"I don't have the attention span to meditate"

Wisdom Quarterly (INTERVIEW with Fat Joe) no relation to Fat Mike

• Joe, do you or could you meditate?

"What? I have ADHD. At least I think I do. My mom's doctor gave me speed [the chemical pharmaceutical Ritalin], so I do now anyway."

[Still drinking soda, eating fast food (excitotoxins and cancer-forming carbs, adulterated fats, sugars), watching TV (commercials)...]

"There's no way I can meditate. I can't pay attention. I've been sitting here playing Call of Duty: Black Ops for like 12 hours.

"If I try to meditate, I'll fall asleep. So, like, forget it. My phone keeps going off, texts, uh... What was I saying?

"I'm so fat and losing my hair. I look like Da' Buddha, or who's that guy at the Chinese take-out, Hotei Budai? You know, you rub his belly. Anyway. What, like, you sit down, like, on the floor on a cushion? Dude. No way! Maybe after some primo bud..."

• But, Joe, how are you able to pay attention to those videogames for 12 hours?

"What d'ya mean?"

• If you have Attention DEFICIT and Hyperactive Disorder, where are you getting all this attention?

"Oh-oh, I see! Hmm, huh, yeah. Medication? This game's exciting! Isn't meditation, like, BORING? Just sitting there staring at your belly button. What is meditation? I can't do it! I don't have the attention span to meditate."

Fact Find Tour Inside Joe's Head


Short Attention Span Theatre "Leaving Jesusland" (NOFX)

• Beer and the Science of Partying
• Adventures in Hyperactive Meditation (borntoexplore.org)
• Zen Buddhism and ADHD: Meditation not medication
• VIDEO: Excitotoxins The Taste That Kills
• PDF: Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
  
• TaoJoe.com: Path of Least Resistance

Meditation as treatment for ADHD (ABC News)

Coca Cola RECIPE revealed

Wisdom Quarterly
(Blink967) At least Pepsi, which is just as bad, makes funny ads using Buddhist monks.

This American Life's Ira Glass revealed the addictive ingredients that went into the original Coca Cola. It has no doubt gotten worse with the addition of synthetic excitotoxins euphemistically referred to as "natural flavors." (The only thing "natural" about them, according to FDA labeling guidelines, is that artificial chemicals are used to mimic something that exists in nature.)

"Coco cola" was originally concocted as a syrupy medicinal drink using tropical ingredients and dispensed at soda shops. The addition of massive amounts of sugar alone made it habit forming and carcinogenic. Cancer rates going up and hitting people younger? What a surprise. Adding alcohol, cocaine, caramel coloring, and neurotoxins (synthetic replacement of the original tropical fruit and nut oils) then cinched its addictive profile.

Snorting Coke? Soft drinks train us for hard (fermented) drinks.

This gave us the need we have felt ever since to drink this poisonous chemical brew, ride the sugar spike, and hit a low lower than we began with, which leads us to think another would be a good idea. Coca Cola remains the only American corporation with the legal right to import coca leaf and legally produce the illicit drug cocaine. It claims to no longer use it in its formulation, but it retains the right to produce it in great quantities (for sale to labs, street kids, the CIA?)

• sugar - 30 lbs
• cocaine (fluid extract of coca) - 3 drams
  
• alcohol - 8 oz
  
• oils of orange, lemon, nutmeg, coriander, neroli, cinnamon (tree bark)
  
• citric acid, caffeine, lemon juice, vanilla
• soda water (necessary or it would be impossible to consume this cloying amount of sugar without the body rejecting it by vomiting or avoiding it due to surfeit.

The exact level of cocaine was not quantified but it was sufficient to produce a "buzz" with 4 to 5 drinks, according to early newspaper accounts. Why only 30 lbs of sugar? There are now 16.25 teaspoons of sugar (1 tsp = 4 grams) in a 20 oz (590 ml) bottle, 9.25 teaspoons per can. Any more and it would become a syrup. Soda manufacturers have not found a way to add sugar and keep the formulation liquid. The addition of brain toxic artificial sweeteners (like aspartame) makes it worse on the brain than sugar.

• Is it true Coca Cola once contained cocaine?
  
• VIDEO: Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
• The exact ingredients and how to make it (PDF)
• This American Life press release

Support This American Life and Nat'l Public Radio

The Recipe
ThisAmericanLife.org

FE Coca (Fluid Extract of Coca)	3 drams USP	4 oz FE Coco
Citric Acid	3 oz	3 oz
Caffeine	1 oz	1oz Citrate Caffein
Sugar	30 #	30 #
Water	2.5 gal	2.5 gal
Lime Juice	2 pints (1 qrt)	1 qrt
Vanilla	1 oz	1 oz
Caramel	1.5 oz or more to color	Color sufficient
	Use 2 oz flavor (below) to 5 gals syrup	2.5 oz flavor
7X Flavor
Alcohol	8 oz	1 qrt
Orange Oil	20 drops	80
Lemon Oil	30	120
Nutmeg Oil	10	40
Corriander Oil	5	20
Neroli Oil	10	40
Cinnamon Oil	10	40
(The Pemberton formula for 7X is the same as the Beal, just four times as much.)

• To make fluid extract of coca. Buy whole leaf coca tea. Instructions for making coca extract from this can be found online. You don't need much. The recipe calls for 3 fluid drams, which is equivalent to 1/8 of a fluid ounce or -- an easier measurement for a home kitchen -- 3/4 of a tablespoon.
• Make the syrup. Once you have your 7X flavor, and your fluid extract of coca, you are ready to mix them with your other ingredients to make the syrup. Mix your ingredients in this order: water, sugar, then coloring, then coca extract, then vanilla extract, then caffeine, then lime juice, and citric acid.

Go to Blog

Sugar Shock: It's a "Drug"! (video)

Wisdom Quarterly, Nutrition by Natalie, Psychetruth
(weheartit.com)

How much sugar do we consume? Americans might be surprised just how much sugar there is in everyday drinks and foods. I reveal the shocking truth about how much sugar we are eating.

Sugar is a highly processed chemical

Common things like soft drinks, Starbucks, McDonald's, fast foods, alcohol -- they are all FULL of addictive sugar.

Let's look closely at how much sugar there is in "healthy" orange juice, blueberry muffins, Pop Tarts, Lucky Charms, BBQ sauce, Coca Cola, Gatorade, frappuccino mocha coffee, chocolate cake desserts, and more.

Top 10 Worst Foods

There is a relationship between sugar/high fructose corn syrup to hunger, weight gain, obesity, low energy, inflammation, digestive troubles, depression, exhaustion, brittle bones, bad teeth, diabetes, cancer, and bad health. This is an eye-opener even for people not on a diet.

• The Reclassification of Sugar as a Drug
• VIDEO: Sugar: Pure, White, and Deadly
  

Sugar: a Class A drug?

BodyMindSuccess.com
We know the effects of sugar are not good. But to what degree do we know? I thought I had a pretty good understanding, but after watching this video and the series of videos listed below, it has become clear that there is much more I didn’t know. For example, sugar is the Number One addiction -- above cocaine and other addictive drugs. Sugar contributes to weight gain, sure, but “sugar” is disguised in many forms. Sugar affects many things (cancer, low sugar, diabetes, insulin insensitivity, inflammatory conditions, hunger, vision, insomnia, malnutrition, aging...). More

• Is sugar really that bad for you?
• Increased metabolism and weight loss
• Future well being depends on leaving past behind
• VIDEO: Sugar The Bitter Truth (short version)
• VIDEO: Corn (and beet) syrup as bad as cane sugar
  
• VIDEO: Lustig yells at Gary Taubes about fructose
  
• Myspace.com/psychtruth
• Youtube.com/psychetruth
• Livevideo.com/psychetruth

Poor Casey Anthony! (video)

Wisdom Quarterly, TheGrio.com

Hating hateful actions (like murder) or hateful actors (like murderers) makes us guilty of hate. Hate is toxic to all who harbor it, and it is not cured by vigilantism or revenge.

There are those who give free rein to hate when it arises like stampeding horses. There are others who pull the reins and control their chariot even when the horses are bolting. The Buddha called the latter "charioteers," whereas the former are merely holding the reins.

American hatred has grown so great -- animosity at a mother or a trial gone wrong -- that citizens are ready to lynch anyone named Casey Anthony.

Searching Facebook, many have found a man by the same name and tormented him. His response to the vigilante mob? "I can't change my name, ladies and gentlemen."

"Casey Anthony" is a 43-year-old African-American male. He lives in Darby, Pennsylvania, and just happens to share the name of a 25-year-old Anglo-American female from Orlando, Florida, who is infamous for being found not guilty of killing her 2-year-old daughter.

• PHOTO: The other Casey Anthony from Pennsylvania (NBC Philadelphia)
• She's to be released Sunday; some fear for her safety
• Casey Anthony gets and loses job in pornography

Mr. Casey Anthony has been bombarded on Facebook. He estimates that he has gotten at least 300 friend requests, messages, and posts, all targeting the other Casey Anthony.

"After the verdict that day, it went crazy. It was like everybody wanted to know and wanted to comment on this Casey Anthony situation," he explains.

The Antidote is the Opposite
There are Three Poisons of the heart/mind: greed, hatred (often expressed as fear), and delusion. It is wise to root them out at every opportunity. It is easier to transmute or transform them into something useful than it is to rid oneself of them.

But surely if they remain, they are serving as the basis of unprofitable karma (unskillful action of mind, speech, or body). Their "antidotes" are categories of opposite states -- nongreed, nonhatred, and nondelusion. Three immediate remedies are given as:

1. letting go
2. generating compassion
3. being mindful of the present moment.

Why would one even try to avoid or abandon hatred if it is manifesting as "righteous indignation"? Surely, that justifies it and strengthens us to act in opposition!?

No, what it does is obscure the mind, cause one to act in ways that result in remorse, that bring about suffering for us (when those actions later ripen), the bring humans down to subhuman states.

Hate helps no one. And those who say it does are trying to make the best of a bad situation. Transform it, transmute it, let it go, be freed from it, free others from it -- for it will surely drag us down, and we will only realize it too late.

• A man named Casey Anthony (thegrio.com)
• What if Casey Anthony were black?
• The notion of race and coverage disparity also applies to Casey Anthony herself. Would she have been so easily acquitted if she were a Black woman?
• Prof. Boyce Watkins: Would a black Casey Anthony been exonerated? Most blacks don't think so