RTFA: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6c7_1232290490

This footage was prepared recently by a citizen-journalist / advocate in Vancouver. Contrary to what one might think, it’s a pretty good PSA for crack addicts wanting to manage their addiction … and it’s apparently legal, too.

When it comes to drug legalization, there are a few approaches. Harm reduction, for example, makes the argument that the purpose of public policy is to reduce harm, and that any policy that creates more problems than it solves isn’t actually successful. There’s decriminalization, which is essentially driven by voter initiative. There’s rescheduling, which seeks to alter the definition of a drug so that it no longer meets certain criteria for enforcement. There’s the medicinal movement, which seeks to alter access to certain drugs on the basis of their beneficial qualities. One of the features that all of these techniques share is that they directly address currently illegal drugs, and attempt to directly argue that these drugs should not be illegal.

…and then there’s this guy from Vancouver, who has created a Jonathan Swift-esque Modest Proposal, of sorts. Essentially, our Vancouver Videographer has created a tutorial that illustrates how to take plain coffee, combine it with a household cleanser, and end up with a super-pure, smokable form of caffeine. Essentially, his challenge to policymakers is this: criminalize coffee. Naturally, after coffee is criminalized will inevitably come the next food that can be purified, and so on… This is the argument of absurdity (reductio ad absurdum); how ridiculous could we theoretically make policy before policy has become too absurd to take seriously?

Some people will doubtless be shocked that the Vancouver Videographer suggests selling it on the school playground with the name “black magic,” but he insists that it must be sold with the disclaimer that it is legal to sell. Of course, anyone who is shocked by the suggestion is clearly missing the point of the video. In A Modest Proposal, Swift never advocated for cannibalism, and he would probably have been disgusted if people actually ate the children as a result of his proposal. On the contrary, people ought to be shocked by what is currently criminalized.

Personally, I love this message, but I’m not about to freebase some coffee. I would suggest that a more direct route to smokable caffeine would be to purchase chemically pure caffeine, rather than using the coffee method depicted in the video. I’ve heard that United Nuclear is a good source, but I’ve never purchased from them, and I make no warranties. Although this does have me thinking about some possibilities, let me reiterate: making freebase caffeine isn’t the point of the video.

I’d venture that all anyone really needs to hear are the words “freebase caffeine” and they are less than an hour from actually making it a reality. The knowledge is already out there, and a video tutorial isn’t a necessary step to making your own freebase caffeine. Any process that can be explained in 120 seconds is childishly simple, so it’s not like this video is the groundbreaking source of some “great new technique.”

What is groundbreaking, however, is the suggestion that we could criminalize everything simply by showing how easy it is to transform it into a “scary form.” Hot peppers, for example, are well known for their accompanying endorphin rush – perhaps peppers aren’t too far behind coffee? In fact, someone could just walk down the aisles of a supermarket and identify which products, fruits, and vegetables have any conceivable potential for becoming “scarier.” Why not create an act stipulating that nothing, whatsoever, can be sold in a store unless it has first been confirmed that it could never be made into a scary form?

Because it is absurd.

If it is plain to see why this line of reasoning is absurd, then we need to work backwards to figure out where this absurd line of reasoning began, and then remedy the situation so that it is no longer absurd.

[UPDATE 2009-01-20]
Since there is question about whether or not anyone has ever done this, I submit for your evaluation the following Erowid report:

I recently bought a bottle of ’stacker 2′ pills. I really like these pills taken orally but I find that the excessive amount of caffeine (200mg) is a bit much for me. It also contains several vitamins, herbs, etc–but most importantly, ma huang extract (standardized 25mg ephedrine). I decided to do what the cigarette companies do to tobacco in order to convert the nicotine salt into a freebase–soak it in ammonia. I opened up one of the capsules onto a glass dish, added 5ml household clear ammonia via medicine dropper, ‘cut’ with razor blade until capsule contents were fully saturated, and let soak for approx. 1 hour. Next, I evaporated the ammonia in the microwave, scraped up sticky goo (light brown in color, almost rubbery but sticky when rolled into a ball), and smoked through my trusty bowl. That was bout two hours ago. Since then, have taken about 7 hits of the pharmaceutical-tasting lump…

Obviously, RTFA. I take two things from this report:
1) the guy lived
2) the caffeine was hard to disambiguate from the ephedrine (which he also freebased).

So, this doesn’t strictly mean it’s safe to do, but there is more that you can read about the topic…

[/UPDATE]

RTFA: http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/

This web game is to use the mouse to feed Wind powder, the powder dance to enjoy the game.

Dan-Ball has released Powder Game 5.6! That’s right – not 5.1, but 5.6, which includes a bunch of new items like soap, thunder, and laser. The maximum dot count is 20,000 but the performance is great on the new version.

If you have never played Powder Game, then you might not initially understand how to “Have fun” with it… Well, let me explain. It’s a physics simulator, so you set up these cool scenarios and see how they play out. If you’ve ever played with a marble run, then you know what I mean.

In the picture below, I set up a simple holder for water, oil, and magma. I put a metal container around each one, and I put a clone block below each one. This is a recipe for disaster!

Basically, the cloner makes tons of dots out of whatever drops onto it. Then, the cloned dots fall onto the bottom of the screen and mix. Here’s where the magic of Powder Game comes in: each dot has different behaviors when they interact. The oil and the magma create fire and wind, which mixes everything up. The water and magma create stone. The water rusts the metal, the magma melts the metal, etc…

The dots all behave somewhat realistically, insofar as they have physical properties, and the simulator does a good job of staying true to the “meaning” of the dots. The end result is a sort of sandbox or playground that lets you create all sorts of great interactions. …and it’s up to you to figure out how you, personally, “have fun” with this sort of environment.

This sort of mechanism is similar to the new game from Namco, Noby Noby Boy. In NNB, you basically just walk around and mess with the universe:

There is no explicit goal in Noby Noby Boy, any more so than Powder Game has a goal. …and yet, these are definitely “games.” The underlying principle is that you need to find your own fun; the game is what you make of it. From an article by Matt Leone on 1up.com:

…the most common criticism of Noby Noby Boy around the office is that the game doesn’t set enough goals for players — it’s less of a game, and more of a playground. Katamari was an unusual mechanic wrapped inside traditional objectives and time limits, while Noby Noby Boy is an unusual mechanic without any of those trappings. But I’ve been playing the game almost nonstop for the past few days, and have been trying to figure out why I keep playing. And I think it comes down to a feeling that there’s always something new to discover.

A great way to find some fun is to watch videos of other people having fun. Here’s a Vacuum Cleaner, that was built with an older version of Powder Game:

Powder Game, which was originally released in 2002, has this “fun” element nailed. One time in 2006, I spent 6 hours making a volcano, filling it with gunpowder and oil, drawing intestinal underground tunnels for magma to flow through…

If I spend 6 hours moving little virtual dots around to make an imaginary volcano, does that make me a freak? Absolutely not! … which is the whole point of finding your own fun. I thought it was fun, and I don’t need some game designer to give me instructions, objectives, or goals in order to have fun.

What is your “fun” like?

RTFA: http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/9VBatter…

With just two parts your Arduino goes portable, powered by a 9V battery. Note that these connections are the same ones you’d use to make a plug to connect to a solar cell array, a car lighter plug or a larger battery.

You’ll need a 9V battery clip, a 2.5mm power plug, a soldering iron and some solder, and optionally a small piece of heat shrink tubing.

Okay – I’m going to stop raving about the Arduino eventually, but right now I wanted to share a picture of my 9v batter adapter. If you’ve been following the exploits of my infrared receiver, then you have watched the project increase in complexity. The software is totally cool, the breadboard has been exchanged with a protoshield, and now I have gotten rid of wired power (no USB cable, no 9v AC/DC adapter).

That’s right – this little computer is totally portable now! w00t! It behaves just like it does when it’s plugged in.

This gives me an idea: now that I can carry this thing with me, what about an arduino tv-b-gone? hmmmmm… I’ve found this code, but it’s pretty ugly… Maybe that would be worthy follow-up project for my IR decoder.

RTFA: http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Tutorials/Protosh…

Here is a design for an Arduino protoshield that sits on top of the main Arduino board. You can use the files below to order a board from a PCB manufacturer, or you can make them yourself. The file is in Eagle format; you’ll have to generate your own drill and gerber files appropriate to your PCB house.

I built an Arduino Protoshield v.4 today, and it’s really cool. I’ve been working on an infrared decoder for a few days, and the solderless breadboard does become pretty cumbersome, after long enough. The protoshield makes it a lot easier!

When I got down to it, it was really hard to find good information about assembling the protoshield v.4. The tutorial from atomicsalad is useful, but it’s not for the specific protoshield I am using. This isn’t a big deal if you’re familiar with this stuff, but I had a hard time getting started. I decided to post some of the information that finally got me rolling.

First, I am using an Arduino Protoshield v.4 that was purchased from FunGizmos. So you know, this comes with absolutely no instruction on how to assemble it, nor does it include a 1k ohm resistor. I happened to have one lying around, so it’s not a big deal, but be aware…

The protoshield “source code” is actually an image, and it’s a matter of printing the image onto a PCB to actually make something useful out of it. Well, I got a printed protoshield v.4 and a few documents came in handy for understanding how to assemble it.

The two most helpful documents came from sgBotic:

1. PCB Diagram, which is the source image that the PCB was based on. Looking at this picture, it is easier to tell what hooks up with where, since the physical traces can be a little hard to see on the physical board itself.

2. Schematic Diagram, which is a high-level explanation of the components that need to be soldered to the board, and where they attach. I referred to this image to get the placement of the two resistors right.

Also, Lady Ada’s adafruit store has a very useful picture of the final product. I didn’t do anything about the ICSP interface (which is in Lady Ada’s picture), since I only use the one ATmega168 chip and I won’t be changing the bootloader.

There is another useful picture from sgBotic here.

In the end, everything worked out great. I had to position the breadboard in a pretty strange way, and that did require a few modifications… The following pictures show off the finished product, with a small project already on it.

Check out this soldering! …I think it looks really great.

Since the breadboard hangs off the side, I cut the insulation off the bottom of the portion that extends beyond the board. As you probably know, a solderless breadboard connects columns of pins with a piece of metal that is called a rail. Well, since my breadboard was right on top of the protoshield’s power connections, I had to remove one of the rails to prevent the shield from shorting the Arduino. Also, since I had removed the insulation from the breadboard, I covered the back with several pieces of electrical tape.

Anyway, the protoshield v.4 is definitely a good one. My primary criticism is that the breadboard I got for it doesn’t fit right, but as I’ve demonstrated, it’s not too hard to work around it. Enjoy!