The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual.
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May: Memorial Day - 21 views
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Learn something new every day - Memrise - 5 views
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The Joy of Quiet - NYTimes.com - 4 views
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The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.
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MAYBE that’s why more and more people I know, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi; these aren’t New Age fads so much as ways to connect with what could be called the wisdom of old age.
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Other friends try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown, Mr. Carr points out, that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.”
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I noticed that all their talk was of sailing — or riding or bridge: anything that would allow them to get out of radio contact for a few hours.
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empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.” The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for.
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I’ve yet to use a cellphone and I’ve never Tweeted or entered Facebook. I try not to go online till my day’s writing is finished, and I moved from Manhattan to rural Japan in part so I could more easily survive for long stretches entirely on foot, and every trip to the movies would be an event.
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Nothing makes me feel better — calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music.
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For more than 20 years, therefore, I’ve been going several times a year — often for no longer than three days — to a Benedictine hermitage, 40 minutes down the road, as it happens, from the Post Ranch Inn. I don’t attend services when I’m there, and I’ve never meditated, there or anywhere; I just take walks and read and lose myself in the stillness, recalling that it’s only by stepping briefly away from my wife and bosses and friends that I’ll have anything useful to bring to them.
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Psilocybin (magic mushrooms) - 0 views
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The several analogyes with triptophan aminoacid, with whom psilocybin has common origines are probably at the base of psilocybin ability to induced psychedelich alteration on humans.
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Amino acids, including tryptophan, act as building blocks in protein biosynthesis. In addition, tryptophan functions as a biochemical precursor for many compounds like serotonin Serotonin (a neurotransmitter), synthesized via tryptophan hydroxylase. Serotonin, in turn, can be converted to melatonin (a neurohormone), via N-acetyltransferase and 5-hydroxyindole-O-methyltransferase activities
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it's been noticed that psilocyn can indirectly raise dopamine concentration withing the basal ganglia.
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Almost 50% of oral psilocybin is absorbed by stomach and gut; from here is lead to liver, where it's converted in psilocin, pharmacologically active form, that can furtherly be glucoronated and escreted with urine or converted in other psilocinics metabolites.
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In rats, the median lethal dose (LD50) when administered orally is 280 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg), approximately one and a half times that of caffeine. When administered intravenously in rabbits, psilocybin's LD50 is approximately 12.5 mg/kg
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Clinical studies show that psilocin concentrations in the plasma of adults average about 8 µg/liter within 2 hours after ingestion of a single 15 mg oral psilocybin dose; psychological effects occur with a blood plasma concentration of 4–6 µg/liter. Psilocybin is about 100 times less potent than LSD on a weight per weight basis, and the physiological effects last about half as long.
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Within 24 hours from administration 65% of the alucinogen is escreted by urine, while another 15-20% is excreted by bile and feces.
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Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI) have been known to prolong and enhance the effects of psilocybin. Alcohol consumption may enhance the effects of psilocybin, because acetaldehyde, one of the primary breakdown metabolites of consumed alcohol, reacts with biogenic amines present in the body to produce MAOIs related to tetrahydroisoquinoline and β-carboline. Tobacco smokers can also experience more powerful effects with psilocybin, because tobacco smoke exposure decreases levels of MAO in the brain and peripheral organs.
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This could lead to a lower usage o f glucose, but the same study admitted an increase glucose usage by the whole brain cell, meaning a differente use of this sugar while the drug is having effects.
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use of MRI (functional magnetic resounance) showed that the decresed blood flow associate with decreasing in neural activity. A simple explanation for this unexpected situation could be the serotoning agonist action of psilocybin, action that seems to be focused more on 5-HT receptors than on 5-HT2A.
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augmented glucose consumption in several brain regions; this lead to the conclusion that psilocybin is some way able to modify the physiological glucosal metabolic rate of our body
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The strong inibition of the PCC is now thought to be most significant action of psilocybin on neural disaccoppiation
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Psilocybin comprises approximately 1% of the weight of Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, and so nearly 1.7 kilograms (3.7 lb) of dried mushrooms, or 17 kilograms (37 lb) of fresh mushrooms, would be required for a 60-kilogram (130 lb) person to reach the 280 mg/kg LD50 value.
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psilocybin can cause anxiety and increased heart rate and BP which is very counter- productive for someone on metoprolol and micardis.
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propose the possibility to use psilocybin as a palliative therapy for terminal illness like cancer but also as a real antidepressive active principle available for the family of the patient. The rational is foundable in the fact that we usually administer SSRI as antidepressive agents, so psilocibyn sholud be useful in this purpose for its selective agonist action on 5-HT2A receptors
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Is Google Making Us Stupid? - Magazine - The Atlantic - 48 views
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Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes
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media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought
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chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation
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""Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?" So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial " brain. "Dave, my mind is going," HAL says, forlornly. "I can feel it. I can feel it." "