The biggest colossal squid ever caught weighs over 1000 pounds and measures almost 30 feet long.

In February, 2007, a Sanford seafood company fishing vessel, the San Aspiring, caught a toothfish on a long line while fishing in the freezing Ross Sea of the Antarctic. When the crew brought the toothfish to the surface, they realized they’d also caught a colossal squid. The squid wouldn’t let go of the toothfish, so they decided to catch the squid, too.

After hauling the squid aboard, the crew froze it in a cubic meter of water and brought it to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Currently, Marine biologists at the museum are in the process of thawing the creature in order to learn more about the species.

Besides measuring the largest eyeballs ever seen (about the size of a beach ball), the team has measured the colossal squid’s lower beak at 40 centimeters across.

Since a 49 centimeter squid’s beak was previously found in the stomach of a sperm whale — and since the total squid size to beak size ratio is incremental, not linear — scientists believe there are still colossal squid in the ocean that are a great deal bigger.

The colossal squid may hold another record, too: first colossal squid to have its own blog. To keep up with the thawing process and read the latest findings, visit: Colossal Squid Te Papa’s Blog.

Read more Amazing, Orgasmic, and Fantastic Facts: Amasnic Fact Off Archive.

Read More: giant squid, New Zealand

During the 1980s, the CIA was known as the Cocaine Import Agency for good reason: the Civilian Intelligence Agency that was chartered to collect and analyze information about foreign governments to protect America was instead collecting tons of cocaine and importing it to America.

Just as many people still refuse to believe the CIA killed JFK despite the confessions of those involved, many die-hard patriots still refuse to believe their own government — while it advised our children to “Just Say No” and fought for stiffer sentences for cocaine traffickers — was the biggest cocaine trafficker of all, despite the fact that it’s in the public record.

Before delving further in to the hypocrisy, let’s put the rumor to rest that the CIA did NOT import cocaine. Here’s a quick 60 Minutes video from 1993 of Ex-DEA head, Robert C. Bonner, flat out admitting that the CIA imported a ton of cocaine: Ex-DEA Head Admits CIA Imported a ton of Cocaine.

Why Did the CIA Import Cocaine?

During the 1980s, the Reagan administration was hell-bent on funding insurgents — I mean freedom fighters — to help them overthrow the Republic of Nicaragua. This involved working through Israel to sell weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages, despite Reagan’s public claim that, as a matter of principle, the U.S. didn’t deal with terrorist countries like Iran.

Then, the National Security Agency’s own Lieutenant Colonel Oliver “Ollie” North got involved and started diverting some of the weapons sale profits to the insurgents (Contras, freedom fighters, whatever…) in Nicaragua.

But the U.S. Government soon discovered that selling anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran just didn’t produce enough cold hard cash to fund its favorite insurgents. And, when Congress wouldn’t send them a bigger slice of Americans’ tax payments, the CIA decided to get the money from Americans another way: they’d sell them cocaine!

1980s Crack Epidemic

Before long, the State Department was paying over $800,000 to four companies owned and operated by narcotics traffickers, which were assuring the Contras had all the cash, weapons, planes, pilots, and air supply services they needed to supply an exploding American demand for cocaine. And soon, the coke and weapons were flowing into L.A. via super dealers like “Freeway” Ricky Ross.

Between 1984 and 1986, crack houses popped up in every major U.S. city, and America saw a huge surge in crack addiction, homelessness, murder, theft, and robbery.

But, the upshot was that all that CIA cocaine combined with new get-tough, long-term prison sentencing laws created a boom time for the Prison-Industrial Complex.

And the rest of America got to watch Miami Vice.

God bless the CIA.

Read More: war on drugs, CIA, Iran Contra Affair, Prison-Industrial Complex, 1980s, crack epidemic, Miami Vice

As mentioned in the previous post, brain experts are beginning to realize the right side of most normal people’s brains harbors genius, savant-like abilities. But, you were born with two very impressive brain hemispheres, and your left side is important too.

Let’s use George W. Bush as an example. To the right we see Bush, with both sides of his brain intact.

In this picture, Bush’s left side brain is controlling the right side of his face, and his right side brain controls the left side of his face. Your brain hemispheres control the opposite side of your face and body, too.

So, what would Bush be like if he only had a wonderful savant-like super talented right side brain, and vice versa?

The Godlike Right Brain

Meet Bush with two right side brains (actually, the right-brain controlled left side of his face and its mirror image.)

The right side brain is like God. When freed from the left hemisphere, it has almost miraculous savant-like abilities. It’s exceptional at imagining and creating (In the beginning…), processing spatial information (separating light from dark, water from land…), and seeing the big picture when faced with many shapes and sizes and complex interrelationships (all the little children of the world…)

And like God (I AM), the right side brain is always living in the present.

The down side is that Mr. Right Side Brain is pretty scatterbrained ( it might show up as a burning bush one day, a cloud the next, or just disappear and leave a crowd wandering in the desert for 40 years…) It stinks at organization, and it’s horrible at explaining itself verbally (Abraham, kill your son Isaac…but wait! No, not really…)

Frankly, the right side brain would rather keep dreaming big dreams and leave the details up to others (I gave you ten big ones on tablets; somebody else can write the New Testament…)

The Egocentric Left Brain

Now, meet Bush with two left side brains (the right side of his face, doubled.)

I’m not the first to suggest the left side brain is home of the ego. It’s even jealous of the right side brain, and proud of its own talent for language and verbal expression. If the right side brain paints a picture, the left side brain immediately slaps a name on it.

The left side brain is orderly, literal, articulate, and to the point. It tends to see everything in a linear way, past or future, black and white, good and evil, with no gray areas in between.

The down side? The egocentric left side brain doesn’t understand emotions. Emotions don’t make sense. Your puppy died? So, get another one. Problem solved. Now, back to balancing the checkbook…

The Perfect Human Brain

A lot of people say the dissident teacher Jesus was as close to a perfect human as anybody has ever come. Jesus supposedly attained Christ Consciousness. Jesus said he was the son of God, and the son of man. Maybe he was trying to tell us that he used both the godlike right and the egocentric left sides of his brain. Equally.

Perhaps to thrive in the world, we need to strike a balance between our godlike and egocentric brain halves.

Balancing Your Left and Right Side Brain

Most everybody has a dominant side of the brain. (Take this quiz to find out which side of your brain is dominant.)

Over 90% of Americans have the same dominant side of the brain. Care to guess which side it is? Here’s a clue: The left side of the brain is used for reading, writing, and basic arithmetic.

Add to this the fact that programs like No Child Left Behind require schools to spend even more time teaching Reading and Math — at the expense of already little-taught right-brain subjects like Art and Music — and the future culture of this country is looking even more egocentric brain imbalanced. If you think everybody is either with us or against us now, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

But there is something you can do about it; you can help restore balance, and you can start with your own brain.

Your left and right brain hemispheres are connected by a bridge called the corpus callosum. Like a muscle, it can be exercised and strengthened until it is physically larger, which will allow better communication and cooperation between your egocentric left brain and your godlike right brain. (If it’s any encouragement, Albert Einstein’s brain had a huge corpus callosum.)

Try this exercise on for size: visual brain-balancing exercise.

Look at the circles above. Cross your eyes until you see the third circle between the blue and red one. When your left brain is dominant, you’ll see the blue circle/verticle line. When your right brain is dominant, you’ll see the red circle/horizontal line.

Try to focus your eyes so that you see a cross, which means you’re seeing both circles equally, which means you’re using both sides of your brain at the same time, which not only induces a very pleasant meditative state, but also grows your corpus callosum by leaps and bounds.

Alternating Left and Right Brain Dominance

Another interesting tidbit is that your left and right side brains switch dominance all the time, every 90 minutes or so on average, but at times as often as every few seconds.

Yogis say you can tell which side of your brain is currently dominant: if you’re breathing more through your left nostril, it’s the right side, and vice versa. Because they tend to feel more peaceful and connected with the world when their right side brain is dominant, yogis practice breathing through their left nostril to help turn on their right side brain.

Nose Peace. Who’d a thunk it? ;-)

Read More: left side brain, right side brain, hemispheric dominance, corpus callosum, George W. Bush

Savant syndrome occurs when a person with below normal intelligence displays an incredible ability in a specific area — like, for instance, if George W. Bush had extraordinary musical, mathematical, or artistic talent. ;-)

One thing to note about the super abilities of savants: they are gifts usually associated with the right side of the brain.

The Divine Right Side Brain

People with savant syndrome seem to have right-side brain abilities on steroids.

Savants may be able to mentally double 8,388,628 up to 24 times within a few seconds, paint amazingly accurate cityscapes from photographic memory, or sit down at a piano and play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 after only one listen.

Until recently, savant syndrome was thought to occur due to some sort of injury to the left side brain — occurring either inside the womb, or shortly after birth — which caused the right side brain to overcompensate.

But more recently, scientists have pondered whether we all have unconscious right side brain super abilities.

Allan Snyder, award-winning physicist and director of the Center for the Mind at the University of Sydney, says everybody has the innate capacity for savantlike skills:

Even something as simple as seeing requires phenomenally complex information processing.

When a person looks at an object, for example, the brain immediately estimates an object’s distance by calculating the subtle differences between the two images on each retina (computers programmed to do this require extreme memory and speed). During the process of face recognition, the brain analyzes countless details, such as the texture of skin and the shape of the eyes, jawbone, and lips. Most people are not aware of these calculations.

In savants the top layer of mental processing — conceptual thinking, making conclusions — is somehow stripped away. Without it, savants can access a startling capacity for recalling endless detail or for performing lightning-quick calculations.

This theory has been bolstered by a growing number of cases in which normal people suddenly acquire savant-like super talents after a head injury, after the onset of frontotemporal dementia in old age, and also, sometimes during deep hypnosis.

The Right Side Brain Experience of Jill Bolte Taylor

Brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor got the opportunity to experience the full power of the right side brain firsthand. One morning, when a stroke disabled her left side brain, she experienced the world according to her right side brain.

After years of rehabilitation, Taylor was able to tell the world about her experience:

TEDTalks Video: Jill Bolte Taylor describes what it’s like to lose your left side brain.

Daniel Tammet: The Rosetta Stone of Brain Research

Daniel Tammet is a savant gifted with super mathematical and natural language abilities. He’s most famous for reciting pi from memory to 22,514 digits, and for learning Icelandic in a week. He’s also fluent in English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Estonian, Welsh and Esperanto.

There are fewer than 50 prodigious savants in the world, and unlike the rest of them, Tammet has no obvious mental disability. Because his language skills are functioning to a high degree, he can describe his own savant thought processes, which makes him a scientific Rosetta Stone for brain researchers.

Tammet explains that he “experiences” numbers, each with its own unique shape, color, and texture, and emotion. When solving math problems, he doesn’t consciously work out the answers, but sees the answers appear, emerging from mutating, multiple-sensory landscapes.

In 2005, Tammet was the subject of an engrossing UK documentary, well worth the watch:

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (1/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (2/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (3/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (4/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (5/5)

Update: Don’t miss the next post on Achieving Left and Right Brain Balance.

Read More: autistic, savant, savant syndrome, left side brain, right side brain, Jill Bolte Taylor, Daniel Tammet

Yesterday, while spreading democracy-tipped bombs around the world, House Republicans blocked a bill designed to help states convert to verifiable paper ballot voting systems.

Paper ballot voting systems produce a paper trail, so that an election can be recounted and verified, unlike the 2004 election, which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has clearly shown was stolen.

Safe Elections Cost Too Much

After spending millions of dollars for easily hacked paperless touch-screen machines, and after spending almost $330 million in recent years to ensure honest elections in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and after losing track of billions of dollars in the Pentagon year after year after year…what is the excuse of Republicans for not helping make sure the election of the leader of the free world is a fair and legitimate election?

The Republicans blocked the bill because, they said, it would cost too much. Maybe even as much as $685 million!

Keep in mind that the price tag on a single B2 Stealth Bomber exceeds a billion dollars. We can’t spend half that towards having a fair election in the USA?

America Needs Verifiable Elections

New Jersey Representative Rush Holt, the sponsor of the bill, had this to say:

I’d like to ask the opponents how much spending is too much to have verifiable elections in the United States. I note that many people who opposed this legislation supported spending almost $330 million in recent years to provide election assistance in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. I would have hoped those who supported efforts to export democracy abroad would be equally committed to strengthening democracy here at home.

I don’t buy the “costs too much” excuse. Republicans have virtually broken the bank and looted the country for the past 8 years. They don’t care about the money, and neither do the Democrats, for that matter.

The bottom line is that many Congresspersons do not want Americans to be able to verify their elections.

Why is that?

I’ve got several possible answers, forming and floating around in my head…none of them very comforting.

Read More: 2008 election, election, elections, paper ballots, democracy, Diebold, Congress