Good morning.
Scary Mary. Hide your children!
Think-racing out of depession
“Depressed? Think faster thoughts, and your mood may improve.”
Hunh! Simple, elegant, worth a try. I guess it’s very similar to “Depressed? Try doing some physical activity.” That works too: people work out, for example, to lift their mood; or clean house like a whirlwind. Still, thinking faster. I’d never thought of that.
How cocaine is made
Prompted in part by an email to a list, in part by Jake’s detailed comment about additives to illegal drugs (hello, Jake!), I point you to a short documentary on transforming coca leaves into cocaine.
Some things I really, truly never want to put into my body.
Debunking marijuana misinformation
If you know me at all, you know that the senseless, expensive, misguided “war on drugs” is a bit of a hobby-horse of mine. Today I saw streetdrugs.org for the first time, and decided to look at what they say about marijuana.
Why pot? Well, because it is (as streetdrugs say) “the most widely used illegal substance in the world today,” and because it’s a Schedule I drug (rated as dangerous as heroin, and more dangerous than cocaine). Also, because marijuana prohibition has a long political history having to do with disliking immigrants. No, really: go read this FAQ (and its various disclaimers) on Erowid.
Before we go any further, here’s another useful link to an article titled “The top 10 pot studies government wished it had never funded.” Now, to the streetdrugs article about marijuana.
Marijuana is made from the plant cannabis sativa…
Actually, sativa is only one of three species of the cannabis genus that qualify as sources of “marijuana”: sativa, indica and ruderalis.
The plant, cannabis sativa, contains chemicals called “cannabinoids.” THC (delta-9-tetrhydrocannabinol) is the cannabinoid believed to be responsible for the psychoactive effects of cannabis.
THC can be found in all parts of the cannabis plant, including hemp. This is why hemp is regulated carefully–some hemp products such as clothing, rope, yarn, lotion and soap are legal products because they do not cause THC to enter the human body.
Would be nice if you’d mentioned that the cannabinoids are also produced endogenously in our brains. Not only that: in order to react to any chemical, we have to have a receptor for it, and we certainly do have cannabinoid receptors. Studies of whether we can take advantage of having these receptors by tickling them with THC seem to have promise in many areas of medicine, including treatments of Tourette Syndrome and cancer.
Streetdrugs quoting the DEA:
There are no FDA-approved medications that are smoked. For one thing, smoking is generally a poor way to deliver medicine. It is difficult to administer safe, regulated dosages of medicines in smoked form. Secondly, the harmful chemicals and carcinogens that are byproducts of smoking create entirely new health problems. There are four times the level of tar in a marijuana cigarette, for example, than in a tobacco cigarette.
True enough, about tar. Problems, though: (a) I have never heard of anyone smoking the equivalent of 20+ joints a day, whereas the pack-a-day cigarette habit is quite common; and (b) why doesn’t anyone ever talk about vaporizers in the “mainstream”? THC evaporates at a lower temperature than is needed for combustion – voila, no (or few) bad volatiles.
Streetdrugs quoting NIDA:
Smoking marijuana may increase the risk of cancer more than smoking tobacco. Marijuana smoke contains 50% to 70% more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke. It also produces high levels of an enzyme that converts certain hydrocarbons into their carcinogenic form–levels that may accelerate the canges that ultimately produce malignant cells.
See the link to Ten Studies above. To their credit, Streetdrugs go on to add:
In May 2006, a study was published by UCLA that disputes the claims that marijuana causes lung cancer. To read the press release, click here.
Moving along:
Marijuana is usually smoked in the form of loosely rolled cigarettes called “joints,” hollowed out commercial cigars called “blunts,” smoked in pipes or bongs. Joints and blunts are sometimes laced with a number of adulterants including PCP, cocaine and embalming fluid (a chemical traditionally used to preserve dead bodies)–resulting in a wide range of effects…
You know, you could just say formaldehyde. But whatever. I’ve no idea whether street-purchased marijuana is laced with anything, but somehow I seriously doubt that all those hippies (not to mention the many peoples who used pot way before we were born, we’re talking Biblical times here) would do such a thing. You want to combat drug selling on the streets, fine, but don’t be blaming cannabis for human hubris.
SHORT TERM EFFECTS of marijuana use include impaired short-term memory, impaired concentration, attention, and judgment; impaired coordination and balance, increased heart rate, blood shot or red eyes, dry mouth and increased appetite (the “munchies”).
Fair enough, these are some widely known effects (not all of them necessarily bad, by the way) of ingesting marijuana. But consider this: it’s a plant. It can be bred. Forget human intervention; natural means it mutates. Don’t you think it’s possible that some strains of pot have different effects, like increased concentration? Erowid (link above) lists its classifications as “Intoxicant; Stimulant; Psychedelic; Depressant.” That’s a hell of a range.
LONG TERM EFFECTS of marijuana use include addiction (psychological), paranoia, persistent anxiety, impaired learning skills and memory difficulties.
Kudos – seriously – for not claiming that there’s physical addiction associated with marijuana. As for the rest, particularly learning and memory, see the Tourette’s-treatment link above.
MEDICAL COMPLICATIONS associated with marijuana use include an increased risk of chronic cough, bronchitis, and emphysema; increased risk of cancer of the head, neck, and lungs; a decrease in testosterone levels and lower sperm counts for men and an increase in testosterone levels for women and increased risk of infertility.
Nice, returning to the cancer-risk bogeyman and painting it as a definitive complication even though they themselves linked to the UCLA study. The rest of these aren’t substantiated by Streetdrugs.
More information claimed to be from NIDA:
Within a few minutes after inhaling marijuana smoke, an individual’s heart begins beating more rapidly, the bronchial passages relax and become enlarged, and blood vessels in the eyes expand, making the eyes look red. The heart rate, normally 70 to 80 beats per minute, may increase by 20 to 50 beats per minute or, in some cases, even double. This effect can be greater if other drugs are taken with marijuana.
OK, let’s see. Bronchial passages enlarged… it’s a bronchodilator! I wonder if we can treat asthma with it? Also, I’m assuming the blood-vessel expansion isn’t limited to the eyes (why would it be), and together with an increased heart rate that means better blood flow. Then again, blood vessel dilation is also a “known cause” of headaches (NYTimes article, not freely available so not linking). But is headache listed as one of the effects of smoking pot? No.
Studies show that approximately 6 to 11 percent of fatal accident victims test positive for THC. In many of these cases, alcohol is detected as well. In a study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a moderate dose of marijuana alone was shown to impair driving performance; however, the effects of even a low dose of marijuana combined with alcohol were markedly greater than for either drug alone.
“Many of these cases”? How many? And what other substances are found in their bodies? And how many fatal accident victims have nicotine in their blood? What about alcohol (and only alcohol)? “6 to 11 percent” means little if you don’t compare it with other numbers. As for the NHTSA study: a moderate dose vs. a low dose combined with alcohol. What’s wrong with this comparison?
Cancer of the respiratory tract and lungs may also be promoted by marijuana smoke. A study comparing 173 cancer patients and 176 healthy individuals produced strong evidence that smoking marijuana increases the likelihood of developing cancer of the head or neck, and that the more marijuana smoked, the greater the increase. A statistical analysis of the data suggested that marijuana smoking doubled or tripled the risk of these cancers.
Here we go again! OK, I get it. You want me to think that pot smoking causes cancer. This isn’t presenting information, at this point, because (a) you’ve already mentioned cancer, and (b) what study? Where are the findings?
Necessary disclaimers: I Am Not An Expert. I am not contesting the possibility that marijuana smoking may have negative side effects. I am, however, railing against the ubiquitous misinformation about it out there, and severely displeased with how much money has been spent on holding up this straw man. How about closing the doors on the War on Drugz, and instead pouring all that money into real research? Maybe we’ll cure cancer in our lifetime.
Happiness is.
Do you know what I did today? I worked on Roland. It was bliss.
Partly it was bliss because I worked on Roland, which hadn’t happened (not reliably or for any significant length of time) for a couple of weeks. I did more dissertation work when I was traveling – in the interstices among those five trips in the space of two months, the last of them being in mid-November – than I did in the last two weeks.
At least, for once I wasn’t slacking. During that time I wrote something like 8000 words in different venues, most of which writing was “public” (like the final NEH report for the two-year Virtual Humanities Lab). I think, all things considered, things went pretty well with all the obligations. Only a few relatively minor balls dropped, unless someone isn’t telling me something big.
Then there was Thanksgiving! And it was grand! For the first time in a long time I wasn’t with my family. That wasn’t the part that was grand; the good part was that I got to meet my two, uh, half-brothers-in-law. Who are in their early to mid-20s, and both funky and interesting and smart and well-traveled. It was good to spend time with Ethan’s family again, those I’d met before and new acquaintances. Including the puppy, to whom I didn’t become allergic for hours. Hooray for modern medicine.
Then we came home, and this week we have a cold. Nasty cold, too: I took yesterday off from work completely… eeexcept for the totally-burning stuff.
And tonight, I started in on Roland again. I have to encode everything I’m going to encode for the thesis (which is not all of Roland’s corpus, that’ll take years more than I have) by the end of December, so thought I’d make a list of everything that still needs to be encoded. Oh boy, it’ll be a fun month! Good thing I’m lovin’ it. tm.
too much jetsetting
I’m so tired of travel.
On Friday I came back from the latest – to Maryland on Tuesday, to give a talk at MITH; and then DC for the Reinvention Center conference. This was my fourth trip in just under two months: the other three were to Nebraska (digital humanities workshop), Fredericton (text-analysis conference) and Chester, Vermont (Readex Digital Institute, which got extensively blogged here). On Tuesday I leave for Chester again, to return on Wednesday after a meeting. This is the blessed last trip for the foreseeable future.
Don’t get me wrong: all the events I went to have been fabulous (see below), and I’m looking forward to going back to Readex. But – and I’ve known this from the start – this is too much travel right now.
The talk at MITH went well. I guess the crowd was a bit diminished compared to their usual; it was election day, and there was a Human-Computer Interaction event precisely coinciding with my talk. Nevertheless, it was a good group, and boy, they really mean it when they call these things “Digital Dialogues.” They jumped right in about five minutes into my talk, and the lively conversation didn’t stop for the next hour and a half or so. I showed the Virtual Humanities Lab and we talked about collaboration, its logistical issues and benefits-vs-drawbacks and ways in which VHL can be made a more friendly collaboration environment. It was great to receive feedback from people not only interested, but way more knowledgeable about the state of the field. It felt easy to be there; they’ve created a great atmosphere both for conversation and for work.
Wednesday I took advantage of MITH’s generous offer to use their “coffeehouse” space for work. That evening I found myself at the downtown Washington hotel where the Reinvention Center conference was to take place in the next two days.
I’ve a ton of notes from that conference. I only got to go because my dissertation director was leading one of the sessions, and asked me to be his session recorder; this way the Center gives a few grad students the opportunity to see what’s going on in research universities around the country, while at the same time getting young’uns to more or less write the proceedings. A more than fair price, I must say.
So I’d been reasonably interested in the conference, but had no idea how useful it would be and how much new information I would get that will be applicable in my near-future work. For one thing, I saw the largest concentration of high-level university administrators that I’ve ever seen before. Not sure what the ratio of administrators (and staff, like librarians) to faculty was, but it felt something like 2:1 or maybe even 3:1, and perhaps 300 people in attendance. (I may be wildly off here. It’s just an estimate.) I’ll have to go over my notes later and perhaps write it up here, if I get to it.
If I get to it. Friday I came back; and yesterday my adored husband took me out for a romantic evening out that stretched well into this morning. I had no idea what we were doing; turned out, we were going to an Ani DiFranco concert. Well, holy shit: I hadn’t been to a concert in a long, long time, and had only seen Ani in concert once. It was a treat. Not only does she rock the the house, but she is touring while quite pregnant, and her happiness with where she is and what she’s doing could be felt all the way at the back bar where we were standing. She had with her a stand-up-bassist and a percussionist with a xylophone and a steel drum and a bunch of other unusual rhythm instruments. Beautiful sound, mostly good crowd, amazing energy.
Then we reconnected over dinner and conversation and general dalliance. This past summer, going into early fall, was difficult for both of us. We both had to reduce and eventually stop taking anti-depressants: welcome to U.S. health care, which left us scrambling for two months (three in Ethan’s case). In the fall we both dove into new work, and have been trying to catch up with each other ever since. Last evening (orchestrated in part by a kind friend – many thanks!) was a badly needed one.
And now… now there’s more work. The final VHL report to the NEH is due at the end of the month. My write-up of our session at the Reinvention Center conference is due at the same time. I’ve got a job app to send out tomorrow, blessedly almost done but still on the to-do list. Tuesday-Wednesday there’s the trip, and my next task for the dissertation is the transcription and encoding of around 600 lines of poetry. Then there’s another fellowship app to get together.
And then there’s the social life, without which Vika gets to be a dull and sad girl. Tonight we were treated by our fabulous housemate to Marie Antoinette the movie, which had an unexpected soundtrack (Aphex Twin!) and was generally not half bad. Monday (tomorrow!) we have a friend visiting. Haven’t seen her in a long long time, so I’m really looking forward to it, and to the inevitable good food associated with the visit.
So what do I do? Instead of getting some sleep I write a long blog entry. Ah well, at least now I have a de facto to do list. There’s more to write about – details of the movie, Sean McMullen’s The Miocene Arrow which I’m enjoying these days, my relationship with the uncertainties of life after May, various anxieties about whether I’ll finish the dissertation in time. But all these can wait. Good night now.
If wishes were babies…
Via the inimitable Ms. Bitch comes a link to a Washington Post article (free registration required, I believe): “As Europe Grows Grayer, France Devises a Baby Boom.”
France has woken up to a bit of population crisis going around Europe: all of Europe is below replacement rate, meaning the population count is going down. In addition, they like families. You know, have family values. I remember hearing something about that in the U.S., vaguely and only once or twice.
Some excerpts from the article:
When the municipal day-care center ran out of space because of a local baby boom, the town government gave Maylis Staub and her husband $200 a month to defray the cost of a “maternal assistant” to care for their two children.
When Staub delivered twins last December — her third and fourth children — the nation not only increased their tax deductions and child allowances, the government-owned French train system offered 40 percent discounts off tickets for the parents and the children until they reach their 18th birthdays.[…]
France heavily subsidizes children and families from pregnancy to young adulthood with liberal maternity leaves and part-time work laws for women. The government also covers some child-care costs of toddlers up to 3 years old and offers free child-care centers from age 3 to kindergarten, in addition to tax breaks and discounts on transportation, cultural events and shopping. […]
A century ago, France was one of the first European countries to face a declining population. Since then, almost every elected French government — regardless of party — has instituted laws that encourage bigger families and make it easier for women to keep their jobs while raising children.
Now that’s family values.
Technological wonders and peripheral lucidity.
Ethan’s taken geeky anti-vandal measures. Plus, we now have a set of functioning motion-sensor floodlights. Come back, kid. I want you to show your face.
This repeated-senseless-violence thing has been… distracting; I had been unsuccessfully trying to work for two days and instead somehow getting sucked into the WaiterRant archives again and again. But lo, as soon as I sit down to read/annotate some primary sources (instead of writing the second chapter, which is due – oh – at the end of the month), work gets interesting again. Go figure.
Reading and annotating, in this case, is a lot of pattern-searching. All afternoon and evening my peripheral vision has been crazy-sensitive. I wonder if the two are related.
Don’t have any more words.
He fucking did it again.
One un-smashed window remains in our car.
He’s some punk kid. I saw him but, of course, not his face.
Fuck you, and your little hammer too.
Some bored soul has busted in the rear windshield and one of the back door windows of our car tonight. Probably with one of those little hammers that come in safety kits: the windshield is broken in the middle and also around the edges, but not in-between – and there are no marks on the metal around the edges, so it probably wasn’t a sledgehammer.
Fucking punks. Completely pointless vandalism. Unless they know us and are trying to make some sort of a statement, which I highly doubt: nobody really knows us around here, except by passing hellos. I hate this sort of shit, this mindless mean-spiritedness. [ETA: They didn’t take the ipod that was in the glove compartment, or my passport, or the road atlas. Really pointless.]
Now, instead of angsting about my dissertation tomorrow, I get to call the insurance company and sweep up broken glass, and maybe drive the car over to some repair place or other (or maybe wait until they get the part in, since these cars haven’t been sold in the States for that long). Plus there’ll be a deductible-sized hole in our budget that we just didn’t need. All of it because some idiot broke stuff for ha-has.
