While California is going bankrupt, one business is booming. "How Weed Won the West" is the story of the growing medical cannabis / marijuana industry in the greater Los Angeles area, with over 700 dispensaries doling out the buds. As a treatment for conditions ranging from cancer and AIDS, to anxiety, ADHD, and insomnia, cannabis is quickly proving itself as a healthier natural alternative to many prescription drugs.

Following the story of Organica, a southland dispensary which was raided by state and federal agencies in August of 2009, the film shows that although much has changed with Obama in office, the drug war is nowhere near over. From Kevin Booth, the producer/director of Showtime's "American Drug War", "How Weed Won the West" puts California forward as an example to the rest of the country by documenting how legalizing marijuana can help save the economy.

American Drug War
The Last White Hope

35 years after Nixon started the war on drugs, we have over one million non-violent drug offenders living behind bars.

The War on Drugs has become the longest and most costly war in American history, the question has become, how much more can the country endure? Inspired by the death of four family members from "legal drugs" Texas filmmaker Kevin Booth sets out to discover why the Drug War has become such a big failure. Three and a half years in the making, the film follows gang members, former DEA agents, CIA officers, narcotics officers, judges, politicians, prisoners and celebrities. Most notably the film befriends Freeway Ricky Ross; the man many accuse for starting the Crack epidemic, who after being arrested discovered that his cocaine source had been working for the CIA.

AMERICAN DRUG WAR shows how money, power and greed have corrupted not just drug pushers and dope fiends, but an entire government. More importantly, it shows what can be done about it. This is not some 'pro-drug' stoner film, but a collection of expert testimonials from the ground troops on the front lines of the drug war, the ones who are fighting it and the ones who are living it.

After 4 years of production including several sold out test screenings in New York, Austin & Los Angeles, the final version of American Drug War "the last white hope" is locked and loaded.

Tags:
American Drug War the last White hope Pre Release Cut Marijuana Legalization CIA

Drugs & the Internet are inextricably and symbiotically entwined. Indeed, the very origins of the Internet are bound up with the exuberant experimentation with psychedelic drugs that took place in Silicon Valley from the 1960s onwards. The use of both psychedelic drugs and the Internet can be conceptualized as attempts to augment human capacity, as technologies through which minds can be opened and society reformed.

Read full article at:
http://bit.ly/dqWL6g

A technology reporter sees a day when the music industry abandons "leasing licenses on intellectual property" and earns its money from exotic technology-enhanced concert experiences.

Currently we have multi-camera concert streams and the ability to "telepresence" sounds (which may one day allow the blind to drive). But he visualizes live feeds from special eyeglasses provided to concertgoers -- as well as footage piped directly to their eyeglasses. "Telepresencing technology and the raw hunger of fans for free and novel entertainment is in an arms race with corporate ingenuity's efforts to commodify increasingly abstract souvenir experiences... In response to freely available live music, the industry must work harder to create points of artificial scarcity and more intimate/intricate pay-to-play options."

Burnaby, BC, Canada: January 1, 2010 -- Interdimensional Games Inc (iDGi) announces an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), through which a new video game Intellectual Property will be announced. Through the ARG, iDGi has discovered how to export human consciousness into an entirely different dimension. Company officials claim that a proprietary invention accessible from their website http://interdimensionalgames.com, will, starting today, January 1st, 2010, be capable of allowing anyone to travel interdimensionally.

"We invented this gateway to help our efforts in crafting a compelling interactive experience," says iDGi Founder Vidal Desertch. "We never intended to make this tool available to the public, but after realizing its awesome potential...well, we simply couldn't keep it a secret any longer." Vidal makes it clear that the technology is limited, and it's not entirely certain where - or when - your consciousness may end up once it crosses the dimensional threshold, or what form it may end up becoming.

"This technology is made possible from our satellite 'iDGi-1', which we have positioned very close to the moon's orbit. When the moon eclipses the sun, casting the earth in shadow, in that precise moment, interdimensional travel is possible."

The company is also launching a public forum and a blog, entitled "Culture and Philosophy", through which the iDGi team will begin sharing views and opinions, as well as information about the new, as yet unannounced, video game IP.

About Interdimensional Games Inc.

Incorporated in September 2006, Interdimensional Games Inc (iDGi) is an independent association of self-driven and talented individuals who are collectively working together to push the boundaries of interactive single player entertainment.

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The blurb for "Haunted Earth - Internet Television & Documentaries" reads as follows: "The Number One Internet Site for Original Paranormal Video and Live Streaming Investigations" - and, for once, the blurb says exactly what I think about this YouTube Channel. Haunted Earth was created by Chris Halton, who had a professional career as a police officer and was trained as a detective.

Full review:
http://paranormal-supernatural.blogspot....

Author Jason Louv argues in all seriousness that 4Chan is "our best preview of where human consciousness is going," calling them a "freebased version of mankind's new drug of choice..." 4Chan users are "the Magellans of media desensitization," showing us "the chaos at the edge of human perception, where the mind has consumed so much information through artificially enhanced sensory inputs that it begins to break down and cannibalize itself."

"The kaleidoscope of the Internet is more endless, more distracting and more mutating than even the most potent psychedelic drugs could have ever prepared us for," and 4chan is "the ultimate, final trip."

Science author Joe Quirk defends Darwinian psychology from a high-profile attack in a book by Anne Innis Dagg. "Dagg manages to cram three misunderstandings into these two paragraphs, one confused conflation, and three wacky leaps of logic...I have the urge to hit my game show wrong-answer! buzzer twice per declarative sentence..."

Quirk argues Dagg's book overlooks nearly every prominent Darwinian psychologist, and instead attacks unrelated "straw men" to discredit their research. "What we're seeing here are the crumbled ruins of a tremendous ideological bulwark that was set against biological explications for human behavior way back in 70s... [Matt] Ridley's four books about evolutionary psychology have been translated into 25 languages and sold half a million copies, and Dagg only mentions one, in the bibliography."

"So where were you 10 years ago? Getting involved in a drug-fueled polyamorous relationship? Making more money than you were entitled to?" A former DJ remembers the 10 albums "that defined the dotcom era".

Remembering the 90s as "the time of Napster's infinite-mp3-download-orgy," Steve Robles asks whether there could be a nostalgia craze for music from the era. "Someone sold a lot of kids on the idea that the Brave New World had been reached," he points out, also arguing that there's now a subsequent bleakness "which continues to this day."

"When that wave of prosperity which brought us there - for a happy, shiny moment - rolled back violently, these kids found out even drugs wouldn't help."

I dunno, it's all very Father Ted, but...

only days prior to this a family member of mine saw a circular shape flying through the sky in Co.Cavan and described it as having a 'cross' marking on it. (She may be old my grannie, but she's not one for flights of fancy, best of all was that her home-help also saw the thing. :))

Here's the link to the article posted today on the Belfast Telegraph site.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/l...