Posts Tagged ‘politics’

‘Tame’ bears guard Canadian marijuana farm

Police raiding a marijuana farm in western Canada were astonished to find black bears apparently guarding it. However initial alarm wore off when officers realised the 10 or so bears did not behave aggressively and were in fact docile and tame. Police believe dog food was used to attract the animals...

August 25th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

‘I’m planning to retire to Mars’

Elon Musk, The SpaceX founder, is convinced that humanity’s survival rests on its ability to move to the red planet. He here speaks of how his company is making the leap to the stars an affordable dream The fresh-faced 39-year-old man, in a dark T-shirt and jeans, is talking about travelling to...

August 6th, 2010 | Science & Technology | Read More

Monkey Economicus?

Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in “monkeynomics” shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too. Laurie Santos studies primate psychology and monkeynomics —...

August 4th, 2010 | Social Insight | Read More

Drugs That Shape Men’s Minds

Aldous Huxley’s acclaimed essay about man’s inclination towards intoxication and the potential for good and evil that drugs represent In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country. The craving for ethyl...

August 4th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

Jobs, Taxes and Crime: Keys to California’s Pot Vote

Getty Images Inside City Hall in Oakland, Calif., Jim Wilcox explained his plan for a commercial marijuana farm. “My idea was a Silicon Valley of cannabis,” he told the city council recently. “An office park for pot.” The council has approved the creation, licensing...

July 28th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

Valery Yarynich glances nervously over his shoulder. Clad in a brown leather jacket, the 72-year-old former Soviet colonel is hunkered in the back of the dimly lit Iron Gate restaurant in Washington, DC. It’s March 2009—the Berlin Wall came down two decades ago—but the lean and fit Yarynich...

July 20th, 2010 | Big Ideas | Read More

Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World

Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year’s list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, game-changing propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to empty jails,...

July 13th, 2010 | Big Ideas | Read More

(A Brief History and) Motivation of an Entheogenic Chemist

Abstract: Casey Hardison was arrested spring 2004 for the production of psychedelic-type drugs, i.e., LSD, 2C- B and DMT. In the three years since, not one person from ‘authority’ had bothered to ask him what motivated him to synthesise psychedelic drugs. It was as if the a priori assumption that...

July 5th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

International drug crime measures ‘lead to executions’

Enforcement by Britain, the UN and the EU backs up regimes that ignore human rights, says report. The United Nations, the European commission and individual states including Britain are flouting international human rights law by funding anti-drug crime measures that are inadvertently leading to the executions...

June 30th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

Feathering the Falcon’s nest

ELON MUSK is not, to paraphrase James Watson’s bon mot about Francis Crick, a man given to modest moods. Today, though, he might be forgiven a little hubris. The co-founder of PayPal, and developer of the Tesla, the first modern electric sports car, has long wanted to get into the space business as...

June 13th, 2010 | Science & Technology | Read More