Heavy marijuana use not linked to lung cancer


Despite popular belief, a new study shows that people who smoke marijuana do not appear to be at increased risk of developing lung cancer.


It seems even heavy, long-term marijuana users do not appear to increase the risk of head and neck cancers, such as cancer of the tongue, mouth, throat, or esophagus.


Senior researcher, Donald Tashkin, M.D., Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles says the findings were a surprise as they expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana.


The study looked at people in Los Angeles County - 611 who developed lung cancer, 601 who developed cancer of the head or neck regions, and 1,040 people without cancer who were matched on age, gender and neighborhood.

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I really need to find something shaped like the Virgin Mary. My dog once shewed up a plastic clothes peg once, it looked a bit like the UNA Bomber. I've got him worlding on an old coke bottle as we speak, its starting to resemble Buddah.


Golden Palace Casino, famous for its collection of Kitch arcania, swooped in about 30 seconds before bidding closed Wednesday evening on the Internet auction site eBay.




The winning bid: $10,600 US. The Casino previously bought a partially eaten grilled cheese sandwich said to resemble the Virgin Mary, which looks a lot more like Marilyn Munroe to me - still what do I know.
It could also look like Mother Theresa as a kid or even Michael Jackson after his next face job.


The pretzel drew 56 bids. The second-highest was $10,500.

The Net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.
– John Gilmore (famous quote)


What if censorship is in the router?

– Seth Finkelstein


1. Censorware isn’t just for kids


Censorware (often misleadingly called “filtering”) is software designed and optimized for use by an authority to prevent another person from sending or receiving information. In the United States, it was first discussed in connection with parents who wanted to prevent children from seeing sex-related information. But the issues are by no means restricted to that situation. The very same software which is used by parents in their home, is legally imposed on libraries (which accept certain government funds), and employ by dictatorial governments, e.g. “The Great Firewall Of China”.


2. Programmers have been sued for publishing reverse-engineering of censorware


In March of 2000, programmers Eddy L O Jansson and Matthew Skala published a report “The Breaking of Cyber Patrol 4” (“Several attacks are presented on the “sophisticated anti-hacker security” features of Cyber Patrol 4, a “censorware” product intended to prevent users from accessing Internet content considered harmful ... Excerpts from the list of blocked sites are presented and commented upon. A package of source code and binaries implementing the attacks is included.”)


They were quickly sued by CyberPatrol, for copyright infringement, breach of licensing agreement, theft of trade secrets, and other charges. The case was settled out of court, as the programmers could not afford the costs of a legal defense. As Skala wrote:

What I found out was that those organizations, through no fault of their own, were able to give me a lot of sympathy and not enough of anything else, particularly money, to bring my personal risk of tragic consequences down to an acceptable level, despite, incredibly, the fact that what I had done was legal. Ultimately, I couldn’t rely on anybody to deal with my problems but myself.

Some people learn that lesson a bit less impressively than I had to.

Disclosure note: The author of this article, Seth Finkelstein, had done similar reverse-engineering of CyberPatrol much earlier, but not published a report about it, and remained anonymous for years when providing information about censorware, out of fear of a lawsuit.

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1. Google query syntax underwent some subtle changes over the years.


Not too long ago, you couldn't enter more than 10 words into the Google search box. Or to be more precisely, you *could*, but subsequent words were ignored. I bet the Google founders were thinking "10 words ought to be enough for everyone," and mostly there were right – but for some advanced uses, especially with the Google Search API, a little more is helpful. Then, a while ago, Google increased the words limit to 32 words. This is probably OK for a few more years!


Another change is that Google ignores stop words nowadays. Stop words in search engines are words like "the" or "a" which are too tiny or common to be useful additions to most searches. However, Google is now accepting them as semi-normal words (one remaining difference being that they're not highlighted, or linked to the dictionary). This means in Google.com, you get different results when search for [the tale of a cowboy] vs [* tale * * cowboy] vs [tale cowboy]. (I'll be using square brackets around search queries – they're not to be included in the search.)


Another operator changed its functionality during the years; a couple of years ago, you could only query Google for [site:something.com], but not [site:something.com/something/]. Today, you can add folders to the site operator.


2. Google itself was Beta.


These days, everyone puts a Beta tag on their 2.0-ish web app. But did you know back in 1998, when Google launched their search, it was also in Beta? Take a look at a copy stored in the WayBack Machine to see it. Be aware the page might look quite ugly by today's standards... heck, it was probably ugly even back in 1998 (then again, so was my homepage in 1998!).

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Factors that risk being left out of the equation


Electromagnetic fields stemming from gadgets such as kettles, computers and microwaves contribute towards a cloud of unseen emissions - even when they are switched off.


It's a sinister idea, and "electromagnetic hypersensitivity" is sweeping Britain, or at least the Independent and the Daily Mail last week. Symptoms include fatigue, tiredness, concentration difficulties, dizziness, nausea, heart palpitations, and digestive disturbances; and since these are real symptoms, causing genuine distress, the problem deserves to be considered seriously, and carefully.


There are two things the newspapers left out of their stories:
The first is the scientific evidence, and the second is a very crucial nuance. We'll deal with the evidence first, because science is "hard".

The Science

There have been 31 studies looking at whether people who report being hypersensitive to electromagnetic fields can detect their presence, or whether their symptoms are worsened by them. A typical experiment would involve a mobile phone hidden in a bag, for example, with each subject reporting their symptoms, not knowing if the phone was on or off.


Thirty-one is a good number of studies, and 24 found that electromagnetic fields have no effect on the subjects. But seven did find a measurable effect. And because I have a reputation for pedantry to uphold: in two of those studies with positive findings, even the original authors have been unable to replicate the results; for the next three, the results seem to be statistical artefacts (details on Bad Science) and for the final two, the positive results are mutually inconsistent (one shows improved mood with provocation, and the other shows worsened mood). It's a slightly obsessive form of value for money you get here, but it's value nonetheless.

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