‘A decent way of smuggling’ & earn more money when you have more sex!

                Good Day World!

I got a few things on my mind today that may interest you.

A man in western Ohio found 285 pounds of marijuana stuffed into a Mexican-made gun-storage safe that he recently purchased on the Internet, authorities said.

When I read this article and saw what Shelby County Sheriff John Lenhart said - "It's a pretty decent way of smuggling. My guess is that it's not the first time it's happened," I was stunned.

A decent way of smuggling? What’s up with that? The Sheriff sounds like he’s a fan or something. Perhaps it’s just me, but what if he stumbled onto a whole new system of smuggling drugs into the USA, and here he sounds like…oh hum…just another day!

The DEA is interesting in following what would normally be an insignificant amount (285 pounds?) because they suspect it could be the tip of the iceberg. Meanwhile, Sheriff Barney Fife aka John Lenhart, is clueless about the case – a condition I suspect that’s chronic.

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I ran across this article “Earn more money, when you have more sex, study says (seriously!)” and am somewhat skeptical of the claims made, but who knows? I know there’s something to making more money when you have more sex – any prostitute will tell you that.

A new study finds that sexually active people make more money without always being prostitutes. And if you do it more than four times a week, you earn even more, the study shows. Wow! If that were the case, I would have been wealthy years ago! Instead, I’m just a regular Joe making a living.

According to Warwick University's Oswald, “Happiness does raise productivity in humans,” so it’s possible that people who are having sex are more productive at work because they’re in a better mood — albeit maybe a bit sleep-deprived. Drydakis found that people having sex more than four times a week see the biggest wage benefit.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

The Pot...Porri Report: Weed helping kids? That’s not what the government’s telling us!

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Video: Some parents want the drug legalized and say it’s helped their children immensely. NBC’s Michelle Franzen reports.

Good Day World!

This Monday marks the first installment of The Pot…Porri Report, by yours truly. As you’ll see in future reports, I do have some knowledge about marijuana.

My research on the subject began in 1964 when I inhaled pot for the first time. I did it to get high and have a good time. Mission accomplished.

Over the years, being an avid reader has helped me research every aspect of marijuana. It’s an amazing medicine that goes back over 5000 years, but I’m not going to give you a history lesson today. The topic of the day is children getting pot for medicinal reasons.

Parents who believe their sick children would be helped by medical marijuana won a partial victory in New Jersey Friday. Using a conditional veto, Gov. Chris Christie modified a bill to allow prescriptions of edible medical marijuana for children.

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This bill is going to attract the anti-pot crowd like fleas on a dog. Don’t let them tell you these kids who are using pot to treat their epilepsy are getting high. Simply put, there’s THC and CBD’s in marijuana. THC gets you high. CBD’s work many wonders without getting you high.

New Jersey isn't the first state to allow medical marijuana prescriptions children. Eighteen states, plus Washington, D.C., allow use of medical marijuana. A number of them provide prescriptions to children, with parental supervision, to treat a host of ills, ranging from autism to cancer to seizures.

Links to related stories:

2-Year-Old Girl With Epilepsy: Family Fights To Get Her Medical Marijuana

Medical Marijuana for Children

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

    

A Fond Farewell: As It Stands is Moving On

 

By Dave Stancliff/For The Times-Standard
It’s been a good run.

After five years of writing this column for the Times-Standard, it’s time to call it quits. I don’t think I can put my feelings into words, but I’ll try.

When I made my reappearance in the world after years of crippling depression due to my PTSD in 2006, I took on the roll of publicity director for the first North Coast Stand Down in Ferndale. The event was meant to “Give veterans a hand up, not a hand-out.”  

As rewarding as it was to work with homeless veterans and their families, I only did it for two years because it took a mental toll on me. Putting myself “out there” was no easy proposition. I wasn’t used to being around people. I still avoid large crowds. 

The good news was, it whet my appetite to communicate with people. Glenn Simmons, editor of the now defunct Eureka Reporter, offered me some space on the Op Ed page in 2007, and I was off!
After the Eureka Reporter folded up, I hooked up with the Times-Standard and the rest, as they say, is history.

The words that wouldn’t come out after all those dark years of battling the disability that forced me to retire as a newspaper editor, began to flow once again.

I was able to look at the daily news and not get angry because I had an outlet. Writing. Purging myself on subject after subject was a positive experience and I settled into a comfortable groove. After 265 columns (give or take a couple) the time has come to close this chapter in my life.

Five years have passed in a blink of an eye. After over 30 years of living in Humboldt County, my beautiful wife and I are moving to Oregon. I never thought I’d move from this area. I should have known better. Never say never. Life is too unpredictable for that!

I can’t say I had a particularly favorite column. To me, each had its moments when readers commented and I got feedback.

I am proud of one column I did about Humboldt County not having a prescription disposal program like most of the rest of the country had at the time. A man I admire, Jimmy Smith (then Country Supervisor) read the column and got proactive.

Thanks to Jimmy, we now have an excellent prescription disposal program on the north coast. He took positive action as opposed to some other local pols who felt I was trying to embarrass them!

Writing an OP ED column can be a merry game. It can also get old. Forgive me, but my interests are going in new directions.

I’ve been a consultant for Learnist this last year, a hot new social learning website. I get to create and curate learning boards on practically any topic you can name. Politics and News are what I’m most known for, but I’ve done boards on everything from world travel to Elvis Presley’s first concert!

So you see, I won’t quit sharing things with people. The benefit of being able to do my job from home is immense. I still have PTSD. It doesn’t go away. You learn to live with it. Working online has been a resurrecting experience for me. It started with this column, which has a history of appearing in four different newspapers.  

Why leave Humboldt County? That’s harder to explain. I don’t want to say anything bad about it. I’ll always love this area. I have family here, so I’ll return to visit from time to time. The climate change won’t make much difference to me as I’m indoors more than out. It is just time.

I can’t begin to thank everyone who has encouraged me to write again, and those of you who have read my column on a regular basis. You know who you are, so I won’t embarrass you by saying your names.

I cannot end this column without acknowledging and thanking the following three people:

* My dear friend Margaret Searles, an author and editor who lives in Mckinleyville and whose invaluable input on every one of my columns is deeply appreciated.

* Times-Standard Assistant Editor, Mark Valles, who I’ve had the pleasure of working with for just over a year. His strong editorial and copywriting skills have the editorial page looking better than ever!

* Times-Standard Editor, Kimberly Wear, who I worked with for several years prior to Mark. I enjoyed her small talk about her family. Especially around October when she took her daughter to the Pumpkin Patch in Arcata. Always the professional, she’s a nice person to know.

  I guess that’s about all I have to say about that…other than thanks for the memories!

As It Stands, it’s time for me to walk on down the road…

Oops! Another embarrassing moment for a Republican Pol!

 

Exposed! Voter fraud is not as rampant as Colorado's secretary of state has been claiming.

Just when you thought Republicans might stay out of the news for a month or two without making asses of themselves, one of their political luminaries, Secretary of State Scott Gessler (R), announced last month that 155 possibly illegal voters went to the polls in the November 2012 elections - out of more than 3,050,578 voters in Colorado.

Today, a review by Boulder County's top prosecutor has found that all 17 instances of allegedly fraudulent voters in his county were, in fact, verifiable U.S. citizens, The Boulder Daily Camera reported.

You have to hand it to these conservative hammerheads who never stop trying to limit minorities from voting, they’re determined. They’re also rabid racists, and determined.

As It Stands: RNP flips out and bans news outlets they don’t like! Election 2016

By Dave Stancliff

I’m simply stunned at what the Republican National Party (RNP) has done. The party that was thrashed in the last two presidential elections and who vowed to change some things the next time around – read appeal to minorities – is totally gone off it’s tracks.

The train derailed when they voted Friday to bar NBC News and CNN from partnering with them in hosting the 2016 presidential primary debates! Apparently one of the things the GNP decided to change was who gets to report on them. They don’t like being criticized – poor sensitive darlings – and have decided to cut off any legitimate coverage of their political election coverage.

Too bad. They just don’t play well, and like a pack of petulant kids, are pushing out their lower lips: “We’re done putting up with this nonsense,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said ahead of the vote to ban NBC News and CNN. “There are plenty of other outlets. We’ll still reach voters, maybe more voters. But CNN and NBC anchors will just have to watch on their competitors’ networks.”  

Can’t you see Priebus wiping the snot away from his nose after making this announcement? The whole pack of idiots aren’t going to stop there however. The clowns are talking about having Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levine as the moderator for “their debates.” No kidding. They’re that pissed off about having inconvenient facts surfacing about their candidates.

I really do wonder what world these guys live in? Unrealistic ideals are one thing, but to ban any news sources that don’t fit in with their view of the world is scary, senseless, and stupid. What really set the RNP off? I’ll tell you.

NBC Entertainment, a subsidiary of NBC News, is planning on doing a documentary on Hillary Clinton in 2015. CNN is also guilty of planning a a show about her – a biopic on the former secretary of state, next year. Reince Prince Priebus warned that if each network did not cancel planned projects about Clinton, each network’s news division would be barred from participating in official Republican primary debates in 2016.

There you have it. Let’s see if the Democrats ban Fox News from their election coverage. Somehow, I doubt it. But, politics being politics, they might show how stupid they can be in spite of what I think. 

As It Stands, controlling media coverage in America is too Nazi-like for my comfort!

 

As It Stands: Meet a New Cute Mammal today

  Good Day World!

TGIF! The weekend looms…meanwhile I’d like to introduce you to a new mammal! He’s new to us, but has been around for a long time.

Brass band buildup….ta da! Say hi to Olinguito (you can call him Fog for short if you’d like).

I can’t wait to see the Olinguito stuffed toy line and the avalanche of other marketing ideas that will surely following this cute critter. Panda’s are going to face a new challenge to their cute mammal monopoly. The world is being introduced to “Fog” by the Smithsonian Institute. Here’s the low down:

A new mammal species has been confirmed by scientists, and it's already melting hearts. The olinguito, described as a cross between a house cat and a teddy bear, is the first new carnivorous mammal identified in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years, and it's considered one of the cutest scientific finds in recent memory.

Photo by Mark Gurney- The newly named "Olinguito" lives in the "cloud forests" in the Andes. Its scientific name, Bassaricyon neblina, comes from the Spanish name for fog.

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Kristofer Helgen talks about the introduction of the olinguito — a member of the raccoon family who is being described as a cross between a house-cat and a teddy bear.

"It's certainly the cutest new species described in a long time," Roland Kays, director of the Biodiversity and Earth Observation Lab at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences said.

In addition to cat and teddy bear comparisons, "it has a bit of monkey and raccoon thrown in there too," said Kays.

The researchers describe the entire olingo family, including a first-time analysis of the elusive olinguito, in the Aug. 15 edition of the journal ZooKeys.

Time for me to walk on down the road…