Snake Island: A Place That I Will Never Set Foot On

October 25, 2017 Markozen.com Animals

In this part of Canada the only snakes we have are harmless garter and green snakes. However, here in Manitoba we do have the Narcisse Snake Pits, see below. Although harmless, when I stumble upon a snake, I still jump and my heart rate goes up 50 percent. I can’t imagine being in a place infested with killer vipers.

Ilha da Queimada Grande, The Snake Island

Ilha da Queimada Grande, nicknamed Snake Island, is a 430,000-square-meter island located about 33 km off the coast of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The island is home to a variety of snakes including an endemic species called the Golden Lancehead Viper (Bothrops insularis), which is one of the most venomous snakes in the world. According to a 2015 estimate, there are between two and four thousand snakes on the island, which equates to an average of one snake per 75 square meters over the entire island. Exaggerated claims suggest there are as many as five snakes per square km. Local folklore is also filled with stories of horrible deaths suffered by those who wandered onto the shores including that of a fisherman who landed onto the island in search of bananas, and the family of a lighthouse keeper who lived there.

Hope this guy has heavy boots and Kevlar pants.

Officially, there never has been any report of a human being bitten by the golden lancehead viper, so the toxicity of its venom on humans couldn’t be tested, but other lanceheads are responsible for more human morbidity and deaths than any other group of snakes in either North or South America. A bite from a lancehead carries a seven percent chance of death, and even with treatment, victims still have a three percent chance of dying. Death usually results from intestinal bleeding, kidney failure, hemorrhage in the brain and severe necrosis of muscular tissue. The venom actually melts flesh and tissue making it easier for the snake to digest. Tests have found that the venom of the golden lancehead viper is the fastest acting in the genus Bothrops.

The snakes on Queimada Grande were originally the same species as those on the mainland, when the island and the mainland were a connected landmass. Between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago when the sea level rose, Queimada Grande was isolated from mainland Brazil and the snake population was marooned. With no small mammals to hunt, the snakes adapted to life to the trees because their main source of food were the birds that passed over the island on their migration. The islanders learned to hold it high in the trees by the tail, and pluck birds who rested on the branches. Their venom also evolved to become five times more potent as that of their brethren on mainland. This was required to kill the birds faster, otherwise they would fly away. When there are no passing birds, they filled themselves with lizards, centipedes, slugs and frogs.

The island is currently off-limits to human, and the Brazilian government strictly controls who visits the island and when. Visitors are mostly biologists and researchers, who are granted special permission to visit the island in order to study the golden lanceheads. The Brazilian navy does make an annual stop on the island for maintenance of the lighthouse, which, since the 1920s, has been automated.

Despite the dangers, wildlife smugglers sneak into the island to trap the golden lanceheads which fetch a high price in the black market.

Mean looking SOB

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This is one badass serpent

The Narcisse Snake Pits are located 6 km north of the rural settlement of Narcisse in the province of Manitoba in Canada. Fifty kilometres north of Winnipeg. These pits harbour the largest concentration of Red-sided Garter Snakes in the world. During winter, the snakes hibernate inside subterranean caverns formed by the area’s water-worn limestone bedrock. Shortly after the snow melts in late April and early May, tens of thousands of these snakes slip out of their limestone dens and hang out on the surface of the ground performing their mating rituals in great tangled heaps.

The male snakes are usually the first to awaken from the long winter hibernation and reach the surface where they wait patiently for the females to come out. As the females slither out of the caves, the males pounce on the helpless females eager to mate with them. As many as 50 or more males attack a single female forming a writhing, moving “mating ball” of snakes. These massive snake balls are everywhere – on ledges, tree limbs, on plants and on the ground. Some mating balls slowly roll down rocks like tangled balls of twine. Professor Mason, a professor of zoology from Oregon State University estimated that there were 35,000 snakes at one pit alone and more than 250,000 in the general area.

There are four active snake dens at the Narcisse Wildlife Management Area. The dens are connected by a three-kilometer self-guiding interpretive trail. Tourists come from all over the world to view this spectacle from observation platforms built next to the dens, as do many scientists to study these non-venomous creatures.

The population of red-sided garter snakes around Narcisse was roughly 70,000 until terrible weather in 1999 killed tens of thousands of them before they could reach their winter dens. This tragedy triggered concern about the snakes’ biannual migratory path, which cuts right across Highway 17. Every year, ten thousand snakes trying to get to or from their winter dens had been crushed under the wheels of vehicles. This had not been a problem before, because the vast population compensated for the losses. After the winter of 1999, however, the population of garter snakes was dangerously low, causing Manitoba Hydro and volunteers to intervene.

Foot-high snow fences were built to force snakes into 15-cm tunnels that went under Highway 17. Since some snakes still managed to squeeze under the fence and onto the road, signs were put up during the migratory season urging motorists to slow down to avoid accidentally driving over snakes. These measures worked, and now less than a thousand snakes per season are killed on the highway.

Even though I live near this place, I’m never going anywhere even close to those pits.

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Is it worth taking a chance with this drug considering the possible side effects?

October 24, 2017October 24, 2017 Markozen.com Health

If it works it works. But these side effects are off the charts.

Otezla (apremilast) is a phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) inhibitor used to treat adult patients with active psoriatic arthritis. Common side effects of Otezla include:

diarrhea,
headache,
nausea,
upper respiratory tract infection,
vomiting,
runny or stuffy nose,
abdominal pain,
fatigue,
indigestion/heartburn,
decreased appetite,
insomnia,
back pain,
frequent bowel movements,
depression,
bronchitis,
tooth abscess, and
sinus headache.
Other side effects of Otezla include hypersensitivity, weight loss, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), migraine, cough, and rash.

The recommended maintenance dosage is 30 mg twice daily taken orally starting on Day 6, after 5 days of an initial schedule of titration dosing. Otezla may interact with CYP450 inducers (such as rifampin). Tell your doctor all medications and supplements you use. During pregnancy, Otezla should be used only if prescribed. It is unknown if this drug passes into breast milk. Consult your doctor before breastfeeding.

Bill O’Reilly points finger at “God” after accusations of sexual harassment

October 24, 2017 Markozen.com Bizarre, Religiousness

Bill O’Reilly has seemingly run out of options for blaming others after a series of sexual harassment allegations canned the former Fox News host. From accusers to the news media, the only logical scapegoat left would surely be his Almighty.

During a recent episode of his web series “No Spin News,” O’Reilly spoke candidly about his anger toward God for not protecting him, as more details surrounding allegations have surfaced, according to CNN.

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“You know, am I mad at God? Yeah, I’m mad at him,” O’Reilly said. “I wish I had more protection. I wish this stuff didn’t happen. I can’t explain it to you. Yeah, I’m mad at him.”

He also admitted people have it “much rougher” than him and that he’s a “bigmouth.”

The New York Times reported Saturday that O’Reilly paid $32 million to settle accusations with former Fox News contributor Lis Wiehl. Six other agreements have been made by either O’reilly or the network on his behalf.

With this latest rant under his belt, his New York Times bestseller Killing Jesus: A History is beginning to look more like a manifesto.

Rock Stars and Musicians that died at age 27, very bizarre

October 24, 2017 Markozen.com Bizarre, Music

The number of rockers who were taken from us too early in life — whether by accident, violence or misadventure — is obviously far too large. The fact that so many of the biggest and most influential talents in rock history died at the age of 27 is even more bizarre, and when you think about it, downright creepy.

Over the years, the stories behind the deaths of the members of this so called “27 club” have grown more and more inflated and outrageous, with everything from legal cover-ups to elaborate hoaxes and even deals with the devil trotted out to try and make some sense of these tragic losses.

Together with our friends at Loudwire, we try to distinguish fact from fiction regarding these sad stories on the following list of Rockers Who Died at Age 27.

Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison all died at the age of 27 between 1969 and 1971. At the time, the coincidence gave rise to some comment but it was not until the death of Kurt Cobain, about two and a half decades later, that the idea of a “27 Club” began to catch on in public perception.

According to Hendrix and Cobain biographer Charles R. Cross, the growing importance of the media—Internet, television and magazines—and the response to an interview of Cobain’s mother were jointly responsible for such theories. An excerpt from a statement that Cobain’s mother, Wendy Fradenburg Cobain O’Connor, made in the Aberdeen, Washington newspaper The Daily World—”Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club.”—referred to Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison dying at the same age, according to Cross. Other authors share his view. On the other hand, Josh Hunter and Eric Segalstad, writer of The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll, assumed that Cobain’s mother referred to the death of his two uncles and his great uncle, who all committed suicide. According to Cross, the events have led a “set of conspiracy theorists [to suggest] the absurd notion that Kurt Cobain intentionally timed his death so he could join the 27 Club”.

In 2011, seventeen years after Cobain’s death, Amy Winehouse died at the age of 27, and there was a large amount of media attention devoted to the club once again. Three years earlier, she had expressed a fear of dying at that age.

People identified as being in the 27 Club

Name	Date of death	Official cause of death	Fame	Age
Levy, Alexandre	January 17, 1892	Unknown	Composer, pianist and conductor	27 years, days
Chauvin, Louis	March 26, 1908	Neurosyphilitic sclerosis	Ragtime musician	27 years, 13 days
Johnson, Robert	August 16, 1938	Poisoning (Strychnine)	Blues singer and musician who recorded a very influential set of 29 songs.	27 years, 100 days
Nat Jaffe	August 5, 1945	Complications from high blood pressure	Swing jazz pianist	27 years, 216 days
Jesse Belvin	February 6, 1960	Traffic collision (car)	R&B singer, pianist and songwriter	27 years, 53 days
Lewis, Rudy	01964-05-20-0000May 20, 1964	Drug overdose	Vocalist of the Drifters	27 years, 271 days
Henderson, Joe	October 24, 1964	Heart attack	R&B and gospel singer	27 years, 183 days
Hale, Malcolm !	01968-10-31-0000October 31, 1968	Poisoning (carbon monoxide)	Original member and lead guitarist of Spanky and Our Gang	27 years, 166 days
Pride, Dickie	March 26, 1969	Drug overdose (sleeping pills)	Rock and roll singer	27 years, 156 days
Jones, Brian	01969-07-03-0000July 3, 1969	Drowning(coroner’s report states “death by misadventure”)	Rolling Stones founder, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist	27 years, 125 days
Wilson, Alan “Blind Owl”	01970-09-03-0000September 3, 1970	Drug overdose (barbiturate), possible suicide	Leader, singer and primary composer of Canned Heat	27 years, 61 days
Hendrix, Jimi	September 18, 1970	Asphyxiation	Pioneering electric guitarist, singer and songwriter for the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Band of Gypsys	27 years, 295 days
Joplin, Janis	October 4, 1970	Drug overdose (probable, heroin)	Lead vocalist and songwriter for Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Kozmic Blues Band and Full Tilt Boogie Band	27 years, 258 days
Arlester “Dyke” Christian	March 13, 1971	Murdered	Frontman, vocalist and bassist of Dyke and the Blazers	27 years, 273 days
Morrison, Jim	01971-07-03-0000July 3, 1971	Heart failure	Singer, lyricist, and leader of the Doors	27 years, 207 days
Jones, Linda	March 14, 1972	Complications from diabetes	Soul singer	27 years, 91 days
Harvey, Leslie	May 3, 1972	Electrocution	Guitarist for Stone the Crows and brother of Alex Harvey	27 years, 233 days
Ron “Pigpen” McKernan	March 8, 1973	Gastrointestinal hemorrhage	Founding member, keyboardist and singer of the Grateful Dead	27 years, 181 days
Roger Lee Durham	July 27, 1973	Fell off a horse and died from the injuries	Singer and percussionist of Bloodstone	27 years, 163 days
Yohn, Wallace !Wallace Yohn	01974-08-12-0000August 12, 1974	Plane crash	Organ player of Chase	27 years, 212 days
Alexander, Dave	February 10, 1975	Pulmonary edema	Bassist for the Stooges	27 years, 252 days
Ham, Pete	April 24, 1975	Suicide by hanging	Keyboardist and guitarist, leader of Badfinger	27 years, 362 days
Thain, Gary	December 8, 1975	Drug overdose (heroin)	Former bassist of Uriah Heep and the Keef Hartley Band	27 years, 207 days
Cecilia	August 2, 1976	Traffic collision (car)	Singer	27 years, 296 days
Köllen, Helmut	May 3, 1977	Poisoning (carbon monoxide)	Bassist for 1970s prog rock band Triumvirat	27 years, 27 days
Bell, Chris	December 27, 1978	Traffic collision (car)	Singer-songwriter and guitarist of power pop band Big Star and solo	27 years, 349 days
Miller, Jacob	March 23, 1980	Traffic collision (car)	Reggae artist and lead singer for Inner Circle	27 years, 324 days
Boon, D.	December 22, 1985	Traffic collision (van)	Guitarist, lead singer of punk band the Minutemen	27 years 266 days
Bashlachev, Alexander	February 17, 1988	Fall from a height, probable suicide	Poet, rock musician and songwriter	27 years 266 days
Basquiat, Jean-Michel	August 12, 1988	Drug overdose (Speedball)	Painter and graffiti artist; formed the band Gray	27 years, 234 days
de Freitas, Pete	June 14, 1989	Traffic collision (motorcycle)	Drummer for Echo & the Bunnymen	27 years, 346 days
Zapata, Mia	July 7, 1993	Murdered	Lead singer of the Gits	27 years, 316 days
Cobain, Kurt	April 5, 1994 c.	Suicide by gunshot	Founding member, lead singer, guitarist and songwriter for Nirvana	27 years, 44 days
Pfaff, Kristen	June 16, 1994	Drug overdose (heroin)	Bass guitarist for Hole and Janitor Joe	27 years, 21 days
Edwards, Richey	February 1, 1995	Disappeared; officially presumed dead November 23, 2008	Lyricist and guitarist for Manic Street Preachers	27 years, 41 days
Pat, Fat	February 3, 1998	Murdered	American rapper and member of Screwed Up Click	27 years, 61 days
Tah, Freaky	01999-03-28-0000March 28, 1999	Murdered	American rapper and member of the hip hop group Lost Boyz	27 years, 318 days
Kami	June 21, 1999	Subarachnoid hemorrhage	Drummer for Malice Mizer	27 years, 140 days
Bueno, Rodrigo	June 24, 2000	Traffic collision (car)	Cuarteto singer	27 years, 31 days
Sean Patrick McCabe	August 28, 2000	Asphyxiation	Lead singer of Ink & Dagger	27 years, 289 days
Maria Serrano Serrano	November 24, 2001	Plane crash (Crossair Flight 3597)	Background singer for Passion Fruit	27 years, 363 days
Ward, Jeremy Michael	May 25, 2003	Drug overdose (heroin)	The Mars Volta and De Facto sound manipulator	27 years, 20 days
Ottoson, Bryan !Bryan Ottoson	02005-04-19-0000April 19, 2005	Drug overdose (prescription medication)	Guitarist for American Head Charge	27 years, 32 days
Elizalde, Valentín	November 26, 2006	Murdered	Mexican banda singer	27 years, 297 days
Winehouse, Amy	02011-07-23-0000July 23, 2011	Poisoning (alcohol)	Singer-songwriter	27 years, 312 days
Richard Turner	August 11, 2011	Cardiac arrest	Trumpet player, collaborator with Friendly Fires	27 years, 12 days
Nicole Bogner	January 6, 2012	Undisclosed illness	Singer for Visions of Atlantis	27 years 290 days
Soroush “Looloosh” Farazmand	November 11, 2013	Murdered	Guitarist for the Yellow Dogs	27 years, 11 days
Monkey Black	April 30, 2014	Murdered	Dominican rapper and singer	27 years 278 days
Slađa Guduraš !	December 10, 2014	Road accident	Bosnian pop singer and actress	27 years, 121 day

Airstream Travel Trailer Goes Airborne

October 24, 2017 Markozen.com Aviation

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Back in the early 1990’s the United States Air Force (USAF) was tasked with a mission to develop an airborne mobile command center which could provide a long-range transportation and global communications capability for use by travelling VIP’s. This Distinguished Visitor (DV) program required that the USAF create a command and control module (CCM) that can quickly and easily be loaded on to a variety of different military transport aircraft – like the C-141, C-17, KC-10, KC-135 & C-130 – and be rapidly dispatched to any theatre of operations. Although a number of bespoke solutions were offered at the time, the provisional (and by far the cheapest) option was a palletized 36-foot Airstream travel trailer with an embedded communications suite. This asset package – designated as the “C2” in military parlance – came to be known as the “Silver Bullet.”

C-17 Globemaster III

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An Airstream being loaded into a C-17

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The help sit in the cargo cabin

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Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in the airborne Airstream

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Inside Google’s Giant Data Centers

October 24, 2017 Markozen.com Technology

Inside the internet: Google allows first ever look at the eight vast data centres that power the online world

Data centres range from vast warehouses in Iowa to a converted paper mill in Finland
Buildings are so large Google even provides bicycles for engineers to get around them
Street View tour of North Carolina facility reveals Stormtrooper standing guard

Google has given a rare glimpse inside the vast data centres around the globe that power its services.

They reveal an intricate maze of computers that process Internet search requests, show YouTube video clips and distribute email for millions of people.

With hundreds of thousands of servers, colourful cables and even bicycles so engineers can get around quickly, they range from a converted paper mill in Finland to custom made server farms in Iowa.

One of Google’s server farms in Council Bluffs, Iowa, which provides over 115,000 square feet of space for servers running services like Search and YouTube

‘Very few people have stepped inside Google’s data centers, and for good reason: our first priority is the privacy and security of your data, and we go to great lengths to protect it, keeping our sites under close guard,’ the firm said.

‘While we’ve shared many of our designs and best practices, and we’ve been publishing our efficiency data since 2008, only a small set of employees have access to the server floor itself.

‘Today, for the first time, you can see inside our data centers and pay them a virtual visit.

‘On Where the Internet lives, our new site featuring beautiful photographs by Connie Zhou, you’ll get a never-before-seen look at the technology, the people and the places that keep Google running.’

The site features photos from inside some of the eight data centers that Google Inc. already has running in the U.S., Finland and Belgium.

Google is also building data centers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Chile.

Virtual tours of a North Carolina data center also will be available through Google’s ‘Street View’ service, which is usually used to view photos of neighborhoods around the world.

The photographic access to Google’s data centers coincides with the publication of a Wired magazine article about how the company builds and operates them.

The article is written by Steven Levy, a journalist who won Google’s trust while writing ‘In The Plex,’ a book published last year about the company’s philosophy and evolution.

Google colour codes its servers depending on their location, while piping in the buildings is coded depending on what it carries – with cool water in blue tubes and warm in red

Google’s Douglas County data centre in Georgia is so large the firm provides Google branded bicycles for staff to get around on

The data centers represent Google’s nerve center, although none are located near the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

As Google blossomed from its roots in a Silicon Valley garage, company co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked with other engineers to develop a system to connect low-cost computer servers in a way that would help them realize their ambition to provide a digital roadmap to all of the world’s information.

Initially, Google just wanted enough computing power to index all the websites on the Internet and deliver quick responses to search requests. As Google’s tentacles extended into other markets, the company had to keep adding more computers to store videos, photos, email and information about their users’ preferences.

A street view tour published by Google also reveals a hidden surprise – A Stormtrooper standing guard over a server in Google’s North Carolina server farm

The insights that Google gathers about the more than 1 billion people that use its services has made the company a frequent target of privacy complaints around the world.

The latest missive came Tuesday in Europe, where regulators told Google to revise a 7-month-old change to its privacy policy that enables the company to combine user data collected from its different services.

Google studies Internet search requests and Web surfing habits in an effort to gain a better understanding of what people like. The company does this in an effort to show ads of products and services to the people most likely to be interested in buying them. Advertising accounts for virtually all of Google’s revenue, which totaled nearly $23 billion through the first half of this year.

Even as it allows anyone with a Web browser to peer into its data centers, Google intends to closely guard physical access to its buildings. The company also remains cagey about how many computers are in its data centers, saying only that they house hundreds of thousands of machines to run Google’s services.

Google’s need for so many computers has turned the company a major electricity user, although management says it’s constantly looking for ways to reduce power consumption to protect the environment and lower its expenses.

Here hundreds of fans funnel hot air from the server racks into a cooling unit to be recirculated in Oklahoma. The green lights are the server status LEDs reflecting from the front of the servers

The Iowa campus network room, where routers and switches allow data centers to talk to each other. The fiber cables run along the yellow cable trays near the ceiling.

Even the water pipes reflect Google’s brand: These colorful pipes are responsible for carrying water in and out of an Oregon data center. The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled.

Google’s server farm in Douglas County, Iowa

Denise Harwood, a Google Engineer, diagnoses an overheated CPU. For more than a decade, Google has built some of the world’s most efficient servers.

Each server rack has four switches, connected by a different colored cable. Colors are kept the same throughout data centers so staff know which one to replace in case of failure.

Google Street View Protects Cows Privacy by Blurring its Face

October 24, 2017 Markozen.com Offbeat

At least Google’s face-blurring technology takes privacy seriously — even for non-humans.

The photo was captured in Cambridge, England and shows a cow grazing by a river with a blurred-out face — something Google usually only does for the humans it captures as it drives about photographing cities for its Street View service.

In a statement to the BBC, Google said, “we thought you were pulling the udder one when we herd the moos, but it’s clear that our automatic face-blurring technology has been a little overzealous. Of course, we don’t begrudge this cow milking its five minutes of fame.”

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Here is the real intention. West End Winnipeggers partying on the street.

Cartoons of the Day

October 23, 2017 Markozen.com Cartoons

Thousands of Previously Unseen JFK Assassination Files to Be Released This Week

Experts expect the documents will reveal new info on a trip Lee Harvey Oswald took to Mexico, where he met with Cuban and Russian spies.

While the news might excite people who believe that the assassination was an elaborate government conspiracy, experts on the November 1963 assassination say we probably won’t get any explosive new information that would rewrite the history books. According to Philip Shenon and Larry J. Sabato—two historians who have researched the assassination extensively—the documents could shed light on a trip Lee Harvey Oswald took to Mexico weeks before killing JFK, where he met with Cuban and Russian spies. In a piece for Politico, Shenon and Sabato said that “many” of the previously unseen files center on the trip, during which Oswald “came under intense surveillance” by the FBI and purportedly “spoke openly” about wanting to kill JFK.

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The Marijuana Nuns of Merced, California

October 23, 2017 Markozen.com Offbeat

Cannabis-growing ‘nuns’ grapple with California law: ‘We are illegal’

The Sisters of the Valley’s “abbey” is a modest three-bedroom house on the outskirts of Merced, in a cul-de-sac next to the railroad tracks. (Sister Kate calls the frequent noise from passing trains “part of our penance”.) When visitors come to the door, Sister Kate asks them to wait outside until she can “sage” them with the smoke from a piece of wood from a Russian tree given to her by a shaman.

Sister Kate lives here with her “second sister”, Sister Darcy, and her youngest son.

But these aren’t your average nuns. The women grow marijuana in the garage, produce cannabidiol tinctures and salves in crockpots in the kitchen, and sell the merchandise through an Etsy store. (Cannabidiol, or CBD, is one of the active ingredients in marijuana that is prized for medicinal qualities and is not psychoactive.) The women perform their tasks wearing long denim skirts, white collared shirts and nun’s habits. And while their “order” is small – last week they ordained their third member, a marijuana grower in Mendocino County known as Sister Rose.

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But their ambitions have been thwarted by legislation that was passed last year – 19 years after medical marijuana was first legalized in the state – to regulate the billion-dollar industry through the Medical Marijuana Safety and Regulation Act. An error in the final text of the law has resulted in scores of cities across the state passing local bans on the cultivation, distribution, and sale of the drug, including Merced, a small city in California’s Central Valley where the Sisters live.

The legislation accidentally established a 1 March 2016 deadline for cities to impose their own bans or regulations on medical marijuana or be subject to state rules, a deadline that assembly member Jim Wood, who authored that section of the bill, said was included by complete accident.

Wood has drafted fix-it legislation, which he’s optimistic will pass in the legislature by the end of next week and be signed by the governor immediately after. But next week is too late for the Sisters of the Valley.

“If it was a typo, that’s great. If it wasn’t, who knows,” said John M Bramble, the city manager of Merced, the morning after Merced’s city council passed its medical marijuana ban. Either way, “it’s too late,” he said. “We’re banning it for now because if we don’t, we’ll have no local control.”

That leaves the Sisters of the Valley in a precarious position. “We are completely illegal, banned through commerce and banned through growing,” said Sister Kate. “They made criminals out of us overnight.”

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Despite Sister Kate’s Catholic upbringing, the Sisters “are not affiliated with any traditional earthly religion”. The order’s principles are a potent blend of new age spirituality (they time their harvests and medicine making to the cycles of the moon, and pray while they cook to “infuse healing and intent to our medicine”), environmentalism (“We think the plant is divine the way Mother Earth gave it to us”), progressive politics (asked whether she’s offended if someone drops her title and calls her “Kate”, Sister Kate responds: “It’s offensive that no banksters went to jail”), feminism (“Women can change this industry and make it a healing industry instead of a stoner industry”), and savvy business practices.

Sister Kate was looking for a “second sister” when a mutual friend arranged a phone call with Darcy Johnson. After just a thirty minute conversation, the 24-year-old from Washington state was ready to move to Merced and join the order. Sister Darcy had spent time in New Zealand working on an organic farm, and now, back in the States, was looking for a better way of life.

“This is my better,” Sister Darcy said.

The day after Merced’s ban on medical marijuana was passed, the sisters were preparing for battle. Sister Kate is planning to start a call-in campaigns across the Central Valley, urging growers and customers to flood city council members with phone calls every Friday until they come up with reasonable regulations.

Whatever happens, though, the Sisters of the Valley are answering to a higher authority. “We’re not accepting their ban,” said Sister Kate. “It’s against the will of the people, and that makes it unnatural and immoral.”

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