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So I started to do some digging around his SiteMeter stats and those of other big bloggers. My source was right. The SiteMeter numbers are indeed fishy. But the reason is far from nefarious: a design flaw in how SiteMeter counts visits that systemically overcounts unique visitors on extremely high traffic blogs like Daily Kos… by a lot. First of all, I looked at the Detail view showing the last 100 visitors. Overwhelmingly it showed visitors hitting the site only once, with a visit time of zero (you need to hit a second page for it to register any time spent). Contrasted with my traffic, with an average visit length of three minutes, this seemed highly improbable. Then it hit me: SiteMeter only accounts for the last 100 visitors individually. On a site like Daily Kos, the 100th most recent visitor could have been 15 seconds ago. If you are the 101st most recent visitor and you click on a new page, you are counted as a new unique visitor in SiteMeter’s all important count. On a normal site, this wouldn’t matter, since it’s highly unlikely you’ll stick around long enough to have 100 others show up after you. On a site with hundreds of thousands of page views a day, it’s extremely likely you will. Sure, politicians always appreciate a warm welcome when they appear on daytime TV talk shows. But the welcome House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got today on ABC's chick TV show "The View" was more than warm - it was downright steamy. Even before Pelosi walked on stage to take her seat at the round table, the show's moderator, Whoopi Goldberg, and its co-hosts - with former news anchor Barbara Walters leading the pack - started flirting with the speaker's husband, Paul, who was seated in the front row. "You wanna take a look at Nancy Pelosi's handsome husband?" Walters asked the audience. Yes, came the answer in the form of whooping and hollering. Poor guy was actually blushing. Then the show's hosts asked him how long he and Madame Speaker have been married. "Forty-four years," Mr. Pelosi managed between pained glances in the direction of a blanket, a paper bag, anything to hide under. Whoopi got the pleasure of introducing Speaker Pelosi, who she noted is the first woman speaker of the House who, somewhere along the way, managed to raise five children. But Walters was still stuck on Mr. Pelosi, unfortunately for Mr. Pelosi. And this is where a little blushing turned to a Code Red alert, four-alarm fire. Trying to shout over Whoopi and her other gabbing co-hosts and excited audience members, Barbara turned to Guest Pelosi and said she has heard Whoopi say before that she'd "do Paul Newman." "And I think she'd like to do your husband as well," Walters deadpanned in that quintessential accent that made her the subject of late-night lampooning over the decades. Of course, Whoopi being Whoopi, she couldn't let that one go, which is where the speaker begins blushing. Yes, Whoopi implicitly acknowledged, she'd like to do Mr. Pelosi - but she might take his wife while she's at it. "I would do her as well. But we should wait on that because you're still in office, I don't want to cause a problem." Oh dear, would this were not live TV. As you might expect, Speaker Pelosi remained silent underneath her signature permanent smile. And her press office later remained predictably mum on the specter of Whoopi-on-Speaker action. "She enjoyed being on the show," Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly told us via email. "It was a fun chance to talk to (primarily) women around the country about what Democrats are doing in Congress." In the eyes of religious Muslims, Western culture is the height of decadence. They do not refer to the USA as "the Great Satan" because of our military power, but rather because they find Western popular culture to be a disgraceful affront to nearly every value that they hold sacred. They see their culture threatened by the West's great pursuit of the false gods of wealth and celebrity status, sexual liberation and hedonism. The curious paradox is that the Hollywood idiots who rail the loudest against GWB are in fact a large part of the problem. They will also be the first to get beheaded when the Taliban takes over. Labels: decline and fall of Western civilization, politicians behaving badly Labels: gun history Some of the most unlikely attendees of Sunday's kinky leather fetish festival were under four feet tall. Two-year-olds Zola and Veronica Kruschel waddled through Folsom Street Fair amidst strangers in fishnets and leather crotch pouches, semi and fully nude men. The twin girls who were also dressed for the event wore identical lace blouses, floral bonnets and black leather collars purchased from a pet store. Fathers Gary Beuschel and John Kruse watched over them closely. They were proud to show the twins off. "They will see more than the kids with moms and dads in Iowa," said Beuschel, who wanted to expose his children to San Francisco's diverse community. "Every parent has to decide for themselves what is right for them. And I respect that. And we decided that this is right for our children." Beuschel and his girls were at the 22nd Folsom Street Fair, an annual leather event in San Francisco's South of Market district, which showcased outrageous costumes, fetish attire, and a community obsessed with bondage, whipping, and spanking. Event organizers said that parents are responsible in determining whether the fair was suitable for kids. However, some people said children should not be allowed inside. "I don't think that a 6-year-old can understand that S&M is about trust," said Quincey Justman, a 28-year-old graduate student from the University of California San Francisco. "Showing a kid a bunch of adults hitting each other would be damaging." As for Dylan Middlebrooks, it was his sixth year at the leather fair. He is 10 years old. "It's pretty nasty because a lot of people here are naked," said Middlebrooks, who was there with his mother. Organizers said that they gave families ample warning. Some fairgoers said that it was inappropriate to have children at the event. "Why do (these people) bring kids here? This is a leather fair for god's sake," said Bahran Aliassa, who was masturbating in public. He has been doing it annually for the past six years. Father of two, John Kruse said it is an educational experience for children. He said there were conservative parents against having kids at the event. "Those are the same close-minded people who think we shouldn't have children to begin with," he said. Labels: homosexuality Labels: gun history Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: ACLU, child sexual abuse Michigan's self-defense act will be a year old Monday. The law allows people to use deadly force, with no duty to retreat, if they reasonably think they face imminent death, great bodily harm or sexual assault. They can use deadly force anywhere they have a legal right to be. The legislation, promoted by gun-rights activists, clarified when a person can use deadly force in self-defense during break-ins, carjackings and other potentially violent crimes -- even in incidents away from the person's home. Such was apparently the case Thursday night in Detroit. One week after a fatal carjacking in Hamtramck, an 18-year-old would-be carjacker was killed when his potential victim opened fire. Police said Michael Evans of Detroit brandished a handgun as he approached a 36-year-old man from Troy as he got into his vehicle after having dinner with friends. The Troy man used his registered handgun to shoot Evans in apparent self-defense. The shooting, which occurred in front of Detroit Police headquarters at 1300 Beaubien, remains under investigation, but prosecutors likely won't charge the unidentified Troy man if his version of events checks out. And in May, a 53-year-old Detroit man fatally fired his gun to protect his car from being stolen at a Detroit car wash. He, too, had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The botched carjacking on Grand River and Prevost came after a string of robberies in Detroit on Thursday, which police said were committed by Charles Parker Jr. and four others ranging in age from 16 to 20. Parker brandished an unloaded handgun in a robbery attempt before a man shot and killed him. After the shooting, police questioned the 53-year-old man and released him, noting that he had a valid concealed-weapons permit. Concealed-weapons permits rose by nearly 1,000 in Wayne County -- where much of the region's crime is concentrated -- between 2004-05 and 2005-06. Permits issued during the same time period dropped by about 1,000 in Macomb County and more than 2,000 in Oakland County, according to state records. Law enforcement officials said they're not reading much into the statistics. Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel said he rarely sees abuse of concealed-weapons laws. "Of course, you're going to get a case once in a while where someone's out waving a gun or something," he said. "But overall, most people are responsible." Labels: gun self-defense Labels: Islamofascism, terrorism Labels: poverty Labels: deinstitutionalization
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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
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THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
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Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
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A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
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Gone To Ohio
Headed off to speak at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Cincinnati. Back Sunday late. I would have taken my notebook to blog--but it is still broken!
How Many Visitors?
I used to be very heartbroken about how few people read my blog--I was getting a real inferiority complex that I average about 1000 to 1100 visitors a day, while Instapundit averages 200,000 visitors a day. Is Instapundit 200x more interesting? Or are there really 200x more libertarians than conservatives?
Patrick Ruffini has a very useful discussion of how the traffic statistics for Dailykos (the hard left blog that increasingly runs the Democratic Party--or at least gives the impression that it does) are grossly inflated:
Why Didn't Nancy Pelosi Just Walk Out?
The Democrats keep trying to claim that they aren't really the party of sexual depravity--so why did Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stick around after this start?
One of the comments on the article quoted above exaggerates the reason that Islamofascists hate us--but there's a little truth to this, and it is part of why the Democratic Party is never going to get much support from people with some self-discipline:Islamic fundamentalists don't hate America because of George W Bush. They hate America because of celebrities such as Britney Spears, 50-cent, Madonna and Whoopi Goldberg.
There was a time, not that many years ago, when this kind of banter on live television would have been the end of someone's contract--and perhaps the end of that person's career. There was also a time when a politician would have at least pretended disgust, and walked off the show. American culture is in serious decline.
Books & Movies
New addition to the website: "Books & Movies," Shotgun News, October 1, 2007, pp. 30-32, on the popular magazine articles page. This article contains short reviews of John Lott's Freedomnomics: Why The Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t, Kristin A. Goss’ Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America (Princeton University Press, 2007). In addition, I have some comments about “Guns of the Revolution” episode of the Tales of the Gun video series, and David T. Hardy's In Search of the Second Amendment.
A Whole New Definition of "Family Time"
This part is not exactly news--this is from two years ago--but it really does make you wonder what San Francisco Child Protective Services does. From the September 29, 2005 San Francisco Xpress:
And here's my favorite quote from the article:
I have never been comfortable with homosexuals adopting, but I at least acknowledge that for some kids, it is probably better than being in foster care. But Mr. Kruse is giving me strong reason to rethink that.
Michelle Malkin reminds us that Miller Lite is one fo the proud sponsors of this event.
I was for a long time prepared to consider the possibility that homosexuality wasn't really so different from heterosexuality. But the open, public promotion of sadomasochism--and that this event is not in any way limited to adults--is a pretty clear indication that there's something pretty sick about a movement that is prepared to welcome this bunch.
I can intellectually understand the idea that a man might fall in love with another man, or a woman with another woman. I can intellectually understand the idea that this might be expressed sexually. But pain, suffering, violence as an expression of sexual excitement? You can find heterosexual sadomasochists, of course--but heterosexual society doesn't glorify or excuse it.
I'll Be On The Radio in Twin Falls Wednesday
From 8:30 to 9:00 AM, on KLIX 1310 AM.
Get Real
I blogged in July about pro-lifers threatening to sit out the 2008 election if Giuliani wins the nomination, and why this is a very, very bad idea. I don't want Giuliani as the nominee. I don't trust him. I don't expect social conservatives to be enthusiastic about him if he gets the nomination. But this increasing talk about supporting a third party candidate if Giuliani is the nominee is just madness.
I keep pointing out: the Supreme Court is the real issue. President Giuliani, even if you don't believe his current talk about appointing strict constructionists, is likely to appoint a mixture of moderate, libertarian, and conservative Republicans to the federal courts, including the Supreme Court. President Clinton will appoint what?
Over at Slublog is this rather important list:Justice John Paul Stevens is 87.
As the Anchoress points out:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 74.
Justice Anthony Kennedy is 71.
Justice Antonin Scalia is 71.
Justice Stephen Breyer is 69.
Justice David Souter is 68.The third-party pipe-dreamers will once again make the Clinton tag team victorious. And with a Supreme Court likely to need three quick replacements in '09, the third party folks will watch as the court becomes a permanent 5-4 liberal majority activist court - for decades. Decades, folks. The America you think you’re going to “preserve” with your third party candidate may become unrecognizable in a very short time. The Roe v Wade you think you’re going to reverse with your unelectable third candidate will seem almost quaint when compared with the "compassionate" euthanasia and the "practical, community-serving, environment saving" limitations on life you'll be watching get handed down as law by an activist court determined to see the Constitution as a "living" and flexible document.
I understand that there's a lot of rage about abortion. But guaranteeing a Democratic victory in 2008, in the hopes that the Republican Party will start to listen to social conservatives is really, really foolish. You might get a social conservative Republican nominee in 2012--but so what? The Supreme Court will be fully stacked with liberals who will make social conservatives wish for the return of Sandra Day O'Connor.
I'm hoping that a lot of this talk about supporting a third party candidate is just an attempt to threaten Republicans into not backing Giuliani, and that if Giuliani wins the nomination, everyone will sulk for a while and face reality. But I am rather fearful that this is not the case.
There are not enough conservatives to win a national election. Some people want to imagine that there are, but they are grossly mistaken. Those who want to disagree might want to look at this Barna Group report. Now, there are probably a lot of social conservatives who don't have what the Barna Group study considers a "Biblical worldview." But if only 4% of Americans have a "Biblical worldview," it seems unlikely that the number of of people in America is large enough to elect a candidate whose primary reason for being is that he is a social conservative.
Imagine Stephen Reinhardt on the Supreme Court--the 9th Circuit judge who decided that speech that offends homosexuals isn't constitutionally protected. That's what helping Clinton get elected will do for us.
UPDATE: I received a variety of responses. Several said, "If we accept someone like Giuliani, why will the Republican Party ever listen to us?" I understand that concern. But as another reader pointed out, "If social conservatives walk away from the Republican nominee, why will the rest of the party ever trust them?"
These are both real serious perspectives. If we don't demand a conservative Republican nominee, we won't ever get one. But if we aren't prepared to vote for a Republican over a Democrat, why should we expect the libertarian wing of the Republican Party to support a social conservative nominee in the future?
Obvious solution: pick someone that is acceptable to a broad swath of the party, and a broad swath of the American voters, like Fred Thompson.
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, We'll Call You, Tomorrow
The continuing tragedy of my broken notebook. Friday, customer support said that the case manager (who is two levels up from the phone techs) would call me back--certainly by Monday.
Monday came. I called. The case manager will call me back that day.
Tuesday came. I called. The case manager was busy. He will call me tomorrow.
I have heard from a lot of people who swear that they will never buy another HP because of their customer support. I am now on nine days with a notebook that doesn't work--and I bought the Express Repair service agreement. What would the Standard Repair speed be?
I emailed the VP of Customer Support for HP, both describing the severity of the problem (including sharing a part number between incompatible parts), and suggesting some methods of reducing costs and improving customer support. (There are some dreadfully inefficient aspects to how their support system works that are obvious from the outside.) I haven't heard back from him. Perhaps he is too busy trying to get his HP notebook repaired.
The American Elite
A while back, it was a former ACLU official pleading guilty to trying to buy child rape videos. Now it's a CBS producer trying to trade football tickets for sex with an 11 year old:Daniel Barron, 56, was arrested and charged with solicitation to commit sexual battery on a child under the age of 12 Saturday.
What's with the American elite? Are they really the lowest scum of the planet?
Police said Barron, a CBS sports television producer, chatted on the Internet with an undercover detective who was posing as a father willing to let Barron have sex with his 11-year-old daughter as well as sleep nude with her in exchange for tickets to the Miami Dolphins football game Sunday.
According to a police report, Barron told the undercover officer that he was looking forward to meeting the daughter, allegedly telling the detective, "I will be very gentle with her."
St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara said that Barron was arrested when he went to meet the people he thought would be the father and daughter in the parking lot of a Ft. Lauderdale hotel on Saturday.
Is Hell Freezing Over?
Or so asks a commenter at the Detroit Free Press website after two pro-gun articles in two days. From the September 30, 2007 Detroit Free Press:
"The Surge Won't Work"
Remember when Democrats were insisting that it couldn't work, and wouldn't work? From September 30, 2007 AFP:US military losses in Iraq for September stood at 70 on Sunday, the lowest monthly figure since July last year, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.
As much as I admire Bush's often stubborn refusal to bend to popular sentiment, there's sometimes a heavy price to pay for that refusal--and the unwillingness to treat Iraq like an occupied country turns out to be one of those prices.
The figure also marks the fourth consecutive drop in the monthly death toll following a high of 121 in May. June saw 93 deaths, July 82 and August 79. The monthly toll in July 2006 was 53.
Two US soldiers were killed on Saturday in separate incidents, pushing the overall toll of American losses since the March 2003 invasion to 3,801.
A surge in US troop numbers saw an extra 28,500 personnel deployed from mid-February, mainly in Baghdad and the neighbouring province of Anbar, although commanders said most were not in combat positions until May.
US commanders say the strategy is starting to work and that levels of violence are dropping, allowing for a possible drawdown of the 160,000 or so troops now deployed.
"The trend is certainly in the right direction," US military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox told a press conference in Baghdad.
"The surge unquestionably is what has been the catalyst that has created the opportunity to have more forces operating in more places at the same time and to deny Al-Qaeda and the extremists safe-haven and to take away sanctuaries."
It's easy to show our good our 20/20 hindsight is--and as I have acknowledged, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's decision to keep the number of troops low in Iraq was logical. It just didn't work. I wonder how differently this might have worked out if in September of 2001 President Bush had asked:
1. For an immediate enlargement of the armed forces to a war footing--perhaps adding several hundred thousand men.
2. When we invaded Iraq, put 300,000 or 400,000 soldiers in place. We could have sealed the borders, and prevented much of the al-Qaeda and Iranian infiltration.
3. With this many troops, it is possible that the bloody fighting that took place would simply not have gone very far--and with the enhanced stability, perhaps the Iraqi government would have been able to take charge--and we could have been either out, or with just a few garrisons there by now.
There are two very important points about all this:
1. Democracies aren't very good at fighting prolonged wars. Public sentiment against the costs in lives and money add up--and completely despicable sorts start looking for a way to gain political advantage by attacking the war. I don't mean legitimate criticism of how it is being fought, but the dishonest trash that a number of Democrats who supported the war started spreading about when they saw a chance to get control of Congress back. This means that a democracy needs to win quickly.
2. The U.S. has one enormous advantage when it comes to fighting a war: a large military, lots of material resources, and the ability to get them into position very quickly. One of the mistakes of Vietnam (and there were many, including the decision to fight that war) was that we escalated our troops slowly enough that the Soviet Union was able to match its level of support to North Vietnam. I find myself wondering if we had moved 540,000 men into Vietnam in two or three months--instead of taking several years--might have broken the ability of the Soviet Union to keep up in providing ammunition and supplies.
UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has some graphs showing that it isn't just U.S. military deaths that are falling, and links to this October 1, 2007 BBC report:Iraq violent death rates 'plunge'
The number of Iraqi civilians killed per month in bombings and shootings has fallen to the lowest level this year, the Iraqi government says.
In September, 884 civilians were killed by violence, less than half the figure for August, the government said.
The BBC's Jon Brain in Baghdad says the figures suggest the so-called surge involving 30,000 extra US troops is having some success.
Strange Notion of Poverty
Fairfax County, Virginia, has public housing for those who are too poor to afford to live in unsubsidized housing. But it seems to be a rather strange notion of poverty at work, according to this September 30, 2007 Washington Post article:Hundreds of families living in housing subsidized by Fairfax County taxpayers exceed income caps designed to ensure that only the neediest receive assistance, a review of county records shows.
I am sympathetic to governmental attempts to help the poor. But what happens when "the poor" include households making more than four times the national average ($46,326 per year in 2005)?
In the most extreme cases, Fairfax is underwriting rents for families making well into six figures: One household getting help makes more than $216,000 a year; another, $184,000. Dozens of others -- making $60,000, $70,000, $90,000 -- exceed eligibility caps. And they do so with the tacit approval of county housing administrators, who do little to encourage occupants to move on when their fortunes improve.
These tenants live in housing intended for families at the bottom of the county's economic spectrum. They are in the federally subsidized public housing program, the Fairfax rental program and the county's senior housing program. The county's Department of Housing and Community Development will spend about $4.5 million this year running these programs.
The rest of the article goes on to say that you know, housing is really expensive in Fairfax County, and that's part of why people with six figure incomes aren't moving out of government subsidized housing. But I think there are some people who have good reasons to be upset about this:
1. People who are struggling--without government subsidies--to make house payments on $40,000 a year household incomes in much of the United States.
2. People who are struggling to put food on the table or provide health care for their children on $15,000 a year in much of the United States.
When government generosity for "the poor" is being funneled into six figure income households, it discredits the notion of governmental help to the poor.
BidPay vs. PayPal?
A friend mentioned that PayPal was antigun--and sure enough, they are:Q What types of firearms related items does PayPal prohibit?
Now, if PayPal was in the shipping business, I could understand their concern about liability. But they are only in the business of processing funds transfers. This would be the equivalent of the U.S. Post Office refusing to deliver a check to pay for gun parts that are being shipped in accordance with all applicable laws. There are a lot of completely lawful transactions that PayPal is saying it will not allow to be done through them.
A PayPal prohibits all account holders from buying or selling any type of firearm and certain firearm parts and ammunition. PayPal may allow certain U.S. merchants to sell items addressed by this policy if they have been approved by PayPal and can ensure transactions and shipments comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
Firearms – Include all rifles, shotguns, and handguns, whether they are intended for use in sporting, as collectibles, or as curio and relic firearms. These items are prohibited regardless of their present working order.
Firearm parts - Include, but are not limited to, receivers and frames, silencers, kits designed to convert a firearm to automatic firing capability, high capacity magazines, multi-burst trigger activators, and camouflaging firearm containers.
I've been using PayPal for processing ScopeRoller transactions for some time--but I am thinking seriously of switching to BidPay instead, which doesn't have this antigun rule. Does anyone have experience using BidPay as either seller or buyer?
Mental Illness & Creativity
It has long been noticed that creativity, intelligence, and mental illness often go together. Think of Isaac Newton, who appears to have struggled with with bipolar disorder--and whose creative days largely ended after a nervous breakdown. Or the mathematician John Nash. Or Vincent Van Gogh.
A study published several years ago suggests that this is not coincidence, described in the October 1, 2003 Science Daily:The study in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says the brains of creative people appear to be more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment. Other people's brains might shut out this same information through a process called "latent inhibition" - defined as an animal's unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs. Through psychological testing, the researchers showed that creative individuals are much more likely to have low levels of latent inhibition.
This is not surprising to me at all. Schizophrenia involves false information reaching the brain--apparently because the nervous system misrepresents various stimuli. It would not be surprising if creativity and intelligence benefit from having lots of data--but what causes schizophrenia might be that whatever biochemistry causes "lots of data" is not radically removed from "lots of data, much of it false."
"This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment," says co-author and U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson. "The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though that object is much more complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities."
Previously, scientists have associated failure to screen out stimuli with psychosis. However, Peterson and his co-researchers - lead author and psychology lecturer Shelley Carson of Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard PhD candidate Daniel Higgins - hypothesized that it might also contribute to original thinking, especially when combined with high IQ. They administered tests of latent inhibition to Harvard undergraduates. Those classified as eminent creative achievers - participants under age 21 who reported unusually high scores in a single area of creative achievement - were seven times more likely to have low latent inhibition scores.
The authors hypothesize that latent inhibition may be positive when combined with high intelligence and good working memory - the capacity to think about many things at once - but negative otherwise. Peterson states: "If you are open to new information, new ideas, you better be able to intelligently and carefully edit and choose. If you have 50 ideas, only two or three are likely to be good. You have to be able to discriminate or you'll get swamped."
"Scientists have wondered for a long time why madness and creativity seem linked," says Carson. "It appears likely that low levels of latent inhibition and exceptional flexibility in thought might predispose to mental illness under some conditions and to creative accomplishment under others."
For example, during the early stages of diseases such as schizophrenia, which are often accompanied by feelings of deep insight, mystical knowledge and religious experience, chemical changes take place in which latent inhibition disappears.
What I am not too happy with is how the article ends:"We are very excited by the results of these studies," says Peterson. "It appears that we have not only identified one of the biological bases of creativity but have moved towards cracking an age-old mystery: the relationship between genius, madness and the doors of perception."
The Doors of Perception was a book by Aldous Huxley published in 1954 that argued that we are all victims of limited senses, and that psychedlic drugs opened us up to the universal consciousness that was out there, by opening the doors of perception. Unfortunately, psychdelic drugs would appear to be more like a kaleidoscope--something that gives pretty colors, but distorts reality, instead of showing us a more true reality.
