Picture of my dog

Yes on PA HB 1393

    I was a proud graduate of the D.A.R.E. program when I was a child. I have since learned that like the national office of drug control policy, telling the truth isn't the job of law enforcement or government agencies. Their job is to reduce the use of certain substances whether the substance is actually harmful or not. They are paid lobbyists, nothing more. They lie and propagandize people, spreading fear when they should be spreading the truth. Now I despise their kind just as everyone should because having the truth is the only way to make an informed rational decision. Don't treat people like children, telling them lies, and them expect them to trust you when they find out the truth. Legalize and tax marijuana because its prohibition is based on lies, nothing more. If you care to find out the truth it isn't hard, but beware, you will resent your own government afterward for their lies.

    The AMA, along with every other medical association has approved of medical usage of cannabis. They've also all published findings that show there's no negative health risks associated with regular cannabis use. The government simply continues to ignore these scientific findings and promotes their own profit-mongering lies and propaganda.

    I believe it is unconscionable to deny this effective medicine to sick and dying patients.

    My first introduction into the dark world of drugs was tobacco then alcohol, but of course you will find very few politicians with the courage to fight these industries, especially when these organizations are directly responsible for keeping politician’s wallets fat. Shame on you politicians! You have spit on the public trust.

    Fourteen states - Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington have enacted laws protecting medical marijuana patients from state prosecution. These laws are operating primarily as lawmakers intended and have not led to widespread abuses among adolescents or adult recreational users. Locally, nearly six out of ten Pennsylvania voters support HB 1393, according to a December 2009 poll.

    In York, Pennsylvania under a clear blue sky about 40 supporters, several in wheelchairs, held up signs for PA HB 1393; the still-active medical marijuana bill in the Pennsylvania legislature. Hundreds more showed their support by honking car or motorcycle horns, waiving, cheering and stopping by for information on an awesome spring Saturday.

    Chuck Homan is a driven local activist who has been leading a growing crowd of volunteers in public education efforts for PA medical marijuana. Homan has been featured in several news reports for his peaceful marches and protests in Central Pennsylvania; including at the State Capitol. His organization is called The Medical Movement and works with the statewide non-profit group PA4MMJ.

    Homan attended the December 2, 2009 House Health and Human Service Committee hearings for HB 1393. On Saturday March 20, 2010 the Medical Movement gathered at George Street & Route 30 in York PA. The weather could not have been more perfect.   For the 2010 kick-off to support the educational march of House Bill 1393, Chuck Homan was able to rally 38 people to educate the public.

www.pa4mmj.org has an easy-to-use system for PA residents to indentify and contact their legisaltors. PA HB1393 will have additional hearings before the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee by May 2010. At that time PA4MMJ expects the companion bill to be introduced in the state Senate.


    Public information seminars, marches and rallies are being planned from Philadelphia to Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. PA4MMJ is also seeking donations to purchase billboards on major Pennsylvania roadways.

    Homan is planning the next Medical Movement rally at the Harrisburg Statehouse on Tuesday 4/20/2010.

    Let’s talk about what politicians understand. Money. It should come to no surprise that for a majority of our country's history marijuana/hemp was a major cash export. Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence both sold and profited from its use. But today, we treat this substance it would rob our nation of prosperity and direction. Nothing could be more false. The projected tax revenues expected from legalized medical marijuana in Pennsylvania is $25,000,000. Show me a simpler, safer and more compassionate path to this revenue than medical marijuana.

The bill

http://www.legis.state.pa.us/CFDOCS/Legis/PN/Public/btCheck.cfm?txtType=HTM&sessYr=2009&sessInd=0&billBody=H&billTyp=B&billNbr=1393&pn=1714

More information about medical marijuana in Pennsylvania can be found at

www.pa4mmj.org

http://www.phillynorml.org/

http://www.temple.edu/law/spin/forum.html

www.medicalmovement.com

    As you may tell I am 100% toward approving HB 1393.

Awesome! Fucking Amazing! Awesome!

Just like Meth and Sex, Facebook is an addiction.

Just like Meth and Sex, Facebook is an addiction. You can easy hide away in your living room shutting yourself off from real interaction with friends and society to be able to be in a dark room online to interact with friends and society. It’s just like the real world but more sad and pathetic. The real question is are you doing it right? Status updates and mobile uploads fill our days, but do you always need the information they supply? Do you really need to see a someone’s baby sleeping or hear about how long the line is at Walmart? Perhaps not. What if you’re the one offering up these boring little tidbits? What if you’re the one clogging up Facebook with asinine comments and making it dumber for the rest of the Intrawebs. How do you know? Easy, here are 10 Signs.

10. Depressing Status Updates
Listen, we all have bad days, no way around them. But keep in mind we really don’t care about yours.  We don’t give a flying fig if your boyfriend is a mindless jerk, or that you just don’t know if you can live this life anymore. Status updates are meant to be funny, clever and filled with completely useless information. Unless we’re going to be seeing a mobile upload of slit wrists or empty pill bottles, we really don’t care.

9. Profile Pic Is Your Dog
What part of FACE did you miss on Facebook. Part of finding friends on Facebook is seeing how they’ve changed, good or bad. Discovering an ex-girlfriend has gained 40 pounds since you broke up 5 years ago is information gold. Discovering she owns a pug is crap.

8. You’re Begging Your Friends For Cows To Play FarmVille
Listen, if we wanted to play games we’d go down to the local arcade. (Do they even have them anymore?) We’re not here to play games. We’re here to be voyeurs. We don’t want to spend the first five minutes of our Facebook experience ignoring Farm requests. We don’t have trees or livestock to give, ask again and we’ll burn your farm to the ground.

7. Unaware Everyone Can Read Your Wall
Think of your wall as a big ass bulletin board for all to see. If you post you’re eating a burrito we know it and get a little hungry ourselves. If you post you’re stuck in traffic we know it and are glad we’re not in our car. If you post that you hope your friend’s doctor visit over their hemorrhoids went well and you might miss your free clinic visit because you slept over at a stranger’s house, well… we know that too. It’s time to learn the different from a private message and the wall. If you can’t figure this out, MySpace still wants you.

6. Your Facebook Profile Pic Is Over A Decade Old
It’s hook up time! Late one Thursday night you start chatting with a new friend on Facebook. It’s going well. You have a lot in common, more than you’d think for someone you’ve never met. It’s going really well. It just might be time to meet in person.  You should recognize them from their profile picture right? Sure, if it was 15 years and 80 lbs ago. If only the ‘remove friend’ option worked at a Jamba Juice.

5. You Take Your Own “How Well Do I Know Me” Test And Get An 78
Thanks for littering our feed with the constant quizzes you take. No one cares which Disney character or ’70s actor you’re most like. But when we watch you take a quiz about yourself and get a B-, it’s really time to shut down your computer and take a long look in the mirror. When you think you’re done… keep looking. Anything to get you offline.

4. You’re A Fan Of Myspace Tom
Sure, there are a lot of moronic things to be a fan of: Bread, Shopping even clouds. If you’re completely amazed by the simple things in life, then that’s your thing. But if you’re THIS simple… you just need to go away.

3. You Get A Buzz From Sending Drink Requests
STOP! STOP! STOP! If you us another round of martinis we are sending you to FBAA (you figure it out).

2. Hacking Movie Quotes Or Music Lyrics For Your Status Updates
It’s called plagiarism or even better, lack of originality. If we wanted to know you didn’t need any stinking badges then we’d dig through your DVD collection.

1. Laughing At Your Own Status Updates
If you put LOL or HA HA in a status update then you’re officially the crappy comedian we hate that laughs at his own jokes. Go away.

Review: HTC Hero from Sprint

HTC Hero for Sprint has the same name as its European counterpart but without the Leno chin.

First I just want to say how I think it is great to have a phone with a 3.5mm audio jack.

Once you turn on the Sprint Hero, you'll forget all about the boring exterior. The interface design is fantastic. It's clever and useful, with polished, colorful menus and icons.

The body of the phone is a gray color with a silver metallic band encircling the sides that extends to the bottom of the device where it meets HTC’s miniUSB port. Thanks to the slightly rubberized backing, the Hero feels great.

The phone comes with the standard: NASCAR mobile, NFL mobile, and SprintTV but can be removed.
There are active widgets that make the desktop much more functional and an improved look throughout the phone that makes the interface a joy to use.

Android and Sprint's HTC Hero excel with the numerous customization options. You can build themes that change not only the look of the phone's wallpaper and desktop icons, but also change the desktop's organization to offer exactly the tools and apps you want right on the home screen.

At 4.5 inches tall, 2.2 inches wide, just over half-an-inch thick, and weighing in at a trim 4.5 ounces, the smartphone is a compact device that will slip comfortably into most pockets or purses.

When accessing an individual contact, a tabbed menu offers the option to easily call, email, or text that contact, see text and email messages exchanged with that contact, access call history, and see that contact’s updates from Facebook and Flickr.

Unfortunately, Facebook integration is relatively limited, synching only a contact’s Facebook picture and birthday and alerting you to the fact that a contact has updates without going into any detail, but that's what the web browser can be used for.

The phone dialer screen is simple. You can use the on-screen numerical dial pad to quickly search through contacts by name or phone number while the matching results are narrowed down in the background as you type.

Calls on the HTC Hero on Sprint sounded very good.

For messaging and social networking fans, the Sprint Hero does a great job keeping up with all your separate accounts and networks. (Facebook, Email, Twitter, etc)

The HTC Hero on Sprint uses the standard Android browser, and this is one of the better browsers on the phone market. Pages loaded quickly and looked sharp, exactly like their desktop counterparts. The Sprint Hero also features multi-touch, which works very nicely on Web pages. Though the two-fingered controls weren't as smooth and accurate on this device as they are on the Apple iPhone, it was still easy to zoom in and out on Web pages (and photos) by pinching and spreading our fingers.

Pictures taken with the 5-megapixel camera on the Sprint Hero are pretty good but nothing special.

After some lighthearted debate, we’ve all come to agree that HTC’s latest Android device brings a hero to Sprint’s smartphone lineup. The Hero boasts HTC’s impressive Sense interface and full support for Microsoft Outlook synchronization including email, contacts, and calendar. From Wifi, to GPS, to 3G support, the smartphone didn’t leave us sorely missing any desired feature big or small.

The Sprint Hero is not the best phone for first-time smartphone users, since the interface can be complicated. You might forget whether you have to pull down the window pane menu from the top, press the menu key for the pop-up menu from the bottom, or hold your finger for a contextual menu in the middle of the screen, and sometimes the choice isn't obvious.

There are plenty of useful, silly, and fun apps in the Android Market.

Specification
Processor:    Qualcomm® MSM7600™, 528Mhz
Operating System:    Android™ platform
Memory:    ROM: 512MB, RAM: 288MB DDR, 2GB microSD™ memory card
Display:    3.2-inch 320 x 480 HVGA resolution, 262K-color TFT LCD touch-sensitive screen with LED backlight
Network:    Dual Band CDMA2000 1xRTT/1xEVDO/1xEVDO Rev. A (800/1900 MHz)
GPS:    Internal GPS antenna
Camera:    5 megapixel camera with auto focus
Connectivity:    Bluetooth® 2.0 with enhanced data rate, Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11b/g, HTC ExtUSB™, 3.5mm audio jack
Power:    Rechargeable battery — 1500 mAh
Talk Time:    Up to 250 minutes
Standby Time:    Up to 360 hours
Dimensions and Weight:    (LxWxT) 4.5" x 2.22" x .54"; 4.5 ounces with battery

I'll give the HTC Hero from Sprint 4.5 out of 5 stars.