So, a 20" tablet is one of the five dumbest ideas at CES, but a tablet measuring seven feet is one of the standouts? Hmmm.
The 20" tablet was among dumb ideas because it was a 20" tablet - the gigantic touch screen was not because, get this, it wasn't a tablet but a touch screen, and a remarkable touch screen it is.
At least with a computer, you could play a game and it would be rendered at 4K (assuming it had enough processing power).
...assuming the game uses scalable vector graphics - otherwise the extra resolution may or may not benefit, but raster graphics used aren't going to get more detailed than they are...
If you don't trust the provider to keep your data intact, don't use that provider.
If you need more storage, pay for it. The cost is not prohibitive - 100GB or so for under US$10/mo is pretty easy to find.
If $10/month prices you out of the market, there are better things to worry about than encrypting files and storing them in the cloud.
$10€/month? I pay 35€/year for account on Finnish "community", though it's for non-commercial use only and it doesn't aim to big profits but rather the payment is to cover their costs - now they don't have fancy "cloud file storage interface (just ssh/sftp to access your files) and the service is mainly provided for having "ssh shell" to run stuff like irc client on and email account, web pages & database (httpd, php, perl, mysql, etc...) and so on, but they also provide 50GB storage for ssh/http, which is backup secured, and additionally 500GB for your backups (which they don't keep backup versions of).
fuse-encfs + sshfs should be easily set up to use that... for now I just upload encrypted and compressed tarballs via ssh to keep my data backuped.
Yes, I imagine that is what publishers would want - whether we should allow this state given protection for life is another question, and the answer is really simple: no, what are you, crazy?
Absolutely, and for a lot shorter time too - for computer software 75 freaking years is a big time! I'm starting to wonder if there could be a legally effective clause I could add to GPL or copyleft text to give my contributions to PD after a certain time from when it's written, as the copyright madness, whole world considered, seems to be just growing......and if there is a copyright of me+50, well, I'd rather say that my code is practically dying with me - PD is important for archiving culture and information, and *any* information dating 50 years from my death should be reusable by anyone for any purpose without legal worries - kinda the point US is now ignoring about what/why there is such thing as PD.
just as there's plenty of cases where people blame alcohol for the stupid shit they've done. AA is full of them.
still, if an alcie goes to doctor because of anger issues/unstability(that they blame on drinking) around here it's quite usual they're given diazepam. which would be all good if they weren't unstable alcoholics and the pams just enhance that. giving them a bag of weed would be much better, at least if someone is going too deep with weed they're not 99.99% of time going to hurt anyone, themselves or others, except through inactivity. someone with anger issues gets alcohol+diazepam psychosis and someone is going to get hurt - via physical assault.
Of course there are also very similar people with very different story. My friend is much like your alcie, except that his doing quite well on not drinking in excess. He has severe anger issues and unstability, which alcohol doesn't help but which actually existed before it and is the no. 1 reason he became alcoholic - poorly misguided attempt to self-medicate his mental condition. He would need some diazepam - I've seen it and he doesn't have to drink if he has some, but currently his only source is street dealers. He has tried doctors for help - being honest (and also trying to get help with alcoholism too) he has told about his problem with alcohol and that he wants to be without it. His told about his mental issues, and asked for benzos because they would help - the doctor agrees they would probably help. He has also told that when he gets medication he doesn't have the need to drink - because the big reason for drinking in the first place is gone. You know what the problem is? The damn stupid ass doctor, after all this, tells that he can't write prescription for such drugs because of the alcohol problem! Flaming fsck! Yes, I'm angry - not only does his problems spread into my life too but he is also my best friend. I see him suffer, I feel him suffer - and a dipshit like this is appointed to my friend at local public healthcare station (this is Finland). Now when he lived in Tampere, different city with different healthcare policies, he actually got help. Since he now lives in Helsinki there is very little hope for him to get the medication *proven* to help tho two major problems, one which causes the other, and the other that causes him to not receive medication in this city from public healthcare.
this study doesn't really surprise me at all though, it's even on the "no shit sherlock" level, it's so blatantly obvious. still, it's nice that they bothered to make a real study about that unhappy people seek a fix.
I don't drink anymore due to health issues(pancreatitis is a bitch that wont let her eye off you) and would be very glad if they legalized weed around here. Sure, it might make you spend a lot of time thinking with yourself and laughing at stupid shit along the way but quite frankly what's so bad about that?
Psychosis as a term is so fucking all over the place that it's almost useless as a word too, since it can mean fucking anything - even me wanting to emphasize things with "fucking" is a form of psychosis if you ask the right idiot. basically most weedsters use psychosis as a word for being bored nowadays(they're out of weed it's "psychosis", they got some good weed but nothing fun to do while smoking it and it's psychosis again! they smoke enough that they're practically sleeping and that too then is psychosis.) - it's so fucked up thanks to the prohibitionists. hell, even being drunk is "psychosis" nowadays, fucking pansies.
Let me put this question to you: is a Sam Adams Boston Lager very different in its health and drug abuse risks than a Sam Adams Double Bock? The latter has 80% more alcohol than the former. You will not find anyone in the alcohol abuse treatment community claiming that alcoholic proof has the slightest bit of difference in the risk and harm of alcohol consumption.
Your points above were all good, but this - which I consider bollocks. I'm assuming that it's because you know less about alcoholism and alcohol abuse treatment community than you know about Mary Jane. Or perhaps you know a large number of people from the community and it just happens that they fit into your claim, which maybe has caused your belief? I wouldn't know, and it doesn't matter - it's OK.
I'm not putting any arguments about the difference in harm between mild and hard liquor, I just wanted to friendly tell you that there are people in the community including alcoholics themselves (like my best friend who is recovering alcoholic with quite a bit of experience of that claimed difference - as his friend I share some of his experience, having seen enough to share his belief on this) as well as people working to help them. As said, I wont argue anybodys views about this subject in this message - but if you want to discuss about it I will reply:)
Marijuana advocates reject all criticism, and assume all scientific studies are somehow flawed or are the result of anti-marijuana conspiracies. To them marijuana _has_ to be the perfect drug, even if reality contradicts that viewpoint. Sounds crazy, but it's roughly what you'd expect from people who are no longer living in our reality.
Perhaps it sounds crazy because you only count a vocal minority as advocates - doing so you sound quite like the equivalent of opposing side (...and I don't know whether you're pro or con, just saying what it makes you sound like).
Which is more likely: 1) People with psychological issues seek pharmaceutical drugs to help them stay calm and not screw up their lives even though they are hearing voices and other psychotic issues. 2) Drugs cause the problems - but no one ever noticed before.
2b) Marijuana causes the problem - and everybody has already noticed this before?
Nope - and that's why were having this argument, silly.
The connection has been known as long as Marijuana has been forbidden, it is reason it is forbidden in the first place.
Sure, that's why it took little time to forbid it, while tobacco in comparison was known so long and yet attempted to prohibit later. The others you're arguing with are just living in the opposite land.
If they could manage to prove the correlation worked the other way it would remove the main reason doctors still recommend not to legalize it completely. This has not been proven so far everything points to 1) or both like this one.
Talk about "loss of contact from reality" - delusions, impaired insight, but are there hallucinations? Now, I'm not a doctor, but this has a word in common with title of page: psychosis.
Right. So a cocktail of a thousand chemicals is less side-effect heavy than a purified component?
So, if comparing any one chemical used as active ingredient on a drug and cannabis, it's the synthesized and/or extracted chemical that wins because even though it may have any number of nasty side-effects you feel immediately (nausea, loss of libido, mental/motoric impairment) and a number you'll get to know later (eg. withdrawals), the plant has a thousand chemical cocktail which we just never can know which will blow up on you and end up causing damage the synthetic drug wouldn't do (because, whatever it is, we at least know it).
I was of course just comparing strong opioids with side-effects I wrote in parenthesis - a relatively harmless category of drugs in general, most not causing practically any physical damage and next to nil psychological. I say it's clear that cannabis is better choice for treating chronic pain than synthetic opioid oxycodone, provided it works for you if it's long term and you want to live full, unimpaired as possible, normal, healthy and enjoyable life.
Well, then... let's just compare synthetic THC to organic cannabis plant as drug to give you an easy one. This is clearly a victory for your argument......although there was a study saying that CBD is apparently acting as psychosis prevention of the main active chemicals duo in cannabis plant, while plain THC alone was shown to have higher probability to cause psychosis. Now, clearly this wasn't anti-cannabis biased study - if anything, it was cannabis neutral and it's results can help to create healthier cannabis strains and/or pharmaceutical products. Still it might not have been correct, but you certainly don't get to call yourself a winner on this one.
Caffeine pills or coffee? Now this is probably one where you *do* win - I chose it just to point that while coffee in fact is known to have hundreds of chemicals, many known to be carcinogenic and only a portion of them known for their effects, I'd still pick a cup of coffee (I'm leaving out the pleasure from taste & feel, just comparing effects) over caffeine pills. Why? Because coffee has substance(s) that act against caffeine smoothing it's effects that cause nervousness, jitters, concentration loss, raise of pulse and blood pressure and even panic attacks. So even if it's less healthy I'm saying the quality of my experience is also a factor (actually of most important ones) in which one to consider, all accounted, to be the better drug (or in this case... well, drug - in non-medicinal meaning;) ).
As a scientist
Somehow I doubt this. Now, I know I might be totally wrong here, and I apologize for the insult and bad feelings caused if that's the case, but frankly with what you wrote I'm not seeing your rationale that much above the one of the "it's herbal so it's better than evil synthetic *chemical*" crowd - but at least you do have some kind of logic behind this, just erroneously interpreted as far as my opinion goes.
But I've personally witnessed the same psychosis described in the TFA occur 2-3 years after cannabis usage started. And mathematically speaking, with a mixture of a thousand chemicals, chances are that the compound responsible for that is different from the compound that's beneficial to you.
Forget the mathematics - studies have already established that to get the most beneficial effects you need both, CBD and THC. CBD alone would be poor one, and THC would not work as well as the two together either but there's a study suggesting that it would also have higher probability of causing psychosis.
Sometimes with plants, herbal medicines, it's not a one chemical you can extract and get the benefits, hell sometimes it's not enough to have just one plant! The same is true with synthetic pharmaceuticals in medical treatment.
Marijuana/Cannabis is not for everyone, alcohol is not for everyone, we all have personal preferences.
I know cannabis has helped keep me sane. I've found it far more beneficial than the concoction of of man-made, side-effect heavy, possibly lethal pharmaceuticals that the doctor would prefer I took daily.
I know next to nothing about marijuana... is it still consumed primarily through smoking?
It's the most common method, if that's what you mean.
It can also be prepared for eating or drinking, which will take larger amount of ganja to reach the same level as you get with smaller amount when smoking and the onset seems to take forever (0.5-3 hours even), but as a flip-side it will last several times as long as a smoke.
Then there is vaporizing, a method producing vapor instead of smoke, offering the same fast onset as smoking but with only fraction of the amount needed - it's quite rare, but mostly because people don't know about vaporisator's or where to buy them. I see a possibility here - legalize and then, at least for medical marijuana, put vapo's in pharmacies... If the word starts spreading there is a chance of getting potheads like me to use, in wider scale, a method which saves us big penny, has effects and duration like when smoking and yet saves you from the biggest clearly established source of possible negative health effects when smoking pot: getting smoke (with carcinogens, etc.) in your lungs.
Oh, and almost forgot: As for prescription drugs, a product named Sativex, made from the plant itself (not some lame attempt by big pharma to develop a synthetic cannabinoid they have patent for). It's a spray, and supposedly should have fairly fast onset. It contains a mix of both, THC and CBD. That's all I know about it at the moment - oh, and it was accepted, as first cannabis product, to be sold and used as prescription drug (for glaucoma, chronic pains and other uses) August 2012 in Finland, where I live. *thumbs up*
I know this has little to do with original subject, and I actually mostly agree on what you wrote (I don't damn anyone to hell though, but I sure wish there exists something like the hindu reincarnation system where you do worse the worse you lived your last life - if not then maybe at least a purgatory type of system?;) ), but I wanted to ask you... what about corporations who do stuff in 3rd world countries that puts most small ass terrorist groups in shame, like Shell and the killings of Ogoniland people in Nigeria - I know, "it was not Shell, but military", no need to go there - and other such things, actions where the corporation knowingly chooses to take action they know will result in numerous deaths (not that even one wouldn't be enough) of innocent people, even babies (Nestle, baby milk substitute in India(?)), because it will be the (more) profitable thing to do for them.
Surely you must agree that there are corporations (not ones you mentioned specifically, but since your message seemed to be bit general...) that can be even worse, much so, than terrorists? Hell, some terrorists, no matter the fckdness of their horrible actions toward other people, even have way better motives for doing the act of taking lives - hell, even downright noble motives in comparison to sociopathic greed of some business leaders who make the decisions... Wouldn't you agree?
Has there been an actual study claiming what your message says or is this just how you figured it would likely be?
What about people who didn't eat those antidepressants (SSRI's for one have many uses [and doctors want to claim there are even more]) to treat depression but something else, like anxiety, and decided to kill themselves? In such cases I would expect the symptoms to likely increase chance of suicide than not, and if the medication helps then it should decrease it, yes?
It says in boxes of many different brand of antidepressants that suicide is indeed a possible, even if relatively rare, side-effect.
My friend killed himself after starting a medication to help him stop smoking. The medication is a relative of antidepressants - and it lists suicide as side-effect. He was not depressed, nor was he suicidal before the medication.
On the whole I agree with the principle, but at the point where someone is making a boatload of money selling something that might be dangerous, it deserves some medical attention to determine what the risks actually are. I don't care if it's marijuana, alcohol, or tobacco. Companies and individuals shouldn't be able to sell this stuff without the users of the product being made well-aware of what the hazards are.
Some pothead with experience of wide variety of drugs - mainly positive.
I agree with you on this fully.
For informed adults and responsible companies, yeah, who cares? It's their business. But for youth and irresponsible businesses, the rest of us do have some obligation to care about what is going on. Same for tobacco and alcohol, same for weed.
Drug users claim that they use drugs because they supposedly expand their minds.
Not "drug users" but psychedelics users - they are drug users but drug users are not all (most really) them, sadly.
That is squarely where the burden of proof lies for that claim lies.
Yes it does - but I still can believe in my "mind expanding" (it's a tricky & wide concept, often misunderstood by those who haven't experienced it - and of those who have there are people who do think it wasn't real after all. Just to be fair) LSD experiences (as some experiences with other psychedelics) to be real.
For me it's hard (impossible really) to prove it and I don't know studies proving it so I'll leave it at that - it's my belief, nothing more as far as I can prove.
Still there are also people who claim it absolutely does not happen - but they have no proof either, so it's rather poor argument too.
But as to your question, I haven't ignored the fact that pot can have negative psychological effects on some people and cases (especially in chronic use [pun unintended]), I'm not going to ignore this, especially without reading it - if it's correct then it is.
Honestly, if I'm paying $500 - $1000 *per lecture*, I'm going to sit and pay attention no matter how boring the material or the professor is.
You can. I have an ADHD, I can't. Yes, I get stimulants, when I eat them they help, but they are not the perfect solution for all,for me they just help, they don't fix the whole problem.
Doesn't mean I'm not a brilliant student at right environment - and ending up at McDonalds would be waste of my possibilities for society too.
no need to dress up like cartoon characters to make the class interesting like we're teaching 3rd graders with uncontrollable ADD. This is college. These are (ostensibly) adults. Give me a break.
There is something called adult ADD/ADHD. Most common misunderstanding is that ADD is only about kids - actually kids usually have ADHD more often than ADD, and ADHD kids will often lose much of the hyperactivity but they get to keep the fun attention disorder when they grow up.
And BTW, if you are really so undisciplined and trite as to need to be entertained at every turn, you don't need to be enrolled in a higher learning institution. Assembly line, etc ought to suit you just fine.
My father worked a simple job at factory. He, like I, had ADHD. Thanks.
I have a 4.2Ghz quad core AMD cpu, 16 gigs of 2ghz ram and a pair of SSD's in raid
so do I really give a shit about a graphic tachometer telling me that a text editor will bump that needle up by a fraction of a pixel?
So, if you never use your machine to it's fullest, why did you buy it and not some secondhand crap like I did (because it will fill my needs still - when it gets too slow, I'll upgrade)?
I don't need to see how a text editor bumps my CPU or MEM/CACHE meters either, but I do need to see those meters when running real shit.
Slashdot Mirror
Description is not how communism was supposed to be done nor how it was tried in reality.
So, a 20" tablet is one of the five dumbest ideas at CES, but a tablet measuring seven feet is one of the standouts? Hmmm.
The 20" tablet was among dumb ideas because it was a 20" tablet - the gigantic touch screen was not because, get this, it wasn't a tablet but a touch screen, and a remarkable touch screen it is.
Sheesh, I wish people read more carefully...
At least with a computer, you could play a game and it would be rendered at 4K (assuming it had enough processing power).
...assuming the game uses scalable vector graphics - otherwise the extra resolution may or may not benefit, but raster graphics used aren't going to get more detailed than they are...
If you don't trust the provider to keep your data intact, don't use that provider.
If you need more storage, pay for it. The cost is not prohibitive - 100GB or so for under US$10/mo is pretty easy to find.
If $10/month prices you out of the market, there are better things to worry about than encrypting files and storing them in the cloud.
$10€/month? I pay 35€/year for account on Finnish "community", though it's for non-commercial use only and it doesn't aim to big profits but rather the payment is to cover their costs - now they don't have fancy "cloud file storage interface (just ssh/sftp to access your files) and the service is mainly provided for having "ssh shell" to run stuff like irc client on and email account, web pages & database (httpd, php, perl, mysql, etc...) and so on, but they also provide 50GB storage for ssh/http, which is backup secured, and additionally 500GB for your backups (which they don't keep backup versions of).
fuse-encfs + sshfs should be easily set up to use that... for now I just upload encrypted and compressed tarballs via ssh to keep my data backuped.
Yes, I imagine that is what publishers would want - whether we should allow this state given protection for life is another question, and the answer is really simple: no, what are you, crazy?
Why?
Absolutely, and for a lot shorter time too - for computer software 75 freaking years is a big time! I'm starting to wonder if there could be a legally effective clause I could add to GPL or copyleft text to give my contributions to PD after a certain time from when it's written, as the copyright madness, whole world considered, seems to be just growing... ...and if there is a copyright of me+50, well, I'd rather say that my code is practically dying with me - PD is important for archiving culture and information, and *any* information dating 50 years from my death should be reusable by anyone for any purpose without legal worries - kinda the point US is now ignoring about what/why there is such thing as PD.
Sorry for accidentally leaving the end part of your message into end of my reply below btw...
just as there's plenty of cases where people blame alcohol for the stupid shit they've done. AA is full of them.
still, if an alcie goes to doctor because of anger issues/unstability(that they blame on drinking) around here it's quite usual they're given diazepam. which would be all good if they weren't unstable alcoholics and the pams just enhance that. giving them a bag of weed would be much better, at least if someone is going too deep with weed they're not 99.99% of time going to hurt anyone, themselves or others, except through inactivity. someone with anger issues gets alcohol+diazepam psychosis and someone is going to get hurt - via physical assault.
Of course there are also very similar people with very different story. My friend is much like your alcie, except that his doing quite well on not drinking in excess. He has severe anger issues and unstability, which alcohol doesn't help but which actually existed before it and is the no. 1 reason he became alcoholic - poorly misguided attempt to self-medicate his mental condition.
He would need some diazepam - I've seen it and he doesn't have to drink if he has some, but currently his only source is street dealers. He has tried doctors for help - being honest (and also trying to get help with alcoholism too) he has told about his problem with alcohol and that he wants to be without it. His told about his mental issues, and asked for benzos because they would help - the doctor agrees they would probably help. He has also told that when he gets medication he doesn't have the need to drink - because the big reason for drinking in the first place is gone.
You know what the problem is? The damn stupid ass doctor, after all this, tells that he can't write prescription for such drugs because of the alcohol problem! Flaming fsck!
Yes, I'm angry - not only does his problems spread into my life too but he is also my best friend. I see him suffer, I feel him suffer - and a dipshit like this is appointed to my friend at local public healthcare station (this is Finland). Now when he lived in Tampere, different city with different healthcare policies, he actually got help. Since he now lives in Helsinki there is very little hope for him to get the medication *proven* to help tho two major problems, one which causes the other, and the other that causes him to not receive medication in this city from public healthcare.
this study doesn't really surprise me at all though, it's even on the "no shit sherlock" level, it's so blatantly obvious. still, it's nice that they bothered to make a real study about that unhappy people seek a fix.
I don't drink anymore due to health issues(pancreatitis is a bitch that wont let her eye off you) and would be very glad if they legalized weed around here. Sure, it might make you spend a lot of time thinking with yourself and laughing at stupid shit along the way but quite frankly what's so bad about that?
Psychosis as a term is so fucking all over the place that it's almost useless as a word too, since it can mean fucking anything - even me wanting to emphasize things with "fucking" is a form of psychosis if you ask the right idiot. basically most weedsters use psychosis as a word for being bored nowadays(they're out of weed it's "psychosis", they got some good weed but nothing fun to do while smoking it and it's psychosis again! they smoke enough that they're practically sleeping and that too then is psychosis.) - it's so fucked up thanks to the prohibitionists. hell, even being drunk is "psychosis" nowadays, fucking pansies.
Let me put this question to you: is a Sam Adams Boston Lager very different in its health and drug abuse risks than a Sam Adams Double Bock? The latter has 80% more alcohol than the former. You will not find anyone in the alcohol abuse treatment community claiming that alcoholic proof has the slightest bit of difference in the risk and harm of alcohol consumption.
Your points above were all good, but this - which I consider bollocks. I'm assuming that it's because you know less about alcoholism and alcohol abuse treatment community than you know about Mary Jane. Or perhaps you know a large number of people from the community and it just happens that they fit into your claim, which maybe has caused your belief? I wouldn't know, and it doesn't matter - it's OK.
I'm not putting any arguments about the difference in harm between mild and hard liquor, I just wanted to friendly tell you that there are people in the community including alcoholics themselves (like my best friend who is recovering alcoholic with quite a bit of experience of that claimed difference - as his friend I share some of his experience, having seen enough to share his belief on this) as well as people working to help them. :)
As said, I wont argue anybodys views about this subject in this message - but if you want to discuss about it I will reply
Marijuana advocates reject all criticism, and assume all scientific studies are somehow flawed or are the result of anti-marijuana conspiracies. To them marijuana _has_ to be the perfect drug, even if reality contradicts that viewpoint. Sounds crazy, but it's roughly what you'd expect from people who are no longer living in our reality.
Perhaps it sounds crazy because you only count a vocal minority as advocates - doing so you sound quite like the equivalent of opposing side (...and I don't know whether you're pro or con, just saying what it makes you sound like).
2b) Marijuana causes the problem - and everybody has already noticed this before?
Nope - and that's why were having this argument, silly.
The connection has been known as long as Marijuana has been forbidden, it is reason it is forbidden in the first place.
Sure, that's why it took little time to forbid it, while tobacco in comparison was known so long and yet attempted to prohibit later. The others you're arguing with are just living in the opposite land.
If they could manage to prove the correlation worked the other way it would remove the main reason doctors still recommend not to legalize it completely. This has not been proven so far everything points to 1) or both like this one.
Talk about "loss of contact from reality" - delusions, impaired insight, but are there hallucinations? Now, I'm not a doctor, but this has a word in common with title of page: psychosis.
Right. So a cocktail of a thousand chemicals is less side-effect heavy than a purified component?
So, if comparing any one chemical used as active ingredient on a drug and cannabis, it's the synthesized and/or extracted chemical that wins because even though it may have any number of nasty side-effects you feel immediately (nausea, loss of libido, mental/motoric impairment) and a number you'll get to know later (eg. withdrawals), the plant has a thousand chemical cocktail which we just never can know which will blow up on you and end up causing damage the synthetic drug wouldn't do (because, whatever it is, we at least know it).
I was of course just comparing strong opioids with side-effects I wrote in parenthesis - a relatively harmless category of drugs in general, most not causing practically any physical damage and next to nil psychological. I say it's clear that cannabis is better choice for treating chronic pain than synthetic opioid oxycodone, provided it works for you if it's long term and you want to live full, unimpaired as possible, normal, healthy and enjoyable life.
Well, then... let's just compare synthetic THC to organic cannabis plant as drug to give you an easy one. This is clearly a victory for your argument... ...although there was a study saying that CBD is apparently acting as psychosis prevention of the main active chemicals duo in cannabis plant, while plain THC alone was shown to have higher probability to cause psychosis.
Now, clearly this wasn't anti-cannabis biased study - if anything, it was cannabis neutral and it's results can help to create healthier cannabis strains and/or pharmaceutical products. Still it might not have been correct, but you certainly don't get to call yourself a winner on this one.
Caffeine pills or coffee? Now this is probably one where you *do* win - I chose it just to point that while coffee in fact is known to have hundreds of chemicals, many known to be carcinogenic and only a portion of them known for their effects, I'd still pick a cup of coffee (I'm leaving out the pleasure from taste & feel, just comparing effects) over caffeine pills. ;) ).
Why? Because coffee has substance(s) that act against caffeine smoothing it's effects that cause nervousness, jitters, concentration loss, raise of pulse and blood pressure and even panic attacks. So even if it's less healthy I'm saying the quality of my experience is also a factor (actually of most important ones) in which one to consider, all accounted, to be the better drug (or in this case... well, drug - in non-medicinal meaning
As a scientist
Somehow I doubt this.
Now, I know I might be totally wrong here, and I apologize for the insult and bad feelings caused if that's the case, but frankly with what you wrote I'm not seeing your rationale that much above the one of the "it's herbal so it's better than evil synthetic *chemical* " crowd - but at least you do have some kind of logic behind this, just erroneously interpreted as far as my opinion goes.
But I've personally witnessed the same psychosis described in the TFA occur 2-3 years after cannabis usage started. And mathematically speaking, with a mixture of a thousand chemicals, chances are that the compound responsible for that is different from the compound that's beneficial to you.
Forget the mathematics - studies have already established that to get the most beneficial effects you need both, CBD and THC. CBD alone would be poor one, and THC would not work as well as the two together either but there's a study suggesting that it would also have higher probability of causing psychosis.
Sometimes with plants, herbal medicines, it's not a one chemical you can extract and get the benefits, hell sometimes it's not enough to have just one plant!
The same is true with synthetic pharmaceuticals in medical treatment.
Marijuana/Cannabis is not for everyone, alcohol is not for everyone, we all have personal preferences.
I know cannabis has helped keep me sane. I've found it far more beneficial than the concoction of of man-made, side-effect heavy, possibly lethal pharmaceuticals that the doctor would prefer I took daily.
I know next to nothing about marijuana... is it still consumed primarily through smoking?
It's the most common method, if that's what you mean.
It can also be prepared for eating or drinking, which will take larger amount of ganja to reach the same level as you get with smaller amount when smoking and the onset seems to take forever (0.5-3 hours even), but as a flip-side it will last several times as long as a smoke.
Then there is vaporizing, a method producing vapor instead of smoke, offering the same fast onset as smoking but with only fraction of the amount needed - it's quite rare, but mostly because people don't know about vaporisator's or where to buy them. I see a possibility here - legalize and then, at least for medical marijuana, put vapo's in pharmacies... If the word starts spreading there is a chance of getting potheads like me to use, in wider scale, a method which saves us big penny, has effects and duration like when smoking and yet saves you from the biggest clearly established source of possible negative health effects when smoking pot: getting smoke (with carcinogens, etc.) in your lungs.
Oh, and almost forgot: As for prescription drugs, a product named Sativex, made from the plant itself (not some lame attempt by big pharma to develop a synthetic cannabinoid they have patent for). It's a spray, and supposedly should have fairly fast onset. It contains a mix of both, THC and CBD.
That's all I know about it at the moment - oh, and it was accepted, as first cannabis product, to be sold and used as prescription drug (for glaucoma, chronic pains and other uses) August 2012 in Finland, where I live. *thumbs up*
I know this has little to do with original subject, and I actually mostly agree on what you wrote (I don't damn anyone to hell though, but I sure wish there exists something like the hindu reincarnation system where you do worse the worse you lived your last life - if not then maybe at least a purgatory type of system? ;) ), but I wanted to ask you... what about corporations who do stuff in 3rd world countries that puts most small ass terrorist groups in shame, like Shell and the killings of Ogoniland people in Nigeria - I know, "it was not Shell, but military", no need to go there - and other such things, actions where the corporation knowingly chooses to take action they know will result in numerous deaths (not that even one wouldn't be enough) of innocent people, even babies (Nestle, baby milk substitute in India(?)), because it will be the (more) profitable thing to do for them.
Surely you must agree that there are corporations (not ones you mentioned specifically, but since your message seemed to be bit general...) that can be even worse, much so, than terrorists? Hell, some terrorists, no matter the fckdness of their horrible actions toward other people, even have way better motives for doing the act of taking lives - hell, even downright noble motives in comparison to sociopathic greed of some business leaders who make the decisions... Wouldn't you agree?
Has there been an actual study claiming what your message says or is this just how you figured it would likely be?
What about people who didn't eat those antidepressants (SSRI's for one have many uses [and doctors want to claim there are even more]) to treat depression but something else, like anxiety, and decided to kill themselves? In such cases I would expect the symptoms to likely increase chance of suicide than not, and if the medication helps then it should decrease it, yes?
It says in boxes of many different brand of antidepressants that suicide is indeed a possible, even if relatively rare, side-effect.
My friend killed himself after starting a medication to help him stop smoking. The medication is a relative of antidepressants - and it lists suicide as side-effect. He was not depressed, nor was he suicidal before the medication.
On the whole I agree with the principle, but at the point where someone is making a boatload of money selling something that might be dangerous, it deserves some medical attention to determine what the risks actually are. I don't care if it's marijuana, alcohol, or tobacco. Companies and individuals shouldn't be able to sell this stuff without the users of the product being made well-aware of what the hazards are.
Some pothead with experience of wide variety of drugs - mainly positive.
I agree with you on this fully.
For informed adults and responsible companies, yeah, who cares? It's their business. But for youth and irresponsible businesses, the rest of us do have some obligation to care about what is going on. Same for tobacco and alcohol, same for weed.
And this as well.
Drug users claim that they use drugs because they supposedly expand their minds.
Not "drug users" but psychedelics users - they are drug users but drug users are not all (most really) them, sadly.
That is squarely where the burden of proof lies for that claim lies.
Yes it does - but I still can believe in my "mind expanding" (it's a tricky & wide concept, often misunderstood by those who haven't experienced it - and of those who have there are people who do think it wasn't real after all. Just to be fair) LSD experiences (as some experiences with other psychedelics) to be real.
For me it's hard (impossible really) to prove it and I don't know studies proving it so I'll leave it at that - it's my belief, nothing more as far as I can prove.
Still there are also people who claim it absolutely does not happen - but they have no proof either, so it's rather poor argument too.
Damn I'm high right now :)
But as to your question, I haven't ignored the fact that pot can have negative psychological effects on some people and cases (especially in chronic use [pun unintended]), I'm not going to ignore this, especially without reading it - if it's correct then it is.
PS. Assface.
It's you - get out of the social games that tell you games are for little children.
Honestly, if I'm paying $500 - $1000 *per lecture*, I'm going to sit and pay attention no matter how boring the material or the professor is.
You can. I have an ADHD, I can't. Yes, I get stimulants, when I eat them they help, but they are not the perfect solution for all,for me they just help, they don't fix the whole problem.
Doesn't mean I'm not a brilliant student at right environment - and ending up at McDonalds would be waste of my possibilities for society too.
no need to dress up like cartoon characters to make the class interesting like we're teaching 3rd graders with uncontrollable ADD. This is college. These are (ostensibly) adults. Give me a break.
There is something called adult ADD/ADHD. Most common misunderstanding is that ADD is only about kids - actually kids usually have ADHD more often than ADD, and ADHD kids will often lose much of the hyperactivity but they get to keep the fun attention disorder when they grow up.
And BTW, if you are really so undisciplined and trite as to need to be entertained at every turn, you don't need to be enrolled in a higher learning institution. Assembly line, etc ought to suit you just fine.
My father worked a simple job at factory. He, like I, had ADHD. Thanks.
I have a 4.2Ghz quad core AMD cpu, 16 gigs of 2ghz ram and a pair of SSD's in raid
so do I really give a shit about a graphic tachometer telling me that a text editor will bump that needle up by a fraction of a pixel?
So, if you never use your machine to it's fullest, why did you buy it and not some secondhand crap like I did (because it will fill my needs still - when it gets too slow, I'll upgrade)?
I don't need to see how a text editor bumps my CPU or MEM/CACHE meters either, but I do need to see those meters when running real shit.
Ion3 (well, so did Ion2 and Ion too for all I know) does this - I'm having high hopes of wmii and awesome doing that too, as I'll be trying them next.
To me open means free. You number your software as you please. I do it as I please and others do it as they please.
I would drop the whole version number stuff and just use the date.
Didn't wine used to do that? Now it just says 1.01... (oh my, I should upgrade...)