A pox on the fools who got the "synthetic" label established. This is not a synthetic version of a natural product, or a modified natural product. It is (one or more) totally synthetic "analogues" which bind to the same receptors (more or less) as THC but in significantly different fashion. The perceived effects are somewhat similar to MJ but the differences are more significant than the similarities.

The active ingredients are *NOT* those found in natural MJ, and some of them are much more pharmacologically active. These compounds have found a market in an effort to circumvent anti-MJ laws, but they appear to be immensely more dangerous than MJ itself. It would be much safer to legalize MJ than to try to block the market in cannabis imitators. Cannabis imitators have sent a number of people to emergency rooms and one is clearly implicated in at least one death. Given the short period of time these drugs have been available, and the smaller number of users compared to MJ, they are clearly the sort of public danger that opponents of MJ always wanted MJ to be.

#1 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Government > Civics
#1 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Current Events > Civil Rights & Liberties
#15 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics

Does Gingrich have a secret stake in the publisher ? He's done more to get people to read Alinsky than anyone else in the last 30 years.

Hardball did a spot on Alinsky's "Thirteen Rules", and it's obvious that Gingrich is using many of them. NG is obviously pissed that someone else came up with these "Big Ideas" first. But I'll bet his really big gripe is that SA helped blacks in their organizing efforts.

The Wiki on SA is worth reading. He avoided joining political organizations, and is generally regarded as a "leader of the nonsocialist left". Here's a prescient -- and worrying -- excerpt:

Imagine a school where a student could sketch out an idea for a new design of bicycle and not only draw it in 3D using a computer-aided design package but actually create a scale-model and test it out, using inexpensive materials and a special printer that they can build themselves in the classroom.

That's the vision put forward by Ben O'Steen, a software engineer with a social conscience who is thinking about the implications of a world where 3D printers are no longer just expensive prototyping systems for large companies but have fallen into the hands of the masses.

He has been inspired by the RepRap, a desktop 3D printer capable of printing plastic parts by extruding a heated thermoplastic polymer under computer control, which then sets as it cools and makes a usable object.

The RepRap project was started in 2005 by Adrian Bowyer, who teaches mechanical engineering at Bath University.

The schematics and all aspects are freely licensed for anyone to implement or adapt, and the current version, called "Mendel", can be built for around £350.

It makes objects from a cheap plastic made from corn starch, so is well within school budgets.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10089419

http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.thingiverse.com/