Another thing that some Mac fanatics gloss over is that Apple has never really competed for the low-end or mid-low-end computer segment, though. I'm not even talking about beige boxes--just look at a cheap Dell vs. Apple's offering. The Mac Mini has style, smallness, lower power consumption (and of course OS X) going for it... and pretty much nothing else. The phrase "low-end Macintosh notebook" is nothing more than a contradiction. I haven't priced them recently, but last I checked the cheapest one they offered was over 2.5x the price of the cheapest full-featured Intel notebook available.
The budget crowd is probably the BIGGEST group of consumers, and for these people Apple is still nowhere near competitive. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you--in my opinion, Apple SHOULDN'T be cutting any corners trying to offer a bargain-basement option--but it's still something the fanboys tend to neglect when they spout off about how "Macs are cheaper now!!!!!!!!!". No, they aren't. They're arguably cheaper for a very specific middle-of-the-road, I'm-not-ever-going-to-bother-building-my-own minority market segment. But, the thing is, Macs weren't designed to compete with PC's cost-effective hardware... it was designed to be a cohesive hardware + software package, and in this regard they blow away Windows entirely.
I was thinking much along the same lines, until I saw the $21 million limit. Going by the content industry's own over-inflated prices, that's really pretty insignificant. A $21 million tax applied to the combined book, movie, music and software industries is laughably small. Now, if someone decided to apply it all to a single product (e.g. Windows) that *might* get someone's attention...
You assume people care about the use of steroids by athletes. I don't think they do. As far as I can tell, only sports media and athletes care.
Maybe you're right, but lawmakers care what the media says, otherwise we wouldn't have time-wasting baseball hearings conducted by the highest legislative body in the nation.
Steroids aren't physiologically addictive (and cannabis isn't either, for that matter.) Caffeine is HIGHLY addictive. And as someone else pointed out, the same drug that's too dangerous for adults to use even occasionally (Adderall) is routinely forced down the throats of millions of teens/preteens everywhere FOR THE EXACT SAME REASON COLLEGE STUDENTS MANY COLLEGE STUDENTS TAKE IT--poor academic performance.
I think that the article makes a very valid point. There's a lot of hypocrisy to be found here.
Wrong. Read the article again. If you get a hit at detector C, the bomb is usable, yet it does not explode (in our universe. According to the many-worlds interpretation of what's happening here, it DOES explode in an alternate universe, and we're basically detecting the results of that explosion. Freaky shit, I know.)
Londoners should start smashing cameras then. I care, and I would, except I'm not a Brit.
It's entirely possible you're correct about the cynical motives behind this recent effort, in which case I am saddened, but perhaps cynical motives can sometimes serve a greater good. Not sure what that would be, though, if (as you said) cameras are already elsewhere and are left unmolested. I've a hard enough time figuring out our fucked up society without worrying about the details from across the pond... should've made it clearer that I was speaking on general principle given the quick 'n' dirty facts presented, as opposed to a specific or personal analysis.
I really don't give a shit about speeders. If anything, I'm on your side (in principle), though I don't believe speed is a causative agent in the majority of accidents (though it admittedly can make an accident much worse.)
My point is, you're being extremely naive if you think these cameras will be used ONLY to combat speeding. Hell, give it 10 or 15 years and I'll be surprised if they're even *primarily* used for speeding. A few months after 9/11, and there were law enforcement seminars being held for law enforcement agencies/officers showing how they could use anti-terrorism laws against criminals. Shortly thereafter, forfeiture crap skyrocketed and I know one guy was even charged and convicted of manufacturing biological weapons (meth). I don't have any solid numbers, but I'd wager anything that the vast majority of convictions under the new anti-terror laws are being used against drug offenders and other non-terrorist offenders.
Just picture this situation--the police are on the lookout for a specific car in a high-profile case. They know the license plate. Someone points out that they can EASILY modify the cameras to take a picture of EVERY passing car instead of just the speeding ones, and software is available to automatically decipher the license plate numbers. They make the change, the subject is apprehended, and then someone points out--why bother changing the cameras back? This way they get to track ALL of the cars, ALL of the time, and thereby pinpoint subjects' vehicles (and stolen vehicles) much quicker. As an added bonus, they can also track the movements of the owners of those cars, too. And if you don't think THAT power won't be abused, you really need to pay closer attention to history (even recent history.)
Crime in general is bad. Speeding is crime, and it is bad. Allowing the state this level of unchecked surveillance is terrible. A possible middle-ground would be legal and technological measures to prevent a permanent database from being constructed, but the lawmakers absolutely *hate* putting these kinds of limits on law enforcement.
There are certain to be plenty of replies saying how this is a bad thing, people should write to their lawmakers instead, etc. Let me offer a preemptive rebuttal: Fuck that. The information age has made permanent archival cheap, and improvements in pattern recognition are fast giving us the ability to rapidly search through those archives. There isn't a single government in existence today that's responsible enough to handle such data. Certainly, Britain's (and to a much greater extent, the USA's) extremely self-destructive War on Drugs is evidence enough of that.
Speeding isn't good, but it isn't the scourge of society. The fact is, governments (and the UK government especially) have repeatedly shown a propensity to never throw away any data gathered from the public (if you are arrested in the UK for any reason, your DNA is put into a database and never deleted, even if the charges are dropped.) The speeding *obsession* is a joke anyway--the only reason why law enforcement cares so much about it is it's easy to prove and tickets are an easy source of revenue. The solution to the traffic problem is ultimately a technical one--within the next 50-75 years, we should have fully automated cars anyway (if not flying.)
Despite what the evening news tells you, law enforcement is NOT the primary problem of our times. In the quest for a peaceful society, law enforcement is a merely one tool of many and it's a very dangerous and cumbersome tool at that. If our lawmakers cannot recognize this and continue to blaze a merry path towards a privacy-less society--one where surveillance is abused to persecute the law-abiding and civil disobedience is utterly impossible because law enforcement is just too damn omniscient--then the populace at large can and should take measures into their own hands.
I'm certainly not happy *at all* about the destruction of taxpayer-funded property, but this issues involve here transcend your average political quibbling. If these Brits are willing to risk imprisonment to fight the naive Orwellians in charge, good for them. (If on the other hand they're just doing this so they can speed with impunity, shame on them.)
Try that and you'll get the GOP all up your ass about increasing the tax burden on the working class.
Not that it ever stopped them before, but that would be pretty piss-poor logic. The Democratic/sane person response would be: "No, the working class will SAVE MONEY by using compact fluorescents. We're just making the savings a little more obvious and up-front." Yeah, the GOP prides itself on being anti-tax, but I don't really understand how can BANNING something be easier than taxing it. Surely there are a lot more people (corporate and citizen) who're much more likely to be pissed off by a ban than a tax.
Anyway, I thought neither party cared about the working class anymore...? Nowadays it's all about pandering to the middle class.
I'm not exactly a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian here, but does a ban really make sense here? There are probably applications (other than EasyBake) that require incandescents, and there are probably more than a few people who can't stand CFLs. I foresee these people turning to the black/gray market for incandescents, since they have little alternative.
Instead banning anything, why not tax incandescents so they cost 5x-10x more than the average CFL? That's enough to get the majority of the nation to switch, and you can use the tax money from the rest of the nation to fund alternative energy research. Hell, I think the same philosophy should be used with low-MPG vehicles.
Even open source implementations are vulnerable to XSS.
Firefox + NoScript FTW. Filters XSS even from sites you've otherwise whitelisted (which does *very* rarely cause a problem, but you can manually override if necessary.)
Owning and operating cars make sense where the population density falls below a certain threshhold, say in the country,
I live about 17 miles from work.
In a perfect world, I'd be able to bike to and from, thus saving money and fossil fuels, reducing traffic congestion, etc. In reality, I would have to be suicidal to try and bike it (over half of it would be without sidewalks, across very busy streets), not to mention the extra 3 (or so) hours it would probably take out of my already jam-packed day, not to mention the fact that I need to drive around town occasionally on official business and my boss wouldn't tolerate the wait.
We do have a few bus stops, but this isn't the big city (it's "medium city", if there is such a thing) and the buses don't run around my schedule, nor do they let me off where I need to be (would require at least 3-5 miles of biking, I think.)
This is my situation, and I have a job in an adjacent town. MANY people who live here commute to the biggest city in the area (Orlando), which makes busing/biking pretty much impossible.
And I don't think our city is very unusual. The sad fact is, America's urban/suburban population density is a lot lower than that of most of Western Europe, and that makes public transportation not an option for most of us.
Of course you do realize that most major Open Source projects will actually wait until something is stable and make sure all of the important features are added and working correctly before releasing it, right? Microsoft would have released this 7+ years ago and you would have paid for the privilege of beta-testing it, and paid 2 or 3 more times again as "updated" (read: bug fixed + more eye candy) versions are released. Compare this to Firefox--I was using it for at least a year and a half before it went 1.x, and at 0.7.x it was very usable, with extensions and everything. Similarly, I'll wager Octave has been perfectly usable for years now--some people simply have much higher "1.0" standards.
The dilemma is founded entirely upon a baseless idea. I can give you another baseless idea--you cannot get into heaven unless you constructed an idol out of a hollowed-out cucumber and pray to it daily, otherwise you shall spend eternity in the great Food Processor at the center of the earth.
Ridiculous as it sounds, this "dilemma" is identical to Pascal's. There exists no evidence (save your "faith" that the dudes who wrote the Bible were telling the literal truth, and that you're interpreting that truth correctly) for Heaven or Hell or God or the rules for getting into heaven and hell. There also exists no evidence for my cucumber-based religion, save for your faith that *I'm* telling you the truth. I am, at least, known. You could track me down and give me a polygraph or something. The authors of the Bible are (for all intents and purposes) anonymous.
On what evidence do you base this belief? The couple says they were just screwing around and hit the helicopter by accident. Barring evidence to the contrary (e.g. claims by the pilot that the green flashes were prolonged), I see no reason to disbelieve them.
Marijuana "addiction" is more like sex "addiction", or potato chips "addiction". Sure, there are no withdrawal symptoms, but that doesn't stop people from their compulsive behavior.
Which is why TV should be banned long before marijuana.
Sorry for replying to myself so much, but there's one more thing I must add.
The war on drugs (and marijuana especially) isn't immoral just because it takes away peoples' freedoms. It's also immoral because it wastes billions of taxpayer dollars that could be using to SAVE lives instead. It's immoral because people who commit REAL crimes get paroled early from prison because there isn't enough room. Finally, it's immoral AND STUPID for the same reason that the Prohibition was immoral and stupid--it gives organized crime a lucrative source of income. Al Capone and friends were nothing until bootlegging gave them a fortune. Similarly, both organized crime and random thugs would find themselves penniless without their sales of illicit substances. Crackheads and smack fiends wouldn't have to steal in order to support their habit, either--a few weeks at a minimum-wage crap job could buy them enough junk to last them a year (...or die by overdose, thereby ridding society of their "burden".)
Oh yeah, FYI marijuana doesn't have withdraw. Or deadly overdose. Or even physiological dependence.
I used to smoke occasionally, my last blunt was nearly three years ago, I quit cold turkey due to a prospective new job, and I haven't ever had the slightest craving for another hit. It won't cure cancer or anything, but I'll be damned if it's 1/10 as bad as alcohol.
Fine by me. Let the government ban distribution to minors. The precise definition of "minor" is contentious, but in principle I think it's a good idea to keep mind-altering drugs out of the hands of kids.
However, you should go after the shrinks first. The only drug I was ever addicted to was speed (aka Ritalin), and it was given to me (when I was 11) by an extremely pushy, extremely persuasive shrink. It sent me into a spiraling depression, and the shrink's response was to up the dose. I finally quit, over the objections of my parents and doctors, after I missed a couple doses and realized (after breaking several things in my room) the withdraw was making me feel like shit and lose all impulse control.
As far as this couple goes, OTOH, they should be imprisoned for a short length of time if they didn't realize the harm they were doing, and a rather long length of time if they did.
At what point does it become immoral for the police to "do their job"? At what point does it become not-immoral to use deadly force to prevent them from (immorally) taking away your life or liberty?
I'm not saying that point exists in regards to marijuana, but it's something to consider. As freedoms are gradually taken away, at some point it is NOT immoral to use deadly force against the people with guns who are trying to take away your freedoms. That point lies somewhere in-between our current system and Stalin's (or Hitler's). Mind you, there's a LOT of gray area in-between. I'm just saying, it's important to remember that this point does exist, and "just doing their job" only goes so far.
Enforcement of draconian anti-marijuana laws is immoral. Not as immoral as arresting people based on their political persuasions, but immoral nonetheless.
Being able to flood ALL of the coastal cities in the world using only 2 or 3 bombs would be a lot more devastating (on the global scale) than simply bombing 2 or 3 big cities.
Also, a 5 megaton blast will not completely wipe out a major metropolis (e.g. New York.) It will severely decimate it, of course, but the majority of the city (by land area, though possibly not by population) will survive intact.
Slashdot Mirror
Another thing that some Mac fanatics gloss over is that Apple has never really competed for the low-end or mid-low-end computer segment, though. I'm not even talking about beige boxes--just look at a cheap Dell vs. Apple's offering. The Mac Mini has style, smallness, lower power consumption (and of course OS X) going for it... and pretty much nothing else. The phrase "low-end Macintosh notebook" is nothing more than a contradiction. I haven't priced them recently, but last I checked the cheapest one they offered was over 2.5x the price of the cheapest full-featured Intel notebook available.
The budget crowd is probably the BIGGEST group of consumers, and for these people Apple is still nowhere near competitive. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you--in my opinion, Apple SHOULDN'T be cutting any corners trying to offer a bargain-basement option--but it's still something the fanboys tend to neglect when they spout off about how "Macs are cheaper now!!!!!!!!!". No, they aren't. They're arguably cheaper for a very specific middle-of-the-road, I'm-not-ever-going-to-bother-building-my-own minority market segment. But, the thing is, Macs weren't designed to compete with PC's cost-effective hardware... it was designed to be a cohesive hardware + software package, and in this regard they blow away Windows entirely.
I was thinking much along the same lines, until I saw the $21 million limit. Going by the content industry's own over-inflated prices, that's really pretty insignificant. A $21 million tax applied to the combined book, movie, music and software industries is laughably small. Now, if someone decided to apply it all to a single product (e.g. Windows) that *might* get someone's attention...
You assume people care about the use of steroids by athletes. I don't think they do. As far as I can tell, only sports media and athletes care.
Maybe you're right, but lawmakers care what the media says, otherwise we wouldn't have time-wasting baseball hearings conducted by the highest legislative body in the nation.
Steroids aren't physiologically addictive (and cannabis isn't either, for that matter.) Caffeine is HIGHLY addictive. And as someone else pointed out, the same drug that's too dangerous for adults to use even occasionally (Adderall) is routinely forced down the throats of millions of teens/preteens everywhere FOR THE EXACT SAME REASON COLLEGE STUDENTS MANY COLLEGE STUDENTS TAKE IT--poor academic performance.
I think that the article makes a very valid point. There's a lot of hypocrisy to be found here.
Wrong. Read the article again. If you get a hit at detector C, the bomb is usable, yet it does not explode (in our universe. According to the many-worlds interpretation of what's happening here, it DOES explode in an alternate universe, and we're basically detecting the results of that explosion. Freaky shit, I know.)
Londoners should start smashing cameras then. I care, and I would, except I'm not a Brit.
It's entirely possible you're correct about the cynical motives behind this recent effort, in which case I am saddened, but perhaps cynical motives can sometimes serve a greater good. Not sure what that would be, though, if (as you said) cameras are already elsewhere and are left unmolested. I've a hard enough time figuring out our fucked up society without worrying about the details from across the pond... should've made it clearer that I was speaking on general principle given the quick 'n' dirty facts presented, as opposed to a specific or personal analysis.
I really don't give a shit about speeders. If anything, I'm on your side (in principle), though I don't believe speed is a causative agent in the majority of accidents (though it admittedly can make an accident much worse.)
My point is, you're being extremely naive if you think these cameras will be used ONLY to combat speeding. Hell, give it 10 or 15 years and I'll be surprised if they're even *primarily* used for speeding. A few months after 9/11, and there were law enforcement seminars being held for law enforcement agencies/officers showing how they could use anti-terrorism laws against criminals. Shortly thereafter, forfeiture crap skyrocketed and I know one guy was even charged and convicted of manufacturing biological weapons (meth). I don't have any solid numbers, but I'd wager anything that the vast majority of convictions under the new anti-terror laws are being used against drug offenders and other non-terrorist offenders.
Just picture this situation--the police are on the lookout for a specific car in a high-profile case. They know the license plate. Someone points out that they can EASILY modify the cameras to take a picture of EVERY passing car instead of just the speeding ones, and software is available to automatically decipher the license plate numbers. They make the change, the subject is apprehended, and then someone points out--why bother changing the cameras back? This way they get to track ALL of the cars, ALL of the time, and thereby pinpoint subjects' vehicles (and stolen vehicles) much quicker. As an added bonus, they can also track the movements of the owners of those cars, too. And if you don't think THAT power won't be abused, you really need to pay closer attention to history (even recent history.)
Crime in general is bad. Speeding is crime, and it is bad. Allowing the state this level of unchecked surveillance is terrible. A possible middle-ground would be legal and technological measures to prevent a permanent database from being constructed, but the lawmakers absolutely *hate* putting these kinds of limits on law enforcement.
Yes, if the lawmakers would agree to this. Barring that, I believe it's a good thing that this trend is being fought by direct action.
There are certain to be plenty of replies saying how this is a bad thing, people should write to their lawmakers instead, etc. Let me offer a preemptive rebuttal: Fuck that. The information age has made permanent archival cheap, and improvements in pattern recognition are fast giving us the ability to rapidly search through those archives. There isn't a single government in existence today that's responsible enough to handle such data. Certainly, Britain's (and to a much greater extent, the USA's) extremely self-destructive War on Drugs is evidence enough of that.
Speeding isn't good, but it isn't the scourge of society. The fact is, governments (and the UK government especially) have repeatedly shown a propensity to never throw away any data gathered from the public (if you are arrested in the UK for any reason, your DNA is put into a database and never deleted, even if the charges are dropped.) The speeding *obsession* is a joke anyway--the only reason why law enforcement cares so much about it is it's easy to prove and tickets are an easy source of revenue. The solution to the traffic problem is ultimately a technical one--within the next 50-75 years, we should have fully automated cars anyway (if not flying.)
Despite what the evening news tells you, law enforcement is NOT the primary problem of our times. In the quest for a peaceful society, law enforcement is a merely one tool of many and it's a very dangerous and cumbersome tool at that. If our lawmakers cannot recognize this and continue to blaze a merry path towards a privacy-less society--one where surveillance is abused to persecute the law-abiding and civil disobedience is utterly impossible because law enforcement is just too damn omniscient--then the populace at large can and should take measures into their own hands.
I'm certainly not happy *at all* about the destruction of taxpayer-funded property, but this issues involve here transcend your average political quibbling. If these Brits are willing to risk imprisonment to fight the naive Orwellians in charge, good for them. (If on the other hand they're just doing this so they can speed with impunity, shame on them.)
Try that and you'll get the GOP all up your ass about increasing the tax burden on the working class.
Not that it ever stopped them before, but that would be pretty piss-poor logic. The Democratic/sane person response would be: "No, the working class will SAVE MONEY by using compact fluorescents. We're just making the savings a little more obvious and up-front." Yeah, the GOP prides itself on being anti-tax, but I don't really understand how can BANNING something be easier than taxing it. Surely there are a lot more people (corporate and citizen) who're much more likely to be pissed off by a ban than a tax.
Anyway, I thought neither party cared about the working class anymore...? Nowadays it's all about pandering to the middle class.
I'm not exactly a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian here, but does a ban really make sense here? There are probably applications (other than EasyBake) that require incandescents, and there are probably more than a few people who can't stand CFLs. I foresee these people turning to the black/gray market for incandescents, since they have little alternative.
Instead banning anything, why not tax incandescents so they cost 5x-10x more than the average CFL? That's enough to get the majority of the nation to switch, and you can use the tax money from the rest of the nation to fund alternative energy research. Hell, I think the same philosophy should be used with low-MPG vehicles.
Even open source implementations are vulnerable to XSS.
Firefox + NoScript FTW. Filters XSS even from sites you've otherwise whitelisted (which does *very* rarely cause a problem, but you can manually override if necessary.)
Owning and operating cars make sense where the population density falls below a certain threshhold, say in the country,
I live about 17 miles from work.
In a perfect world, I'd be able to bike to and from, thus saving money and fossil fuels, reducing traffic congestion, etc. In reality, I would have to be suicidal to try and bike it (over half of it would be without sidewalks, across very busy streets), not to mention the extra 3 (or so) hours it would probably take out of my already jam-packed day, not to mention the fact that I need to drive around town occasionally on official business and my boss wouldn't tolerate the wait.
We do have a few bus stops, but this isn't the big city (it's "medium city", if there is such a thing) and the buses don't run around my schedule, nor do they let me off where I need to be (would require at least 3-5 miles of biking, I think.)
This is my situation, and I have a job in an adjacent town. MANY people who live here commute to the biggest city in the area (Orlando), which makes busing/biking pretty much impossible.
And I don't think our city is very unusual. The sad fact is, America's urban/suburban population density is a lot lower than that of most of Western Europe, and that makes public transportation not an option for most of us.
Of course you do realize that most major Open Source projects will actually wait until something is stable and make sure all of the important features are added and working correctly before releasing it, right? Microsoft would have released this 7+ years ago and you would have paid for the privilege of beta-testing it, and paid 2 or 3 more times again as "updated" (read: bug fixed + more eye candy) versions are released. Compare this to Firefox--I was using it for at least a year and a half before it went 1.x, and at 0.7.x it was very usable, with extensions and everything. Similarly, I'll wager Octave has been perfectly usable for years now--some people simply have much higher "1.0" standards.
The dilemma is founded entirely upon a baseless idea. I can give you another baseless idea--you cannot get into heaven unless you constructed an idol out of a hollowed-out cucumber and pray to it daily, otherwise you shall spend eternity in the great Food Processor at the center of the earth.
Ridiculous as it sounds, this "dilemma" is identical to Pascal's. There exists no evidence (save your "faith" that the dudes who wrote the Bible were telling the literal truth, and that you're interpreting that truth correctly) for Heaven or Hell or God or the rules for getting into heaven and hell. There also exists no evidence for my cucumber-based religion, save for your faith that *I'm* telling you the truth. I am, at least, known. You could track me down and give me a polygraph or something. The authors of the Bible are (for all intents and purposes) anonymous.
Lake of fire. I would rather suffer eternally than worship an egotistical god who values faith over rational truth.
The fact that no accident happened here
On what evidence do you base this belief? The couple says they were just screwing around and hit the helicopter by accident. Barring evidence to the contrary (e.g. claims by the pilot that the green flashes were prolonged), I see no reason to disbelieve them.
Marijuana "addiction" is more like sex "addiction", or potato chips "addiction". Sure, there are no withdrawal symptoms, but that doesn't stop people from their compulsive behavior.
Which is why TV should be banned long before marijuana.
Sorry for replying to myself so much, but there's one more thing I must add.
The war on drugs (and marijuana especially) isn't immoral just because it takes away peoples' freedoms. It's also immoral because it wastes billions of taxpayer dollars that could be using to SAVE lives instead. It's immoral because people who commit REAL crimes get paroled early from prison because there isn't enough room. Finally, it's immoral AND STUPID for the same reason that the Prohibition was immoral and stupid--it gives organized crime a lucrative source of income. Al Capone and friends were nothing until bootlegging gave them a fortune. Similarly, both organized crime and random thugs would find themselves penniless without their sales of illicit substances. Crackheads and smack fiends wouldn't have to steal in order to support their habit, either--a few weeks at a minimum-wage crap job could buy them enough junk to last them a year (...or die by overdose, thereby ridding society of their "burden".)
Oh yeah, FYI marijuana doesn't have withdraw. Or deadly overdose. Or even physiological dependence.
I used to smoke occasionally, my last blunt was nearly three years ago, I quit cold turkey due to a prospective new job, and I haven't ever had the slightest craving for another hit. It won't cure cancer or anything, but I'll be damned if it's 1/10 as bad as alcohol.
Fine by me. Let the government ban distribution to minors. The precise definition of "minor" is contentious, but in principle I think it's a good idea to keep mind-altering drugs out of the hands of kids.
However, you should go after the shrinks first. The only drug I was ever addicted to was speed (aka Ritalin), and it was given to me (when I was 11) by an extremely pushy, extremely persuasive shrink. It sent me into a spiraling depression, and the shrink's response was to up the dose. I finally quit, over the objections of my parents and doctors, after I missed a couple doses and realized (after breaking several things in my room) the withdraw was making me feel like shit and lose all impulse control.
As far as this couple goes, OTOH, they should be imprisoned for a short length of time if they didn't realize the harm they were doing, and a rather long length of time if they did.
At what point does it become immoral for the police to "do their job"? At what point does it become not-immoral to use deadly force to prevent them from (immorally) taking away your life or liberty?
I'm not saying that point exists in regards to marijuana, but it's something to consider. As freedoms are gradually taken away, at some point it is NOT immoral to use deadly force against the people with guns who are trying to take away your freedoms. That point lies somewhere in-between our current system and Stalin's (or Hitler's). Mind you, there's a LOT of gray area in-between. I'm just saying, it's important to remember that this point does exist, and "just doing their job" only goes so far.
Enforcement of draconian anti-marijuana laws is immoral. Not as immoral as arresting people based on their political persuasions, but immoral nonetheless.
I'm wondering if it's not too late to convert to Christianity. Which is this one, the third seal or the fourth? Have I missed the rapture?
Being able to flood ALL of the coastal cities in the world using only 2 or 3 bombs would be a lot more devastating (on the global scale) than simply bombing 2 or 3 big cities.
Also, a 5 megaton blast will not completely wipe out a major metropolis (e.g. New York.) It will severely decimate it, of course, but the majority of the city (by land area, though possibly not by population) will survive intact.