We at why need to take a break every so often…and it doesn’t help to run into technical hurdles either.

We are back…Paddling our way in your hearts…

Get up, stand up..and paddle, paddle, paddle!

When then din of chatter also carries a distinct skunky odor…you know its prime TIME to talk about change.

Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense - TIME

Hacktivists parody Google logo for protest, China human rights fundraiser

Posted by Xeni Jardin, February 12, 2006 12:12 PM | permalink

Hacker and free speech activist Oxblood Ruffin shares this parody logo remix with Boing Boing, and says,

The Cult of the Dead Cow has started a global protest against Google’s appeasement policy towards the PRC. Haxors are already printing up t-shirts based on this graphic, and we’re getting feedback from as far away as India and Taiwan, and that’s just within the past 8 hours. Our only request is that if anyone makes any profits from this idea that they donate them to Human Rights in China.

More info here. Image: PDF Link, and large GIF link

Battered By The ShamWow Guy - March 30, 2009

By Associated Press

Branding, addiction, sneaker culture and legal infringement are explored when artist/designer Ari Saal Forman mash-ups the lively Newport cigarette brand into a cool Nike-like sneaker.

Original article can be found at JESS3 Blog

Tags: brand, nike, newport, spoof, art, mash-up, knock, parody, satire, fair use

ShamWow Guy In Slap, Chop Bust

TV pitchman battered hooker in South Beach hotel room brawl

MARCH 27–Meet Vince Shlomi. He’s probably better known to you as the ShamWow Guy, the ubiquitous television pitchman who has been phenomenally successful peddling absorbent towels and food choppers. Shlomi, 44, was arrested last month on a felony battery charge following a violent confrontation with a prostitute in his South Beach hotel room. According to an arrest affidavit, Shlomi met Sasha Harris, 26, at a Miami Beach nightclub on February 7 and subsequently retired with her to his $750 room at the lavish Setai hotel. Shlomi told cops he paid Harris about $1000 in cash after she “propositioned him for straight sex.” Shlomi said that when he kissed Harris, she suddenly “bit his tongue and would not let go.” Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue. The affidavit, a copy of which you’ll find here, notes that during the 4 AM fight Harris sustained facial fractures and lacerations all over her face (she is pictured here in mug shots snapped following busts in 2008 and 2005). After freeing his tongue, a bleeding Shlomi ran to the Setai lobby, where security summoned cops. Harris refused to cooperate with officers, who recovered $930 from her purse. “Both parties had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from their persons,” police reported. In a brief telephone interview, Harris declined to answer TSG questions about her run-in with Shlomi, though she did say she is considering a lawsuit against the pitchman. Asked if she worked as a hooker, Harris declined comment. As seen in the below mug shot, Shlomi was also injured during the fracas and, court records show, was treated at Mount Sinai Medical Center. While Shlomi and Harris were both arrested for felony aggravated battery, prosecutors this month declined to file formal charges against the combatants. Police records list Shlomi’s occupation as “Marketing,” but make no mention of his affiliation with the ShamWow or the Slap Chop.

The Smoking Guns has the rest of the scoop

Decorated big mountain skier and BASE jumper Shane McConkey was killed earlier today in a ski-BASE accident in the Italian Dolomites.

A member of the Red Bull Air Force and pioneer of the ski-BASE-ing phenomenon, McConkey experienced problems in the air after launching off a cliff with the expectation of deploying his parachute canopy and then gliding down to the ground—as he had done successfully some 700-plus times before.

“He did a double backflip off the jump and he has these releasable bindings so they come off in the air and then he flies off in his wing suit,” filmmaker Scott Gaffney, a longtime close friend of McConkey’s, told ESPN Action Sports in an interview this afternoon via phone.

“But one ski did not come off. And when that happens the drag on the skis causes you to flip over, so the skis go over your head. So he was struggling with the one ski. Then he also got into a bad spin. So he may have never even pulled his pilot chute. And that’s coming from JT Holmes, who Shane was with in Italy and who reviewed the footage of the accident. So the combination of the ski, the spin and the pilot chute, apparently. Because you can’t throw the pilot chute like that; if you throw it while you’re upside down and it wraps around the ski, you’re done.”

McConkey was filming with Matchstick Productions and Red Bull at the time, according to Gaffney, who said McConkey apparently died on impact with snow on the ground below the cliff. Gaffney was not clear about the size of the cliff. “But it had to be a sizable cliff, at least 400 feet, for him to be planning on flying his wing suit away from it,” Gaffney said.

McConkey, 39, of Olympic Valley, Calif., is survived by his wife, Sherry, and their 3½-year-old daughter, Ayla.

This afternoon Gaffney was at home in Squaw Valley, Calif., with his brother, Robb, also a close friend of McConkey’s, reeling from the news. “With what Shane does,” said Scott, “it’s a call you always picture getting at some point, but you realistically don’t ever expect it to happen.”

Added Robb Gaffney, “Shane’s been a part of our lives for quite a while now. I’m just sitting at Scott’s house processing the whole thing. The texts and calls are coming in, and you can really even feel it in the air in Squaw right now. I’m thinking about Sherry and his little girl. But in this area people have always loved Shane, so Sherry and Ayla, they’re going to have an immense amount of support around them. That’s one thing for sure; that’s Shane’s legacy.”

Also See: Retallack Rip-Fest, a 2008 photo gallery featuring McConkey and friends.

Making a little research, an interesting question showed up: When is a brand really strong? When we think about that, it’s really huge the number of possible answer we might get. The most intriguing one? When people start faking it.

Yeah, you may think this is stupid, but if you only think about it for one moment, you’ll realize that only solid brands are copied in industrial scale. Adidas, Puma, McDonald’s, Panasonic are among the brands that are so famous that people will even get absurd copies of their products.

Fake brands clearly supply a basic demand for low cost items that the consumer can associate with less affordable, scarce premier brands. However, psychologists have looked far more deeply into this area of consumer behaviour and a wealth of research has been published. A very basic finding is that despite the low price factor, fake brands are regularly bought by relatively high income households in developed countries. - Sarah Boumphrey

But looking through another perspective, what if a percentage of these people buy fake products as a kind of protest? It’s pretty clever, but if a brand is expensive and represents a bad thing to a group of people, they just might buy it so that other people see they won’t spend 100 bucks for a shirt, a purse, a shoe or whatever.

Once fake brands were sold from suitcases on high streets and back-street market stalls. Then trend-setter, gap-year teens and early twenty-somethings began returning home wearing their knock-off brands with pride. Now they are more pervasive, and are attracting buyers from across the consumer wealth spectrum. Are fake brands becoming chic and fun, and are luxury brands in danger of being undermined by a consumer trend towards ironic purchasing? - Sarah Boumphrey

And of course, here are some examples of what we get to see in the streets. Again, we’d love you to tell us what you think is the sign that a brand is really strong and solid. Cheers!

About the author

Branding: The Fake Factor | Abduzeedo - design inspiration and tutorials

Drug Agents Raid SF Medical Marijuana Clinic

Reporting
Joe Vazquez
E-mail

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) 

Federal drug agents raided a medical marijuana facility in San Francisco Wednesday night.

The raid occurred at Emmalyn’s California Cannabis Clinic at 1597 Howard Street. DEA spokeswoman Casey McEnry told CBS 5 the documents regarding the raid are sealed, so the DEA was not able to give many details.

“The documents relating to today’s enforcement operation remain under court seal. Based on our investigation we believe there are not only violations of federal law, but state law as well. As of now we are prohibited from releasing further details of the case. Items of evidentiary value were seized and no arrests have been made. The investigation is currently ongoing,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Anthony D. Williams in a written statement.

Emmalyn’s California Cannabis Clinic had a provisional permit, according to Chris Hermes, spokesperson for Americans for Safe Access, a national advocacy group for medical marijuana issues.

Hermes said at least two people were taken into custody at the facility.

“We’re shocked that after the Attorney General has made repeated statements that raids on California medical cannibis dispensaries would be suspended that we are seeing a continuation of that policy,” said Hermes.

“We call on the Attorney General to explain these actions by the DEA,” he added.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Drug Agents Raid SF Medical Marijuana Clinic - cbs5.com

Study Explains How Cannabis Kills Cancer Cells

Study Explains How Cannabis Kills Cancer Cells

By West Coast Cannabis News • March 23, 2009

A study published recently in Nature Reviews-Cancer provides an historic and detailed explanation about how THC and natural cannabinoids counteract cancer, but preserve normal cells.

 

The study by Manuel Guzmán of Madrid Spain found that cannabinoids, the active components of marijuana, inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals. They do so by modulating key cell-signalling pathways, thereby inducing direct growth arrest and death of tumor cells, as well as by inhibiting the growth of blood vessels that supply the tumor. The Guzman study is very important according to Dr. Ethan Russo , a neurologist and world authority on medical cannabis:

“Cancer occurs because cells become immortalized; they fail to heed normal signals to turn off growth. A normal function of remodelling in the body requires that cells die on cue. This is called apoptosis, or programmed cell death.

 

That process fails to work in tumors. THC promotes its reappearance so that gliomas, leukemias, melanomas and other cell types will in fact heed the signals, stop dividing, and die.” “But, that is not all,” explains Dr. Russo: “The other way that tumors grow is by ensuring that they are nourished: they send out signals to promote angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels. Cannabinoids turn off these signals as well. It is truly incredible, and elegant.” In other words, this article explains several ways in which cannabinoids might be used to fight cancer, and, as the article says, “Cannabinoids are usually well tolerated, and do not produce the generalized toxic effects of conventional chemotherapies.

Usually, any story that even suggests the possibility of a new treatment for cancer is greeted with headlines about a “cancer cure” - however remote in the future and improbable in fact it might be.

But if marijuana is involved, don’t expect any coverage from mainstream media, especially since mainstream editors have been quietly killing this story for the past thirty years.That’s right, news about the abilility of pot to shrink tumors first surfaced, way back in 1974. Researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institutes of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice — lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia. The Washington Post reported on the 1974 study — in the “Local” section — on Aug. 18, 1974. Under the headline, “Cancer Curb Is Studied,” it read in part: “The active chemical agent in marijuana curbs the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice and may also suppress the immunity reaction that causes rejection of organ transplants, a Medical College of Virginia team has discovered.” The researchers “found that THC slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers, and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent.” “News coverage of the Madrid discovery has been virtually nonexistent in this country. The news broke quietly on Feb. 29, 2000 with a story that ran once on the UPI wire about the Nature Medicine article,” complained MarijuanaNews.com editor Richard Cowan, who said he was only able to find the article through a link that appeared briefly on the Drudge Report Web page. “The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times all ignored the story, even though its newsworthiness is indisputable: a benign substance occurring in nature destroys deadly brain tumors,” added Cowan. On March 29, 2001, the San Antonio Current printed a carefully researched, bombshell of a story by Raymond Cushing titled, “POT SHRINKS TUMORS; GOVERNMENT KNEW IN ‘74.” Media coverage since then has been nonexistant, except for a copy of the story on Alternet . It is hard to believe that the knowledge that cannabis can be used to fight cancer has been suppressed for almost thirty years , yet it seems likely that it will continue to be suppressed. Why? According to Cowan, the answer is because it is a threat to cannabis prohibition . “If this article and its predecessors from 2000 and 1974 were the only evidence of the suppression of medical cannabis, then one might perhaps be able to rationalize it in some herniated way. However, there really is massive proof that the suppression of medical cannabis represents the greatest failure of the institutions of a free society, medicine, journalism, science, and our fundamental values,” Cowan notes. Millions of people have died horrible deaths and in many cases, familes exhausted their savings on dangerous, toxic and expensive drugs. Now we are just beginning to realize that while marijuana has never killed anyone, marijuana prohibition has killed millions. By Steve Kubby Originally published at http://drugpolicycentral.com

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Telstar Logistics: Flying Car Completes Successful Test Flight

Big Huge Blog » Blog Archive » Make a Twitter background with BigHugeLabs

I was pondering ways to make the background of my twitter page a tad more interesting….

here ya go peoples…

chron.ron

Darth Vader money - Boing Boing

gotta love a little chingy from the dark side….

REPORT: Saab, USA snag 500,000 players with Burn Notice online game

Been having that discussion with my trend friends..about how product placement can be overt and covert.

Saab is getting pretty sly…until you realize they are partially owned by GM…