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Ok, this is about a news item I heard on KRAK radio out of Sacramento, Ca. Roseville is a town linked to Sac and actually part of it physically but is a separate township. Roseville is paying people to eliminate their grass because of water considerations, either take up your grass and put down mulch(which the city will supply if you wish)or artificial turf. I didn't hear all the details but I think it is laughable that they are screaming about CO2(and the Sacramento Bee is one of the biggest screamers)causing global warming but at the same time you are...

The modernized America we know today is largely dominated by suburbs, the perfect mix of city and ranch, commonly on the outskirts of cities. Its not the stacked to Timbuktu apartments like in New York, Kansas City, and Chicago, but its not the "home on the range" sort of thing. We know the modern suburb as nicely assorted houses, separated by lush, thick, dark green lawns, that are neatly cut every weekend. We know them with the smell of barbeque every Sunday after the residents have come home from Church. Its these modern American paradises that house the factory-workers, the...

GRASS LAKE TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) - State police say they found about 1,200 pounds of marijuana in a tractor-trailer they were inspecting near Grass Lake.

Hello Hank Hill, propane and propane accessories. Not really. I would like to have a discussion about my lawn, though. Maybe just lawn mower talk in general. I have recently moved into a new house. The yard is very well groomed...moreso than I am used to. I am used to mowing patches of grass and weedeating a little and being done. This new yard is one of those "yard of the week" type yards. The people that owned it before me took pride in their gardening and obviously just enjoyed doing it. The grass is very lush and thick, although...

Hippies still trying to ruin the country By Jenean Mcbrearty CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST America won't win another war until the 1960s flower children are pushing up petunias. Radicalized, the flower children morphed into lefty loonies who now masquerade as social progressives. No matter what they rename themselves, however, their agenda hasn't changed. They still want utopia, and it wouldn't be worth mentioning except that their naivetŽ has aged into a persistent denial of reality that may have devastating consequences. For example, consider their continued belief that America's armed forces are neo-Nazi stormtroopers who delight in burning babies to further the aims...

IN MEMORY OF JOACHIM FEST The Proud Loner By Matthias Matussek Joachim Fest has died. The author of a best-selling biography of Adolf Hitler and former editor of the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has left an impressive life's work - one of the most important to be produced in Germany since 1945. Fest's memoirs "Not Me" are a masterpiece. They tell the story of a family that refused to bow to the pressures of history and society. Now he has lost his battle against illness after all. Joachim Fest had to muster the last of his strength to complete...

I can't cut my grass because there's about a million wasps (or something like wasps) flying around at ground level. What are they looking for and how can I get rid of them?

Gdansk councillors will not strip Grass of city honors 31.08.2006 The Gdansk city council has decided not to strip German writer Guenter Grass of his honorary Gdansk citizenship after hearing his letter explaining his membership in the notorious Waffen SS at the end of World War II. But local councilors of the ruling Law and Justice, who were for such a move, want to invite the writer to attend the nearest city council meeting. They argue Grass should personally explain to the people of Gdansk why he had hidden the truth for such a long time. They prepared an appeal...

Gdansk residents declare understanding for Grass 21.08.2006 The mayor of Gdansk has said that the wartime service of Guenther Grass in a Waffen SS unit cannot overshadow the writer’s merits. Pawel Adamowicz has repeatedly declared that the city authorities do not intend to strip the Nobel prize laureate of his honorary Gdansk citizenship, though the issue is still to be officially decided on by the City Council. Speaking for Polish Radio, mayor Adamowicz quoted a just conducted opinion poll on the matter among the city’s residents. 72% of respondents voiced the opinion that the council members should not motion for...

Dear Günter Grass, First: why an open letter? I have never written one before, whereas you have written dozens. You are, so to speak, Europe's leading man of open letters. I admit that the idea of turning the tables on you did appeal to me. But there is another, more personal reason for my decision to address you in this way. In a newspaper interview about your autobiography, "Peeling the Onion," you have admitted after 60 years, that you belonged to the Waffen SS. I want to make you aware of my feeling of betrayal — a feeling I believe...

Nobel laureate's memoirs sell out after SS confession By Lee Glendinning and agencies The publishers have brought forward the release date and German bookshops are struggling to keep up supplies. Such is the demand for Gunter Grass's autobiography, which has stunned Germany with revelations that the Nobel-prize winning novelist once served in Hitler's Waffen SS as a teenager. Grass, 78 - regarded by many as Germany's moral arbiter - recounted the secret shame that has weighed upon him for decades following his involvement in the elite military force, in a pre-publication interview with a German newspaper last weekend. His admissions...

Poland's Walesa says Grass owes Poles explanation By Natalia Reiter REUTERS 8:58 a.m. August 18, 2006 WARSAW – Polish Solidarity hero Lech Walesa urged German author Guenter Grass on Friday to prove that a confession about his membership in Hitler's SS was not just a marketing ploy to promote his new novel. The former Polish president also said he would give up his honorary citizenship of Poland's city of Gdansk, if Grass, also a holder of the same title, failed to explain why he decided to confess when his autobiography 'Peeling Onions' came out. 'If Grass will not address his...

Jewish leader criticizes Grass 2 hours, 11 minutes ago BERLIN - The head of Germany's main Jewish organization has criticized writer Guenter Grass for waiting decades to reveal that he had served during World War II in the Waffen-SS, the Nazis' dreaded military force. Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews, said Tuesday that the admission negated Grass' longtime criticisms of German politics and society for not adequately dealing with the Nazi past. "His long years of silence over his own SS past reduce his earlier statements to absurdities," Knobloch was quoted as saying by the Netzeitung online...

Walesa wants Grass to give up Gdansk honorary citizenship after SS admission By: The Canadian Press at 21:42 on August 13, 2006, EST. BERLIN (AP) - Nobel peace laureate Lech Walesa wants German novelist Guenter Grass to give up his honorary citizenship of the Polish city of Gdansk after admitting that he served during World War II in the Waffen-SS, a German newspaper reported Sunday. Grass, 78, revealed in a weekend newspaper interview that he was called up at age 17 to a division of the combat arm of Adolf Hitler's dreaded paramilitary forces. Asked why he was making the...

Nobel prize winner Grass admits serving in Nazi SS Fri Aug 11, 2006 8:37 PM BST BERLIN (Reuters) - Nobel prize-winning German author Guenter Grass has admitted for the first time that he served in the Waffen-SS, Adolf Hitler's elite Nazi troops. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Grass, 78, said he volunteered for submarine service towards the end of World War Two. He was called up instead to serve in the Waffen-SS in the eastern city of Dresden. The author, best known for his first novel "The Tin Drum" and an active supporter of Germany's Social Democratic...

Escaped golf-course grass frees gene genie in the US 09 August 2006 Andy Coghlan A nondescript grass discovered in the Oregon countryside is hardly an alien invasion. Yet the plant - a genetically modified form of a grass commonly grown on golf courses - is worrying the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) enough that it is running its first full environmental impact assessment of a GM plant. It is the first time a GM plant has escaped into the wild in the US, and it has managed it before securing USDA approval. The plant, creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera, carries a...

WADSWORTH, Ohio - Firefighters dousing a fire in a new home were confused when the man they thought was the owner suddenly left — until they found $700,000 worth of marijuana plants in the basement, officials said...

Bush: Freedom is Nukes, Grass and Rocks

NASA Earth Observatory has this neat graph of the lawn area in the United States. It's a very close match to the "night light" image made a couple of years ago. I linked the little picture below to the bigger one (which is only 380 K). Click on the link for the accompanying article. Yann-Arthus Bertrand took this impressive photograph of the "crater lake" inside the caldera from the Pinatubo eruption of 1991:

Parents are smoking dope with their kids. What are they thinking? MARNI JACKSON "It was a little weird, seeing my parents stoned," Tom confesses. The Toronto high school student was describing the first time he'd smoked marijuana -- at home last spring, just after turning 17, when he shared a joint with his hard-working, middle-class parents. "But I had an amazing, fantastic connection with my dad, and it was a good experience for all of us. They showed me how to take the seeds and stems out of the pot. Then, basically, we ate. My mom ordered sushi, and we...

“Cannabis is still seen as a risk-free drug despite mounting evidence that it can lead to serious mental health problems, particularly amongst young teenagers, people with a family history of severe mental illness and in long-term users.” The charity called for the money to be spent on a massive public education campaign to inform users and potential users of the well-founded mental health dangers of using cannabis at a young age and over a long period of time. Rethink chief executive Cliff Prior told the committee: “Cannabis is still seen as a risk-free drug despite mounting evidence that it can...

Aug 22, 7:08 PM (ET) TOWSON, Md. (AP) - Armed with a tape measure, Sophia Jennings keeps her eyes open for overgrown weeds and the owners of the yards that have them. Jennings, a Baltimore County code enforcement officer, checks on residents who are not in compliance with rules about overgrown lawns. In most area jurisdictions, letting grass grow more than a foot high, or 8 inches in Baltimore city, is against the law. In some jurisdictions, the grass "cops" come in the form of code enforcement officers. In others, public works officials or environmental health workers are assigned to...

Several grass fires have been reported along Highway 61 and Interstate 80 from Clinton to Davenport. Be aware of some traffic trouble spots along these two major roadways, as police are blocking one lane of traffic to get the area fire departments to the area of concerns. We will continue to update this story and have the latest for you on the KWQC-TV6 News at 5pm.

This came to me today via email. I thought it was very interesting. (The text of the email follows.) A friend of mine was raising Wheat Grass and decided to try an experiment that anyone can duplicate with relative ease. She had three trays of Wheat Grass. Tray A: She prayed for and sang to and had nothing but good things to say about. Tray B: She spoke to in the same manner that her grandmother addressed her as a child. This amounted to incessant criticism, shame and blame. To make it even more realistic she had to curse the...

Cannabis use rises tenfold among children THE number of schoolchildren using cannabis has increased more than 10 times since 1987, according to a study of 350,000 teenagers to be published this week. The research also shows that some 7% of 12 to 13-year-old boys and 6% of girls have taken the drug. The soaring rise in the use of cannabis by children will fuel calls for a change in the legal status of the drug after it was downgraded from class B to class C last year when David Blunkett was home secretary. In March, Charles Clarke, Blunkett’s successor, asked...

AVALON, Calif. - A species of grass not seen since 1912 has been discovered growing on Santa Catalina Island off the Southern California coast, botanists say. The plant, California dissanthelium, had long been thought extinct until a botanist recently spotted the wispy, 7-inch-tall tufts while hiking in Cottonwood Canyon. "I saw a little grass, and I thought, 'Hmm, that doesn't look familiar,'" said Jenny McCune, an assistant plant ecologist for the Catalina Island Conservancy. McCune found the grass on March 30 in an area of the canyon hit by fire two years ago. Scientists confirmed the plant's identity last month....

Cops: Man Tries to Pay for Pizza With Pot N.D. Man Allegedly Assaults Pizza Delivery Driver Who Refused to Take Marijuana As Payment The Associated Press FARGO, N.D. May 1, 2005 — Police arrested a 21-year-old man early Saturday after he allegedly assaulted a pizza delivery driver who refused to take marijuana as payment for a pie, police said. The man, charged with robbery, was released from the Cass County Jail after posting $5,000 bond. Pizza Patrol driver Atif Yasin thought the man was asleep when he arrived to deliver a medium pizza and 20-ounce soda. After knocking a few times and...

Grow grass, not for fun but for fuel. Burning grass for energy has been a well-accepted technology in Europe for decades. But not in the United States.Yet burning grass pellets as a biofuel is economical, energy-efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable, says a Cornell University forage crop expert. This alternative fuel easily could be produced and pelleted by farmers and burned in modified stoves built to burn wood pellets or corn, says Jerry Cherney, the E.V. Baker Professor of Agriculture. Burning grass pellets hasn’t caught on in the United States, however, Cherney says, primarily because Washington has made no effort to...

AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE 12-05-04 To those who support our constitutionally limited “Republican Form of Government“, Raich v. Ashcroft is not about “medical Marijuana” but rather, the case presents a chance to correct a despotic decision made by the SCOTUS in 1942 concerning Congress’ power to regulate commerce in which the Court gave a new meaning to the word “commerce” in order to allow part of FDR’s NEW DEAL socialism [price controls] to pass as being constitutional, when it was not. The following article is worth reading, and can be found at findlaw.com.The Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument on a...

One last update from our grass roots movement to inform America about the real John Kerry. We have a volunteer who is a 30 year veteran of the Marine Corps out in the Los Angeles area going door-to-door through out his neighborhood delivering the flyer from http://www.notjohnkerry2004.com/ and so far he has collected just about every KerryEdwards yard sign at the homeowner's request. From another veteran in Oregon, "I've printed out 1,000's of the flyers that you sent to me and have been distributing it all over the place around here. It works! Thanks!!!"

Medical Pot Not Up To Snuff Unless the government learns to grow better dope, a proposal to distribute Health Canada marijuana in pharmacies will go up in smoke, say local medical marijuana advocates. "They have to improve their product or this project isn't going to go anywhere at all," said Fred Pritchard of Windsor's marijuana compassion club. "I can't believe the government pushes this garbage on sick people. We're going to make them sicker." A 43-year-old Windsor woman authorized to smoke pot for medical reasons said she became sick after trying the Health Canada weed last fall and sent it...

COCHISE COUNTY - The erratic driving of a garbage truck led to the arrest of two men for transporting and possessing more than two tons of marijuana. Arizona Department of Public Safety Sgt. Steve Tritz said he was suspicious of the truck as he followed it beginning near Ramsey Road and Highway 92 around 4 p.m. Tuesday. "It got my attention," Tritz said. "He was driving slow and failing to signal." As Tritz watched, the driver pulled the garbage truck off the road and watched traffic go by. "I normally don't get involved in traffic stops," said Tritz, a DPS...

A man of 36 is believed to have become the first person in Britain to die directly from cannabis poisoning. Lee Maisey smoked six cannabis cigarettes a day for 11 years, an inquest heard. His death, which was registered as having been caused by cannabis toxicity, led to new warnings about the drug, which is due to be reclassified this month as a less dangerous one. "This type of death is extremely rare," Prof John Henry, a toxicologist at Imperial College, London, said after the inquest at Haverfordwest, west Wales. "I have not seen anything like this before. It corrects...

<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- A man going through a courthouse metal detector emptied his pockets, tossing a small bag of marijuana into the security tray.</p> <p>When Clyde Lamar Pace II realized what he had done, he tried to flee. But he ran the wrong way from Polk County deputies into a locked revolving door.</p>

CREDIT: Jonathan Hayward, The Canadian Press Don Appleby died of his injuries suffered in an Oct. 12 explosion while he was trying to make a concentrated oil using marijuana and butane. Don Appleby's fight against the aids virus that was sapping him was made more difficult by a tragic paradox. While the Ottawa man was one of the few Canadians who could legally smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes, he could rarely afford it due to his minuscule disability pension. In the end, he was killed in the struggle to produce the drug that was helping him survive. On Oct. 12,...

<p>ESSEX -- The residents of Weed Road in Essex are angry. You just might have a hard time finding them to ask why. The street signs at both ends of Weed Road have been stolen at least five times this summer. Police are investigating the incidents, as well as other cases of stolen and damaged markers around town. Missing and damaged signs threaten public safety and cost the town money, said Todd Law, assistant director of the Public Works Department.</p>

A fast-growing marsh grass cropping up on the shores of San Francisco Bay looms as one of the nastiest invaders ever to hit the tidelands, experts and government officials say. Introduced innocently in the 1970s to check erosion in the southern reaches of the bay, the grass is building toward a growth explosion that threatens to choke much of the bay unless landowners join to stop it, say officials and researchers studying the problem. Wetlands experts working with the California Coastal Conservancy are leading a campaign to stamp out the existing 500 acres of the grass, Spartina alterniflora or East...

A hypoallergenic grass genetically modified to lack two common hay-fever allergens is set to enter field trials in the US. The researchers behind the GM grass hope it will help shift public opinion around the world in favour of GM crops. "The beauty of this grass is that it will benefit the wider public not just the primary producer," says German Spangenberg of the Plant Biotechnology Centre at La Trobe University in Melbourne. Perennial and Italian ryegrasses, the types Spangenberg and his team have genetically modified, are sown for lawns and pasture around the world and account for 70 per...

OXFORD, MISS. -- Bloomington-based Toro Co. will close its lawnmower engine plant in Oxford in January, idling 120 workers. Employees were informed Tuesday. Because the lawnmower engines they had been making for nearly 20 years were essentially banned under new federal emissions standards, the announcement came as no surprise to many employees and community members. Toro, in a statement released Thursday, said it had tried to find a way to keep the Oxford plant open, but closing was the only option.

<p>I recently moved my family from the rugged blue-collar city neighborhood of Brookline to the palmy suburbs of Shaler. The move was mostly for a bigger house, but also to escape the crime and drugs beginning to permeate my community. After several trips and several hundred boxes being unloaded, I settled in to my new life. My wife and I had done all the research and checked out the school district for crime and, most importantly, for multilevel marketers -- we found nothing. Surely, my family would be safe here.</p>

Marijuana advocates warned that Canada's plan to decriminalize marijuana could increase prices for the drug and attract criminals to the trade, the Edmonton Sun reported May 11. The federal government is poised to decriminalize simple possession of marijuana, with possession of less than 15 grams of marijuana considered a ticketing offense, rather than a criminal one. However, the proposal also calls for tougher penalties for trafficking and production of marijuana. "If the government is really serious about increasing penalties against people who are trafficking, they're contradicting themselves," said Munir Ahmad of the Edmonton Compassion Network. "Why would they allow consumption,...

JUNEAU - Marijuana reform will be a major topic tackled at this year's Alaska Libertarian Party convention, being held Saturday in the Douglas Conference Room at the Prospector Hotel. Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, will give a lecture at 6 p.m. about the national efforts to reform marijuana laws. MPP is a national organization based in Washington, D.C., that has been active in challenging government policy toward marijuana.

WAILUKU >> Getting back to that little grass shack in Hawaii may become a bit easier for Maui residents. A Maui County advisory committee has finished drafting proposed rules that allow the construction of four different kinds of Hawaiian grass huts using materials mainly grown on the islands -- the first proposal of its kind in the state. "It's a long time in coming," said master builder Francis Sinenci. The draft, if adopted, would allow qualified builders to go through the same process to construct Hawaiian huts as they would for a Western dwelling. Sinenci said he has been frustrated...

Man Tells Passer-By Cop About Dope A man who allegedly boasted to a passer-by while carrying a marijuana plant down the street ended up getting arrested by the man — a plainclothes police officer. "Would you believe I'm walking down the street in the middle of the day with this pot plant," Daniel Fornash of Canton said as he walked down the street Thursday, according to police. The passer-by responded, "Would you believe I'm a cop?" Canton Detective Joe Mongold, who was returning from court, cited Fornash with misdemeanor charges of cultivation and possession of marijuana. Authorities said Fornash told...

Thousands of people are marching in cities across the UK to mark Cannabis Liberation Day. The Million Marijuana March is a worldwide event involving people taking to the streets in nearly 200 cities across the globe. According to the organisation's website, marches are taking place in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Hull, Sheffield and Stafford. In London the march, entitled Dance on the Grave of Cannabis Prohibition, will go from Kennington Park to Brockwell Park, in south London, where a festival is being held featuring live music, a speakers tent and food stalls. Across the world marches are taking place...