It's been over a decade. There is no way you don't know that's a lie.

"I think we're going to owe smokers a big apology when the homosexual community's own statistics for its health - which it presents when it wants more money for health - are that is has higher rates of drug taking, of suicide, it has the life of a male reduced by up to 20 years. The life of smokers is reduced by something like seven to 10 years and yet we tell all our kids at school they shouldn't smoke."

- Jim Wallace, Australian Christian Lobby, yesterday

"Over the past few months we have learnt of a number of reports regarding a paper we published in the International Journal of Epidemiology on the gay and bisexual life expectancy in Vancouver in the late 1980s and early 1990s. From these reports it appears that our research is being used... to suggest that gay and bisexual men live an unhealthy lifestyle that is destructive to themselves and to others. These homophobic groups appear more interested in restricting the human rights of gay and bisexuals rather than promoting their health and well being.

The aim of our research was never to spread more homophobia, but to demonstrate to an international audience how the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men can be estimated from limited vital statistics data. In our paper, we demonstrated that in a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 21 years less than for all men... In contrast, if we were to repeat this analysis today the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved. Deaths from HIV infection have declined dramatically in this population since 1996. As we have previously reported there has been a threefold decrease in mortality in Vancouver as well as in other parts of British Columbia.

It is essential to note that the life expectancy of any population is a descriptive and not a prescriptive mesaure. Death is a product of the way a person lives and what physical and environmental hazards he or she faces everyday. It cannot be attributed solely to their sexual orientation or any other ethnic or social factor... In summary, the aim of our work was to assist health planners with the means of estimating the impact of HIV infection on groups, like gay and bisexual men, not necessarily captured by vital statistics data and not to hinder the rights of these groups worldwide. Overall, we do not condone the use of our research in a manner that restricts the political or human rights of gay and bisexual men or any other group."

- Robert S Hogg et al, December 2001

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."

- God, quite a while back

Limitless, hidden, dark, formless

"Believing first of all that the world had a beginning, the Egyptians concluded that the world must also have both spatial and temporal limits, even if such limits remained indistinct and were conceived of only in very general terms as being millions of years and miles away. Modern cosmogony has refined rather than replaced this early insight. Measurements and calculations have helped determine the spatial and temporal horizons of our world with increased precision, but those horizons still are not entirely comprehensible to us."
- Erik Hornung, Idea Into Image

I actually feel pretty good today

I'm dopey, but not eighteen-wheeler-roadkill sedated. I feel calm and have some energy. I even went outside and cleaned the plastic crap that's been sitting on the front doorstep since dinosaurs etc. Thank gods - I find being overwhelming drowsy incredibly distressing.

False vacuum decay redux

"The threat of total dissolution finds expression also in the Egyptians' anxiety that the sky could fall to earth. Should space collapse in this way, it would effect a return to the original state in which all was one. The Egyptian sorcerer who invokes such a collapse to strengthen his spells utters the most terrible threat imaginable."
- Erik Hornung, Idea into Image

Things not to watch when you are already in a liminal / transitory mental state

I don't know what an "MR" is. But once you have removed it, you can hear the singers' voices with reasonable clarity, which is fascinating. Or, if that doesn't appeal, you could just trip out.

ETA: "music recorded". The backing music, including any pre-recorded vocals added to support the singers' own voices. (Occasionally their microphones go flying and all is revealed! XD