Agreed. This isn't about technical expertise; indeed, I think the rawness may actually add something, the way an irregular beat can accent music. By the time I got done looking my hair was standing on end, and not because the pictures were so frightening or dramatic, but because the juxtaposition was so effective.
Which is why I only see this as practical for long straight runs, where it would move with traffic lights just like a car, and would not have to turn. Otherwise there's going to be serious confusion down below. And considering that "confused" was the kindest thing I can say about Chinese street traffic (at least per videos I've seen)...
I'm sure unethical DAs will think up all sorts of similar tricks. After reading the lab dude's posts, it appears it's not the method that's in question; it's just triggering on "brain recognises something". Fair enough.... The problem being how easily we can be SET UP to recognise something, even if we've actually never seen it before (spurious memory, whatever it's called, that it's easy to convince yourself you've actually had). How about just some "posters" (bearing the images they wish to be recognised) lining the walls of the hallway down to the interrogation room??
Occurs to me that the method is fundamentally flawed, in that once you've been shown the various stimuli, now you know the stimuli exist, and you will recognise them in the future, whether they are relevant (to you or to the investigation) or not.
I also wonder how they plan to get the terrorists to troupe down to the shrink lab and get themselves electroded to see if they recognise any of their presumed targets. Like anyone who's been in the U.S. for five minutes wouldn't recognise New York?
Yeah, first thing I do with a newly-acquired CD is rip the blasted thing... easier to point at MP3s on the PC and let WinAmp have at, than to drag the CD off the shelf, muck about with the case and the drawer and THEN a player, and worry about scratching it along the way. And more versatile since it's way easier to mix-and-match to the taste of the moment. I mean, who wants to be swapping 50 CDs in and out to get the songs you want at the moment, when you can do it in a few clicks with MP3s and a playlist?
So I consider the MP3s the usin' copy, and the CD the offsite backup.:)
All flamingly obvious if you've done it even once.:D
I'd rip all my video DVDs too, if I had the disk space.
Been doing the same with my old vinyl, as being a lot less trouble than acquiring the hardware to rip it myself (tho sometimes they're damned hard to find). The end result is the same -- I have MP3s of vinyl that I've already paid money for.
To my personal aereating system, cannabis smoke is much worse than ordinary cigs, right up there with cigar smoke, and the pot smoke residue that gets into fabrics etc. is vastly worse (and harder to get rid of).
However, as you say there is really no necessity to smoke the stuff; in fact ISTM a much better way, especially for those who depend on a specific dosage, would be ordinary extraction such as is done with caffeine and essential oils from other plants (via alcohol, another oil, or water as may seem best).
And I'd think known reliable dosage would be just as much to the benefit of recreational users as to medical users. Would also reduce wildassed-guesswork in DUI cases.
I suppose I should check if there's a Greek market around here... the lamb I had at the Greek festival was fantastic, and I know they got it locally. Tho I've seen Armenians pay up to $100 for a 70 lb. lamb or goat on the hoof, which isn't any great bargain by the pound of meat.
Of course I could just shoot one of the neighbour's goats, next time I catch them destroying my trees;)
Blame radio and then TV. With print, updates were limited by the daily or weekly print schedule, or at worst by morning and afternoon editions. Radio made it possible for "Breaking news" to intrude at any time, and gradually people began to accept that "breaking news" might be, uh, broken news. TV, with its forced sense of in-your-face immediacy, made this worse. And now we have the natural endpoint, Twitter as 'news'.
I've also stopped paying attention to "breaking news", as being too often broken fluff, or a "reporter" almost *creating* news on the spot.
And it generates a "panic every time you miss 2 seconds worth of news updates" psychotic behaviour even in people who know the end of the world is just not that imminent.
I agree, let's go back to reasonable timeframes that allow the news to get it right. Funny thing too, there was less SPIN applied BY news agencies back then, even tho there was more time to apply it.
Til then, let me know if the world ends, cuz I won't hear the news til the day after.;)
Particularly if the criticism itself is lies, distractions, schizophrenia and lopsidedness. Which seems to be the case as often with critics as with news sources.:(
It's become too much about attracting the max number of eyeballs to sell to advertisers, and not enough about giving us value in return for our eyeballs.
How does it hold up to bleach? I've discovered that those wonderful comfy cotton/bamboo socks are just great for everything *except* working around bleach -- eats thru 'em like they're made of air. Much worse than straight cotton.
Why shouldn't it be like beer or wine? Brew or grow what you want for your own consumption, no problem. The moment you sell it commercially, you pay tax on it.
I expect many tobacco farmers are also watching with interest... tobacco being so gawdawful hard on the soil, and subject to so many pests -- hemp might be a whole lot more cost-effective to grow if it doesn't need so much doctoring (fertilizer, pesticides). I'm also wondering how much of the commercial tobacco harvesting and processing equipment could be adapted to hemp.
As to the more smokable kind -- the one downside I can see is that it will probably replace a lot of vegetable crops, unless those are subsidized, since the same immigrant labour force can do essentially the same work -- picking strawberries or picking flowers, what's the difference, except that marijuana likely has a better profit margin, and less risk to the grower.
Main thing I've noticed is that while stoned on pot, people make decisions rather slowly, or more often not at all. So they might see the red light but not be able to make the decision to stop. I don't see this as intrinsically different from the drunk who misfigures he can beat the light. Either way they don't manage to do what's needed, having failed to make the correct decision.
Which is why we call it "under the influence".
I don't care WHY someone is impaired, nor about the fine details of different sorts of impairment. I'm sure we can work up a reasonable average threshold for THC intoxication -- yeah, it won't be perfectly accurate but it'll be a tolerably good benchmark for most people's level of impairment, much like blood alcohol (at least before MADD got it twiddled downward).
Point is, the law should be consistent on the point of a driver being impaired, and to what degree, and should not care WHY he is impaired (other than as needed for a legal measure thereof -- unfortunately "he acted drunk" is a bad metric subject to even more forms of abuse and misuse).
How about we ditch the Commerce Clause entirely, agree that the Feds have no business regulating commerce BETWEEN the states either, and set its duty to regulating only business directly between a state and a foreign power?
I'd buy more lamb, but it's $7/lb. and the equivalent cut of beef or pork is $2/lb. I have no idea what goat would sell for at retail, but if it's priced like lamb, no wonder it doesn't sell better.
Chicken and egg indeed -- it's gotta be comparably priced before it will attract a comparable market, making the price fall due to better availability... gah. Pass the beef.
Which works out to a retail range of roughly $3600 to $13,000 per pound depending on the form and supplier. Based on what I know of other seasonings, wholesale price is probably about 5% to 10% of that.
At the other end of the scale, most culinary herbs and spices retail for around $4/ounce, but are around $4/pound for bulk packaging (like the big containers sold at Costco).
Anyway, it does appear that marijuana is rather overpriced, even allowing that the 'good' stuff requires some nitpicky handwork (tho not on the scale of saffron). But that's the penalty of an artificially restricted market. What does it sell for where it's legal, unrestricted, and locally-grown? I'm wild-assed-guessing somewhere around $25/lb.
Firstoff, I'm all for legalizing and taxing it. This pointless "war on drugs" has got to stop, before it burns up the entire Constitution.
The data I've seen indicated that pot smoke carries MORE carcinogens per ounce of burned matter; however, it's a lower risk than tobacco smoking simply because one smokes pot a few tokes a day, often on random days or weekends, not a pack or more a day every single day. So the *total* ingested volume of particulate matter (the real issue) is less, even tho each individual smoke contains more.
Regardless, IMO everyone has the right to be stupid at their own expense, and if you want to fill *your* lungs with smoke or seawater or even vacuum, that's your business.
And no, it should NOT be at society's expense; if you're stupid the consequences should be on your own nickel, not picked up by the nanny state. Losers are self-limiting, if not enabled by a mommy-fix society. Individual freedom also means the freedom to be a dolt.
If this is successful, it could mean other "improvements" in the future. Such as a mosquito that cannot transmit heartworm. Or a tsetse fly that cannot transmit sleeping sickness. Or of a flea that cannot transmit... you get the idea.
Tho having lived in areas with twin-engine mosquitoes, my notion of a REAL improvement would be a modification that eliminated the species altogether. Let one of the small crane flies take over the ecological niche; they're just as edible for other critters, and they don't bite.
[Not an entirely facetious idea: I've noticed that when you have a lot of crane flies, you're likely to have fewer mosquitoes, apparently being crowded out by the crane flies. So there must be some overlap as it is.]
Not just games. Some major Win9x apps also used a 16bit installer, usually some antique version of InstallShield (probably because it was very expensive to update). You could always tell because the installer would spit up a Win3.x-looking interface.
I just looked at both the WINE and Codeweavers reports for CorelDraw/PhotoPaint (my dealkiller app) and it looks like they both suffer the same issues.:(
Slashdot Mirror
Um... there's plenty of evidence that "Adrian Lamo" is nothing more than a high-end con artist:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/american_police_force_hardin_montana.php?ref=fpb
http://www.kulr8.com/home/related/62994352.html
http://www.infowars.com/exposed-american-police-force-is-a-blackwater-front-group/
http://helenair.com/news/local/state-and-regional/article_aac61630-ae5a-11de-a782-001cc4c002e0.html
Agreed. This isn't about technical expertise; indeed, I think the rawness may actually add something, the way an irregular beat can accent music. By the time I got done looking my hair was standing on end, and not because the pictures were so frightening or dramatic, but because the juxtaposition was so effective.
Which is why I only see this as practical for long straight runs, where it would move with traffic lights just like a car, and would not have to turn. Otherwise there's going to be serious confusion down below. And considering that "confused" was the kindest thing I can say about Chinese street traffic (at least per videos I've seen)...
I'm sure unethical DAs will think up all sorts of similar tricks. After reading the lab dude's posts, it appears it's not the method that's in question; it's just triggering on "brain recognises something". Fair enough.... The problem being how easily we can be SET UP to recognise something, even if we've actually never seen it before (spurious memory, whatever it's called, that it's easy to convince yourself you've actually had). How about just some "posters" (bearing the images they wish to be recognised) lining the walls of the hallway down to the interrogation room??
I don't know if it's true but I recall reading about such a technique being used in the Soviet Union, to get rid of political rivals.
Occurs to me that the method is fundamentally flawed, in that once you've been shown the various stimuli, now you know the stimuli exist, and you will recognise them in the future, whether they are relevant (to you or to the investigation) or not.
I also wonder how they plan to get the terrorists to troupe down to the shrink lab and get themselves electroded to see if they recognise any of their presumed targets. Like anyone who's been in the U.S. for five minutes wouldn't recognise New York?
Yeah, first thing I do with a newly-acquired CD is rip the blasted thing... easier to point at MP3s on the PC and let WinAmp have at, than to drag the CD off the shelf, muck about with the case and the drawer and THEN a player, and worry about scratching it along the way. And more versatile since it's way easier to mix-and-match to the taste of the moment. I mean, who wants to be swapping 50 CDs in and out to get the songs you want at the moment, when you can do it in a few clicks with MP3s and a playlist?
So I consider the MP3s the usin' copy, and the CD the offsite backup. :)
All flamingly obvious if you've done it even once. :D
I'd rip all my video DVDs too, if I had the disk space.
Been doing the same with my old vinyl, as being a lot less trouble than acquiring the hardware to rip it myself (tho sometimes they're damned hard to find). The end result is the same -- I have MP3s of vinyl that I've already paid money for.
To my personal aereating system, cannabis smoke is much worse than ordinary cigs, right up there with cigar smoke, and the pot smoke residue that gets into fabrics etc. is vastly worse (and harder to get rid of).
However, as you say there is really no necessity to smoke the stuff; in fact ISTM a much better way, especially for those who depend on a specific dosage, would be ordinary extraction such as is done with caffeine and essential oils from other plants (via alcohol, another oil, or water as may seem best).
And I'd think known reliable dosage would be just as much to the benefit of recreational users as to medical users. Would also reduce wildassed-guesswork in DUI cases.
Your subject line is priceless :)
I suppose I should check if there's a Greek market around here... the lamb I had at the Greek festival was fantastic, and I know they got it locally. Tho I've seen Armenians pay up to $100 for a 70 lb. lamb or goat on the hoof, which isn't any great bargain by the pound of meat.
Of course I could just shoot one of the neighbour's goats, next time I catch them destroying my trees ;)
"This will be a robbery long remembered..."
Blame radio and then TV. With print, updates were limited by the daily or weekly print schedule, or at worst by morning and afternoon editions. Radio made it possible for "Breaking news" to intrude at any time, and gradually people began to accept that "breaking news" might be, uh, broken news. TV, with its forced sense of in-your-face immediacy, made this worse. And now we have the natural endpoint, Twitter as 'news'.
I've also stopped paying attention to "breaking news", as being too often broken fluff, or a "reporter" almost *creating* news on the spot.
And it generates a "panic every time you miss 2 seconds worth of news updates" psychotic behaviour even in people who know the end of the world is just not that imminent.
I agree, let's go back to reasonable timeframes that allow the news to get it right. Funny thing too, there was less SPIN applied BY news agencies back then, even tho there was more time to apply it.
Til then, let me know if the world ends, cuz I won't hear the news til the day after. ;)
Particularly if the criticism itself is lies, distractions, schizophrenia and lopsidedness. Which seems to be the case as often with critics as with news sources. :(
It's become too much about attracting the max number of eyeballs to sell to advertisers, and not enough about giving us value in return for our eyeballs.
How does it hold up to bleach? I've discovered that those wonderful comfy cotton/bamboo socks are just great for everything *except* working around bleach -- eats thru 'em like they're made of air. Much worse than straight cotton.
Why shouldn't it be like beer or wine? Brew or grow what you want for your own consumption, no problem. The moment you sell it commercially, you pay tax on it.
I expect many tobacco farmers are also watching with interest... tobacco being so gawdawful hard on the soil, and subject to so many pests -- hemp might be a whole lot more cost-effective to grow if it doesn't need so much doctoring (fertilizer, pesticides). I'm also wondering how much of the commercial tobacco harvesting and processing equipment could be adapted to hemp.
As to the more smokable kind -- the one downside I can see is that it will probably replace a lot of vegetable crops, unless those are subsidized, since the same immigrant labour force can do essentially the same work -- picking strawberries or picking flowers, what's the difference, except that marijuana likely has a better profit margin, and less risk to the grower.
"All things not compulsory are forbidden."
-- old Soviet jape
Main thing I've noticed is that while stoned on pot, people make decisions rather slowly, or more often not at all. So they might see the red light but not be able to make the decision to stop. I don't see this as intrinsically different from the drunk who misfigures he can beat the light. Either way they don't manage to do what's needed, having failed to make the correct decision.
Which is why we call it "under the influence".
I don't care WHY someone is impaired, nor about the fine details of different sorts of impairment. I'm sure we can work up a reasonable average threshold for THC intoxication -- yeah, it won't be perfectly accurate but it'll be a tolerably good benchmark for most people's level of impairment, much like blood alcohol (at least before MADD got it twiddled downward).
Point is, the law should be consistent on the point of a driver being impaired, and to what degree, and should not care WHY he is impaired (other than as needed for a legal measure thereof -- unfortunately "he acted drunk" is a bad metric subject to even more forms of abuse and misuse).
How about we ditch the Commerce Clause entirely, agree that the Feds have no business regulating commerce BETWEEN the states either, and set its duty to regulating only business directly between a state and a foreign power?
I'd buy more lamb, but it's $7/lb. and the equivalent cut of beef or pork is $2/lb. I have no idea what goat would sell for at retail, but if it's priced like lamb, no wonder it doesn't sell better.
Chicken and egg indeed -- it's gotta be comparably priced before it will attract a comparable market, making the price fall due to better availability... gah. Pass the beef.
At the most expensive end... Saffron appears to retail for between $8/gram and [goes off, fiddles with calculator] $860/ounce, based on http://www.amazon.com/Frontier-Culinary-Spices-Saffron-Bottles/dp/B001EQ57NY
Which works out to a retail range of roughly $3600 to $13,000 per pound depending on the form and supplier. Based on what I know of other seasonings, wholesale price is probably about 5% to 10% of that.
Some cheaper prices cited here, http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/asianveg/msg0821032623921.html but flavouring prices have roughly doubled since then across the board.
At the other end of the scale, most culinary herbs and spices retail for around $4/ounce, but are around $4/pound for bulk packaging (like the big containers sold at Costco).
Anyway, it does appear that marijuana is rather overpriced, even allowing that the 'good' stuff requires some nitpicky handwork (tho not on the scale of saffron). But that's the penalty of an artificially restricted market. What does it sell for where it's legal, unrestricted, and locally-grown? I'm wild-assed-guessing somewhere around $25/lb.
Firstoff, I'm all for legalizing and taxing it. This pointless "war on drugs" has got to stop, before it burns up the entire Constitution.
The data I've seen indicated that pot smoke carries MORE carcinogens per ounce of burned matter; however, it's a lower risk than tobacco smoking simply because one smokes pot a few tokes a day, often on random days or weekends, not a pack or more a day every single day. So the *total* ingested volume of particulate matter (the real issue) is less, even tho each individual smoke contains more.
Regardless, IMO everyone has the right to be stupid at their own expense, and if you want to fill *your* lungs with smoke or seawater or even vacuum, that's your business.
And no, it should NOT be at society's expense; if you're stupid the consequences should be on your own nickel, not picked up by the nanny state. Losers are self-limiting, if not enabled by a mommy-fix society. Individual freedom also means the freedom to be a dolt.
If this is successful, it could mean other "improvements" in the future. Such as a mosquito that cannot transmit heartworm. Or a tsetse fly that cannot transmit sleeping sickness. Or of a flea that cannot transmit ... you get the idea.
Tho having lived in areas with twin-engine mosquitoes, my notion of a REAL improvement would be a modification that eliminated the species altogether. Let one of the small crane flies take over the ecological niche; they're just as edible for other critters, and they don't bite.
[Not an entirely facetious idea: I've noticed that when you have a lot of crane flies, you're likely to have fewer mosquitoes, apparently being crowded out by the crane flies. So there must be some overlap as it is.]
Not just games. Some major Win9x apps also used a 16bit installer, usually some antique version of InstallShield (probably because it was very expensive to update). You could always tell because the installer would spit up a Win3.x-looking interface.
I just looked at both the WINE and Codeweavers reports for CorelDraw/PhotoPaint (my dealkiller app) and it looks like they both suffer the same issues. :(