Slashdot Mirror
Crowdsourcing the Department of Public Works
blackbearnh writes "Usually, Gov 2.0 deals mainly with outward transparency of government to the citizens. But SeeClickFix is trying to drive data in the other direction, letting citizens report and track neighborhood problems as mundane as potholes, and as serious as drug dealers. In a recent interview, co-founder Jeff Blasius talked about how cities such as New Haven and Tucson are using SeeClickFix to involve their citizens in identifying and fixing problems with city infrastructure. 'We have thousands of potholes fixed across the country, thousands of pieces of graffiti repaired, streetlights turned on, catch basins cleared, all of that basic, broken-windows kind of stuff. We've seen neighborhood groups form based around issues reported on the site. We've seen people get new streetlights for their neighborhood, pedestrian improvements in many different cities, and all-terrain vehicles taken off of city streets. There was also one case of an arrest. The New Haven Police Department attributed initial reports on SeeClickFix to a sting operation that led to an arrest of two drug dealers selling heroin in front of a grammar school.'"
they might fill the drug dealers with asphalt and chase the potholes out of the neighborhood.
The city is never any further than an email or phone call away. Where do you live that your city doesn't have phone or an Internet presence?
I'll just take this time to point out that I've never heard of anyone selling liquor in front of an elementary school. If you want to get heroin off the streets, put it in well regulated stores instead.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If you email or call the city, it's between you and the city.
If you use this site, it's among you, the city, and everyone else using the city. So whereas now the city would just ignore you cause they don't give a shit (like where I live), this might just provide sufficient public shame to get something accomplished.
I'm not naive enough to assume the magic of the intertubes will fix everything, but as ideas go, this isn't a bad one and has some potential as a responsiveness check on municipal government.
This was reported back in Dec of '09 with an iPhone App. There's even an wiki dedicated to Open311. In the US the app was created by CitySourced.
I guess most users heard about them, but there are a few iPhone/iPad apps that help in reporting these issues, also taking advantage of the devices' geolocation.
To do list for Windows
My sarcasm detector is on the blink today, so ignore me if you were just being sarcastic.
Let's execute them. Haphazardly selling something seriously deadly for ingestion is akin to poisoning people.
You want the death penalty for brewers, distillers, tavern owners, bartenders, and liquor store owners and their sales clerks? More people die from alcohol overdose than overdose of all other drugs combined. Cigarettes kill almost all their users, too.
And if you want to kill yourself, or engage in risky behavior, how is that any of my business?
Free Martian Whores!
Alcohol's a cross between not-that-bad and impossible to regulate. I make my own alcohol.
Heroin is pretty fucking toxic. We're not talking Marijuana toxic here (I'd rather cigarettes and weed be gone too, though cigarettes are more like alcohol but with EVERYONE that drinks being a huge alcoholic drinking contaminated booze). We're talking a chemical with no benefit, that makes you literally need it all the time to even stay on a normal level once you're hooked; and if you cut it off completely after a certain point, you die from withdrawal.
Alcohol will kill you from withdrawal too. Even most alcoholics don't get to that point. It's really, really fucking hard. Heroin will do it way easy; and the natural course of exposure is to tend towards that addiction, strongly. It's also much easier to overdose.
This is a different problem than liquor, just like carrying a small rocket launcher is a different problem than carrying a 6 bullet revolver.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
"That damn kid from next door ruined my flowers again. Let's see how that Mitchell boy likes running throw claymores!"
... are probably their own local governments.
"Click here to have your corrupt mayor tarred and feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail."
. . . or . . .
"Click here to endorse a public works program, which nobody wants, because nobody needs . . . Monorail!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
But I *liked* the heroin and potholes.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Government" is an abstract idea, run by people. And who gives birth to those people? Us. Who elects those people? Us.
Government isn't the problem. The people who run it and the people who put them there are the problem.
Living With a Nerd
Was crowdsourcing last year's fad, or the year before's?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Alcohol's a cross between not-that-bad and impossible to regulate.
We seem to be doing a better job of it than heroin.
Heroin is pretty fucking toxic.
Heroin is actually quite non-toxic. If your breathing is supported, you can survive pretty much any level of an opiate. It's not toxic to the liver, or pretty much any other organ.
We're talking a chemical with no benefit, that makes you literally need it all the time to even stay on a normal level once you're hooked
But it's worth mentioning that with dependence comes tolerance. When an opiate addict is maintained on the dose they need, they can carry out an otherwise normal life. Dr. William Halsted, for instance, had a brilliant surgical career and co-founded Johns Hopkins while maintaining himself on morphine. That doesn't happen with alcoholics.
if you cut it off completely after a certain point, you die from withdrawal.
That is simply not true. Unless your health is already seriously compromised it is not possible to die from opiate withdrawal.
Heroin will do it way easy; and the natural course of exposure is to tend towards that addiction, strongly. It's also much easier to overdose.
It's pretty easy to avoid an overdose, if you know what dose you're taking. Problem is, black market heroin is un-measured. Someone who could drop into a pharmacy and pick up a premeasured dose of heroin would be very unlikely to die from overdose.
This is a different problem than liquor, just like carrying a small rocket launcher is a different problem than carrying a 6 bullet revolver.
It's different, but not altogether worse. Heroin is easier to get addicted to, but the addiction is not as bad. Alcohol makes people more violent. Heroin makes people very mellow. It's easier to overdose on heroin, but you don't see the same sort of chronic toxicity you do with alcohol. You can't objectively claim that one is worse than another.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I reside in Tucson, and in south-tucson, and ironically, it being the drug portal; you know with all the mexican cartels trying to lay claim to this gateway, the number one thing i found my fellow tucsonans complaining about, more important than drugs: is our Potholes, i guess the only pot they care about is the one they drive over.
Of all the things I've lost; I miss my mind the most. - Mark Twain
Perhaps he's a muslim|mormon|other kind of miserable bastard (please specify)?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You just gave me a great idea for a new game show: "Moonbat or Wingnut?"
Alcohol regulation gets fucking stupid.
We have a (responsible!) liquor store chain in my town. They have a store that is ~1400ft (as the crow flies) from an elementary school. Never a record of the store ever selling to minors, and they've got a store policy of catching and reporting fake ID's to the police.
Last year, the idiot town council changed the limits on liquor licenses from 700ft to 1500 ft, and changed it from "shortest path" to "as the crow flies" measurement, then tried to get the store's liquor license retroactively revoked on the grounds that they didn't meet the new (illegally ex-post-facto) legal standard.
It's ridiculous. But then what do you expect when you live in a town dominated by "no drinking, no dancing, no fun, the-stick-up-our-ass-has-a-stick-up-its-ass" Southern Baptists?
It's still government and it's still the source of everything that is wrong with this country.
I've heard tales of a mythical land called Somalia whee men are free to do as they please. Wait it is real, and it isn't a nice place to visit.
The fact that it's so addictive and harmful are reasons to regulate.
I've lost a few friends and family to heroin. It's already here. The $80B we spend trying to keep it away only puts helpless addicts into contact with unscrupulous armed drug dealers.
If there were pharmacies that were secure like banks where addicts could go and buy limited amounts, we'd be much better off. Does it totally fix the problem? Absolutely not, but I'd like to know that my local junkie can peaceably go down to the store and buy his fix of clean, regulated regulated smack for the day and offset my taxes a bit.
Cigarettes are a -great- model, they're -maddeningly- addictive. I've collected wet butts off the ground, dried them in the toaster, and rolled them in wrapping paper to get my fix (long ago). I'll gladly pay $9 for a pack that costs under $1 to make if it keeps me sane. I want the same model for heroin addicts.
Also, it's not the -users- of drugs out there that tend to be violent (in my experience), it's the dealers and runners. Cut the dealers out of the loop and replace them with secure distributors and bank-type retail and you've just grown the economy -and- cut a huge amount of crime and lowered enforcement costs.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Heroin is pretty fucking toxic. We're not talking Marijuana toxic here (I'd rather cigarettes and weed be gone too, though cigarettes are more like alcohol but with EVERYONE that drinks being a huge alcoholic drinking contaminated booze). We're talking a chemical with no benefit, that makes you literally need it all the time to even stay on a normal level once you're hooked; and if you cut it off completely after a certain point, you die from withdrawal.
Here's a good ranking of the relative danger levels of various drugs. In fact, it was so good that the guy who published it was forced to resign from his job as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in the UK because it didn't jibe with current politics.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/02/david-nutt-dangerous-drug-list
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Heroin is pretty fucking toxic. We're not talking Marijuana toxic
1. Define "Marijuana toxic". Be sure to cite scientific articles to back up your statements.
I make my own alcohol.
I'd rather cigarettes and weed be gone too
2. You brew your own alcohol, a substance known to kill thousands of people a year both directly (alcohol poisoning) and indirectly (drunk drivers). Yet you want weed to disappear, a substance which has never had a recorded death directly attributed only to itself without any other factors coming into play?
Very odd.
Living With a Nerd
I thought it was a combination of a boondoggle, a palliacebo[1] and an immensely cynical publicity stunt. My bad.
[1] yes there is, as of now.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is a different problem than liquor, just like carrying a small rocket launcher is a different problem than carrying a 6 bullet revolver.
Fortunately both are equally protected by the 2nd Amendment, if you're an American.
The question is not whether heroin or whatever is good or bad. The question is the appropriate public policy response to it. In particular, given the certain fact that some people will desire it, and others will meet that desire with supply, are we better off to legalize and regulate the trade and medicalize personal and social problems associated with use the way we do with alcohol; or do something insanely counter-productive like criminalize the supply and use, stigmatize and ostrasize users, and create a hugely costly, unproductive and dangerous narco-security state to combat the criminal gangs the such criminalization will inevitably and predictably produce?
The OP was suggesting for some reason that killing dealers would somehow solve some problem, but it isn't clear how. Shift from medical to criminal focus in the UK in the '70's certainly didn't reduce drug use, and Portugal's recent blanket legalization hasn't brought about the end of the world.
Retributive violence makes stupid people feel good. It's a basic monkey reflex. Fortunately, most of us are no longer quite so much in the grip of our reflexes that we fall prey to them while setting public policy, although clearly we still have a long way to go with regard to rational and effective drug policy, because it is still an area where stupid people promoting ineffective, destructive policies are still holding sway.
There is a lot of money in the narco-security state, which probably explains why stupid people have been so successful in this: they spend a lot of the taxpayer's hard-earned cash to promote their ineffective, destructive policies. But the rest of us are getting a little tired of it, and even more tired of the anti-conservative radicals like Glenn Beck who want to give the cops and the military even more power than they already have to regulate the behaviour of adults.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The more civic functions that we are able to move online, the better. I live in Long Beach, CA and the city has a graffiti hotline. The one time I used it, the graffiti that I reported was cleaned up less than 24 hours later. The system involves having to leave a voice mail, and the recording time is way too short. It would be much easier to be able to upload digital pictures, or even click the relative location on a map and type in a short description. It would make dispatching the tickets easier too on the city's end.
I'm sure that there will be some who decry the big brother potential of the system. They will worry about nosey neighbors and the spectre of authoritarianism intruding into their lives. I wonder how many of those people actually live in neighborhoods that are right on the border between "nice" and "not so nice". In those neighborhoods, community activism and participation are key in reversing the slide toward the "not so nice" end of the spectrum. All it takes for a neighborhood to decay is for the residents to remain apathetic for long enough. Soon enough all of the "little" things start to add up.
I think you'll find that in Somalia, you're not as free to do as you please as you think. Somalia is ruled by warlords, which is just another form of government.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I have a completely different plan to crowdsource the DPW.
"Welcome, welcome to the intersection of Cedar and Ash streets. Thank you all for responding to my tweet about giving away a new Apple iPad. There is of course a little catch, before the giveaway." (... Hands out the shovels ...)
The weird part is, that when you account for full lifetime pensions after 20 years, having three guys watch one guy dig, and govt wages far higher than private wages, its probably cheaper to give away Apple products than to pay DPW to do it for you...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
We have a similar thing in the UK, called Fix My Street. I used it once. I got a form email after a couple of days, followed promptly by nothing at all. They finally got around to fixing the problem I reported after a few months, but never bothered to reply to say so. Zero human communication. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's all very well setting something like this up, but the government has to be committed to the project for it to work. Setting up a website is only the small part, getting them to actually follow up is another matter. It's all too easy for a politician to pay lip service to ideas like this, but fail to adequately support the effort after the headlines have been made.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
It's like if there's an absence of a governmental power the most powerful will become the government...
And the powerful didn't get to be powerful by being Mr. Niceguy.
Cynical Sam says "Oh this is truly great news. Grandma will be able to complain 24/7! Now if we can just get this for Home Owners Associations."
According to that reasoning, government necessarily oppresses the citizenry. Fine (I don't agree, but it doesn't really matter here).
I'd rather have my oppression be at least nominally influenced by my will, than to have it be entirely based around who's got the best odds of killing kill whom. It's unrealistic to think that eliminating government eliminates 3rd party coercion of free people. It just distributes the opportunity to oppress people more widely, not reduce the total amount of oppression.
Fortunately both are equally protected by the 2nd Amendment, if you're an American.
Not really. A missile launcher would have been considered munitions by the founding fathers.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Don't worry, the invisible hand of the market will take care of them, better than any central government ever could.
Yes, when people that aren't constrained by an effective de jure government, those with more personal power set themselves up as a de facto government over whatever domain they can establish.
I think that was rather the point GP was making in response to the argument that the government is the source of everything wrong with the country -- that, in the absence of real government, what you get is much worse, even from a perspective of practical freedom.
As far as the potholes, graffiti, flooding and other similar reporting options go. Bravo, its a great way of bringing everyday problems to the attention of those who are responsible for fixing them, or at least showing that they exist and where. However.... I'm a little more dubious as to the morality of the other possible options, "Homeless Encampment?, Homeless Nuisance?" are some of the ones visible right on the example screenshots of the Citysourced.com website. I'm guessing "Drug Dealer, Meth Lab, Drug House, ect" are somewhere down the list. This for me brings up too many images of the East German Secret police and their encouragement of citizens to report on other citizens. In a time of (real) war I would have to wonder whether "dissident", "sympathizer" or "pacifist" would be on that list. All in all, I think such a system should focus on the physical problems of a city, and leave the criminal (or at least issues involving humans) ones to 911.
Bluefoxlucid betrays his own ignorance. Alcohol is, in fact, one of the few drugs with lethal withdrawal[forgive the source, too lazy to look for respectable one]. Furthermore, I don't know any sane person who considers marijuana more hazardous than alcohol. And I have plenty of experience with alcohol, it is my namesake.
-- Ethanol-fueled
Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications to a logical but absurd consequence.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Heroin is pretty fucking toxic. We're talking a chemical with no benefit, that makes you literally need it all the time to even stay on a normal level once you're hooked;
Heroin is often a better analgesic than morphine especially in the terminally ill in extreme pain. It metabolizes better and is more effective for certain diseases.
And if you are terminally ill, who gives a shit if you become addicted to heroin?
and if you cut it off completely after a certain point, you die from withdrawal.
Nonsense; your ignorance is showing. Ask any recovered heroin addict whether they are dead or not. Apparently, you would be surprised at their answer.
Somebody please mod this dude down.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
To be fair, he did say "Alcohol will kill you from withdrawal too."
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It is my opinion that a junkie should have to get his fix at a health center, complete with counciling, offers to go to rehab, and literature. The opportunities to help a junkie get clean would be much more numerous than if he goes to his shady drug dealer instead. (Bonus: We get rid of the black markets and reduce our prison population of non-violent criminals.)
Yeah well, if we go around listening to what the Romans had to say on logic pretty soon we'll end up with gladiators killing Christians in an arena.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
What??? No mention of tobacco?
Portland has been doing such a thing for a few months now through an iPhone app appropriately named "City of Portland Citizen Reports". Allows users to upload photos with descriptions and tag them with GPS coordinates. The description pulled from the iTunes page:
Citizen Reports is a direct result of Mayor Adams and the City of Portland’s call for more open data and interactions with the citizens of Portland. Citizen Reports is used by citizens to report and request service calls to city assets and infrastructure, including issues with parks, pot holes, traffic lights, street lights, catch basins, and graffiti. Additional city assets and service request types will be added over time.
Using an iPhone, citizens can access this easy-to-use interface to the City of Portland’s issue reporting infrastructure. Citizens select the type of issue to report, take a photo (or upload an existing one), geo-locate the issue via GPS or interactive map, add comments, and send their report directly to the responsible bureau for resolution. Citizens can also view issues they have previously submitted and check the status or resolution of the issue.
Citizen Reports is a small but important step in allowing citizens to participate in expediting the City of Portland's awareness and resolution of various issues. Citizen Reports is available for free within the Apple App Store.
2D version of that list:
dependence v. physical harm
I have to say that's a pretty bad list. For instance, I've made good arguments here that heroin and alcohol are roughly equal in danger. Or at least, that there's no clear winner. Also, LSD being placed above Ecstacy and other stimulants. There's just no sense in that. LSD has never caused a death by overdose, and no neurotoxicity is known. That's not the case for stimulants.
I think I read this paper when it came out. IIRC one major flaw is that they included addiction potential into the quantification of danger. Addiction itself is not dangerous. That would explain why heroin is at the top of the list. I'm still scratching my head about LSD.
In any case, this just illustrates how hard it is to obectively measure danger on a linear scale. The only real killer is ignorance.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There was also one case of an arrest. The New Haven Police Department attributed initial reports on SeeClickFix to a sting operation that led to an arrest of two drug dealers selling heroin in front of a grammar school
Surely it's better for the kids to be able to get their heroin from the safety of their school steps than to make them travel to a seedier part of town, isn't it?
Uh...and that would be a bad thing how, exactly?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Locals repair roads!
http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2010/04/07/vladivostok-road-repair-flashmob/
Go, Russia!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I just had a rather surreal picture of a moshpit full of Civil Servants...
I love this logic,
People use corperations to contain fiscal liability, but you can just as easily contain moral liability in government.
"It's not me who's not contributing and doing awful things! It's just the government of which I am a part"
> Alcohol makes people more violent. Heroin makes people very mellow.
Wrong, and wrong. In many cultures, alcohol that makes people mellow, and sometimes there's something else that makes them aggressive. In one peculiar culture, imported western alcohol consumed in cities made people aggressive and traditional alcohol consumed in villages made them mellow.
Learned effects, people. We know it from comparative anthropology, and we know it from large, double blind studies performed in the sixties and seventies: alcohol changes you the way you expect it to change you.
People use the supposed effects largely as excuses. Alcohol gives you the excuse to say what you want to say, or occasionally punch who you want to punch. Someone who beats his wife when drinking isn't exactly excused, but he's called a drunk. If he did it when cold sober he would be called a psychopath instead. Both alcohol and cannabis are useful excuses for your grades not being as good as they "could" be.
What about heroin? Heroin, the king of chemical excuses around here, gives a rather plausible explanation for your life being a mess. (If you've heard the life story of a couple of street addicts, you know there's usually more than enough explanations already, but it's more appealing to be a victim of a powerful chemical than just not coping with a messed-up life. )
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Changing the law like this is not in fact illegal. If they change the law to make dancing illegal, prosecuting you for dancing in the past would be illegal, but you better stop dancing right now.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Well, if that town is, by any chance in Alabama, I would immediately report anybody with a stick up their ass to the authorities...
Umm... dude... that's my ass you're scratching. I mean, we're all connected and part of the single cosmic organism, sure, but my ass is not your head, no matter how well connected we all are in the rhythmic cosmos. Would you please knock it off for a while?
=8)
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Surely that invokes a bit of selection bias, no? I mean, if he wanted to survey heroin addicts to find out if they died during recovery, surely he'd want to also ask the ones that died, right?
If I wanted to find out if falling sixty stories was likely to cause my death or not, I wouldn't limit myself to asking only people who survived a sixty-story fall. That's all I'm saying.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I don't want the death penalty for them, but I realize that it's a fucking huge problem that brewers, distillers, tavern owners and liquor store owners profit from slowly killing people. It's perverse incentives. If we like free markets (and we do) we need to do something about it, or we'll be using the invisible hand to choke people to death in an exemplary efficient manner.
Alcohol consumption follows a log-normal distribution, it's skewed to the heavily drinking end. If the 20% heaviest drinkers suddenly stopped cold turkey, you could expect 80% of the breweries, distillers, taverns and liquor stores to go as well.
(Another disturbing issue is that the distribution appears not to change very much across times and space. Median consumption and heavy consumption are closely related, so the alcohol industry can't simply compensate by selling more to people who drink little today - all evidence indicates that would cause the heavy drinkers to consume even more.)
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Usually, Gov 2.0 deals mainly with outward transparency of government to the citizens.
Posts from a different, less corrupt universe are leaking through again. I thought they patched that?
It's still government and it's still the source of everything that is wrong with this country.
I've heard tales of a mythical land called Somalia whee men are free to do as they please. Wait it is real, and it isn't a nice place to visit.
Meanwhile, outside the Land Of False Dichotomies...
Not odd at all, if you stop and think about human nature for a moment. What he's saying is, "My drugs aren't as bad as the drugs that I've rejected." Yes, I know that alcohol and tobacco kill more people than several other drugs combined. All the same, I like a little alcohol now and then, and I'm addicted to tobacco. Caffeine isn't even listed, but I'm also addicted to that.
I question the position they've given cocaine, though. They are certainly lumping white powder cocaine together with the rocks that people smoke. If they separated nose candy from rock candy, where would each appear on those charts?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
True... but use of fallacious arguments does not mean that the proposition is false...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy. For extra kicks and grins, read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom about a society based on this concept, plus using online reputation instead of currency.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Now the site sports mainly pot-hole and idling vehicle reports. Reminds me of tech support calls at an ISP being inundated by reports of pings by noobs watching their new firewall.
But I fear systems that link citizen informants into the power of government. On the one hand we'll have the gated community syndrome, with busybodies working 24/7 to enforce all the rules. On the other, the government will find more and more value in leveraging citizens to obtain policy goals.
It's not that you raise bad points, because you're spot on in the gist of your post. But:
Surely that invokes a bit of selection bias, no? I mean, if he wanted to survey heroin addicts to find out if they died during recovery, surely he'd want to also ask the ones that died, right?
Well, I can see your point, but his argument was that death was the only possible outcome, hence my sarcastic characterization of his "surprise" at speaking with -living- people who had experienced heroin withdrawal. He came across as the kind of person who would then dispute that those people were ever heroin addicts to begin with (since they were not dead); I don't suspect him to be a stranger to circular logic. But that's just my read on the tenor of his comments.
BTW, isn't there some move afoot to use the tilde (~) as an on-line punctuation mark for snark? Not a bad idea.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
That's a terrible idea, you ass. Then people might actually start to communicate effectively. ~
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
In my city, Virginia Beach, VA, we have a City Manager form of government where a City Manager is hired to manage the city and the City Council is supposed to approve much of what he does. Our "mayor" has no special power other than to preside over council meetings. So we have a non-elected, contracted employee using mushroom management on the elected officials (keep them in the dark and feed them shit) and treating the city like a fifedom (he was observed tearing down political campaign signs of those who disagreed with him), an attitude that filters down to department heads but has not yet affected all of the city employees. Overall, the bosses are an arrogant bunch who live by the Golden Rule - "We own the Gold; We make the Rule".
Sound stereotyped? Sure, but it's pretty much true. One councilman did grow a pair just last week when the City Manager submitted a budget balanced with a significant increase in real estate taxes and no significant budget cuts, especially in the bloated administrative levels. Lot's of public fireworks not reported by the local media.
This site is just what my city needs now to focus the employees who actually accomplish something with our tax dollars. Later we can work on getting a real government.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
The list is at least partially empirical - based on the number of people showing up in the hospitals in britain because they ingested that drug.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Just so I'm clear: would you need to frame your sarcastic/snarky comment in tildes for it to be considered compliant, or does one at the end work? I.e., {~blah blah blah your mom~} vs {that's what she said~}? Personally, I'd go for the former as it informs the reader up front that there is a change of tone, similar to quotes and HTML tags (and, coincidentally, Spanish exclamations and interrogatories).
Comments, please?
~That would be completely retarded... then we'd have conversation that is far too easily understood -- and people would be discouraged from going back to re-read a post in order to figure out just exactly what the poster intended.~
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
To be fair, driving stoned is indeed a terrifying, dangerous experience. Some people *ahem* have enormous difficulty with temporal and spatial relationships when stoned. If I had to pick one, I guess I would rather be impaired driving slowly and stoned than recklessly and drunk... this is not a recommendation for either, of course.
"A man under the influence of weed is completely unfit to drive a car. Weed disturbs your sense of time and consequently your sense of spatial relations. Once, in New Orleans, I had to pull over to the side of the road and wait until the weed wore off. I could not tell how far away anything was or when to turn or put on the brakes for an intersection"
"Junky", William S.. Burroughs
and, coincidentally, Spanish exclamations and interrogatories
Good point. Figure out how to type an upside-down tilde and we'll go with it~
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Hmm, let's see here...
:-)
~
Yeah, I think that got it. ~Feel free to copy and paste as needed~ While I was at it, I also figured out how to type B, C, D, E, H, I, O, S, X, Z, and {numerous 'junk' characters} upside-down. No charge
Hence, the government is never Nice(tm). QED, I couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks.
LSD has never caused a death by overdose, and no neurotoxicity is known.
Maybe, but you're unlikely to fuck your head up with Ecstasy the same way that you might with LSD.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
I've known a lot more E burnouts than LSD burnouts. E has this magic the first few times, lots of people end up chasing that. Popping several pills in a night, etc. And there's good reason to believe that it's neurotoxic to serotonergic neurons at high doses. LSD on the other hand is non-toxic. The rates of psychiatric reactions are no higher than the rates of psychosis in the general population, which leads me to believe that if you have a psychotic reaction to LSD you were crazy to begin with. It's really quite safe.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
We'd have to cut loose if they did that.
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You cannot regulate heroin in that way. What will happen is people will do what they do with zoloft and cough syrup: they get a bottle of pills and it says take one every 8 hours. They take 5, and see pretty colors. Or if you make them come to the office for their dose, they'll ... go get it off the streets.
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Alcohol is not immediately toxic. The first ounce or two is actually good for you and helps prevent diabeetus and improve immune response in the long term, among other things. The way MOST people drink is, of course, damaging in the long term and not very beneficial in the short term.
Tobacco and marijuana are no good for you at all. Cigarettes however are garbage; smoking something rolled from good, clean tobacco that isn't contaminated with all kinds of toxic shit is not as bad. Compound this with the fact that people binge-smoke like they binge-drink: that guy drinking 14 beers a day is mirrored by most every smoker downing a pack and a half a day, and some reaching two or three (or even four, in rare cases). People don't unwind at the end of the day with a 15 minute break on the pipe or a good cigar; they consume the worst garbage they can, in quantity.
Yes I'd quite like cigarettes and budweiser to vanish. I've got better beer than that.
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Withdraw off heroin can raise your blood pressure and cause abnormal heart rate. Withdraw off Methodone can do the same. Methodone is supplied to pregnant women addicted to heroin because it doesn't affect the foetus; it's more addictive though. It will, however, prevent heroin withdrawal.
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Around the turn of the previous century, heroin was considered a reasonable treatment for alcoholism.
Alcohol gets you addicted, wrecks your health even if you don't OD on it, and ultimately makes you unable to function (keep a job, etc.) which produces costs to society (not to mention your family).
Doctors looked at this situation and many decided to substitute heroin for alcohol. Yes, heroin left their addiction patients still addicted. However, it didn't wreck their health unless they OD'd on it. With some care, users could get high and still function, keep a job, etc.
The problem of addiction was not cured this way but the ultimate costs to society were much lessened.
All of this sounds reasonable to me but I'm certainly open to the notion that I could be ignorant of important considerations that I haven't mentioned.
So - Could someone clue me in on how the notion of using heroin to treat alcoholism got discredited?
There have been MANY studies, however, that link cannabis with reduced cancer risk, reduced risk of alzheimer's, decreasing effects of depression, assisting AIDS and chemo patients in maintaining an appetite...keep in mind that you can ingest cannabis without smoking it. You can cook with it or vaporize it, both of which remove the harm incurred on your lungs from smoking.
Unlike the positive effects from alcohol, the positive effects associated with cannabis don't disappear as consumption increases. Obviously, just like with any substance, you shouldn't overdo it...but the positive aspects aren't lost when the amount ingested increases.
I would provide links to cite my claims, but I'm at work and I don't think they would like seeing that stuff showing up in my browsing history :/ It's easy enough to find, look around at any study that isn't government funded...they are almost all positive.
Living With a Nerd
Jesus, Martin Luther, Ghandi, Martin Luther King - All nice guys with armies.
Actually you are a moron. If a person addicted to heroin and a person addicted to alcohol show up at an emergency room with only one bed, the alcoholic gets it. Alcohol is a much more dangerous drug to withdraw from than heroin or any other legal or street drug. And excuse me? Heroin is used in many parts of the world as a pain reliever in the same class as morphine and dilaudid, both which were attempts at making a synthetic heroin. Of course, that ain't what the WoDers want anyone to know, so keep spewing your lies and untruths.
Lol, my state owns the liquor stores. You know how Jews don't recognize Christians? And Catholics don't recognize Protestants? Southern Baptists don't recognize each other in the liquor store.