harvest!!

Ah, sweet!  

Behold!  Today's harvest from the Bella Rosa plant, which has produced some of the sweetest, juiciest tomatoes I have ever had the pleasure of consuming.

Many more tomatoes and cucumbers on the way, but so is extreme summer heat.

ISS tour

Can't believe I missed this video when it first appeared last November!  WTF was I doing? 

Sunita Williams, an American astronaut gives a guided tour of the International Space Station (ISS) from the ISS.  Sunita has more in-space hours than any other female on Earth, or in space!

It's very interesting, and 29 minutes long.

Dan Rather is still producing hour-long special reports, now airing on AXS-TV, known previously as HD Net.  Practically every show has been great.  The AXS-TV archive is not free, however, so I cannot post complete episodes here.  

In April, Dan did a program called, "Suni in Space" which featured an interview with Suni Williams and lots of video clips from Suni's ISS Tour.  He devoted the entire 60-minute show to Suni and it was really good.  Here's an excerpt:

legal weed

I sure hope nothing derails Colorado and Washington state from their experiment in legal weed.  If they just hold tight, and if the DOJ stays out of it, both states are going to see a real economic boost.

  

Colorado governor signs recreational marijuana regulations into law

(Reuters) - Governor John Hickenlooper on Tuesday signed into law measures to regulate the recreational use of marijuana in Colorado, including blood-level limits for motorists and setting up a voter referendum to impose a tax on the non-medical sale of cannabis.

Colorado House of Representatives Assistant Majority Leader Dan Pabon said the legislation reflected the "will of the voters" who charged lawmakers with setting up the regulatory system after approving legalization in a vote last November.

One of the bills signed by Hickenlooper calls for a referendum in November on setting a 15 percent excise tax and an additional 10 percent sales tax on marijuana sales.

Other measures included in the legislative package are setting blood limits for driving while under the influence of marijuana at 5 nanograms per milliter, and limiting purchases of marijuana to non-Colorado residents at one-quarter of an ounce.  (So how much is 5 nanograms per milliliter?  One toke?)

"The laws ... signed today put the health and safety of our kids front and center," said Pabon, a Democrat. "They drive a stake into the heart of a large black market while creating a regulated, legitimate industry."

House Republican leader Mark Waller, who sponsored the driving-under-the-influence legislation, said Colorado is in "new and foreign territory" in implementing its marijuana laws and it was vital to add a public safety component.

"Equipping law enforcement with the tools they need to ensure people make safe decisions behind the wheel is critical to maximizing public safety," he said.

Voters in Washington state also approved legalizing recreational marijuana use last November.

Mason Tvert, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, which ran the campaign for the Colorado pot legalization ballot initiative, said it is "only a matter of time" before other states follow the lead of Colorado and Washington.

He said Colorado's retail marijuana stores were expected to open in early 2014.

Colorado and Washington are among nearly 20 states and the District of Columbia that allow the use of medical marijuana. The federal government still lists it as a dangerous narcotic and it remains illegal under federal law to take the drug for any purpose.

After the Colorado legislature passed the bills, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver said the Justice Department was considering what its response will be to the marijuana legalization movement.

In Washington state, the Liquor Control Board is required to establish regulations for the state's recreational marijuana industry. Earlier this month the agency released a set of draft rules that said marijuana must be grown indoors and tested for contaminants and potency. Licenses to grow, process and sell the drug would each cost $1,000 per year on top of a $250 application fee under the proposed guidelines.

Original.

S&P history

And so here is even MORE evidence that the economy actually performs best under Democrats and not Republicans, and yet, conventional "wisdom" still holds that Republicans are better managers of the economy.  Not sure why that BS persists, except that Republicans seem to be born liars who never let history, facts, or reality get in the way of their bullshit talking points.

Isn't it interesting to note on the chart below that the ONLY Presidents who presided over drops in the S&P market over their terms in office were Republicans (GW Bush, Nixon, and Hoover).

The old saying still holds:  if you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic.

Obama is clearly the worst socialist ever

By Steve Benen

Tue May 28, 2013

Wall Street's major indexes soared this morning after U.S. home prices saw their best annual rise in seven years, and consumer confidence got another boost. But even before today's stock-market gains, President Obama is in rare company when it comes to Wall Street returns.

In the 84 years that the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index has been calculated, it doubled during the terms of only four presidents before Barack Obama's election in 2008. This month that number rose to five as the index climbed to more than twice what it was when he took office.

Through Friday, more than 52 months after he took office, the index was up 105 percent during his term in office, for a compound annual gain of 18 percent.

In terms of the percentage gain, it's worth taking some of this with a grain of salt. If I open a widget factory and sell two widgets a year, I'll find 100% growth if I sell four widgets the following year. In Obama's case, it was easier to double the value of the major Wall Street indexes given the scope of the catastrophe he inherited from Bush/Cheney.

Nevertheless, Obama had to get the economy back on track, and he did. As the above New York Times chart helps demonstrate, when it comes to stock-market growth, Obama is already among the most successful modern president of either party, and if the economy continues to steadily improve over the next three years, Obama will fare even better from a historical perspective.

From a purely political perspective, it's worth remembering that the president's critics on the right predicted the opposite.

As we talked about several months ago, the real fun begins when we reminisce about what Obama's Republican critics were saying in early 2009. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal ran an entire editorial in early March 2009 arguing that the weak stock market was a direct result of investors evaluating "Mr. Obama's agenda and his approach to governance."

Karl Rove and Lou Dobbs made the same case. So did Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Fred Barnes. For a short while, it was one of Mitt Romney's favorite talking points, too. Even John Boehner got in on the larger attack.

For the record, I don't think a strong stock market is necessarily proof of a robust economy. On the contrary, I care far more about unemployment, median wages, and economic growth than Wall Street returns. But the right shouldn't try to have it both ways -- if a bear market in 2009 is, in the minds of conservatives, clear proof that Obama's agenda is misguided and dangerous, then by the same reasoning, should we interpret soaring Wall Street indexes as proof of Obama's genius?

Original.

reactionary

Why must we be saddled with so much ignorance and greed?

On the other hand, why not?

Friends of Perry

Time for another installment of "Friends of Perry" by Houston Chronicle political cartoonist, Nick Anderson.

Yep, we sure need some "reform" in Texas.

Click here.

reverse dementia!

No, not as in the "opposite" of dementia (whatever that is)....it appears that yet another benefit of marijuana is to slow down brain degeneration and aging and even to REVERSE dementia. 

Could we have a major treatment of Alzheimer's under our noses??  Dude! 

Oh, if my father had only known!  I tried to get him high a few times, but he never would.  

Marijuana cannabinoids slow brain degeneration and aging, reverse dementia

from Realfarmacy.com

The human brain contains an extensive network of special receptor sites that modulate nervous system function only when activated by the appropriate cannabinoid compounds, many of which are found in abundance in the marijuana plant. And emerging research continues to uncover the unique role these cannabinoids play in protecting brain function, which in turn helps deter the aging process and even reverse the damaging effects of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia and cognitive abnormality.

One of the latest discoveries concerning cannabinoids involves their ability to act as antioxidants in the brain. Researchers from Germany found that the brain’s cannabinoid system is fully capable of not only cleansing damaged brain cells from the brain, but also triggering the production of new brain cells within the brain, a concept that contradicts years of conventional thinking about how the brain works. Cannabinoids also supercharge mitochondria in the brain, which are the powerhouses of energy that maintain proper cell function.

Published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, these discoveries shed new insight on how natural marijuana cannabinoids hold the capacity to literally quell the brain inflammation responsible for causing cognitive decline, neural failure, and brain degeneration. By supplying these receptor sites with cannabinoids, patients may be able to overcome brain conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and many other conditions, not to mention premature brain aging, all conditions for which modern science has failed to find real solutions.

“I’ve been trying to find a drug that will reduce brain inflammation and restore cognitive function in rats for over 25 years; cannabinoids are the first and only class of drugs that have ever been effective,” said Gary Wenk, a professor of neuroscience, immunology and medical genetics at Ohio State University (OSU) who helped with the research. “I think that the perception about this drug is changing and in the future people will be less fearful,” he added, referencing the fact that marijuana is still viewed mostly negatively by many people.

Read full article

Read more at http://www.realfarmacy.com/marijuana-cannabinoids-slow-brain-degradation-and-aging-reverse-dementia/#wQB2qiDZ1mcM0OYq.99 

cicadas

This video can be embedded on third-party websites as long as you credit me (Samuel Orr) as the filmmaker, and please mention the kickstarter project. Please contact me if you want to feature the film or excerpts in broadcast media.

Link to Kickstarter

Samuel put together a stunning documentary on cicadas.  

Return of the Cicadas from motionkicker on Vimeo.

SPAMALOT

The wife and I went to the matinee performance of "Spamalot," Monty Python's spoof of Camelot and Broadway, first performed in 2005.  TUTS ("Theater Under the Stars") put on the show. 

Here's their blurb:

Back by popular demand, Monty Python’s SPAMALOT is the outrageous musical comedy lovingly ripped off from the film classic “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” With music and lyrics by the Grammy-Award winning team of Eric Idle and John Du Prez and book by Mr. Idle, SPAMALOT tells the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table as they embark on their quest for the Holy Grail. Flying cows, killer rabbits, taunting Frenchmen and show-stopping musical numbers are just a few of the reasons audiences everywhere are eating up SPAMALOT.

The show was very entertaining, but we did have a little trouble understanding some of the lines.  Could have been our seats.  We were in the Balcony, but very close to the edge in the middle.  Maybe the dialogue wouldn't have been as muddled if we'd sat on the floor.  Dunno.   

The show is vintage Monty Python, with tons of anachronisms, cultural references and silly sides.  I do wish the "boys" would produce some new material.  They're not all THAT old.  Right?  

Where is the Monty Python equivalent of today?  Jon Stewart?  Stephen Colbert?  FOX News?

I found a video on the net of a composite of a few tunes from the show.  I think this vid was from a London performance.  It sure looks like Tim Curry playing King Arthur.

Monty Python Musical! (Spamalot) by Benji_mon

When we got home after the show, I was driven to look up some of the lyrics.  Too bad the "aha!" moments came so far AFTER we were actually AT the show, y'know?

And the song that leaves you whistling down the tunnel as you are leaving the theater (and you get the lyrics too!)  Oh, the following is not a part of the Spamalot show...

Speaking of lyrics, here are the lyrics to Find Your Grail from the show:

Find Your Grail

If you trust in your song
Keep your eyes on the goal
Then the prize you won't fail
That's your grail
That's your grail

So be strong
Keep right on
To the end of your song
Do not fail
Find your grail
Find your grail
Find your grail

Life is really up to you
You must choose what to pursue ohh yeeeah
Set your mind on what to find
And there's nothin' you can't doooo

So keep right to the end
You'll find your goal my friend
You won't fail
Find your grail
Find your grai-a-a-a-ail
Find your grail

[Company]
Find your grail
Find your grail

[Arthur]
When your life
WRONG: Seems dejeffed
RIGHT: Seems to drift
When we all need a lift
Tell yourself you won't fail
Find your grail
Find your grail

Life is really up to you
You must choose what to pursue
Set your mind on what to find

[Lady of the Lake]
And there's nothin' you can't do
You can't do
Dooooo!!

[Company]
So keep right (so keep right) to the end (to the end)
You'll find your goal my friend 
Find your grail!
You won't fail
Find your grail
Find your grail
Find your grail!!

[Lady of the Lake]
Ohhhh
You'll find it!
You'll find it!
YEEEEAH!
You gotta keep on
Goin round! 
Goin round!
Cause I know 
YEEEEEEAAAH

Ok, one more.

4lb. hairball!

Keep an eye on your cat!

Tiger's Basketball-sized Hairball Removed By Surgeons (VIDEO)

CLEARWATER, Fla. -- It's not unusual for a cat to get a hairball, but a 400-pound tiger needed help from veterinary surgeons in Florida when he couldn't hack up a basketball-size hairball by himself.

The 17-year-old tiger named Ty underwent the procedure Wednesday at a veterinary center in the Tampa Bay area community of Clearwater. Doctors said in a statement that they safely removed the 4-pound obstruction from Ty's stomach.

The tiger, which is cared for by Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in Seminole, was brought to veterinarians after not eating for nearly two weeks. Doctors said they detected the hairball using a scope with a camera.

Vernon Yates, whose nonprofit group regularly assists law enforcement agencies with seized animals, says he's thankful the hairball was removed and Ty is doing fine.

Go here.

Space Oddity

Astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield makes the first complete "music video" from space, singing David Bowie's "Space Oddity" from the International Space Station!  Very cool.   

the latest lie

Well, shocker!  One of the latest "scandals" is total bullshit.   Read below.

How many times have Republicans pulled this shit?  It's obvious they cannot win on merits because they just keep on creating fake scandal after fake scandal.  

What does it say about our "democracy" when one of the two major parties uses every tool of deception it can find to fabricate lies and distractions?  They just cannot play fair at all.  Bastards!  (They are probably proud of this behavior.  After all, we keep falling for it.)

Read the snips below and read the entire story here. 

The Latest Lie:  IRS Targeted Conservatives

by Dave Johnson

The corporate media is blasting out the story that the IRS “targeted conservative groups.” Some in the media say there was “IRS harassment of conservative groups.” Some of the media are going so far as claiming that conservative groups were “audited.”

This story that is being repeated and treated as “true” is just not what happened at all. It is one more right-wing victimization fable, repeated endlessly until the public has no choice except t believe it.

Conservative Groups Were Not “Targeted,” “Singled Out” Or Anything Else

You are hearing that conservative groups were “targeted.” What you are not hearing is that progressive groups were also “targeted.” So were groups that are not progressive or conservative.

All that happened here is that groups applying to the IRS for special tax status were checked to see if they were engaged in political activity. They were checked, not targeted. Only 1/3 of the groups checked were conservative groups.

Once again: Only 1/3 of the groups checked were conservative groups.

Conservative groups were not “singled out,” were not “targeted” and in the end none were denied special tax status — even though many obviously should have been.

From last week’s House hearings on this:

Rep. Peter Roskam, R-IL: “How come only conservative groups got snagged?”

Outgoing acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller: “They didn’t sir. Organizations of all walks and all persuasions were pulled in. That’s shown by the fact that only 70 of the 300 organizations were tea party organizations, of the ones that were looked at by TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration].”

Bet you didn’t see that blasted all over your TV news that night.

Click here to watch the video clip of this. It’s worth it..

snip

What Did Happen?

Here’s the story. After the “Citizen’s United” decision allowed unlimited corporate money into elections there was a flood of applications to get special tax status that allowed an organization to hide its donors from the public, and in some cases even be tax-exempt. But the rules say that political groups can’t get this special tax status. The IRS has to check out applications for tax status to see if it is really a political group trying to sneak in to a special tax status.

Because they were flooded and couldn’t check out every applying organization, the IRS group looked for things in the applications that “flagged” an organization as a possibly a political group. These flagged applications were then passed along to specialists to look deeper and determine if they were legit or not.

snip

So What Was The “Wrongdoing”?

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has issued a full report:Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review that looked into the accusation that the IRS “targeted” tea party groups that were applying for special tax status for extra scrutiny. The report is not all that long. You should read it. (Apparently most the people you are hearing from in the media haven’t read it.)

According to the report, the swamped IRS group involved in this came up with ways — “criteria” — to identify groups that really needed to be checked further because it was possible they might be engaged in the kind of political activity that would exclude them from getting the special tax status. (The rules for what constitutes political activity that would keep a group for getting special tax status are, to say the least, not clear. See the PS below.)Some groups were chosen to receive the required scrutiny because they had “political-sounding” names. Some of the “political-sounding names” included the words “tea party.”Others included “We the People” and “Take Back the Country.” (The IG report does not disclose if or which other “political sounding names” were also used as criteria.)

And the other problem was that the scrutiny these groups received involved some “unnecessary, burdensome questions.”

That was the extent of the wrongdoing. 

snip

This is not the first time the Obama administration was taken in by false stories originating at right-wing propaganda outlets before the real facts were known. Van Jones had to leave the Obama administration after Glenn Beck accused him of being a “communist” and other right-wing sites accused him of being a “9/11 Truther.” Shirley Sherrod was fired from the Department of Agriculture after the Breitbart (the same website that had showed the doctored ACORN videos) posted doctored video that made it appear she had made racist remarks — even though the full video later showed the opposite to be true.

The great Brad Blog tells these stories, in IRS ‘Scandal’ Appears Nearly as Phony as Shirley Sherrod, Van Jones, ACORN ‘Scandals’,

… if you listened only to the corporate media, you — like the Obama Administration — also probably thought that the phony, trumped-up “scandals” that led to the inappropriate firing of USDA official Shirley Sherrod, the cowardly firing of White House green jobs adviser Van Jones and the outrageous federal defunding of ACORN were also the unhappy result of an endemic culture of corruption by the Obama Administration, the Democratic Party and its insidious political apparatchiks.

Those fake scandals, however, all three of them, were shams. They were eventually identified as such, though only after a great deal of harm to Sherrod, Jones and ACORN had already been done by the Democrats who fell for them and acted out of knee-jerk and cowardly fear to try and contain the perception of “scandal” which was, naturally, helped along by the very loud misreporting of “the nightly news”.

Original.  

One wonders what the next orchestrated lying scheme these bastards will employ? 

This kind of crap makes me skeptical of ANYTHING that comes from Republicans.   But that's why it worked in this case;  everyone is sensitive to IRS abuses, and we are sensitive to IRS over-reach.  Of course, in this case, like so many others, it's the GOP, not the IRS, that is playing fast and loose with the facts and abusing the public trust.

Ted Rall

Ted has another good toon today, and it's got that ring of truth to it.

It's a damn shame that the Dems seem to not have a stomach for impeachment.  After all, if ANYONE deserved to be impeached in the last 20 years it was George W. Bush:  lying us into Iraq; illegal wiretapping; illegal torture; totally asleep at the wheel on 9/11; firing of US attorneys that wouldn't play along; outing of a CIA agent for political gain.  The list is almost endless.  Go here for an almost endless list.

And yet, when the Dems regained the House and Senate in 2006, new Dem Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that impeachment (of Bush) was "off the table."  

Off the table?   What the ...

You talk about your missed golden opportunities, or shooting yourself in the foot?

Republicans don't know how lucky they are, thanks to most Dems having little or no spine.  Or ... maybe they do know, and that's why they act like they do.

state of the universe

And now a few words from my favorite "unknown" comic, Mr. "Under-the Radar" Swami Beyondananda.

I don't know how I missed his 2013 State of the Universe message a couple of months ago.  I must have fallen into a time sink.

Well, the world didn't end on December 22, 2012.  Talk about an anti-climax.  The shift of the ages happened seamlessly, as the Creator hit Re-Start and the Show got renewed for another 26,000 years.

I don't know about you, but I'm inspired.  I'm like, "Start the world - I want to get ON!"

So let's just say the rapture happened and we all got born again without reincarnating.  In other words, the shift has hit the fan.  And if you're not a fan of shifting now, you will be soon.  The planets and stars have done their part.  Now it's time for humanity to shift our karma out of reverse and get our assets in gear.

You probably don't get the Timeless Times where you live, but beings from across the Universe are rooting for us.  Last month, their headline was, "We're Betting On the Human Race."

I know this because I just got back from a trans-universal tour seeking the Key to the Universe (turns out, it's been left unlocked so the joke was on me) and I come bearing a Universal message for humanity:  It's time to shift or get off the pot.

Or, stay on the pot if you need pot to shift you.  Whatever it takes. 

It's time for us to use our intelligence intelligently, and begin thinking like a species - because in terms of global footprint, call us Bigfoot.  And given our big global footprint, we must develop a big global brain and even bigger global heart to weave us back into the web of life.  We don't want to flunk third dimension, do we?

And if we are - as evolutionary biology is now telling us - all cells in the body of a super-organism called Humanity, it's time we gather all good intentions under One Big Intent:  Thrival for all.

I know, I know.  I am proposing a sane world.  I must be crazy.

But I'm not the only one.  More and more humans are going sane, and committing themselves to turning the world into one big sane asylum.  People are waking up and wising up, and the good news is the "evolutionary upwising" gathered esteem in 2012. 

Take the Presidential campaign - please!

In sharp repudiation of the conventional belief that there's no such thing as a moderate Republican, the people of the United States thumbed their nose at convention and actually elected one President.  So there!  No longer high on hopium, a more sober body politic made what they saw was the better choice - positive change in small increments, as opposed to negative change in large excrements.

Speaking of which, the never-ending war on terror ("We're going to win the war to end all wars, even if it takes us forever!") went droning on in 2012, and we now have space-age wind-up toys doing our assassinations for us.  As for success, it's been hit-and-miss, mostly hit.  Because even when they miss, they still hit something, right?

Oh, and in 2012 the climate over climate change got heated up, as reality-deniers faced off against ... well, reality.  So, is climate change real?  Well, I'll put it this way.  I just came back from a terrific vacation in the future.  Spent a glorious week in Tropicanada.

And the gun debate has had everybody up in arms.  Listen, every child in America should be taught the appropriate use of arms as soon as they have arms to raise - hugging.  Hug first, ask questions later.  Come up with your hands out!

If that doesn't isolate the sociopathogens, I don't know what will.

Join the UPwising - Wake UP, Wise UP, Grow UP, Show UP

Here's some good news.  Now is the perfect time to make the shift, and I will tell you why.  Because it's too late to do it sooner, that's why.  I'll put it bluntly. If we humans don't begin rowing together in the same direction, we're going to be up shift creek without a paddle.

Now as you know, there are two kinds of mystics in the world - the optimystics and the pessimystics.  The pessimystics tell us "the sky is falling!"  The optimystics say, "No ... it only looks that way, because WE are ascending."

Personally, I am an optimystic realist.  While many look at the world situation and declare the glass 95% empty, I take the opposite position.  To me, it's 5% full!

So yes, we have an uphill journey.  But otherwise, it's all downhill.

Now there are those who say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, while others swear by the 12-step.  I present here a compromise - four simple steps to make sure we step out in the right direction, mathematically guaranteed to work three times faster than 12-step.

Now, if you remember I presented the same four-step program in last year's State of the Universe.  Please forgive me for serving up laughed-overs, but these four steps that will take us from children of God to adults of God are even more important this year.

They are ...Wake Up ... Wise Up ... Grow Up ... Show Up.

First step, Wake Up Laughing.  As the ancient Foo Ling Masters who achieved Cosmic Comic Consciousness came to realize, life is a joke ... but God is laughing with us, not at us.  The Creator is watching the Comedy Channel, and WE are what's on.  Yes, the world is in serious condition - largely because of our conditioning to be serious.  So instead of having gravity bring us down, we can choose to have levity lift us up.  Hearty laughter makes us go completely out of our head, and puts us right in the heart.  And that brings us to Step Two.

Second step, Wise Up Loving.  To counterbalance all the challenges of being human, we were given the power of love, the universal solvent.  You have a problem?  Dissolve it in a warm solution of love.  Through the power of love, we can metabolize all the BS (Belief Systems) that we mistake for reality.  And the good news is, love is more powerful than fear.  How do I know?  You ever hear anyone singing, All You Need Is Fear?

Third step, Grow Up Giving.  Each of us has been given a special gift just for entering - so you are already a winner!  We are the Creator's creation created to create, so what are we waiting for?  Time to give all we were given to give ...  before we give out.  The more of our gifts we give, the more we grow upward.  So if you're spiritually upwardly mobile, here is my suggestion.  Make a "bucket list" of all the undertakings you wish to undertake before being overtaken by the undertaker.  And then undertake ... and over-give, and you can't grow wrong.

And finally, Show Up Living.  Show up for the Greatest Show On Earth ... it's better than reality TV ... it's REALITY!  A once-in-a-lifetime world win adventure show, where the whole world can win.  It's the Hero's Journey with One Big Hero ... the Human Race.

I've said it before, and it certainly applies now.  If you don't like the current programming, turn off your TV and tell-a-vision instead.  So, I will tell my vision.  I see it now.  The Timeless Times headline that reads:  "How Did The Human Race Turn Out?  They WON.  They Achieved Oneness and Won."

Original.

cult of Dusty

I discovered "The Cult of Dusty" via "The Friendly Atheist".  In this episode, Dusty jumps all over those "Christian" kids who were featured in that sorry video called "The Thaw."

hemp oil men

At this moment in time, most of the "evidence" that hemp oil is a "miracle" treatment for all sorts of ailments is only anecdotal, since it is still illegal, especially in the USA, to grow hemp.  

When we get marijuana reclassified from a "Schedule I" drug to a "Schedule II" drug, we will see an explosion of research.

Here is a relatively recent documentary by Chris Harrigan.

balancing act

Got 7:43?  Sure you do.

1st hemp crop

I wish I could invest somehow in hemp cultivation.  There has to be a way ...

I wish my company was interested in doing some energy research on hemp.  I have gone up and down the authority chain in my company to finally receive a four-word response:  "not at this time."  Which I guess means that maybe at some future time they will research it.  

Frankly, the research is already in.  What we need is some major companies to scale up production, but as long as federal law still prohibits industrial hemp cultivation, progress will be sporadic.

New law allows Colorado hemp crop

SPRINGFIELD, Colo. (AP) - Springfield farmer Ryan Loflin is now watching over one of Colorado's first industrial hemp crops in almost 60 years.

The passage of Amendment 64 in November allows commercial growing, even though hemp, like marijuana, is illegal under federal law.

Hemp is genetically related to marijuana but contains little or no THC, the drug substance in marijuana. Hemp has dozens of uses in food, cosmetics, clothing and industrial materials.

According to the Denver Post , Loflin began planting 60 acres on acreage previously used to grow alfalfa on Monday. He and business partner Chris Thompson also are installing a seed press to produce hemp oil.

Original.

And here is a great site for all sorts of info on hemp - Hemphasis.