Liberals vs science on weed

TV comedians and editorial writers for the nation’s most respected newspapers enjoy making fun of conservatives for flouting science.
In the past week the crown jewel has been opposition to vaccinations, which doctors say could lead major outbreaks.
Don’t even mention climate change/global warning.
As one doctor put it on the Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, these amateur scientists think they can learn more from an hour on Google than professionals have spent centuries studying.
And yet the flagships of these same venerated news institutions, including the New York Times and Associated Press, say “pot legalization has unleased a wave of crime, drugged driving and stoned psychopaths,” the Washington Post reports.
The city of Denver television stations rush to report any time a child appears in an emergency room apparently after eating a parent’s medical marijuana. No one was harmed. And more importantly, no one asked how many kids were in the ERs for toking their parents Jack Daniels.
Yet annually many thousands, even millions of children are admitted to emergency rooms for consuming their parents’ alcohol. Police in Britain have found children eight-years-old binging.
The stories in the Denver area died down as it became obvious how insignificant the number was. A husband who shot his wife to death after eating edible marijuana also had consumed prescription drugs.
Reports from outside media ignored the details.
A young man who became a poster boy for stoned drivers turned out to have a blood alcohol level of .238.
Jack Healy of the New York Times made it seems like Denver had become a crime zone. He quoted doctors and others about how crime use was spreading, providing no details of any kind. In fact, Healy was told crime had declined.
A few days later Times’ columnist decided to try edible marijuana because of reports users, particularly new users, had suffered paranoid and found it a very unpleasant experience.
Her narrative raises more questions than it answers. Did she seek advice, which is freely given. Clerks selling weed in dispensaries warn users not to eat an entire cook. Then there is always Google.
Here are excerpts from her horror story:
“I figured if I was reporting on the social revolution rocking Colorado in January, the giddy culmination of pot Prohibition, I should try a taste of legal, edible pot from a local shop.
What could go wrong with a bite or two?
… For an hour, I felt nothing. I figured I’d order dinner from room service and return to my more mundane drugs of choice, chardonnay and mediocre-movies-on-demand.
But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.”
It was never explained what happened to the room service.
One hopes this is not the start of CIS New York Times.
After their experience identifying non-existent stashes of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq caution might be order.
During this period a headline said there were “no fingerprints” of Russians at work in Ukraine. That begs the question of the 100 dead Russians sent home to Mother Russia. Did they not have fingerprints.

Nigerian Army attacks newspapers for reporting on kidnapped girls

Western media have reported that the Nigerian Army, showing a dexterity not seen in its efforts to contain terrorists, has raided newspaper distribution centers throughout the country.

 Nigerian Information Minister Labaran Maku had warned media to stop giving “free publicity” to the terrorists and “define the lines between the urge to report the interest of our nation,” the BBC reported.

 The Nigerian Guardian reported: “A military official said the action would continue until Defense Headquarters was satisfied. He was, however, unwilling to explain what he meant.” Newspapers were seized two days in a row, the Vanguard said.

 Nigeria, since independence, has experienced conflict between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian and animist south. A war claimed a million lives between July 1967 and Jan. 15, 1970.

 Boko Haram is accused of killing thousands of bombings and assault as well as kidnapping hundreds of schoolgirls. In a recent case reports said they had tricked villagers into a meeting that turned into a Johnstown-style massacre.

 Police had briefly banned protests demanding that the girls be rescued.

 On Friday, Associated Press reported copies of at least four national newspapers were destroyed.

 Five papers said they had been hit, Punch, Leadership, Nation, Daily Trust and Vanguard.

 The Weekly Trust also told AFP: “soldiers blocked a number of its worksites.

 “The soldiers, who were fully armed, insisted on carrying out the ‘order from above’ to flip through each of the several thousand copies of Weekly Trust in search of alleged ‘security risk material.’”

 Sue Valentine of the Committee to Prot

ect Journalists condemned the attacks. She said blocking news "sows the seeds of rumors and distrust".

 "While we recognize that Nigeria faces security threats, these can never effectively be addressed by media blackouts or persecution of journalists," she said in a statement. We call on authorities to respect the vital role that media play in circulating information and holding government to account."

 Allvoices correspondent Johnthomas Didymus, in a column a day ago, said there has been a "dearth of information in the Nigerian media about new developments …”

 Despite belated acceptance by President Goodluck Jonathan’s government to accept aid in finding the 300 missing girls they remain in captivity. A few have escaped.

 The US has said the Nigerian Army is so ineffective, brutal and corrupt that people are not cooperating in the search.

Can Poroshenko be Ukraine's Churchill?

Deadly enemies in World War 2, France and Germany brought Ukraine’s new president together with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France.
Although it was their first meeting since the Russian puppet government was overthrown in the spring, and lasted less than half an hour, it brought hope that talks would replace bullets.
But time after time Putin has not kept his word, and chocolate king Petro Poroshenko made it clear he was not Willy Wonka and was not willing to hand over parts of his country to the Kremlin. In his speech to the nation Saturday night, Poroshenko promised that peace, prosperity and freedom were not “Pure Imagination.” He spoke in both Ukrainian and Russian.
Of course he could not match the words of Winston Churchill [Unlink], when Britain stood alone during the Blitz. For Churchill, as for Abraham Lincoln [Unlink], a phenomenon called “asyndeton” was a key factor. Among other things it omits conjunctions.
A Churchill example: “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. . ."
Poroshenko said: "A real war, planned and unleashed in the Ukrainian Donbas, became an obstacle for enormous opportunities that opened for the European modernization of Ukraine after the fall of tyranny.” He said he was prepared to offer amnesties and ready to talk to real representatives of the eastern Ukraine.
'Today, we need a legitimate partner for the dialogue. We will not speak to bandits. Acting local deputies do not represent anyone there already. We are ready to declare early local elections in the Donbas.” He warned his countrywomen and countrymen not to count on NATO or the US to rescue it from Moscow’s grip.
“Our most reliable allies and the best guarantors of peace are our army, fleet, the National Guard and professional special forces!” Nobody will protect us until we learn to defend ourselves."
Most importantly, he said, “Russia occupied Crimea, which was, is and will be Ukrainian soil.”
Turning an underfunded and ill-trained army into a fight force overnight may be as difficult a job as Robin Williams [Unlink] faced in another Hollywood movie, “Toys,” when he had to learned how to use toys as weapons.
Sources:
Poroshenko speech
Ria Novosti
WHCT-TV

Don't check a good story too closely

In journalism, it has long been a practice to not check a good story too closely.
Net neutrality is a prime example. Assuming it ever existed, and as the old saying goes: When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.
When foreign correspondents toted heavy, though small, satellite dishes around the Third World they would make them available to other writers. But for much more than the data, audio or video transfers cost.
Of course there was no record of this, and the local government didn’t get a sou.
These days the issue is whether a provider will charge some users more, and some users less.
Some call it Internet robbery.
The problem is that this will be gone in the blink of an eye. Bandwidth is increasing exponentially.
The military has developed ways to send data in bursts.
There are people out there who will figure out how to frustrate this attempt at monopoly.
So why should a user pay for a 24/7 connection when everything he/she needs can be downloaded/uploaded in a minute or two.
As shown on HBO’s hit “Silicon Valley,” data can be compressed and sent at almost the speed of light. OK. That show is a comedy. But the idea works.
What will the Comcast Weissman score be?
The season finale put the whole thing in perspective, comparing data speeds to the length of penises.
Smoke ‘em if you got them when you come back from hyper space.
Don’t wait for Scotty to beam you up back up.
Oh, for the days of the Trash 80. That was the nickname for the device that could send at 75 baud.
In those dreamy days a robot could be put together from parts in the nearby Radio Shack. “Number 5 is alive.”
Beware. You will be lucky to get a robot that does your bidding as in “Robot and Frank.”

Califiornia wants to find way to get guns back from mentally ill before they kill

The Isla Vista massacre is no different. Police had met with the killer, and a search would have stopped him in his tracks.
Deputies came after his mother reported his bizarre behavior, but Eliot Rodger, in a performance is film maker father would have been proud of, conned the deputies.
For a moment, though, he was terrified the police would search his found all of my guns and weapons, along with my writings about what I plan to do with them. I would have been thrown in jail, denied of the chance to exact revenge on my enemies. I can't imagine a hell darker than that.,” CNN reported from his “manifesto.”
The deputies did not view the videos that had drawn Rodger’s attention.
The same thing happened in 1999 in the Columbine murders. The killers had been arrested for minor theft and it would have easy to get a search warrant. Their friends had reported the boys had threatened they were going to kill.
For some unknown reason plans for search of the homes of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were dropped. An investigation by Colorado’s attorney general cleared the officers.
In most recent massacres in the past 20 years the killers have given hints of their plans, often on the Internet.
Before assigning all the blame to cops, and mental health professionals, it must be remembered that laws protect the rights of suspects or patients.
Soumaya Akaaboune, the Moroccan-born actress stepmother of Elliott, asked cops to see if he was a threat.
Fifteen years after Columbine rumors persist that the killers’ parents had threatened school officials, warning them against acting against their children.
Though there is little doubt that existing mental care in the US is not up to the task, it remains unclear that existing laws would have allowed most of these killers to be stopped. In most states they can be committed and then must be released if no major problems are found.
Without formal action no word can sent to those who register guns.
As for the deputies’ actions, the rules can be even tougher. Plus law enforcement officers go into such situations knowing their could be a threat to their lives.
California legislators say they are working on a plan that would prevent some people suffering from mental illnesses from getting guns or other weapons, and taking weapons away from those who are later found to be victims of dangerous mental health problems.
One idea is to let friends and families be allowed to report to police. However, Rodger’s wife had done that.
Psychiatrists say those identified with mental illnesses make up a very small fraction of those who later kill.
The late psychiatrist Carl Jung, in his “The Undiscovered Self,” wrote that for every psychopath who is identified there are 10 who go unnoticed.
SOURCES:
Carl Jung
Mass Murder
Psychology Today

Sudan mother and kids taken off death row for marrying Christian

The Sudanese government has decided not to execute a woman who gave up Islam, married a Christian and had two children.
He smallest, a newborn, is in prison with her.
Social media and intensive political pressure from the much-reviled West apparently persuaded Khartoum that this was a battle that was not going to be fought against Lord Kitchener.
But before too much is made of this incident, rapes and murders occur. Two women had to defecate in field India. They were grabbed, raped and left handing dead from a mango trees.
In Pakistan this month police stood by and watched a woman considered a heretic stoned to death.
Honor killings often are a factor.
“An honor killing is the homicide of a member of a family or social group by other members, due to the perpetrators' belief that the victim has brought shame or dishonor upon the family or community, usually for reasons such as refusing to enter an arranged marriage, being in a relationship that is disapproved by their relatives, having sex outside marriage, becoming the victim of rape, dressing in ways which are deemed inappropriate, or engaging in homosexual relations.[1][2][3][4][5] Honor killings are especially targeted against women and homosexuals,” Wikipedia reports.
Such killings don’t just occur in the Third World. Several have been reported in the US, Canada and other countries.
Parents often doing the killing.
The BBC reported: “Meriam Ibrahim, who gave birth to a daughter in custody, will be freed in a few days, the official told the BBC. Abdullahi Alzareg, an under-secretary at the foreign ministry, said Sudan guaranteed religious freedom and was committed to protecting the woman.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron called the ruling as "barbaric".
Meriam Ibrahim, 27, married to an American Christian, was brought up as an Orthodox Christian. A judge ruled she is a Muslim because that had been her father's faith.
After refusing to give up her faith she was sentenced to hanging. Her newborn is her second child.
Sources:
BBC
Wikipedia Honor Killings
Guardian

Ukraine has new export, dead Russians

The Ukraine has found a new export: the bodies of Chechnya volunteers and Russian soldiers killed by Kiev’s warplanes and helicopters.
Until the election that elected chocolate king “Petro Poroshenko” president last week, Ukrainians were the main victims of “little green men.”
Poroshenko immediately sent warplanes and combat helicopters to blast the Russians. The Russian rebels may have lost 100 or more fighters, while Kiev’s main loss was a downed helicopter with 12 men on board.
Vice News followed the dead Russians and Chechens as they were sent back to their homeland in red coffins.
Vice News reported the bodies were in coffins marked “200,” the Soviet Union’s military code for dead soldiers.
They bore the red, black and blue flag of the erstwhile Donetsk People’s Republic.
One person, using the Twitter name of East of Brussels, quoted a Ukrainian border guard as saying: “We don't need them to fertilize the land of Ukraine.”
Moscow won’t even admit the soldiers are there, though they hint there may be some volunteers. The “volunteers” have admitted their presence to many journalists.
To confront the stronger response of Kiev, Russia will have to begin using more powerful records, perhaps halting only at the use of its once favorite weapon, the tank.
Ria Novosti says Moscow has a new portable ground-to-air missile that can fired from a shoulder and is without equal. Expect to see them soon.
The dead soldiers won’t be able to see it, they will be greeted by a sign that says: “Heroic actions are immortal.”
The only signs of life are in the moribund Ukrainian economy.
The Stern Agee Investment Bank reports the decision of Putin’s “willingness to work with Ukraine’s new president, the European Union has halted the threatened third round of sanctions against Russia.”
Even in Moscow, where a media purge has made criticism of Putin treason, some bankers have publicly stated that the sanctions have driven the country closer to a recession.
Foreign investors are fleeing, as are any Russians who can get visas, especially Jews headed to Israel. It was once said that refugees are people who vote with their feet. And history shows the most talented people live, not the poor.
For those wondering how things went so bad for Putin so quickly, against a divided and weak enemy, then perhaps the question should be asked how weak was the Ukraine?
Moscow has put thousands of “writers” to work on the free wheeling Internet to spread an incomplete history of what happened in the Ukraine during World War 2.
Ukrainians by the millions had died under Stalin’s rule, and when the Nazis arrived they were briefly welcomed. Very soon it became obvious that Hitler was just another Stalin. Ukrainians joined the underground, and got some of the west combat and partisan training ever, fighting both Berlin and Moscow.
Sources:
Vice News
Kiev Post
Stern Agee Bank
Ria Novosti