A little pot is good for the kids

Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, a Swiss journal, published a study by researchers at University of Lausanne this week that found that teens who sometimes smoke pot, when compared to teens that don’t, are more likely to have a good relationship with their friends and to be involved in sports. They were, however, found to be less likely to have a good relationship with their parents. The study concluded, “Compared with abstainers, they are more socially driven and do not seem to have psychosocial problems at a higher rate.”

The study contrasts with an earlier one in the same journal that found that for young children who watch TV, “there are modest adverse effects . . . on the subsequent cognitive development.” TV is worse than pot.

It might be interesting to ask if the poorer relationship occasional pot smoking teens experience with their parents is a result of their parents misjudgment on the effects of their smoking pot compared to the effects of their watching TV.

Buy a good newish computer for real cheap

Reboot is store-front operation at 825 East Hastings that takes surplus computers from big institutions like Vancouver City and EBay, refurbishes them, cleans their drives out and reinstalls them with up-to-date suites of fully licensed core software, and then sells them for extremely low prices to people on income insistence, and still very low prices to anyone else.

Institutions like Vancouver City change over one-third of their entire inventory of computers every year to keep their staff productive and current. This means an awful lot of computers that are only three years old are disposed of, typically at a cost to the institution doing the dumping.

Reboot is a non-profit, a project of the Network of Inner City Community Services Society, that sees a positive community-building role to play in grabbing those computers to save them from the dump, and moving them into the hands of people who normally would be marginalized out of the benefits of research and contact that modern computers now provide everyone else. A complete and ready-to-use desktop system sells for $45 to those on income assistance and $80 otherwise. LCD flatscreen monitors are $100. There are fully functioning, very modern laptops for $150. Reboot also provides training and technical support not only to individuals but to charities and non-profits who they hook up with computers.

They’re open for business from 10 to 6 Monday to Friday, and their warehouse is full of this stuff. Call them at 604-687-2777 and go get it. It’s another Republic-approved “Good thing.”

Turmoil in restaurant land

Jaroslav Hrsinklinzskzckli, Pizza 99¢ Heaven’s parts spreader-extraordinaire the last three weeks, has unexpectedly left his post, throwing Commercial Drive’s restaurant row into turmoil. The announcement follows cook Rob “Get the Ketchup” Feenie’s abandoning of his post at yet another food establishment in Vancouver called Lumiere, as reported on the front page of the Vancouver Sun three breathless days straight.

Both grub-slingers cited loss of control over the product as the reason for their sudden departures. “What is the pizza? It is shit. It is shit of America. You are shit,” Hrsinklinzskzckli shouted from the sidewalk back into Pizza 99¢ Heaven’s door after the owner, who would only identify himself as Bob, squeezed him out the door, alarming the diners inside. Likewise, the Vancouver Sun reported that Feenie had also been “squeezed out after the fight of his life.”

The Republic visited the restaurant after a new parts-spreader had been employed later that evening. Amazingly, we found the same results as Mia Stainsby did in her Vancouver Sun story following a visit to the Feenie-free Lumiere, headlined “No ‘oh-my-God’ moments at Lumiere, just appreciative ones.” Hrsinklinzskzckli, like Feenie, sure gave us a few “oh-my-God” moments in his days at Pizza 99¢ Heaven!

Lost in space

“Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting," said Ernest Rutherford. So what’s new in physics? A new thing proposed as the root of all there is, that’s what’s new.

“Branes,” short for membrane-like objects, are composed of “strings” from string theory, made famous by mechanical-voiced Stephen Hawking, himself made famous by that Simpsons cartoon episode.

“According to string theory,” reports Scientific American, “our observable universe is a small part of a larger space having more dimensions than the three we directly see. The other dimensions may be microscopic in size (or otherwise difficult to penetrate) and crumpled up in a funky shape known as a Calabi-Yau space. The observable universe may be on a membrane, or simply a “brane,” sitting at the tip of a spike” stretching out from the star-shaped Calabi-Yau space.

String theory proposes that all subatomic particles are all the same one-dimensional objects that look like miniature rubber bands which vibrate in different ways to produce the different particles. Physicists like Hawking like it because it predicts gravity rather than gravity having to be something assumed.

What gravity is remains the big question going on 350 years now. It remains in play—take your best shot. Obviously the big boys at the universities haven’t got a clue where they’re going with it ever since Einstein died and can’t tell them what he meant anymore, so gravity is back up for grabs.

Where’d they go?

Like the increasingly infrequent glimpses of Osama, the right-wing Christian fundamentalists who only eight years stormed to the fore of American—and hence world—politics, have all but disappeared. As the New York Times has pointed out, no leading candidate for president seems to have them bunched into his or her corner, and no new loudmouths have taken to the airwaves to direct wrath around either.

There’s no mystery. Look around and see what a mess has been made by one-time Christian poster child ‘ol Georgie boy. Who in their right mind would lay claim to this ruins?

There’s a slight chance that maybe their minds have been changed and Christian fundamentalists are now rethinking their allegiance to wild right-wing theories of governance and economics. Change is possible, you know.

Uh, pardon me, but . . .

It must have been an Iranian who called the New York Times to get this correction printed: “An article on October 17 about a meeting of the Caspian Sea nations described incorrectly the agreements Iran and the Soviet Union once had on sharing the sea and its resources. They did not share everything 50-50.” No, I imagine not.

Sound familiar?

Reinhold Niebuhr, writing in Harpers 75 years ago, in June 1932:

“It is not at all out of the realm of probabilities that the middle-class paradise which we built on this continent, and which reached its zenith no later than 1929, will be in decay before the half-century mark is rounded. We may offer an example on a rather grand historical scale of the fate of a house that is built upon sand.

“If such a prediction seems too daring—as indeed it may be—we might confine our prophecies to the more imminent future and predict that it will be practically impossible to secure social change in America without the use of very considerable violence. Even if our civilization should not perish catastrophically, it is almost certain that both the advancing and retreating groups in the social struggle will resort to extra-legal and extra-constitutional means to preserve and to achieve their interests in the social order. Lacking the intelligence either to appropriate the experience of more advanced nations or to profit by our own, we shall probably continue to suffer political and social maladjustments until the vehemence of resentment produces the desire for change which intelligence failed to create in time.” Plus ça ne change pas. . . .