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The Corroboree

at0m

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Posts posted by at0m

    Pot Dealer in UK Gets Sentenced to Write 10-Page Essay

    in Chill Space

    Posted

    http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/pot-dealer-in-uk-gets-sentenced-to-write-10-page-essay--161750168.html

    Convicted UK pot dealer Terry Bennett, 32, was just sentenced to the grown-up version of writing “I will not chew gum in class” on the chalkboard 100 times. He must pen a 5,000-word essay about the dangers of cannabis by April 4—or spend a year in jail.
    “It was a shock to be given such an unusual punishment. It’s been ages since I last wrote an essay,” Bennett, who was caught with just over two pounds of marijuana and admitted his intent to sell it, told the UK newspaper the Mirror.
    “I think it’s good in a way because it gives me a chance to express my opinion about the crime that I’ve committed,” he added in a video interview with SWNS. “And it also gives me more of an understanding of why the crime’s illegal, because I’m having to actually do the research.”
    Bennett’s original sentence from Bristol Judge Julian Lambert, given in January 2012, was for a one-year suspended prison sentence with 240 hours of community service. But a shoulder injury Bennett got while snowboarding, he eventually explained to the judge, made that impossible. Last week Lambert came back with the alternative essay-writing sentence, which also comes with a four-month daily curfew of 8pm to 8am.
    “I asked the judge if I could write a balanced argument for and against cannabis, but he said that since it’s illegal, I should only write about the bad things,” said Bennett. “I’m just going to write about certain dangers caused by cannabis that people might not necessarily know.”
    The former plumber and father of two kids left high school at 16 and lives in Gloucestershire with his mother. Speaking with various UK news outlets, he seemed rather excited about the assignment, saying he’d gotten right to work with online research.
    “I’ve always loved writing, and used to write stories from when I was 11, but this is the first time I’ve ever had to write a proper essay,” Bennett told the SWNS. “I didn’t realize just how much work it would be to get my point across properly.”
    He said he plans to take a slightly different tack than the judge may be expecting.
    “I'm going to approach it from a different angle, writing about the dangers that come about because it is illegal, rather than the nature of weed itself,” he explained to the Telegraph. He shared points he planned to cover in his 10-page thesis, including the concepts that pot can cause psychotic episodes, that money generated around the selling of the drug is not taxable, and that smoking the stuff can cause cancers. Then, he stressed, there are the social dangers.
    “Weed often causes more problems because of the social inertia and stigma that surrounds it,” the blooming writer noted. “It would be good if there was no stigma attached to people who want help with weed.”

    • Like 2

    Silk Road - online marketplace that officials seem powerless to stop

    in News & Notices

    Posted

    I have a wallet.dat file with 600 coins in it but it is corrupted and will let me use the dat file

    (when i started buying them they where 3 dollars and i had a small rig) but with this boom

    i am desperately trying to get it to work. The one thing i hate about bit coin there is no

    customer support, any pointers

    edit every time i log onto mt gox a see red ahhhhhhhhh but if someone can help me

    recover the file i will share the booty (but a lot of expert nerds say just let it go

    Could you explain the 'corruption' a bit better? How did it happen? Was the wallet encrypted? PM me if you want and I'll see what I can do to help

    • Like 3

    leonotis leonurus (lion's tail) - harvesting seeds?

    in Ethnobotany

    Posted

    I've been doing the shake to get them out.

    Cut them off and make sure you leave about 2-3cm of stem on atleast one side, let them dry until they're 100% dry (no sign of green at all) and then hold them over a large bowl and shake like crazy.

    Fair warning: They're rather spikey...

    Hope you asked before picking their flowers...

    Want to buy prints

    in Mycology

    Posted

    you might want to try looking for spore print vendors online? i've seen that there are a few around, if you can find one that will ship to your... hole?

    I wouldn't go around suggesting people illegally import spores :\

    • Like 1

    Cannabis scratch and sniff cards to track down farms [UK]

    in Chill Space

    Posted

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-21833045

    Marijuana-scented scratch cards are to be posted to thousands of households in a bid to detect illegal cannabis farms.

    Crimestoppers, which runs the campaign, said the cards would help people to recognise the smell of cannabis and report suspected plantations to police.

    The charity said there was a 15% rise in the number of cannabis farms found in homes between 2011 and 2012.

    The West Yorkshire Police area had the largest number of cannabis plantations uncovered in the UK.

    According to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), about 1,800 cannabis farms were found in the area by officers between 2010 and 2012.

    South Yorkshire had the second highest number with 1,600 farms uncovered in the same period.

    Other hotspots included London, where more than 1,200 farms were detected, Greater Manchester, which had 800 plantations uncovered and Humberside, where officers found nearly 300 cultivations.

    'Crackdown on cannabis'

    Andy Bliss, from ACPO, said: "Many people don't realise that the empty, run-down house or flat on their street with people coming and going late at night may actually be a commercial cannabis farm.

    "It's not just the stereotype of the remote rural set or disused industrial estate unit.

    "These farms are often run by organised criminals [and] they bring crime and anti-social behaviour into local communities causing real harm and leaving people feeling unsafe."

    Crimestoppers said growers were moving way from commercial and industrial properties and using homes to cultivate the plants.

    The green and black cards, which are being distributed to 210,000 households, release a scent when scratched that replicates the smell of cannabis during its growing state.

    The charity hopes the campaign would lead to a crackdown on the crime.

    Roger Critchell, director of operations at Crimestoppers, said: "We are distributing scratch and sniff cards because not many people know how to recognise the signs of cannabis cultivation happening in their neighbourhood.

    "Many are also not familiar with the established links between this crime and serious organised crime."

    The initiative started three years ago in Holland, where 30,000 scratch cards were distributed to homes.

    • Like 1

    Silicon Valley Reportedly Full of Stoners

    in Chill Space

    Posted

    i actually expected to click on this and see a link to an oinion article,

    thats how thoroughly unamazing i think this "revelation" is,

    (p.s. not directed at you at0m, but at news outlets and OH GOD SOME PEOPLE SMOKE WEED WUT!?!?)

    Yeah, that's why I posted it

    It's nice to see the 'mainstream' catching up with what people already know.

    I'm currently studying I.T Network Admin and 6\18 of the class including myself smoke weed.

    I'd be hard pressed to find IT friends of mine who haven't, at the very least, been through a 'phase' where they smoked weed and took acid. The majority definitely did more than that though.

    Silicon Valley Reportedly Full of Stoners

    in Chill Space

    Posted

    http://www.alternet.org/silicon-valley-reportedly-full-stoners

    Another major marijuana stereotype just got blown totally out of the water -- this time the idea that consuming cannabis is for unemployed slacker types. In fact, pot is wildly popular in one of America's economic centers, Silicon Valley. According to a new report in Bloomberg's Businessweek, the "physical toll" of computer coding has made Silicon Valley workers key consumers in the medical marijuana industry.

    In San Jose, which Businessweek dubs the "Bay Area capital of medical marijuana," 106 medicinal marijuana dispensaries span the city's 177 square miles, more than adequately serving its 967,000 residents. One of those dispensaries, Pallative Health Center, told Businessweek that tech workers make up an estimated 40 percent of clients.

    “We’re seeing people from some semiconductors, lots of engineers, lots of programmers,” Ernie Arreola, 38, the assistant manager, told Businessweek, which noted, "That makes sense, because the shop is an easy shot from some of the area’s biggest employers—Cisco Systems, Google, Adobe Systems, Apple, EBay—and a short drive from dozens more. Also, people in Silicon Valley do like their pot."

    One medical marijuana executive told Businessweek that marijuana-infused chocolate toffee is a favorite among tech workers, who he says represents about 15 percent of customers. “It does not give the high or intoxicated feeling that you would typically get from a lot of medical cannabis,” Doug Chloupek, CEO of MedMar Healing Center, told Businessweek. “Those who are coding for 15 hours a day with cramping hands, that is the product that allows them to have mental clarity and still get pain relief.”

    But while Silicon Valley employees are getting stoned in a culture that embraces marijuana use, Businessweek notes policies forbidding drug use and possession at Cisco and Adobe, though neither company screens new employees for drug use. Maybe that's because, as Silicon Valley CEO Mark Johnson told Businessweek, “Pot is an extremely functional drug. Coders can code on it, writers can write on it."

    Still, as Galen Moore notes at the Boston Business Journal, weed isn't the only drug popular in Silicon Valley:

    offer a glimpse into prescription drugs that are popular as work aids in Silicon Valley's high-tech culture, including so-called "smart drugs" Provigil (Modafinil) and Nuvigil, and pharmaceutical stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin.

     

    Some commenters also challenge Businessweek's assertion that marijuana culture is "raging" in Silicon Valley. It may be news to Businessweek, but the reality has always been that people from all ends of the social spectrum use drugs, pot especially. Not everybody, however, is arrested for it.

    'Marijuana cannon' used to fire drugs over US border seized in Mexico

    in Chill Space

    Posted

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/27/marijuana-cannon-us-border-seized-mexico

    Police in the border city of Mexicali say they have recovered a powerful improvised cannon used to hurl packets of marijuana across a border fence into California.

    Police told the Televisa network that the device was made up of a plastic pipe and a crude metal tank that used compressed air from the engine of an old car.

    The apparatus fired cylinders packed with drugs that weighed as much as 13 kilos, police said. It was confiscated last week after US officers told Mexican police that they had been confiscating a large number of drug packages that appeared to have been fired over the border. Mexican police on the border have recovered a series of similar devices in recent years.

    • Like 6
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