Hemp for victory

Mary-Kate Olsen is all grown up

I’m happy.

Related post:

• Because women don’t smoke pot, part 2

And now for something completely different

Try it, you’ll like it.

What are you smoking?

Hat-tip Monkeyfister.

Recommended viewing:

• Judge the tree by the fruit thereof

Share and enjoy?

Playing with food

Hat-tip Phydeaux Speaks.

Recommended listening:

• Sufjan Stevens

And now for something completely different:

• The Richard Bruce Cheney fansite.

Be fruitful, and multiply

“Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them.
Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away.
And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them.
But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

What if God smoked cannabis?

Related posts:

• Judge the tree by the fruit
• For the want of a reply…

Permaculture: The Garden of Eden

[Zoom]

Will it work?

Do plants grow?

Hat-tip Monkeyfister.

Etz Chaim

[odeo=http://odeo.com/audio/12377753/view]

Heal the nation.

Support the family farmer, save the earth, listen to Willie

Is that a bustle in your hedgerow?

The arboreal articulture of Axel Erlandson.

Hat-tip ggwfung.

Recommended listening:

• To Bedlam and part way back
• As the Leonids fertilize the earth…

The joy of hemp

Shockwave video.

Hat-tip Tanya.

Story of Rabbit

Hat-tip Neil Gaiman.

Recommended viewing:

• Try tempting me with a carrot.

Montel, today

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch today. Hat-tip Cannabis News.

Medical use of marijuana should be legalized
By Montel Williams
04/03/2007

You probably know me as a talk show host and, perhaps, as someone who for several years has spoken out about my use of medical marijuana for the pain caused by multiple sclerosis. That surprised a few people, but recent research has proved that I was right: right about marijuana’s medical benefits and right about how urgent it is for states to change their laws so that sick people aren’t treated as criminals. The Illinois General Assembly is considering such a change right now.

If you see me on television [10 a.m. weekdays on Channel 4 in St. Louis], I look healthy. What you don’t see is the mind-numbing pain searing through my legs like hot pokers.

My doctors wrote me prescriptions for some of the strongest painkillers available. I took Percocet, Vicodin and Oxycontin on a regular basis, knowingly risking overdose just trying to make the pain bearable. But these powerful, expensive drugs brought me no relief. I couldn’t sleep, I was agitated, my legs kicked involuntarily in bed and the pain was so bad I found myself crying in the middle of the night.

All these heavy-duty narcotics made me nearly incoherent. I couldn’t take them when I had to work, because they turned me into a zombie. Worse, these drugs are highly addictive, and one thing I knew was that I didn’t want to become a junkie.

When someone suggested I try marijuana, I was skeptical. But I also was desperate. To my amazement, it worked after the legal drugs had failed. Three puffs and within minutes the excruciating pain in my legs subsided. I had my first restful sleep in months.

I am not alone. A new study from the University of California, published in February in the highly regarded medical journal Neurology, leaves no doubt about that.

You see, people with MS suffer from a particular type of pain called neuropathic pain: pain caused by damage to the nerves. It’s common in MS but also in many other illnesses, including diabetes and HIV/AIDS. It’s typically a burning or stabbing sensation, and conventional pain drugs don’t help much, whatever the specific illness.

The new study, conducted by Dr. Donald Abrams, looked at neuropathic pain in HIV/AIDS patients. About one-third of people with HIV eventually suffer this kind of pain, and there are no FDA-approved treatments. For some it gets so bad that they can’t walk.

This was what is known as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, the “gold standard” of medical research. And marijuana worked. The very first marijuana cigarette reduced the pain by an average of 72 percent, without serious side effects.

What makes this even more impressive is that U.S. researchers studying marijuana are required to use marijuana supplied by the federal government, marijuana that is famous for its poor quality and weakness. So there is every reason to believe that studies such as this one underestimate the potential relief that high-quality marijuana could provide.

In my case, medical marijuana has allowed me to live a productive, fruitful life despite having multiple sclerosis. Many thousands of others all over this country — less well-known than me but whose stories are just as real — have experienced the same thing.

Here’s what’s shocking: The U.S. government knows marijuana works as a medicine. Our government actually provides medical marijuana each month to five patients in a program that started about 25 years ago but was closed to new patients in 1992. One of the patients in that program, Florida stockbroker Irvin Rosenfeld, was a guest on my show two years ago. If federal officials come to town to tell you there’s no evidence marijuana is a safe, effective medicine, know this: They’re lying, and they know it.

Still, 39 states subject patients with illnesses like MS, cancer or HIV/AIDS to arrest and jail for using medical marijuana, even if their doctor has recommended it. It’s long past time for that to change.

Illinois state Sen. John Cullerton, D-Chicago, has introduced a bill — SB 650 — to protect patients like me from arrest and jail for using medical marijuana when it’s recommended by a physician. Similar laws are working well in 11 states right now.

The General Assembly should pass the medical marijuana bill without delay. Sick people shouldn’t be treated as criminals.

Television talk show host Montel Williams is the author, with Lawrence Grobel, of “Climbing Higher” and other books.

Special to the Post-Dispatch

This is my message to you.

Recommended listening:

• Even the hopeless sinner

Do you prefer plagues of locusts?

Stoner genius

jibbs00 (2 days ago)

this is a true thing that happens! its not a chain letter! its kinda scary at first but it really works!! paste this message into 3 comments and press ALT F1 and your crushes name will appear on the screen!!! its soo wierd

A song of seeds, the food of love

“She’s trying to stop me from helping you!” Click the video to watch it elsewhere, it won’t embed.

All life is intelligent

Consider a simple plant, which knows at a deep cellular level how to find and transform water, air, sunlight and a few minerals into complex forms of great beauty and practical utility. You may not know how to communicate with all life, but all life communicates in its own way. Herbs put forth scents and spices, which give us pleasure and medicine at once, and we think it an evolutionary accident only if we presuppose no intelligence prior to our emergence as humans.

Related post:

• Here.

Green light

Climate control

Greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, have a certain “half-life” in the atmosphere before they are eliminated by natural processes, such as by plant respiration. When the production of new greenhouse gases has equilibrium with the elimination of circulating greenhouse gases, the climate is kept in balance.

Much discussion of reducing and controlling global warming has focused on how we may regulate the production of new greenhouse gases, and we must do so or we could never eliminate them quickly enough to prevent their building without limit and turning the earth into a place uninhabitable to humans.

It would also be helpful to begin encouraging the reduction of circulating greenhouse gases by broad based home agriculture. One green plant can reduce the carbon footprint of one person by a significant amount. If climate science has taught us anything, it’s that small changes over a large population make a huge difference.

Judge the tree by the fruit thereof

You do not have to eat poison, and you can be sure that if you consume enough of some things you will die.

Some things are so benign you can eat them without limitation and become healthier.

Recognize the difference.

And now, a word from one of our many non-sponsors

Tanya has more.

Not funny

Hat-tip egalia.

Instead of war

“Please don’t sue me. I’m just a fan.”

A few days late

NTodd has an interesting perspective on the issue of birth control, of which abortion is only one component. I tend not to write about this issue often because it is so deeply a matter of personal conscience what determines the relative value of a given human life over another. I also take a Monty Pythonesque view on the issue of contraception, which is to say their true view and not the view they satirize by their famous song.

Let me take a moment to point out the obvious hypocrisy of anyone with a purportedly pro-human life outlook being advocates of war. Obviously they value some lives more than others, and some are entirely dispensable to them.

No sane person wants there to be unwanted children or abortions, if it were possible to avoid having them without doing violence to women (or men). We should not want to mutilate people’s genitals, we should not want there to be any harm done to the innocent.

We don’t often enough stop to consider that the cause of violence is usually violence. Stop non-consensual sex and you will stop most or all of the abortions that occur. Stop adultery and you will stop the rest.

Oh, but you don’t want to stop adultery, going by what I see.

Except to punish the woman, because she is the one who is subject to violence from her spouse if she is caught with child.

We have to end the violence done to women, and you know that divorce must be a right for that very reason. But what many of you don’t know or publicly admit due to the risk of persecution is that violence can be tamed by cannabis — marijuana. It is a lie and an obvious one at that when prohibitionists associate cannabis with violence, when the only violence is involved in the criminal aspects of prohibition itself.

End cannabis prohibition and you will see that the very thing you criticize about “hippies” is their non-violence.

End cannabis prohibition and you will end the war in Iraq and in the rest of the middle east. Cannabis can be grown to fuel our economy. Cars and trucks can run on clean biological oils. Paints and chemicals can be made from it. Cannabis may be sacred but she is also profane. We have a petroleum economy today but we cannot have a petroleum economy forever.

Seeds

Via skippy.

Black market goose liver doesn’t sound like a very good idea

Chicago bans foie gras.

This is ridiculous. People can have a debate on the morality of eating meat, too, and I for one prefer that all animals be humanely treated and organically fed if farm raised.

But prohibition does not work.

Please note again how this differs from the TFA ban in New York. People really do want to eat foie gras. I don’t care whether you agree with them or think they are despicable people, they are going to eat foie gras, and the more of a fuss you make about it, the more foie gras they are going to eat just to piss you off.

Also, it is delicious.

Via.

Schrödinger’s Beer

Two tablespoons organic hemp protein (Living Harvest),

Two cups hot freshly distilled water.

Tea only Not for me

I have tasted the hops and I would not use it in bread.

As a tea it is embittering.

No more bread nor wine from these

It is done, and a New Year.

Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Here

Let me show you a miracle.

Six days of creation

Related post:

• Five cups of wine

Fine herbs for bread making

As any decent person knows, hops had nothing whatsoever to do with sinful chemistry; they just kept bad company. They did not prevent, sustain, catalyze, or effect in any way the process of alcohol formation from various sugars, cellulose, starch, taters, beans, seaweed, or from whatever else human folk have attempted its secretion. Except that when hops are included in a bread recipe, the dough is, for some reason, the more ecstatic. Hop cones ground to a fine grayish powder, rendered then to a tea, this in turn stirred into bread yeast, caused the carbon dioxide that spewed forth from asexual torment to come off in the most exquisite bubbles. Not belching, gargantuan bubbles that lift the crust of the bread so horribly that the result is bread with gopher holes. Hops do for white bread what only an extra half hour of intensive hand-to-hand combat with the bread board could equally bestow. A fine-stranded gluten that gives farm bread an unblemished texture, almost silken smooth was the flesh of this oven varmint. Hops in my grandmother’s bread recipe brought about the same result as three rounds on the wrestling mat.

Excerpted from The Hop Pole, by Justin Isherwood. The whole story is well worth reading.

I haven’t yet tried adding hops to my starter.

A poem that shows

The rose is a rose
and was always a rose;
But the theory now goes
That the apple’s a rose,
And the pear is, and so’s
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose,
but were always a rose.

– Robert Frost, “The Rose Family”.

No more war between the roses, I say.

Taken from Wikipedia’s entry on Rosaceae, the order of which is called Rosales, of which it is said within,

In the APG classification, well-known members of Rosales include: roses; strawberries, blackberries and raspberries; apples and pears; plums, peaches and apricots; almonds; rowan and hawthorn; elms; figs; nettles; and hops and cannabis.

So there you have it, and enjoy them all.

From someone who goes, but comes in repose.

White meat

Just discard the peel

Five cups of wine

I could keep going, really. Just drink the juice down half way and refill it as many times as you want, since the little yeasts (eukaryotes) will keep on multiplying if you don’t finish the whole thing, and fruit juice is food to them.

Related posts:

• More cooking and eating today
• Water into wine
• What’s next?

More cooking and eating today

The pancakes were made with starter, bananas and hemp protein, oil and honey, and added salt.

The wine is very fine and a portion was blended with some organic strawberry lemonade. Christmas punch indeed.

Bananas are a kind of herb. Who knew?

Water into wine

The starter which is used to make bread, may separate while refrigerated. The top layer is a liquid, in my case a mixture of water and oil with some suspended herbs, because I always feed my starter with flour, water, oil, honey, salt and fine herbs.

This is mead, a kind of beer.

Fresh bread and smoked salmon

Let every herb grow

Let all be cultivated for their virtues, and treated with the respect and caution a new food deserves. For what is good to eat does not make you sick, and what gives you pleasure without doing harm is good for your spirit.

Test me, and then test yourself. Are my beliefs different from your own?

Cannabis is prohibited?

Oh, but this is good:

• Nine percent of 8th graders sniffed glue, spray paints, cleaning fluids or other inhalants, down slightly.

Um. Here’s the thing, parents. Your kids are going to alter their consciousness, and don’t you pretend to me that you don’t alter yours. Everyone does it. Choose your poison, or learn what is good for you.

Sniffing paint is using dope, and it’s not good for you or your kids. Nine percent of 8th graders is way too many kids that are being permanently injured by these dangerous things.

Cannabis is not dope.

Better you should eat or drink or vaporize or smoke cannabis than drink alcohol, smoke tobacco or take prescription mood altering substances. God knows what is good for you, and you will find no better medicine than what God made for you.

Hat-tip.

Sourdough latkes

In honor of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, here is the recipe.

Starter, mashed potatoes, honey, oil, salt and fine herbs.

Just mix ’em up and fry ’em in a pan. This is something I’ve done when it was time to feed the starter but I didn’t want to make bread that day. It’s good stuff.

Bon appétit.

Hat-tip to Jan in San Fran.

Related post:

• Starter biscuits

A lovely beverage

If you have a vaporizer, you do not burn your flowers. When you have finished enjoying their aromas, you can place the roasted pieces into a tea ball and steep them in hot water for a few minutes.

Really, it’s delightful.

(Don’t try this with tobacco, kids. It’s only cannabis that is so benign.)

It’s all over but the counting

Cannabis is the top cash crop in America according to a new study.

The study shows that 10,000 tonnes of marijuana worth $35.8bn (£18.4bn) is grown each year; the street value would be even higher. This dwarfs the $23bn-worth of corn grown, $17.6bn-worth of soybeans and $12.2bn-worth of hay. Marijuana is the biggest cash crop in 12 states, with the value of pot grown outstripping peanuts in Georgia and tobacco in North and South Carolina. In California, the biggest producer, it is worth $13.8bn.

Hat-tip.

Democracy

Click here if the video does not properly embed.

With comment

Press release. Copied in full because it deserves to be read.

On Tuesday December 12th the largest single marijuana cultivation bust in the history of the DEA was dismissed in the 9th circuit courts by Judge Meredith Patel. Judge Patel ordered that all evidence and information taken from and used against Charles Edward “Eddy” Lepp in the 2004 Raid of Lepp’s home, ministry and garden (better known as Eddy’s Medicinal Gardens and Multi-Denominational Ministry of Cannabis and Rastafari) be suppressed due to the illegal service of warrants. The raid conducted in August of 2004 was a considerably large one. The DEA confiscated 32,524 plants on Lepp’s 20+ acre home and ministry taking a total of two days and using members of the local law enforcement and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Elite National Guard Wolf Team. The DEA estimated it to be an 80 million dollar bust calling it the most sophisticated cultivation they had ever seen.

Judge Patel has called for a Franks hearing on January 9th 2007 at 9:30am about the warrant from the 05 raid on Lepp’s home and ministry. At this time they will hear testimony from witnesses for both the prosecution and the defense to determine the validity of the warrant and the information used to attain it. It is the hope of the defense to prove once again the criminal behavior of the DEA by the attainment of yet another illegal warrant. This hearing is open to the public and is on the 19th floor of the Federal Court Building in San Francisco at 450 Golden Gate Ave.

Check Eddy’s Medicinal Gardens for more information on this case, updates on the next court date and to read the current court documents from this case which will be posted very soon. You may contact Lepp at 707-275-8879.