CASE 420 - The legalization of cannabis and hemp

Over £40 Billion spent each year worldwide to fight a drug war that's going on since the 1930s and no end is in sight, its time to stop wasting law enforcement time on users who are not violent and present no trouble to anyone. let each individuals pave the way to their own lively-wood and way of life instead of government telling us what we can or can't do with our body. If the government wants to regulate what we put in our body then they should start with fast food companies such as Burger King & McDonalds.



Hemp is not the same as cannabis, Although the plants are closely related, the term hemp refers to the strains that do not contain significant levels of THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol), the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Hemp is a versatile crop with many practical uses. Hemp products offer environmentally friendly alternatives for a variety of everyday applications. Hemp fibers can be used to make rope, clothing, and paper. Hemp foods, such as HempNut, contain beneficial nutrients, including essential fatty acids. Hemp oils have many applications, as biofuels, industrial lubricants, and soaps. There is no logical reason to ban hemp other than it would put thousands of companies, corporations and businesses out of business instantly as hemp is the strongest, fastest growing, safest, cheapest, highest yeild of ANY plant on the planet. Still, the federal government of the US and European, Asian and S. American governments continues to waste money and resources in its attempt to protect us from this valuable crop. Drug war hysteria has clouded our leaders' ability to make good policy that would distinguish between cannabis, which has psychoactive properties, and hemp, which does not.

The drug agencies' current opposition to hemp legalization is based on a groundless concern that legalizing hemp will make it harder to enforce legal proscriptions against using or growing industrial hemp's cousin, marijuana.

Whatever the merits of marijuana criminalization, legalizing industrial hemp should not in any way interfere with enforcement efforts against marijuana growers and users. Industrial hemp is bred to contain such a low level of THC, the psychoactive substance in marijuana, that it cannot reasonably be considered a drug. It is easily distinguished in fields from marijuana: marijuana plants are short and bushy, with many leaves and is harvested for its flowers and leaves; industrial hemp, tall and straight, with leaves at the top of the stalk, is harvested for its stalks before flowering occurs. There is virtually no possibility of marijuana being illicitly grown in the middle of a field of industrial hemp, because the cross-breeding between the two plants quickly eliminates the THC content in marijuana seeds. Despite these facts, and noting the genuine concern among many law enforcement agents about the effect of industrial hemp legalization on marijuana use and growing, the petitioners for industrial hemp legalization suggest a heavily regulated licensing scheme for industrial hemp seeds and growing permits that should satisfy residual law enforcement fears.

Legalizing industrial hemp has the potential to yield substantial environmental benefits, especially as a substitute for wood in paper making. Industrial hemp yields two-to-four times more pulp per acre under cultivation than do trees. Paper made from industrial hemp is also stronger, able to be recycled more times and longer lasting than paper from trees. Compared to wood, fewer chemicals are required to convert hemp into paper pulp.

Industrial hemp also could serve as an environmentally sound substitute for other products:

Hemp has valuable qualities as clothing material. It takes color and absorbs moisture better than cotton, is "breathable" and extremely durable, softens when washed and needs little ironing. It can be blended with cotton to obtain the benefits of both fibers. About 30 percent of pesticides used in the United States are sprayed on cotton; hemp, by contrast, can be grown with little or no use of pesticides, herbicides or fungicides, thanks to its natural resistances.

Hemp can be used in building materials such as fiber-board.

Hemp contains cellulose, a basic building block of many plastics. Hemp could be the basis for a range of plastic products now made from petroleum products.

Hemp seed oil could be used for motor oil or as all-purpose lubricant. It may also work as a substitute for petroleum diesel.

Other nations, including the United Kingdom and Germany, already recognize the benefits of industrial hemp, and permit hemp cultivation within their borders. It is time the United States joined the ranks of advanced nations and permitted the domestic production of industrial hemp.

CASE 031 - The truth about Cannabis

CASE 419 - Water

Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state (water vapor or steam). Water also exists in a liquid crystal state near hydrophilic surfaces.

Water covers 70.9% of the Earth's surface, and is vital for all known forms of life. On Earth, 96.5% of the planet's water is found in oceans, 1.7% in groundwater, 1.7% in glaciers and the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland, a small fraction in other large water bodies, and 0.001% in the air as vapor, clouds (formed of solid and liquid water particles suspended in air), and precipitation. Only 2.5% of the Earth's water is freshwater, and 98.8% of that water is in ice and groundwater. Less than 0.3% of all freshwater is in rivers, lakes, and the atmosphere, and an even smaller amount of the Earth's freshwater (0.003%) is contained within biological bodies and manufactured products.

Water on Earth moves continually through the hydrological cycle of evaporation and transpiration (evapotranspiration), condensation, precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea. Evaporation and transpiration contribute to the precipitation over land.

Safe drinking water is essential to humans and other lifeforms. Access to safe drinking water has improved over the last decades in almost every part of the world, but approximately one billion people still lack access to safe water and over 2.5 billion lack access to adequate sanitation. There is a clear correlation between access to safe water and GDP per capita. However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability. A recent report (November 2009) suggests that by 2030, in some developing regions of the world, water demand will exceed supply by 50%. Water plays an important role in the world economy, as it functions as a solvent for a wide variety of chemical substances and facilitates industrial cooling and transportation. Approximately 70% of the fresh water used by humans goes to agriculture



Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water throughout the Earth. The study of the distribution of water is hydrography. The study of the distribution and movement of groundwater is hydrogeology, of glaciers is glaciology, of inland waters is limnology and distribution of oceans is oceanography. Ecological processes with hydrology are in focus of ecohydrology. The collective mass of water found on, under, and over the surface of a planet is called the hydrosphere. Earth's approximate water volume (the total water supply of the world) is 1,338,000,000 km3 (321,000,000 mi3).



Liquid water is found in bodies of water, such as an ocean, sea, lake, river, stream, canal, pond, or puddle. The majority of water on Earth is sea water. Water is also present in the atmosphere in solid, liquid, and vapor states. It also exists as groundwater in aquifers.

Water is important in many geological processes. Groundwater is present in most rocks, and the pressure of this groundwater affects patterns of faulting. Water in the mantle is responsible for the melt that produces volcanoes at subduction zones. On the surface of the Earth, water is important in both chemical and physical weathering processes. Water and, to a lesser but still significant extent, ice, are also responsible for a large amount of sediment transport that occurs on the surface of the earth. Deposition of transported sediment forms many types of sedimentary rocks, which make up the geologic record of Earth history.

Water cycle

The water cycle (known scientifically as the hydrologic cycle) refers to the continuous exchange of water within the hydrosphere, between the atmosphere, soil water, surface water, groundwater, and plants. Water moves perpetually through each of these regions in the water cycle consisting of following transfer processes: evaporation from oceans and other water bodies into the air and transpiration from land plants and animals into air. precipitation, from water vapor condensing from the air and falling to earth or ocean. runoff from the land usually reaching the sea. Most water vapor over the oceans returns to the oceans, but winds carry water vapor over land at the same rate as runoff into the sea, about 47 Tt per year. Over land, evaporation and transpiration contribute another 72 Tt per year. Precipitation, at a rate of 119 Tt per year over land, has several forms: most commonly rain, snow, and hail, with some contribution from fog and dew. Condensed water in the air may also refract sunlight to produce rainbows.

Water runoff often collects over watersheds flowing into rivers. A mathematical model used to simulate river or stream flow and calculate water quality parameters is hydrological transport model. Some of water is diverted to irrigation for agriculture. Rivers and seas offer opportunity for travel and commerce. Through erosion, runoff shapes the environment creating river valleys and deltas which provide rich soil and level ground for the establishment of population centers. A flood occurs when an area of land, usually low-lying, is covered with water. It is when a river overflows its banks or flood from the sea. A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. This occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation.

Fresh water storage

Some runoff water is trapped for periods of time, for example in lakes. At high altitude, during winter, and in the far north and south, snow collects in ice caps, snow pack and glaciers. Water also infiltrates the ground and goes into aquifers. This groundwater later flows back to the surface in springs, or more spectacularly in hot springs and geysers. Groundwater is also extracted artificially in wells. This water storage is important, since clean, fresh water is essential to human and other land-based life. In many parts of the world, it is in short supply.

Sea water

Sea water contains about 3.5% salt on average, plus smaller amounts of other substances. The physical properties of sea water differ from fresh water in some important respects. It freezes at a lower temperature (about −1.9 °C) and its density increases with decreasing temperature to the freezing point, instead of reaching maximum density at a temperature above freezing. The salinity of water in major seas varies from about 0.7% in the Baltic Sea to 4.0% in the Red Sea.

Tides

Tides are the cyclic rising and falling of local sea levels caused by the tidal forces of the Moon and the Sun acting on the oceans. Tides cause changes in the depth of the marine and estuarine water bodies and produce oscillating currents known as tidal streams. The changing tide produced at a given location is the result of the changing positions of the Moon and Sun relative to the Earth coupled with the effects of Earth rotation and the local bathymetry. The strip of seashore that is submerged at high tide and exposed at low tide, the intertidal zone, is an important ecological product of ocean tides.

CASE 418 - Self sustainability - Part 5 - Becoming self sustained

There's never been a better time to go self-sufficient, in a lifetime per person, per family or per group it is so much better and less of an impact on the earth, it costs less money, its more healthy for people and people, children especially can learn the importance of the balance between humans and nature by growing food and becoming self sustained. It may be a return to a frontier spirit for an American, or a yearning for a lost rural idyll for an Englishman, a way of life for many.Whatever the motivation, it has a long and honourable place in many cultures, and need not be associated with extreme or weird political views, poverty or deprivation. Self Sufficiency incorporates ideas of sustainable living which we will all have to inevitably abide by. Future generations will not have the luxury of the abundance of Earth's resources that we currently rely on, and eventually all aspects of urban self sufficiency will become commonplace in a more sustainable society.

A love of personal freedom is always present. Is that such a terrible thing?

You don't need to be rich or live on a farm to be able to Grow your own food and reduce your bills with Solar heating, Rainwater harvesting, and Off grid power to almost zero. From a suburban family to a high rise city dweller, anyone can increase their self sufficiency in some way. Self sufficient living reduces your Carbon Footprint by making small changes in every area of your everyday life.

Learning to live self sustained and becoming self sufficient isn't as easy as it sounds. It's not really that difficult either, once you change your mindset for it. The biggest hurdle is in the way that we think. Some of the common responses I hear to the self sustaining ideal is; 1- I don't have any land. 2- I can't live without commodities our society has got used to. It can prove to be very difficult to get over our notions of what we absolutely have to have to live. We are most certainly not used to going without or not getting what we want "right now".

One's basic needs, what are one's basic needs? I think of this as the fundamentals of life. 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food and you die. We all have to drink and eat, we have no choice on that. Our choice comes in when we get to choose what we drink and what we eat. We can choose to not consume food and drink filled with chemicals, artificial flavors, steroids, antibiotics or lab created sweeteners. We can choose to not consume the genetically modified monstrosities being pushed on us by companies such as Monsanto and Dow. Choosing to not consume these fake foods is the easy part. Getting your hands on real food can prove to be a daunting task. For me, the outlets for real food are almost non existent. The seasonal farmers markets are full of fruits and vegetables trucked in from other areas and priced much too high. The high prices are a particular annoyance for me because I grow my own food here and I know that it does not cost more money to grow non GMO fruits and vegetables than commercially produced foods. So, why the huge price increase? Plus, all you have is some strangers word that they didn't douse those fruits and vegetables in some chemical pesticide or chemical fertilizer. So, what can we do then? Grow it for ourselves.

There are only a couple real living situations I consider to actually be difficult if not impossible without some serious help when it comes to growing any amount of food for yourself. Those would be living in an apartment these situations give you much option or flexibility for growing yourself some food without creating an indoor growing area. Every other situation can be successfully navigated with container growing, raised beds or conventional, in ground gardens. While gardening in any form has a steep learning curve for people that have never tried to grow anything before, it won't take very long to learn and with a little effort, you will be growing food successfully in no time and more than likely more food than you need.

Below is a chart that could help you become more self sustained

Previous cases relevent to this case

CASE 020 - Self sustainability - part 1 (Introduction to self sustainability)
CASE 361 - Self sustainability - part 2 (Growing food)
CASE 369 - Self sustainability - Part 3 (Powering homes)
CASE 379 - Self sustainability - Part 4 (Water)

Links and websites

http://www.self-sufficiency-guide.com/eBooks.html - Lots of free PDF books
http://www.selfsufficientish.com/main/
http://www.go-self-sufficient.com/
http://www.self-sufficient-farm-living.com/
http://www.goselfsufficient.co.uk/
http://www.self-sufficiency-guide.com/

CASE 417 - Love

Love you could say is an emotion of a strong affection and personal attachment to something, someone, a place. Love is also a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection —"the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". Love may describe actions towards others or oneself based on compassion or affection.

love refers to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from pleasure ("I loved that meal") to interpersonal attraction ("I love my partner"). "Love" may refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of eros, to the emotional closeness of familial love, to the platonic love that defines friendship, or to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love, or to a concept of love that encompasses all of those feelings. This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states.



Impersonal love

A person can be said to love an object, principle, or goal if they value it greatly and are deeply committed to it. Similarly, compassionate outreach and volunteer workers' "love" of their cause may sometimes be born not of interpersonal love, but impersonal love coupled with altruism and strong spiritual or political convictions. People can also "love" material objects, animals, or activities if they invest themselves in bonding or otherwise identifying with those things. If sexual passion is also involved, this condition is called paraphilia.

Interpersonal love

Interpersonal love refers to love between human beings. It is a more potent sentiment than a simple liking for another. Unrequited love refers to those feelings of love that are not reciprocated. Interpersonal love is most closely associated with interpersonal relationships. Such love might exist between family members, friends, and couples. There are also a number of psychological disorders related to love, such as erotomania.

Biological basis of love

Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive, much like hunger or thirst. Helen Fisher, a leading expert in the topic of love, divides the experience of love into three partly overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and attachment. Lust is the feeling of sexual desire; romantic attraction determines what partners mates find attractive and pursue, conserving time and energy by choosing; and attachment involves sharing a home, parental duties, mutual defense, and in humans involves feelings of safety and security. Three distinct neural circuitries, including neurotransmitters, and also three behavioral patterns, are associated with these three romantic styles.

Lust is the initial passionate sexual desire that promotes mating, and involves the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and estrogen. These effects rarely last more than a few weeks or months. Attraction is the more individualized and romantic desire for a specific candidate for mating, which develops out of lust as commitment to an individual mate forms. Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act in a manner similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side effects such as increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement. Research has indicated that this stage generally lasts from one and a half to three years. Since the lust and attraction stages are both considered temporary, a third stage is needed to account for long-term relationships. Attachment is the bonding that promotes relationships lasting for many years and even decades. Attachment is generally based on commitments such as marriage and children, or on mutual friendship based on things like shared interests. It has been linked to higher levels of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin to a greater degree than short-term relationships have.[20] Enzo Emanuele and coworkers reported the protein molecule known as the nerve growth factor (NGF) has high levels when people first fall in love, but these return to previous levels after one year.

Psychological basis

Psychology depicts love as a cognitive and social phenomenon. Psychologist Robert Sternberg formulated a triangular theory of love and argued that love has three different components: intimacy, commitment, and passion. Intimacy is a form in which two people share confidences and various details of their personal lives, and is usually shown in friendships and romantic love affairs. Commitment, on the other hand, is the expectation that the relationship is permanent. The last and most common form of love is sexual attraction and passion. Passionate love is shown in infatuation as well as romantic love. All forms of love are viewed as varying combinations of these three components. Non-love does not include any of these components. Liking only includes intimacy. Infatuated love only includes passion. Empty love only includes commitment. Romantic love includes both intimacy and passion. Companionate love includes intimacy and commitment. Fatuous love includes passion and commitment. lastly, consummate love includes all three. American psychologist Zick Rubin sought to define love by psychometrics in the 1970s. His work states that three factors constitute love: attachment, caring, and intimacy.

Evolutionary basis

Evolutionary psychology has attempted to provide various reasons for love as a survival tool. Humans are dependent on parental help for a large portion of their lifespans comparative to other mammals. Love has therefore been seen as a mechanism to promote parental support of children for this extended time period. Another factor may be that sexually transmitted diseases can cause, among other effects, permanently reduced fertility, injury to the fetus, and increase complications during childbirth. This would favor monogamous relationships over polygamy

Free love

The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It claimed that such issues were the concern of the people involved, and no one else. Much of the free-love tradition is an offshoot of anarchism, and reflects a civil libertarian philosophy that seeks freedom from state regulation and church interference in personal relationships. According to this concept, the free unions of adults are legitimate relations which should be respected by all third parties whether they are emotional or sexual relations. In addition, some free-love writing has argued that both men and women have the right to sexual pleasure. In the Victorian era, this was a radical notion. Later, a new theme developed, linking free love with radical social change, and depicting it as a harbinger of a new anti-authoritarian, anti-repressive sensibility.

Many people in the early 19th century believed that marriage was an important aspect of life to "fulfill earthly human happiness." Middle-class Americans wanted the home to be a place of stability in an uncertain world. This mentality created a vision on strongly defined gender roles, which led to the advancement of the free love movement.

While the phrase free love is often associated with promiscuity in the popular imagination, especially in reference to the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, historically the free-love movement has not advocated multiple sexual partners or short-term sexual relationships. Rather, it has argued that love relations that are freely entered into should not be regulated by law.

CASE 416 - The history of Venezuela

Venezuela was paradise for the Indians who lived on its beaches, in its tropical forests, and on the gentle grassland of the llanos. There were three main groups: the Carib, Arawak, and the Chibcha. They lived in small groups and all of them practiced some degree of farming; the land, however, was bountiful enough so that this was not always a necessity. They could easily hunt, fish for their food. The most advanced of the three were the Chibcha who lived on the eastern slopes of the Andes. Though they never developed large cities, their agricultural skill were formidable: they terraced parts of the Andes and built sophisticated irrigation channels to water their crops.

Christopher Columbus was the first European to visit Venezuela. He came in 1498 during his third voyage to the New World, and landed on the Peninsula de Paria. Following the coast, he explored the Rio Orinoco Delta and concluded that he had found much more than another Caribbean island. More explorers came a year later, and it was Alonso de Ojeda who gave the country its name. Arriving at Lake Maracaibo, he admired the stilted houses that the Indians had build above the lake and called the place Venezuela - "Little Venice." A year after that the Spanish established their first settlement, Nueva Cadiz, which was later destroyed by a tsunami. Early colonization in Venezuela was much less rampant than it was in other parts of South America, and the colony was ruled with a loose hand from Bogota. It was much less important to the Spanish than the mineral-producing colonies of Western South America, but Venezuela would later surprise the world when massive oil reserves would be discovered.

Venezuela may have been a quiet outpost on the edge of the Spanish Empire, but it gave birth to the man who would one day turn that empire on its head: Simon Bolivar. With the help of British mercenaries, Bolivar and his followers campaigned against the Spanish tirelessly, marching across the Andes and liberating Colombia in 1819, Venezuela in 1821, and Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia in 1825. Much of his army was composed of native Venezuelans. Independence did not prove easy for the new nation. Civil strife, wars, and dictatorships raged in the country well into the next century. Though some dictators sought real reform, most milked their positions for personal gain. Border disputes with the British colony of Guyana erupted in the 1840s, and although they never boiled over into full-fledged warfare, Venezuela still disputes the border to this day.

In the early 1900s, the nation under a conflict finally began to get on its economic feet with the discovery of oil, and by the 20s Venezuela was beginning to reap the benefits. Unfortunately, most of the wealth remained with the ruling class, and the plague of dictators continued until 1947 when Romulo Betancourt led a popular revolt and rewrote the constitution. The first president-elect in Venezuela's history took office the same year, the novelist Romulo Gallegos. Unfortunately, he was ousted by another dictator and the country did not experience a non-violent presidential succession until 1963. For the next 25 years, things went comparatively well. An oil boom in the mid-1970s saw enormous wealth pour into the country, though, as always, the vast lower class benefited little. Oil prices dropped in the late 80s and once again the country was thrown into crisis. Riots swept through Caracas and were violently repressed, and two coup attempts took place in 1992. Right now, the nation's stability and future are uncertain.

Despite a rough history, Venezuelans are infamous in South America for their easy-going nature and fun-loving spirit. Their national mythology hails back to the days when independent and rugged settlers tamed the lawlessness of the llanos, a heritage not unlike that of the American West. Most Venezuelans them come from a mix of European, Indian, and African roots, while a minority are exclusively white, black, or Indian. Roman Catholicism is the overwhelmingly dominant religion.