In short no, but there is one chemical that makes you feel so good you can’t help but tell the truth, which I thought was interesting since most depressed people or people with child trauma lie a lot. So I guess if you feel good you tell the truth and if you have issues then you lie. Interesting. So here is the details on the chemical used for Truth Sirum.

What does the term “truth serum” mean?
That’s a term that was used to describe the use of certain drugs, most commonly barbiturates like sodium amytal and sodium pentothal, to try to extract truthful statements from people about their past experiences.  What the term really meant was that the people who used the serum believed that it made people unable to censor themselves and they would just empty their memories into a narrative statement.

Who discovered these effects?
In the mid-1910s, Dr. Robert House was an obstetrician who noticed that the popular obstetric anesthetic drug, scopolamine, also known as twilight sleep, would put his patients into a state where they would deliver information in a way that seemed automatic.

He didn’t want to use it in interrogation, for the purpose of getting people to admit to criminal acts, so this is a quite different beginning from the association we have now. At the time, he wanted to use it to provide support for claims people made about their innocence — not their guilt.  If somebody said ‘I wasn’t at the crime, I was in the library but nobody saw me,’ then, perhaps, this would give support for the claim, because you would think they could not lie under the drug’s influence.

It was only later when other people used these drugs that they got the reputation for having the power to force people to provide information against their will.

How did they begin to be used for interrogation?
In the 1930s, there were these committees to evaluate corruption in American policing, and it first came out that police were using these drugs in interrogations to get suspects to incriminate themselves. But there’s not a lot of documentation of that.

During World War II, these drugs were used in a very different way. They were the first intravenous anesthetics and were used to treat traumatized soldiers who had lost their memories or had aphasia [loss of the ability to speak or process language due to brain injury]. Doctors found that using these drugs would make it easier for people to say what happened, and this helped them feel better.

As a result, a lot of doctors who had been in the military during the war were familiar with these drugs. Sodium amytal and pentothal were no longer just used as surgical anesthetics, although that was their most common use, but they were sometimes used for this psychiatric purpose of getting people to talk.  In most cases, the drugs were not used in interrogations, but to help people talk about their memories in psychiatric consultations.  However, some of these military doctors eventually became consultants for police forces or they did psychiatric research for the government and began exploring different ways of using these drugs for interrogation.

Do experts believe they really work?
The idea of a “truth serum” has never been widely accepted. Although there have been waves of enthusiasm for the idea of a drug that can extract information reliably, there has been even more skepticism. Ever since the 1920s, many judges, psychiatrists, and scientists have rejected the idea that there is a drug that can get memories out intact. They have claimed, instead, that it makes people feel like talking, but it also puts them in a state of extreme suggestibility: people will pick up on cues about what questioners want to hear and repeat that back. This is one of the reasons that statements made under the influence of these drugs have never, as far as I know, been accepted in an American court.

After 9/11, there were discussions in the national papers about whether it’s a good idea to interrogate suspects using these drugs. Every time there is a desperate need for information from people, you get speculation about whether these drugs are going to get that information. But you also get consistent warnings that the information may be less reliable than what you would get without the drugs. That skepticism was there right form the start 80 years ago.

A Pasadena man pleaded not guilty Monday to accusations that he tried to run down six people with his car outside of a Newport Beach bar on Labor Day after women in the group rejected his advances.

Bryan Curiel, 23, is charged with six counts of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and several counts related to driving drunk the night of Aug. 31 when prosecutors said he sped between 50 and 65 mph in the Newport Beach Pier parking lot — trying to hit six people.

According to prosecutors, Curiel and a friend were drinking at a Newport Beach bar near the pier and then went to a nearby doughnut shop. There, Curiel hit on three women who rejected him. He persisted, even as the women met three more people, two men and a woman, outside of the shop, officials said. Curiel eventually left.

About 10 minutes later and intoxicated, officials said, Curiel saw the group in the pier parking lot and charged at them in his car, hitting one of the men in the foot. Curiel drove onto the sidewalk and slammed to a stop after hitting concrete benches, police said.

Curiel remains in custody in lieu of $1 million bail and is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing Dec. 12.

This innovation is hoped to be embedded into tables and work surfaces so that as soon as a device is placed on the surface, it will be able to draw power. The technology uses magnetic fields to transmit up to 60 watts of power to a distance of up to two to three feet while only losing around 25% of the power during transmission.

A major concern of any wireless power technology is its possible effects on users. Fortunately during the demonstration the electricity was broadcast without electrocuting anyone who passed between the transmitter and the receiver. Intel’s lead researcher Josh Smith explained that, “The trick with wireless power is not that you can do it; it is that you can do it safely and efficiently.” Magnetic fields, used by Intel’s WREL technology do not affect the human body (at least as far as we currently know), unlike electric fields, which might give the user a zap.

The idea of using resonant magnetic fields to wirelessly transmit electricity was demonstrated by a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who refer to their idea as WiTricity. More recently Intel researchers joined forces with MIT to explore the phenomenon known as ”resonant induction,” and the outcome is a technology capable of transmitting power several feet away without wires.

Currently, resonant induction is used to recharge small devices such as electric toothbrushes. Future induction systems based on Intel’s technology will not be restricted to a physical touch between transmitter and receiver and will be able to transmit power over a distance of several feet with efficiency of 50 percent or more.

“In the future, your kitchen counters might do it [supply the power],” Mr. Smith said. “You’d just drop your espresso maker down on them and you would never have to plug it in.”

The new technology would initially be used to charge the battery of devices such as laptops, cameras, and cell phones, but Intel hopes to eventually eliminate the use of batteries altogether. Enderle Group analyst Rob Enderle said, “That is potentially a world changing event. This is the closest we’ve had to something being commercially available in this class. Previous wireless power systems consisted basically of firing lightning bolts from sending to receiving units.”

Intel is not the only player in the growing market of wireless power companies. Many companies are currently working on different types of wireless power technologies. Two American start-up companies, WildCharge and WiPower, have already shown simpler wireless power technologies. Intel’s next target is to design a system to recharge a laptop computer without wires.

Intel looks on this next development as a strategic move since attaching a WREL receiving antenna to a laptop would be easier than trying to implement the WREL technology into cell phones or PDAs due to their small size compared to the WREL receiver. If successful, the system would be implemented in airports, offices, and other buildings and deliver power to laptops and other mobile devices. The technology could also be built into plugged in computer components, such as monitors, to enable them to broadcast power to devices left on desks or carried into rooms.

Smith says that Intel’s wireless power system is still in an early stage of development and much research remains before it can be brought to the market. “You’d like to cut the last cord,” Smith said. “It’s great that we have wireless email and wireless internet and stuff like that but at the end of the day it would be nice to have wireless recharge as well.”

You can read more about MIT’s first test of the technology mentioned above in “Wireless Power Demonstrated,” where a 60 watt light bulb was able to be lit wirelessly from a distance of about 2 meters in mid 2007. Another wireless power technology is currently being developed by the U.S. company Fulton Innovation under the title “eCoupled Wireless Power.” While waiting for all those wireless power technologies to be developed, you can check out a new, fully operational, green plug universal adapter, which helps you power all your devices from a single adapter.

By the way Amy Winehouse is not Dead dispite recent rumors just very close.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080509161527AA7850V

Image to the left is the big brother that starts at 300k

The biggest LSA ever designed and built. So big you can sleep in it, carry bicycles, kayaks or more luggage than you’ll ever need with 6 hours of autonomy and a cabin of 152 cubic feet.

The Ecoflyer is a composite airplane with a single piston engine. The Ecoflyer is equiped per Farr 91.205, to meet day and night VFR flight.

The Ecoflyer two-seat light sport aircraft also serves as a flying motor home. Need a place to stay at your destination? Bring a sleeping bag and stretch out on the cabin’s built-in bed. Want to go bicycling or kayaking? Bring your gear along in the airplane. You can even set up a camp table inside and turn the two front seats around to create dining for four. The Ecoflyer is built in Canada by Explorer Aéronautique, the same folks who developed the much larger Private Explorer, a flying motor home designed for aerotourism. A prototype of the Ecoflyer is flying now, and you can buy your own for just $100,000. Deliveries are expected to start by late 2009. (819.536.5353, www.exploreraero.com)

First I really believe the old saying “if its not broke don’t fix it” is so key in this. Sure something might go wring so have some precautions but changing and regulating to try to solve a later issue is poor managment.

As people we have to assume allot when it comes to government. Most all policy is made behind closed doors by people we don’t even know of. At least with business, if a company for example like AOL blocks the internet and email they will get a bad rep “like AOL has now” and lose money. But the government has nothing to lose. It only takes one self righteous ignorant person with the right clout to ruin a great venue for community, entertainment, business, and learning just because of a couple issues. I really think the government needs to stay out of the internet with the exception of crime.

#6.
Belle Gunness Torches Her Way to Riches

The key to life is to turn your failures into successes. Just ask Bell Gunness, who managed to succeed despite a series of devastating fires. Granted, she started the fires, but we like to think the point still stands.

Belle Gunness emigrated from Norway to the USA in 1881. She quickly married and set up a candy store that failed to make any money. One year later it burned to the ground but, fortunately, it was insured. She used the money to buy a house in Austin. In 1898, it burned to the ground. Thankfully, it also was insured. In 1900, her husband, Max Sorenson, burned to the grou- oh, no, he died. He had, though, just taken out two insurance policies.

Belle used the money to buy a farm in La Porte, Indiana. Soon after moving in, the boat and carriage house burned to the ground. You see a pattern emerging here?

In 1902, Belle’s second husband, Peter Gunness died (when a large sausage grinding machine “accidentally” fell on him). Belle, who had the world’s most trusting insurance company, got paid on her claim for $3,000.

Needing a good man to accompany her through all of life’s troubles and mysterious fires, Belle sent advertisements to Norwegian language papers asking for a mate. Over the next two years a number of suitors turned up at Belle’s farm, took out life insurance policies, and promptly disappeared.

Finally on April 28, 1908, in the aftermath of yet another fire at the Gunness farm, police found four bodies in the basement; one adult and three children. The adult was thought to be Belle, but was hard to identify because the head was missing.

Authorities, finding this whole scene slightly suspicious, began digging up Belle’s back yard. They found the remains of 12 bodies and numerous body parts. They never found Belle’s head, despite the best efforts of her insurance company’s agents who probably just wanted to give it a check.

How Much Did She Make?

It is estimated Belle made $30,000 from the various husbands who got sucked in by the newspaper ad, and maybe as much as $250,000 overall. It sounds impressive, but considering the sheer number of bodies she left in her path, we think it works out to like, six dollars per victim.
#5.
Burke and Hare Sell Their Bodies (Well, Not Theirs)

William Burke and William Hare set out to make their money in the same fashion as any young up and coming entrepreneur living in 19th century Britain: by stealing dead bodies for dissection.

A pretty gruesome way to make a living, sure. But such was the demand for corpses (for medical students to practice on) that it was a pretty popular crime and one generally overlooked by the authorities, since the victims were already dead and all. Burke and Hare made their first buck from the trade when a tenant in Hare’s lodging house died. They took the body and sold it to Edinburgh Medical College for seven pounds.

It didn’t take long before the pair started thinking about how they could make their operation more productive. The two thought outside of the box. You know, the box people were buried in. That’s right, these savvy young lads cut out the middle man and just started killing people on their own.

“I gotta tell you, this is so much easier than digging up graves.

Over 18 months, Burke and Hare, along with their wives, killed 16 people. First they killed their tenants, then, when their supply ran out, they started luring people to the apartment.

Unfortunately for the pair, one of Hare’s tenants became suspicious after finding a dead body under a bed and alerted the police. Hare was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony against Burke. As a result Burke was hanged in 1829, his body given to medical students to dissect according the British rules of ironic punishment.

How Much Did They Make?

At the rate these guys were going, it seems like they’d have had to slaughter a whole city to make a decent living. Burke kept a diary about the murders and wrote in one entry: “July 1. Sold the Englishman for L10. Kept the whole money, for Hare’s conduct to me.”

So these jackasses killed 16 people that we know about, yet still haggled over a few bucks here and there. It almost seems like they could have, you know, just gotten jobs instead.
#4.
Marcus Licinius Crassus: Fire Fighter for Profit

Marcus Licinius Crassus was a Roman general and politician who commanded his legions around 70 BC. He’s credited with creating the first fire brigade, though he probably wasn’t thought of as highly of as FDNY since his primary motivation for putting out fires was to extort money from the property owners.

It all began when Crassus noticed the tendency of buildings in Rome to burn down, due to being built too high and close together and with large wooden support beams. To capitalize on this, he bought 500 slaves and put together a fire brigade. Then, he’d show up at the scene of the fire and make the owner a deal. It went something like this:

“Sell me your building, or I’ll let it burn down along with everything you own. I’ll give you 30 Talents.”

“Ah come on Crassus, I bought it for 72 Talents. And I added that deck!”

“20 Talents for the house pal.”

“I’ll take 80. 80 Talents.” (Noise of building collapsing in on itself)

“10 Talents bud. Time’s running out. You take it or you get nothing.”

“Yeah, I smell the fire, but I’m not even turning around until you show me some money. Tick tock.”

It was kind of like how a fire department would work under the Libertarians. Not only would Crassus buy the house that was burning down, he’d buy the neighbouring houses that were at risk of catching fire. He’d then set the slaves to work putting out the blaze and rebuild any damaged houses, to be sold later at an enormous profit.

How Much Did He Make?

Crassus eventually amassed a fortune almost equal to that of the annual income of the Roman Treasury. He accumulated over 7,100 talents, or 200 million Sestertii. We have no idea what either of those things are but we do know he’s listed as one of the 10 richest men in history.

Later Crassus went off to war in Parthia (modern day Iran). His soldiers demanded he parley with the Parthians who had offered to meet him. At the meeting Crassus was seized, tortured and had molten silver poured down his throat to sate his thirst for wealth.

And that, Mr. Obama, is why you don’t negotiate with Iran.

#3.
The People of Vernon, Florida Mutilate Themselves for Profit

Why did more than two-thirds of all loss-of-limb accident claims in the United States in the late ’50s and early ’60s come from the Florida Panhandle? Well, in the words of John J. Healy, insurance investigator, “Vernon’s second-largest occupation was watching hound dogs mating in the town square, its largest was self-mutilation for monetary gain.”

Yep, the good townsfolk of Vernon were deliberately maiming themselves in order to claim insurance policies they’d taken out on their limbs. Nearly 50 people in Vernon (population 780) had some kind of horrific “accident”.

L.W. Burdeshaw, an insurance agent, told the St. Petersburg Times in 1982 that his list of policyholders included a man who sawed off his left hand at work, a man who shot off his foot while protecting chickens, a man who lost his hand while supposedly trying to shoot a hawk, a man who somehow lost two limbs in an accident involving a rifle and a tractor, and a man who bought a policy and then, less than 12 hours later, shot off his foot while aiming at a squirrel.

Insurance agents, probably disillusioned by the whole Belle Gunness affair, were a little suspicious. Cutting your hand at work may be possible. Sawing off your entire hand at work really takes some amount of sustained effort. But that the kind of can-do attitude that marks the people of Vernon (besides a disturbing lack of symmetry).

These people either had enormous balls, or they really, really needed the fucking money.

How Much Did They Make?

No one in the town was ever convicted of fraud, and it’s not easy to find out just how much they got away with. What we know is that one farmer took out policies with 38 different companies before, in some no doubt comical accident, he lost his left foot.

Luckily, the particular day of the “accident” he happened to be driving his wife’s automatic, since if he’d been driving his own stick shift he would have needed the left foot to use the clutch. He also happened to have a tourniquet in his pocket (in case of snake bites, he insisted). He could be telling the truth, right?

For snakes?

Well, it turned out he’d taken out so much insurance that he was paying premiums that cost more than his total income. He collected more than $1 million from all the companies.

The insurance companies fought it but conceded, “it was hard to make a jury believe a man would shoot off his own foot.” Proof once again that there is good money to be made by being just a little crazier than the world thinks possible.
#2.
H.H. Holmes

You know what makes a bad combination? Medical degrees and murderous insanity.

And so we have H.H. Holmes, who graduated in medicine from the University of Michigan in 1884. He was a likable man, handsome, friendly and charming. In the late 1880s, to seek his fortune, he moved to Chicago and took a job in a pharmacy. A nice man all around, you might think. But only if you were retarded and completely skipped the rest of this article.

By 1888 Holmes had murdered his boss and stolen her drugstore (telling friends she was “in California”). The key to a good business, though, is expansion, so he bought up a vacant lot on the other side of the street and built a large hotel.

Well, it wasn’t really a “hotel,” except in the sense the Hotel California was a hotel. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Except you can’t check out. Because you’re dead. Or slowly suffocating in an airtight vault, or being stretched on a rack in the basement that Holmes used to see how far the human body could stretch (Answer: not that far).

In retrospect, it’s nothing like Hotel California.

And that’s just the basement. The building was designed to Holmes’ specific instructions to create a labyrinth with secret chambers, trap doors, sliding walls, hidden laboratories and torture rooms. We’d think the contractors would have asked a few questions, but some people don’t like to pry.

But Holmes didn’t design all that just for fun. Like everyone on this list, he was a businessman. Once a guest at the hotel had been killed, Holmes would take them to the basement, strip them of their flesh, craft them into skeleton models and then sell them to medical schools.

“Shoulda gone to Motel 6, but no, I wanted to save a few bucks.Stupid.

Holmes left his hotel after 1893 due to a lack of guests, possibly because the Chicago World’s Fair had ended, possibly because he’d killed everyone in Chicago. He then moved to Philadelphia and promptly murdered his business partner, to collect on a $10,000 insurance policy.

Actually, “Murdered,” isn’t really descriptive enough. We’ll let Holmes himself tell you about it:

“I proceeded to burn him alive by saturating his clothing and his face with benzene and igniting it with a match. So horrible was this torture that in writing of it I have been tempted to attribute his death to some humane means-not with a wish to spare myself, but because I fear that it will not be believed that one could be so heartless and depraved.”

Holmes then went on the run, taking with him, for some reason, Pitezel’s three children. Guess what happened to them?

Holmes was arrested for the murder of Pitezel and his three children, and hanged. The only official number of victims is 27, though it’s thought the real number is a lot higher, probably around the death toll of a Michael Bay film.

How Much Did He Make?

The reason it’s so hard to pin down the number of Holmes’ victims is because he was a pathological liar, on top of everything else. So who knows how much cash he collected from his carnival of horrors. What we do know is that he kept turning a profit right up until the end, when he sold his confession to the Philadelphia Inquirer for $10,000.
#1.
Dr Marcel Petiot, The Anti-Schindler

It’s January 1942, Nazi occupied France. There is a small time con man named Dr. Marcel Petiot, who moved to Paris and set up a medical practice, claiming to have been an intern at a mental hospital. That was pretty close to the truth. He had been a patient there.

Thanks to his well-rounded experience of having seen a mental health facility from both sides of a straight jacket, Petiot spent his time selling addictive narcotics and conducting the occasional illegal abortion. When World War 2 and the Holocaust came along, Petiot saw his opportunity to make some extra cash on the side.

The Nazis were on the hunt for Jews to send off to concentration camps. Petiot put out word that he’d help fugitive Jews escape from the country, for a fee of 25,000 Francs per person. We know what you’re thinking. Sure, the guy charged an arm and a leg. But in the end, he was doing good, right? He was lining his pockets, but saving lives at the same time!

Where did he get all those suitcases?

You might want to stop reading now, so you can keep believing that.

When customers came to Petiot, he told them that in order to enter Argentina (their alleged destination) they had to be inoculated. He would stick them with a needle and…

On March 6, 1944, the police arrived at Petiot’s burning three story house. Once inside, they found a large heap of quicklime mixed with human remains. There was a pit dug in the stable, full of quicklime and corpses in various stages of decomposition. They found basement sinks large enough for draining corpses and a soundproof octagonal chamber with wall-mounted shackles and a peephole in its door. On the staircase leading to the basement, police found a sack containing a headless corpse, missing its organs.

Petiot was later arrested and during the trial, maintained that the whole thing was a big, wacky misunderstanding. They didn’t buy it, and Petiot was beheaded.

How Much Did He Make?

Petiot not only would collect on his huge fee, but would take all of the victim’s possessions (they were fugitives, so would come to him with all of their life savings on them). Authorities say Petiot’s haul ran up to–holy shit–200 million Francs.

The lesson? Crime doesn’t pay, but apparently unfathomably dark, monstrous evil pays quite well.

If you’re ready for something totally different from that, to restore your faith in mankind, check out Third Reich to Fortune 500: Five Popular Brands the Nazis Gave Us.