria and even—hilariously—absentmindedness back in 2737 BC. Scythians, a people that lived in Siberia around the 7th century BC, were more into the drug for the fun; they were known to throw marijuana seeds onto stones that were heated during funeral ceremonies, inhaling the fumes to become intoxicated. Russian archeologists began to suspect that both male and female Scythians smoked marijuana regularly for pleasure when they found primitive pot pipes in tombs in 1929.

4) Opium: Greece

Those Sumerians were really into their substances. In addition to brewing beer, they also cultivated the opium poppy, which they called “the joy plant.” The Sumerians passed on their knowledge of opium-induced joy to the Assyrians, who in turn passed it on to Babylonians, Egyptians and Greeks. By the time of the Greek classical period, farmers on the island of Cyprus had invented harvesting knives of surgical quality to get the most out of the poppies, and extracts of the flower were a common additive to the poison hemlock cocktail used in executions. During this period, poppies were considered of such usefulness in inducing sleep and forgetfulness that they are often depicted as part of the clothing or possessions of three gods of the Greek pantheon: Hypnos (sleep), Nix (night), and Thanatos (death).

5) Coco: Peru

Early use of coca leaves resulted from a fortuitous correlation between optimal growing weather and the high altitudes in the South American Andes Mountains. From the reign of the Inca until the South American revolutionary wars, native laborers and soldiers chewed the leaves to increase alertness and oxygen intake, helping them fight, ferry goods or messages over long distances, or mine without requiring much food or rest. As one European visitor noted in later years, “Where Europeans would have halted and bivouacked, the ill-clad, barefooted Indians merely paused, for a short interval, to chew their Coca.”

6) Laudenum and Morphine: Great Britain/USA

The opium poppy may have been discovered in the Near East, but the processing of it into innocuous-seeming salts, injections and liquids was a product of the industrial revolution in the West. In the 1800s, white women in particular were fond of a liquid opium preparation called laudanum that was sold through mail order companies and at local apothecaries. This preparation was also a favorite of English writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who may have been inspired to pen his poem Kubla Khan while in a laudanum-induced dream. After the US civil war, injured soldiers with morphine habits expanded the need for opium products, and opium-smoking dens started popping up in major cities like New York and San Francisco.

7) Cocaine: Austria

Once Coca was synthesized into cocaine and introduced to the world at large in the late 1800s, it found an unlikely proponent in the world’s most famous psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. Even after attempting to cure a friend’s morphine habit by introducing him to the drug (the man died, addicted to both drugs, within seven years), Freud touted cocaine as a cure for everything from headaches to depression to sexual impotence. Not unexpectedly, he used quite a bit of the white lady himself, writing licentious letters to his fiancée containing such passages as: “When I come, I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward, you should see who is the stronger—a gentle little girl who doesn't eat enough, or a big, wild man who has cocaine in his body... I am just now busy collecting the literature for a song of praise to this magical substance.”

8) Amphetamine: Germany

German scientist Lazăr Edeleanu first synthesized amphetamine in 1887, and it became a useful cold remedy and diet pill throughout the world over the next 50 years. Once World War II broke out, however, amphetamine—along with injectable methamphetamine produced in Japan—became a weapon on a par with submarines and fighter planes. Thousands of soldiers on all sides of the conflict were issued drugs to keep them awake during all-night bombings, and Japanese kamikaze pilots used methamphetamine before every flight. The German blitzkreig, in particular, is well known for having been influenced by the use of meth among pilots. By the end of 1940, however, the German army had cut back substantially, having determined that the substance was incredibly addictive.

9) MDMA: USA

Though it was discovered in 1912 by a chemist working for Merck, not much was known about the psychoactive effects of MDMA until an eccentric chemist named Alexander Shulgin synthesized it as part of a pet project at Dow Chemical in 1967. When Shulgin gave a small gift of the drug to a psychologist friend, it became the focus of therapeutic zeal in the psychology community, with one doctor even calling it “penicillin for the soul.” Soon after, MDMA popped up in the club dance scene in Dallas, and the DEA held hasty meetings to add the drug to the illegal schedule—fighting tooth and nail with psychologists all the way. Shulgin, meanwhile, wrote and published a book called PIHKAL, short for Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved, which is still known worldwide as a club drug cookbook.

10) Benzodiazepines: New Jersey

While researching potential tranquilizers for Hoffman-LaRoche in New Jersey in the 1930s, Polish American scientist Leo Sternbach discovered the benzodiazepine that came to be known as Librium. Next came Valium and Klonopin—both of which were also discovered by Sternbach. Before long, the high anxiety culture of the mid-20th century led to increased use of benzos and thousands became addicted. Sternbach, meanwhile, continued his successful career, likely because he never developed an addiction to the drugs himself. “My wife doesn't let me take [them],” he once told the New Yorker.

Former neuroscientist Jacqueline Detwiler edits a travel magazine by day, but moonlights as a science writer. Her work has appeared in Wired, Men's Health, Fitness and Forbes.

Giving up speed for quality

Giving up speed for quality | Eric Weaver: We’ve joined every niche social site and accepted nearly every friend request. Strangers know which conferences we’re attending, acquaintances know what we’re reading or buying, and coworkers can see every place we check in, before, during and after work hours. Where are the boundaries? What was the point? Was it worth it?

For the last six years, partially out of interest, partially out of a desire for keeping up to date on the tools, I’ve joined pretty much any social site that I could find. Squidoo, Vox, Posterous, Marzar, XING, Plaxo Pulse, Upcoming, Spock, ProfileFly, Xigi, Hi5, Tagworld, Skobee, Blip.fm, Last.fm, iLike, Virb, Panoramio, Picli, 8Tracks, BrightKite – plus at least 100 more. Many are long gone, rolled up or shut down. But I joined them all; to learn and to connect. To keep my view of the social world as wide as possible.

Through each network, hundreds of friend requests rolled in. Former coworkers. People I’d met at a conference. Unknown friends of known friends. Friends of my wife, friends of my kids. I added all but the total unknowns, to see what the value of each site was in terms of network volume. To see what happened.

The answer: I spent a ton of time and got very little back.

Don’t get me wrong: I love connecting with people and I get a tremendous amount of value from doing so. And I had to join each community to learn. But my Return on Time Investment has been rather low.

Sure, it brings back memories to see where my former coworkers at DDB check into an old haunt. It’s fun to find that several Social Media Club friends and acquaintances are attending #barcampseattle. I really dig getting exposed to music I really like through former colleagues on Blip.fm. But the rest? I have never connected with former European coworkers through XING. I have gotten nothing but porn spam from Windows Live Spaces and Hi5. I used Picli for two seconds and stopped. Which makes me question:

1. Should I continue to accept every new friend request from someone I don’t know but with whom I have shared friends?
2. Should I allow acquaintances and former coworkers to connect on Foursquare? And if my checkins are for fun, not for work, should I allow current colleagues to see my every destination?
3. Should I invest the time to maintain profiles on the outlier sites like Squidoo or Epinions – in the hopes that one day, I will connect in a meaningful way? Do they really increase my search rankings?
4. At which point does the happy Social Media Kool-Aid wear off (example: Quora)?
5. When do I get my offline life back?

Now that we’ve joined everything, added everyone, and sampled every site: what comes next?

Time for pare-down. Fewer sites, fewer friend connections, fewer hours spent in front of a monitor.

Time to get my life back

After six years of this, I want my offline life back. Drinks with my friends where we have to actually TALK to learn what we’ve been up to. Kayaking. Hiking. Camping. Photowalks. Karate classes. All the things I used to do before I got hooked on this delicious addiction to social knowledge.

When we’re time-starved, we speed up and shorten our social interactions, so that, just like an addict, we can have MORE. Speed becomes a game, and the faster we can go, the more we can learn, and the larger volume of news/updates/photos/videos we can ingest.

But information and speed addiction reinforces a focus on the online life instead of the off. Kids can keep your brain present, but it just ratchets up the intense desire for time maximization. We start squeezing every ounce out of every second. That tyranny of the clock penalizes us in ways we don’t even begin to understand.

No offense, but…

As of today, I am disconnecting from most of the vast number of communities I’ve joined. I am disconnecting tangential acquaintances from most of my social networks. Don’t take it personally. I just want my life back. You know: close friends, hanging out, impromptu trips to the Cascades, working on my car, mowing my lawn. I am forcing a mental move from a volume/speed-based mentality to a quality mentality. Quality of interactions, quality of connections, quality of life. No more waking up and checking my phone to see who messaged me while I was sleeping.

Quality of life does not come from speed of life. It doesn’t come from information addiction or intensive time optimization. It comes from focus and being present. And also from taking your foot off the personal gas pedal. Fear of loss (friends, work opportunities, income) may make you think that’s a bad idea. But I don’t want to live with fear of loss.

Quality of life will create the abundance we all seek. Not speed.

This post is probably a bit rambling. But only because I want to stop writing, get offline and enjoy the sunshine.

So if we get disconnected, if you hear less from me, if you can’t see where I check in and can’t follow what I am reading, don’t take it personally.

Who Gives a Tweet - Carnegie Mellon University

Who Gives a Tweet - Carnegie Mellon University: Who Gives a Tweet

Who Gives a Tweet

Twitter users say only a little more than a third of the tweets they receive are worthwhile. Other tweets are either so-so or, in one out of four cases, not worth reading at all.

This is according to a recent new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, MIT and Georgia Tech.

"If we understood what is worth reading and why, we might design better tools for presenting and filtering content, as well as help people understand the expectations of other users," said Paul André, a post-doctoral fellow in Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) and lead author of the study.

Twitter users choose the microblogs they follow, but that doesn't mean they always like what they get.

Twitter says more than 200 million tweets are sent each day, yet most users get little feedback about the messages they send besides occasional retweets, or when followers opt to stop following them.

André and his colleagues — Michael Bernstein and Kurt Luther, doctoral students at MIT and Georgia Tech, respectively — created the website "Who Gives a Tweet?" to collect reader evaluations of tweets. They will present their findings Feb. 13 at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Seattle, Wash.

People who visited "Who Gives a Tweet?" were promised feedback on their tweets if they agreed to anonymously rate tweets by Twitter users they already follow. Over a period of 19 days in late 2010 and early 2011, 1,443 visitors to the site rated 43,738 tweets from the accounts of 21,014 Twitter users they followed.

Overall, the readers liked just 36 percent of the tweets and disliked 25 percent. Another 39 percent elicited no strong opinion.

"A well-received tweet is not all that common," Bernstein said. "A significant amount of content is considered not worth reading, for a variety of reasons."

Despite the social nature of Twitter, tweets that were part of someone else's conversation, or updates around current mood or activity were the most strongly disliked.

On the other hand, tweets that included questions to followers, information sharing, and self-promotion (such as links to content the writer had created) were more often liked.

"Our research is just a first step at understanding value on Twitter," Luther said. "Other groups within Twitter may value different types of tweets for entirely different reasons."

Nevertheless, the analysis confirms some conventional wisdom and suggests nine lessons for improving tweet content:

• Old news is no news: Twitter emphasizes real-time information. Followers quickly get bored of even relatively fresh links seen multiple times.
• Contribute to the story: Add an opinion, a pertinent fact or add to the conversation before hitting "send" on a link or a retweet.
• Keep it short: Followers appreciate conciseness. Using as few characters as possible also leaves room for longer, more satisfying comments on retweets.
• Limit Twitter-specific syntax: Overuse of #hashtags, @mentions and abbreviations makes tweets hard to read. But some syntax is helpful; if posing a question, adding a hashtag helps everyone follow along.
• Keep it to yourself: The cliched "sandwich" tweets about pedestrian, personal details were largely disliked. Reviewers reserved a special hatred for Foursquare location check-ins.
• Provide context: Tweets that are too short leave readers unable to understand their meaning. Simply linking to a blog or photo, without giving a reason to click on it, was "lame."
• Don't whine: Negative sentiments and complaints were disliked.
• Be a tease: News or professional organizations that want readers to click on their links need to hook them, not give away all of the news in the tweet itself.
• For public figures: People often follow you to read professional insights and can be put off by personal gossip or everyday details.

André said it may be possible to develop applications that can learn a user's preferences and filter out unwanted content.

Or apps might display some information differently; location check-ins are unpopular tweets, but might be valued if plotted on maps.

But it's also possible that users are willing to tolerate unwanted content, he added. Some people may follow others out of social obligation. Others may dislike certain types of tweets, but value them in the aggregate as helping them keep track of people or issues.

"Social media technologies such as Twitter pose questions regarding privacy, etiquette and tensions between sharing and self-presentation, as well as content," André said.

"Continued exploration of these areas is needed for us to improve the online experience."

Fluoride Health Effects Database

Fluoride Health Effects Database: Fluoride & the Thyroid

Summation - Fluoride & the Thyroid:

According to the US National Research Council, "several lines of information indicate an effect of fluoride exposure on thyroid function."

Fluoride's potential to impair thyroid function is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that -- up until the 1970s -- European doctors used fluoride as a thyroid-suppressing medication for patients with HYPER-thyroidism (over-active thyroid). Fluoride was utilized because it was found to be effective at reducing the activity of the thyroid gland - even at doses as low as 2 mg/day.

Today, many people living in fluoridated communities are ingesting doses of fluoride (1.6-6.6 mg/day) that fall within the range of doses (2 to 10 mg/day) once used by doctors to reduce thyroid activity in hyperthyroid patients.

While it may be that the thyroid in a patient with hyperthyroidism is particularly susceptible to the anti-thyroid actions of fluoride, there is concern that current fluoride exposures may be playing a role in the widespread incidence of HYPO-thyroidism (under-active thyroid) in the U.S.

Hypothyrodisim, most commonly diagnosed in women over 40, is a serious condition with a diverse range of symptoms including: fatigue, depression, weight gain, hair loss, muscle pains, increased levels of "bad" cholesterol (LDL), and heart disease.. The drug (Synthroid) used to treat hypothyroidism is now one of the top five prescribed drugs in the U.S.

As recommended by the US National Research Council: “The effects of fluoride on various aspects of endocrine function should be examined further, particularly with respect to a possible role in the development of several diseases or mental states in the United States.”

Fluoride & the Thyroid - Overviews:

Letter from Dr. Richard Shames - Letter to Palm Beach Board of County Commissioners, May 1, 2006

Health Warning: The Thyroid and Fluoride - Paul Connett, PhD, September 2003

Fluoride & the Endocrine System: Presentation to 2nd Citizens' Conference on Fluoride - Kathleen Thiessen, PhD, July 2006

History of the fluoride/iodine antagonism - Parents of Fluoride Poisoned Children, 2000-2006

Fluoride & the Thyroid - US National Research Council (2006):

“In summary, evidence of several types indicates that fluoride affects normal endocrine function or response; the effects of the fluoride-induced changes vary in degree and kind in different individuals. Fluoride is therefore an endocrine disruptor in the broad sense of altering normal endocrine function or response, although probably not in the sense of mimicking a normal hormone. The mechanisms of action remain to be worked out and appear to include both direct and indirect mechanisms, for example, direct stimulation or inhibition of hormone secretion by interference with second messenger function, indirect stimulation or inhibition of hormone secretion by effects on things such as calcium balance, and inhibition of peripheral enzymes that are necessary for activation of the normal hormone.”
SOURCE: National Research Council. (2006). Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards. National Academies Press, Washington D.C. p 223.

“The effects of fluoride on various aspects of endocrine function should be examined further, particularly with respect to a possible role in the development of several diseases or mental states in the United States.”
SOURCE: National Research Council. (2006). Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards. National Academies Press, Washington D.C. p 224.

“several lines of information indicate an effect of fluoride exposure on thyroid function.”
SOURCE: National Research Council. (2006). Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards. National Academies Press, Washington D.C. p 197.

“it is difficult to predict exactly what effects on thyroid function are likely at what concentration of fluoride exposure and under what circumstances.”
SOURCE: National Research Council. (2006). Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards. National Academies Press, Washington D.C. p 197.

“Fluoride exposure in humans is associated with elevated TSH concentrations, increased goiter prevalence, and altered T4 and T3 concentrations; similar effects on T4 and T3 are reported in experimental animals..”
SOURCE: National Research Council. (2006). Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards. National Academies Press, Washington D.C. p 218.

“In humans, effects on thyroid function were associated with fluoride exposures of 0.05-0.13 mg/kg/day when iodine intake was adequate and 0.01-0.03 mg/kg/day when iodine intake was inadequate.”
SOURCE: National Research Council. (2006). Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards. National Academies Press, Washington D.C. p 218.

“The recent decline in iodine intake in the United States could contribute to increased toxicity of fluoride for some individuals.”
SOURCE: National Research Council. (2006). Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards. National Academies Press, Washington D.C. p 218.

“Intake of nutrients such as calcium and iodine often is not reported in studies of fluoride effects. The effects of fluoride on thyroid function, for instance, might depend on whether iodine intake is low, adequate, or high, or whether dietary selenium is adequate.”
SOURCE: National Research Council. (2006). Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards. National Academies Press, Washington D.C. p 222.

Fluoride & the Thyroid - Studies Available Online:

FULL TEXT - pdf:Bachinskii PP, et al. (1985) Action of the body fluorine of healthy persons and thyroidopathy patients on the function of hypophyseal-thyroid the system. Probl Endokrinol (Mosk) 31(6):25-9.

FULL TEXT - html: Day TK, Powell-Jackson PR. (1972). Fluoride, Water Hardness, and Endemic Goitre. Lancet 1:1135-1138.

FULL TEXT - html: Steyn DG, et al. (1955). Endemic Goitre in the Union of South Africa and Some Neighbouring Territories. Union of South Africa. Department of Nutrition.

FULL TEXT - html: Wilson D. (1941). Fluorine in the aetiology of endemic goitre. Lancet Feb 15: 212-213.

See also:

FULL-TEXT (html): Lin Fa-Fu; et al (1991). The relationship of a low-iodine and high-fluoride environment to subclinical cretinism in Xinjiang. Iodine Deficiency Disorder Newsletter Vol. 7. No. 3. (August).

Local alternative dentist

BarefootGardener : Message: tooth care advice from our local alternative dentist: I was browsing through John's blog just now and read his rant about fluoride and
his search for alternative tooth care. I think I have a bit of information to
contribute to that which might be helpful to someone.

We are lucky to have right in our area an alternative dentist who not only
doesn't believe in fluoride, he also doesn't believe in conventional fillings.
Some years ago my husband and I had ours replaced by him with ones that are not
only less toxic, they are also white...makes it almost look like you've never
had a cavity. It has helped me with some of my chronic fatigue issues. I am
very glad I have had his procedure done.

His name is Dr. Behm and he is located in downtown Clearwater.
His website is:
http://www.saveyourteeth.com/

Read especially the page called "The Secret" for his take on how to care for
your teeth.

He also recommends removing the conventional fillings from your mouth because
they are a source of mercury poisoning. Dentists routinely experience the Mad
Hatter syndrome AND the hatter was mad because in his day mercury was routinely
used in the manufacture of hats. I will warn you that that is a very expensive
proposition, though.


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WAKE UP

AMERICAN - FREEDOM: Our institutions will not get
better, until more of the general population participates and takes responsibility for their piece in the revamping process.

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SO MANY PEOPLE are expecting Superman to show up and get everything done for them. Like electing the next clown to office. What a joke. Whether it's Ronald McDonald or Bozo will never change anything. What ever clown puppet they put in place will never change anything. The system is broken, our votes are meaningless when the media only props up clowns for us to choose from.