Freedom from Pain - People & Power For much of the Western world, physical pain ends with a simple pill. Yet more than half the world's countries have little to no access to morphine, the gold standard for treating medical pain. Freedom from Pain shines a light on this under-reported story. "For a victim of police torture, they will usually sign a confession and the torture stops," says Diederik Lohman of Human Rights Watch in the film. "For someone who has cancer pain, that torturous experience continues for weeks, and sometimes months on end." Unlike so many global health problems, pain treatment is not about money or a lack of drugs, since morphine costs pennies per dose and is easily made. In India, the first stop in the film and the world's largest grower of medicinal poppy for developed countries, there are severe restrictions to the use of morphine domestically. Nadia, a single mother living in Kiev, tells of the anguish of living with a son in constant pain.
Sleep Stream Online Legalizing Marijuana Could Save Thousands of Lives - Megan McArdle - Business [Adam Ozimek] A recent op-ed in the New York Times by Sylvia Longmire tries to lower expectations for what legalization of marijuana could accomplish. It's all fine and good and be realistic, but I think the author oversells her pessimism. Here is her summary of the argument she is attempting to counter: "FOR a growing number of American policy makers, politicians and activists, the best answer to the spiraling violence in Mexico is to legalize the marijuana that, they argue, fuels the country's vicious cartels and smugglers. After all, according to official estimates, marijuana constitutes 60 percent of cartels' drug profits. There are several debatable issues here, but she is mostly disagreeing with the notion that the "power and influence" of cartels would be "undermined" by legalization of marijuana. Her main counterpoints can be summarized as: 1) They will still have 40% of their profits from other activities. 2) They could enter the legal marijuana market.
How Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes Failed at Setting Up a Strong Republican Candidate for 2012 On Monday afternoon, March 28, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes summoned Glenn Beck to a meeting in his office on the second floor of News Corp.’s midtown headquarters to discuss his future at the network. Ailes had spent the better part of the weekend at his Putnam County estate thinking about how to stage-manage Beck’s departure from Fox, which at that point was all but inevitable. But, as with everything concerning Glenn Beck, the situation was a mess, simultaneously a negotiation and a therapy session. Ailes had hired Beck in October 2008 to reenergize Fox’s audience after Obama’s election, and he’d succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest hopes, tapping deep wells of resentment and igniting them into a vast, national conflagration. “Let’s make a deal,” Ailes told Beck flatly. During a 45-minute conversation, the two men agreed on the terms: Beck would give up his daily 5 p.m. program and appear in occasional network “specials”—but even that didn’t solve their problem.
Victims of U.S. “Drug War” Mount as Media Yawns Last week, you would have been lucky to find even a small blurb in a few newspapers about but another journalist killed in post-coup Honduras — the 19th in the last two years, making Honduras by far the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist. Indeed, Honduras is now the murder capital of the world. It is important to note the comparative silence about the mass killing of journalists in Honduras with the mass outpouring of grief the media showed for the two Western journalists (Marie Colven & Remi Ochlik) killed in Syria recently, with the photo of Ms. Colven donning the front page of every paper in the U.S. the day after her killing. The reason for the disparate treatment of these journalists is easy to explain. It may also delegitimize the U.S. role in the rest of the region, from Colombia through Mexico – a region where the bodies count continues to grow to extra-ordinary numbers due to the so-called U.S.
The Good Night (2007 Infographic - Why Are Pot Smokers Skinny? New Research on Weight & Marijuana As seen at Number 1 on Visual.ly! Embed This Graphic! More than 4,600 people participated in the study. Waist circumference and other weight-related factors were assessed in those who currently are marijuana users, those who used but don’t anymore, and those who never used. When studied, those factors led to some of the most surprising results. It is hoped that further research into the subject will be able to determine whether the differences found by the study are a direct result of marijuana use. Also Read: Which is Worse: Soda or Marijuana? Fatty Foods Trigger Marijuana-Like Experience Dopamine is the Trigger for Food Addiction July 8th, 2013
Actually, that's not in the Bible By John Blake, CNN (CNN) - NFL legend Mike Ditka was giving a news conference one day after being fired as the coach of the Chicago Bears when he decided to quote the Bible. “Scripture tells you that all things shall pass,” a choked-up Ditka said after leading his team to only five wins during the previous season. “This, too, shall pass.” Ditka fumbled his biblical citation, though. Ditka’s biblical blunder is as common as preachers delivering long-winded public prayers. These phantom passages include: “God helps those who help themselves.” “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” And there is this often-cited paraphrase: Satan tempted Eve to eat the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden. None of those passages appear in the Bible, and one is actually anti-biblical, scholars say. But people rarely challenge them because biblical ignorance is so pervasive that it even reaches groups of people who should know better, says Steve Bouma-Prediger, a religion professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
The War on Drugs is a War on You by Michael Boldin The drug war is based on a repugnant assertion: that you do not have ownership over your own body; that you don’t have the right to decide what you’ll do with your body, with your property and with your life. The position of the drug warriors is that you should be in jail if you decide to do something with your body that they don’t approve of. This is an abomination of everything that America is supposed to stand for. As long as this country continues the drug war, you are not free. If you are concerned at all about liberty, the economy, the Constitution and the power of the Federal Government – you cannot ignore the US government’s longest and most costly “war” – the War on Drugs. But no matter how long it lasts, how much is costs, how many lives are disrupted, and how much it fails – the war rages on. Why? All they care about is their own power. Period. In this ongoing drug war, you are always treated as a suspect and your neighborhood is much less safe. About the author
Cannabis foods Various cannabis foods on display in Amsterdam Nomenclature[edit] There are many different names and slang terms for the recipes. Ingredients and effects[edit] Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is generally considered to be the primary active substance in cannabis. The oil-solubility of cannabis extracts has been known since ancient times, when Sanskrit recipes from India required that the cannabis be sautéed in ghee before mixing it with other ingredients.[1][3] Making a tea by boiling cannabis in water is a highly inefficient way to extract cannabinoids, although if the cannabis is of good quality and has plenty of resin on the outside, a portion of resin can be softened by the heat and float out into the water. A cookie containing medical grade cannabis Oil[edit] "Cannaoils" or "marijuana oils" are cooking oil based products that have been infused with cannabinoids. Butter[edit] Making cannabutter Liqueurs[edit] Hash cookie[edit] Space cookies advertisement on Don Det, Laos The writer Alice B.
Birtherism, the debt ceiling, climate change, evolution: Are Republicans losing their grip on reality? - By Jacob Weisberg At a press conference last week, someone asked Chris Christie for his views on evolution vs. creationism. "That's none of your business," the New Jersey governor barked in response. This minor incident, which barely rated as news for a few political blogs, offers a glimpse of Christie's personality, which seems increasingly grumpy and snappish. But it says even more about the current state of the national Republican Party, where magical thinking trumps rationality, and even to acknowledge basic realities about the world we live in runs the risk of damaging one's political future. Christie is not part of the natural constituency for Darwin-denial. Moments like this point to a growing asymmetry in our politics. Like the White Queen in her youth, the contemporary Republican politician must be capable of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Reality-denial is not limited to the Republican inability to utter words like evolution and revenue.