Speaking (writing?) of the Olympic Games (editor: please insert subliminal message "Free Tibet from Chinese Oppression"), the favorites in men's basketball is no longer Team USA, but rather Team China. After all, as anyone watching the NBA playoffs now knows, the home team always wins.

Cue Robin Leach voice: In the world of glitz and glamour, Brad Pitt announced his gay marriage in California to twins while bombshell wife Angelina Jolie promoted her animated flick Afro Ninja at the Wango Tango music festival in Cannes. No word from Jolie yet as to whether she'd be demonstrating against the 2008 Olympic Games {editor: please insert subliminal message "Free Tibet from Chinesse Oppression because we love the Dalai Lama because he's seems like such a nice guy, always smiling and all"}, though one is expected as an estimated 17 of her adopted children are of Tibetan descent.

Back on the campaign trail, former rival for the presidency "Honest John" Edwards formally endorsed Obama, who may now officially be referred to as The Dude Who's Gonna Lose to John McCain.

Finally, thousands of Chinese and Chinese Dutch rallied in Amsterdam in protest of another silly declaration from the US government, continued closure of coffee shops, and something else ... ah yes, support of the Beijing Olympics. {Editor: insert subliminal message. "Free Tibet. Do your part today. Boycott naughty corporate sponsors. Also, vote for The Dude Who's Gonna Lose to John McCain, I mean, Barack Obama. You can do this online, can't you, editor?}

And somewhere out there in the lonely Antarctic, a seal humped a penguin...

Francis Bacon's take on Prometheus and the Orestia, the minimalistically entitled "Triptych, 1976" was sold at Sotheby's last night for a sweet $86.28 million. The large sum of money - the biggest ever garnered by a Bacon work - earned the auction house just over $10.3 million with the previous owners, the wine-producing Moeuix family, hauling in the remaining $76 million or so.

Since its purchase by the Moeuixes in 1977, "Triptych, 1976" has been exhibited at the Tate Gallery in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Museo d'Arte Moderna in Lugano.

In the lead-up to the auction, Sotheby's worldwide head of contemporary art Tobias Meyer called the triptych "undoubtedly the most important Bacon in private hands. It has been with the same collection ever since it was acquired ... over thirty years ago, and it is a masterpiece of the 20th century."

Bacon (1909-1992) is known as one of the foremost figures in figurative art, a 20th-century movement that featured deliberate derivation from original source material; cf. Aeschylus and certain Greek myth in "Triptych, 1976."

As has become tradition, commissioner of social security Michael J. Astrue announced the most popular names (and released a list of the top 1,000) on Mother's Day. Parade magazine is co-sponsor of SSA's Mother's Day 2008 campaign, a drive designed to "inform people with limited income about the extra help available with their Medicare prescription drug costs."

Among the names cited by Astrue, together with their placement on the list (ranking for names in 2006 in parentheses), included the following:

Girls
1 (1). Emily
2 (4). Isabella
3 (2). Emma
4 (5). Ava
5 (3). Madison
6 (9). Sophia
7 (7). Olivia
8 (6). Abigail
9 (8). Hannah
10 (11). Elizabeth
31 (43). Nevaeh
41. Destiny
72. Trinity
126. Serenity
226. Maddox
263 (253). Heaven
278 (n/a). Miley
307 (352). Danica
315. Harmony
461. Miracle
673. Charity
692. Journey (here's to hoping this isn't a mass tribute to the '80s pop band)
804 (n/a). Shiloh
891 (992). Neveah
914. Destini
930. Essence
971. Armani

Boys:
1 (1). Jacob
2 (2). Michael
3 (4). Ethan
4 (3). Joshua
5 (6). Daniel
6 (7). Christopher
7 (9). Anthony
8 (10). William
9 (5). Matthew
10 (8). Andrew
18 (49). Jayden
45 (46). Jordan
622. Sincere
676 (761). Elvis
723. Messiah
743 (914). JaMarcus

Additionally, Astrue spent some time detailing what may someday be called the "Maiden Phenomenon of the 2000s":

For reasons likely to puzzle baby name experts around the world, American parents have become infatuated by names, particularly for their sons, that rhyme with the word "maiden." These names for boys include: Jayden (No. 18); Aiden (No. 27); Aidan (No. 54); Jaden (No. 76); Caden (No. 92); Kaden (No. 98); Ayden (No.102); Braden (No.156); Cayden (No.175); Jaiden (No.191); Kaiden (No. 220); Aden (No. 264); Caiden (No. 286); Braeden (No. 325); Braydon (No. 361); Jaydon (No. 415); Jadon (No. 423); Braiden (No. 529); Zayden (No. 588); Jaeden (No. 593); Aydan (No. 598); Bradyn (No. 629); Kadin (No. 657); Jadyn (No. 696); Kaeden (No. 701); Jaydin (No. 757); Braedon (No. 805); Aidyn (No. 818); Haiden (No. 820); Jaidyn (No. 841); Kadyn (No. 878); Jaydan (No. 887); Raiden (No. 931); and Adin (No. 983). This startling trend was present, but less pronounced, with girls names: Jayden (No. 172); Jadyn (No. 319); Jaden (No. 335); Jaiden (No. 429); Kayden (No. 507); and Jaidyn (No. 561).

Social Security spokesman Mark Lassiter indicated that the agency would resist any legislative efforts to standardize the spelling of these names.

For an MPR-recommended time-waster on the subject, check out the SSA website, which includes a database of the most popular American names dating back to 1880.

Proving that slow news days exist even in the natural world, LiveScience.com is running as lead story a titillating tale entitled "Seal Tries Sex with Penguin."

Quickly, ahem, putting the "discovery" into a, as it were, scientific context, the article goes on to state that

This seems to be the first known example of a sexual escapade between a mammal and another kind of vertebrate such as a bird, reptile or fish, "although some mammals are known to have attempted sexual relief with inanimate -- including dead things -- objects," said researcher Nico de Bruyn, a mammal ecologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

Charles Q. Choi (if that is his real name) then tries his hand at same colorful prose, sparing no detail in imparting the attempted would-be conquest in romantic Marion Island off the coast of Antarctica between the shameless 240-pound polygynous fur seal and an unfortunate king penguin. MPR will leave the enjoyment of discovering Choi's prose all to the reader.

The good news: "The penguin apparently did not suffer any injury." The amusing news: "The scientists detailed their findings in the May issue of the Journal of Ethology." The bad news: De Bruyn and company probably received or will receive utter unjustifiable funding for this, um, wankery.

Ah well, all in the name of science, right? Oh, and mindless internet video watching.

The hubbub is all about a new report from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy entitled "Teen Marijuana Use Worsens Depression: An Analysis of Recent Data Shows 'Self-Medicating' Could Actually Make Things Worse"

Some of the statistics in the report included:

"two million teens felt depressed at some point during the past year, and depressed teens are more than twice as likely as non-depressed teens to have used marijuana during that same period";

"Depressed teens are also almost twice as likely to have used illicit drugs as non-depressed teens";

Depressed teens "are also more than twice as likely as their peers to abuse or become dependent on marijuana";

"Marijuana use is associated with depression, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts";

Teenaged marijuana smokers "are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than non-users";

"The percentage of depressed teens is equal to the percentage of depressed adults, but depressed teens are more likely than depressed adults to use marijuana and other illicit drugs";

"Teen girls who use marijuana daily are more likely to develop depression than girls who do not use marijuana"; and

"Depressed teens are also more likely than non-depressed teens to engage in other risky behaviors such as daily cigarette use and heavy alcohol use."

(Um, isn't that last one a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing...?)

National Drug Control Policy director John P. Walters naturally took the occasion of the announcement to kick in the usual stuff about "Parents must not dismiss teen moodiness as a passing phase. Look closely at your teen's behavior et cetera et cetera blah blah." Walters also stated that "Marijuana is not the answer," to which MPR would respond that surely this depends the question, eh?

Luckily, some calmer, more reasoned voices are speaking (or writing) as well; you just have to claw through the cacophonous clamor to get to them. After the CNNs and FOX News.coms of the world have driven you into a right state of reeferphobia, please check out the nicely thoroughly "New Federal Report on Marijuana Use is Misleading, Groups Say" from Salem-News.com. The comparatively radical intro by the news service's Will King goes:

A new federal government report on the ill effects of marijuana on teens may be a last ditch effort to demonize the medical weed before it sees its own day of emancipation. As it stands, even the most hardcore marijuana legalization advocates do not support children using anything that causes intoxication.

King goes on to check in with Marijuana Policy Project director of communications Bruce Mirken on the fallacies of the report, including the oft-repeated contention that marijuana in America is stronger than it was 40 years ago. A sample:

Mirken ... questions the lack of warning about alcohol's relationship to depression, which is completely left out of their new report.

"Data linking alcohol to depression is much stronger and alcohol use by teens is greater than marijuana use," he notes.

Mirken also stated that "This very week the British government's official scientific advisors on illegal drugs issued a report saying they are 'unconvinced that there is a causal relationship between the use of cannabis and any affective disorder,' such as depression."

The British report Mirken refers to was handed over to prime minister Gordon Brown by a group comprised of doctors, law enforcement officers, judges and drug counselors in late April. That group stated that "cannabis should still be regarded as a soft drug"; Brown responded by declaring essentially that "there is no scientific basis for a change."

Reportedly, turnover is now expected at the UK's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and "Going against the ACMD's decision could spark a massive row and trigger resignations from the committee, which plays a crucial role in setting Britain's drug policy."

Total bummer.

Case in point: An announcement from MySpace today that has geeks (particularly assumedly those of Generation YouTube) all a-twitter online. The social network company, in some sort of partnership with Yahoo!, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter, has introduced "data availability."

If you're one of the those chumps that thought "data availability" was kinda the point of the present-day Internet, well, get adapted, dude. "Data availability," it seems, can "Empower Users To Share Their User Generated Content and Data Web-Wide."

As it turns out, "data availability" is an initiative which is also "a ground-breaking offering to empower the global MySpace community to share their public profile data to websites of their choice throughout the Internet." Now, users are "offered the opportunity to share their MySpace profiles with the site they are visiting. MySpace [and partners] will be allowing users to dynamically share the content and data of their choosing." Of course, that choosing, in classic Internet fashion is restricted to participating providers, so allowed for sharing will be basic profile information, MySpace photos, MySpaceTV videos, and friend networks.

All in all, this is all "about enriching existing Internet destinations with social functionality and valuable pre-existing user generated content and data."

Or as MySpace chief operating officer Amit Kapur put it, "The launch of Data Availability is an unprecedented move to further socialize the Web and empower users to control their online content and data."

Oh.

MPR still doesn't get it...

Though prolific enough in much of the world and hardly considered endangered in most areas, US Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced gray wolves into the Yellowstone area in 1995-96. Within 10 years, the program had seen the wolf's Northern Rockies population burgeon to 1,200-1,500 in the area.

US Fish and Wildlife were confident enough in the animal's success that the gray wolf was taken off the federal government's endangered species list on March 28. Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett proclaimed the program "a conservation success story" at that time.

Except Scarlett seems to have forgotten the human factor.

On March 28, Idaho introduced a new that allowed for the killing of wolves without a hunting permit; most of Wyoming now has a "predator law" in effect, also essentially granting legal immunity to those protecting property and livestock from the wolves.

The results? In the first week after removal, "at least 10 wolves were immediately shot and killed in Wyoming during the first week after the de-listing. One of the first wolves killed was a male wolf known as 253M, a member of Yellowstone's Druid Peak wolf pack who had been quite popular with the public."

This week, reckoning that "at least 37 wolves have been killed in the Northern Rockies - over two percent of the total wolf population," environmental legal concern Earthjustice has filed suit on behalf of 12 organizations seeking to re-list the wolf.

The lawsuit claims the wolf's chances at survival now suffer from "biased, inadequate state management plans, as well as by the lack of connections between largely isolated state wolf populations."

Humane Society of the United States senior VP John Grandy took the opportunity of announcing the lawsuit to update everyone's scorecard: "Idaho wins the prize for wanting to kill the most wolves. Wyoming wins for the most blatant hostility toward wolves enshrined in state law. And Montana wears the crown for killing the most wolves in 8 of the last 10 years, despite having the smallest wolf population of all three states." The Humane Society is one of the twelve in on the lawsuit.

Also in is the Sierra Club, whose Melanie Stein sums it up sadly with "Since delisting, our worst fears are coming true."

In fact, this writer definitely far enough on the wrong side of 30 to have to find out about this bacchanalian behavior the same way so many learn so much information they'd otherwise live just as happily without: surfing.

While intrepidly seeking out the odd and fascinating, MPR stumbled upon a gem called "Worthing party girl stays away from trashed home." British tabloids have been employing infinitely marketable headlines involving the phrase "party girl" for approximately 236 years now, and amazing too is the two words' continuing attractiveness through generations.

Generation YouTuber Gemma Johnson, 15, somehow allowed a party at which three people were to be permitted for a "sleepover." Well, 'tweren't much sleepin' goin' on over there, what with the skins party, helpfully defined by Wikipedia as ... well, believe it or not, it's not defined by Wikipedia.

However, the apparently much hipper UrbanDictionary.com has skins parties down as "A party inspired by the British E4 Drama, "Skins." These parties usually involve large amounts of drugs, alcohol, sex and loud music. After the skins party, the guests usually wake up in somebody elses house/garden completely disorientated, naked and covered in puke/piss/blood."

An even better idea can be had at - you guessed it - SkinsParty.com.

Right, then.

The Argus colorfully describes the aftermath of Gemma's carnage as with "Youths left graffiti 'tags' in some of the bedrooms. ... Drugs were found littered throughout the five-bedroom property as well as beer cans and empty bottles of spirits. ... A new £600 fridge had patterns scratched into it with a knife and Mrs Anscomb's eight-year- old daughter's room was destroyed, the canopy ripped off her bed and underwear found beneath the covers."

Even better: "Revellers claimed the party turned into a 'cross between a Hell's Angels knees-up and a Roman orgy' with guests taking ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana." (With a fair amount of youthful pride, too, bets MPR...)
Oh, and by the way, Gemma's mother Mrs. Anscomb "lies awake at night in disgust at the thought of partying teenagers romping in her marital bed."

Speaking of said marital bed, Gemma's been hiding out with her father since the party in January, her continued absence the newsy bit of this story.

Gemma's quote, reportedly posted on Bebo: "[the party] went wrong but it was well good. I mean it was f---ing good."

Just one more of many other examples can be found in the pages of the good old Daily Mail of late April, in the tale of the "MySpace party from hell," reportedly jumpstarted with a message inviting all to a "trash the average, family-sized house disco party."

This "average, family-sized house" was valued at some £230,000 but is worth at least £25,000 less now after "More than 200 young people from as far afield as London and Liverpool converged on the detached house in a respectable cul de sac in Houghton-le-Spring and destroyed it after seven hours of drink- and drug-fuelled mayhem."

MPR asks that, before passing judgment on either party, however, one consider the visual evidence. Again, here's a sample from young Gemma's home life; here's a skins party.

Any questions?

At stake where nine delegates, five the ubiquitous "super delegates," representing 0.445 percent of the 2,024-1/2 votes needed at the Democratic convention for nomination by the party. In taking the island's caucus and therefore getting two of the four pledged delegates, Obama went from holding a decent 73.52 percent of the needed total to an insurmountable 73.6 percent.

And a bit of an Election 2000 is being observed in the beautiful Pacific non-commonwealth, non-protectorate of the United States: According to Pacific News Center, over 500 ballots have been called "spoiled," thus invalidating these, and others are purported to be missing.

In other hype, or, if you prefer, "news," Obama got in the quote of the day for yesterday when he called Clinton's support of a national gas tax-free day as "[typical of] empty gestures calculated to get politicians through the next election."

Obama tossed out like pithy comments after folksily shooting baskets on a campaign stop in hoops-loving Indiana, a gesture rife with meaning beyond getting elected, to be sure.

As for Clinton, no word yet as to whether she'll be obliterating Guam on Day One of her administration.

Mixing metaphors a bit, Paddy Power pronounced it would be paying out all those fortunate enough to have wagered on Conservative Party candidate Boris Johnson: "After the kick in the ballots that Labour has had overnight, we expect Boris to put the final nail in their local elections coffin."

With about 62% of local councils reporting, the Labour party - party of current prime minister Gordon Brown - figures to lose some 144 seats in Parliament (138 of which will be picked up by the archenemy Conservative Party), while garnering just a third-best 24% of the overall vote in England and Wales.

Paddy Power had odds of 4-11 on Johnson at the start of the day Thursday; on that day, however, Labour took a "mauling" in Paddy Power's prose, producing their worst electoral showing in local elections since the late 1960s. Over at BetFair (and presumably other British bookies as well), bets are still being taken on the mayoral candidates' chances. At BetFair, Johnson's currently sitting at 1:12.

Paddy Power has been making a habit out of early payouts in political races as of late; back on January 7, a day before the New Hampshire primary, the bookmaker declared the Democratic Party race over in America.

"From a betting point of view we reckon that it's game over for Hillary," argued the bookmaker. "With each passing day, Obama is looking more like a certainty to get the Democratic vote and as far as we're concerned, he's already past the post."

As for prospective mayor Johnson, he's taking the, well, politic approach to his party's success thus far: "I think the party's done fantastically nationally but London is a very different kettle of fish. We'll have to see what happens."

The release of McCain's 2007 personal income tax return provoked the revelation that the seemingly fit senator received $58,358 in federal disability pension based on "limited body movements due to injuries as a POW."

This, in turn, triggered yet another fanciful spin on the Is-McCain-too-old question addressed in media by anyone with an opinion from Chuck Norris on down. The resulting online "debate" on the issue rapidly became one-note, with stuff like FOX News bloggers' "Is McCain Physically Unfit for President?" (sic) the sad norm.

Perhaps instead one should debate the ethics of a guy who claims he's fit enough to serve four (no, maybe eight) years as US President, yet is supported for disability at a rate approximately 25% higher than the average household income...

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, 20 protestors were removed from McCain's offices. "If he should be president," said American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today national organizer Bob Kafka, "it would be ironic that he comes from a party that talks a lot about family values."

After reportedly refused a meeting with McCain on The Community Choice Act, the activists staged the protest. Sponsored by big players Tom Harkin and Arlen "I'm Gonna Bring Down Bill Belichick If It Kills Me" Specter and co-sponsored by a couple of senators named Obama and Clinton, the Community Choice Act would provide more benefits for at-home care of the disabled.

You'd think that, as a government-certified member of the American disabled population, McCain might be more sympathetic to its cause. Certainly a folksy, straight-shooting millionaire like Mr. McCain wouldn't mind making amends for the arrests by, say, giving up his $50,000-plus to the cause...

Incidentally, the reason McCain was not in D.C. at the time of the police action? He was in Florida, pushing his healthcare plan on an apparently more valuable constituency. Now, isn't that ironic...

Don't you think?

Hofmann was born in January 1906 in Baden, Switzerland. He credits a strange, pantheistic experience in nature with somehow demonstrating the presence of God; this would set his spiritual philosophy and his career path.

In 1926, Hofmann began his studies in chemistry at Zurich University and completed his Ph.D. some four years later. Hofmann went to work at a Sandoz (today part of pharma giant Novartis) chemical research lab in the early 1930s and stayed with the company into the 1970s. Set to work with medicinal plants and fungi, Hofmann became interested in ergot alkaloids, ultimately discovering in 1938 that lysergic acid is a basic component in certain useful versions of the alkaloids.

Interest of all but Hofmann was lost in lysergic acid. In 1943, the doctor accidentally ingested some of the stuff and, um, felt the effects of "a not unpleasant intoxicationlike condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination." Three days later, he deliberately dosed himself and the rest is history.

Sort of. What the partying hippies and counterculturalists tend to forget about Hofmann is that he saw LSD not as a party drug but as a way to "develop a new awareness of reality" which "could become the basis of a spirituality that's not founded on the dogmatics of existing religions, but on insights into a higher and profounder sense," meaning the God he felt in his young age.

In his book, "LSD: My Problem Child," Hofmann well illustrates his problems with said offspring when describing his meeting with "LSD apostle" Timothy Leary:

I voiced my regret that the investigations with LSD and psilocybin at Harvard University, which had begun promisingly, had degenerated to such an extent that their continuance in an academic milieu became impossible.

In this conversation, I further objected to the great publicity that Leary sought for his LSD and psilocybin investigations ... Emphasis was thereby placed on publicity rather than on objective information. Leary defended this publicity program because he felt it had been his fateful historic role to make LSD known worldwide. The overwhelmingly positive effects of such dissemination, above all among America's younger generation, would make any trifling injuries, any regrettable accidents as a result of improper use of LSD, unimportant in comparison, a small price to pay.

"LSD: My Problem Child" can be read in full here. The New York Times obituary can be found here.

R.I.P., Dr. Hofmann. Hope your trip was a good one.

When the EU finally gave this most recent stage the thumbs up, Slovenian transport minister Radovan Zerjav stated that the project "represents a decisive step towards a further implementation of this project. Europe has to carry on by intensively developing [Galileo], which constitutes the greatest technical and technological challenge for the EU in terms of developing its proper navigational system." On the occasion of the launch, EU transport commissioner Jacques Berrot called the EUR 3.4 billion (approximately $5.31 billion) project "a tool of sovereignty for Europe."

Compare this with those similarly objective reports from America back in 1957. "Reds," indeed.

What MPR finds interesting about the nonchalance regarding Galileo is not only that the technology used is directly a product of the half-century of repression behind the "Iron Curtain," but that in buying a GPS system, you're basically giving permission to have yourself tracked by an even more ominous eye in the sky.
But, hey, since the Soviet Union bankrupted, we're all benevolent capitalists now, right? I mean, the Patriot Act isn't taken that seriously, is it?