Solar power for everyone

h/t quixote @ Shakesville.

Stonehenge in America

h/t Cory Doctorow.

Want

Analogical synthesis

So the homeopaths say

A musical offering and other observations

[odeo=http://odeo.com/audio/17137793/view]

NTodd is wicked smart.

Wikipedia article of the day

Stirling engine.

Suggested by Phoenix Woman.

Recommended also:

• AM404
• Collective intelligence
• Sean Baker

Permaculture: The Garden of Eden

[Zoom]

Will it work?

Do plants grow?

Hat-tip Monkeyfister.

San Francisco

Even “reasonable conservatives” forget the first half of the second amendment

Jon Swift has an idea:

It is the Second Amendment that makes our country free. A Global Second Amendment would make the world free. Nuclear proliferation could be the key to making the world safe for democratic proliferation.

We’d have to accept a Nuclear Regulatory Body, being necessary to the security of a free World.

Related posts:

• RKBA:
• Regulate the militia.

Bigger, Slower, More Intrusive is not necessarily better

I remember the bomb that was Windows ME. Well, Microsoft has done it again,

Vista is been such a success that CNet reports that Dell is bringing XP back. In response to customer demand, Dell is going to make Windows XP available on its home machines, as it still is on its business machines.

Hat-tip Bryan at Why Now?

By the way, I really do like the MacBook. It’s a comfortable machine to use, as opposed to merely being powerful.

Timing malfunction

A treatment for lung cancer

HealthDay:

Harvard University researchers have found that, in both laboratory and mouse studies, delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) cuts tumor growth in half in common lung cancer while impeding the cancer’s ability to spread.

Hat-tip.

Vaporized medicinal cannabis contains plenty of THC and contains none of the oxidized smoke and tar which can cause irritation. Smoked cannabis has not been shown to cause a higher incidence of lung cancer, but vaporized cannabis is likely to shrink tumors and restore lung function.

Related post:

• A treatment for leukemia

This is my church.

Related post:

• Here.

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

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

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.

All these worlds, and on and on…

Move, or remain motionless. Your choice.

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

The little ones understand, and laugh

Hat-tip Ellroon.

Space, the final frontier

Watch this from NASA via Carnacki.

Phenomena!

iRaq is not an Apple product

But what if it was?

Various items

1. I began this post intending to write about broadcast reform, but got sidetracked. The public airwaves belong to the public, they are not the private property of licensees to spectrum. We the public own the spectrum in common and for our benefit, not for private profit unless that is consistent with our own public interest. I will come back to this in a future post but welcome general discussion in the comments.

2. It happens that America has come to believe in an economic theory of competition, a capitalist Darwinian survival of the fittest. Shamefully, we treat people as human capital, as resources to be exploited and consumers to be sold, and not as independent members of the public whose object the government is meant to serve. But we do not have a government of, for and by the people today. We have a government of, for and by the rich and powerful.

3. We do not need to compete in everything, we can cooperate instead. We can help one another with our ideas and our efforts to achieve a common purpose. This is not communism, this is just community.

Free software has taught me to be generous with my own talents, and to be able to use the commons at will means we are assured of our freedom and independence, because we cannot be held hostage to the proprietary limitations of the rent seekers.

4. I’m going to be posting another version of the Chromosphere in a day or so, maybe later tonight if I’m inspired enough. This project is really a life’s work for me, even though it is only a bare skeleton of the idea currently sketched out and on display. This is a new way of communicating, a living language. It is an old way of communicating, too. Perhaps we are all having conversations around one another and not understanding.

In the meantime, please do check it out if you can spare ten minutes, and if you feel like tossing me a dime or buying me lunch sometime you can use Paypal from there. I prefer not to ask donations here at Cannablog, because I don’t ever want to have my politics or my religion or any of my beliefs a matter of monetary gain. But if you like my work and want to support free software, art and music, I sure appreciate it.

Update: version1 has been released.

No music now, unless you read it

ARTIST: The Beatles
TITLE: Golden Slumbers/Carry that Weight/The End
Lyrics and Chords courtesy Gunther Anderson

[ Ebdim7 = ]

Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

/ Am7 – – – Dm7 – – – / G7 – – – / C Em Am Dm9 – / G7 – C – /

Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles awake you when you rise
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

/ C – F – C – / C – F – / C Em Am Dm9 – / G7 – C – /

Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

{Refrain}

Boy, you’re going to carry that weight
Carry that weight a long time
Boy, you’re going to carry that weight
Carry that weight a long time

/ C – G – / – – C – / 1st / G – C Am7 /

I never give you my pillow
I only send you my invitations
And in the middle of the celebrations
I break down

/ Am7 – Dsus2 Dm / G – Csus4 C / Fmaj7 – Dm E7 / Am – G – /

{Refrain, ends with / C A / C A /}

Oh yeah, all right
Are you going to be in my dreams
Tonight

/ D – E – / A – Ebdim7 – / A – /

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make

/ A – – – / G – – – / Bb – – F – G / C – /

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.

And now, for something completely different

First they hurt our children, then deny them medicine

Yesterday, Shakes wrote,

I missed it last night, but watched the whole thing in six pieces on ABC’s website: In an Instant: The IED Explosion, Bob Woodruff’s 36-Day Coma, Wounded Warriors, Are We Ready for Our Injured?, The Human Cost of War, and Woodruff’s Closing Thoughts. It’s absolutely staggering, and I highly recommend it, with the warning that it is deeply upsetting, so be prepared. But it’s a must-see. Truly.

I finally finished watching it today, and recommend you watch the whole thing from beginning to end.

Incidentally, I read that veterans overwhelmingly support medical marijuana. For the pain and suffering that it can relieve those suffering traumatic brain injuries, nothing else in the world would help more.

I’m very happy for Bob Woodruff and his family, and glad that he received the best quality medical care in the world. But people not so visible in the public eye are more likely to fall through the cracks, and those with internal brain damage are hard to treat with any technique; often the risks in trying to correct it with surgery are higher than the damage could possibly justify if we even had the diagnostic capability to know precisely what was wrong in all cases. Cannabis helps the neurons in the brain that still work.

TBM experiment

Hat-tip Radley Balko.

Rough sketch of Chromosphere

If you don’t know what this is about, see the related post below. This design is published under the Imaginary Public License version 1.0, as described therein.

Artistic help is always welcome.

Related post:

• Musical language project

Cannabis treats attention deficit disorder, according to physicians

Keith Olbermann has the story,

Hat-tip Tanya.

Pass it on

Hat-tip Cory Doctorow.

Adult content

Hat-tip Ellroon.

Tech support

Hat-tip Cory Doctorow.

Update: replacement video: