Fight the Stop Prop 19 Campaign

I just watched the newly debuted Stop Prop 19 campaign video, which I will embed here. I have taken the time to disprove every single point in here, so lets see if we can win this vote on the grounds of educated individuals who can see through the lies of outdated and incorrect information.

Here is the video and why every point in it is incorrect:

The numbers for teens in drug rehab from marijuana are primarily court ordered. This means they were not addicted and in need of rehab, but rather forced through a system where they had to admit guilt and attend rehab vs. a more severe punishment.

Marijuana is NOT a gateway drug. This has been disproved time and time again. One of the most famous studies to state this was the Schafer commission, ordered by Richard Nixon. More information can be found at http://www.ukcia.org/research/gateway.php

The statement about 4 times more mind altering is misleading. Marijuana is more potent now, but that means you ingest less of it. Why would you want to ingest 95% plant unnecessary plant material when you could ingest 1/4 of that and get the same effect? In fact there is a currently drug available in pharmacies called Marinol, which is 100% THC. This is about 20 times more potent than the 1970’s.

Marijuana has never been proven to cause cancer. Take a look at this study for one example - http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/15/10/1829.abstract . This statistic is also debunked when you look at alternative methods of ingestion such as vaporization or metabolizing from medicated foods.

If it was sold in grocery stores, it would be treated like alcohol, regulated and kept away from children. That sounds much better than on the streets in front of schools and in some cases, directly to children.

Saying that usage in teens will skyrocket is absolute incorrect speculation. If we look at places like Amsterdam where is readily available, teen usage is much lower than here in the United States. When you put a substance in a controlled market, you lessen the demand for street dealers and make it harder for teens to have access.

This measure does not promote drugged driving, just as repealing prohibition on alcohol did not promote drunk driving. Any medication or mind altering substance should be consumed responsibly, and marijuana is no different. That does not mean it should be illegal. Misuse of the substance should be.

Addictions will not soar, because marijuana is not an addictive substance. People can technically get addicted to anything, including sugar or food. Marijuana does not create a dependency as other drugs like heroin do. Additionally, regulating and taxing this will bring many funds in to the state as well greatly reduce the costs required to house non-violent marijuana offenders.

Farmland would be used to grow marijuana, which is much more logical than destroying our forests and natural beauty for illegal grows. Besides, aren’t farmlands supposed to be used for growing crops that will bring farmers income? Think of all the additional benefits of being able to grow hemp, an incredible industrial resource.

Marijuana relaxes minds, and relieves anxiety and depression. Marijuana saves lives and provides relief where no other medications are currently available. Marijuana allows for parents with debilitating diseases to support their families in ways they would not otherwise be able. Marijuana is also a much safer alternative to relieve stress vs. the currently available alcohol which does, in some cases, destroy families. California will be more in control than ever, taking the power away from illegal operations and cartels.

Please don’t buy the lie being told in this advertisement. Campaigns based on fear and outdated information are far more damaging than Prop 19, which is based around one of the most studied and analyzed substances in the world.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Education is key to any major progression.

To ride or create...

There have been two conflicting philosophies going on for me lately and I’ve always tried to follow both, but the trick is finding the overlap. Do I ride the wave or create a wave? The second cannot come without experience riding the wave and true understanding of how that wave ever came to be.

Life moves fast and the world around us moves faster, it’s an incredible ride when you embrace it, like the first philosophy. Eventually, I begin to get uncomfortable with the loss of controlled direction and rather than going where the wave takes me, I like to try and shape it in my favor. This works better at times than others, but I’ve found the trick is not evolving from living philosophy A onto something bigger and better in philosophy B and being ready to go, but simply jumping back and forth between the two, taking in as much as possible back and forth. The experience and life flow you achieve can be exponentially huge in this. Each leap from one to the other builds on everything else and thus anything will ever only be as big as the space it is given.

Sometimes to outside observer it may look like I will never make up my mind as I try different things, leave some pieces unfinished, surprisingly finish others, and just kind of bounce all around. Nothing I have ever done has not led to some piece of insight. I think about if I regret anything I’ve done in my life quite often and the same strings of thought arise: knowing what i know now i would have perhaps modified previous actions or interactions, but then how would I have known what I know now unless I had had that experience. I will never have an answer to whether or not I regret anything, but I don’t care, that’s not important.

While we enjoy what is here and now, we can appreciate that the life that was before has been the perfect equation to equal what is now. If you are unhappy with what is now, step back and look at the next piece of the equation. Remember that what is now will later only be what was. Do with it what you will;s ride the wave, make the wave, be the wave.

A Draft Of A Thought

What I will say about my writing is this, I’m not going for much form, more a draft of a thought. As the thought develops, I would like to to elaborate and document. Occasionally a thought gets missed that could have changed everything. Something must get caught along the way if I follow some of these right?

Well the question to begin this tangent goes “is digital media a great way to share creation or is it a way to devalue it?”

The way I avoid giving an answer (seriously) is by taking the pieces often missed in the echos of the thought.

When art is created in the physical world, and I mean any kind of art; painting, sculpture song, dance, thought, whatever, it is put into a single form that is unique of itself. Some things stay preserved better, such as a painting than a song, but even when a song is recorded onto any medium that medium is in it's own tiny way, unique to every other one. It was printed at a different time, it was in a different part of the world, it has a whole different back story. But with digital media, all of that goes away. If I make a painting in Photoshop or record a song in Logic I can immediately post a copy on the internet and as many exact copies can be made instantaneously. While the uniqueness has lessened, the message has infinitely expanded. I don’t have to print 1000 CDs for 1000 people to hear me, I can click upload and send out a free email or two.

Both sides have ups and downs and I can’t say I agree with one more than the other, though I am a great supporter of the digital medium as I base much of my life around it. I want to look into one piece a little deeper and that’s saturation. With digital media, from the standpoint of the consumer, you have the whole world offering you everything they’ve got, all you have to do is want it. So how does anyone distinguish true art from false, what you want from what is being thrown?

You ride the wave. Take some falls and enjoy the ride when you realize you just purchased Hannah Montana’s last 3 albums just to see an exclusive clip on disneychannel.com. In the midst of the chaos, something will shine through and, cheeseball as can be, you just know, and it’s not very different from any judgement in life. You feel what it is and go with it.

Now the smart person will learn as they ride the wave so they can really take advantage of the insurmountable growth of these creations. Many have and have created methods for which to help others in the digital world, e.g. digg, iTunes, Pandora, StumbleUpon, any other social media site. That’s where the power cycles back around to you. All of these methods to sort through the data are driven by algorithms powered by people reading articles, listening to songs, viewing websites, just by naturally showing interest and keeping a ready to go nature.

You are here. The time is now. This will always be the case. Enjoy the embrace.

Making Ends Meet

Does anyone ever think, when they hear the term "making ends meet", that it may be a bit obscure if, in reality, it really meant "end's meat"? I did for a long while. I realized, when i was about 20 years old, that it really meant making the ends meet, as in join (I was a slow learner). Until then it was just one of those figures of speech you accept because it just is. Almost like "all of the sudden", making no sense at all. J/K bff!!! i know it's really "all of a sudden", but, as you can see, interpretation is strong. MAJOR theme of today. Theme of life, perhaps. Maybe the theme of my next essay.... blogthirteen.com. Woot!!!

Beginning

Let’s try to grasp the scope of what is and who we are in order to begin to make sense of progress (strictly from a chronological standpoint) so that we may steer ourselves in the right direction and produce a great quality of life for now and those who follow. Rational, transparent, thought. We need to flow steady, strong, and beautiful. Following is one mind beginning to work through this from the vantage of our tech-savvy twitterific generation. Hopefully this will make some sense.

Picture this: Our world as a giant hard drive. We are individual bits of information. Every day, as we live our lives, we gain knowledge and we gain experience. All, which collectively adds up to quite a bit. Take a minute to think about how much has gone on today. From the moment we wake up to this exact moment, each second that passes includes infinite amounts of minuscule calculations and discoveries. We store these discoveries in our memory for future use so we don’t have to continually rediscover life in an endless loop of neverventual¹ futility. Multiply that information by all those seconds that have happened throughout the day. So with all this information flowing around from vessel to vessel we’ve got a consortium of potential knowledge to work with. We need to figure out the best way to access this universe of a hard drive and make some monster algorithms to see what works and what doesn’t. (this is where it gets fun) There can be mass debates (I am the best mass debater²) over what it even means to be working or not as a society, but part of the process of creating this algorithm will be to allow it to make sense to any individual. Almost as if to set preferences to choose the ideal outcome for every single user.

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¹ I’m aware that neverventual is a word. Use your best deduction skills to interpret what I meant.

² pun intended