Driving on pot doubles crash risk.

Driving on pot doubles crash risk, study finds

Driving under the influence of pot nearly doubles the risk of a serious or fatal car crash, a Canadian study finds.

Cannabis — marijuana — is the most widely consumed illicit substance in the world, and the number of Canadians confessing to driving within an hour of using pot is growing, researchers from Dalhousie University write in this week's issue of the British Medical Journal.

In addition, "surveys of young drivers have also shown that rates of driving under the influence of cannabis have surpassed rates of drinking and driving in some jurisdictions," the Halifax team reports.
Not only is cannabis relatively easy to get, "many young people really don't believe that cannabis impairs," said lead author Mark Asbridge, an associate professor in the department of community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie.



"They know that alcohol impairs their driving, so if they're the designated driver at a party they'll switch alcohol for cannabis. I've heard stories: 'I'm the designated driver so I'm just going to smoke up.' "
"We just simply don't have the same messaging around drugs and driving" that exists around drinking and driving, he said.

Past studies into cannabis and crash risk have been mixed. Some have found an increased risk of being involved in a collision after using marijuana, while others have found either no association whatsoever, or even a lower risk — suggesting people were actually safer driving while intoxicated by pot than not.

The Halifax team set out to disentangle the evidence. They performed a "systematic" review, scouring the literature for the best-designed studies they could find. In the end, they pooled data from nine studies that combined involved 49,411 drivers from Australia, New Zealand, the United States, France and the Netherlands.

All the crashes involved in the analysis took place on public roads and involved one or more moving vehicles such as cars, vans, trucks, buses and motorcycles.

The researchers found a 92 per cent increased risk — a near doubling — of a driver being involved in a collision resulting in serious injury or death, to themselves or others, if they used marijuana within two to three hours of getting behind the wheel.

The strongest association was with fatal crashes.
The study wasn't designed to answer the question: How much pot does it take before the crash risk increases?

Most studies in the analysis used any amount greater than zero as the cutoff for a positive test result. But, "for cannabis, there's not necessarily a cut off that we can identify where risk was most heightened," Asbridge said.

Still, studies have shown that cannabis impairs the psychomotor skills needed for safe driving, he said. Marijuana affects perception and spatial awareness. Drivers have difficulty staying in their lanes, Asbridge said. "There's actually a psychological process where people often believe that they're driving safer than they really are and they don't recognize that they're following too closely, or making these lane violations."

Earlier studies that suggested it might be safer driving under the influence of cannabis often relied on urine samples. The problem there, Asbridge says, is that markers for cannabis in urine "can stay in your body for weeks or even over a month so that's not a measure of recent use at all."

His team only included studies that measured active THC metabolites from blood samples, which is a more accurate way of measuring whet

Read more: http://www.canada.com/news/Driving+doubles+crash+risk+study+finds/6129082/story.html#ixzz1lyEE5mWi

Low-tech Magazine: How to downsize a transport network: the Chinese wheelbarrow

Low-tech Magazine: How to downsize a transport network: the Chinese wheelbarrow

« Gas Bag Vehicles | Main

December 29, 2011

How to downsize a transport network: the Chinese wheelbarrow

For being such a seemingly ordinary vehicle, the wheelbarrow has a surprisingly exciting history. This is especially true in the East, where it became a universal means of transportation for both passengers and goods, even over long distances.

The Chinese wheelbarrow - which was driven by human labour, beasts of burden and wind power - was of a different design than its European counterpart. By placing a large wheel in the middle of the vehicle instead of a smaller wheel in front, one could easily carry three to six times as much weight than if using a European wheelbarrow.

The one-wheeled vehicle appeared around the time the extensive Ancient Chinese road infrastructure began to disintegrate. Instead of holding on to carts, wagons and wide paved roads, the Chinese turned their focus to a much more easily maintainable network of narrow paths designed for wheelbarrows. The Europeans, faced with similar problems at the time, did not adapt and subsequently lost the option of smooth land transportation for almost one thousand years.

Human Trafficking

Uploaded by sdsctr on Oct 19, 2008

A video about modern slavery with facts and figures about the trade in Southeast Asia.
Please visit: htsea.pbwiki.com; humantrafficking.org; bdcf.org
License:  Standard YouTube License

Brilliant Teacher

My learning about many things has been greatly advanced by watching the many wonderful TED Speeches.  Sometimes watching favorite speeches many times over. Mike deGruy generated enthusiasm for the oceans with his passionate presentation and he was a pleasure to watch. 

In this talk, as in his photography and his many films, you can sense Mike’s infectious humor, his passion for the oceans — and his example of a life well and richly lived.

We are saddened by the news that ocean photographer, filmmaker and storyteller Mike deGruy died yesterday in a helicopter crash in Australia. Mike was truly one of the great teachers and advocates for the oceans, as you can see in his TEDTalk, filmed aboard Mission Blue in 2010:

Take Care

Conservation & Communities

Africa loses more than 10 million acres of forest every year -- twice the world’s deforestation rate. Global demand for forest and extractive industry products is growing, with competition for Africa’s natural resources at an all-time high. Meanwhile population growth in Africa is faster than anywhere else, with accompanying poverty, and basic needs unmet. To be effective, forest and species conservation must address the deeply rooted human problems associated with poverty. As Jane says, “How can we even try to save the chimpanzees and forests if the people are so obviously struggling to survive?”

JGI’s community-centered conservation approach provides local communities the tools needed to manage their natural resources for long-term economic gain and environmental prosperity. With increased local capacity, responsibility, and participation in the sustainable management of natural resources, communities are much better positioned to effectively preserve the natural environment and wildlife of their area.

 We do not "parachute in" with defined solutions. Rather, we support communities as they identify priority development and conservation goals. As a result, our projects set is eclectic – reflecting the diversity of communities in Africa and the myriad problems they face.

 

Here’s an idea of what our activities look like on the ground: 

• We educate farmers on sustainable farming methods such as rotating crops for soil fertility and re-cropping rather than clearing forest to make new fields
• We promote the use of fuel-efficient stoves that reduce the need for fuel wood by two-thirds and are made from local materials – saving time, money and trees
• We organize micro-credit programs that allow villagers – especially women – to obtain capital for small business ventures by pooling their own money seeded by JGI funds. The payback rate is impressive – over 85 percent.
• We work with villages to improve health through training and infrastructure development, including spring protection, shallow and bore wells, and ventilated improved pit latrines
• We place a special emphasis on girls’ education, providing scholarships that have help girls in Tanzania complete secondary school and beyond.

These sample projects are part of JGI’s conservation and community programming, which falls into four broad areas: 

• Protecting Forests
• Creating Sustainable Livelihoods
• Creating Healthy Families
  
• Supporting Education

Roots and Shoots

Roots & Shoots youth raise funds for trees in Tanzania



After a year of literally sowing seeds of hope, participants in the “ReBirth the Earth: Trees for Tomorrow” campaign—as part of Jane Goodall’s global Roots & Shoots youth program—have something to celebrate:

Raised: $16,415 (USD)
Planted: 3,550 trees

The youth-initiated and youth-led campaign blew the top off of its tree-planting and fundraising goals, which were to raise $10,000 for five Roots & Shoots tree nurseries in Tanzania while planting 3,000 trees in the United States. Campaign organizers called on young people across the US to panda miti (Swahili for “plant trees”) and get sponsorships for every tree planted. Our campaign was supported by Animal Planet and the National Arbor Day Foundation and led by Campaign Chairperson Bryan Lairmore.

Money raised paid for seedlings, their transport, nursery tools, and training youth in Tanzania how to start and maintain nurseries. Now, Roots & Shoots members from three schools in Moshi, near Mount Kilimanjaro, have put 1,351 seeds into sprouting beds. Meanwhile, in the Morogoro region, young Roots & Shoots members began bedding seeds this month, hoping to have 10,000 seedlings ready for planting by year-end. As the youth work to establish the tree nurseries, they’re learning about local tree species and sustainable growing practices.

The ReBirth the Earth campaign started in 2006, after 10 Roots & Shoots youth leaders from the US traveled to Tanzania as part of an immersion experience. While there, they joined local Roots & Shoots groups in planting trees and learned there was a need for more nurseries.

“This is a fantastic and exciting campaign, because it is completely conceived, organized and implemented by our Roots & Shoots young people,” said Dr. Goodall. “These youth are gaining the worldly knowledge and practical skills to make a real difference in their own communities and in the communities of their new-found friends in Tanzania.”

Jane Goodall

spirit and nature

Healing the split between spirit and nature

Jun. 06, 2011

By Rich Heffern

• Ecology

(Dreamstime)

Earth and Spirit
Federico Fellini’s beautiful 1963 film “8 1/2” is an autobiographical story about a director, Guido, played by Marcello Mastroianni, who is trying to complete his new film. As he tries to escape pressures by entering a fantasy world, incidents in the film repeatedly link to childhood memories, showing how his Catholic upbringing shaped his life.
One scene involves an odd incantation. At a party, a magician performs with a clairvoyant who demonstrates her ability to read people’s thoughts. A skeptical Guido agrees to be a subject. The clairvoyant studies his face and then writes the words “ASA NISI MASA” on a blackboard. Fellini then cuts to a brief flashback of Guido’s childhood. “Asa Nisi Masa” is a bedtime chant the children would say, a phrase with the power to make the eyes of a wall portrait come to life.
The chant is children’s play language, pig Latin. When each second syllable is dropped, we have the word anima. Fellini was interested in the work of Carl Jung, who used the word anima to describe the personification of female characteristics in the male. It’s a reference to Guido’s confusion about women; the film shows how the many women in his life influence his thoughts and actions.
The word anima means soul or life force. It’s what gives zest and lift to our lives.
I head-over-heels befriended a young woman who lived upstairs from my first apartment in college. Her name was Christina. Her eyes flashed with wit and intelligence. She had an ironic mouth, a wry humor, a stalwart strength, a storming and irreverent mind. If the moon had a sister, Christina was the dark-haired and more stimulating of the two. Lost in the razzle-dazzle shock that is late adolescence, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had suddenly unfolded filmy butterfly wings and fluttered up off into the evening. I wanted nothing less than to gather her silver music, her darkness into my hands, and take tentative sips.
One summer evening when it was too hot indoors, we sat, Christina and I, in a back alleyway under a buzzing neon billboard and talked, just talked, until well past midnight, about things we discovered we both happened to treasure -- Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast fantasies, Captain Nemo, Ray Bradbury, calling butterflies “flutterbys,” about outrageous thoughts and madcap schemes. That she liked what I liked and thought funny what I chuckled at -- moreover that she even fancied, just like me, crunchy peanut butter spread over toast -- these were discoveries. Not only did I share the planet with mysterious creatures like her, but in important ways we were kith and kin.

We related to each other as equals. The one time I strayed from this footing, she lashed out at me expertly, with uncanny radar, demolishing me with a few well-chosen words.
We all have such encounters. Others are alluring, nurturing, enchanting -- and can be dangerous, just as nature is.
Ecofeminist Starhawk titles her blog “Dirt Worship.” It’s shocking, revealing the discontinuity in our religious views, and shows how reclaiming the feminine together with the sacredness of the natural word is a political act as well as a spiritual calling -- and it’s deeply healing in an ecological sense.
The split between spirit and nature, with “spirit” assigned to men and “body” to women, devalues not only women and female bodies, our source, but the natural world, also our source, and gives human beings license to destroy the very life-support systems that sustain us all. To heal that split, we embrace the deep value of this world, of life, flesh, nature, sexuality, emotion, intuition and all the nurturing aspects that have been assigned to women. This is what creation spirituality is all about. When we empower women, we also free men -- to hold their own bodies and sexuality as sacred, to reconnect with the Earth and their own loving, emotional and nurturing selves, to feel their passion.
When women can cherish the vulnerability of men as much as men can celebrate the strength of women, a new breed may lift a heavy yoke from us both. We all could breathe free, look life’s realities in the face, deal with them in an adult way, and stop recoiling from them like 50-, 60- or 70-year-old teenagers. Among the disruptions of our time, the strife between women and men takes heavy casualties -- families torn asunder, broken hearts, a wasteful drain of vitality, a Catholic church broken apart. It’s hard to see how the rift will mend.
After several decades of marriage, I am beginning to learn: When the light comes, it shines on a man who wishes to grow up before he grows too old. We can move into responsible masculinity -- and humbly discover what we’ve been missing.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune asked poet Robert Bly to propose activities for a National Day for Boys equivalent to Take Our Daughters to Work day. Bly suggested fathers take their sons off to the library and show them the books and play the music they love. Women have often been excluded from the work world, Bly noted. “I think it’s just as likely now that men will be shut out of the inward world.”

Asa nisi masa.



[Rich Heffern is editor of the Eco Catholic blog on NCR’s Web site at NCRonline.org/blogs/eco-catholic.]

Whooping Crane is an endangered species.

Riddle's Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary

Adopt an Elephant | How You Can Help | Our Mission | Elephant Biographies International School For Elephant Management | Current Information The Elephant Experience Weekend | Links | Contact

» See Our Newest Addition!

Riddle's Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary
was established by Scott and Heidi Riddle in 1990
on 330 acres in the Ozark Mountain foothills in Arkansas as a non-profit
[IRS 501(C)(3) EIN-71-0694957] home for elephants needing one for
any reason. This is the only internationally recognized sanctuary that
accepts any elephant regardless of species, gender, or disposition.

This Arkansas elephant sanctuary currently houses Asian elephants
and African elephants, and both males and females. Elephant care
and elephant management are taught at this elephant haven in the
peaceful Arkansas countryside. Programs include Elephant Experience
Weekends and an annual International School for Elephant Management.
Major goals of the sanctuary include the care of the resident elephant
herd, but also elephant conservation in general, helping to ensure the
long-term survival of these magnificent and highly endangered species.
Visit our site to learn how you can help elephants or to "adopt" an
elephant!

ENDANGERED SPECIES

Florida manatee.
1. Species distribution.
The Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) is a subspecies of the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus). The Florida manatee's primary range is the Florida peninsula, but individuals can be found as far north as Virginia and as far west as Louisiana during warm summer months.

2. Reasons for endangerment.
The estimated population for the Florida manatee in 1992 indicated there may be as few as 2,000 animals. Tragically, manatee deaths are increasing each year. Since 1976, total deaths have risen an average of 5.3% each year. The majority of human-related deaths are caused by collisions with boats; boat divers can't see the camouflaged, slow-moving manatees to avoid accidents. Prenatal deaths (i.e. stillborn and newborn calves) are also quite high. The exact cause of these deaths isn't known. Other causes of death include disease and parasitism, exposure to cold weather, crushing in flood control structures and navigational locks, shooting by humans, and entanglement in fishing line and ropes.

3. Conservation efforts.
Florida manatees are listed as endangered by the Endangered Species Act, vulnerable by the IUCN/World Conservation Union, and on Appendix I of CITES. They're also protected under the MMPA and the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act.

In most Florida counties manatees are also protected by boat speed laws and no-boat zones. Several institutions (permitted by the USFWS), including Sea world of Florida, are involved in the rescue and rehabilitation of injured or sick manatees.


California condor. 1. Species distribution.
The California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) once ranged throughout the coastal regions of North America, from British Columbia to Baja California, and from Florida to New York. By the 1800s the condors were restricted to the Pacific coast. Today they live only in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary in Southern California, the Los Angeles Zoo, and the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

2. Reasons for endangerment.
California condors used to number in the thousands. By 1939 their numbers were estimated to be under 100, and by 1982 only 21 to 24 birds remained in the wild. Reasons for their decline include habitat loss, poaching, a low reproductive rate, electrocution by high-voltage wires, and poisoning by eating animal carcasses that contained lead.

3. Conservation efforts.
In 1981, the California Department of Fish and Game permitted the San Diego Zoological Society and the Los Angeles Zoo to breed condors. Chicks and eggs were first collected for the program, but due to continued threats to adults in the wild, all birds were captured by 1987. The breeding program has been successful, with over 50 birds now in captivity. Eight birds have been reintroduced into the Sespe Condor Sanctuary and future releases are being planned.

The California condor is listed as endangered by the Endangered Species Act, the IUCN/World Conservation Union, and Appendix 1 of CITES.