A little article I wrote for h+ on the feasibility of neural controllers and multi-sensory porting of neuro-to-digital memory.

As human neural networks and electronic digital networks converge there is some debate over how to best move data from neural to digital formats. Since the human brain is equipped with high-resolution sensory organs, there are many obvious routes for digital-to-neural input, but organic systems lack sufficient neural outputs for porting thoughts, memories, and dreams directly to digital memory. A variety of methods have been pioneered to capture digital thought, including embedded sensor wires, embedded sensor grids, and non-invasive dermal sensors. Initial success with neural interfaces indicates that progress in this field is possible, but each method has distinct functional limitations and problems. Given the severity of modification needed for high-resolution neural-to-digital memory capture, analysis suggests a mix of invasive and non-invasive methods will be customized to meet specific end-user needs, and that the popular market will lean more towards minimally invasive “good-enough” technologies as opposed to radically invasive technologies for the high-end consumer.

Bank regulators are being asked to step into the marijuana industry. Prohibition is over. It's all about the money now.

U.S. Representative Barney Frank is among 15 members of Congress pushing the Treasury Department to set rules that would help banks provide financial services to medical marijuana dispensaries.

"Legitimate state-legal businesses are being denied access to banking services, which does not serve the public interest," the lawmakers said in a May 20 letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner that was distributed today by Americans for Safe Access, a patient-advocacy group.

The letter was written by Representative Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat whose state is one of at least 14 that have legalized marijuana for medical use. It asks the Treasury to issue "formal written guidance" assuring banks they won’t be targeted for doing businesses with companies that distribute medical marijuana.

The Washington Post Magazine's lead story Sunday involved a twenty-something who goes to India to find his uncle, who's become some sort of Hare Krishna guru-king.

It turns out that when your uncle's a guru, he acts a little weird. He sits on a bed with the writer in silence, smirking. But I think the weirdest part in the piece comes before he joins the Hare Krishnas:

--He thought about suicide, got kicked out of school and spoke of moving to Nepal. "Where did I go so wrong?" my grandmother, who still lives in Germany, wrote in her diary back then. One afternoon, terrified of losing her connection with her son, then 17 or 18, my grandmother, a good Lutheran, sat with him at the kitchen table and got high on LSD.--

Can you think of anything wilder than doing acid with your mom?

[Thanks to the Dropper!]

Never-before seen journals found recently at a garage sale outside Buffalo, N.Y., chronicle the life of Lyster Dewey, who tended a United States government hemp farm in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Dewey, a botanist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, wrote in detail about growing strains of hemp called Keijo, Chinamington and others on a tract of government land known as Arlington Farm, reports Manuel Roig-Franzia of the The Washington Post.

My favorite part:

So in addition to the already-known intertwining of the noble hemp plant and U.S. history, now it is revealed that the very location of the Pentagon itself was once covered with verdant fields of cannabis.

[Thanks Mason!]

Corpus Christi cops in Texas mistake actual weed for marijuana, spend hours doing yard work.

"one of the largest marijuana plant seizures in the police department's history," turned out to be a common prairie flower of little significance...

Texas officers ultimately spent hours laboring to tag and remove up to 400 plants from a city park, discovering only after a battery of tests that they had been sweating over mere Horse Mint, a member of the mint family.

Johns Hopkins is reportedly "Seeking Persons Committed to Spiritual Development to Participate in a Research Study of Mystical Experience, Meditation and Spiritual Practice"

In recent years, scientists at some U.S. universities have been conducting studies using entheogens, resuming research in pharmacology, psychology, creativity, and spirituality that was suspended following the drug excesses of the 1960s.

Entheogens (roughly meaning God-evoking substances) include the peyote cactus used by the Native American Church, the psilocybin-containing mushrooms used as sacraments in Mesoamerica, and certain other plants and chemicals. Such substances have been used for thousands of years in cultures from the Amazon to ancient Greece as a means of inducing non-ordinary states of consciousness for spiritual or religious purposes.

These states of consciousness are most widely known in connection with practices such as meditation and prolonged fasting. Scientists have found, however, that the entheogens sometimes bring about states that are indistinguishable from the mystical and visionary states reflected in the sacred texts and poetry of the world's religions.

Context seems to play a major role in shaping entheogen experiences and their consequences. Despite the well-known problems that can arise in unstructured settings, the risks of entheogens in research and ritual contexts have proven to be very small.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University are seeking volunteers who have an active interest in exploring and developing their spiritual lives to participate in a scientific study of the combined effects of meditation, spiritual practice, and the entheogen psilocybin, a psychoactive substance found in mushrooms used as a sacrament in some cultures.

From Toke of the Town:

Washington drug agents have illegally seized signed petitions for marijuana legalization, according to organizers of ballot initiative I-1068.

Marijuana advocacy group Sensible Washington says it has learned that a dozen signed copies of the marijuana legalization initiative for Washington State of which it is the sponsor, were seized last week by the federally-funded WestNET drug task force.

Advocates say that the drug agents who seized the petitions are interfering with a constitutionally-protected legislative procedure.

"Our estimate is that 2009 signatures are sitting in WestNET's offices in Port Orchard, apparently seized as 'evidence' during a series of raids against the North End Club 420 in Tacoma," said Sensible Washington campaign director and initiative co-author Philip Dawdy.

Fabulous Beat Box/Middle Eastern Riffs by Patrick Archie.

Amazingly trippy video, sent by Jedi Mind Traveler.

1923 (aka Heaven) is one of two new animation loops directed by Max Hattler, inspired by the work of French outsider artist Augustin Lesage. 1923 is based on Lesage's painting 'A symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World' from 1923.

The second loop, 1925 (aka Hell), is based on Lesage's painting 'A symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World' from 1925. It is here:

Canada's so-called "Prince of Pot" has been brought to the US where he is expected to plead guilty to selling marijuana seeds to US customers.

Marc Emery allegedly sold millions of marijuana seeds around the world by post.

He was ordered extradited by Canada's Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson on 10 May.

Mr Emery arrived in Seattle, Washington state, on Thursday and is expected to plead guilty on Monday.

Richard Troberman, Mr Emery's attorney, told the Associated Press news agency that his client would plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana in exchange for an agreed sentence of five years in prison.

Mr Emery, a resident of Vancouver, British Columbia, said he had made $3m a year before his arrest in 2005.