Canna Reading

[Smoking Gun]

So I am an avid reader of Cannabis and gardening material. I was curious as to what kind of Cannabis related books everyone else was reading.

I love the Cannabible series by Jason King. I know not all of the info in there is 100% accurate, but I have a lot of respect for King for having taken his time to travel the world and sample some of the worlds bet Cannabis. Did I say respect? I meant jealousy. But honestly, Jason King certainly did his best to provide the most accurate possible information, and did his best to correct any mistakes he did make along the way. I am still hoping and waiting for the fourth edition to come out.

I also have read Dr. Mitch Earleywine's Understanding Marijuana which is a fantastic book. I would highly recommend it to everyone, non-cannabis users as well. It is chock full of great information from the history of Cannabis to the medical facts about Cannabis use.

And then there is the textbook of Cannabis, Robert Connell Clarke's Marijuana Botany. This is a must read for all growers and breeders of Cannabis. It breaks down just about everything there is to know about Cannabis. It is a great presentation of scientific facts and approaches to growing Cannabis. It is a truly special book, and I cannot ever be thankful enough that Mr. Clarke took the time to write this book.

I also have the first two books in the Spliff's series of books. They are entertaining, but not particularly accurate. The first in particular includes more myth and hearsay than fact. I cannot read it without getting a bit miffed at the author (of the first one, Nick Jones) for including some of the things he did. Some times it is very small details, misuse of words and slang, but it totally changes the meaning of what he was trying to say. Like I said it's an entertaining read, but not something I would use to quote when proving a point that needs to be based upon facts.

Then there are the few books, I regret purchasing. The first to come to mind is Ed Rosenthal's Big Book of Buds. If I wanted to read the seed companies descriptions of their strains I would just go online. In fact to me this is a perfect example of Ed's "work", he simply takes what other people have written and worked on, has someone compile the info and then he slaps his name on it. His grower's guide is no different. In fact I found Ed clearly contradicting himself several times in that book, at which point I felt that book, even the info that is correct, to be a poor choice for learning anything. I apologize if you take offense to my opinion of Ed, but he show time and time again that his knowledge is questionable at best and rarely is work with his name on it to actually be his work.

So what is everyone else reading?

 

[sox]

kings bible? its pretty good huh? and hes got 3 of em out? which ones the best you think?? I love reading, just never sit down and do it...lol im in my rooms, with my dogs, or on the farm.
i honestly think the only one ive ever read was that old school one by greg somethin ( i think)

hope all is well with you and yours,
Love & Light

 

[baba G]

first cannabible sucks a bit, but the second and third are better. Atleast he does do strains that aren't typical seed co descriptions and you can tell he smoked most of what is in that book. I do agree with ED's work, it's subpar imo
Jorge Cervantes and Robert Clark do a much better job, but in all honesty you covered some of the best books. Read up on daytime and nightime reactions for plain botany if your trying to gain an understanding of plant physiology and if you want to learn about morphology and all that jazz, read a good Botany text, I can rec'd some if you want...
Cannabis is a blink in the plantae kingdom!

 

[baba G]

Not sure how much bio chemisty you want to go through but it is interesting and makes the plant world make more sense when you start to understand the concepts of plants and how they metabolize....sugar sink !! lol
We should have a botany part on here with questions and testing to see who is paying attention...lmao
I could grab stacks of old notes and tough plant questions...lol

 

[sox]

Not sure how much bio chemisty you want to go through but it is interesting and makes the plant world make more sense when you start to understand the concepts of plants and how they metabolize....sugar sink !! lol
We should have a botany part on here with questions and testing to see who is paying attention...lmao
I could grab stacks of old notes and tough plant questions...lol

any suggestions on a good bio chem book to start out on?

 

[baba G]

You need a basic understanding of chemistry or you prob will hate this and not extract as much as you can from this information:
here are three books-

Biochemistryby Garrett & Grisham (3rd edition)
Fundamentals of Biochemistry by Voet, Voet & Pratt (upgrade edition)
Principles of Biochemistry by Lehninger, Nelson & Cox (4th edition)

 

[baba G]

Or if you want more of a survey of Plant Science, check Biology of Plants, Evert,RAven,Eichenhorn or something like that, I have a 7th edition but that is prob way old...lol

 

[sox]

nice, i was a lame and didnt even go to high school..i thought i was cool.
Now im realizing how lame it is to not have a decent education.
i got a buddy that crashes on my couch, he is a genius..so whatever i dont understand i have him lecture me on...works well.

 

[squiggly]

I am happy/qualified to answer any questions of a chemical/biochemical nature (and do have a thread up somewhere for this purpose).

 

[sox]

I am happy/qualified to answer any questions of a chemical/biochemical nature (and do have a thread up somewhere for this purpose).

nice! i dig all your informative posts bro! that shit is sweeet

 

[NaturalTherapy]

nice, i was a lame and didnt even go to high school..i thought i was cool.
Now im realizing how lame it is to not have a decent education.
i got a buddy that crashes on my couch, he is a genius..so whatever i dont understand i have him lecture me on...works well.

The class room is the only place you can get a degree, an education is something wholly different one can achieve on his own if he so choose. School does help education along with the structure, but for others it unravels it. Little trumps experience though.

 

[squiggly]

The class room is the only place you can get a degree, an education is something wholly different one can achieve on his own if he so choose. School does help education along with the structure, but for others it unravels it. Little trumps experience though.

This is so true.

The BIGGEST difference between a formal education and self-education these days (at the college level) is that universities/colleges tend to offer opportunities for experience-based learning--whereas a self taught student must provide these opportunities for him/herself.

This is fine for some disciplines--but ones like mine might find a person hitting a wall very early on in studies as it regards equipment and facilities.

I know that every time I walk into the research lab I cost about 5 grand (in non-renewable chemicals that I am using for reactions). I walk in there about 4 times a week, so maybe 20g's per week (15 is probably more realistic).

Granted, I am doing advanced research so that might not be a fair cost comparison--I imagine if you wanted to do a basic organic 101 lab procedure it would cost you about:

1. 200$ chemicals
2. 500$ glassware ($2000+ if you don't have a fume hood and want to live)
3. ~500-1000$ to build a fume hood (+tool costs).
4. 1000-2000$ other required equipment (magnetic stirrers, vacuum aspirator, sparkless hot plate/thermowell, variac, and more)

The benefit of a university is that you can ignore all of those needs and walk in with the sole intent of learning about the reaction at hand--without giving credence or care to what the cost might be.

Beyond that the chances of you running a reaction and then confirming it worked without VERY expensive equipment is extremely low. Generally speaking after each organic lab (101 and 102) we would subject our products to IR, NMR, and GC-MS analysis. We learned how to read the results from these machines, and others. THIS is what being a chemist is all about.

If you hand me an IR spectra I need to be able to point out the C-H stretch signal, or the signal expected from an aldehyde or an alcoholic group. Without this capability, no one will:

1. Listen to.
2. Believe.
3. Consider.
or
4. Care about.

my results--and no one will want to hire me.

Obviously when you get into this discipline things can become convoluted very quickly--and everything isn't 1+1 = 2, there are a vast number of "exceptions" as it regards what is to be expected from a given reaction/system. In that regard it helps to have someone hovering over you with 25+ years of hands on experience.

I've seen students blow things up, burn themselves, come very close to asphyxiating themselves, and even get carcinogens all over themselves. In short, I've seen a huge amount of people nearly kill themselves in the lab. It is 100% true that you can get the education that I've received as it regards chemistry on your own at home--and frankly this is mostly what I do at the university level anyway (sit at home in the books, working things out in my head), but there are some things that you either can't get at home, or which might be too dangerous to do at home.

Chemistry is an all-encompassing science, everything follows it--and the things we find are not always intuitive. So while a particular reaction procedure might tell you to set things up in such a way--and you feel confident you understand what to do--there might be a piece of information which is "generally known" by chemists (not by yourself) which has been left out and could pose a severe risk to your health.

Run an electrical current through some water--and you might find yourself blowing up soon without proper air flow. Even the world's most innocuous things can kill you.

 

[sox]

The class room is the only place you can get a degree, an education is something wholly different one can achieve on his own if he so choose. School does help education along with the structure, but for others it unravels it. Little trumps experience though.

fully agree...i just wish i had the basics down in alot of areas..it would def give me more confidence to pursue things.
9th grade was my last year before i hit the road. and i only made it a few months. juvinile detention centers and living under bridges doesnt do much for your education.

 

[NaturalTherapy]

I suppose science is the only industry without the drugs/sex back door. Among the last true meritocracies, it seems

 

[squiggly]

I suppose science is the only industry without the drugs/sex back door. Among the last true meritocracies, it seems

To be fair, though, it's mostly an insurance thing--both in college and in industry.

A student exploded tert-butyl lithium out the back of a syringe being drawn from a large bottle of the substance (the WRONG way to do this). Tert-BuLi is colloquially known as liquid fire. It reacts violently in air. When the syringe fell out the back, it created a jet of the material which covered the student, burning and killing her (violently).

The professor who was overseeing her is now on trial and is facing prison time (up to 5 years I believe). The civil trial will bankrupt him and will severely damage the university.

This is not an unheard of story in this industry, or others with similar dangers.

You kill a few students it fucks your career up. Blow a factory or two up and your company isn't going to get very far.

A huge amount of what I work with (that will have an appreciable effect on science) is EXTREMELY dangerous. Most of the innocuous stuff has been figured out, unfortunately.

If I don't have a Ph.D. no one in the industry cares how smart I am--the piece of paper is meant to provide proof that I won't kill myself or my co-workers and I am thus, insurable.

 

[fractal]

There's also HASHISH by robert connel clark. Awesome, huge book detailing every aspect of hash history and manufacturing. Great pictures also. I wish we still got imported hash in the states, it would be awesome to smoke some real afghani gold seal or nepalese hash. They still get it up in canada, coming in from vancouver mainly but it never makes it down to the states in any real quantity.

 

[Jack Dupp]

I've tried reading this book twice, but I cannot jive with the authors' writing style.

http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Danknes...1354864383&sr=8-1&keywords=hearts+of+dankness

Interesting topic, and probably full of history.

 

[Smoking Gun]

Haven't seen that one, thanks for sharing I will have to pick it up.

 

[Sarlacc]

I was just about to buy ed's book. good save thanks