Search Results: real-time (100)

Flickr/Anupam Kamal edited by Toke of the Town.


While the trigger-happy pukes of the American drug war beat down the doors of innocent citizens, armed to the teeth and prepared to rain down hell on any man, woman or child who stands in their way of busting petty drug offenders, one California tech firm hopes to prevent this brutality with a new watchdog device aimed at monitoring the psychopaths in blue.


The rapid rise in the popularity of 3D printers in recent years, paired with how affordable they have become, has led to a long list of crazy, deadly, useful, and sometimes downright delicious creations being spit out by these incredible machines. Anything from firearms, to body parts, to pizzas, and in a move straight out of a Terminator movie, we even have 3D printers printing out more 3D printers.
So, of course, it took no time flat for folks to start pumping out 3D-printed plastic accessories for the cannabis crowd – everything from cheap grinders to entire bongs shaped like popular video game characters.
But a research and development firm out of Israel has taken the technology to a whole new level with a 3D-printed vaporizer that they believe will change the way the world looks at medical marijuana.

You probably know the rules by now: in New York City, if you’re caught in public view with pot, or in possession of 25 grams or more, you’re getting a violation. Because of this (well, at least, partially), New Yorkers made up 99.2 percent (149,951) of the entire state’s marijuana-related arrests of 155,048 stoners last year.
But lately, the external pressures placed on internal agencies by the incredibly high rates has become an engine for policy shifts. This is why Governor Cuomo continues to try to outlaw the public view provision in the criminal code last year. And why Bloomberg has opted out of the ‘stay overnight in jail, be at court in the morning’ situation for marijuana offenders. And why NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has even told his officers to chill with the pot arrests. Luckily, it looks like these efforts are actually showing real-time results. Village Voice has the 4-1-1.

Alfie420_2006/Photobucket

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent

I think it’s essential at Thanksgiving that we remember what’s important and yes, what we are thankful for, as we lay out our fat pants in anticipation for a day of complete stuffage. Before we begin the mental preparation needed for enduring the forced march that is Uncle Bill and the onslaught of his incredibly misguided and alcohol-scented opinions, before it gets crazy, this is what I’m thankful for. 
I’m thankful that every day, marijuana becomes more accepted.
I’m thankful for the people who celebrate 4/20 as a holiday. It is a flame for the rest of the world to smell.

ACLU

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
I am such a downer. Since Election Day, many friends, colleagues, and even my in-laws and family members who don’t fancy one of theirs being a pot writer, called or wrote wanting to know what I thought of Washington and Colorado passing what they’re calling “the legalization of marijuana.”
I should be ecstatic, as many of the well-wishers have commented. I tell them that it is a win. I tell them that it is progress. What I can’t tell them… is what’s going to happen next.
What we’re dealing with here are cultural norms. 
The question to me is, what is society going to do? How as a nation are we going to look at marijuana? What kind of resistance is there going to be?

Weedist

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
I had the privilege and honor of attending a conference this past week in San Francisco titled, “Cannabis In Medicine.” The symposium brought together all levels of health care workers: Doctors, nurses, researchers and other medical professionals, mostly unfamiliar with marijuana as a medical treatment, gathered in one room to receive straight, sober information. We were treated to the results of data, case studies and clinical trials conducted using cannabis therapy.

Mario Piperni dot Com
What I learned from watching the Republican Convention was that nowadays you can basically lie about anything as long as the market can tolerate the bullshit

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
Boy Howdy… Are we fucked
What I learned from watching the Republican Convention was that nowadays you can basically lie about anything as long as the market can tolerate the bullshit. In the past, the market stood for facts, common sense and what we could logically bear as a society. Now the market is based on how much bullshit you can get the American people to accept before their heads overload and explode.
Take American Idol. It was almost a new religion when it premiered in 2002. Now it’s like an elderly third cousin who needs a place to crash for a night or a year. When the American people have had enough of something they let you go quick the way the Church of Scientology jettisons a fanatic parishioner who talks to the press. 
And don’t expect any apology.
See, I don’t care about the lies told at the RNC. They’re on the record but it doesn’t matter. You could tell the American people that cannabis cures cancer but they won’t believe it until they heard from someone they trust like Dr. Oz or Matt Lauer. 
What I do care about are the innocent people who get hurt in the process? I care about my friends, the growers of Northern California.
Did I mention we’re fucked?
Sorry for the crassness but I’m beyond angry. I’m motivated.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat
Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman: “We are, of course, supportive of legitimate medical marijuana here.”
 

Tell me what company you keep and I’ll tell you what you are.
   ~ Miguel de Cervantes, “Don Quixote de la Mancha Part II” (1615)
By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town

Northern California Correspondent
Conventional wisdom for anyone living north of Santa Rosa is that marijuana is an integral component of California’s economy. In the beginning, growers were tolerated by the locals as misfits of society who had migrated north to avoid the world of straight jobs and or had fled to Mendo with the ‘back to the county’ movement to grow their organic beans and fruit.
Venerable local institutions such as the timber and fishing industries were leery of the young freaks with their torn jeans and rusting VW vans. Their fears were soon justified when that first generation found that there were endless acres of hidden land stashed in them there hills.
If a guy could find a secluded patch in the hills that was close to water and had sun, he had the makings of his first clandestine start-up. The Timber giants viewed the encroaching growers as threats to their land, their water, and to the political dominance that they held in NorCal since the mid-19th century. 
By the 1980s, the marijuana industry was entrenched and blooming, much to the chagrin of local law enforcement and community leaders. These former lazy rejects were driving new trucks, sending their kids to school, and buying their veggies at Safeway just like everyone else.  
Thirty years later it is estimated that cannabis industry generates around 13 billion dollars in annual sales. And that’s what is available to count. The timber industry is now a hollow trunk of its former self. The salmon and other fish populations have been so drastically depleted in the last few decades that fishermen can’t rely on their yield from season to season. Many fishing boats on the coast have gone belly up.

Worldwide Hippies

Commentary By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
About a month ago, in California, Assembly member Tom Ammiano removed a pro-cannabis bill he authored (AB2312) from proceeding in the State Senate after determining that he wouldn’t be able to gather enough support from his colleagues.
The pulling of Ammiano’s bill, and the Feds’ continued attacks on legitimate marijuana businesses, kick-started a very heated online debate among pot activists and other political cannabis factions. The issue: “Is marijuana strictly only medicinal?” and, I’m paraphrasing, “By calling it a recreational drug, does it undermine the purpose and objectives that the medical marijuana movement has been trying to achieve for these 20 years?”

All photos by Jack Rikess


By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent

Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside Health Center

Oakland, California: Starting at noon a few hundred cannabis supporters and activists gathered on the steps of Oakland’s City Hall to show support for Harborside Health Center and to protest President Obama’s early evening fundraiser at the picturesque Fox Theater. 
On July 11, Harborside Health Center in Oakland and San Jose was served an official Complaint for Forfeiture of Property. The complaint is signed by U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, Assistant U.S. Attorney Arvan Perteet, and DEA Agent David White, filed on July 6 in the District Court, San Francisco Division and received by the court on Sunday, July 9. The complaint seeks forfeiture of real estate and improvements on the grounds that cannabis is being distributed on the premises, in violation of federal law.
Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside, Libertarian vice-presidential candidate Judge Jim Gray, and others spoke under the hot East Bay sun to the cheers and applause of the cannabis crowd that assembled in the commons of City Hall. 
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