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FBI Need Potheads To Fight Cybercrime
An anonymous reader writes "The rate of cybercrime is growing and growing, and law enforcement is struggling to keep up. The FBI is in the process of beefing up its headcount, but they're running into a problem: many of the hackers applying for these jobs have a history of marijuana use, and the agency has a zero tolerance policy. FBI Director James Comey said, 'I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview.' However, change may be on the horizon: Comey said the FBI is changing 'both our mindset and the way we do business.' He also encouraged job applications from former pot users despite the policy."
Regardless of your stance on the morality of it, maybe we just start treating one drug (MJ) like another (Alcohol or Tobacco) from a legal perspective? Contrary to Mr. Christie, Denver is a fantastic place to live, and I genuinely believe the recreational industry has improved it even more.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
When I was much (decades) younger (and still smoked) I wrote code all of the time when high. In fact, it was one of life's pleasures -- the concentration focus was fantastic. And yes, the code was very complex, was thousands of lines long (when finished) and ran perfectly when I was done as far as I was ever able to tell.
With that said, not everybody could do what I did and work effectively high. But I knew a fair number who could and did, and of course I knew a few who were useless when high. Of course, I knew a fair number or people who were useless coders stone cold straight. This isn't terribly surprising -- the world is full of functional alcoholics too. Pot is different from alcohol, though, in so many ways. Alcohol eventually puts you into a stupor, then kills you. Pot at worst puts you to sleep and has no known fatal dose. It is considerably safer than aspirin or caffeine -- the former you can easily overdose on or it can kill you outright with e.g. Reyes' Syndrome. Caffeine is lethal at doses somewhere between 2 and 20 grams (depending on your metabolism and weight) -- not easy to ingest in coffee, easy to ingest if you put a couple of spoonfuls of legal, over the counter caffeine powder onto your morning post toasties. Cigarettes, don't get me started -- a single cigarette can kill a small child if accidentally ingested, and nicotine makes a dandy insecticide even when highly diluted.
In addition to being amazingly safe compared to almost anything humans consume outside of brocolli, pot is basically a non-prescription (openly illegal in many states) antidepressant. Lots of people who smoke (or drink, for that matter) are self-medicating or compensating for the fact that their lives suck for reasons utterly beyond their control. Is it a good medicine compared to SSRIs or other prescription medicines? I don't know. I do know that drug companies don't want you to have the choice. I do know from bitter experience that the law enforcement industry from police through the lawyers and the courts make a living from pot. I know that the biggest single risk for pot smokers isn't anything associated with pot itself -- it is being arrested, charged, jailed, forced to pay thousands of dollars for bail, forced to pay thousands more for lawyers, forced to pay fines and court costs, forced to endure probation, forced to pay for "rehabilitation". It is being fired, not being hired, not getting into college not because of your grades or intelligence (both of which can be just fine) but because of your "police record". And the penalties scale up enormously for the poor and stupid who often smoke weed because life as a janitor or store greeter or one of the dudes who has to put on a costume and wave at passing cars to get them to file their taxes or patronize a failing store sucks, but weed makes the menial and mindless jobs you can get a bit more tolerable without ruining your liver.
If pot has a flaw as a recreational substance, it is that it can, by making a shitty situation tolerable, act as an ambition suck. Hamlet on pot:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? Or just get high
And suffer no more; and by suffer to say we end
The head-ache of the thousand natural schlocks
That life is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. So don't bogart that joint,
My friend, pass it on over to me...
Sometimes, though, it really is better to take arms against the sea of troubles and by opposing end them. Pot can make it a bit too easy to suffer the slings and arrows and end up trapped in a life that consists of little else. Or not. Or it can do so for a while, and then people grow up. Ultimately, it ain't nobody's business but your own, and it certainly isn't a positive predictor of failure -- or success. Like anything, for some people (especially some of the me
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.