Prisoners' free health care plan beats anything on the streets

Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard

Posted: 08/16/2009 01:27:21 AM PDT

Recent court rulings call for improved medical care for California's prison population. The court said the care now provided to prisoners is unconstitutional. The reality is everything possible is being done for prisoners health care right now.

The prison system continues to be the biggest drain on California's budget. Billions of dollars come out of state coffers to meet every mental and medical need of prisoners according to the court's orders.

A 2005 court appointed receiver oversees the responses to the prisoner's needs. That almost resulted in new medical facilities to treat 10,000 ailing inmates and create “a holistic” environment with indoor basketball courts, handball courts, electronic bingo boards, stress-reduction rooms, music therapy, kitchens to teach cooking skills and outdoor gardens where inmates could relax in private.

Click here to read the rest at The Times-Standard.

Birds of a feather drink together

They obviously have a better class of pigeon Down Under.

Instead of pecking around on the filthy pavements among cigarette butts and chewing gum, they prefer to sip filtered water and go to great lengths for a bath.

The trio pictured here, in Brisbane, Queensland, appear to have worked out a clever system of adapting the water fountain built by humans for their own pigeon purposes.

After waiting for the fountain to be free, one bird jumped on the lever and pushed it down to fill up the bowl, while another kept watch and the third splashed in.

Read more at The Daily Mail

BREAKING: Rush, Newt, and Sarah Supported Death Panels, Too!

From The Nation --

Attention, townhall protesters: Guess who else wants to pull the plug on granny and kill Sarah Palin's baby?

In some knock-out reporting, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow showed Thursday night that not long ago Rush Limbaugh promoted death panels on his own radio show, Newt Gingrich sung their praises in the pages of the Washington Post, and, as the half-term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin actually proclaimed an official Death Panel Day for her state!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Now, I wonder how long it will be before this must-see hypocrisy is featured on the nightly news and Sunday talk shows? Especially on your shows, Brian Williams and David Gregory, since you are, like Maddow, part of the "NBC family." Surely you're not going to ignore this major story at the heart of the health care debate, are you?

And for more must-see health care hypocrisy, viddy this: Glenn Beck on the Best Health Care in the World, from The Daily Show, aired the same night.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Glenn Beck's Operationwww.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Spinal Tap Performance

Early toolmakers were 'engineers'

Early modern humans in South Africa were using "heat treatment" to improve their stone tools about 72,000 years ago, according to new research.

By Griet Scheldeman

This technique may bridge a gap between the use of fire to cook food 800,000 years ago and the production of ceramics 10,000 years ago.

Evidence for this innovation was found at Pinnacle Point, a Middle Stone Age site on the South African coast.

The researchers have published details in the journal Science.

"We found that as early as 165,000 years ago, but definitely 72,000 years ago, people are doing more than just using fires for cooking, heat, light or protection," lead researcher Kyle Brown, from Arizona State University, US, told BBC News.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

8 WAYS HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM PROVIDES SECURITY AND STABILITY TO ALL AMERICANS

1. Ends Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions: Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history.

2. Ends Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays: Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses.
3. Ends Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care: Insurance companies must fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests that help you prevent illness, such as mammograms or eye and foot exams for diabetics.
4. Ends Dropping of Coverage for Seriously Ill: Insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill.
5. Ends Gender Discrimination: Insurance companies will be prohibited from charging you more because of your gender.
6. Ends Annual or Lifetime Caps on Coverage: Insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.
7. Extends Coverage for Young Adults: Children would continue to be eligible for family coverage through the age of 26.
8. Guarantees Insurance Renewal: Insurance companies will be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full. Insurance companies won't be allowed to refuse renewal because someone became sick.
Learn more and get details:
http://tinyurl.com/nbn5fg
Click here to read 8 Common Myths about health reform.

Check out this film: 'Power & Control LSD in The Sixties'

Experiments with LSD. Wait till you see some of the people who dropped the hallucinogenic compound back before anyone in the public heard about it.

As usual, it involves some sneaky crap by the CIA and others who sought to exploit it's properties for no good.

Click here to see the YouTube Video - Part One. A film by Aron Ranen

Food for thought today...

LSD drawings from 1950 test by the government

Women spend one year, four months of life in tears

An average woman spends the equivalent of one year and four months of her life crying, new research has shown.
The survey of 3,000 females found, that during their first year, they will shed tears for three hours a day when they need changing, feeding or entertaining.

Teenage girls cry for around two hours and 13 minutes a week and, by their mid-20s, they will cry for as much as 2.24 hours a week after falling out with their partner, watching a weepy film or losing a loved one, reports The Daily Express.

Researchers found from birth to the age of 78, she will be in tears for 12,013 hours.

The poll conducted by www.TheBabyWebsite.com also shows that the reasons why women cry change dramatically over a lifetime. But spokeswoman Kathryn Crawford said: “Feeling tired is one of the most common reasons adults and babies cry.”
Photo & Text from The Times of India

Read more about real Meat Lovers !

Meat is Good. Meat tastes good, smells good, and plumps when you cook it. Meat is one of those things that makes you glad you're at the top of the food chain so you can enjoy it. Meat makes friends. Meat is for Lovers.
Click here to read more about PWEETA (People who enjoy eating tasty animals) via Ooze

The 20th Century The Way It Should Have Happened

By Graeme McMillan
Part-Star Wars homage, part-alternate history, If Star Wars Was Real retells the history of the 20th century with some added players, offering up a Photoshopped-fantasia of nerditry and "What If"s. Click here to see more.

Here's 27 Links in 24 hours to my recent column about a government monopoly on cannabis cultivation

It's hard to believe that so many people viewed this column (There's a monopoly on marijuana growing & research in America.") in the last 24 hours.

It's was still number One in the Times-Standard Most Read Online as of 6 p.m.
Let's see what happens in the days and weeks ahead.
Meanwhile, check out some of these cool sites that carried this column so far:
Marijuana.com This site has everything you want to know about cannabis and it's many uses.
Magazine New Data Portal Magazine
This site has plenty of options from hemp to hash oil, to research.
Cannabis News
News about pot from Great Britain and the USA. It's collects news on the controversial herb.
Cannabis Lifestyle Network
On the news menu: politics, hemp, green earth, business, lifestyle, & entertainment.
UK420
Tips for promoting healthy plant growth from the UK
TWEETMEME
My column is listed under their "Hottest Links on Twitter!"
Current
This slick news site provided a picture of the "Pot Doctor" along with my column.
Stoner Nation
This cool blog likes to provide marijuana news that keeps people talking.
Medical Marijuana Referrals
This blog's Dr. Reefer is from Las Vegas Medical Marijuana Clinic
Home Grown BudThis blog has a membership forum with an online chat room: topic cannabis
Treating Yourself
This web site is a cannabis fueled forum for open discussion
Weed Bay
Another blog forum for marijuana talk and news
Vote4Pot
Shaggy on Twitter
Ajnag
This facebook fan has a lot of friends and enjoys news about cannabis
Marijuana Journal
Nice blog that features pot news and videos too.
High Memories
Another Twitter person with hundreds of friends who want to read about weed in America
BudHoe
Medicinal Marijuana Online Magazine -This sweet site has a picture of the good doctor next to my column, and a wide variety of news categories and videos
The Hemp and Cannabis Association/NORML Daily Audio Stash
Information on Medical Marijuana Clinics, news, entertainment, and more from this site by NORML
HydroCanna
A nice growing and smoking forum for those who like marijuana.
Medical Marijuana Inc.
Solutions for an emerging industry!
Canna Nation
An online cannabis community that shares information on the healing herb we call marijuana.
Jack Herer. com
I'm totally honored to have Jack's site pick up my column. The guys a legend. My day has been made. (see Aug.9th, 2009)
420 Magazine
I can't believe it! 420 Magazine. I read this mag as much as High Times! Again, I'm honored to have my column featured with such a sweet publication!
Rollitup
This site calls itself the Marijuana Source.
Identi.com
This is a microblogging service, that picked up my column, by Status.net. It runs the Laconica microblogging software, version 0.8.0, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
420Attorney.com
Recent events in the California Marijuana Legal World (Kroger & Kroger Law Group)
The Marijuana Observer
Observations on Marijuana (See Aug 10 list)

There's a monopoly on marijuana growing and research in America

By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard

Posted: 08/09/2009 01:28:32 AM PDT

I'd like you to meet Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly, the only person in the United States who can grow tons of marijuana and not worry the Feds will bust him.

If your company wants to do research on marijuana, he's the guy to see. Dr. ElSohly's lab at the University of Mississippi has an exclusive contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which supplies the pot to approved researchers who study its ill effects.

Despite the federal government's efforts to suppress marijuana's positive aspects for the last 72 years, researchers everywhere watch with interest as Big Pharma gets involved with the controversial herb and its therapeutic qualities.

Click here to read the rest of this column.

Obese Texas inmate hides gun in his flabs of fat

HOUSTON — An obese inmate in Texas has been charged after officials learned he had a gun hidden under flabs of his own flesh.

Twenty-five-year-old George Vera was charged with possession of a firearm in a correctional facility after he told a guard at the Harris County Jail about the unloaded 9mm pistol. The Houston Chronicle reported Thursday that Vera was originally arrested on charges of selling illegal copies of compact discs.

The 500-pound man was searched during his arrest and again at a city jail and the county jail, but officers never found the weapon in his rolls of skin. Vera admitted having the gun during a shower break at the county jail.

photo and text via AP

Before marriage and after marriage

Online Optical Illusion: The Hidden Tiger

By Boomeryearbook

Do you believe the statement “The first impression is the last impression” is true? Think again. There are various online optical illusions that will prove this quote wrong. When individuals look at an image, they try to perceive it in relationship to something that is most closely related to something they have experienced before. Psychological articles tell us that banking on this nature, creators of online optical illusions have created various illusions to play trick on the viewers.

The ‘The Hidden Tiger’ is one of those online optical illusions that tricks the human eye based on the way the human organizes visual sensory input.

What is your first impression of this online optical illusion? Your first impression may be that it is a picture of a tiger in the woods. You will also see the trees and the grasses. This is where our first impression can prove to be deceptive or incomplete.

Take another look. Do you see anything else? To be more precise, do you see ‘The Hidden Tiger’ in this online optical illusion? Take a closer look and try to find ‘The Hidden Tiger.’

If you still cannot find ‘The Hidden Tiger’, look closely at the tiger’s stripes. Can you now see the ‘The Hidden Tiger’ in this online optical illusion? Most probably yes. Are you wondering how you missed it in the first trial? Well, you are far from alone and there is nothing to worry about. The majority of people looking at this online optical illusion tend to see the “whole” of the big tiger, not the hidden tiger as the way we perceive something is based on matching the perception of the new stimuli and generalizing it to something familiar of which we have stored prior knowledge.

Taking a first look at this online optical illusion of ‘The Hidden Tiger’ demonstrates that first impressions are seldom true; they are more accurately based on past perceptions and not just current stimuli. Thus the human brain’s way of generalizing sensory information provides the source of online optical illusion tricks, and encourages us to take a closer look at what we see in the world around us.

So, after “reframing” how you look at this online optical illusion, do you still believe the statement “The first impression is the last impression” is true? We at Boomer Yearbook would love to encourage you to look again.

image via Google Images

20 Strange and Mysterious Medical Syndromes

Doctors have come across some baffling day-to-day ailments, but few conditions are as strange as these 20 disorders, which range from biological to psychological to cultural in nature.

Foreign Accent Syndrome
Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a speech disorder that causes sudden changes in speech pattern, intonation and pronunciation so that the victim is perceived to speak with a "foreign" accent. FAS usually results from severe trauma to the brain, such as a stroke or head injury, and typically develops within one or two years of the injury. Of the 50 to 60 cases that have been verified since 1941, only a few FAS sufferers regained their normal speech pattern, although some experienced success through speech therapy.

900 Boxes of Coffee Laced With Viagra Seized

It's been a strange day for me so this interesting little story seems to fit...

Malaysian authorities have confiscated 900 boxes of coffee laced with Viagra, a newspaper report said Sunday.

Health Ministry officials raided a company in Kuala Lumpur that marketed the coffee as an energy booster, The New Straits Times said. The report did not say whether the package labeled Viagra as an ingredient.

Sunday's report said the 900 confiscated boxes containing some 9,000 coffee packets were worth more than 72,000 ringgit ($20,000). Some of the Viagra-laced coffee had been distributed nationwide, it said.

Click here to read the rest at NBC Washington

Why the State Sovereignty and Secession Movements? The Feds Are Selling Us Into Servitude

by Brian Roberts

Washington is selling servitude.

• We watched as they destroyed the financial sector by forcing banks to give loans to people that could not afford them… then they stepped in to “save the day” by gaining direct control of our financial sector.
• We watched as they destroyed a once powerful automotive industry through excessive regulation and labor union control… then they stepped in to “save the day” by gaining direct control of our automotive industry.
• We listened as they verbally assaulted capitalism when government regulations were to blame.
• We watched as they asked the American people to fund a $1 trillion dollar stimulus bill, they yelled emergency as they slipped cash from our children’s pockets to their political allies.
• We watched, as they worked to destroy the rule of law by arbitrarily dictating revised terms to legal contracts and installing a Supreme Court justice that promotes social justice over rule-of-law.
• We know, they intend to control our children, it’s written in the GIVE Act.
• We know, they intend to control our resources, it’s written in the Cap and Trade Bill.
• We know, they intend control of our very lives, it’s written in the Health Care Bill.
• We know, they intend to control our votes, the 2010 census is now controlled by the white house and the ones registering voters are corrupt
• We watch and wait as they install unaccountable czars for dictating not representing
• We watch and wait as they increase “organizer” funding from millions to billions of our tax dollars. And we wonder how these groups will be used to steal our life, liberty and property from us.

The fifth sentence of the Declaration of Independence states, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

A movement based on the 10th amendment is undeniably lawful and moral.
Click here to read the rest at LewRockwell

Meet Samsam the Bubbleman!

How does one go about becoming world famous for bubbles?
Just ask Samsam Bubbleman (aka Sam Heath) who started his love affair with them almost 20 years ago, in 1989.

It all started with just a single bubble," he said. "I was sitting in a field and a bubble just floated past. I took the word away from the object and just looked at it for what it was. I captured my imagination and I just thought what an amazing thing that was. It's like one of those anomalies of nature that just shouldn't exist."

Samsam Bubbleman now earns a living doing what he loves best. He eventually formed a company called Bubble Inc and now sells mixtures, equipment, clothing (bubble tights?) and performs shows for large audiences.

Photo & text via The Telegraph