Researchers: “Lazy Stoner” Stereotype NOT Supported by Evidence

“Lazy stoner” NO MORE!

UK Researchers Find Cannabis Abstainers LESS Motivated Than Cannabis Consumers

—>This is NOT A JOKE!<—

Ms Martine Skumlien is a PhD student in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Her research centers around the impact of regular cannabis use on brain and cognition, with a particular emphasis on use in adolescence, in which she utilizes behavioral data along with fMRI in her work.

Ms. Martine Skumlien, MRes, is a researcher affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK -and- Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, Clinical Educational and Health Psychology Department, University College London, London, UK, and was lead researcher of a team of 16 that recently published their findings in the 14 August 2022 edition of the peer-reviewed International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.

In the research entitled “Anhedonia, apathy, pleasure, and effort-based decision-making in adult and adolescent cannabis users and controls,” [also at: International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, pyac056, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijnp/pyac056] the results showed that non-cannabis users “had higher levels of anhedonia than cannabis users.” Anhedonia is the clinical term referring to the inability to feel or experience pleasure.

In their conclusion, the researchers wrote, “Our results suggest that cannabis use at a frequency of three to four days per week is not associated with

COVID-19 Update: More Need To Die

Update Sunday, 04 July 2021: Martha Raddatz, co-host of ABC’s “This Week” news program, interviewed Democrat-turned-Republican West Virginia Governor Jim Justice about his state’s low vaccination compliance rate which aired today. The following dialogue occurred:

Raddatz: “Do you really think those people who aren’t vaccinated — who as you said may be more conservative, may not want anybody in their business — are really ever going to get vaccinated? What could actually put them over the edge to want it at this point?”

Justice: “Well, Martha, I hate to say this, is what would put them over the edge, is an awful lot of people die. The only way that’s going to happen is a catastrophe that none of us want.”

Raddatz: “Let’s go back to who’s not getting vaccinated. The statistics will show it’s poverty, race and you just look at the map — it’s a lot of red states.”

Justice: “Well, I mean, there’s some truth to that and everything. Because, you know, the red states probably have a lot of people that, you know, are very, very conservative in their thinking. And they think, ‘Well, I don’t have to do that.’ But they’re not thinking right.

“When it really boils right down to it, they’re in a lottery to themselves. We have a lottery, you know, that basically says, ‘If you’re vaccinated, we’re going to give you stuff.’ Well you’ve got another lottery going on, and it’s the death lottery.”

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The “Angel of Death” has much more work to do
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with children, teens, and adults.

With at least 33,677,411 confirmed cases – the most in all the world – at least 605,010 known U.S. deaths – again, the most in all the world – untold numbers of hospitalizations, and the perilously close collapse of the U.S. healthcare system, human suffering from the novel Coronavirus Disease-2019 (SARS-CoV-2) has not nearly reached its apex in the United States.

MORE people – particularly, and especially children – need to suffer and die.

It’s difficult to feel any scintilla of sorrow, or even scant sympathy for stupid people wantonly negligent and abusive parents who willingly expose their children and themselves to diseases and other preventable dangers.

That big ol’ knot at the end of your neck is supposed to be used for something else other than a hat rack. And for those who claim faith, especially the so-called “Evangelical” community, you dishonor your Maker when you refuse to exercise any brainpower – which is a gift to you, to Creation, and all of humanity, even though you don’t act like it, and wastefully squander it.

And, your fatalistic fait accompli that your “God will provide,” or surreptitious claims that infection and/or resultant death “is God’s will” is not merely baneful, pernicious, and malignant, it is wholly, fully, and entirely contrary to good and common sense, and orthodox theology.

In other words, you’re AFU – All Fucked Up. Soon enough, you’ll be FUBAR’d – Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

So-called “American exceptionalism” isn’t so “exceptional” – especially among Republicans, Trump voters, and other such idiots morons.

So, please…whatever you ilk decide to do, PLEASE, DO NOT GET VACCINATED – not yourself, not your children, and BY ALL MEANS, NOT just against COVID-19, but against ANY disease.

“Actions have consequences,” I believe is the saying.

Yet so do inactions.

And “tough love” to you.

Thoughts and prayers…

Thoughts and prayers.

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Nearly 100 Teens & Adults COVID-19 Positive At Illinois Church Summer Camp

Crossing Camp, a Christian summer camp operated for children and teens in west central Illinois near Rushville, in rural Schuyler County, has been forced to close prematurely this year following a COVID-19 “outbreak” which has so far infected very nearly 100 children, teens, and adults across 3 states.

Crossing Camp is owned and operated by an independent Protestant, Evangelical multi-campus church called “The Crossing” which main campus is in Quincy, IL, and has attendance of approximately 10,000 members weekly on several campuses in Illinois, Missouri and Iowa.

The entire camp, their staff, and all guests are now considered “super spreaders” after at least 50 COVID-19 cases were first confirmed June 23 by Pike County Public Health officials with the Health Department after camp members’ traveled to a nearby conference, which became the super spreader event.

The day prior, Tuesday, June 22, 2021, the Schuyler County Health Department notified the public about a super spreader exposure event to the COVID-19 virus at the camp which occurred from June 13 through June 17.

Two days later, on June 24, the Adams County Health Department was alerted to a COVID-19 super spreader exposure event in Adams County where a conference sponsored by The Crossing church was held on June 18th and 19th. It was the second such public health warning directly associated with The Crossing church.

USA Today was among the first to report the massive infection that spread among children and has left one teen hospitalized so far, news which has since “gone viral” and been reported by numerous news outlets.

The Schuyler County Health Department told CNN that their Public Health officials had worked with camp staffers “to provide guidance and mitigate the situation.”

The Illinois Department of Health (IDPH) first found that 85 attendees and volunteers at Crossing Camp tested positive for COVID-19, and that only a “handful” of campers and volunteers had received any vaccine against the disease. Since the first report, the number of infected people has since increased to 96, and public health officials expect an untold number more.

State Public Health records indicate that Indiana’s Schuyler and Adams counties, where Crossing Camp and The Crossing conference are located, only have a 40% COVID-19 vaccination rate, while statewide in Illinois, only 46.1% of the population is fully vaccinated.

IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike, MD, issued a Public Health statement addressing the spread of Coronavirus Disease among children and teens which stated in part that,

“Just say ‘NO’” has never worked. Here’s what does.

Freedom.

What a concept, eh?

The very idea that you have a brain, and therefore, can think independently to decide FOR YOURSELF what you want, or ought, to do, continues to frustrate others who think that they know better than you do what personal decisions you should make for yourself!

It’s an adult decision.

Why, it’s nothing short of… LIBERTY!

ENOUGH! of the “Nanny State”!

Take your religion home, and GET IT OUT OF GOVERNMENT!!

Practice it PRIVATELY, with your family, friends, and other like-minded individuals. STOP forcing your PRIVATE religious ethics and morals upon others by writing public laws that mirror your private interpretation of your religion.

Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists that cited the establishment clause of our nation’s Constitution, which as he wrote, erected a “a wall of separation between Church & State,” or as we now say, between government, and religion.

Religious nuts have been trying to tear it down, ever since.

And they’re STILL TRYING TODAY!

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‘Drug Use For Grown-Ups’ Serves As An Argument For Personal Choice

If you grew up scared of what illicit drugs could do to you — hearing about all the horrors that could befall you from everyone from Nancy Reagan to your parents — the threat may have felt very real: If you actually took a puff off that joint that the kid who slept through math class offered you, it could lead to failed relationships, chronic unemployment, self-destruction.

The shame would outlive you.

But drugs are a more complicated matter than they’ve been made out to be, according to Dr. Carl L. Hart. In his new book Drug Use for Grown-Ups, the Columbia University professor of psychology and psychiatry zealously argues that drug use should be a matter of personal choice — and that, in more cases than not, personal choice can lead to positive outcomes. His positions may seem quite extreme to some but they also, by and large, make a lot of sense — and are backed up by ample research.

A major reason drugs have such a negative public image, Hart asserts, is racism. He notes that after the Civil War, some Chinese railroad construction workers smoked opium and, sometimes, established “opium dens” to do so. Over time, more and more white Americans visited these dens to smoke opium too. That in turn led to broader, bigoted social fear among whites, like, for example, the sentiments captured in H.H. Kane’s 1882 report:

“The practice spread widely…Many women and young girls, as also young men of respectable family, were being induced to visit the dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise.”

Then there was the post-Civil War use of cocaine among some Black day laborers, something Hart writes was at first encouraged by white employers because of the productivity it could promote. Soon enough, however, articles appeared widely that tried to make a connection between African American cocaine use and criminality. One particularly egregious article in The New York Times in 1914, cited by Hart, even reported that some police in the South “who appreciate the vitality of the cocaine-crazed” were switching to higher-caliber weaponry capable of “greater shocking power for the express purpose of combating ‘the fiend’.”

But horrifying history aside, one of the book’s most eye-opening aspects is its challenge of the long-running association between drugs and addiction. First the basics: Addiction, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM – 5), must be a source of distress for a drug user. It must also interfere with a person’s job, parenting or personal relationships. Other indications of addiction may be

Analysis: Alabama Unemployment Higher Than Stated

Alabama Governor Bentley claims he, and his policies – whatever they are (he has none… just look for your self) – have been responsible for declining Alabama Unemployment. Fact is, he’s blowing smoke.

Alabama Governor Bentley claims he, and his policies – whatever they are (he has none… just look for your self) – have been responsible for declining Alabama Unemployment. Fact is, he’s blowing smoke.

Alabama’s Republican Governor Robert Bentley, MD has crowed about “success” in lowering Alabama unemployment during the past 4 years of his term.

However, to be certain, a random statistical examination of the state’s Unemployment rate shows that it is very likely, AT LEAST two points higher than reported.  Here’s how.

Unemployment is calculated as a simple average. Take the number of people working, added into the number of people NOT working, AND who WANT to work, divided by the people who are available to work, gives the unemployment rate.

Here’s how the Bureau of  Labor Statistics defines the parameters of the equation:

What are the basic concepts of employment and unemployment?

The basic concepts involved in identifying the employed and unemployed are quite simple:
• People with jobs are employed.
• People who are jobless, looking for a job, and available for work are unemployed.
• The labor force is made up of the employed and the unemployed.
• People who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force.

Simply put, the formula is:

Unemployment Rate =	Unemployed
	Employed + Unemployed

 

However, if you’ve had a college course in Statistics – and most folks in Alabama have not (it’s part of maintaining the policy of “largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command”) – then you’d understand that a random sample of the set would show essentially the same results.

And face it… most folks in Alabama DO NOT HAVE A COLLEGE EDUCATION. In fact, according to the Alabama Department of Education, Alabama’s High School Drop Out rate is 28%. Page 2, Frame 2 of the linked document shows the 2010-2011 TOTAL Graduation Rate as 72%.

Face it… ALABAMA IS

“No, Dr. Bentley, we are in no way prepared for Ebola.”

Pippa Abston, MD, PhD, is considered by many, to be the preeminent, board-certified general pediatric physician in the Tennessee Valley, and is author of the following commentary, written in response to a news item entitled “Ebola hasn’t surfaced in Alabama but state ready, Gov. Bentley says,” published October 08, 2014 at 9:03 AM, updated October 08, 2014 at 12:59 PM at http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2014/10/gov_robert_bentley_on_ebola_vi.html.

In his press conference, Governor Bentley said, “In the event that Ebola spreads to Alabama, we are ready and we are prepared to respond.”

Thursday, 9October2014, 6:18am

By Pippa Abston, MD, PhD

Alabama Governor, Dr. Robert Bentley, MD (a retired dermatologist) holds a Press Conference Wednesday, 08 October 2014 purporting to assert state readiness for the Ebola virus.

No, Dr. Bentley, we are in no way prepared.

First and most seriously, people lack insurance or have high co-pays/ deductibles, so they will delay going to the doctor or ER and expose others in the meantime.

Second, our public health infrastructure is underfunded and understaffed.

A couple of years ago I let the local HD (Health Department) know about a new viral syndrome I was seeing, which needed

Alabama High School Basketball Coach Denies Wrongdoing: 17-year-old Student Sex all started with “sexting”

Brian Scott Keeton, age 38, taught Math & was a Boys Basketball coach at Vina High School, in Franklin County, Alabama. He was arrested for having sex with a 17-year-old female student. He denies the charges.

Enough already!

But do notice the punishment – 2 to 20 years in prison upon conviction of the Class B felony.

The Alabama Lunchroom Lady “Cougar” got six months in jail, and 5 years probation.

Reckon what this Basketballing Math Teacher will get?

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Second Vina teacher arrested for alleged affair with student

Published 4:38pm Wednesday, November 13, 2013

VINA – The Vina High School boys basketball coach became the second faculty member from the school in less than a week to be arrested for an alleged sexual relationship with a student, officials said.

Brian Scott Keeton, 38, 73 Lost Creek Lane, Carbon Hill, was arrested Wednesday afternoon and charged with one count of being a school employee engaging in a sexual act with a student under the age of 19, which is a Class B felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison if convicted.

This arrest comes only five days after Vina physical education teacher Sonny Dewaine Tibbs, 35, of Hamilton, was arrested on

When the treatment is worse than the disease

“Simponi can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. Serious and sometimes fatal events can occur – such as infections, cancer in children and adults, heart failure, nervous system disorders, liver or blood problems and allergic reactions. Before starting Simponi, your doctor should test you for TB and assess your risk of infections, including fungal infections, and hepatitis B.”

– from a teevee commercial/advertisement for a once-a-month, self-injectable “drug/medicine” branded “Simponi” purported to treat rheumatoid arthritis

“SIMPONI^™ can lower your ability to fight infections. There are reports of serious infections caused by bacteria, fungi, or viruses that have spread throughout the body, including tuberculosis (TB) and histoplasmosis. Some of these infections have been fatal. Your doctor will test you for TB before starting SIMPONI^™ and will monitor you for signs of TB during treatment. Tell your doctor if you have been in close contact with people with TB. Tell your doctor if you have been in a region (such as the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys and the Southwest) where certain fungal infections like histoplasmosis or coccidioidomycosis are common. Unusual cancers have been reported in children and teenage patients taking TNF-blocker medicines. For children and adults taking TNF blockers, including SIMPONI^™, the chances for getting lymphoma or other cancers may increase. You should tell your doctor if you have had or develop lymphoma or other cancers.”

– from the http://www.simponi.com/ website

The word “medication” can be simply defined as “a compound or preparation used for the treatment or prevention of disease,” while the word “cure” can be simply defined as to “relieve (a person or animal) of the symptoms of a disease or condition.”

Should a “cure” cause disease?

What the hell was the FDA thinking when they approved this “medicine”?

What sense does it make to create a “medicine” for which the company knows causes cancer? Is that not a class action lawsuit waiting to happen? Would the American Cancer Association approve this medication?

Would YOU recommend this “medicine” to your family and friends?

Would YOU take this “medicine”?

Should this “medicine” be banned?