Posts Tagged ‘Drugs’

Bloom, Distributed Power, and Parallel Revolutions

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Here’s the 60 Minutes piece everyone is talking about, presented just so you have context:

Okay, now I’m going to switch it up and not talk about Bloom itself, favoring a wait-and-see approach. I’m not even going to talk about Google Energy (which makes perfect sense in the context of their networking strategy — “own the grids”).

I’m more interested in the implications of distributed power generation. The way I see it there are three very interesting things poised to happen:

  1. Canada’s green energy advantage is slipping away. Lack of investment by several past governments who adopted a “hydro is the future, and we’re already there” strategy have possibly crippled our theorized future as a clean energy provider. How will we get hydro when all those ugly-as-sin transmission lines come down?

    Still, fuel cells are powered primarily by fossil fuels. This means unhealthy projects like the tar sands and Mideast interventionism will remain the order-of-the-day, but at a lower level of emissions.

  2. Despite Doerr’s polite, political assertion that the electric utilities have nothing to fear this might be the beginning of the end for them. Home fuel cells would make their business model (generate dirty power far away, transmit it into cities and distribute) totally, instantly obsolete.

    And a sky without so many G-D poles and lines would make photography a heckuvalot easier.

  3. “Bloom box” is a hilarious name because that’s a cannabis grow-op term — the high-energy box you put your plants in to flower. Since one major way the police bust grows is by tracking all of our energy consumption, moving the power plant in beside the cannabis plant will protect growers even more from the forces of prohibition and help shield all British Columbians from continuing violations of our privacy.

    IIRC, cannabis breathes CO2 just like any other plant, so a fuel cell power plant in your grow might actually make your product better — carbon-sink the emissions right into the bud. Delicious!

    The police may respond by using FLIR devices, as they already do illegally in the ‘States. FLIR is a technology that, essentially, lets the cops watch you inside your house from outside. It should be super-illegal for police to use.

These are just some of the multiple simultaneous revolutions that distributed energy generation will allow. I can see why they say its market is measured in “trillions” — just about the only companies unaffected by it will be Big Oil.

Cannabiz

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Check out this CBC documentary on the Cannabis industry in Canada.

Canada’s $20 billion-dollar marijuana industry is now at a violent crossroads between crime and commerce. Impossible to police, yet steadily gaining public acceptance, the cannabis industry is now so vast and vital to Canada’s national economy that it can no longer be ignored.

This microeconomy will eventually be totally destroyed by legalization. By Murphy’s Law that’ll happen right after you buy your own aeroponic mister.

Of course, that’ll be a small price to pay to get rid of all the violence prohibition creates.

The Cannabis-Psychosis Connexion

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Some research suggests that cannabis use, particularly before age sixteen, can increase the likelihood of becoming schizophrenic by up to four times.

One of the reasons given for this is the increasing potency of marijuana. In the 1960s it was approximately 1-2% THC by weight, and is now approaching 30%.

Market forces and genetic modification of the crop have put children in danger. More, because its market is unregulated, cannabis is potentially easier for children to obtain than both tobacco and alcohol. Drug dealers don’t check ID.

The drug war has clearly failed: prohibition makes violent criminals rich and puts children at risk of developing debilitating, life-long mental health problems. Cannabis should be fully legalized, regulated, monitored, and taxed immediately as an issue of public safety.

Besides, making plants illegal is stupid.

Starbucks Boycott

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Via WhyProhibition.ca: Starbucks, The North Face, and the alcohol industry are sponsoring anti-Cannabis lobbying efforts.

No more Starbucks for me! I was only looking for a little push to avoid them anyway…

California Votes on Full Legalization

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Via DoseNation, California votes to legalize Cannabis tomorrow. Drug laws are Federal in America, so the State doesn’t have the full say — but they can direct resources from fighting prohibition profiteers to filling their financial pit of a legislature.

Canada, however, lags woefully behind.

Celebrity Rehab: Fixed!

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Season three of Celebrity Rehab just started. VH1 fixed their site so you can stream it from Canada now:

Of Course He Played Horde…

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Blizzard responded to a police request they didn’t have to, and a drug dealer hiding from American law in Canada was tracked down through his WoW character and IP address.

Remember: You’re never actually anonymous online. The companies you do business with will sell you out at the slightest provocation, regardless of your expectation of privacy.

I mean: Go law enforcement! Another nasty young marijuana dealer behind barz!

Prorogation Smells Like Burning Rope

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

When Her Excellency The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean prorogued parliament today she tacitly killed Bill C-15 which would have amended Canada’s drug laws to add mandatory minimum prison sentences for crimes which currently receive community service judgments in BC, like selling small amounts of marijuana to your friends.

Mandatory minimums for non-violent soft drug crimes are part of the reason behind ridiculous incarceration rates in the States (5% of the world’s population, 25% of its prisoners).

We can be happy the government, despite its best efforts and the support of the thrashing-for-platform Liberals, failed to enact a law which typically saddles people under 30 with hard time for something most of us believe should be legal.

Amanda Knox: Innocent?

Friday, December 11th, 2009

There’s a summary article in The Stranger, photos included, by someone who actually knew her and seems to have closely followed the trial — more horse’s mouth, perhaps, than the drug-fueled media portrayals.

A woman with condoms, weed, and a vibrator does not a psychopath make — and thank God!

Here’s the CBS story on the case (via Friends of Amanda):

Pharmacopacetic

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

I wasn’t feeling off at the moment, but I was on the way either up or down. Saturday Karen took me to the Oak Bay Free Clinic and I asked to see a doctor.

Nurse: Do you have your CareCard?
me: Nope.
Nurse: Picture ID?
me: Nope.
Nurse: Well, I need to know who you are…
me: Can’t you do that thing were I guess the info in my file so you know it’s me?
Nurse: Fine. But next time bring your card. Reason for visit?
me: Mental health.

After a quick chat — and a talking-to about going off my previous meds — I was put on escitalopram, “probably for the rest of your life.” To supplement the first couple weeks’ “getting-to-know-you” phase of the drug, wherein it can actually make symptoms worse I was given what, to my untrained eye, looked like a dangerous amount of lorazepam.

I’m stoned on it right now.

You might have noticed, or not, my self-reports of increasingly-strange behavior on this site: staying up for days at a time, getting virulently angry at the media, making political arguments that might not have made sense, etc. I understand some of your newsreaders caught me writing something very maudlin which I sat-up-deleted-what-the-fuck! the next morning, to no avail.

Stephen Fry made a documentary about his Cyclothymia which I watched around the time of the last gallery opening (after which I showed some hypomanic symptoms). The documentary ends with a girl talking about how depression doesn’t make your writing more interesting — true depression makes writing impossible.

That resonated.

Along with the sleepless lead up to the opening and my frenetic pub activities afterward and my family history of mood disorders I thought I’d better see someone.

Hence the escitalopram: A catchall SSRI to see if anxiety and depression account for my (I think several) issues. The theory there is to reduce anxiety and treat for depression and see if mania still surfaces. If it does, we go from there. I’d also like to look into ADHD or similar meds to let me focus on projects I start (creating lots of ideas and then executing none of them is both a bipolar and ADHD thing).

The lorazepam is to stabilize the stabilizer. Escitalopram can get dark before the dawn. It should take about five weeks to kick in according to the forums. The ‘zepram is to smooth the bumps: Raze the hot shuddering highs to bury the dank cold lows and form a zombie-highway medium.

It’s actually quite pleasant.

Here’s a little couplet I hallucinated Coleridge-styles last night lounging on a lady’s loveseat:

Floating gently down the stream,
Life on benzodiazopenes,

Yeah: They’re pretty good — relaxing. I get the impression the neurotypicals are having some fun times.

The trick, the cliché of all psychiatric clichés, is getting the patient to take the meds. I’m already running into weird kinds of resistance, both in my head and out. People want to be sure that I’m taking the Ativan responsibly, which I am — though this is totally subjective. I could take less, I could take more: What is “unmanageable” anxiety?

Already I want to cut the Cipralex on the theory that my mood swings weren’t that unmanageable… And then I have a neurotic freakout, fix it with Ativan, and agree to give the meds time to do their work.

What is a lack of concentration and what is a lack of planning? What is happiness and what is mania? What is a “normal” level of depression? What is a “manageable” level of anxiety? These are the gray areas I’m spending time niggling.

Last, biggest: What is normal? Or perhaps better: What is adaptive? That’s a question the doctors are helping me with.