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It's my understanding (from chewing a hundred or so leaves) that the best leaves are thicker and shinier, and rather small. The big dark-green duller ones are rather weak in my experience. I haven't tested enough, but sometimes leaves are way stronger tasting than others. Secondly, if you chew the leaves, don't gobble the entire thing at once. It's better to either bite of tiny chunks and chew them thoroughly, or make some kind of quid and "suck" on it, and every so often "crush" it a tiny bit. I'm also immediately skeptical of those harvesting Pukatea commercially, and I didn't even know it was happening. I hope we can spread the awareness that we should leave them to grow since they're rare before it becomes a problem. It's a good thing that all the mature trees I've seen are basically fine.

Looks like a bridge/peru hybrid. The rib shape and how damn glaucous it is are suggestions for peruvianus, and the "random" spine lengths and thinness are signs of bridgesii. Whatever the case - it's a very nice plant and I hope it grows well for you.

I don't think we can ever know for sure whether or not our waking lives are any more real than our dreams. Maybe even Solipsism has it right. To answer your questions qualia, I'll give you another question - if you knew you might never wake up again, should that stop you from trusting that you will?

Hey friends, I've been having particularly brutal mood swings lately. A week or so ago I'd been rising into an ecstatic mood, and I had 3 ecstatic days in the week. Projects were ending, I was talking to a few girls and had a date and I was making good progress with guitar. Wednesday night I could barely sleep from all the oxytocin. Yesterday my whole year project was completed in its entirety. After that, went and hung with a friend and some of his friends, and had a few puffs of a pre-rolled "incence joint", and talked in the park. I had zero tolerance (while I assume they all had more than that), and was basically lost for words after it kicked it. I was extremely out of it. At some point in the conversation (that I was really just a listener to), I had a revelation - that I had been "listening" wrong most of the time for my entire life. To put it in arbitrarily simple words that don't really portray what I felt - I realized that just because we all speak "English" doesn't mean we all speak the same. While I had realized this before, this time it was particularly endearing to me, because I felt this utterly indescribable feeling that I could just "accept" things the way they are, and just listen to them. At this time, a policeman came, and everything seemed to slow down at this point. My friends had been drinking alcohol, and we still had a half a litre of vodka or so. He informed us of a liquor ban in the area (we knew, but played ignorance). This conversation felt so grave, yet it was meandering too. Then he did what felt like the kindest thing possible, and just told us that if we moved outside of this park, to a little further away, we would be outside of the ban, and that he was worried about us being in a park that can be dangerous. All these thoughts swirled in my head. But I couldn't take it anymore. I felt so humbled. Like I'd been given a free bone by the universe. "There's more to it son - open your heart to the way things and people are, and join in." I was holding back tears, and I was just so overwhelmed by all these ideas that I had to excuse myself. I thanked them for this. At this point I started the walk back home. I started crying while I was walking - not just tears, but full on crying. This type of crying felt primal and amazing, but completely different to every other time I've ever cried. It felt like I had opened up something that had been closed for so long. Like I had advanced a level in maturity, and become more human. It wasn't from sadness, but from being so humbled. All the time, I listened to the sounds around me - it was only knowing that I had to focus to listen, which precludes crying - that put pause to it. I realized I had been feeling hatred towards sounds of the city every other day. Each time I heard a car accelerate, a little bit of resentment welled up. But not today, I just accepted the sound for what it was. It was the most sublime feeling I've experienced in a long time. It was the most powerful, utterly incredible, extremely emotional and exhilirating moment in a long time. All the way home, I opened my head to new ideas. I began to think about artificial intelligence, mappings of the objects around me to sound dimensions, robotic vision. It's about 9kms of terrain back to my house, which I walked. The day before I'd walked 10kms up hills as well, and so my back was a little bit sore. I learned how to rest my back. I learned how to minimize the shear forces in my joints while I walked on the tilted pavements. The entire time, I was focused, and at peace. I got home, and fell asleep. Today I wake up, and I felt a perceptible slide in my mood... All day the sliding slid. And slowly but surely, I'm back to feeling fearful, lonely and sad. So I made this topic to see if anyone has some advice for me. I think I need it.

Thanks again for your kind words everyone. It means a lot that you are trying to help me. Here's sort of a merged reply to what you've written: Well, I really dislike to use the word, but my father was diagnosed with bipolar. I still don't see how getting a label for my particular flavour of difference will help me in any manner other than being prescribed dangerous drugs, and giving myself an excuse. So I avoid the term, but I think that using it will help give an idea of close to how I feel. The thing that's different for me, is that I feel this great responsibility to the world. I feel that by understanding that there's deep suffering; people starving, our ecosystems being poisoned, people's rights being rescinded and essentially being forced into slaving for the industrial society machine. I feel I must help. That my care, is as tenuous as my help. So if I don't help - then I don't really care. But I do care. Thus I must help. And I have to be honest to myself too. Thus I can't make a half-assed attempt and clear my conscience at that. In terms of this profound moment, I think the thing that accelerated the slide afterwards was just how far I've let my thought patterns slip. Despite knowing that the further I let them slip, the harder it will be to bring them back, I let it happen. I think this is because sometimes I will feel like I'm just not cut out for the people I meet. Oftentimes I feel more in common with plants than people. To be truly honest, I really feel like I'm missing some kind of fulfilling emotional commitment, someone to cultivate love with, and I worry that I won't find this person. I'm just looking for someone who 'gets' me. Am I supposed to settle when it doesn't feel quite right? I have been into personal development since about 2009 or so. I haven't got the idea of 'balance' figured out quite yet though, so sometimes I'll focus too much on one thing and ruin other things. I can't even begin to list the times where I've almost or have, messed things up from being too unbalanced. The major one this year was learning and practicing music instead of studying for my degree. I think that this is probably because I'm quite unorganized in terms of daily life. As time allows this year, I'll be learning how to be organized so that I have more quality time. Integration - it was my favourite word of 2010. Thanks for reminding me. I would class a large part of my problem as being a spiritual crisis. I'm on year four of my engineering degree, and I've almost fucked it up just at the last moment. I don't think it's cool to do such little work, and last-minute everything. I just let it happen. I feel like a trainwreck observer, rather than watching. I rationally know though, that I am wrong, that I always have the control over these things. But... for some reason, I just let it slide. If there's been one thing I've failed at harder than anything in my entire life - it's sticking to my word that I will try my best at uni. This is where I sometimes do stick to my word, but burn out like a charred moth and then do nothing for the next week. Lastly - please don't worry about me doing something rash like that. If I ever got to the point where I felt I couldn't handle it, I would just run away and hide in the forest for a few weeks (actually - the forests I have chosen are the Waitakeres or the Ureweras). I appreciate my life way too much to end it abruptly. Post-lastly, thanks once again for your help. I really needed some help lately. Most importantly, an amazingly kind forum member (who with permission, I will name), sent me the most kindest things. Lots of kind thought went into it, and that's what I really appreciate. I promise that I'll use them as an opportunity to turn things around.

Wow you grew those Terscheckii really big, really quickly. I really enjoy your photos.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone here for taking the time to write a reply. I really appreciate your thoughts and wisdom, and I will try and incorporate them over the coming days. I'll write some more once I get a chance to think.

Hehe, cool. Reminds me of Playstation's orange and purple heroes. ^^

Those plants are so awesome.. Look at those golden spines and green skin!

Hey Greg, I know we have our differences, but I think we are mostly on the same page (the very fact we can discuss the concepts we have is testament to that). In light of some of the words in here, I realize that ultimately we probably would be better off if you succeeded, than if you didn't. With that said, I wish you the best of luck. I hope you stay safe, don't receive any harm, and perhaps engage a few people to think wider (I think that this will be the greatest effect you have from this opportunity). Kind regards, -cbl/blunt

Happy Birthday Marcel! May your moustache inch closer to its goals. :D

Happy Birthdee driftee!! =D

cv. - cultivar (can be a clone, or a distinctive phenotype that breeds true from seed - this specfication usually refers to something that has been bred or kept alive by humans) var. - variety http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_%28botany%29 A variety might be like an island species of a plant that is almost identical, except the leaves are 3x bigger. It's the same type of occurence as a cultivar (except the clone), and except that it occured naturally. http://nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.asp?ID=1486 http://nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.asp?ID=2 My example was these trees, I thought they were varieties, but they're actually subspecies - so I'm also confused. =D

Didn't want to make a new thread, so I hope it's okay if I add my own benzo related story. I just went to my doc to get prescribed modafinil, and he wouldn't have any of it. First he said he'd never heard of it (okay fine, then tell me that I'll have to come back when you know more), then he looked at the medsafe page (this one: http://www.medsafe.g...ecember2011.htm), and made up some rubbish about how "oh wow, I can see it's really dangerous" and said he couldn't prescribe it at all. Then he proceeded to say he could prescribe me anti-depressants or a hypnotic, and that was it. So I left with a script for some Temazepam, rather than getting nothing ($40 for a visit and another $2 for some pills - why not). Really angry, that he would pretend he knew a medicine was dangerous after reading about it for 20 seconds (if not less), and then giving me a dangerous benzo without batting an eyelid. Whole profession is full of dangerous people who blatantly have many more, higher-priority motivations than what the patient needs. I explained it clearly that falling asleep wasn't my problem, but staying focused was. Secondly, after reading about Temazepam wiki quotes: "but has the drawback of distorting the normal sleep pattern", Side effects typical of hypnotic benzodiazepines are related to CNS depression, and include somnolence, dizziness, fatigue, ataxia, headache, lethargy, impairment of memory and learning, longer reaction time and impairment of motor functions (including coordination problems), slurred speech, decreased physical performance, numbed emotions, reduced alertness, muscle weakness, blurred vision (in higher doses), and inattention.- SO IT MAKES MY PROBLEM WORSE!!! FUCK YOU DOCTOR, FUCK YOU! So anyway, I am looking into the racetams as I think it's my only legal option.

It sounds like the best choice would be to taper off the benzos over the course of months, but finding a doctor to help you sounds difficult. So the problem here is the supply of benzodiazepines. Just read about Epilim, and it sounds like a dangerous denizen. If it were my position, I'd probably taper with the methods that have already been suggested, but also with the green herb to get to sleep. I don't know if it's suitable in your case, but I do know that drinking alcohol before sleep often results in waking up a few hours later, bright as a daisy.

There's only Terscheckii x Pach, and perhaps the vice-versa. I had some seeds of Terscheckii x Psycho0, but none germinated. One day I'll get some of this hybrid.

I'm pretty sure it's a Mammillaria, but not sure which. Could be a Mammillaria Geminispina

;_; ;_; ;_; You guys have no idea how much this is my favourite hybrid, and how sad I am that I can't grow one

Could also be another Coryphantha, such as poselgeriana: http://www.cactus-art.biz/schede/CORYPHANTHA/Coryphantha_poselgeriana/Coryphantha_poselgeriana_valida/Coryphantha_poselgeriana_valida_VZD64.jpg Could be a dirty hybrid also. ;P

Good stuff incog, I'm glad you're going well and feeling better. Just remember to make awful sure that everything you doing is sustainable, and you'll be set for life. Also, spot work will not reduce your chest any more than doing completely unrelated exercises will. The single best thing to do would be to work on your shoulders and back, as when they fill out they'll stretch your skin and make your pecs look like pecs.

Everything turned purple you say... Interesting. Was this purpleness a haze that covered things, or did white objects look purple?

Okay, I can't not explain why it's so awesome... But look at the molecule 103 - Yatein. It's very similar to two certain, well-revered, phenethyamines joined together. I'm not at all suggesting it would as a combination act as such (it 99.99999% won't), but maybe with a cleave in the right place, it could become a something useful for further processing... I'm not at all suggesting that yatein is the ideal molecule for such a cleave, but rather that certain more common lignans may possess more amenable structures that when cleaved result in rare molecules. /\ This related bad-boy is used to treat genital warts, and has anti-cancer properties. Hehehehehe

What I find really strange is that the loph cake is shiny, and my mind can't imagine it as being anything other than made out of that shiny vinyl. In other words.... please post me some cake.

T Scopulicola x T 'Fat Spach' Datura metel seeds Datura stramonium Seeds If any of these bad boys are left, and you still have envelopes and stamps, I would like some of these.

The other thing you should get checked while you're there is your blood pressure. To be honest I couldn't care that much about the actual numbers, but it's important that you're not walking around all day with elevated blood pressure. The most common things that do it are: 1) Too few green vegetables, and red/orange/yellow vegetables (i.e. potassium, magnesium and various other trace element deficiencies - this isn't very well fixed by mega-dosing with ground rocks either, as the metal complexes found in food are more bio-available) 2) Too little sleep 3) Caffeine/Nicotine addiction 4) Extremely high levels of salt intake (I don't think that salt is a real bogeyman by itself, but only when coupled with #1 ) Lastly, and perhaps the most abstract thing - perhaps come to terms with your mortality. In my case, the worst (in one particular sense) thing that can happen is that I die, and I'm not afraid of it - thus I'm not afraid of the worst thing that could happen - thus I shouldn't be afraid of anything that's not the worst either (aka everything else). Admittedly this is a little contrived and such, but this kind of logic can be used to erode other fears, as after you keep reminding yourself that death isn't anything to be afraid of (but only if you have actually come to this conclusion yourself - don't believe it if it's not true ), then they don't seem so bad.