The report that Keith Richards hasn’t had a drink for four months seems a little sketchy in that whole “a source close to [X] reports” way, but if it actually turns out to be true, the suggestion that “Keith decided to quit booze after seeing his bandmate Ronnie Wood start drinking heavily again” has got to be a literally sobering reproach to Wood. If Keith Richards stops drinking because he thinks you have a problem, well, you have a problem.

“Fashion police on the prowl for the latest trends were held captive at a Singapore prison recently when it housed couture instead of inmates.”
-That’s the worst sentence ever, ever, ever written, on the topic of the Calvin Klein Spring 2010 collection, which took place in a recently decommissioned prison. I mean, for starters, “ck Calvin Klein” isn’t by any stretch of the imagination “couture”!

Bad news, dope smokers: Marijuana horticulturists, aiming to beef up your weed, have removed an element in the plant that will keep you from going nuts.

These discoveries about the link between cannabis and psychosis have been widely reported in the media, often accompanied by warnings that street cannabis has risen in strength in recent years and therefore poses a major health risk to the susceptible minority.

This, however, is too simplistic: the type of cannabis taken is an important factor. Street cannabis has indeed changed over the years. So-called “skunk” does contain higher than normal concentrations of the main psychoactive compound, a molecule called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). What is less well known is that another constituent, cannabidiol (CBD), has been eliminated from skunk through selective breeding to increase the THC content.
The elimination of CBD may play a key role in the development of psychosis. Laboratory studies have shown that pure, synthetic THC causes transient psychosis in 40 to 50 per cent of healthy people. In stark contrast to THC, CBD appears to have an anti-psychotic effect, at least in animals. Studies in humans, though few in number, have produced similar findings.

So the trade-off here is a really great high vs. a 50 per cent chance of developing schizophrenia? I’ll take my chances. And so will I.

All those vets who were denied disability payments for a PTSD diagnosis between 2002 and 2008? They are now allowed, at last, to join a class action suit, which also entitles them to an expedited review of their disability claims. (Many of the 4300 veterans diagnosed with PTSD in that window weren’t “rated” properly-the rating is what allows you to qualify as disabled, and therefore receive benefits-even as the government’s own directives said that a diagnosis of PTSD must automatically rate people well beyond the threshold to qualify as disabled.) That this even had to go through an involved court process is a scandal. RELATED: McCain heckler and Iraq Veterans Against the War member Adam Kokesh, who is running for Congress in New Mexico, is releasing his iPhone app today! If it has a Grindr component, that is great news. (Kidding!) Um, also he is strongly anti-choice and pro-immigration amnesty and has a lot of opinions about the Federal Reserve System. It is very confusing to know where to be with him.

Japanese Soccer Robot Will Maim World Cup Opponents

Frustrated by the fact that their country has never won a World Cup soccer championship, Japanese scientists have developed a robot that can kick a soccer ball over 200 kilometers an hour. (That’s about 125 MPH in American.) Japan hopes to field a team of these motorized super-players in this year’s tournament, which kicks off in South Africa in June. As demonstrated in the horrific video above, the potentially lethal machine can blast appendages off any defender foolhardy enough to try to defend the net. “Do not stand in the way of our soccer robot’s power,” warned Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Tatsuo Kawabata. “We will achieve a World Cup victory. We will stop at nothing.”

It is rare that I have read an article about reality television with which I agree less. (Particularly because the analysis of early ‘Real World’ here seems to me-despite the unfortunate use of “arguably”-very accurate: “Season two of The Real World is, arguably, the single most important season of any TV show of the last twenty years.” And because the following points about people on reality TV become simulacra of prior people on reality TV seems quite right!) But it all leads up to this: “It’s difficult to say exactly why we retreated from reality television.” Which, strongly disagree!? Anyway, worth a read, if you’re looking for reading! Your opinions will vary, as you are all just like the cast of a very strange season of Real World-constantly at odds for unknown reasons.

Felix Salmon cracks me up:

It’s not like CEOs and billionaires (and billionaire CEOs) need any more flattery and ego-stroking than they get on a daily basis, but Davos gives them more than that: it allows them to flatter and ego-stroke each other, in public. They invariably leave even more puffed-up and sure of themselves than when they arrived, when in hindsight what the world really needed was for these men (it’s still very much a boys’ club) to be shaken out of their complacency and to ask themselves some tough questions about whether in fact they were leading us off a precipice. Now that it’s clear that many of them were leading us off that cliff, there’s still no sign of contrition, although you can be sure that a few fingers will be pointed at various past attendees who aren’t here to defend themselves. Is anybody here seriously examining the idea that Davos was institutionally responsible, at least in part, for the economic and financial catastrophe which befell the world in 2008? I’ll be on the lookout for that over the next few days.

Here’s one thing you have to say the Obama administration has been remarkably efficient at: managing to piss everyone off. The president’s proposed spending freeze is certainly no different: Republicans say it doesn’t go far enough, House Democrats say they won’t support it, Paul Krugman calls it “a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008.” More importantly, Spencer Ackerman wonders why defense funding will remain untouched in spite of the fact that there’s plenty of unnecessary spending that could be cut. Oooh, I can answer that one: The American people are both credulous and inconsistent, and it has now become perfectly clear that rational solutions to our raft of problems can only be employed if they show results within seconds of being put into place. Welcome back to the age of the V-chip!

Your new terror fear: weaponized Botox.

Oh, look! I breezed past the boilerplate section while reading Ben McGrath’s Tea Party profile yesterday, and I so shouldn’t have. Media Matters? “According to the New Yorker, the ‘mainstream media’ declined to acknowledge that 1.8 million people showed up at the Tea Party rally? Might that be because 1.8 million people didn’t show up and that number was pure fantasy, whipped up by the likes of Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck. Or, to put it another way, the press didn’t report the 1.8 million number because it was off the mark by 1.7 million.”