The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘science’ Category

I think they located some of this hippy ancestor’s in China.

Go on, clicky the linky good! You know you wanna!

(The northlon­don­hippy apol­o­gises for any per­ceived racist humour in the above post. You can’t be too care­ful these days.)

As much as I like to pre­tend I am per­fec­tion per­son­i­fied, the truth is I am a deeply flawed individual.

My life is lit­er­ally lit­tered with bad deci­sions and unfor­tu­nate choices, the results of which con­tinue to dog my days on a daily basis.

It’s fine to reflect upon ones mis­takes, as long as one is not mis­taken into think­ing that some­thing can be done to rec­tify them. The choices you make can’t usu­ally be undone and the con­se­quences will be with you until the day you die and may even con­tinue to effect oth­ers after you’re gone.

I’ve got no par­tic­u­lar deci­sions in mind, this has more to do with a gen­eral overview than any­thing specific.

I don’t want you to think every choice I’ve made in my life has been wrong, I’ve made some good choices too, but lately I’ve been think­ing about some of those moments in my life, where I zigged when per­haps I should have zagged.

It’s easy to sec­ond guess your own deci­sions after the fact, when the full­ness of time and expe­ri­ence yield the miss­ing pieces of the puz­zle that weren’t avail­able at the time of tak­ing the deci­sion. It’s also an exer­cise in futility.

Much of life is futile and point­less, so its not really enough of a rea­son not to think about these things.

There’s a the­ory that states every time a deci­sion is made, the uni­verse is split and alter­na­tive real­i­ties fol­low both paths and that all of exis­tence con­sists of a “multi-verse” of infi­nite exis­tence. Every­thing that can hap­pen, does hap­pen, just not in your reality.

Some­where in the multi-verse, there’s a ver­sion of me that suc­cess­ful, happy and fully ful­filled. No doubt taller, too.

How’d I get stuck in this real­ity? If there really is a multi-verse, then in at least one of them (and pos­si­bly many more), I’m king of the planet and in charge of you all. Don’t worry, if there are infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties, then you get to be king or queen of the world your­self, and I get to be your slave.

Not all of the real­i­ties in the multi-verse would be sunny, as I expect there are plenty that don’t turn out as well. Think about it, how many real­i­ties exist with­out me? Per­haps in some, I was still born and never even got to take my first breath.

I know that even when my deci­sions have been wrong, they’ve been right for me at the time. I have to believe that, because I can’t travel back in time and change them. At least not yet, any­way, but give me another six months and my time machine will be up and run­ning and I’ll be charg­ing loads of dosh for rides to the past and future. Think you can afford it?

My many per­son­al­ity flaws, at least as I see them, colour my every move. I’m cer­tainly my own worst enemy and I’m more respon­si­ble for hold­ing myself back than any­one else.

I used to gen­uinely believe that any­thing is pos­si­ble, but as I get older, I’m less con­vinced. As you get older, the cor­ri­dor of options nar­rows and while you may still cre­ate the illu­sion of choice, your choices become more and more lim­ited with each pass­ing day.

I can’t remem­ber where I heard this one, but it made a lot of sense: “You spend the first half of your life acquir­ing things and the sec­ond half hav­ing them all taken away from you.”

I’m unde­ni­ably in the 2nd half of my life. It’s not too much of a stretch to see where things are going for me. Its all down­hill from here.

Can you tell that my birth­day is approach­ing? It’s about 2 months away. Hey ho.

If I had the chance to do it all again, would I do things dif­fer­ently? Of course I would, what hon­est per­son wouldn’t?

That doesn’t mean I would do every­thing dif­fer­ently, but there are a few wrongs I would cer­tainly put right.

It doesn’t mat­ter because no one gets a sec­ond chance, except in the multi-verse real­ity where rein­car­na­tion hap­pens and it was just my luck not to end up in that one either.

Socrates said “the unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing”. If that is really true, then I have the most wor­thy life known to man.

Either that or my nar­cis­sis­tic ten­den­cies are start­ing to over­whelm being an obsessive-compulsive sociopath with manic-depressive tendencies.

You have a nice day, too.

Why isn’t THIS WOMAN in charge of UK drug policy?

I’m talk­ing about Lady Amanda Nei­d­path, the head of the Beck­ley Foun­da­tion, the group respon­si­ble for THIS REPORT which I wrote about recently.

Why are our elected offi­cial so afraid of the truth?

Why do we ignore experts on issues which are con­tro­ver­sial? Cer­tainly peo­ple with this sort of exten­sive knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence on any sub­ject (includ­ing and espe­cially drug use) should be embraced, as should their conclusions.

We don’t expect enough from our lead­ers, we should expect more. We should receive more too.

Let’s put Lady Nei­d­path in charge of the UK’s drug strat­egy. She’s already got my vote!

Check this out:

It’s over 6 min­utes long, but I promise, it’s worth it.

Don’t have 6 min­utes? Ok, you can read THIS VERSION in 2 mins, from the NY Times.

Per­son­ally, I think this is the first ratio­nal expla­na­tion I’ve ever heard on the nature of exis­tence and it deserves a much wider audi­ence. Please spread the word!

Now that you’ve read the NY Times arti­cle, or watched the video, read the title of this entry again.

Ok, who’s with me?

Yo homies, what up?

Besides the cost of petrol and your cholesterol!

I wouldn’t worry about your cho­les­terol all that much, mat­ter of fact, I’d advise you to have the whipped cream on everything!

I’d actu­ally advise indulging your­self in every con­ceiv­able way at every pos­si­ble oppor­tu­nity. I know, that’s what I usu­ally endorse, but this time its with good reason.

James Love­lock, the man who dreamt up GAIA THEORY and a host of other envi­ron­men­tal mod­els, says that we’re way beyond the tip­ping point as far as the envi­ron­ment is con­cerned and only have until around 2020 before the seri­ous shit hits the seri­ous fan and most of us croak.

Here, check it out for your own badass self by read­ing this inter­view with him from the Guardian a cou­ple of days ago. Go on, CLICK HERE, it’s inter­est­ing reading…

What’dya think?

I thought, make mine a dou­ble vodka and I’ll have the 2 girl exec­u­tive spe­cial, please!

Reject his assess­ment if you wish, that’s what hap­pened with many of Lovelock’s pre­vi­ous claims…until they were accepted uni­ver­sally as fact. The guy’s a vision­ary, I’d heed his words.

The truth is, no one seems that both­ered. This story is only cur­rently run­ning 2nd most pop­u­lar on the Guardian web­site, after the lat­est in the US pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in first place.

Quite frankly, even though this is sin­gu­larly the most impor­tant issue fac­ing the planet today, most of us would just rather not know. Oh yeah, we say, cli­mate change, isn’t that a bitch?

I don’t think any of us truly grasp the enor­mity of what may be com­ing, if we indeed believe the experts…and our own eyes!

I’m not exactly Mr. Nature, but even I can see the plants and ani­mals react­ing to the changes in cli­mate. For fuck’s sake, I have some weird pur­ple flow­ers bloom­ing in my gar­den today! I’ve seen hon­ey­bees buzzing about! None of that can be good!

So what does all this really mean? I don’t know…higher temps, more heat related deaths, the seas rise, Lon­don floods, trop­i­cal dis­eases and pests move fur­ther north, the food runs out, oil runs out, money becomes use­less, soci­ety degen­er­ates into some post apoc­a­lyp­tic night­mare and then we all die.

Well, all except the rich and the pow­er­ful, they flee to their secret bunkers at the north and south poles, where they hun­ker down for gen­er­a­tions, until the planet calms itself down again and sur­face life becomes pos­si­ble again.

Pleas­ant dreams…

All this stuff leaves me think­ing one thing: I need a gun. No, not for self-preservation, but pre­cisely the oppo­site. If it all really does go as bad as they’re sug­gest­ing, I want a sure fire method of spar­ing myself all this non­sense and a bul­let through the skull is the only guar­an­teed method I know.

In the mean time, order the steak, can­cel your pen­sion and smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, there’s not all that much more time left, so enjoy!

A few days ago, I learned of a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion that’s to be held on the sub­ject of the “pos­si­ble” reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of cannabis. It takes place in Lon­don on the 5th of February.

This gov­ern­ment has appar­ently decided the out­come of this con­sul­ta­tion and Jacqui Smith has already leaked their deci­sion to put cannabis back into Class B from its cur­rent sta­tus of Class C.

It widely known that the gov­ern­ment has cho­sen this path for one sim­ple rea­son, to appear “tough on drugs.” They iden­ti­fied this issue as one which Tony Blair and David Blun­kett left them vul­ner­a­ble to crit­i­cism that could be eas­ily changed with­out much pub­lic outcry.

They’re cor­rect on that score. How many dope smok­ers do you know that would attend a government-held, pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on cannabis, and con­fess to reg­u­larly break­ing a law, which is about to become a lot harder on peo­ple who enjoy weed?

Let’s not bull­shit around this…a change in clas­si­fi­ca­tion from C to B means only one thing and that is to fur­ther crim­i­nalise peo­ple who smoke a bit of dope. The penal­ties for pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of cannabis are exactly the same under class B and C — exactly the same! The dif­fer­ence is on the oth­er­wise law abid­ing cit­i­zen, who par­takes of this plant — the penal­ties for sim­ple pos­ses­sion are sig­nif­i­cantly harsher.

Why would the gov­ern­ment wish to crim­i­nalise so many peo­ple? Could it have to do with build­ing new pris­ons and need­ing peo­ple to fill those places? Dope­heads aren’t dan­ger­ous or vio­lent, you would have a prison pop­u­la­tion that was cheap and easy to manage!

Think that’s a bit “con­spir­acy the­ory” even for me? Ok, have you got a bet­ter explanation?

Just about every think tank, pol­icy group and gen­uine expert feels it should be left class C, decrim­i­nalised or legalised com­pletely. Many cops believe this too, and so do a fair few MPs and min­is­ters, but many are afraid to voice their opin­ions for fear of the wrath of the Mail/Express/Telegraph set.

I con­sid­ered attend­ing that con­sul­ta­tion on the 5th of Feb. I thought long and hard about going, stat­ing my real name and read­ing a selec­tion of entries I’ve writ­ten on this sub­ject so near and dear to my heart. And then I pussied out.

Look, either we all go, or none of us go! That’s right, all 6 mil­lion (esti­mated) reg­u­lar cannabis smok­ers have to reg­is­ter to attend. Every last one of us. I’ll go, if you’ll all go. They can’t put us all in jail, can they? If they try, we can just seek asy­lum in the Netherlands!

Here are a few inter­est­ing and related links:

This is from the can­nazine and talks about the 5th Feb con­sul­ta­tion and how they are ignor­ing the experts in the deci­sion to regrade
Click Me.

This one is from the Inde­pen­dent, it’s the same story, only with some ques­tion­able men­tal health details thrown in to con­fuse the issue
Click Me.

This is from the Times and talks about how the gov­ern­ment should base its poli­cies on sci­ence, not emo­tion. It sites the cannabis “debate” as an exam­ple
Click Me.

And here again is my cannabis truth series, which is worth read­ing if you want to know the real story and not the twisted shit they want you to believe!
Click Me.

The UN’s Inter­na­tional Panel on Cli­mate Change, or IPCC as it is known, has issued the stark­est warn­ing so far on the expected effects of cli­mate change. Check out what the “news­pa­per of record”, the NYT has to say about it by click­ing RIGHT HERE.

The group, who were co-winners of the Nobel Peace Prize this year, along with Al Gore, have said that if we don’t get our shit together and soon, we’re all going to die.

Ok, per­haps those weren’t the exact words the panel used in their report, but trust me, that’s what they meant. Our con­tin­ued con­sump­tion of all the resources mother earth has to offer is screw­ing up the planet and we won’t be able to recover from this one.

The report says that we all have to take some dra­matic action to avert this loom­ing envi­ron­men­tal disaster.

As if!

Sure, China will stop build­ing their coal-burning pow­er­plants at the rate of a new one every week.

Of course, peo­ple will junk their gas-guzzling SUVs and sports cars in favour of bicycles.

And we’ll all charge our iPods less fre­quently and sit around in dark rooms, not watch­ing TV.

Let’s face facts; no one is going to change their lifestyle in the slight­est to pre­serve the future of life on the planet. Why would we? We like our mod­ern con­ve­niences, our cen­tral heat­ing, our air-conditioning, our refridger­a­tors. We love our com­put­ers and tele­vi­sions. We love noth­ing bet­ter than tak­ing a joy ride in our big, com­bus­tion motor pro­pelled vehi­cles and our cheap Easy­jet flights that cost less than train jour­neys. We like our fresh sea­sonal fruit and veg, flown in from what­ever coun­try is cur­rently in sea­son. I had some fresh sugar snap peas last week that came from Latin Amer­ica – who would want frozen or tinned?

The IPCC should be com­mended for the work they are doing, but let’s not live under any illu­sions that the rec­om­men­da­tions they’ve made will be widely adopted. They won’t be. We’re fucked. Seri­ously. Fucked.

Some of you will be fright­ened by this, but most of us will take it in our stride and go about our days like noth­ing is wrong. Works for me!

What’s the point of wor­ry­ing about some­thing you can’t pre­vent? Cli­mate change, global warm­ing, what­ever you want to call it, seems as inevitable as death and taxes, though once we’re all dead, there will be no more taxes. See, there is a bright side.

I would sug­gest you all turn your cen­tral heat­ing (or air­con) up to full blast, fill up your tank with super-premium petrol and go for a long drive. Leave your lights on at home and throw all your glass, paper, plas­tic and card­board in the non-recycling bin. If we’re all going to have to die, we might as well enjoy the ride while we can, so smoke ‘em if you got ‘em and that includes fos­sil fuels!

Perus­ing the inter­net, as I do, seek­ing inspi­ra­tion and of course, cannabis related news, I stum­bled upon this lit­tle gem, which can be found on quite a few news sites. I’ve opted to use a link to the Reuters News Agency web­site, as news agen­cies, espe­cially Reuters and AP, are nor­mally the most unbi­ased organisations.

Here’s the topline of the report:

“A study of more than 5,000 young­sters in Switzer­land has found those who smoked mar­i­juana do as well or bet­ter in some areas as those who don’t, researchers said on Monday.”

I told you it would do your head in! Just imag­ine how hard it will be for gov­ern­ments around the world to spin this one away!

The evi­dence in favour of cannabis con­tin­ues to mount, as wit­nessed in my “cannabis truth series”, but the fuck­ers with the power have no inter­est in truth and seek only to sup­press it. Luck­ily for you, you’ve got me and “truth” is my mid­dle name.

Ok, I don’t have a mid­dle name, my par­ents couldn’t be both­ered. See how god­damn truth­ful I am!

(Read the northlondonhippy’s cannabis truth series. Go on, learn some­thing cool!)

As well as relay­ing my own per­sonal expe­ri­ences with cannabis, I’ve been keep­ing track of the truth and the lies sur­round­ing my favourite plant for quite a while now. I thought it would a good time to put links to some of my more rel­e­vant posts together on one page. I did some­thing sim­i­lar, but with a more lim­ited scope a cou­ple of months ago, and I left quite a few older entries out.

I’ll aim to update this list­ing again, in the future, as I add more related content.

So, with­out fur­ther delay, here is “the northlon­don­hippy cannabis truth series”:

A brief his­tory of the hippy and cannabis — 29 June 2006

“Dri­ven by moral panic” — 9 March 2007

Don’t just take my word for it — 11 March 2007

Class C = Sig­nif­i­cant Fall in Cannabis Use — 26 Octo­ber 2007

Sci­ence con­fuses me — 25 Octo­ber 2007

Act­ing with­out think­ing, a pol­icy with­out foun­da­tion — 21 Octo­ber 2007

The ratio­nal voices are get­ting louder, but is any­one in power lis­ten­ing? — 16 Octo­ber 2007

Find­ing truth amongst the lies — 24 Sep­tem­ber 2007

Enlist­ing in the bat­tle over cannabis — 30 July 2007

Demand and sup­ply — another angle on the sta­tus of cannabis — 30 July 2007

It’s not as black and white as they would have you believe — 30 July 2007

But what do real experts say about reclas­si­fy­ing cannabis — 30 July 2007

That Lancet cannabis study, the Daily Mail and the truth — 30 July 2007

Don’t just take my word for it (again) — 30 July 2007

The northlon­don­hippy offers to be the voice of rea­son, truth, san­ity and expe­ri­ence regard­ing cannabis — 30 July 2007

The GUARDIAN of truth — 12 June 2007

False hys­te­ria sells — 27 March 2007

A home­grown har­vest — 13 March 2007

Brave Peo­ple — 27 Octo­ber 2007

I get con­fused, some­times, by all the dif­fer­ent, con­flict­ing bits of infor­ma­tion offered to me on any given day.

I try to dis­re­gard as much of it as I can, but when it comes to the bat­tle over cannabis, my ears prick up, which is markedly bet­ter than a prick up your ear.

The cur­rent lies being ped­dled about weed must be con­fus­ing to a lot of folks out there. The pow­ers that be are not-so-subtly work­ing hard to shift pub­lic per­cep­tion. They want you to think mar­i­juana is the devil’s weed; that it will turn your chil­dren in psy­chotic killers who are only con­cerned with where their next fix of dope is com­ing from.

This por­trayal couldn’t be any fur­ther from the truth if they tried. Oh wait, they are try­ing and they are not in remote prox­im­ity of even a reflec­tion in a pud­dle of piss of truth.

Yet, the news­pa­per head­lines scream with out­ra­geous anger and hyper­bole over the dan­gers of cannabis.

Head­lines can be wrong. Fre­quently, they are. It’s eas­ier to par­rot some make believe fact, if that fic­ti­tious fact cre­ates fear and moral indignation.

Here’s some­thing you won’t be read­ing in any respectable news­pa­per, any time soon. A recent study car­ried out by a respected Dutch uni­ver­sity, com­pared the teenage brains via MRI scans of two groups of teenagers; group A were reg­u­lar weed smok­ers, group B never touched the stuff.

Guess what? There was no dis­cernible dif­fer­ence in the results, between the two groups. Or as it says in the head­line of the arti­cle I’m quot­ing, “Cannabis not dan­ger­ous for young people”.

Could you imag­ine the front page of the Daily Mail or the Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day splash­ing the same head­line across their front page? Nei­ther can I, but a hippy can dream and this hippy does. Far too much.