 SmokingCaterpillar | SmokingCaterpillar December 15 2024 12:49:47 PMThere's a lot of often heated debate about the pros and cons of 20 mph speed limits in Wales and also selected parts of England - with the added context that I live on a road that is subject to a 20 mph limit. Also I have an A full motorcycle licence, own an electric motorcycle, a small car and a 3. 5 tonne motorhome.
I suppose the first question is 'what does a 20 mph speed limit result in?'
From my perspective. There are 2 main consequences of the 20 mph policy. There are others, but these two are the main ones I would like to focus on here. - Reduction in the number and severity of road traffic accidents.
- Increased journey times.
Considering the first point, since its introduction in Wales. It's important to note that relevant data is only available for a relatively short period. It seems to be that the first 6 months of the scheme's operation coincided with a 29% reduction in casualties (considered to be deaths or serious injury. The data seems to be reliable, from the Welsh Government, the BBC, the Guardian and Insurance companies. Interestingly an insurance company, ESure, in a press release, reduced insurance premiums for drivers in Wales. Not all insurance companies have followed suit, though.
Now, I would be the first person to point out that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. But in this case, there seems to enough circumstantial evidence to come to the conclusion that there is a causal link and thus it seems to be a reasonable thing to conclude that the reduction in speed limit has had a positive effect on road accident stations. The level of that positive effect is much more difficult to quantify, though.
It's worth noting that adherence to the 20 mph limit is patchy. Some estimates state that overall traffic rates in 30 mph have dropped some 3-4 mph. This says to me that there is still some room for improvement- the main offenders are possibly people who don't observe the 30 mph limit, never mind a 20 mph limit. Better adherence may well improve the safety benefits of the policy. Moving on to the second point. Does it actually affect traffic flow rates? If it does, then how significant is it?
The first thing to realise is that 20 mph limits are only within built up areas. If I am to drive from Birmingham to, say, Norwich, then most of my drivingis going to be subject to the national speed limit, and I would not expect there to be significant increases in journey time for this type of journey.
Instead, let's pick a good sized urban environment - say Birmingham. The average urban speed actually achieved is generally thought to be and 18 mph, with London at 9mph and Bristol around 13mph.
It's difficult to come up with an way in which we can calculate the changes in average speeds because of the sheer number of variables that can affect the final result. Intuitively, one would expect a reduction, but it is probably less than one would expect. In the same way that increasing speed limits doesn't necessarily translate directly into comparable traffic flow improvements.
So now, what offer does it have on driving times? I would argue that it is relatively small, though I concede that is very likely exists. And whether it matters is quite subjective, though there's a strong objective element as well. For example, haulage firms, where margins are slim, would objective face longer journey times - a major factor in costing models.
And so we come to the final choice. And here's a point that I think some people miss. We already, as a society accept many risks without understanding the ideas behind that risk. I'm guilty of making flippant remark to some vaccine deniers/hesitants, that if they were truly concerned about their or their loved ones' safety, they'd be making a significantly large reduction in the risk to the overall risk by not using cars. The risk of death or injury through driving is almost certainly higher that any routine NHS vaccine such as COVID or flu. Just for the record, I have had flu, pneumonia, shingles, COVID and RSV immunisations.
Anyway, back to 20 mph. This is a personal opinion, of course, but I find I'm willing to trade relatively small increases in journey time with a significant increase in injured and fatalities. At the same time, I accept that clearly we need to make progress on the roads (a point that was made to me when I was learning for my class A motorcycle licence). An interesting historical example - the first cars in the UK were subject to a 5 mph speed limit and had to have a man (this was some time ago) with a red flag walking in front of the vehicle.
SmokingCaterpillar December 10 2024 02:08:07 PMIf you want to avail yourself of 'medication' and here I'm using the euphemism for recreational drugs. these are now, in the UK, easily obtainable. And they can be delivered by Royal Mail. Hypothetically. In principle. Allegedly. There are a few caveats. Firstly, you can only pay using crypto, mainly BitCoin. For myself, this is no great hurdle, as I'm reasonably OK with crypto. I don't buy crypto as an investment - it's way too risky an investment for me - so I buy small quantities and store them in a digital wallet. Even if I lose the wallet completely, there won't be a large amount of money there and I will not have to consider suing my local authority to get it back when the hard drive containing the wallet is on the tip. You can't buy hard drugs - mostly the offers are flower, concentrates, magic mushrooms and concentrates. Plus LSD and I thought I saw DMT there a while back. It seems that police action against recreational drugs, at least the level 2 recreational drugs, are not really considered to be a high priority by many police forces. And that is as it should be, IMHO. In terms of risk to public safety, surely a recreational drug user poses little threat to the community at large. And most recreational users know this. Canadian cannabis legalisation initially saw a sales boom driven by high demand, as could reasonable be expected. But this was hampered by supply shortages and persistent competition from the illegal market. Provincial regulations and limited product variety also affected growth - there wasn't a cohesive national policy, as far as I know. While a legal market exists and is growing, it hasn't fully replaced the black market, resulting in a more moderate and fluctuating sales trajectory than initially predicted. Indeed, it seems that the initial bullishness, which poured investment into legal recreational cannabis may have been overestimated. To me, the main reason is this. In most western advanced nations, cannabis is illegal in law but not so much practice. Many countries now operate a policy of lenience and/or decriminalisation. Something may well be against the law per se, but if the relevant authorities do not pursue the enforcement, then most people will not see any deterrent. In the meantime, the illegal trade has been becoming more sophisticated, with many of the features of the legitimate trade. As far as these consumers are concerned, the legal trade offers few advantages over the illegal trade. The main advantage, legality, probly just doesn't matter that much to most users. So, when a country that has not pursued the enforcement then changes its legislation, I would not expect to see a huge increase in consumption overall. And when consumption does increase after legalisation, it's probably mainly due to people who always wanted to indulge but were wary of possible legal consequences and are now curious. This group is probably a) older and b) quite small. And quite a few will try recreational drugs but then not continue. The illegal market has reached a high level of sophistication. When people talk about the illegal trade, some people think that this the old picture of a dealer, selling products of questionable quality on street corners. Things have moved on from there - the street corner has blossomed into a full market which should warm the hearts of even the most ardent free marketeers. Here's what you can get in today's market: Safety and convenience. You don't have to go out. Or meet anyone. In December, in the UK, this is a definite plus. Quality Many of the products sold are made to legally defined standards - these are products that originate in countries where cannabis consumption is legal. Feedback on sales is an integral part of quality assurance and many illegal channels now offer this. In addition official testing documention is sometimes shown on the product pages. Of course, there's room for forgery here, but many of the custom,ers are experienced users over many years and decades. Flawed products are usually quite quickly identified. Pricing Often below that of legal sources. A reasonable price for a gram of flower is around £10, with significant discounts for greater quantities. You get colour photos of the product, with peer reviews from other purchasers. Many vendors will post a delivery the same day or next by recorded delivery. A comprehensive escrow system with dispute resolution is built into the process. Vendors offer all sorts of inducement - extra items for free, free stickers, dab tools or even chocolate bars are things that I've received. Confidentiality Use of BitCoin and no retention of personal information on market places. Of course, BitCoin isn't totally secure, but you do at least ensure that any purchases you make will take significant (and expensive) work to trace back. It's difficult to justify to law enforcement management that it's a useful piece of criminal work tracing a financial transaction involving 7g of cannabis flower (about £40-50 at current market rates) when the possession and consumption of that amount and type would probably not even result in a criminal prosecution anyway. So, if you have a requirement why not check out https://littlebiggy.net/link/JWzt5E In the interests of transparency, If you purchase using that link, I may get a small commission. This does not increase the price to you SmokingCaterpillar November 27 2024 06:00:00 PMIn my life, so far, I've had two LSD trips. I've talked about a sort of risk assessment that I do in order to decide whether a recreational drug is appropriate for me to take.
Here's my basic thoughts on LSD. By the way, I'm not saying that I assert that the contents of the table are true. They're my opinions and as such are probably wrong to some degree. But on the basis that it's best to do some risk assessment before doing anything risky, here it is. | Area | Measure | | Toxicity | Low | | Metabolic effects (heart rate, temperature etc) | Slight elevations, maybe arrhythmia | | Chemical addiction risk | None known | | Dependence rate | None known | | Entertainment potential | Very good | | Negative psychological effects | Some links to issues. But also frequent anecdotal evidence of benefits. |
So, I took 125 micrograms of LSD at around 8pm one evening. I went to bed, watched a bit of TV, has a couple of rips on a THC cartridge and waited for the fireworks. But I fell asleep, to wake some time later in the middle of an LSD trip. Never having experienced anything like that in my life. It was incredible. Intense open and closed eye visuals like nothing I had ever seen. But here's the thing. I knew I was in a trip and most of the time I was a spectator to my own trip, of that makes sense. And this leads me to believe that it's possibly the case that if you're going to take recreational drugs, wait till you're older. I helps to contextualise things. It's a bit like watching horror movies, Stay with me, I will make sense eventually. I think. When you're a child, watching scary movies can be really scary. Whereas as an adult, I can watch scary movies without being disturbed by them. (Usually, anyway). But why is this? It probably doesn't matter - it's the fact that it happens that is the salient point.
Some time into the trip (you'll understand if say that timescales are difficult to work with when tripping on LSD) I decided that I needed to pee. The problem that I had was that the bathroom was a trip across a landing then six or seven stairs to get to the door of the aforementioned. Well actually, even that wasn't the problem. I was inhabiting two worlds. On the one hand I was in the physical world with things like gravity, emulsion paint, furniture, doors, floors etc. But I was seeing pulsating walls, colours, writhing tentacles etc. Even in my brain, though, I knew a couple of things. Firstly, I didn't want to pee in my pants. Secondly, I formed the opinion that I couldn't trust that things I could see were actually there. So, I devised a strategy dredged up from my fire training as a merchant navy officer. I had a clear mental picture of the layout of where I was (the LSD didn't interfere with that). So I approached what I thought was a wall and tentatively reached out. A bit like a line from Chris McCausland. He is blind, and says that he's nervous about trying to pet animals, saying one end has teeth and the other end ejects faces regularly. In other words, he's cautious. Anyway, once I was on the wall, it was a simple task to navigate my way to the toilet. Urinating in the middle of an acid trip is not one of the things I ever thought I would be doing, but there we go. A bonus was that I didn't miss.
There was a short period during the trip when I became sure that I had been noticed tripping by the neighbours and they had called the police - it might have been an ambulance passing that triggered the slightly paranoid opinion. But once I processed the thought, which admittedly took a while as I recall dimly, I realised that this was not the case and that I should lie down in bed to let things settle around me. The feeling quickly passed.
Some people talk about psychedelic experiences as being spiritual. I think I understand. It's a roller coaster of the mind and takes (for me, anyway) more than a day to process the trip. Yes, it's spiritual, for me, but not in a religious sense - you can have a non-religious spiritual experience, I believe. Through the trip I was never far away from the fact that I was chemically hacking my brain and that what was experiencing was a direct consequence of that. And I won't be making the same mistake when taking my next dose of LSD. SmokingCaterpillar November 27 2024 06:00:00 AMI guess one problem with dying is that we're increasingly divorced from death and its processes.. Now the Victorians were much closer to the realities of death than we are. Funny, that, because we sometimes think of them as prudish and emotionally repressed.
In this picture below (from the BBC), the child on the left has died. But this is a family porttrait. This may seem ghoulish to our modern 21st century attitudes. But I think it's reasonable because in those times, many families had large numbers of children and many would die before their fifth birthday from diseases that are easily and effectively treated today.
I'm uneasy about one cohort of the population's attitude to assisted dying. That cohort says that assisted dying is unacceptable in any shape or form. While i respect yje holding of the opinion, I feel that I cannot agree with that position.
We know that palliative care is pretty good nowadays. When giving someone palliative care, there's an acceptance that there is no longer a reasonable prospect of curing someone of the condition that is killing them. We also assume (sometimes incorrectly) that palliative care is always effective in terms of pain relief.
But, here's the thing. I would assume that a person who believes that assisted dying is unacceptable will have considered the future possibility that they might have to look after a loved one who suffers from a painful life-threatening incurable condition.
It's reasonable that they might be unwilling to either assist their loved one to die or enlist the aid of a third party to assist. But their insistence that their attitude should extend to their idea that no form of assisted dying is acceptable at all seems to be morally weak. Because morality, surely, is about how you deal with other people.
Here's my thinking (for what it's worth) on the matter. Most of the time, we have a moral duty to be kind to people in need. This is a thread that runs through most moral codes, including religion. Surely alleviating suffering is mostly an act of kindness. If I have a loved one who is dying in a painful and distressing manner, how is it immoral to assist them in their final hours of their existence? Palliative care is available, of course, but its imperfections are often glossed over.
I want neither myself nor my loved ones to have to go through any of the experiences recounted in this publication. To me, there's a test by which I can solidify my attitude to assisted dying. I Imagine a loved one in the late stages of a disease such as bowel cancer. This can be extremely painful, undignified l and distressing, as we know. It is by no means uncommon for people with this condition to ask for assistance in ending their suffering. If you were in the position of being asked, why would you not want to help that person who so desperately needs it? If I helped them, I might feel bad. But not helping them would be much, much worse. Because I would always know that I failed them and my failure resulted in needless suffering.
Here's something that I found useful in helping to form my attitudes to assisted dying. Yes. It has several anecdotal pieces. While normally I would be dismissive of anecdotal evidence, here I felt differently. As I said at the beginning of this short essay,
Surely, when I come to the end of my life. It's all over. A few minutes, hours, days or weeks plus or minus really make no difference in the grand scheme of things. A tiny part of the universe is being rearranged. The atoms and molecules that make up the person known as me continue for eternity as far as we know. They will become part of someone or something else. Amusingly, by all accounts, I may well have a few atoms from Julius Caesar. Life is not sacred. It is a natural and normal progression of biological processes. There's nothing divine or mystical about it that I can see. Being alive is truly amazing especially as I seem to be conscious at a time when the universe itself is beginning to understand itself. 'Nuf said... SmokingCaterpillar November 25 2024 06:00:00 PMYou may have heard of 510 cartridges in the context of cannabis. I've written a piece about the CCell Palm Pro vaporiser here: 22112024134602SBOJ6C.htm, which uses 510 cartridges. This purpose of this piece is to lay out their constructions, purpose and use for people who may be new to this subject.
What is a 510 cartridge?
This is actually quite easy to explain. When vaping generally, there are four main components to consider. These are:
A tank to hold a liquid to be vaporised. This liquid can vary widely in its viscosity.
A wick to vaporise the liquid
A mouthpiece to allow vapour to be collected by the consumer
An electrical power source. This is a type of battery
A 510 cartridge integrates the first three of these.
The top portion, coloured white, is the mouthpiece. Depending on the way in which the cartridge is designed, it may be removable once only or many times. The central portion is where the cannabis oil is stored. Towards the bottom, you can see a couple of holes that allow the oil to flow into the wick. At the bottom, there's a threaded connector, the 510 thread. Now, this oil is very thick. Roughly similar to the viscosity of Tate and Lyle's Golden syrup when it's cold. The good news is that like Golden Syrup, cannabis oil's viscosity is inversely proportional to temperature - the warmer it gets, the easier it flows. Some 510 vapes like the CCell have a pre-heat feature. This activates the heating coil for a short period, about 10 seconds. This warms the surrounding oil and helps it to flow into the ceramic wick area. If the ambient temperature is over 20C, a pre-heat cycle isn't really needed in my experience. If you warm the oil to 30-40C, it's generally easy to work with when filling cartridges. That sort of temperature is not high enough (pun not intended, but I'll go with it) to affect the active ingedients.
One issue I have seen is clogging of the unit. Generally speaking with the CCell vape, this is fixed by running a couple of pre-heat cycles. If that still doesn't fix it, it might be that the clogging is in the mouthpiece. Removing it if possible and cleaning it out with an isopropyl soaked pipe cleaner works here. In my experience, the mouthpiece can get blocked with condensed oil. After all we are vaporising the oil at the bottom of the unit. By the time that vapour gets to the mouthpiece, it will have cooled significantly and will be starting to condense.
Why is is called a 510 cartridge?
Opinions on this differ somewhat, but a common one is that It's called a 510 cartridge because the thread at the bottom, which allows the cartridges to be connected to a power supply, has 10 threads, each 0.5mm apart. Seems reasonable to me, but then, it doesn't really matter overmuch as long as the standard is adhered to on a consistent basis.
Re-using 510 cartridges
There seem to be two classes of cartridges. some of them can be filled once - once the mouthpiece is snapped on, it cannot be removed without some degree of damage. Some of them are designed to be removed - generally they can be screwed on and off multiple tomes. If buying empty carts, I've found that generally, they are of the second class. You can indeed re-use 510 cartridges, though it's not entirely without problems. The first and foremost problem is the vaporiser. This will gradually degrade as it vaporises oil - the pores in the ceramic element will clog up, reducing the efficiency of the vaporiser and also the flavour of the delivered vapour. I have used carts twice with no apparent problem.
510 Cartridge sizes
510 cartridges (or 'carts') come in various sizes. The main ones are 0.5ml and 1.0ml. Though 0.8ml and 2.0ml units are available too, Some compact vaporisers like the CCell unit will only accept up to 1.0ml carts - 2.0ml carts have a slightly larger diameter than their smaller versions and won't fit into the cartridge dock of the CCell Palm Pro. When using cartridges, there's a bit of a trade-off. The larger the cart, the cheaper the oil by the millilitre. For example, two 0.5ml carts will cost more than one 1.0ml cart. If the cart fails for any reason, the only way you'll recover the oil is to empty the cartridge contents into another cartridge. That's fiddly and potentially messy. By splitting the risk between two cartridges, you tend to mitigate the risks. SmokingCaterpillar November 25 2024 06:00:00 AMAs a boy, I was brought up as a Roman Catholic. And I have read portions of the Bible. As a boy, I attended endless services, confessions, communions etc. But there was one ritual that even after fifty years, I still find incredible.
That's the kissing of a relic. A part of the saint in whose name the school I went to was was named.
So here's how it worked. Every year, on the feast day of that saint, the relic was brought up from wherever it was kept (I don't know to this day where that was) and installed into a monstrance.
Here's what that looks like when one is used to hold the eucharistic host, which is a wafer imbued with divine properties according to the church. The actual monstrance used in my experience would probably have been different, as I recall two trainee priests holding the monstrance between them so that . . .
Each boy would take the knee and kiss the relic as a sign of devotion.
To be fair, the relic was sealed in a red glass vial. Which made the contents difficult to discern. And it wasn't as gross as it could have been. The vial was wiped down with a linen cloth (snow white, of course. If there's one thing the catholic church is good at, it's snowy linen).
Each boy would take the knee and kiss the relic as a sign of devotion. Why do I suddenly think of virtue signalling?
But...
Since that time, there are a couple of questions that have come to my mind.
Firstly, how do we actually know that there is a piece of the saint in the glass vial? Allegedly, it was a fragment of his thigh bone. This is problematic. The provenance of the item, spanning centuries, isn't exactly a model of a chain of custody, is it? If the fragment of bone was analysed, we would possible find answers to these questions:
Is it human? We don't know that for sure, I guess. A piece of chicken beef or pork bone probably looks similar to human bone. I say probably, because I, like many people have never actually seen a human bone in real life.
Is it from the saint? Very difficult to be sure about this one, too.
And secondly here's the bigger problem that I have with it. What was this act of devotion supposed to achieve? Would god and the saint look favourably on me when I kissed the relic? And what would that mean for me? I just seems nonsensical to me that you would intercede with a god in order to get a special favour. That's the sort of thing I would associate with despots rather than gods.
So now we move on to the title of this essay.
Why do we worship gods at all?
To worship a god is irrational surely. Gods are only gods because we (humans) say so. It's a decision on our part to invent a god and the surrounding rituals in order to get to the final product. A religion. As far as I can see, religions are complete fictions . Created by men (in the 'vir' sense of the word) mainly for the benefit of men. Most religions, especially Judeo-Christian religions seem to treat women at best as second-class citizens and often with a great deal of patronising waffle. Christopher Hitchens said that it's fine for people to have religions as long as adherents don't force their beliefs onto others. He likened it to religious people having a set of toys representing their religion. By all means, he said, play with your toys. Just don't make me or my children play with them. Seems fair and rational to me.
At the heart of my issues with my relationship with a putative god is this. We should usually, whenever possible, attempt to deal with everything we can see in this universe in a rational manner. Surely it is irrational to worship a god and then expect nice things, sometimes completely against the normal workings of the universe that we observe to happen to us in return. Therefore a rational person does not worship any god.
Smoking Caterpillar November 24 2024 06:00:00 AMI suppose a reasonable definition of recreational drugs is any drug that you don't need to take for medical purposes. You take it because it feels good. I find that the morality of taking drugs is complicated and highly problematic. But I'm not going to talk about that now. The purpose of this post is to explore the types of substances that are available and my acceptance or rejection of certain substances. It isn't a case of me saying that these are good or bad choices. Just that there are choices. I try to explain my way of thinking about them. For better or worse.
Examples that I'll consider are coffee, alcohol, nicotine, heroin, solvents, mushrooms, LSD, cannabis.
All of these are drugs that humans take for recreational purposes. They vary in their effects and legality, but they all have their different risks, rewards and consequences. What I'll do below is describe the characteristics of each one of the drugs listed. This is really intended for people like me who have decided to use recreational drugs. Before taking any drug, I like to conduct a bit of a personal risk assessment. - it took me quite a while to work which drugs to use, where to get them and how to consume them. There are, of course, many more drugs than the ones I've listed. I'll add to them when and if I try them.
Coffee
I like coffee. A few years ago, I took an interest in espresso coffee and decided that I was going to make it at home. A La Pavoni Euro Piccolo bought second-hand on eBay (about £150, as I recall) and a Barazza grinder plus some Lavazza beans were acquired and fast forward to today. Caffeine seems to have little effect on me - by that I mean that it neither makes me hyper (I can drink espresso at night without affecting my sleep) nor so I get upset if I don't get a daily dose. I guess this is possibly down to genetics - it seams reasonable that one's genetic make-up is an important factor in determining whether something is individually addictive.
Nicotine
Like many of my contemporaries, I started smoking in the mid-60s or so. At that time, a majority of males smoked and smoking tobacco was deeply embedded in general society. My peers at school smoked; to smoke was therefore partly or even mostly an effort to be included in the 'in' crowd. Smoking was, naturally, against the school rules, but apart from one incident, I don't recall ever being disciplined for smoking. Once I left school, the habit stayed with me, as is to be expected, and I didn't manage to kick the habit until i was nearly 30, I reckon. The negative effects of tobacco smoking on the smoker and nearby people became more widely understood and the only reasonable course of action was to quit. Though it did take a few attempts. Interestingly, though I have on occasion had a few rips from a spliff, it's not kick started a renewed craving for tobacco.
Alcohol
As a young man in the seventies, I fell into regular alcohol consumption like many of my peers. It wasn't a conscious choice, I think, it was really because everyone in my social circles did it. I never drank by myself - drinking alcohol for me was usually triggered by social circumstances. Once my social circumstances changed, my consumption fell away and today I will only drink alcohol on an occasion basis and never more than one or two units at a time. The risks of alcohol consumption are getting clearer by the day and I'm glad that I don't have any problems with it. On a side note, drinks manufacturers seem to have cracked the taste problem with zero alcohol beers. The range of low and zero alcohol beers is pretty extensive and they're much improved from the original Kaliber (remember that?) and many of them are a perfectly good replacement for traditional alcoholic beers. Wine and cider, however, have a long way to go yet in my opinion.
Heroin
Definitely a no-no to me at the moment, However, this is a sort of bucket list item for me. If I'm ever in the situation where I know that have a few months to live, I'll probably take a shot at this. I mean, why not?
Cocaine
Like heroin, this is a final bucket list item. Again, why not?
Solvents
These don't do anything for me. They're probably better referred to as VOCs or Volatile Organic Compounds and include delicious things things like nail polish remover, glue and correction fluids. I think my dislike might hark back to my seagoing days. I spent quite a lot of time on a supertanker, the 6th largest ship in the world at the time. We carried 226,000 tonnes of crude oil from Ras Tanura to Europort in the Netherlands, going around the Cape of Good Hope - we were way too big for the Suez Canal. Crude oil contains all sorts of really nasty solvents and has a particular smell not easily forgotten.
Mushrooms
Ah. Now these are interesting. The thing about these is that they're just organisms. You just eat them. I have a lot of sympathy for magic mushrooms - they've been around for millions of years developing psilocybin only for us to say that eating them is illegal. What I'm interested by is the evolutionary pressures that led to them secreting psilocybin. Was it a defence mechanism of sorts or was it the opposite? To make them more attractive? More on these later.
LSD
Wow. Just wow. I'll expand on this later. For the moment, though, consider LSD as mushrooms on steroids when it comes to the experience.
Cannabis
Although I'm on the face of it a good candidate for cannabis use, I never got into it in my younger days. I was born in the early 50s so by the time Woodstock came around, I was just about an adult, legally speaking, if not in terms of maturity. In the merchant navy, drug taking (and here, I'm talking about cannabis only) was theoretically forbidden, In practice, though, as with many things in life, quite severe breaches of the rules were common. Essentially, as long as you weren't indulging either obviously or to the detriment of your duties, it was tolerated. However, there was a fairly distinct dividing line - cannabis use was much more common among 'below decks' seafarers and I only rarely saw it amongst the officers (I was a navigating officer). The crew quarters often has the unique aroma of weed hanging in the air, but as far as I know, no-one was ever disciplined for it. I remember one occasion when we were berthed in an African port (I forget which one) and a few of us bought some cannabis. We smoked it while sitting on the poop deck is plain view of anyone who cared to look - happily no-one was curious. I'd be a lot more circumspect nowadays. I don't remember any particular stoned effect - this may have been mainly because of the quality of the weed. I have a memory of it being enough to fill a half-pint glass and it containing seeds, leaves and stalks and probably insects - but not flower. The THC level was probably quite low too. After that, I didn't really try anything until a music festival in 2022, when I was nearly 70 years old. Now that was a thing...
MDMA
So. three of us, all family, decide that we're going to a music festival in the shadow of Jodrell Bank. The deal was that I provided a motorhome and others would would provide all the recreational substances apart from alcohol. We had spliff ingredients and some MDMA. It was an absolutely brilliant experience. I want to be clear about this. In my opinion, recreational drugs are brilliant if the circumstances are right. One was an experienced consumer, the other had tried many but wasn't a regular user and I was, relatively speaking, a novice. I had half a tab of MDMA (my first experience of this drug), had a few rips from a spliff, then went out to the music. Came back, has some more spliff, then went to sleep. It didn't really have a great deal of effect on me. The next morning, without a trace of grogginess, we chilled out till the afternoon, then took one full tab each, with plenty of spliff rips. For me, subjectively (and that is the important point) it was fantastic. It was as though my existing world view had dissolved and been replaced by . . . I really can't describe it. A visceral euphoria. Looking into a marble and seeing a whole universe. Cuddling a pillow and thinking it was the most amazing texture in the world. Finding the most inane subjects completely hilarious. Anyone who takes recreational drugs knows that it's very difficult, if not impossible, to put your experience into words. And the best thing? Next morning, a clear head, no upset stomach. I'll be clear about my opinion on this. If your life is measured in your experiences, this is an experience you should consider. It's not without risks, though, and these posts are an attempt to show how I approached the risks...
Just to be clear, I'm not encouraging the use of recreational drugs. But I'm also not trying to discourage them. What I am attempting to do is to lay out in an even-handed way the background, the way in which I conduct risk assessments and my experiences with recreational drugs. I will be opinionated, wrong, right, annoying, stupid and brilliant in hugely varying proportions. Consuming recreational drugs is risky in many ways but that in itself isn't a reason not to consider using them. Smoking Caterpillar November 22 2024 06:00:00 AMNow, the thing is, modern technology has come into the drug world and has transformed it. Sometimes for worse, but in my opinion, often for the better. The CCell Palm Pro is a good example of the level of sophistication that we're at in 2024.
It's tiny. You'll have to forgive my poor photography skills (I'm sure they will improve) but the shots do provide an idea of the scale, at least.
This unit retails for a bit over £30 (in 2024) and you can buy it on Amazon Prime in the UK. If you're new to recreational drugs, it's useful to remember that owning one of these units is not at all illegal. What is illegal is the possession and supply of controlled substances and I'm not necessarily encouraging that. It takes pre-filled cartridges (often called called 510 carts). The second photo shows the 510 cart with an adaptor (two are supplied with the vape). The adaptor is necessary because the cartridge comes with a 510 thread but the vape has a magnetic connection to the cartridge. It's convenient, but I'm not exactly sure why it's used. It doesn't seem too onerous a task to screw the 510 cart directly into the device. .
Incidentally, CCell not only manufactures the vape, they also manufacture 510 carts and have a good reputation for quality.
There's a USB-C on the bottom connector for recharging, some status lights and a membrane button for pre heat. There's no on/off switch. So, you may well ask how do you turn it on? Well, the answer is ingenious. You just draw on the mouthpiece. The device has a pressure switch that detects the reduction in air pressure when you draw and turns on the heating element in the cart. When you stop drawing, the pressure returns to normal and the device witches the heating element off. In my experience, you should draw in the same way as a cigarette - draw vapour into your mouth, then take that into your lungs.
The effect is almost instantaneous.
The thing is, you can't use standard e-cigarette vapes for cannabis oil. This is mainly because cannabis oil is very thick. Think Tate and Lyle's Golden Syrup as a rough equivalent. E-cigarette coils are built to handle a much thinner liquid and are apparently no good at all for cannabis oil.
Now, one nice features about this vape are it's so discreet. I have sat outside a bar in Salford with a pint and taken rips from one of these. No-one turned a hair. The vapour is not at all like the smell of spliffs, blunts or joints and dissipates rapidly. If you live in shared accommodation, it's entirely possible to use one of these in your bedroom without anyone else being aware - I have tested this and found it to be fine.
If you're interested, why not use this link? It won't make the item any more expensive and it will possibly give me a few pennies to put against the blog's admittedly modest running costs SmokingCaterpillar November 18 2024 02:03:12 PMAfter quite a bit of research (OK, I Googled it :), it seems to me that there's little, if any difference between cannabis flower obtained from either indica or sativa. Here's what Google Gemini thinks: The traditional distinction between the effects of sativa and indica cannabis strains—sativa being energizing and uplifting, and indica being relaxing and sedating—is largely not supported by scientific evidence. While there are some chemical differences between strains, these differences are not consistently linked to the purported effects. The effects a person experiences are much more influenced by: THC content: The higher the THC, generally the more intense the psychoactive effects (regardless of sativa or indica label). CBD content: CBD can counter some of the psychoactive effects of THC, leading to a less intense, possibly more balanced experience. Terpene profile: Terpenes are aromatic compounds that contribute to the flavor and aroma of cannabis and may also influence the effects. Different terpenes are associated with different effects (e.g., pinene for focus, linalool for relaxation). Individual tolerance: A person's prior experience with cannabis will significantly impact how they react to a given strain. Method of consumption: Smoking, vaping, edibles, and topicals all have different effects on onset and duration. Individual differences: Genetics, mood, environment, and expectations can all influence the experience. In short, while different strains may slightly vary in their chemical makeup, relying on sativa/indica distinctions to predict the effects is unreliable. It's far more helpful to pay attention to the specific reported effects and the overall cannabinoid and terpene profile of a particular product, rather than its broad sativa/indica categorization. A lab test showing the exact cannabinoid and terpene content is the most reliable guide. And also the difference between them: Sativa and indica are not distinct species, but rather subspecies of Cannabis sativa. The current scientific understanding is that the distinctions between sativa and indica are not as clear-cut as traditionally believed. Genetic analysis has shown a lot of overlap between strains traditionally classified as sativa and indica, and the observable morphological differences (plant structure) aren't always consistent with reported effects. Ultimately, the categorization is more of a historical convention than a scientific classification representing distinct species. We know that cannabis contains a wide variety of chemicals that combine to give us a high. This leads me to the conclusion that the effects of cannabis on an individual is dependent on a large number of variables. Quite apart from the chemical variables, there's also the psychological variables like set and setting, consumption rates, tolerance etc. Myself, I have never noticed any particular difference that I can detect. It seems likely that most, if not all perceived difference are down to placebo effects. Which seems reasonable. Of course a double-blind randomised trial would be interesting. November 17 2024 02:04:07 PM  | Alice in Wonderland. Of course. You may well remember this if you are of a certain age. Let's say around 70...
The line drawings have a charm and dream-like quality that fits well with the theme. The Caterpillar seems to be a complex character. A rather brusque and enigmatic character, he does at least engage with Alice, but is really quite absorbed in his own world.
To me, at least, he is one of the most engaging characters in the book. Whether or not Lewis Carroll was influenced by drugs himself seems unclear. Certainly, Carroll would have had access to opium, alcohol, cannabis and cocaine. Although not wealthy, strictly speaking, he would likely to have been able to purchase drugs and also would probably had access to drugs through social circles - he was a mathematics lecturer at Cambridge University, so it's reasonable to suppose that his social circles were fairly extensive. However, there's no evidence that Carroll took any recreational drugs at all. Some medicinal drugs may have had a psychedelic effect, but again, there's no evidence that he consumed anything for medicinal purposes.
My personal overview is that the Caterpillar is on his own journey. His first words to Alice are 'Who . . .Are . . . YOU?' He doesn't seem to be asking for his own purposes. Rather he is advising Alice to find out for herself who she is. Of course he's a little short-tempered. Look at it from his point of view. He's spent all lot of time pondering the meaning of life and then this rather annoying little girl comes along and expects to be given the secrets, or so it seems to the Caterpillar. Eventually, the Caterpillar wanders off and metamorphoses into a butterfly. Before he goes, though, he hints to Alice that one side of the mushroom (on which he is sitting) will make her taller, the other, shorter. It may seem to be unnecessary to have a portion of the mushroom make the consumer shorter when Alice is only three inches high (an ideal height according to the Caterpillar) but then as the story goes on, the reason why this is important becomes clear.
Do I think of myself as the Smoking Caterpillar?
Not at all really. He's way more intelligent than I am. But it's his chilled (stoned?) attitude plus the fact that he's surrounded by recreational drug accoutrements that makes him a suitable mascot. So I'll be talking about life, death, drugs, philosophy and many other things. If you find what I have to say useful or diverting, great. If not, there's plenty of other places - as I get older I care less and less about whether people take an interest in what I have to say. In fact, as one becomes older, it's wonderful how liberating one's increasing irrelevance to society can be. | |
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