(no subject)

Happy Friday the 13th. :)

It's made its way to the Chicago Tribune

Abuse of cold medicine on rise

Emergency room physicians are reporting a sharp increase in teens abusing non-prescription cough and cold medicines, which are back in vogue as recreational drugs because the products are accessible and easier to take than ever before.

Users call it "skittles," "triple Cs" (for Coricidin HBP Cough & Cold tablets) or "robo-tripping" to describe its hallucinogenic effects. Medical personnel are calling it "an epidemic."

The latest concerns have caused some drugstore chains to limit purchases. But the efforts don't go far enough, say many critics, who are urging that all such products be sold strictly from behind the counter.

"It's not illegal to purchase. It's not even illegal to take in large quantities. It's just dangerous and foolish and that is what is scaring everybody," said Dr. Charles Nozicka, director of pediatric emergency medicine at St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates.

Nozicka estimates he has seen about 30 cold medicine-related overdoses in the last year.

( Read more... )

I wanna handle the truth

Senate's Iraq Probe to Include Bush, Aides

In a blow to the Bush administration, the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday that it planned to investigate whether White House officials exaggerated the Iraq threat or pressured analysts to tailor their assessments of Baghdad's weapons programs to bolster the case for war.

[...] New areas of inquiry will include "whether any influence was brought to bear on anyone to shape their analysis to support policy objectives," the statement said. Sources involved in the investigation said they had turned up no evidence so far that there was such pressure, or that analysts shaded their assessments to please the White House.

The committee said it would examine the role played by a controversial intelligence unit set up secretly at the Pentagon to search for ties between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network. The unit in the so-called Office of Special Plans has been accused of cherry-picking data to help bolster White House claims of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties that the CIA and other agencies viewed far more skeptically.

The committee also will focus new scrutiny on the intelligence community's use of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group during Saddam Hussein's regime that lobbied for years for a U.S. effort to oust the Iraqi president, and whose leaders have ties to senior members of the Bush administration. Critics say the INC has served up a stream of Iraqi defectors with exaggerated or unfounded claims about Iraq's weapons programs and other activities.

(no subject)

I was able to give my contact information to Michael tonight.

Here's hoping he uses email instead of the phone.

for rikhei

From a little pamphlet called The Secret Power of Dreams.

Wedding. Signifies a union between two parts of yourself.

( more dream symbolism )