Leaderboard

i'm so glad to finnally get this one done and finished. there are of course a few lil things i would have liked to do, but when it was over 4 months in the making, (mainly cause i got sick of working on it) i can settle. i think it turned out great! when get around to selling this, it definitely wont be cheap. ok here it goes... so here is the pipe. the main bulk of it is Acacia melanoxylon. the stem i'm not totally sure what type of wood it was from, because they were both originally going to be fire wood. i "think" one is red gum but i realy dont know. i have a feeling they are both gums. the darker wood was from my own back yard, the other was.. kinda.. stolen from a clients pile of fire wood. i'm sure if the client saw what i did with it, they wouldnt mind. also, one of the metal cooling plates are visable. she is a changa pipe, what ever that is XP here is a close up of one of the cooling plates. how does it work? underneath is a little tunnel that the smoke travels through. as it passes thru, it moves against the plate. the plate absorbs the heat to give a very cool smoke. it also adds a restriction to intake. this reduces the chance of coughing and gives the lungs a chance to adapt to the harsh smoke. engraved is a quote from our buddy terry ;) if it wast for these lil bastards, i would have finished this in under a month! :S shown here is the bowl lid, the bowl lid clasp and the storage lid. the brass clasp hold the bowl lid shut and the bowl lid holds the storage lid shut, because, why would you want to open the storage container without opening the bowl? the whole thing locks down tight so there is no accidental spills in transport. two burls are shown here as handles. the storage lid, when unlocked, pulls strait out while the bowl lid rotates, as shown in the next pic.. here you can see the open bowl and the storage lid. inside is a scoop to carefully eyeball what your putting into the bowl. seen also is the custom, large stainless steel mesh screen. (from a seive! XP) next, i showcase the stem. oooo... shiny.. a close up on one of the burls. shame my camera phone doesnt focus right here is a lil lump, what could it be? can you guess children? it's a lil stoker! with suck a large bowl, a stoker is a must because more often then not, it does not all burn evenly, even if you are quite careful with your lighting technique. so when you think its all up, give her one more stir and have another toke to be sure your not wasting any ;) it's quite hard to see, but the wood used is actually a burl too, with it's trippy swirling grain. also, the centre of that end of it is brass, coated with copper tubing. the copper is more visable under the wood handle. and finally the second cooling plate. engraved is UBZA! the date it was finished, and the word, "ENJOY!" that's it! hope you liked it.

I do not view macrogonus to be a valid name anymore. Me neither. Variation within this species is just so great that many cactus sprecialists from the past should have just thrown all of the Peruvianoid Cacti into one big group and call it a species. They are variable, so what? Most species in the Trichocereus family dont deserve their own name.

I think its dangerous ground when you start to compare your intelligence or whatever against others. Its not uncommon that frequent trippers see themselves as smarter or in someway elite to society. This often seems to be a result of the use pf psychs rather than an actual higher intelligence. Having said that there is also people you meet that consider psychs to have opened up their learning processes and increased their intelligence without a bulging ego. The other side is that there are lots of people that eat handfuls of these things and are still total knob heads without any thoughts of compassion or concern for others. These substances can give you insight into many things that you may not have otherwise considered but they also dont automatically raise you above society as a whole. Could it be that you see other trippers as smart because you relate to, or share their ideas more easily? Or maybe you are just lucky and have a brainy bunch of friends. I do think these things can raise intelligence if used with the intention of improving intelligence

http://www.troutsnotes.com/WVC.pdf The above paper is worth taking a look at. It leaves me with some questions. My main question is what is the average ratio of outer green tissue to total plant weight. Clearly it will be a higher ratio in thinner and smaller plants. Does anyone want to take a couple of sections of various cacti, fresh, and weigh them and then remove the outer green tissue and then weigh them again? I am trying to extrapolate data and get a standardized view of these published results. I am not interested in disscussing the data in the paper, just trying to correlate it. If this is not a permissible topic please feel free to censure it without, no need for apology should that be the case.

I agree with the above very good points. In addition, I think it sounds plausible that people with higher IQ would tend more so to be attracted to exploring and developing their minds through psychedelics. On the other hand though, I'd expect lower IQ to correlate with less "noble" uses of these substances. Of course it depends on lots of other variables, such the "Big 5" personalty construct known as Openness to Experience (if I remember correctly, this correlates with higher IQ). The definition of intelligence is also key. The most dominant theory (CHC theory) posits several facets to intelligence. Some, like processing speed and fluid intelligence, I'd expect to remain stable or perhaps even decline through psychedelic usage (through heavy use). But other "kinds" of intelligence, such as the creative component in Sternberg's Triacrchic theory I would expect to increase.

S.d. is indeed extremely powerful, and if you don't remember much of what happened, you probably got too large a dose. I have never even used an extract as the plant works fine for me just as is. The highly concentrated extracts out there now (if you believe that they really are the strength stated. I have my doubts.) are dangerous enough to cause the unseasoned to do thinge like jump through unopened glass doors and crasch through windows--check out utube for an assortment of dumb things done by those who didn't take the plant seriouosly enough. However, I have seen this happen just from using the leaf and not an extract. Propper preparation is the key. It's this kind of inexperienced and foolhgardy behavior that has led to listing and prohibiting of S.d. in several of the states over the past few years, with more jumping aboard that bus every year. There are adequate new users guides online so life threatening experoiences don't have to happpen if only they are read and the information utilized.

Dolos, i dont like the way you articulate everytime someone tries to actually discuss this with you. If you post information, you have to live with people asking critical questions. I have been very patient with this in hindsight of the fact that i am still not convinced your not a climate troll, you can either start having a real discussion or dont post at all. Theres nothing wrong with this community and i dont want you to verbally shoot people down who ask uncomfortable questions and make them look like they are part of some giant Conspiracy just because they wanna known where your heading with this. Is that clear? You asked about being able to discuss this here so you should really come up with something that doesnt sound like your just here to copy and paste. bye EG

or better still avoid the issue of farmers altogether by not looking on private property. in SE QLD there are many forests with hiking trails where cattle are grazed.

Before deciding where to draw species lines a definition of what is required for something to be a species is needed. I have not yet met anyone who can give this definition and in the last year I have asked several professional botanists including Myron Kimnach and Jim Bauml. Right now the crucial factor in something being or not being a species is whether David Hunt agrees with you. Its all political but that could form a book to discuss adequately. Its only our human obsession with cataloging and defining that causes the mess not the plants. We can call them whatever we want in horticulture. All that matters is that we know what another person is talking about when using a name. Its not that I am smart, I just like to keep asking questions and keep digging rather than conclude I have reached any level of understanding. To me the meaningful stuff is not what answers my questions but the stuff that makes me find my world view collapse and a host of new questions arising. I'm presently unclear that any of those species exist as separate species. At best they appear to be subspecies or maybe are just divergent forms or perhaps peaks within a hybrid swarm. People would benefit from taking a single clone line and growing it in a set of different soils, different climates, different watering schedules and differnt amounts of sun. They will find plants result from this that a stranger might insist were separate species. Bridgesii is not valid for preservation as Echinopsis bridgesii was name earlier in the same paper as Trichocereus bridgesii. That is why lageniformis was chosen despite its lack of a anything approaching a good description. I'll keep calling them bridgesii though since everyone knows what I mean by it and no one at the Kew cares a ratsass what I think or call them. I have to agree on how good of a name riomizquiensis is. For instance cuzcoensis has an appallingly inadequate description that would never be accepted today (it was respected only due to gransfathering) Huanucoensis has NEVER had a description published so is not considered a species by any of today's experts. I believe this plant may be why Anderson expended bridgesii's range into Peru and increased its diameter to 7 inches but he did not include details and is dead so we will never know. Riomizquiensis has by far the best written desccription of any of these mentioned.

Did you mean to write breath? Or is that a typo? Other than that it's a nice pipe mate .

NIGERINE?!? Is that the chemical that is in black people that gets you high?