O.J. Simpson was convicted and sentenced to 15 years. This is the saddest brother in the whole world. This man got away with the crime of the century as it has been called and he ends up screwing it all up in Lucky 13 years. How funny is that?
I saw the family of Ronald Goldman, the boyfriend O.J. killed with his wife Nicole, on the news boasting about how they had hounded him into this. Seems a recent book deal he had set that they were able to shutdown was the last straw and financially he was done.
He orchestrated a robbery that he claimed was an attempt to recover his own personal effects and the people he brought along had guns and held a sports dealer in a hotel room in Vegas. The judge cut him some slack and could have easily sentenced him to much more. He faces a maximum of 33 years and is eligible for parole in 9.
O.J. spent a fortune to hire the dream team of lawyers who were able to manipulate evidence and the jury into an acquittal on a case with DNA evidence. I might start writign to him in jail because I just have to hear what happened and how he didn’t see he was being setup.
They found some 2700 year old herb in a tomb in China. What does it all mean? This guy had a friend bury him with some pot for the afterlife. Seems like a friend with weed is a friend indeed.
OTTAWA – Researchers say they have located the world’s oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.
The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly ”cultivated for psychoactive purposes,” rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.
The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.
The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odour.
“To our knowledge, these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent,” says the newly published paper, whose lead author was American neurologist Dr. Ethan B. Russo.
Remnants of cannabis have been found in ancient Egypt and other sites, and the substance has been referred to by authors such as the Greek historian Herodotus. But the tomb stash is the oldest so far that could be thoroughly tested for its properties.
The 18 researchers, most of them based in China, subjected the cannabis to a battery of tests, including carbon dating and genetic analysis. Scientists also tried to germinate 100 of the seeds found in the cache, without success.
The marijuana was found to have a relatively high content of THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis, but the sample was too old to determine a precise percentage.
Researchers also could not determine whether the cannabis was smoked or ingested, as there were no pipes or other clues in the tomb of the shaman, who was about 45 years old.
The large cache was contained in a leather basket and in a wooden bowl, and was likely meant to be used by the shaman in the afterlife.
“This materially is unequivocally cannabis, and no material has previously had this degree of analysis possible,” Russo said in an interview from Missoula, Mont.
“It was common practice in burials to provide materials needed for the afterlife. No hemp or seeds were provided for fabric or food. Rather, cannabis as medicine or for visionary purposes was supplied.”
The tomb also contained bridles, archery equipment and a harp, confirming the man’s high social standing.
Russo is a full-time consultant with GW Pharmaceuticals, which makes Sativex, a cannabis-based medicine approved in Canada for pain linked to multiple sclerosis and cancer.
The company operates a cannabis-testing laboratory at a secret location in southern England to monitor crop quality for producing Sativex, and allowed Russo use of the facility for tests on 11 grams of the tomb cannabis.
Researchers needed about 10 months to cut red tape barring the transfer of the cannabis to England from China, Russo said.
The inter-disciplinary study was published this week by the British-based botany journal, which uses independent reviewers to ensure the accuracy and objectivity of all submitted papers.
The substance has been found in two of the 500 Gushi tombs excavated so far in northwestern China, indicating that cannabis was either restricted for use by a few individuals or was administered as a medicine to others through shamans, Russo said.
“It certainly does indicate that cannabis has been used by man for a variety of purposes for thousands of years.”
Russo, who had a neurology practice for 20 years, has previously published studies examining the history of cannabis.
“I hope we can avoid some of the political liabilities of the issue,” he said, referring to his latest paper.
The region of China where the tomb is located, Xinjiang, is considered an original source of many cannabis strains worldwide.
This article would have us believe that autism is linked to rain. I guess it could be but I somehow feel that it takes a little more than rain to genetically modify someone.
This line in the article pretty much sums it up: “In recent years autism has been blamed on everything from discarded iPod batteries to mercury from Chinese power stations, from antenatal ultrasound scans to post-natal cord clamping, from diet to vaccines,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.”
There are more than one reason for the condition called autism and trying to figure it out is useless. It’s become a blame game with the medical establishment throwing out garbage science to confuse people and avoid being caught poisoning our children. What we need to do is figure out how to make the world a safer and better place for these people. The common thing I have seen in most autistic children is an inability to defend or protect themselves in the face of danger. Most autistic children are simple happy people who focus more on the lights in a room rather than whether or not someone is trying to take advantage of them. They need a world where their neighbor isn’t willing to use them to get ahead.
It seems to me like autistic people are an evolutionary step forward with new abilities they have a difficult time understanding or managing. My son cannot control the things he hears and is easily distracted by the everyday sounds of life we all tone out. He will probably never drive a car or even hold a normal job but he will make music one day I m certain. By taking a step forward inn evolution this new generation has lost some of those base abilities we take for granted. My son has a hard time tying shoes but he loves anything slip on or velcro. He’s defenseless against many people and a pushover when it comes to dealing with others. Even much smaaller and much younger children can easily overpower or take addvantage of my son because he rarely faces confrontation or defends himself. He allows people to take things from him and he wont say anything about it.
In the world we live in now he is weak and sure to become a victim of the nasty hard world around him. He has evolved while society and the world around him has de-evolved into a nasty uncivil place where my sons unequivocal trust of man is a liability and not a trait to be admired as it should be in an evolved society. We will spend billions in search of the reasons for autism and billions more on the search for a cure when what we should do with that money is use it to force the evolution of society into a better and safer world for all of us.
Children who live in the U.S. Northwest’s wettest counties are more likely to have autism, but it is unclear why, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
Michael Waldman of Cornell University and colleagues were searching for an environmental link with autism, a condition characterized by learning and social disabilities.
They got autism rates from state and county agencies for children born in California, Oregon and Washington between 1987 and 1999 and plotted them against daily precipitation reports.
“Autism prevalence rates for school-aged children in California, Oregon and Washington in 2005 were positively related to the amount of precipitation these counties received from 1987 through 2001,” they wrote in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick, a London physician who wrote “Defeating Autism: A Damaging Delusion”, expressed doubt, noting that autism diagnoses are on the rise in all climates.
No one know what causes autism, whose symptoms range from severe social avoidance to repetitive behaviors and sometimes profound mental retardation.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about one in every 150 children has autism or a related disorder such as Asperger’s Syndrome. Rates in many countries have been rising, although that may be partly due to increased reporting and diagnosis of the condition.
Doctors agree there is a genetic component to autism. They also theorize that something in the environment and possibly conditions in the womb can trigger the condition.
The researchers said their study supports this idea.
Perhaps infants and toddlers are kept are kept indoors in front of the TV more in rainy climates, and that somehow causes brain changes, they said. Or perhaps they breathe in more harmful chemicals while indoors.
Vitamin D deficiency caused by insufficient time in the sun might also be a trigger, they said.
“Finally, there is also the possibility that precipitation itself is more directly involved,” they wrote. Perhaps a chemical or chemicals in the upper atmosphere are transported to the surface through rain or snow.
“In recent years autism has been blamed on everything from discarded iPod batteries to mercury from Chinese power stations, from antenatal ultrasound scans to post-natal cord clamping, from diet to vaccines,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a long-term study to find the causes of autism and other childhood conditions.
