Search Results: watts (11)

Daily commuters deserve more sympathy. Not only will the stress and time-suck of rush hour shave years off your life, but the drive will also rob you of the simple things, like daytime television, regular happy hours and the sun. Remember the sun? Anyone who’s out the door before 7 a.m. and off work after 5 p.m. during the winter knows how draining life can be without sunlight, whether you believe in chakras and things that retrograde or not.

It might not be as sexy as scurvy, but Vitamin D deficiency is serious stuff, so in Colorado we make our own ultraviolet rays. Just look in a stoner’s basement, and you’ll find several hundred watts of them. We also make our own indoor sunsets, for about $35 an eighth.

Klaus With a K.


The story of actress Daniele Watts’ confrontation with police last week has sparked a raging debate in Los Angeles. Do you have the right, as Watts insisted, to refuse to identify yourself to cops? In situations like the one Watts found herself in last Thursday, in which a caller alleged to the police that she was having sex in a car in the middle of the day, the practical answer is … probably not.
Now, it’s a little complicated: The ACLU of Southern California is in Watts’ corner, saying you do have the right to refuse, while the union representing rank-and-file Los Angeles Police Department officers says you don’t have that right, not if you’re being detained for questioning.

Wikipedia commons.
Meadow Lane stadium.

The oldest soccer club in the world apparently has some problems growing grass (the legal kind) on their field during the winter.
League One Notts County F.C. was founded in 1862 and has been playing at the Meadow Lane stadium since 1910. Apparently, the technology at the stadium isn’t very new either and keeping the pitch green has been a challenge for some time.

Cannabis Sativa

The headlines in the mainstream press read “Outdoor Marijuana Cultivation Ban,” but the Emerald Growers Association (EGA) and California NORML both endorsed Sacramento’s personal use medical cannabis cultivation ordinance, which follows a statewide trend in outlawing the outdoor cultivation of medical marijuana. What’s up?

After almost an hour of testimony, the Sacramento City Council on Tuesday night followed through on a vote last month which signaled its intent to join other cities around California in placing tighter restrictions around cannabis cultivation, reports Ryan Lillis at The Sacramento Bee. The council voted 6-2 to enact the ordinance.
But all of the Emerald Growers Association’s policy goals were reportedly achieved, as follows:

Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted Peoples Movement

​The damage of the War On Drugs continues long after the original arrest and incarceration. Discrimination against formerly incarcerated people lasts a lifetime, in the form of reduced employment opportunities, removal of the right to vote, and economic hardship.
“The War on Drugs is the biggest cause of disenfranchisement,” said Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted Peoples Movement co-organizer Pastor Kenny Glasgow. In 2008 Glasgow won a groundbreaking lawsuit restoring the voting rights of the currently incarcerated and those convicted of drug crimes in Alabama.

Photo: Les Bazso/PNG
Len Gratto on his property in Mission on Saturday, January 8, 2011. Gratto is ready to join an imminent class-action lawsuit against Mission, for hitting him with a $5,200 grow op inspection fee. The 67-year-old says he and his wife were growing cucumbers in the basement, he never grew pot, and he and many other Mission residents are being unfairly searched and fined.

​A Canadian homeowner says there is no way he will pay a $5,200 fine to Mission, B.C., for growing cucumbers in his basement.

Len Gratto, who has lived in the home for 30 years, said he’s ready to join an imminent class-action lawsuit against the municipality’s grow-op bylaw inspections, reports Sam Cooper at Postmedia News.
A number of citizens, led by Stacy Gowanlock, said their homes were illegally searched for marijuana grow-ops, resulting in them being slapped with fees and repair orders sometimes exceeding $10,000 — all on flimsy evidence.
Gratto, 67, said he has never grown pot. He said the “laughable” evidence against him consists of pictures of some “dirt” on the basement wall, and “a furnace pipe going up into the chimney, where it should be.”

Photo: Huron Daily Tribune

​A 55-year-old New Jersey man whose marijuana plants were found by police — in part, because he didn’t mow his lawn — is now headed to state prison for five years.

Matthew Watts of Boonton, N.J., was sentenced on Friday. He pleaded guilty last month to possessing marijuana with intent to distribute, reports the Courier Post.
Police claim they found at least 50 cannabis plants in Watts’ basement in June.
They had gone to the home after a neighbor reported she hadn’t seen Watts for weeks, adding that no one was collecting his mail and that his lawn was grown up.

Graphic: turn.org

​Indoor cultivation of cannabis could take huge hit from law enforcement with new, “smart” electrical meters being used to blow the whistle on the power consumption of indoor marijuana grow lights.

Many clandestine marijuana growers, rather than using metered kilowatts to power their lights, use pirated electricity by tapping the lines and routing it, unmetered, to their grow rooms, reports Jay Hancock of The Baltimore Sun. Utilities have had great difficulty in detecting indoor marijuana grow operations unless they actually spot the illegal lines, because until now they’ve had little real information about what’s going on on their power grid.
But now, technology has produced smart meters which measure in real time how much energy goes into the network and how much is used at the other end by paying customers. Any difference, apart from normal resistance and line loss, is electricity theft.
“Today we are operating blind,” British Columbia Hydro’s smart-meter expert, Fiona Taylor, told The Vancouver Sun. “This system will allow us to follow the flow of electricity from point to point. We will be able to see at a macro level what is happening.”

Graphic: Reality Catcher

​Supporters gathered outside the Guilford County, North Carolina Courthouse Tuesday evening to rally for a bill before the Legislature to legalize medical marijuana.

The purpose was to educate people on House Bill 1380, which would allow doctors to recommend medical marijuana for seriously ill patients, reports MyFox8.com.
Harold Watts said he wants to tell people how cannabis helps those who are suffering with chronic illness or pain.
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