Also, in part, due to the increasing resistance of the nukaler nutters who protested against just about anything having to do with nuke stuff. Except of course for X-ray machines when they needed them. It was around this time that "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance" was re-named "Magnetic Resonance Imaging" so that hospitals could continue to have a useful diagnostic apparatus, and there began sweeping cutbacks in commercial power nukes due to greatly-increased costs for environmental and safety studies, and financing, and construction costs; the issue of thorium cycle never arose, because the mind-set was still locked into uranium cycle for getting plutonium to build even more warheads.
(Circa '90 I read in Scientific American of three engineers at Hanford who, in early '80s I think, had worked out a no-melt configuration; they re-jiggered an idle reactor and ran their test. Closed the main coolant valve, watched the temp rise a bit, then slowly, steadily decline over the next three days, with no apparent damage or degradation to fuel elements, core, etc. Within a few months, their results were bureaucratically buried and they were transferred.)
If memory serves there were other issues with NERVA, among them packaging - shielding, configuration, controlling material degradation, and working out a complete mission package that made sense from an engineering and cost basis. Not finally, but another simple question was what to do with the whole thing. We'd lost the will to explore - the public and their representatives mostly didn't give a shit after Apollo; besides, robots were fine, so why bother going anywhere, to do... what?
All combined to make a perfect shit-storm that made it easy to just duck, run, find something else to not do.
is one place to start. That some modes of transport have restrictions is understood, i.e., one is supposed to have a license to operate a motor vehicle.
Odd, that; I think you'd have a hard time selling such a sentiment to most of the general population, although I'd prefer to be wrong about that.
I got this far watching the discussion degenerate into mostly ill-informed stuff about encryption (some wonderful exceptions, even the guy wanting to make an tinfoil iHat) and no one has yet thought to read even the summary.
If one reads the article, there are some law enforcement types claiming that total expansion of CALEA is necessary because in-game chat for Scrabble is being used for criminal purposes. I had hoped for general outcry at the gross stupidity of the original law, let alone the expansion, but certainly not completely glossing over it.
After reading over thirty of the posts, many worthy, I return to my first conclusion after reading yours: you said enough to cover the absurdity of what eDx is trying to do. The only possible useful thing I could see for it at first blush would be to act as a rough filter for very basic errors - and it'd still be making mistakes. At a time when there are plenty of sufficiently literate people un- or under-employed, let them grade essays at least as a first filter. One needn't be an expert on a subject to decide if an essay is at least readable, somewhat self-consistent, and maybe even find glaring logical flaws.
Yet I have to give 'em props for trying to do the presently impossible.
Now that's what I'm talking about. Finding enough things in common to start working to something reasonable and better than what we're stuck with now. Good on ya'. Now if, oh, another 10 or 30 million agree, enough reps and sens listen and heed their constituents.... well, anyway, it's a start. Thanks.
"Until people realize the fundamental truth that "We, the people, ARE our government" NOTHING will change."
I'm not so sure of that being completely true anymore. As best I can figure, in many races there is an informal vetting of candidates by financial entities with a vested local or positional interest - a little conversation on the links, over a casual lunch or dinner, at a social event, etc. Independents and grass-roots runners generally are simply out-spent, although sometimes a rumor or three may be needed.
However, I still believe (however forlorn it may be) that in many cases, especially at city and county level, that a sufficient number of eligible motivated voters could indeed elect whom they please from the proferred candidates, if one presumes that they are honest ones in the sense that they are taking positions (and one might hope, keep them if they win) that may not always be in accord with 'the powers that be.'
In any event, I think you're spot on about apathy. But I see a prevailing belief of members of the public that even in concert they can have no real effect - and it's this mind-set that is killing us. (If we haven't the liberty to truly choose those we wish to represent us, then what use is it? If we have no liberty in fact, then why bother doing much more than going through the motions of living, grasping such wisps of life as we may, without authentically living? One either goes numb or pulls the plug.)
So, yeah, even more apathy, could our mood rise so high.
Yeah, I caught that too. Given finite life hours and the huge number of entertainments I can overlook not seeing the movie but to moderate a geek/nerd site and not know of Feynman, one of the finer physicists of last century, known for working on the atom bomb, cracking safes, playing drums, painting, serving with distinction on the Challenger commission, his highly-regarding filmed lectures series, his Nobel prize, his pithy sayings which have spread, his series of very successful books, comments on education and science, seems.... whacked. There is a lot of world from which to choose to what to take in, or have the chance to be exposed to, highly variable for each person, but still, I was surprised.
Perhaps it's simply that, to me anyway, young'uns don't seem to question much, don't read a whole bunch - and then not very widely, depth unknown, and don't seem to socialize with all that many people outside their own 'peer' group - especially educated people in a disparate variety of fields. They may be smart, there's just a seeming lack sometimes of breadth or depth. But it Rob's case I'm simply wild-ass guessing, and mean entirely no disrespect, nor assumption of facts not in evidence - I gots enough problems without visiting any onto others.
He did come up with a good thing: "Good Chance!" That's a good finish and worth keeping.
Thanks. Was wondering a bit about the amphetamine/meth thing also. From what I've read, the blanket ban on so many things and the low cost of speed set the stage and opened the curtain.
As I mentioned before I'm a bit out of touch on this; beyond reading a news story or reports from a study, my only experience was taking a hit of Desoxyn during finals week back in '68. It 'worked' but so did coffee. (Took No-Doz twice; nevermore.) Back when, I met a couple of speed freaks and it wasn't pretty. It was common knowledge by circa '68 that 'speed kills'.
Overall, I'm in favor of de-criminalizing and legalizing the individual use of just about everything*, regulate as needed viz. adulteration and price-gouging, 'operating while under the influence' would generally be a misdemeanor (e.g., if someone continues to drive dangerously while high, take away their license, don't so automatically put them in prison), substituting effective education (not brain-dead programs such as "Just Say No") and a combination of medical intervention (not just detox), outpatient (Methadone, e.g.) and treatment programs for any who have abuse problems; further, there would need to be entry into education, training, apprenticeship, and so on, and whatever on-going support as necessary. I note that the economic consequences of present policy are staggering, and submit that a more rational (yeah, a judgement call) policy would provide economic benefit - for starters you'd have more people working, paying taxes, and being consumers.
*there's bound to be some stuff that's so bad people probably shouldn't have it or take it. I have no examples to hand due to ignorance, other than what's mentioned in the Geneva Accords. Any ban on something ought to be because it's so freaking dangerous, not because somebody in power doesn't like it.
I think you are right to question, and I think you've raised some good ones. My idea is to take what we already know and fix/improve things, get more empirical data and continue. We don't have to agree precisely on details, yet I think it essential to find enough in common as a society to make a current very crazy, very bad situation better.
"Just over a year later, the FTC sued Google again, this time for circumventing privacy protections in Apple’s Safari browser to place tracking cookies on user’s computers. It did this despite ensuring users that they did not need to take any actions to block its cookies in Safari."
Classic. Is that chutzpah or what? Am I arguing against my 'position' - nah, not really, more like keeping a perspective - however skewed it may be. I note that I started using Ghostery about two hours after I first heard about it.
Just that compared to so many companies whose lapses/offenses/pecadillos I've come across over the years, they don't seem half-bad. ITT, GE, AT&T (look up Narus; that's not even what I had in mind, it's just so much fun to think about), General Dynamics, Bell Systems, Hughes, Sony; hell, a laundry list my tired aging mind can't pull out of memory's store.
But as you'll notice from later in my post, I give them no free ride. Not by a long shot. Shooee, for all I know, they're waiting for the right moment to take over the world. But I use gmail, and when I can figure out how to set it up for my needs, the phone thing.
All these heavy things, man, convenience, accountability, get 'er done, liberty.... cheers.
Yeah, I read about it; thanks for the link, though, and I hope interested people read the article. If you read my comment you'll have noticed I didn't gloss over the fact that mining uranium is problematic, as is coal. Neither one thrills me. Are there ways to improve it? I don't know.
Look, right now _every_ way we know to generate electricity, to take just that one thing, has problems, some of them hefty. Further, we tend to shy away from doing anything even approaching a more complete accounting of various kinds of costs.
There is no such thing as "clean" power. Metals? Gotta mine 'em. Fuel, to run the mining machines. Fuel, to run all the steps of refining, alloying, manufacturing fuel elements; all the electricity used to do anything, ditto all the steps to arrive at building and turning the generators. Check out the process for making cement, for instance. Photovoltaics? Just for grins, backtrack all the ingredients, and come back, tell me how clean it is. Look, we've been playing short-sighted stupid mind games about all this stuff since day one right back to the Industrial Revolution and before about how we get stuff, how we make stuff, what we do with it when we're done with it. And what it costs.
At least with nuclear power (with my previous caveats) the middle part, the part where it generates electricity, is, in today's game, a pretty sweet deal. The getting there, and the cleanup after, is still roughly par with the rest.
"Domestic violence all but disappeared. Crime in general dropped dramatically."
Sorry, but that's bullshit. Go look up crime stats for the relevant period. Please.
Copied from a post from forum.pafoafo.org: (and if I screwed up by doing this, sorry 'bout that. Also, the chart didn't come through - it and many other graphics and useful articles show up when searching "crime rates during prohibition".)
-------
September 17th, 2010 Nullifidian Super Member Join Date: Jul 2009
Location:
Nowhere, Wyoming
Posts: 737
Rep Power: 1495
Re: FL Permit in the News again, dude got shot 13x Quote: Originally Posted by GunLawyer001 So if drugs were legal and everywhere and easy to get, then we wouldn't have a drug problem because....?
Because the overwhelming vast majority of crimes associated with drugs are with respect to the SALE and TRAFFICKING of drugs, not use.
This is what alcohol Prohibition did to the USA:
Police funding: INCREASED $11.4 Million
Arrests for Prohibition Violations: INCREASED 102+% (some states had prohibition before national prohibition)
Arrests for Drunkenness and Disorderly Conduct: INCREASED 41%
Arrests of Drunken Drivers: INCREASED 81%
Thefts and Burglaries: INCREASED 9%
Homicides, Assault, and Battery: INCREASED 13% Number of Federal Convicts: INCREASED 561% Federal Prison Population: INCREASED 366% Total Federal Expenditures on Penal Institutions: INCREASED 1,000%
here's a graph showing how much money people spent on alcohol:
Homicide rates went steadily up during Prohibition, then fell off sharply after it was repealed. However it took almost 10 years for homicide rates to fall to pre-prohibition levels.
Just as Prohibition didn't work for alcohol and wouldn't work for guns, it doesn't work for drugs.
I'm curious to know if you think that criminalization of speed has worked out as well or better than the criminalization of alcohol in the sense that it has made worthwhile inroads on whatever its widespread use may be. And I seriously question the notion that de-criminalization of speed could result in 6 million deaths per year. (I dunno, could be; I'm a bit out of touch these days.)
I don't see that removing criminal penalties for using a substance equates to regarding that substance as harmless.
Seems to me that much of current drug law essentially subsidizes the illicit drug industry by making many substances so profitable.
"Hopefully by that stage competition has stepped in and given us other less evil options, but maybe not."
I'll go with the "maybe not." The possible prospects are dim; apart from NoSuchA having stuff that Google doesn't, Google probably has more info about more stuff and more people at their disposal than any other entity on the planet. That they pretty much haven't 'done evil' with it so far is to my ken likely singular in history of business. Meanwhile they sit on a hoard of info that would be the gist for a totalitarian's wet dream.
Can they keep their "do no evil" policy after the founders are gone and through continual board changes? I expect that question keeps a few people up at night.
Good points, but don't forget that there are similar situations that happen with the mining and separation of uranium and (one would hope) thorium.
Another advantage of increasing use of nukes is that, depending on fuel cycle and design, a significant amount of current and future high-level waste can be re-processed and used; with good design, it will mostly all get 'burned' - at least according to my understanding from what I've read.
At the garbage end, we've still got problems with long-term storage of low-level wastes - so far, anyway.
Overall I agree that making a concerted shift from coal to nuclear would be useful.
Sure, I've owned several, they work well; only drawback I ever found was a tendency for a very small blob of ink to appear when starting to write. I found they were more than a gimmick on Earth; I've had enough occasions taking down measurements or marking up framing, for instance, worked nicely, and sometimes better than just using a pencil (and you don't have to sharpen it).
Was done by Fisher, of Fisher Pen; he put in a million out of his pocket towards development, so the story goes. See Wikipedia for a decent article, or go to the company's website. Uses a sealed, nitrogen-pressurized thixotropic ink container. Russians (Soviets) bought lots of 'em also.
Oh, ok. I don't recall coming across that tidbit in print somewhere, before now, of course. I do understand that lots of stuff supposed to be secret may be widely known and that too much of it is classified because "it's supposed to be secret" even when it's not, and that keeping things from the American public is big-time CYA and to prevent embarrassment to some, so TPTB can keep on doing whatever they wish to. I just never knew Mongoose was so widely known and didn't want to make the automatic assumption.
Funding and continuity of mission as dictated by Congress is needed for what you describe, and that's been lacking since well before the end of the Apollo program. NASA has struggled just to manage to do what they're doing now.
@teancum - SpaceX has a man-rated rocket? Capsule? I thought not yet, but working on it.
Seems to me the progression for commercial interests is: get there (LEO, Moon, asteroids and/or Mars; find and expand ways to make money at it; low-level continued exploration for resources in those areas; later explore and exploit stuff further out - moons of Jupiter and Saturn;
and in all or most all cases/areas they will be in the footprints of government exploration efforts. That's for near-term, next 100 years and more, barring gee-whiz magical discoveries in physics and consequent engineering. Or the Singularity. [grin]
In part, yes viz. the 'clandestine' CIA-abetted effort. Has any evidence surfaced to support the idea that Soviet Union was aware of Mongoose, though? [I don't know; if they were, then that adds to their reasons, particularly for the tac nukes.] SU was also irked at US placing IRBMs in several NATO countries, particularly Turkey, so, gander and goose. From what I recall one of the benefits to SU from placing the missiles was to not only reassure Castro but also to be better able to keep him on a leash - they were never all that happy with the relationship apart from being a thorn to the US, because Cuba cost them a lot of money and aggravation for little return - modest port rights, a small amount of some commodities, and a minor vacation spot, IIRC.
That's from memory; your post got me curious, so just read the Cuban missile crisis entry at Wikipedia. Their article is quite good. There were some things I either hadn't read before or had forgotten. (I had a selfish reason for interest on this because I lived in the D.C. area at the time, and some days it became difficult to concentrate on school.)
Slashdot Mirror
Also, in part, due to the increasing resistance of the nukaler nutters who protested against just about anything having to do with nuke stuff. Except of course for X-ray machines when they needed them. It was around this time that "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance" was re-named "Magnetic Resonance Imaging" so that hospitals could continue to have a useful diagnostic apparatus, and there began sweeping cutbacks in commercial power nukes due to greatly-increased costs for environmental and safety studies, and financing, and construction costs; the issue of thorium cycle never arose, because the mind-set was still locked into uranium cycle for getting plutonium to build even more warheads.
(Circa '90 I read in Scientific American of three engineers at Hanford who, in early '80s I think, had worked out a no-melt configuration; they re-jiggered an idle reactor and ran their test. Closed the main coolant valve, watched the temp rise a bit, then slowly, steadily decline over the next three days, with no apparent damage or degradation to fuel elements, core, etc. Within a few months, their results were bureaucratically buried and they were transferred.)
If memory serves there were other issues with NERVA, among them packaging - shielding, configuration, controlling material degradation, and working out a complete mission package that made sense from an engineering and cost basis. Not finally, but another simple question was what to do with the whole thing. We'd lost the will to explore - the public and their representatives mostly didn't give a shit after Apollo; besides, robots were fine, so why bother going anywhere, to do... what?
All combined to make a perfect shit-storm that made it easy to just duck, run, find something else to not do.
Came across this
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/meth-addiction-cure-ucla-ibudilast_n_2863126.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
looks interesting; article worth reading.
Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_United_States_law
is one place to start. That some modes of transport have restrictions is understood, i.e., one is supposed to have a license to operate a motor vehicle.
TSA did not catch 'the shoe bomber.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid
Odd, that; I think you'd have a hard time selling such a sentiment to most of the general population, although I'd prefer to be wrong about that.
I got this far watching the discussion degenerate into mostly ill-informed stuff about encryption (some wonderful exceptions, even the guy wanting to make an tinfoil iHat) and no one has yet thought to read even the summary.
If one reads the article, there are some law enforcement types claiming that total expansion of CALEA is necessary because in-game chat for Scrabble is being used for criminal purposes. I had hoped for general outcry at the gross stupidity of the original law, let alone the expansion, but certainly not completely glossing over it.
After reading over thirty of the posts, many worthy, I return to my first conclusion after reading yours: you said enough to cover the absurdity of what eDx is trying to do. The only possible useful thing I could see for it at first blush would be to act as a rough filter for very basic errors - and it'd still be making mistakes. At a time when there are plenty of sufficiently literate people un- or under-employed, let them grade essays at least as a first filter. One needn't be an expert on a subject to decide if an essay is at least readable, somewhat self-consistent, and maybe even find glaring logical flaws.
Yet I have to give 'em props for trying to do the presently impossible.
Now that's what I'm talking about. Finding enough things in common to start working to something reasonable and better than what we're stuck with now. Good on ya'. Now if, oh, another 10 or 30 million agree, enough reps and sens listen and heed their constituents.... well, anyway, it's a start. Thanks.
If you go to their web site you will see they ask for a number as a sum of your weight and that of your baggage.
I expect that fixed costs are factored into price per kilo. Keeps things simple, even the background calculations the airline has to do.
"Until people realize the fundamental truth that "We, the people, ARE our government" NOTHING will change."
I'm not so sure of that being completely true anymore. As best I can figure, in many races there is an informal vetting of candidates by financial entities with a vested local or positional interest - a little conversation on the links, over a casual lunch or dinner, at a social event, etc. Independents and grass-roots runners generally are simply out-spent, although sometimes a rumor or three may be needed.
However, I still believe (however forlorn it may be) that in many cases, especially at city and county level, that a sufficient number of eligible motivated voters could indeed elect whom they please from the proferred candidates, if one presumes that they are honest ones in the sense that they are taking positions (and one might hope, keep them if they win) that may not always be in accord with 'the powers that be.'
In any event, I think you're spot on about apathy. But I see a prevailing belief of members of the public that even in concert they can have no real effect - and it's this mind-set that is killing us. (If we haven't the liberty to truly choose those we wish to represent us, then what use is it? If we have no liberty in fact, then why bother doing much more than going through the motions of living, grasping such wisps of life as we may, without authentically living? One either goes numb or pulls the plug.)
So, yeah, even more apathy, could our mood rise so high.
Yeah, I caught that too. Given finite life hours and the huge number of entertainments I can overlook not seeing the movie but to moderate a geek/nerd site and not know of Feynman, one of the finer physicists of last century, known for working on the atom bomb, cracking safes, playing drums, painting, serving with distinction on the Challenger commission, his highly-regarding filmed lectures series, his Nobel prize, his pithy sayings which have spread, his series of very successful books, comments on education and science, seems.... whacked. There is a lot of world from which to choose to what to take in, or have the chance to be exposed to, highly variable for each person, but still, I was surprised.
Perhaps it's simply that, to me anyway, young'uns don't seem to question much, don't read a whole bunch - and then not very widely, depth unknown, and don't seem to socialize with all that many people outside their own 'peer' group - especially educated people in a disparate variety of fields. They may be smart, there's just a seeming lack sometimes of breadth or depth. But it Rob's case I'm simply wild-ass guessing, and mean entirely no disrespect, nor assumption of facts not in evidence - I gots enough problems without visiting any onto others.
He did come up with a good thing: "Good Chance!" That's a good finish and worth keeping.
Thanks. Was wondering a bit about the amphetamine/meth thing also. From what I've read, the blanket ban on so many things and the low cost of speed set the stage and opened the curtain.
As I mentioned before I'm a bit out of touch on this; beyond reading a news story or reports from a study, my only experience was taking a hit of Desoxyn during finals week back in '68. It 'worked' but so did coffee. (Took No-Doz twice; nevermore.) Back when, I met a couple of speed freaks and it wasn't pretty. It was common knowledge by circa '68 that 'speed kills'.
Overall, I'm in favor of de-criminalizing and legalizing the individual use of just about everything*, regulate as needed viz. adulteration and price-gouging, 'operating while under the influence' would generally be a misdemeanor (e.g., if someone continues to drive dangerously while high, take away their license, don't so automatically put them in prison), substituting effective education (not brain-dead programs such as "Just Say No") and a combination of medical intervention (not just detox), outpatient (Methadone, e.g.) and treatment programs for any who have abuse problems; further, there would need to be entry into education, training, apprenticeship, and so on, and whatever on-going support as necessary. I note that the economic consequences of present policy are staggering, and submit that a more rational (yeah, a judgement call) policy would provide economic benefit - for starters you'd have more people working, paying taxes, and being consumers.
*there's bound to be some stuff that's so bad people probably shouldn't have it or take it. I have no examples to hand due to ignorance, other than what's mentioned in the Geneva Accords. Any ban on something ought to be because it's so freaking dangerous, not because somebody in power doesn't like it.
I think you are right to question, and I think you've raised some good ones. My idea is to take what we already know and fix/improve things, get more empirical data and continue. We don't have to agree precisely on details, yet I think it essential to find enough in common as a society to make a current very crazy, very bad situation better.
Yes, thank you.
I left this out from above, it caught my fancy,
"Just over a year later, the FTC sued Google again, this time for circumventing privacy protections in Apple’s Safari browser to place tracking cookies on user’s computers. It did this despite ensuring users that they did not need to take any actions to block its cookies in Safari."
Classic. Is that chutzpah or what? Am I arguing against my 'position' - nah, not really, more like keeping a perspective - however skewed it may be. I note that I started using Ghostery about two hours after I first heard about it.
Ya got me. Thanks. I knew of two of those.
Just that compared to so many companies whose lapses/offenses/pecadillos I've come across over the years, they don't seem half-bad. ITT, GE, AT&T (look up Narus; that's not even what I had in mind, it's just so much fun to think about), General Dynamics, Bell Systems, Hughes, Sony; hell, a laundry list my tired aging mind can't pull out of memory's store.
But as you'll notice from later in my post, I give them no free ride. Not by a long shot. Shooee, for all I know, they're waiting for the right moment to take over the world. But I use gmail, and when I can figure out how to set it up for my needs, the phone thing.
All these heavy things, man, convenience, accountability, get 'er done, liberty.... cheers.
Yeah, I read about it; thanks for the link, though, and I hope interested people read the article. If you read my comment you'll have noticed I didn't gloss over the fact that mining uranium is problematic, as is coal. Neither one thrills me. Are there ways to improve it? I don't know.
Look, right now _every_ way we know to generate electricity, to take just that one thing, has problems, some of them hefty. Further, we tend to shy away from doing anything even approaching a more complete accounting of various kinds of costs.
There is no such thing as "clean" power. Metals? Gotta mine 'em. Fuel, to run the mining machines. Fuel, to run all the steps of refining, alloying, manufacturing fuel elements; all the electricity used to do anything, ditto all the steps to arrive at building and turning the generators. Check out the process for making cement, for instance. Photovoltaics? Just for grins, backtrack all the ingredients, and come back, tell me how clean it is. Look, we've been playing short-sighted stupid mind games about all this stuff since day one right back to the Industrial Revolution and before about how we get stuff, how we make stuff, what we do with it when we're done with it. And what it costs.
At least with nuclear power (with my previous caveats) the middle part, the part where it generates electricity, is, in today's game, a pretty sweet deal. The getting there, and the cleanup after, is still roughly par with the rest.
"Domestic violence all but disappeared. Crime in general dropped dramatically."
Sorry, but that's bullshit. Go look up crime stats for the relevant period. Please.
Copied from a post from forum.pafoafo.org: (and if I screwed up by doing this, sorry 'bout that. Also, the chart didn't come through - it and many other graphics and useful articles show up when searching "crime rates during prohibition".)
-------
September 17th, 2010
Nullifidian
Super Member Join Date: Jul 2009
Location:
Nowhere, Wyoming
Posts: 737
Rep Power: 1495
Re: FL Permit in the News again, dude got shot 13x
Quote: Originally Posted by GunLawyer001
So if drugs were legal and everywhere and easy to get, then we wouldn't have a drug problem because....?
Because the overwhelming vast majority of crimes associated with drugs are with respect to the SALE and TRAFFICKING of drugs, not use.
This is what alcohol Prohibition did to the USA:
Police funding: INCREASED $11.4 Million
Arrests for Prohibition Violations: INCREASED 102+% (some states had prohibition before national prohibition)
Arrests for Drunkenness and Disorderly Conduct: INCREASED 41%
Arrests of Drunken Drivers: INCREASED 81%
Thefts and Burglaries: INCREASED 9%
Homicides, Assault, and Battery: INCREASED 13%
Number of Federal Convicts: INCREASED 561%
Federal Prison Population: INCREASED 366%
Total Federal Expenditures on Penal Institutions: INCREASED 1,000%
here's a graph showing how much money people spent on alcohol:
Homicide rates went steadily up during Prohibition, then fell off sharply after it was repealed. However it took almost 10 years for homicide rates to fall to pre-prohibition levels.
Just as Prohibition didn't work for alcohol and wouldn't work for guns, it doesn't work for drugs.
I'm curious to know if you think that criminalization of speed has worked out as well or better than the criminalization of alcohol in the sense that it has made worthwhile inroads on whatever its widespread use may be. And I seriously question the notion that de-criminalization of speed could result in 6 million deaths per year. (I dunno, could be; I'm a bit out of touch these days.)
I don't see that removing criminal penalties for using a substance equates to regarding that substance as harmless.
Seems to me that much of current drug law essentially subsidizes the illicit drug industry by making many substances so profitable.
Yeah, your take on "opt-in" is right on.
"Hopefully by that stage competition has stepped in and given us other less evil options, but maybe not."
I'll go with the "maybe not." The possible prospects are dim; apart from NoSuchA having stuff that Google doesn't, Google probably has more info about more stuff and more people at their disposal than any other entity on the planet. That they pretty much haven't 'done evil' with it so far is to my ken likely singular in history of business. Meanwhile they sit on a hoard of info that would be the gist for a totalitarian's wet dream.
Can they keep their "do no evil" policy after the founders are gone and through continual board changes? I expect that question keeps a few people up at night.
Good points, but don't forget that there are similar situations that happen with the mining and separation of uranium and (one would hope) thorium.
Another advantage of increasing use of nukes is that, depending on fuel cycle and design, a significant amount of current and future high-level waste can be re-processed and used; with good design, it will mostly all get 'burned' - at least according to my understanding from what I've read.
At the garbage end, we've still got problems with long-term storage of low-level wastes - so far, anyway.
Overall I agree that making a concerted shift from coal to nuclear would be useful.
Sorry, should have been a hyphen before ink. And no, it didn't have to be pumped.
Sure, I've owned several, they work well; only drawback I ever found was a tendency for a very small blob of ink to appear when starting to write. I found they were more than a gimmick on Earth; I've had enough occasions taking down measurements or marking up framing, for instance, worked nicely, and sometimes better than just using a pencil (and you don't have to sharpen it).
Was done by Fisher, of Fisher Pen; he put in a million out of his pocket towards development, so the story goes. See Wikipedia for a decent article, or go to the company's website. Uses a sealed, nitrogen-pressurized thixotropic ink container. Russians (Soviets) bought lots of 'em also.
Oh, ok. I don't recall coming across that tidbit in print somewhere, before now, of course. I do understand that lots of stuff supposed to be secret may be widely known and that too much of it is classified because "it's supposed to be secret" even when it's not, and that keeping things from the American public is big-time CYA and to prevent embarrassment to some, so TPTB can keep on doing whatever they wish to. I just never knew Mongoose was so widely known and didn't want to make the automatic assumption.
Funding and continuity of mission as dictated by Congress is needed for what you describe, and that's been lacking since well before the end of the Apollo program. NASA has struggled just to manage to do what they're doing now.
Neither ball-point pens nor Teflon came out of NASA. But if they spur your interest in NASA, science, and the rest, more power to y'all. Go for it!
@teancum - SpaceX has a man-rated rocket? Capsule? I thought not yet, but working on it.
Seems to me the progression for commercial interests is:
get there (LEO, Moon, asteroids and/or Mars;
find and expand ways to make money at it;
low-level continued exploration for resources in those areas;
later explore and exploit stuff further out - moons of Jupiter and Saturn;
and in all or most all cases/areas they will be in the footprints of government exploration efforts. That's for near-term, next 100 years and more, barring gee-whiz magical discoveries in physics and consequent engineering. Or the Singularity. [grin]
In part, yes viz. the 'clandestine' CIA-abetted effort. Has any evidence surfaced to support the idea that Soviet Union was aware of Mongoose, though? [I don't know; if they were, then that adds to their reasons, particularly for the tac nukes.] SU was also irked at US placing IRBMs in several NATO countries, particularly Turkey, so, gander and goose. From what I recall one of the benefits to SU from placing the missiles was to not only reassure Castro but also to be better able to keep him on a leash - they were never all that happy with the relationship apart from being a thorn to the US, because Cuba cost them a lot of money and aggravation for little return - modest port rights, a small amount of some commodities, and a minor vacation spot, IIRC.
That's from memory; your post got me curious, so just read the Cuban missile crisis entry at Wikipedia. Their article is quite good. There were some things I either hadn't read before or had forgotten. (I had a selfish reason for interest on this because I lived in the D.C. area at the time, and some days it became difficult to concentrate on school.)