I dropped in to a computer store today to price flat monitors. They’ve come down more than I thought. I might even buy one this year – if I get a job.

The houseguest said something about “a reasonable facsimile of caffeine” and naturally I thought: what do you get if you replace a C in a caffeine molecule with Si?

Interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell on the creation of The Pill. (Link from Quare)

2020: That article is lost, but here is a newer one on the same subject.

No surprise here: ‘Guru of Ganja’ Found Guilty of Federal Marijuana Charges. (Link from Rational Review.)

Deliberating for a day, the 12-member jury concluded that Rosenthal, the self-described “Guru of Ganja,” was growing more than 1,000 plants, conspiring to cultivate marijuana and maintaining a warehouse for a growing operation. He faces 10 years to life when sentenced June 4.
. . . .
Under strict orders from U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, Rosenthal couldn’t tell the jury he was growing pot as “an officer” for Oakland’s medical marijuana program.
. . . .
“There is no such thing as medical marijuana,” said Richard Meyer, a DEA spokesman. “We’re Americans first, Californians second.”

That’s interesting epistemology.

Outside the courtroom, jury foreman Charles Sackett III said jurors suspected Rosenthal was growing medical marijuana, since a host of protesters outside the courthouse held constant demonstrations.

Sackett, however, said the jury followed federal law when it reached its “tough decision.”

“We had no legal wiggle room,” Sackett said. When asked if he hoped the verdicts would be overturned on appeal, Sackett replied: “Personally, yes, I do.”

Does anyone believe an appeal will get anywhere? Every Federal drug law obviously violates the Ninth and Tenth Amendments; but judges practically never enforce either of those quaint clauses. It’s high time for jurors to remember the Nuremberg Principle and resume enforcing the Bill of Rights on their own initiative.

How can we remain competitive on the world stage without single payer health care?

What do you do if you love (or need) marijuana brownies and go on an Atkins diet?

Average life expectancy for a population is normally given from birth; but it seems to me more useful to distinguish youth mortality (e.g. from birth-defects or malnutrition) from that of adulthood (violence, accidents) and age (heart disease &c).

I’d like to see life expectancy stated in the form of two numbers: the age at which future l.e. stops increasing (which measures childhood mortality; if c.m. is very low I guess the critical age is negative), and the l.e. at that age (which measures what we usually think of as longevity).

This train of thought was prompted by the mention on some blog or other (sorry I’ve now forgotten whose; the background was a pale buff, I think, if that helps) about two brothers who are in business together at ages 100 and 91. The bloguist mused about how it feels to celebrate a centenary birthday and know that one is unlikely to see another. (I commented that a centenarian is more likely to see 101 than he had ever been before!) I’m musing about what it’s like to know somebody for that long. How old can a ‘kid brother’ be, i.e. do people outgrow such hierarchies? (We know that High-Elves don’t, at least not in 2739 years!)

Later: Steven Gallaher shares some pointers and observations. The second derivative starts to look more interesting than the first.

Once again, a seaside resort restores a man’s health.

For the first time, cancer has been treated by removing an organ from the body, giving it radiotherapy and then re-implanting it. The out-of-body operation allows doctors to administer high doses of radiation to widespread tumours without affecting other organs.

The technique has been dubbed TAORMINA after a resort town in Sicily. It’s also an acronym for Trattamento Avanzato degli Organi per Mezzo d’Irradiazione con Neutroni e Autotrapianto.