What is in "A Name"?

[dlbk]

I agree! Smells as well as sounds! Whenever I hear an old 70s or 60s tune, I remember what I was doing at a particular moment way back then like it was yesterday. Funny how that works. As for the door...well...if If I could read and type faster,the paint wouldn't have dried so fast! Ever try smoothing over semi-dry oil based paint? Yuck. I ended up taking the putty knife, scraping off what I had done before my 'little break', and repainted. Looks OK this morning. Good thing there's not a lot of light in that area!

Deb

[Emily]

Ofilia -- a college student in Berkeley in the '70s discovering the interesting effects of herbs? I'm so surprised . . . not.

So many people seem to assume that's natural or herbal is automatically safe and healthy. One of my friends likes to remind them that hemlock is natural . . .

[rightbrainlynne]

Thanks for posting that Deb!

lynne

[Vince]

I grew up in northern Virginia where sassafras trees (shrubs) were common. We often dug the roots and made tea with them and never suffered any harmful effects. As you pointed out, the root-beer industry used the stuff from natural sources nearly forever and I doubt that anyone suffered. In fact, since living in California, I have missed the inability to go out into the forest and find this tree and make use of it. But then, we have Yerba Buena here and Virginia doesn't, and I use that quite often as I have it in abundance.

BTW, Nightshade is also a "natural" substance, and so are arsenic, asbestos, boron, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and a host of other things. Being "natural" does not mean the same as "harmless".

Vince

[Emily]

ricin, curare, strychnine, fugu . . .

[Ofilia_Cinta]

Okay, Emily, What language IS THAT !? It is totally over my head.

Ofilia

[dlbk]

Ofilia - I think they're all natural substances that can be poisonous. Strychnine, for example, is an alkaloid extract obtained from the dried ripe seeds of Strychnos nux vomica, a small tree of the East Indies. In the past strychnine has been used as an antiseptic, stomach tonic, circulatory stimulant, central nervous system stimulant, and as a medication for the relief of constipation. It's a major homeopathic remedy - used especially for complaints due to overindulgence in food, drink, stimulants of all sorts, or from mental overwork, but best known as a hangover remedy. Nux vomica is also known as poison nut plant.
Ricin has been in the news of late, regarding biological terrorism, and curare grows as a vine in S.America and has been used to tip poison arrows. Not sure what fugu is??

Deb

[Karen]

Ricin is the poison (I believe) found in the Castor Oil plant. Fugu is the fish that is a delicacy in Japan and has some small part that contains a fatal poison. The chef's have to be licensed, but accidents still happen. It's hard for me to believe that it's delectibility is worth the risk. Anybody ever taste it here? (Or does it just taste like chicken!)

[Ofilia_Cinta]

Thanks for clearing that up for me, guys. I guess the expression, "Pick your poison", couldn't be more appropriate than with these choices, huh ?

Ofilia

[Janz]

That's what Homer Simpson ate! That fugu fish!
Remember, that inexperienced chef served him, and they didn't know if he ate the poison, and they told Homer he had 24 hours to live.

The chefs name was Akira.
That was a pretty decent episode.

Janz