All is full of life

Hat-tip Monkeyfister.

Recommended listening:

• All is full of love,
• Halcyon and on and on

Is she a good witch, or a bad witch?

Invent your own titles. Fun for the family*!

*Cannablog has been rated PG. Parental guidance suggested.

Cannabis prohibition is institutionalized racism.

Colors seem to fade

To shades of gray. Not black and white. Very little in this world is black and white, except the words.

Tip the fedora to malicenwunderland

My ideal post is so briefly stated that my point fits within the title.

Mimus Pauly prefers to use more words.

Did two or more persons conspire to start a war based upon knowing deception?

Hat-tip Len Hart.

Change for the machines

Hat-tip the modern busker.

John Lennon made lots of money too

John Edwards is a very rich man. He can afford a $400 haircut. He has made no secret of this.

He has not unjustly enriched himself, to my knowledge.

This cannot be said of Republicans who profit from human misery.

Found, or not found?

My wife found it, not me.

First verse

Rush the flaccid dope fiend smelled like a pig, and wallowed in the deep crevasse that lay beneath his legs.

Related post:

• About Rush Limbaugh

Update: Here is what this is about.

Rush has the same first amendment rights as I do, but nobody pays me to be a racist.

Medical procedures save lives

Abortion can be necessary.

Hat-tip Ellroon.

Saturday night movie

Hat-tip Monkeyfister.

Related posts:

• The VA Tech killer and his victims:
• Regulate the militia;
• Yesterday was terrible.

The VA Tech killer and his victims

I’m not going to use his name. He’s dead, and best forgotten. He was a destructive force, and desired to create a name that would live on. Why are the media giving it to him? Why display his writings and his videos, when there are people who are out here writing and making videos for peace that you will give no coverage to whatsoever? What message are you sending by giving to the murderer the very thing he desired?

Let’s talk about the victims, instead. I already mentioned one, a hero by the name of Liviu Librescu who lived through the Holocaust, was liberated from communist Romania, and on his final day he rescued multiple students from certain death by holding the door closed against the killer. He was shot through the door.

Emily Jane Hilscher, age 19, was the first victim. She was killed in her dormitory. Media rushed to report some possible relationship between her and the killer. Without any evidence. Why?

There are 30 more stories like these two, though we don’t know the details of many of the students’ lives. Nor would we expect to; the families are entitled to their privacy in their mourning after all.

Among the faculty, we know somewhat more, in addition to Professor Librescu, killed were Jamie Bishop, age 35, Instructor, Foreign Languages and Literatures, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Instructor, Foreign Languages, Kevin Granata, age 45, Professor, Engineering Science & Mechanics, and G. V. Loganathan, age 50, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering.

I think we should see their pictures. Not the killer’s. Let him lie in an unmarked grave, known only to his family and those that loved him in spite of his actions. Let his name be forgotten, his achievement was only disaster.

Souma yergon, sou nou yergon

If we had known, if we had only known — how to speak to one another.

Hat-tip Egalia.

Can’t you see the little light over there?

Recommended listening:

• Little light shining
• Get out of the waves, get out of the water

Too busy for poetry?

Don’t click.

Advice from Kurt Vonnegut

Wear sunscreen.

Click.

Update: I have been hoaxed, as Ombudsben points out in the comments below. The commencement address was never given, and it was not by Kurt Vonnegut. Here is one account of the story.

Still, it’s good.

War. What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing.

Hat-tip Nicole Belle.

On “supporting the troops”

Maryscott O’Connor:

It’s a fucking nightmare, man. You know that expression, “War is hell?” You never really understand that until you’re in it. There’s blood everywhere. Dead bodies everywhere. ALMOST dead bodies. You want to put them out of their misery but then it’s an execution. So you have to leave them there, dying, suffering, slowly, in agony — it ‘s fucking awful.

This is my church.

Related post:

• Here.

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

Synchronization

I planned to make a post which would be called Synchronization, the music was to be the song, “Time After Time” by Cyndy Lauper. I intended to produce some synchronicity but did not know what it was to be.

I went to video.google.com and searched for “time after time”.

The first result follows:

I was first introduced to Eva Cassidy on April 1. She may be invisible, but she seems to be doing her thing.

Recommended listening:

• Listen to the wind

High society

Please help

I need some advice on how to continue to blog as I have been and still make a little bit more than nothing with two clients across the country one of whom may soon cease to be able to afford me due to the financial condition of his main client. I am in no risk of starving, between my wife’s graduate stipend and a bit we got for our condo when we moved we are okay, but we’re thinking we might want to have kids sometime and it can’t happen if we’re already running a small deficit every month.

This is my message to you.

Recommended listening:

• Even the hopeless sinner

Are you experienced?

Have you ever been experienced?

Hat-tip Cookie Jill.

Related posts:

• James Comey for attorney general
• Immunize Her
• I’m reassured, are you?

Do you prefer plagues of locusts?

What is six times nine in base thirteen?

The act of writing is the means by which our consciousness can be focused and analyzed for coherence. If our thoughts are jumbled we would write in such a fashion. If we have a point to make, our thoughts can be arranged around that point. If we are searching for something which others could help find, our thoughts might be phrased as questions. If we already know the answer, it might be that in asking it of others we answer it to everyone.

What is the Ultimate Question?

You know. Life, the Universe and Everything.

Can you compute?

Following, the back of the Regional Transit Connection ID Center Processing Fee Receipt calculation, and verified by my wife, the graduate statistician.

And she cast a spell to bring down the Emperor and his works

Embed disabled link

Recommended listening:

• Past is prologue
• Tech support

Ever seen a sandstorm?

Ellroon says, “Try fighting in this.”

The little ones understand, and laugh

Hat-tip Ellroon.

A real problem for somebody

Click e-mail for more.

Hat-tip Donna.

Related post:

• Bite-sized morsels of obstruction of justice stay crisp and crunchy in milk

Impeachment testimony

Hat-tip Glen.

Related posts:

• Is that a “Known Unknown?”
• Who investigates himself?

Things we do not know we don’t know — but intend to find out

Related post:

• “Henny Penny”

Is that a “Known Unknown?”

Click chart for more from BradBlog.

What did the president know and when did he know it? Who would have known before Rove and Cheney?

Related post:

• Who investigates himself?

Remembering the future

Where do you think you’re going?

What could make Helen Thomas smile?

Click her picture. Hat-tip Think Progress.

This world is going to survive

Space, the final frontier

Watch this from NASA via Carnacki.

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.

4:20 of Woodstock ’99

A change of perspective — understand highness.

Related post:

• Awesome-o

Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?

Watching my recent visitors compared to those who have been reading this blog for awhile, we are becoming more of a musical tribe and less of a political one. Unfortunately for my desire to abstain from national politics, I cannot put out of my mind the pictures of torture that have been committed. And it is not the actual photographs, which I would not care to see more than I must, but the knowledge that it is going on even now and worse.

This is still a political blog, until the administration and those who continue to dehumanize the world with such foulness are removed from power. We must restore civilization now.

For GenX, this is Woodstock.

I just cried, listening.

Awesome-o

Thanks to Skippy, who has more.

Small, but persistant, like an itchy temblor

Another earthquake, same place and magnitude as the last three.

for Idiots

Hat-tip Ellroon.

Adult content

Hat-tip Ellroon.