Amazon Prime has a new project in the works: a dramedy starring Margaret Cho with Alcatraz co-creator Liz Sarnoff as writer. Cho will play a version of herself that moves in with her "dysfunctional family who now runs a pot dispensary" after going through court ordered rehab. 

Read More

According to new discoveries by forensic scientists, William Shakespeare may have been a big ol' stoner. And he never amounted to anything, did he?

Read More

Jesus, Amy Pascal must hate Seth Rogen so much right now. First he makes a stupid North Korea-baiting movie that results in all of her work emails and even her salary getting released to the public, and now she can't get the stench of marijuana out of her new digs because of him. How's a lady supposed to catch a break?

Read More

Enterprising Girl Scout Danielle Lei is at it again, doing a brisk trade outside of San Francisco's The Green Cross, one of the city's medical marijuana dispensaries.

Read More

Sure, Cosmos is a fantastic television program about the wonders of science and the natural world. But have you ever watched Cosmos... on weed? It's a wild ride, man. Seriously, what is even up with the universe, you guys? Totally far out.

Read More

Microtransactions in games and other programs are nothing new, and neither are incredibly expensive ones. Snoop Lion's new app for iOS and Android, Snoopify, allows you to purchase different sticker packs to cover your photos in. And the packs are all making money for Snoop-- even the sticker that costs $100.

Read More

Enormously unjust rates of incarceration aside, one of the biggest arguments cited in favor of marijuana legalization in this country is that it's safe to use and doesn't have many long-term side effects. Tell that to the fishers that live in the southern Sierra Nevada area, though. According to scientists from U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and Integral Ecology Research Center, they're dying out because of the rat poison that local marijuana growers use to protect their crops. Happy now, potheads?

Read More

Today in Top Notch Police Work news, police in Britain sniffed out an outdoor marijuana farm and brought the operation to a halt -- and it was all thanks to the rank farts of one of their colleagues.

Read More

This right here, folks? This is why we can't have nice things. A recent study published online by JAMA Pediatrics found that one hospital in Colorado is dealing with a new medical phenomenon in the wake of marijuana being approved for medicinal use in the state -- children being hospitalized after unwittingly snacking on their parents' therapeutic pot brownies.

Read More

Medicinal marijuana has been gaining wider acceptance throughout the United States, but there are still plenty of things we don't understand about the effects of the drug. We may be a step closer on at least one angle, though -- the ability of cannabis to dull pain. Using brain imaging technology, researchers at Oxford University suggest that the drug doesn't actually lessen the intensity of pain that patients are feeling. Instead, it seems to change the perception of the sensation, helping patients find the same amount of pain more tolerable.

Read More

Based on this month's election, the idea legalizing marijuana seems more popular than ever. Two states, Washington and Colorado, have legalized pot at the state level. With the legal marijuana market looking stronger than ever, there are companies out there looking to build around big-marijuana when commodity reaches critical mass. For now, most of those companies are waiting in the wings, but not medical supply distribution producer MedBox, which has been thrust into the spotlight. The company, which makes vending machines for hospitals, pharmacies, and “alternative medicine clinics,” has seen their stock price rise by 3,000 percent since the 2012 election. You'd think MedBox' executives would be ecstatic, but in reality, the company is terrified of what will happen now that they've suddenly become so popular on Wall Street.

Read More

With marijuana decriminalization on the ballot in several states this year, it looks like the country might be on the verge of deciding, yeah, maybe smoking some pot shouldn't be a reason for a person to spend years of their life in prison. You know, on account of how stupid that notion is right on its face. So there's no better time than now for ASAP Science take a look at how marijuana actually works in your brain.

Read More

Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to enact a citywide ban on medical cannabis dispensaries. The council's vote was tallied 14 - 0 in favor of the ban. In roughly 30 days, Los Angeles' 762 legally registered dispensaries will receive an order to shut their doors to patients. The fact of the matter is, the L.A. City Council is making a divisive call that could affect thousands of citizens legitimately suffering from debilitating ailments.

Read More

Though the use of medical marijuana is becoming more widely accepted, the plant still carries quite a bit of stigma. Perhaps that's why an Israeli company has taken it upon themselves to develop a species of the cannabis that doesn't get you high. Good news, I guess?

Read More

If you're into both LEGO art and legalizing it (maaaaan), has Known Gallery got the exhibit for you. Opening May 26, art collective LAGO will be showing off their "Legolize It!" exhibition, which, as you might've guessed from the pun and above picture, is a LEGO art show dedicated to marijuana.

Read More

It's alright officers, they were just holding the samples for a friend. Researchers at the company Medicinal Genomics have published the raw data of the Cannabis sativa genome. Yes, scientists sequenced the DNA of weed. You know, for medical reasons. The raw data, including some 131 billion bases of shotgun sequence, have not yet been assembled into contiguous chunks for more detailed analysis. Still, the company released the information on Amazon's EC2 public cloud computing service. According to Medicinal Genomics founder Kevin McKernan, when the fragments of data are assembled the C. sativa genome will likely be around 400 million bases, more complex that other plants like the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana.

Read More

Bitcoins are a P2P-based digital currency produced by siccing computers' horsepower on solving difficult, time-intensive math problems. As we mentioned in our article on browser-based Bitcoin generation, the cost of the electricity it takes to produce Bitcoins on average exceeds the monetary value of Bitcoins produced, but that hasn't stopped some folks from trying their luck at Bitcoin mining anyway, sometimes working alone, sometimes in pools. As it turns out, all that electricity use has its downside: Namely, it can make serious Bitcoin miners look like marijuana growers to police. (Marijuana farmers use up a ton of electricity on lights to grow the plants indoors.) Now, there are (possibly apocryphal) stories among the Bitcoin community that some miners have had their homes raided or even been arrested when local police confused one kind of electricity-intensive activity for the other. And high electricity bills can be used as probable cause for issuing a search warrant. According to one IRC chat on the subject:

Given the libertarian leanings among many of the people to whom an untraceable, P2P currency would have appeal, don't expect it to go over well if Bitcoin-prompted police raids become a thing in the future. (Bitcoin Miner via ComputerWorld)

Read More