Aurora watching

I'm thinking it would be fun to spend a few days watching the aurora borealis. People who've seen it put it on par with total eclipses as far as being one of the most incredible nature-related experiences of their lives.

I've been doing some research into it and have found the following:

- The weather is not totally reliable and the *space* weather is also not totally reliable, so it's best to go for at least 4 days. You need no clouds + a certain aurora strength.
- Airfares have gone up a bit since last year. Roundtrip to Fairbanks is around $650, roundtrip to Reykjavik is around $1000.
- It's very cold. And dark. Duh.
- Reykjavik is more interesting than Fairbanks from a cultural perspective, but these still seems to be a decent bit of stuff to do in Fairbanks. However, I think, like Burning Man, part of the appeal of the trip is meeting the sort of people who would fly out to see an aurora instead of, say, Hawaii.

Hey, if any of you are interested in joining me, let me know. I'm planning on doing this sometime between this November and next March, and probably not in December-January, when it's the coldest and darkest.

Legalize drugs by finding uses for them

Obama announced that the federal government will no longer attempt to shut down medical marijuana clinics.

http://www.slate.com/id/2232915/?from=rss

Some states have legalized medical marijuana. Others haven't.

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So I'm thinking that this is a call to action for all the psychedelic researchers. Various other drugs have potential medical uses. Low doses of Ecstasy have been used to help patients open up in psychotherapy and counseling. (LSD was used to help patients deal with repressed traumas and make breakthroughs, but there were difficulties with the drug's effects on some patients.) Psilocybin mushrooms have lots of potential (and probably not heavily researched) uses in psychology, including treating depression, helping break ingrained habits, and other uses.

By researching and proving beneficial effects of these drugs, researchers could start a movement to legalize other drugs for beneficial medical uses.