I keep getting a message from Academia.edu asking me if I am the Brian Quass who wrote “Longitudinal grooves for bluff body drag reduction.” How flattering is that! It’s so tempting to take credit for writing what sounds like a ground-breaking paper in the field — whatever field that might…

a philosophical review of “A People’s History of the United States” American authors are in denial about the War on Drugs. If anyone doubts this, they should check out the populist classic by historian Howard Zinn entitled “A People’s History of the United States.” If any book might be expected…

testimony from an expert When I see doctors praising antidepressants online, it plucks my last and final nerve. I ask myself, why, in 2023, are doctors still praising a treatment protocol from the 1970s that has turned 1 in 4 American women into wards of the healthcare state? Now, the…

in response to ‘A Talking Cure for Psychosis’ by Matthew M. Kurtz, Scientific American print edition, March 2023 Dear Professor Kurtz: When we say that drugs by themselves have not solved the problem of psychosis, I think we must specify which drugs we are talking about. As you know…

REPORTERS: Mr. Moviegoer! Mr. Moviegoer! Good afternoon. I’d like to make a few comments and then I’ll take questions. As you know, I watched the 2020 movie entitled Buoyancy last night, written and directed by Roel Leijten and starring Michael Wagner as a dot-com billionaire, a certain Nicholas Hallberg…

An open letter to Roland Griffiths, Professor in the Neuropsychopharmacology of Consciousness at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Dear Professor Griffiths: As a 64-year-old depressive who could benefit from MDMA use, I am frustrated by the FDA’s hypocritical and unscientific standard for approving psychoactive drugs. They seem to think…

about the war on drugs A few years ago, I got in touch with Michael Pollan’s publicist, briefly explaining my concerns about the author’s lukewarm stance on drug legalization. I pointed out that I was a lifelong victim of the Drug War, which had turned me into an eternal patient…

At the risk of flattering myself, I have concluded that an American’s level of philosophical sophistication is in direct proportion to their ability to see through Drug War lies, for the Drug War is based on a variety of unspoken assumptions which do not stand up to logical scrutiny. That’s…

Speaking Truth to Power, AKA Uncle Joe Biden I tuned in last night to see Joseph Biden boring an all-too-polite crowd with incontrovertible generalities at the Summit of the Americas: The North American region is large and diverse, quoth Joe; the COVID crisis gave North America a disproportionate wallop, quoth Joe; the ensuing economic downturn ravaged economies throughout…