Oh woe! I feel terrible for the slackness of my blogging lately. My internet at home is down, and it means cramming my posts into lunch breaks and after work when I’m exhausted. But walk with me down these timber planked decks and let me tell you a tale of Twitter, before we down today’s mellow schooner of science.

I was initially sceptical of Twitter. “Why would I want to know what someone’s eating for lunch?” said I (doubledecker cheese and tomato toasty, if anyone cares.) I went to a seminar with SexyMan about how to use it like a pro (not a prostitute, I mean a professional,) hosted by Steve Davis, who is a bit of a specialist in social media and marketing, and also a great public speaker and definately worth checking out if you get the chance. Follow him here!

My own twitter profile has been customised by SexyMan, and I don’t tweet about my lunch – I save that for blog posts! I’d love to have more people to follow, so introduce yourself 🙂 This is me.

Steve also does a regular radio show and blog called “Online In Sites” on 5AA, and his latest one featured this very blog – HOW COOL IS THAT!? I’m rapt with rapturous raptures because he described it as “New Scientist meets Sex And The City meets Pirates of the Caribbean” – three of my favourite things! Check it out here and be dazzled. Plus he profiles all the coolest sites on the net, so it’s worth checking out just for that.

Not only is Twitter great for networking, it also alerted me to today’s schooner. Actually, this was tweeted last week, and I am le slack for sitting on it for this long, but behold!

Medical marijuana is in the news again! Most of you have probably heard how it can be used by cancer patients to help manage chronic pain, suppress the nausea from chemo, and improve appetite. These are things that might make you feel better (plus you could get legally wasted!), but it’s just treating the symptoms, not the cancer itself. The use of marijuana as a medicine is a juicy topic, seeing as it’s a wee bit on the illegal side, and I’m not going to go into the issue too much because there’s plenty of stuff already out there, and you can make up your own minds about it.

What’s cool is this article from the Cancer Research UK blog which cites evidents that some cannabinoids (molecules found in cannabis) can be used to slow the growth of cancer cells, and even kill them. In particular, the study looked at prostate cancer, but research shows it may also be effective in bowel cancer (this has also been discussed here). What I love about the article is how many times it stresses the point that there is no evidence that smoking cannabis will cure cancer. Seriously, they say it about 50 billion times, but at the end of the article I still walked away thinking “wow, maybe people should be smoking cannabis to cure cancer.” Funny how the mind works.

I also just stumbled across an iPhone app which works out where you are by GPS, and the location of the nearest place you can purchase medical marijuana. It’s called “where can I find a medical marijuana dispensary.” It’s likely to work well in the USA where you can buy it legally (what is the deal in Australia? I think that we don’t sell it but I may be wrong), and you can check out a review and links to purchase the app at the Medical Marijuana Blog.

The use of cannabis is not recommended for pirate ships, as the stars are bright enough and you need to have your wits about you if we are to hunt down Moby Dick and find the booty! Peace out.