Pot & Potted Pot - The Electricty Leakage Must Have Been Terrrible!

Well, Dave, we've certainly been busy!

I found the British study to be underwhelming too. Consider this from a 1968 report from the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence: "we think that the dangers of its [marijuana's] use as commonly accepted in the past and the risk of progression to opiates have been overstated, and that the existing criminal sanctions intended to curb its use are unjustifiably severe." I'm sure with little effort I could turn up equally old and salient assessments for other scourges on the Lancet list. Thank god for the Dutch!

I'm afraid I stand in opposition to you on Sydney's decision to "go dark." I feel that no matter how "overstated" the goal is the cause justifies any amount of alarmism. Elecricity leakage is a serious issue simply because, in the aggregate it amounts to considerable. A huge amount of waste? No, not relatively speaking, but:

"The average U.S. home has about 50 watts of standby. This corresponds to 5% of the home's total electric bill.
There are over 100 million homes in the U.S., so standby consumes roughly 5GW. After accounting for transmission and distribution losses and generation reserves, standby is responsible for about 8 GW. This corresponds to the output of 8 large power plants. The true consumption is probably closer to twice this number because the commercial and industrial sectors also have equal amounts of equipment with standby."

Besides, the US is far more guilty than Sydney when it comes to to governments imposing energy saving measures - just think of the new Daylight savings legislation, one of who's main justifications is the conservation of energy...

On a final note, the story of the Encinitas guy is AWESOME! The thing that strikes me is how industrious he must be to build such a complex. Obviously he could not have had too much help because of the illicit (non-permitted) nature of his project (no construction company installed that elevator. Why didn't he use stairs?) and, as a result, must have profound technical and carpentry skills to pull off such a massive project. This guy should be working for a construction company, not rotting in jail. Then again, if he wanted to work for a construction company he probably wouldn't have decided to erect a house with a hidden elevator to harvest pot in massive underground chambers. Cool! By the way, did you catch the fact that Andrews and his accomplices pleaded not guilty!