Sunday, The New York Times published an article about marijuana. But, this one was different from the rest because it talked about how several generations within the same family use pot for various reasons: Anxiety, pain, nausea, you name it.

Here's a snippet:

Bryan, who like others interviewed for this article declined to use his full name for legal reasons, began making them brownies and ginger snaps laced with the drug. Illinois does not allow medical use of marijuana, though 14 states and the District of Columbia do. At their age, his mother said, they were not concerned about it leading to harder drugs, which had been one of their worries with Bryan.

“We have concerns about the law, but I would not go back to not taking the cookie and going through what I went through,” she said, adding that her dizzy spells and nausea had receded. “Of course, if they catch me, I’ll have to quit taking it.”

This family’s story is still a rare one. Less than 1 percent of people 65 and over said they had smoked marijuana in the last year, according to a 2009 survey by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. But as the generation that embraced marijuana as teenagers passes into middle age, doctors expect to see more marijuana use by their elderly patients.

Read the entire article, by John Leland, here.

And, learn how to bake with pot here:

In case you missed it, this weekend's New York Times Magazine was all about food. If you're like me, I couldn't stay inside yesterday — the weather was too perfect, so I'll end up reading the magazine article-by-article all week long. But even if you didn't get a chance to pick up the paper yesterday, know that you don't have to miss out. Here are a few links to some of the stories local slow food advocates might want to read:

Growing Together, by Christine Muhlke

An open letter to the next farmer-in-chief, by Michael Pollan

Recipe Redux: The Community Cookbook, by Amanda Hesser

Slide show: Food Groups, by Lucas Foglia

A mealtime manifesto; An interview with foodie author Laurie David, by Deborah Soloman

Read more articles from the magazine's annual food issue here.

For those interested in participating in the slow food movement here in the Q.C., check out Slow Food Charlotte's website.

If you're asking yourself what the slow food movement is, here's a video, from the University of Maine, that will help with the answer:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. Additionally, she's on the steering committee for the Greater Charlotte Society of Professional Journalists. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

U.S. District Judge Robert Conrad, a Charlotte-based federal judge appointed during George W.'s administration, last week barred ads claiming plastic water bottles are harmful to the environment.

No, seriously. Here's a snippet from an Associated Press article:

A North Carolina company that touted its stainless steel water bottles on television and the Internet as a safer alternative to plastic water bottles has been ordered to stop making those claims.

The International Bottled Water Association sued Eco Canteen Inc. of Charlotte in federal court last year over what it said was a scare campaign to steer consumers away from plastic bottles.

U.S. District Judge Robert Conrad in Charlotte ordered Eco Canteen against distributing advertisements that claim or suggest plastic water bottles threaten public health.

Read the entire article, by Emery P. Dalesio, here.

If you read to the end, you'll see that the judge made his decision without a trial after Eco Canteen, the North Carolina-based stainless steel bottle manufacturer, had some sort of falling out with their legal team. So, this appears to be a ruling based on legal technicalities.

But, back to plastic bottles being bad for the environment:

1. Plastic is made with petroleum.
2. We fight wars over petroleum.
3. Non-biodegradable plastics are filling our landfills and our oceans.
4. Chemicals in plastics can cause health problems.
5. People often neglect to recycle plastic bottles.

And that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

It doesn't take a genius to realize you're using fewer resources and creating less trash when you use a reusable canister versus disposable plastic bottles. Want to help our nation break our oil addiction? Stop using so much plastic, which is made with petroleum, because there is a direct connection between your demand for something and manufacturers' desire to supply it.

You don't need a judge's ruling to make good decisions. Simply choose to reuse containers — including plastic bottles — and recycle or repurpose whenever possible.

Further reading: FTC Proposes Crackdown on 'Greenwashing' — The New York Times

What would it be like to live plastic-free? (And, why would you want to?)

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. Additionally, she's on the steering committee for the Greater Charlotte Society of Professional Journalists. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

Environmentalists are asserting that three coal companies in Kentucky have falsified monitoring data and are in violation of the Clean Water Act many, many times over. The plaintiffs are Kentucky residents, Appalachian Voices, Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, Kentucky Riverkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance, and they've filed a 60-day notice of their intent to sue (which they're required to do by law) alleging three coal companies in eastern Kentucky, ICG Knott County, ICG Hazard and Frasure Creek Mining (a subsidiary of Trinity Coal) have "exceeded pollution discharge limits in their permits, consistently failed to conduct the required monitoring of their discharges and, in many cases, submitted false monitoring data to the state agencies charged with protecting the public."

“Our state officials have closed their eyes to an obviously serious problem,” said Ted Withrow, the retired Big Sandy Basin Management Coordinator for the Kentucky Division of Water and a member of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. “These are not small exceedances — some are over 40 times the daily maximum. This should have been a red flag.”

During a telephone conference this morning, Donna Lisenby, of Appalachian Voices, said the environmentalists realized something was amiss when data in permits was missing, dates and signatures didn't match, and, in at least one instance, it appeared that a coal company copied and pasted monitoring data from one report to another. Lisenby says the odds of that monitoring data being exactly the same on two reports "is less probable than the odds of winning the Power Ball lottery." Also, they found instances where test results were submitted to the state months before they could have been taken. In the example Lisenby used, August and September data was submitted in July at one point.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (yes, that one), of the Waterkeeper Alliance, was also on the call. He said it's unusual to discover fraud of this magnitude, pointing out that the entire system is based on integrity and honesty since many discharge permits allow the coal companies to monitor themselves. He likened lying on the monitoring reports with lying on your tax returns, an act that can lead to both federal and state penalties and even jail time.  Kennedy said the fraud in these cases wasn't an accident, saying it appears to have been the company's regular practice.

Not only can we power much of the East Coast with wind energy, it will be more affordable. So, what are we waiting for?

From McClatchy:

The strong winds off the Atlantic Ocean could become a cost-effective way to power much of the East Coast — especially North and South Carolina, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia, a new study released Tuesday says.

The report by the conservation advocacy group Oceana argues that offshore wind could generate 30 percent more electricity on the East Coast than could be generated by the region's untapped oil and gas. It predicts that wind from the ocean could be cost competitive with nuclear power and natural gas to produce electricity.

The study appears just as new developments are starting to push U.S. efforts to catch up with Europe and China on tapping the energy in offshore wind. Great Britain last week opened the world's largest wind farm, and China built its first pilot offshore wind farm in 2008, using turbines from the nation's largest wind turbine producer, Sinovel.

Read the entire article, by Renee Schoof, here.

For more, check out CL writer John Grooms latest blog post on the subject.

Here's the Sierra Club's take on powering the East Coast with wind energy:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. Additionally, she's on the steering committee for the Greater Charlotte Society of Professional Journalists. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

As you know, or should since you're reading this online, more and more information is being pushed through the Internet these days. Newspapers, magazines, books and self-published content, like blogs, Twitter and Facebook, are all online. Some publications that used to only print their content on paper now only print it on your computer screen.

In a Democracy, such as ours, where citizens vote for their representatives in public office and are allowed to stand in government council meetings and share their thoughts on a topic, access to information is critical so everyone can make informed decisions about important issues. That's one reason why we have public libraries, right? Libraries are important, but not everyone has access to them either. So, like the newspaper used to be delivered daily in our driveway no matter where we lived, we need to be able to have it delivered to our computers no matter where we live.

But not everyone has access to the Internet, and some who do have such a slow connection that it's too frustrating to access. (Remember, not everyone lives in a metropolitan area like we do here in Charlotte.)

Enter the Alliance for Digital Equality. They're holding a FREE summit this Friday at Johnson C. Smith University. If you want to attend, you need to RSVP right away. If you can't attend, you can still submit questions for the panel. Here are the event's details.

Here's one of our neighbors, discussing their lack of access to broadband Internet and some additional, and very valid, reasons to expand telecom services to every citizen:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. Additionally, she's on the steering committee for the Greater Charlotte Society of Professional Journalists. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

Why our moronic representatives asked a comedian to testify on the issue of migrant farm workers is beyond me. As far as I can tell, the act furthers what Mark Twain started to say with this quote: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

Though, Stephen Colbert, the comedian in question, did make a few good points. For instance, he asked Congress, "What would Jesus do about migrant farm workers?"

Watch Colbert's testimony. By the way, he testified in character.

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. Additionally, she's on the steering committee for the Greater Charlotte Society of Professional Journalists. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.