beyond the edge

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I'd really like to see people's opinions on this case, preferably from a medical point of view rather than a social issue.

The discussion we've come across in class is more or less limited to palliative care, where marijuana has been proposed as an alternative to existing painkillers for those in end stage disease. Given that most painkillers available are in fact derivatives of morphine and that heroin falls under this umbrella, the risk balance that cannabis has is probably not all that different.

Morphine/opioids are extremely addictive, some variants in some people can produce euphoric and/or dysphoric moods, and it carries the risk of fatal overdose. The advantages that morphine has over marijuana is that at the moment it's considered to be more reliable, it has a much stronger analgesic effect, and that it doesn't produce hallucinations. Presumably as a carry-on effect, marijuana is associated with psychotic illnesses, particularly schizophrenia, although it seems the jury is still out on which is the chicken and egg in this case.

The impression I got of marijuana is that it's much more a mood-altering drug rather than a strong analgesic, it's a "feel good" drug in the palliative care setting for people who don't have much left to feel good about. Marijuana is also known as one of the few illicit substances that you can't fatally overdose on, although that side effect of morphine is obviously useful in managing terminal diseases by inducing coma in patients who are otherwise in constant excruciating pain.

There's a limited number of studies on the use of cannabis as a therapeutic agent. Ones I've seen include the effect of smoked cannabis in HIV patients with chronic pain, cannabanoid extracts in MS patients with spasticity, and biological studies in rats mimicking neuropathic pain (can't be treated with standard painkillers). Obviously it's not exhaustive, but the general impression is that they all showed some benefits but seemed to be careful about recommending it for common use. There are also a lot of reviews that say there is no use for it as a new entry into the analgesia category as existing analgesics do the same job, if not better and more reliably. On the other hand, almost all reviews I've so far clearly have their own opinions and the information they present do not seem objective.

I don't want to open the can of worms around the issue of decriminalising marijuana for social use, even if - as many people pointed out - two of the biggest risk factors and direct causes of illness and death (as well as social problems) in our society are our two big legal drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

A number of US states have legalised marijuana for medical use. Does anyone know what the situation here in Australia is?



Randomly: I love Cheshire cat ♥ That is all I have to say about Alice in Wonderland today.

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I would say Twilight except I actually spent most of the movie sniggering in amusement so in a way it provided me with a lot of entertainment and perhaps wasn't, therefore, the worst movie since movies are by convention a form of entertainment.............................?




Anyway, after three full days, finally got the Chinese subs for YamaNade. I didn't realise that the one I watched on Tudou was the TVBT subs until I downloaded the TVBT subs and was like "hey the translation is exactly the same!"

Thanks to the Chinese government's sudden enthusiasm in "cracking down on copyrighted material", most of the Chinese bittorrent sites either shut down, went underground or are frantically changing IPs to avoid detection. The real reason is probably because BT makes it harder to trace the sharers and to completely eradicate the files, hence a lot of politically sensitive material are also shared on BT.

As soon as the order came out, TVBT closed public access to its subbing forum, and the other major Japanese drama subber, SUBPIG, began to provide backup addresses. SUBPIG's two original addresses were banned in the last month, so it's now serving from www.subpig.net. Whether it's as a result of the ban or because of a sense of complacency now that most of its rivals have gone underground, SUBPIG's releases have been a lot slower lately.

The happy thing is, both these groups are also on GoGoBox, a Taiwanese derivative of the Korean downloading client Clubbox. So even though TVBT has restricted its account registrations and you can't view its subbing forum, they're still hosting their releases on GGbox. The uploads to GGbox tend to be a day later than BT and the download speed limited to about 35kbs (although I've rarely been able to get above 20kbs), but on the other hand, the download speed stays reliably constant and isn't dependent on the number of seeds.

Of course, people are still uploading the releases of both groups onto streaming sites like Tudou, so if you're happy to wait an extra day after the BT releases, the streaming files are usually available by then.



So...after rewatching YamaNade with subs...I have to conclude it's funnier than without subs Orz <-- listening skills FAIL

But Sunako seems to be a lot more submissive? One of the funny parts in the manga was how Sunako and Kyouhei would always have a catfight over every silly little thing and were competitive about incredibly childish things. I hope they don't cut that bit out =0= The thing I felt from the Kyouhei/Sunako relationship in the manga was that there wasn't much romantic chemistry, but there was a lot of camaraderie, which would be lost if they stopped at the similarity in their complexes about their own appearance. It would also, hopefully, negate Kame's negative onscreen chemistry with girls >_>;

First episode rating was supposedly 12.1, which is very much average for the time slot.

Firstly, I thought I'd do this:
[Error: unknown template qotd]Haro!!! I WANT a Haro~! I want a BLACK one. I want a real one that goes "Haro~ Haro~" and jumps up and down and rolls around looking stupid XDDD

So anyway, because I got home and came to be in an incredibly foul mood on Friday night, I drew this:


I know...I draw happy pictures when I'm pissed off. LOL. The sketch was a 40-minute job, so yeah...I didn't even bother drawing the clothes properly. But this is one of my favourite characters ♥ I should draw him more often XD

After I scanned this picture I found out that because my laptop Bluescreen™ed several times, Photoshop insists that I have to reactivate it. Grr.

So this was coloured in OpenCanvas, which I would use more often if only I figured out how to do a channel mask in it. I also don't like its colour picker as much as I do for PS, which makes for a double frustration when my laptop LCD is pretty unreliable - especially when it comes to choosing skin tones. It always ends up either too pink or too yellow or - on a very bad day - too green. OC has a cooler brush system though I don't use it nearly enough to know which ones I want to use. I end up just using the oil marker because that gives me consistent solid colours LOL.

Merry Christmas~ I'm exactly one month late! XD


(PS: I can't believe channel 7 put on the bloody NEWS right in the middle of the Federer vs Berdych match!!! When he was down 2-1!!!! ARGGH. Me and my friend had to watch Federer win that fourth set by watching the live scoreboard on the AusOpen website Orz. At least Fed finally got back on form in the 5th set and breezed through it like he usually does.)

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Since I saw this, I thought I might as well answer it...

Someone who can teleport me off the island, DUH.

Failing that, maybe a wild child like Gon (Hunter x Hunter) so I don't have to worry about food.....muahahaha.

Seriously, survival above all else!


I had a dream this morning, most of which I can't remember, except this bit where I was standing on top of a hill (in the middle of a quiet street) and the sky was all milky white because of a thick fog. The sun was reduced to a distant orange disk, and the sky behind the fog a beautiful gradient of all the colours of the rainbow. I ran to my house to get the camera, but after I came back out, most of the fog had dissipated and the sky was back to normal again =( Damn. Missed photo opportunity.


Because I've been told that my "lines have no volume", I spent the last few days inking a few pictures more carefully than I usually bother with. I rarely ink my pictures ==; I tend to just colour the pencil sketch in photoshop.

( Random androgynous androgyne )
I think it's more a girl than a guy. Well, if it's a guy then it's a very pretty guy ==;;; If it's a girl then it's a very 帥氣 girl...LOL. It's a bit of a different style to what I usually draw hrm. What have I been reading recently? (Can't remember)

Oh yeah, it's actually inked with a blue felt-tip pen this time, so...not photoshopped! I swear even though both the black and blue pens are "0.4 tips", the blue one is a lot runnier and gets soaked into the paper faster ==;;;

( Random dressed up model? )
She looks very...umm, Caucasian?

Since credit must go where credit is due, that watch I copied off the Chanel website. No, it does not mean I'm an avid fan of brand names now (although that product series had some very pretty things LOL). Tried to find a good reference for the gown and hair as well, but in the end had to make them up ~~;;;