When I worked at Scientific American in the 1960s, mail addressed to Martin Gardner (no relation) sometimes wound up on my desk. The author of the widely read “Mathematical Games” column lived in Hastings-on-Hudson and…
Posts published by “Fred Gardner”
High Times magazine sponsored the original “Cannabis Cup” in Amsterdam in 1987. The event inspired plant breeders and publicized their strains and their seed companies. It has been held annually ever since — a fine…
Patients Out Of Time is a pro-cannabis reform group led by Al Byrne, a retired Naval officer, and MaryLynn Mathre, a Vietnam era nurse. Al survived two catastrophic events in which others died and over…
Howard Zinn greatly admired Fiorello LaGuardia and in the end the two men had important things in common. They grew up in New York City, two generations apart, sons of immigrants. They both flew bombing missions for the U.S. Army -LaGuardia over Italy during World War One, Zinn over occupied France in World War Two- and then reconsidered the worth of those missions. They both spent their lives speaking for people whose voices hardly got heard.
Ester Fride, the Israeli scientist who showed that a newborn mammal cannot suckle and survive without a functional cannabinoid messaging system, died on New Year’s Day at the age of 56. The cause was lung…
Marilyn Monroe once said, “I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle.” This easily would have qualified her for an ADHD diagnosis…
Only in the San Francisco Bay Area did the story cross over from the sports pages to the news pages: on October 30, Tim Lincecum, the Giants' ace right hander, was stopped by a Washington…