USA ALLOWS GAY MARRIAGE IN ALL 50 STATES

With a 5 to 4 vote (and a beautiful statement) the USA Supreme Court allows gay marriages in all 50 states:

'No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

'It is so ordered.'

WEIRD RECENT CANADIAN LAWS

 
1) Canadian Supreme Court rules (on June 11, 2015) making Medicinal Marijuana legal in all forms and ways of ingesting it (as in cookies, oils, tea, etc.) .

- The Federal Health minister was" outraged' by the Supreme Court ruling and vowed to combat "normalization" of pot.

- In Vancouver police appear to be ignoring the marijuana controversy. Vancouver currently now has more medicinal marijuana outlets than Starbucks coffee outlets.

2) Canadian Federal  Bill C-51 has been passed by the majority government in spite of much opposition.

   The recently passed Bill C-51 allows for a person to be held in jail  for up to 7 days WITHOUT BEING CHARGED with a crime. All that is required is for there to be suspicion of promoting terrorism (which is not clearly defined - just social media activity is adequate). Unless the person agrees to some 25 conditions including "religious counselling" and wearing an RCMP electronic GPS tracker) he could be kept locked up for up to 12 months.

     Winnipeg, Manitoba, is not noted for being a hotbed of terrorism.
However, on June 4th Aaron Driver was arrested and placed in jail.for verbally admitting he supports the Islamic State. He hasn't been charged with a crime, let alone convicted, nor accused of dong anything wrong.
    So much for our freedom of speech and legal protest. And what about innocent until proven guilty?

3) Why does the Conservative Federal Government keep introducing bills with no expectation of them ever becoming law because Parliament rises for the summer next week and the "fixed" election date is in October?

ON A HAPPIER NOTE

Canadian sprinter  De Grasse wins NCAA sprint titles.  Andre De Grasse, representing the University of Southern California, produced two of the fastest times in history under any conditions to win the 100m and 200m double at the NCAA Championships in Eugene on Friday (12). His times of  9.75 and 19.58 are not "official records" because he had a wind in his back.

NO COMMENT REQUIRED

Pope Francis' encyclical on climate change had been leaked but is now released. 

Prime Minister Harper's prior 10 minute meeting with the Pope met with with mixed reactions:

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GETTING ALONG IN A CRAZY WORLD

ACCEPTANCE OF GLBTQ  INDIVIDUALS

(GAY - LESBIAN - BISEXUAL - TRANSGENDER - QUEER
QUESTIONING - INTERSEXUAL - ASEXUAL - ALLIES - PANSEXUAL - KINK)

a)  School Gay-Straight Alliances
           -In the USA
          - How Canada Got Its First Catholic Elementary Alliances

Straight guy and his gay best friend
 make an amazing prom couple 

         
b) The Ultimate in Acceptance

         In May of 2015,  two male senior high students who were best friends went to their prom dance together. This has been happening occasionally with two gay young men, but they were both gay.  This is the first I have heard of it with one of them straight and the other gay. 

c) Ireland Is The First Country to Vote (May 23rd) on a Referendum on " Gay Marriage". Is this the same as "Same Sex Marriage?" Or is this just a distinction without difference?  Comments are welcome.

CANADIAN PUBIC SERVICE SCIENTISTS MUZZLED

     The 55,000 members of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada are demanding provisions that would allow scientists to — wait for it! — speak openly about their work, publish results without fear of censorship and travel abroad to collaborate with peers.

     A survey from Environics Research last year found that 91 per cent of government scientists feel they cannot share their expertise with the media without facing censure from their bosses

     The researchers’ union points out that under current plans, more than $2.6 billion and 7,500 positions will be eliminated by 2017 from the top 10 science-based departments and agencies. Meanwhile, some departmental science libraries have been shuttered, with their contents sometimes ending up in dumpsters

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A COUPLE OF THINGS YOU DON'T NEED, BUT ARE IMPRESSIVE

SomeThings You DO NOT NEED

1) The Steampunk motorcycle comes with firing machine guns (blanks only).

      Great to impress your "anarchist friends".

2) The all-new Toroidion  is the world's most powerful all-electric supercar with a full megawatt (1,341 hp) of power.
     To compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race of some 3,000 miles (4,830 km),  Toroidion relies on a rapid-swap high-capacity battery that is "as easily replaced in the pit-lane as it is in the home garage."  Distances like that are over 10 times the range of other electric cars like the Tesla Model S and Audi R8 e-tron.

Some Useful Things You MIGHT USE

1) Add Wi-Fi  connection to your old computer using a USB dongle available from Amazon.com (under $20).  It is just a tiny little dongle that you plug into a USB port. It has a Wi-Fi radio in it, which your computer can use it to connect to Wi-Fi.

2) Want easy Bluetooth for your old computer with USB dongle?  The HTG Guide to Adding Bluetooth to Your Computer

What You SHOULD KNOW

1)  USA CALLS FOR AN END TO PSYCHIATRIC THERAPIES TO CHANGE SEXUAL ORIENTATION (ALSO CALLED "CONVERSION THERAPY).

     President Barack Obama has called for an end to psychiatric therapy treatments seeking to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of gay, lesbian and transgender youth. It comes in response to a petition.

2) Tuesday, April 21, 2015, The Canadian government has indicated it will present a BALANCED  BUDGET (NO YEARLY DEFICIT). Somehow, no one seems concerned that, although this means we will have stopped rushing further into DEBT, we still have a RECORD HIGH DEBT.  As in,   C$ 981,464,208,804  at the time I write this blog and increasing by about $1000 per second. Click to see the DEBT clock. 
      It is like just borrowing more money from the bank to "balance" your household budget SO YOU CAN KEEP ON SPENDING.  I guess this is why the Government NEVER says the word "debt".
      Think about this when you are told how well Canada is doing economically.

   

Pot Festival

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Wanna Fly a Drone?

What You Need To Know Before Flying A Drone 

(to stay out of trouble)

 

http://aerialstocks.com/

CLICK HERE  

please

(Information from How-to Geek we

***************

, HOW TO PEE (dryly) AT A URINAL

(Not as easy as you might think) 
This is a problem which men encounter on a daily basis. Relieving himself at a urinal may result in splash-back onto the floor, shoes or trousers. It has been a topic of much consideration from health as well as aesthetic perspectives.

1) University Study on Urine Splash Back

    Droplets form a small cavity where the next one passes through
 to form an additional cavity, creating a chain of small cavities

  Four physicists at Brigham Young University (calling themselves "wizz-kids") studied the physics properties of urine splash-back by shooting colored water through nozzles.

    They found that "urine" follows what is known as the Plateau-Rayleigh instability in that a pee stream breaks up into drops before striking something else.
   The  splash causes drops to reach as far as the sink in most home bathrooms from the "angle" stream of a standing position.
     The solution is simple. Men could just sit to pee and/or pee straight down - an  easy  solution - but somehow not a popular one.  

2) Pee Controlled By "Pee to-Play" Video Games

   
In a hi-tech version of the traditional Canadian "write your name in the snow" activity, simple video games have been  developed where the urine stream is used to control a simple video game thus encouraging focusing the stream.
      The maker of the system, a UK technology and manufacturing company called Captive Media, says that outside the United States its system has already been installed in bars, hotels, airports. A variety of games are offered, all of which are controlled by the player’s aiming right or left.

3) Hamburg Tries Hydrophonic Paint

      Hamburg's St. Pauli neighborhood is regularly victimized by late-night revelers looking to empty their bladders, thereby causing a bad odor and deterioration of the walls. To battle this problem, walls are being covered with a paint that splashes urine back onto perpetrators. This is an unusual use of the Ultra-Ever Dry super-hydrophobic, oleophobic nano-coating paint sold as a general liquid repentant paint for many uses.

UNTREATED WALL                                    PAINTED WALL  

(4) Click here for 50 other RESEARCH IDEAS for peeing

                                                                                (if you really care)

*****

ON A MORE SERIOUS NOTE

1) Mars Rover Completes Red Planet Marathon

      - 26.219 miles (42.195 kilometers) – with a finish time of roughly 11 years and two months.

      - "This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface

         of another world," said John Callas at  NASA's (JPL).  "A first time happens only once."

 
2) Drones in the news

     
      (a)  Amazon.com is secretly testing parcel delivery by drones to British Columbia

      (b) Canadian Armed Forces plans to buy drones for the Arctic

                                              OR ?

           Canadian Forces (do not) need to buy drones for the Arctic 

3) Encrypted USB Flash Drives 

(a) The Cryptex Drive allows you to lock and secure the16gb USB drive inside. Simply match the pre-set 5 digit code and you’ll be able to remove the drive for use. This may not be the "safest" way to secure your data, but I think it would get the attention of your friends at a reasonable price.

 (b) The Apricorn Aegis USB Flash Drives come in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB storage. The USB storage units are encrypted with 256-bit AES-CBC technology, FIPS Military Grade Hardware validated and work on PC, MAC and Linux.is available with 16GB, 32GB and 64GB of flash storage.

  

 (c) The SanDisk USB Flash Drive is available with 16GB, 32GB and 64GB of flash storage. The WiFi Connect offers wireless connectivity to other WiFi enabled gadgets and micro SD storage expansion and does not need an internet connection, cables or a router. Free iOs and Android apps allow efficient management of file transfers and connection, including password protection and 128-bit AES encryption.

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What Has My Canada Become ???

PLEASE MAKE IT STOP 

 IT IS AS EASY AS VOTING  ABC 

     Remember when Canada had a reputation for being polite (to a fault), and the Canadian Flag on your lapel could earn you a smile and friendly wave from strangers overseas? And the Government didn't lie to you ALL the time?

     Stephen Harper once told an American right-wing think tank, “You won’t recognize Canada when I get through with it.” I think he has pretty much succeeded in doing just that.

     On June 3rd, 2011, Brigette Marcelle, a 21-year-old Senate page, held up a "Stop Harper" sign during the government's throne speech for 20 seconds before being quickly escorted out of the chamber and immediately fired. We should have heeded her advice.

WHAT DOES CANADA HAVE NOW?

 

1) Thousands of ordinary CANADIANS took to the streets all across CANADA on March 14th to PROTEST the Federal Government's plans to shove Bill C-51 through parliament by the end of March.

Four former prime ministers and numerous knowledgeable professionals have publicly decried this bill as a major step in turning Canada into a police state with a "Secret Service Spy Agency" with no oversight to protect personal freedoms. Click on the C-51 link for a CBC news video explanation.



 2) Facebook has a  PETITION to the UNITED NATIONS for election monitors/observers for Canada's 2015 Federal Election because of recent changes to the Election Act C-13

THIS IS NOT THE CANADA I GREW UP IN

Canada Will Have An Election in 2015 . . . . . . . . . (sometime)

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE 2015 ELECTION

Michael Harris 

It is my intention to street-proof your vote. It needs street-proofing because the old electoral politics of presentation, explanation and proof are mostly dead. Politicians no longer court you, they stalk you. They don’t campaign, they spy, cheat, chisel and connive their way into office.

Every electronic device you own is an unlocked back-door to your privacy and their dirty work. Think of it as information sorcery. The people who ply this relatively new profession, using the social media, are routinely referred to in the mainstream media as “wonder children” or “communications geniuses.”

Don’t get me wrong. There have always been rainmakers, fixers, and crooks hanging around politics like flies in a barnyard. But the new technologies, and the access to personal information they bring, have turned them into pure predators. American conservative strategist Vincent Harris is the latest incarnation of this phenomenon, though he has many predecessors like Frank Luntz and Karl Rove.

For public consumption, people like Vincent Harris say they advise the media teams of politicians. Their real task is to create public opinion and herd the masses by way of distortion. They push and pull voters as if they were an accordion.

Their favourite method is to corrupt information in such a way as to make voters “drink pig piss.” – the immortal words of the father of mass manipulation in democratic politics, American conservative consultant Arthur Finkelstein.

In other words, they are masters of making people vote against their own interests, while advancing the interests of their elite clients. They always confuse these democracy-killing exertions with cleverness, just like the media.

Your first line of defence against the election bandits is your telephone. I would advise simply disconnecting it, but your kid might call needing a ride home from a sleepover. But here’s something you can do. Don’t take part in political phone surveys, just hang up.

For one thing, you really have no idea who is on the other end of the line, or what they are really doing. For another, your call display can’t help you. The number it registers may or not be the one from which the call is really being placed. Besides, who you support is nobody else’s business, which is why we vote by secret ballot. Don’t blab your voter intention to people who will just give or sell the information to the media to concoct the latest “trend.”

Never, I repeat, never listen to a telephone recording, let alone act on one. A lot of people who did in the last federal election exercised their legs, not their franchise. Now that Harper’s strategically weakened new elections legislation makes life markedly easier for would-be cheaters, we are certain to see the sequel: Son of Robocalls. When you know it’s a recording, just hang up. Don’t let them use your telephone as a Trojan horse to enter your head.

Make your candidate be real. If he calls you with a chatty recording instead of a visit to your door, draw a line through his name. Never consider voting for a candidate who doesn’t show up at public meetings or debates, as many Conservatives did not in 2011.

Vote for somebody who actually appears and answers your questions, face-to-face, in a way that satisfies you. As for the one who shoves his literature in your face while asking if he can expect your support, all in 30 seconds, tell him to come back in a week and you’ll talk about it. If he doesn’t come back, line the bird-cage with his bumph.

During this election cycle, approach your television with caution; the little screen has big teeth. It is still the favourite weapon of dubious politicians who want all of your vote for one-tenth of the story. Attack ads are not haikus, they are weaselly stunts designed to dumb you down.

For the duration of the election cycle, (and with a vengeance once the writ has been dropped), television will become a weapon of mass deception. So when you see Justin Trudeau doing a slow striptease, or Tom Mulcair baring his canines, do something really useful like clean out the kitty litter box, or vacuum your truck. You’re a person, not a keypad, so don’t let them push your buttons.

Take pollsters with a grain of salt – and make that a five-pound bag when they are doing their surveys for an election that hasn’t been called. Remember that not all polls are created equal. There are real pollsters with proven methodologies and there are those who fly by night. There are professionals who aim to reveal public opinion, and partisans in pollsters’ clothing who use pretend polls to generate their own public opinion.

Don’t forget, the prime minister’s former parliamentary secretary, Dean Del Mastro, actually commissioned a poll during Ontario’s 2011 election to answer other polls he didn’t like. If you care, take a close look at the methodology, the questionnaires, and the track records of any pollster whose work catches your eye. These guys are part soothsayer and part social scientist. You have to be careful to figure out which trait dominates. Better yet, pay little attention to the daily prattle of duelling polls.

Ignore the endorsements of newspapers. They are now almost all owned by big corporations and for the most part put out a pro-big-business message. That’s fair, but remember it’s also 100 per cent self serving.

One needn’t fear an outbreak of journalistic integrity. After all, bear in mind how the Globe and Mail’s corporate masters overruled the editorial board’s endorsement of Kathleen Wynn in the last Ontario election. Vladimir Putin would have been impressed by the sheer audacity.

As for think-tanks and various learned institutes, they have nothing to offer you but the agendas of the people who fund them. Best just steer clear.

Plan your trip to the polling station as though you’re fording a crocodile-infested stream. Make sure you have everything you need. And that means two pieces of official identification, one of which must bear the location of where you hang your hat – if you don’t have a driver’s license or provincial ID with a photo and your street address. And while you can use your passport as proof of identity to vote, you will still need to show a second piece of ID bearing your name and address.

Bear in mind that Pierre Poilievre, the man who downsized democracy in Canada for the Harper oligarchy, has made the act of casting a vote more like filing your income tax. If you don’t have the proper documents, expect to have the dudes in short pants up your nose as an ineligible voter. Stick this on the fridge. 

Challenges to prospective voters at polling stations across the country will be the signature dysfunction of the coming election. The “Fair” Elections Act has set the table.

Finally, watch the all-candidates television debate with the same expectation of getting answers as you do from Question Period. One of two things will happen. Either all the candidates won’t be there, or there won’t be a debate. The consortium of television networks that devises these exercises in chastity-belt communications works for the pols not the people.

Bottom line? The TV executives can be counted on to come up with a format with less life in it than a dead dog. Pretty soon even these stillborn events will be seen as too risky for the leaders to participate in. Take note. Prime Minister David Cameron’s handlers have been trying to come up with a publicly acceptable way of boycotting the TV debate in the UK’s current national election.

Final note on street-proofing your vote? Inform yourself. Look at what the people who want their power renewed have done with it so far, and at what those who seek power say they will do if they get it.

Above all, don’t cast your ballot out of fear.

On that subject, the last word goes to H.L. Mencken:

             “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the population alarmed

                 (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an

                          endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

In other words — vote like Spock.

                                                      —

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His nine books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, is a number one best-seller.

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Ralph Nader to Harper

REMEMBER RALPH NADER?
and his forced recall of the 1960 Chevrolet Corvair?
Fancy, shiny and deadly

This open letter to Harper is taken from a February 2015 Globe and Mail editorial titled “Parliament Must Reject Harper’s Secret Policeman Bill,"

February 18, 2015

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P.
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2

Dear Prime Minister:

Many Americans love Canada and the specific benefits that have come to our country from our northern neighbor’s many achievements (see Canada Firsts by Nader, Conacher and Milleron). Unfortunately, your latest proposed legislation—the new anti-terrorism act—is being described by leading Canadian civil liberties scholars as hazardous to Canadian democracy.

A central criticism was ably summarized in a February 2015 Globe and Mail editorial titled “Parliament Must Reject Harper’s Secret Policeman Bill,” to wit:

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper never tires of telling Canadians that we are at war with the Islamic State. Under the cloud of fear produced by his repeated hyperbole about the scope and nature of the threat, he now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force.

Canadians should not be willing to accept such an obvious threat to their basic liberties. Our existing laws and our society are strong enough to stand up to the threat of terrorism without compromising our values.”

 Particularly noticeable in your announcement were your exaggerated expressions that exceed the paranoia of Washington’s chief attack dog, former vice-president Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney periodically surfaces to update his pathological war-mongering oblivious to facts—past and present—including his criminal war of aggression which devastated Iraq—a country that never threatened the U.S.

You are quoted as saying that “jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced” as a predicate for your gross over-reaction that “violent jihadism seeks to destroy” Canadian “rights.” Really? Pray tell, which rights rooted in Canadian law are “jihadis” fighting in the Middle East to obliterate? You talk like George W. Bush.

How does “jihadism” match up with the lives of tens of millions of innocent civilians, destroyed since 1900 by state terrorism—west and east, north and south—or the continuing efforts seeking to seize or occupy territory.

Reading your apoplectic oratory reminds one of the prior history of your country as one of the world’s peacekeepers from the inspiration of Lester Pearson to the United Nations. That noble pursuit has been replaced by deploying Canadian soldiers in the belligerent service of the American Empire and its boomeranging wars, invasions and attacks that violate our Constitution, statutes and international treaties to which both our countries are signatories.

What has all this post-9/11 loss of American life plus injuries and sickness, in addition to trillions of American tax dollars, accomplished? Has it led to the stability of those nations invaded or attacked by the U.S. and its reluctant western “allies?” Just the opposite, the colossal blowback evidenced by the metastasis of al-Qaeda’s offshoots and similar new groups like the self-styled Islamic state are now proliferating in and threatening over a dozen countries.

Have you digested what is happening in Iraq and why Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said no to Washington? Or now chaotic Libya, which like Iraq never had any presence of Al-Qaeda before the U.S.’s destabilizing military attacks? (See the New York Times’editorial on February 15, 2015 titled “What Libya’s Unraveling Means”.)

Perhaps you will find a former veteran CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, Robert L. Grenier more credible. Writing in his just released book: 88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary (Simon & Schuster), he sums up U.S. government policy this way: “Our current abandonment of Afghanistan is the product of a… colossal overreach, from 2005 onwards.” He writes, “in the process we overwhelmed a primitive country, with a largely illiterate population, a tiny agrarian economy, a tribal social structure and nascent national institutions. We triggered massive corruption through our profligacy; convinced a substantial number of Afghans that we were, in fact, occupiers and facilitated the resurgence of the Taliban” (Alissa J. Rubin, Robert L. Grenier’s ‘88 Days to Kandahar,’ New York Times, February 15, 2015).

You may recall George W. Bush’s White House counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who wrote in his 2004 book, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror—What Really Happened, “It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting, ‘Invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq.’”

Mr. Bush committed sociocide against that country’s twenty-seven million people. Over 1 million innocent Iraqi civilians lost their lives, in addition to millions sick and injured. Refugees have reached five million and growing. He destroyed critical public services and sparked sectarian massacres—massive war crimes, which in turn produce ever-expanding blowbacks.

Canadians might be most concerned about your increased dictatorial policies and practices, as well as this bill’s provision for secret law and courts in the name of fighting terrorism—too vaguely defined. Study what comparable practices have done to the United States – a course that you seem to be mimicking, including the militarization of police forces (see The Walrus, December 2014).

If passed, this act, piled on already stringent legal authority, will expand your national security bureaucracies and their jurisdictional disputes, further encourage dragnet snooping and roundups, fuel fear and suspicion among law-abiding Canadians, stifle free speech and civic action and drain billions of dollars from being used for the necessities of Canadian society. This is not hypothetical. Along with an already frayed social safety net, once the envy of the world, you almost got away with a $30 billion dollar purchase of unneeded costly F-35s (including maintenance) to bail out the failing budget-busting F-35 project in Washington.

You may think that Canadians will fall prey to a politics of fear before an election. But you may be misreading the extent to which Canadians will allow the attachment of their Maple Leaf to the aggressive talons of a hijacked American Eagle.

Canada could be a model for independence against the backdrop of bankrupt American military adventures steeped in big business profits…a model that might help both nations restore their better angels.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

MEDICAL PROGRESS / NO - HI P0T

PROGRESS IN MEDICINE

1) Three-Parent Babies

Britain is set to become the first country in the world to allow the creation of so-called 'three-parent' in vitro fertilisation (IVF) babies permit the creation of IVF babies with DNA from three different people. The law, allowing the licensing of mitochondrial donation, will come into effect in October, opening the way for the first IVF licence to be issued later this year, with the birth of the first three-parent baby in 2016.

2) Canada's Supreme Court allows doctor-assisted suicide

"euthanasia kit" available in Belgium

Canada's highest court struck down a ban on doctor-assisted suicide for mentally competent patients with terminal illnesses Friday (Feb 6/2015), declaring that outlawing that option deprives dying people of their dignity and autonomy. The Supreme Court's unanimous decision reverses its own decision two decades ago and gives Parliament and provincial legislators a year to draft new legislation that recognizes the right of consenting adults who are enduring intolerable suffering to seek medical help ending their lives.

 

"NO-HIGH" Marijuana

   1)  As legal sales of marijuana begin in Colorado, researchers have discovered a  natural hormone that can block the drug’s high while providing medical benefits.

The hormone, known as pregnenolone, is already sold over the counter as an anti-aging supplement, since it is a precursor to steroid hormones like estrogen and testosterone, which decline with age. The new research suggests it could treat people with marijuana use disorders — as well as alleviate symptoms related to accidental or over-doses of the drug. In the study, which was published in Science, the researchers found that pregnenolone is part of a feedback loop that regulates the the brain’s cannabinoid receptors, which bind to marijuana’s main active ingredient, THC.

2) A compound found in marijuana can treat schizophrenia as effectively as antipsychotic medications, with far fewer side effects, according to a preliminary clinical trial.Researchers led by Markus Leweke of the University of Cologne in Germany studied 39 people with schizophrenia who were hospitalized for a psychotic episode. Nineteen patients were treated with amisulpride, an antipsychotic medication that is not approved in the U.S., but is comparable to other medications that are.

3) Israel Is Developing  "no high" marijuana

As medical marijuana gains acceptance around the world, Israel is drawing interest from investors for its “botanical high-tech” medical cannabis. A Canadian producer has entered into a partnership with an Israeli producer, Tikun Olam, for a cannabis variety that helps reduce the seizures of epileptic children and has been especially grown to remove the “high.”.

ROBOT /DRONES

1) Vampire bat-inspired ROBOT DRONES that can fly and crawl  vastly improve their usefulness by   increasing the areas in which they can operate.  Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), building on earlier developments, have created a drone that uses wings incorporating movable tips, allowing it to both walk and fly.                    For a video:  CLICK HERE

2) Top 10 Drones of 2015

3) CES 2015 (Consumer Elecrtronics Show)

        For a closer look at the robots check, out the 2015 CES Field Guide.


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Looking Forward To 2015 . . . and beyond

LOOKING GOOD

1) Microsoft HoloLens

2) Mercedes-Benz  F 015 Luxury in Motion in an autonomous car.

3) The future for legalized Pot.  Oct 19th is the "fixed" Federal election date in Canada with legalization of "pot" a likely major issue in the election. It has been a year since Colorado became the first U.S. state to legalize marijuana for recreational use, Denver now has some $1 billion US in sales in a city of about 650,000. It has more than 60 marijuana outlets, which sell different hybrids of the drug as well as cookies, creams, pipes and T-shirts.      

Legalzed marijuana: What Colorado looks like 1 year after Amendment 64

Colorado gets high on pot revenue, marijuana tourists

Map: Marijuana use around the world

4) Volvo announced a new safety system that warns drivers of approaching cyclists via a symbol on their car's head-up display. Not to be outdone, Jaguar Land Rover has just announced its own system, which takes a more tactile approach – among other things, it buzzes drivers' hands and feet, and even taps them on the shoulder.

5) CES 2016,  Las Vegas, Nevada.  6-incredile facts obout CE2015

THE JURY IS STILL OUT

1) 3D printed shelby cobra model

This Shelby Cobra sports car, 3D-printed at Department of Energy's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, on display this week at the Detroit Auto Show Technology Showcase.

2) HitchBOT - The Canadian twin of the original hitchBOT, (a chatty internet-connected robot that hitchhiked across Canada last summer) is scheduled to hitchhike in Germany from Feb. 13 to 22.

NOT LOOKING GOOD

     OXFAM predicts that by 2016 the richest 1% of the global population will control 50% of the total global wealth unless the current trend of rising inequality is checked.

     If you find it hard to grasp just how unequal the global economy is, here's one stat that should put it all in perspective: The richest 80 people on Earth are now as wealthy as the world's 3.5 billion poorest people. In other words, 80 people control as much wealth as half the population of the planet.

    That's one of the most shocking findings from a report released Monday by Oxfam, an international charity dedicated to finding solutions to global poverty. The report's overall point is that global inequality is soaring to amazingly high levels as the world's richest just keep getting richer.

As you can see from the chart above, it hasn't always been this bad. In 2010, it took a slightly greater number of rich people -- 388 billionaires, to be exact -- to equal the collective wealth of the world's poorest 50 percent.

YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ? 

 1)  How NOT To Make Friends (With A Powerful Neighbor)       (CLICK HERE)


2) Would You Ride These?

(a) The Worlds Wildest Thrill Ride - The Insanity in Las Vegas


(b) The World's Craziest and Highest Roller coaster - the Xstream in Las Vegas




        Final thought:  "If you want to live the American Dream go to Denmark".
                                       

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