From the maker:

The wide variety of organic forms resulting from relatively simple configuration of iterative functions illustrates the concept that complex results can arise from simple conditions. It is my belief that nature expresses itself on every level through fractals, limits, feedback loops, and iterative functions.

World class athletes have been caught using recreational drugs for years but what makes the recent cases of Tim Lincecum, Michael Phelps, and Santonio Holmes remarkable is that they have been outed at the peak of their careers. In these three instances, law enforcement has helped obliterate the mainstream myth that marijuana smokers cannot be overachievers in amazing physical conditions.

A California mother's decision to treat her autistic son with marijuana is coming under fire from some in the medical community, who believe the treatment is unproven and could be harmful.

Mieko Hester-Perez says her son Joey was malnourished and out of control before the Brea, Calif. mother began feeding him marijuana brownies.

"He was 48 pounds and 10 years old," Hester-Perez told Fox & Friends Monday morning. "You could see all his bones … His arms, legs, chest and torso were all the same size. He had extremely aggressive behavior. He was running out of our home. … He was unstable."

Via @vote4pot

Doctors from London University have revealed details of what they believe is the largest amount of ecstasy ever consumed by a single person. Consultants from the addiction centre at St George’s Medical School, London, have published a case report of a British man estimated to have taken around 40,000 pills of MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, over nine years. The heaviest previous lifetime intake on record is 2,000 pills.

Though the man, who is now 37, stopped taking the drug seven years ago, he still suffers from severe physical and mental health side-effects, including extreme memory problems, paranoia, hallucinations and depression. He also suffers from painful muscle rigidity around his neck and jaw which often prevents him from opening his mouth. The doctors believe many of these symptoms may be permanent.

The man, known as Mr A in the report in the scientific journal Psychosomatics, started using ecstasy at 21. For the first two years his use was an average of five pills per weekend. Gradually this escalated until he was taking around three and a half pills a day. At the peak, the man was taking an estimated 25 pills every day for four years. After several severe collapses at parties, Mr A decided to stop taking ecstasy. For several months, he still felt he was under the influence of the drug, despite being bedridden.

This story is a couple of years old, but it still has nice information on long term effects of heavy E use.

Join passionate plant heads sharing their experiences with psychoactive plants and their relationship to the Gaian matrix. Behind the chemistry are there active intelligences in the plant world, and if so how do we best interact with them? How can reclaiming our human-vegetal partnership help us become a sustainable culture? Why do we need to connect to the plant world? If plants can be teachers, can humans be students? What is our historical and bio-chemical relationship with plants? What does Nature have to teach us? What is the Australian plant kingdom’s place in the global entheo blossoming?

Panel discussion held at EntheoGenesis Australis Nov 7, 2009 (see entheo.net) moderated by Rak Razam, featuring speakers: Jewelli Dollman, Dan Schreiber, Margaret Cross, Michael Bock, Julian Palmer, Rob Bruce and Mulga.

Hey, hyperactive kids, in California you can get stoned -- legally. California doctors are now recommending marijuana to children diagnosed with attention hyperactivity disorder, Sphere reports.

Since 2004, California has given out more than 36,000 medical marijuana cards. The number of these cards going to children - it appears that all of the known cases are teenagers - is not known, as doctors are not required to report medical marijuana cases.

However, experts say medical marijuana cards going to minors are on the rise. Parents must accompany children under 18 requesting medical marijuana to this doctor's appointment, the New York Times reports.

This means no more self-medicating kids. You hear me?

The neuropeptide vasopressin is centrally involved in the regulation of social behaviour and response to stress. We previously found support for a subcategory of depression defined by above-normal plasma vasopressin (AVP) concentration. This subcategory is validated by a positive family history of depression and correlating plasma AVP and cortisol concentrations. The data support the validity of above-normal plasma AVP concentration as a genetically determined biological marker for a subcategory of depression. The aim of the present study was to test whether above-normal plasma AVP concentration in depression is related to personality characteristics reflecting a specific social behaviour style. The data of 78 patients from a previously investigated sample were reanalysed. Fifty-eight patients were available after 2 years, 15 of whom with initially above-normal plasma AVP. The dimensions of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) were scored, with particular focus on the dimensions of Cooperativeness (CO) and Reward-dependence (RD). Normative subjects and other depressed subjects were used as controls. After full remission, patients with initially above-normal AVP had low CO compared with normal and patient controls. During depression, these patients had both low CO and low RD compared with normal controls and low RD compared with patient controls. Low CO is a presumably premorbid trait and reduced RD a state-dependent characteristic in depression with above-normal plasma AVP. The low CO further supports the validity of above-normal plasma AVP concentration as a genetically determined biological marker for a subcategory of depression.

The management of psychosis in Parkinson’s disease (PD) has been considered a great challenge for clinicians and there is a need for new pharmacological intervention. Previously an antipsychotic and neuroprotective effect of Cannabidiol (CBD) has been suggested. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to directly evaluate for the first time, the efficacy, tolerability and safety of CBD on PD patients with psychotic symptoms. This was an open-label pilot study. Six consecutive outpatients (four men and two women) with the diagnosis of PD and who had psychosis for at least 3 months were selected for the study. All patients received CBD in flexible dose (started with an oral dose of 150 mg/day) for 4 weeks, in addition to their usual therapy. The psychotic symptoms evaluated by the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale and the Parkinson Psychosis Questionnaire showed a significant decrease under CBD treatment. CBD did not worsen the motor function and decreased the total scores of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale. No adverse effect was observed during the treatment. These preliminary data suggest that CBD may be effective, safe and well tolerated for the treatment of the psychosis in PD.

Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

One of the images shows "213,000 Vicodin pills, equal to the number of emergency room visits yearly in the US related to misuse or abuse of prescription pain killers." Most of them are pretty striking; in their installation format they are huge wall-filling prints. I would like to see them in person.