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Wiz Khalifa On The First Time He Smoked Weed
Joe | Apr 25, 2013 | Comments 0
Rap superstar Wiz Khalifa recently appeared on Big Boy in The Morning on Power 106 FM in Los Angeles, and he was asked about his first time smoking marijuana.
As is the case with many people who try cannabis for the first time, Wiz did not have a good experience; in fact, he says it was “terrible.” There is simply no way to describe to someone the trip they may about to embark on. Wiz certainly sounds like he wasn’t ready to be high.
But like a lot of people who try marijuana, Wiz also wasn’t ready to give up on Mary Jane. Once you know what is coming, smoking marijuana is one of the most enjoyable experiences known to human kind. The anxiety that comes with the unknown is gone; it is replaced by the wonderment of an open and expanding mind.
Many first-timers also experience the opposite of what Wiz did, myself included. I remember being a very excited 17-year-old who was very disappointed when I felt nothing that first time. But the next night I gave the same batch of ganja another try and well, the rest is history.
I guess the same can be said about Wiz, as it can about millions of other people in the United States alone: we love you Mary Jane.
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Rhode Island Opens First Medical Marijuana Dispensary
Rhode Island, the second New England state to permit the sale of medical marijuana, opened its first dispensary on Friday.
Located on in Providence, the Thomas C. Slater Compassion Center 
will initially sell marijuana cultivated by growers participating in the state’s medical marijuana program; however, it plans to begin growing its own medicine to sell as soon as possible.
The state will likely add more dispensaries in the coming months in Warwick and Portsmouth.
For First Time, Pain ‘Signature’ Spotted on Brain MRIs
Scientists could distinguish physical from emotional pain, discomfort in study
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, April 10 (HealthDay News) — For the first time, scientists say they’ve found evidence that physical pain may leave a distinct “signature” in the brain that can be picked up with specialized MRI scans.
The study looked only at short-term pain in healthy people, but researchers hope the findings will lead to better understanding of complex conditions such as chronic severe headaches or fibromyalgia.
When researchers exposed healthy volunteers to a painful dose of heat, it left a reliable pattern of brain activity that could be viewed on functional MRI (fMRI) — a type of imaging that charts changes in blood flow through the brain.
That so-called “neurologic signature” was able to predict people’s subjective pain ratings with more than 90 percent accuracy, and it distinguished heat-induced pain from other feelings — like warmth, and even emotional pain.
Experts said the findings, reported in the April 11 New England Journal of Medicine, hint at a way to objectively measure people’s pain. Right now, that’s done subjectively — often, by having patients rate their pain on a scale of 1 to 10.
But the point is not to catch patients in a lie, stressed lead researcher Tor Wager, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
“This is not a pain lie-detector test, and it should not be used that way,” Wager said. “People in pain need to be believed.”
A pain expert not involved in the study agreed, but said objective measures might be useful in getting more information. “There are times when a patient isn’t able to communicate about pain effectively — for example, after a stroke,” said Dr. Jing Wang, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at NYU Langone Medical Center, in New York City.
In other cases, patients’ descriptions of their pain might not be completely reliable, such as when they have a mental illness. Both Wang and Wager said it would be helpful to have a way to complement patients’ pain reports with an objective measure — which in many cases might suggest that patients are in more pain than they are letting on, or in more pain than a doctor believes.
“We know that right now many people have their pain undertreated,” Wager noted.
But scientists are a long way from using fMRI scans to gauge pain, according to Wang at NYU. “This is a comprehensive, meticulous study,” he said, but added that it’s also an early step.
One big caveat is that the study volunteers were all healthy and exposed to just one type of pain — short-lived pain from heat applied to the skin. Wang said researchers need to see whether this same brain “signature” would appear in people with chronic pain conditions, or pain after surgery, for example.
Mali to give France new camel after first one is eaten
French President Francois Hollande delivers a speech during a ceremony for outgoing Louvre Museum Director Henri Loyrette (unseen) at the Louvre museum in Paris April 9, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Christophe Ena/Pool
BAMAKO/PARIS |
BAMAKO/PARIS (Reuters) – Malian authorities will give French President Francois Hollande another camel after the one they gave him in thanks for helping repel Islamist rebels was killed and eaten by the family he left it with in Timbuktu, an official in Mali said.
A local government official in northern Mali said on Tuesday a replacement would be sent to France.
“As soon as we heard of this, we quickly replaced it with a bigger and better-looking camel,” said the official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
“The new camel will be sent to Paris. We are ashamed of what happened to the camel. It was a present that did not deserve this fate.”
Hollande was presented with the camel when he visited Mali in February several weeks after dispatching French troops to the former colony to help combat al Qaeda-linked fighters moving south from a base in the north of the country.
The president joked at the time about using the camel to get around traffic-jammed Paris. But he chose in the end to leave it with a family in the town on the edge of the Sahara desert.
Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was tasked with giving Hollande regular updates on the camel’s status and had to inform him of its death last week, French media said.
“The news came in from soldiers on the ground,” said a French government official.
French leaders have received many gifts of exotic or wild animals from Africa and further afield over the years.
Last week, a robber chainsawed a tusk off the skeleton of an elephant offered to Louis XIV by a Portuguese king in 1668. Police caught the robber as he fled, tusk under his arm.
(Reporting by Adama Diarra in Bamako and Brian Love in Paris; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
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FDA Approves Invokana – First in New Class of Type 2 Diabetes Drugs
FRIDAY March 29, 2013 — The first in a new class of type 2 diabetes drugs was approved Friday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Invokana (canagliflozin) tablets are to be taken, in tandem with a healthy diet and exercise, to improve blood sugar control in adults with type 2 diabetes.
Invokana belongs to a class of drugs called sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors. It works by blocking the reabsorption of glucose (sugar) by the kidney and increasing glucose excretions in urine, the FDA said in a news release.
“We continue to advance innovation with the approval of new drug classes that provide additional treatment options for chronic conditions that impact public health,” Dr. Mary Parks, director of the division of metabolism and endocrinology products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in the news release.
About 24 million Americans have type 2 diabetes, and it accounts for more than 90 percent of diabetes cases diagnosed in the United States, the FDA said. If blood sugar levels are not carefully controlled, there is an increased risk for serious complications, including heart disease, blindness, and nerve and kidney damage, the agency added.
The FDA approval is based on the findings of nine clinical trials involving more than 10,000 patients. Patients who took the drug showed improvement in hemoglobin A1c levels (a measure of blood sugar control) and fasting blood sugar levels.
Invokana should not be used by people with type 1 diabetes or people with type 2 diabetes who have increased ketones in their blood or urine (diabetic ketoacidosis), severe kidney disease, kidney failure or who are on dialysis, the FDA said.
The agency told drug maker Janssen Pharmaceuticals that it must conduct five post-approval studies of the drug to determine the risk of problems such as heart disease, cancer, pancreatitis, liver abnormalities and pregnancy complications.
The most common side effects of Invokana are vaginal yeast infections and urinary tract infections. It may also cause dizziness and fainting.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about type 2 diabetes.
Posted: March 2013
Unless it was a very large family in Timbuktu, it will take a long time to eat a camel. Unless it was a very small one but surely this would be a poor gift in the first place.
Mali will give him a bigger and better one as soon as it is eaten, and to make sure he doesn’t give it away before returning to France, they will send it to Paris.
What a very desirable gift; good for the Malian government.