Society

Those searching for answers to the question " Is medical marijuana good medicine? " will find few in Dr. David Sack's Times Op-Ed article.   On the one hand, Sack concedes, "Marijuana can effectively treat neuropathic pain, and it has been shown to improve appetite and reduce nausea," an acknowledgment substantiating the plant's therapeutic utility. However, he later warns that cannabis' ability to provide relief for certain other conditions, such as lupus and anxiety, remains unproven.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev allegedly committed the most terrible of acts, the killing and maiming of innocent people. So when cemeteries in Cambridge, Mass, refused to take his body for burial, it was easy to understand the dark mutterings about the Boston Marathon bombing suspect not deserving a proper burial, about how he should be cremated despite his family's wishes and his religion's traditions, or his corpse cast into the sea. Easy to understand, but...

UCLA and Steve Alford. A basketball program of unmatched pedigree led by a former prodigy who became a national champion and Olympic gold medalist before making a steady climb up the coaching ladder. On paper, a harmonic convergence. How they came together, a choreography of those themes, would make for a dazzling introduction, which UCLA held at center court in historic Pauley Pavilion last month. The aura of John Wooden, his contributions to sports and society - and those 10 national titles - was thick.

Re "Stop dissing the humanities," Opinion, April 19 I commend The Times for giving space to David Kipen's defense of the humanities, a much-neglected, undervalued aspect of American society. When will we grow up and recognize the importance played by literature, the arts and all endeavors that create a society that might be called civilized? It's almost funny that Native Americans, once termed savages, cultivated their many art forms in keeping with their values and their respect and care for the environment.

The kids are not all right. And that's what makes "Never Let Me Go" so memorable. Set in an alternative Britain, the adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 dystopian love story follows Kathy, Ruth and Tommy from naive youngsters at Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic English boarding school, to the institutionalized, emotionally immature twentysomethings they've become — as played by Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield. Close friends, they've grown up knowing they are somehow different and now live apart from the outside world, marking time until they are called upon to fulfill their destinies.

I was extremely impressed by Eric Mann's commentary of May 11: "Help for a Smoldering Society." I am an African-American born in 1963. It was truly a shock to me to see a white man advocate the same things black people have been advocating for my entire 30 years of life! He cited the age-old problems of "white racism vs. a multiethnic society," "police repression vs. social cohesion" and "ethnic Balkanization." But indeed, weren't these the very things people marched for in 1963?

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- In Wednesday's marquee speech at the Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton will argue that Republicans offer a “you're-on-your-own” society, while Democrats want a “we're-all-in-this-together society,” as he symbolically submits President Obama's name for nomination to a second term. According to remarks prepared for delivery, the former president will say Obama “began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a more modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for the innovators.” “The most important question is, what kind of country do you want to live in?

So, Gordon House intends to prove that "Hey, this situation could have happened to anybody" ("Power of Grief," Dec. 16). I know many people, myself included, who would never drink and drive. When the attitude that drinking and driving "happen" is no longer accepted by society, the law will require people to take responsibility for their actions and, perhaps, these people will be convicted of their true crime: murder. GINA BERNBAUM Encino

Re "The California fix: Cuts dim inmates' hope for new lives," Oct. 17 As a society, we seem more interested in saving money in the short term than saving lives in the long term. Only by investing in the future of our most vulnerable citizens can we break the cycle of poverty and crime that engulfs so many of the inmates in California. The overcrowding in California prisons is shameful and a symptom of man's inhumanity to man. Until we invest in the welfare of our inmate population in California, we have failed as a society and have become a society that is only concerned with materialistic matters.

Thanks to Sherlock Holmes and his Doctor Watson, we are used to detectives coming in asymmetrical pairs: Your Batman and Robin (superheroes, you say, but their career began in Detective Comics), your Poirot and Hastings, your Morse and Lewis, your Lewis and Hathaway. Your Doctor and his current companion. The hero and the protégé, the genius and the occasionally inspired sidekick. More satisfying to my sensibility is another sort of crime-solving unit: the cooperative team, with or without leader, in which each brings to the table a necessary specialty, the Scooby Gang, as it is often short-handed nowadays.

Visitors to Maui now have a way to stay connected to four-legged friends, even if the family pets are back home, thousands of miles away. The Maui Humane Society is giving pet lovers a chance  to interact with homeless dogs and cats in need of some human kindness. Starting Wednesday, the “Helping Paws Visitor Program” will let tourists lend a “helping paw” at the society's animal shelter 1-4 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays. After a brief orientation, vacationers-turned-volunteers will participate in activities such as bathing puppies, brushing cats and walking dogs.

Violence is the trigger in "The Place Beyond the Pines," Derek Cianfrance's latest love letter to bad breaks. But it's the ripple effect of responsibility, regret, limited resources and guilt that makes "Pines" particularly relevant in a time when so many struggle from paycheck to paycheck. Starring Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, Bradley Cooper, Ray Liotta and Dane DeHaan, the movie is intimate in its telling, sweeping in its issues and stumbles only occasionally. The idiosyncratic Cianfrance tends to gravitate toward the economically challenged who live lives of desperation.

REWARI, India - Vijendera Kumar has been sentenced to work and live in a cow shed for six months, feeding and bathing the animals and shoveling their dung 10 hours a day, seven days a week, after eloping at 17 with his girlfriend. That is in addition to a year the laborer spent in jail. "They didn't even investigate my case," Kumar said, surrounded by 300 lumbering beasts. "Punishing young people for having consensual sex is unfair and backwards. " Among the most controversial provisions of anti-rape legislation passed Thursday in India's Parliament - in hurried response to public anger over the fatal mid-December gang rape of a 23-year old physiotherapy student - was a provision setting the age of sexual consent at 18. But even before the law passed, Indian law was flexible enough, as Kumar learned, to make consensual sex among teenagers risky, a paradox in a society where rape has often gone unpunished and marriages are still arranged among the young.

VATICAN CITY - Few people were more shocked at the choice of a Jesuit as pope than the Jesuits. There had never been a Jesuit pope before Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected last week, and he was the only Jesuit among the 115 cardinals who voted in the papal conclave. (The only other one, from Indonesia, was too ill to attend.) Pope Francis, who will be installed formally Tuesday before more than 100 heads of state and foreign delegations, including Vice President Joe Biden and what will undoubtedly be an adoring crowd, has already shown himself to be a different kind of pope.

Virginia "Ginny" Hill Wood led a life of adventure beginning at a young age, guiding horseback trips in her native Washington state, bicycling through Europe before and after World War II, serving as a WASP pilot and, after moving to Alaska, building a rustic backcountry lodge and leading wilderness treks. But her lasting legacy may be her role as a pioneer Alaska environmentalist. Wood died Friday of natural causes at her home in Fairbanks, Alaska, friends said. She was 95. The outdoors enthusiast guided her last backcountry trip at age 70, cross-country skied into her mid-80s and gardened into her early 90s. But she also "had a vision outside of her own personal interest.

Mervyn E. Kirshner of the Seeley Co. has been selected as the 14th recipient of the Roy C. Seeley Award of the Southern California chapter of the Society of Industrial Realtors. A senior marketing executive in the firm's Torrance office, Kirshner is a past president of the chapter and a frequent speaker at industrial real estate marketing seminars across the country under the auspices of the society's national office. He also is a member of the American Industrial Real Estate Assn.

CAIRO - The brother of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri is an unflinching man with a graying beard whose aim, as a Salafi, is to impose Islamic law on the divided country that has emerged since the overthrow of secular autocrat Hosni Mubarak two years ago. Seated at a rooftop cafe as dusk draped the Nile, traffic screeching and lights flickering in the ancient city below, he wagged a finger in the air and spoke of an "epic battle" to scour Egypt...

LAS VEGAS  - A national animal advocacy group excoriated the federal government, saying it misled the public about last week's removal of 11 wild mustangs that had coexisted for years with residents of a populated area outside Carson City, Nev. The Humane Society of the United States has called for the Bureau of Land Management to return the animals to the wild, rather than following through on plans to put them up for adoption. “The Humane Society of the United States denounces the Bureau of Land Management's decision to remove a small band of wild horses located just east of Carson City, Nev., in the Pine Nut Herd Management Area,” according to a statement released by the group Tuesday.