Because Hurricane Electric is operated by a boatload of fucking imbeciles. As someone who had cage/rack space (as a form of 2nd data centre) from them for numerous years, I can assure you their operational methods are quite possibly the worst (particularly in the Bay).
This raises the question that if things were so bad, why did you use them for "numerous years"?
If you are _really_ concerned about going green, the biggest (and likely simplest) impact you can have is to never have children, especially in the developed world where per-capita energy consumption is highest.
The generally accepted age of the earth is about 4.5 billion years. Say what you will, but this would indicate the earth is pretty good at maintaining itself. Pump out all the greenhouse gases and pollution you like, the earth isn't going away.
But "going green" (yes, overused phrase) isn't founded on concerns that the earth will cease to exist. It's based on concerns about the earth maintaining itself so that it can sustain human life.
This is why I don't understand why you would then suggest gradually ending human life on earth via a self-imposed ban on reproduction. Either way you end up with no life on earth.
Are you proposing some sort of do-over on the human race? Where a select group of people (apparently only from developing, uneducated places) get to remain on earth following the majority of population's death?
You might counter that other people will still have children, thus maintaining the population. But in order to actually make a dent in energy consumption, would you not need to reduce the population substantially? One person forgoing children isn't going to do much. A lot of people would need to do it, right?
All that as precursor to saying: I think your idea is really stupid, especially if it's serious, given the science of not only climatology, but also sociology, anthropology, economics and, most of all, plain-old, yet surprisingly elusive, logic.
We don't declare war on Ford or General Motors due to this problem, do we? No. Neither should we have declared war on Bin Laden.
Is this a serious analogy? Because it really, really sucks.
If Ford decided that they were going to include a part in a car that would blow up the driver if they also owned a Japanese, Korean or German car, or if GM decided to install something to use the seatbelt to decapitate a passenger if the driver says something offensive, then, yes, it might actually be worthwhile to "declare war" on Ford or GM. But Ford doesn't make killer cars, and GM doesn't make killer seatbelts. Because they're [politically incorrect sign language motions]CAR MANUFACTURERS[/politically incorrect sign language motions]. Furthermore, Ford and GM aren't particularly responsible if a drunk driver t-bones my truck and takes me out. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the fricking drunk driver would be responsible, given that he'd be the actual perpetrator of the act.
Say what you will about the war, but you're making no sense to try and compare Bin Laden to a company that makes cars.
Secondly, the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. in 1941 by surprise, killing about 2400 people and wounding about 1300 people. Everyone agrees this was good enough justification for the the U.S. to then declare war on Japan. (FWIW, the Japanese at least tried to declare war ahead of time and then attacked with the intention of destroying strategic targets, not inflicting mass casualties. They also killed mostly non-civilians.)
So what's the right number? Why was it ok to hit up Japan for killing 2400 sailors and soldiers, but not the group of terrorists that killed about the same or more number of civilians? Because the terrorists are informal and sneaky and it will be hard to catch them?
Point being, there's plenty of validity in discussing if Bush (and don't forget that pesky Congress!) reacted properly, but if you're going to use a certain number of human lives as a gauge for the appropriateness of their response then it would seem that in context of the history of American war the number of civilians killed on 9/11 would indeed merit some action beyond your silly suggestion of sackcloth, ashes and the gritting of teeth as we "get back to living".
From TFA, along with the obligatory suggestion to RTFA before writing the headline/summary: (my emphasis below)
The company is launching the all-electric Typ-1e with a 120-mile range and a recharge time of 8 hours. Next year, it plans to follow up with a plug-in hybrid, the Typ-1h, which should get 300 mpg for the first 120 miles and never go less than 130 miles on a gallon of gas.
Phroggy - Make no mistakes, I'm not saying this isn't an acceptable option for some people. I'm simply questioning whether or not there's some sort of even smallish exodus from the U.S. in relation to medical care because it's too expensive in the U.S. I do not believe there is. Furthermore, I do believe that going to certain, but not all, countries raises the risks/consequences of complications exponentially, as well as reduces the possibility of receiving compensation if they screw you up.
Whether you're a nerdy engineer or a nerdy public policy guy is completely irrelevant to my point. Whether this is a discussion or a dissertation does not matter. Whatever you think it is, this is not a discussion with your buddies over a few beers about the size of a fish you caught. The point is that using words that are misleading does matter -- and even more so when you're trying to make a point.
500,000 sounds like a big number. But it is probably around 2 tenths of 1% of the insured population of the US and 16 hundredths of 1% of the total population of the US.
Futhermore (my emphasis below),
With an estimated 45 million uninsured Americans, some 500,000 trekked overseas last year for medical treatment, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. Asian hospitals in Thailand, India and Singapore have long been swarmed by medical tourists looking for tummy tucks and face lifts, but many glitzy, marble-floored facilities are now gaining reputations for big-ticket procedures including heart surgery, knee and back operations.
As far as I had time to check, the NCHC stats (used in the MSNBC article quoted above) don't break down who was getting a discount breast augmentation (not usually covered anyway in U.S.), who was getting non-FDC approved treatments (not available in the U.S.) and who was actually getting a hip replacement they could not otherwise afford (obviously, too expensive in the U.S.). These are extremely important distinctions, but would admittedly be tough numbers to gather accurately.
No, buy many Americans jump on a plane to India because they can't afford to get their treatment in the US.
No. No no no. This is terribly and awfully anecdotal. You cannot just sling around words like "common" and "many" without providing even minor evidence of such. You need to provide evidence of the number of Americans that actually travel to India and then conduct a discussion around whether or not this number would qualify as "many" Americans. You cannot take something you read in a magazine or saw on 20/20 and start formulating policy based on that.
If we could see evidence that -- just for sake of discussion -- 0.1% of (just guessing) 200 million insured people had to go to India for a procedure they could not afford in the US, there'd be some merit to your argument. Otherwise, you're just telling stories that may tug at the heart strings, but aren't at all useful for the purpose of making broad decisions.
Andree McLeod received 4 boxes of email and phone records from two of Palin's aides. All but one of the emails was sent to her personal account rather than her state account. That's not evidence??
Sure it's evidence, but not necessarily that she did something illegal. It depends on what the emails were about. That's what I wanted to see and they didn't provide. I think it's fair to ask to see what the emails were about.
That's the thing. It is widely known, but no one provides real evidence. The article from the Daily News doesn't provide any proof. It simply says she conducts official business on the personal account, but does not provide any actual evidence. Just opinions by a bunch of people surrounding why it would be bad if she did (or does, according to their assumptions).
I think people will feel strongly about this if 1) Palin admits she was/is doing this or 2) The account is subpoenaed and we all see the evidence.
So basically, is it widely known like it was widely known that OJ was guilty (the first time)? Or widely known like it was widely known that Saddam Hussein had tons of nuclear weapons?
On one hand, we have the Governor of Alaska and potential VP of the United States using a public e-mail system (with a really simple password hint) for state work.
Sometimes the written word is tough to interpret, so please don't take this as some sort of macho challenge, but do we really have any official proof that the governor was doing what you've said? I don't want anyone to simply answer "Yes" or give some anecdotal diatribe. I want someone to provide some real proof that I and a bunch of other curious people can read.
he [adamengst] may not understand how they work. but for the majority here i might think the understanding is natural.
Oh yeah - natural.
At its simplest, the MSC is just two big databases and a connection to the regular phone system. One database, called your Home Location Registry (HLR) is the master database for your account, with your IMSI, phone number, and current location. The second database is called the Visitor Location Registry (VLR) and it keeps track of people that have wandered into that area (a VLR serves only a single base station). Here's how it works - your phone registers your unique IMSI with the nearest base station, and that base station tells its VLR that you are connected. The VLR then contacts your HLR and, using your IMSI, registers your location.
I'm sure you, in your ultimate smugness, knew all this and more before reading the article (you did read it, right?). But I actually learned something from RTFA. Maybe I'm just not in the majority here...
Don't be tempted to think that it's someone else's responsibility to handle backups and versioning. Always keep your own when possible, even if you're using some kind of enterprise source code mgt. This sounds paranoid and overkill, but you'll be amazed at how many things it can help you fix in a pinch.
Oh shut up. You've made a tremendous leap using "the armpit of freedom". Such statements discredit everything else you say or write, whether they deserve discrediting or not. Point being, if you want people to listen, if you want to make a difference for something that you claim to care so much about, don't say such obviously stupid and exaggerated things.
I generally can't bring myself to read the entirety of these types of threads. I usually give up after awhile, as I've done today. So can someone please explain why they believe it's a bad summary as it was tagged?
Without fanfare, this bastion of the internet is being removed from the mainstream
Was it ever actually a bastion? It hasn't been mainstream in since, well...has it ever honestly? I guess that depends on your definition of mainstream and your timeline of the "internet", but I hope you see at least a sliver of my point. A lot of great (and some poor) anecdotes will pop up in the discussion about how people use or used to use usenet, but if you asked the mainstream internet user between 1999 and 2008 if they utilize usenet, the majority would probably say, "Huh".
Ethics, huh? I think there's enough misunderstanding about ethics to go around, whether it be from right wing fanboys or flaming liberal...liberals. Point being, right wing fanboys don't have the market on misunderstanding or excusing away ethics as your comment suggests. Furthermore, I think the poster's response was more of a comment about the level of scrutiny placed on candidates and his (I'm assuming he's a male, given that this is slashdot) perception that certain candidates are receiving more scrutiny than others.
I feel tempted to launch into a tirade about the supposed ethics of those opposite the right wing fanboys, but it would all be based on an assumption about you and why you used the term "right wing fanboys". So'll I'll just leave well enough alone.
If Matt Damon wants to run for office and get elected, he's more than welcome. Shoot, if he could even write his own "Time For Choosing"-like speech instead of talking about dinosaurs and (sophomorically) offering the current president "a million dollars" to step down, your sarcasm might have a point.
Until then, I think it's a valid point that his political experience and wisdom and the opinions that stem from that experience and wisdom are worth about as much as or less than any random person with the same limited political experience and wisdom that he possesses. The same could be said for the host of other people that get airtime to spew hot air based on credentials that have nothing to do with the topic on which the spewing is focused. I don't care what Matt Damon or Jon Voight or Gary Sinise or Oprah Winfrey think about the presidential race because, frankly, in my infinite arrogance, I think I know considerably more about what's best for me than they do.
First of all, you're kind of mixing crime and violence and religious violence, which are related, but different. Someone stealing a car is different than a person blowing up a car in the name of some god. For example, there's a high crime rate in the United States, a relatively "religious" country. And there's a high violent crime rate too. But there's not a lot of violence between religious groups like you'd see in some Islamic theocracies or predominantly Islamic countries. In fact, in the US the best example of "sectarian violence" is probably gang violence which could safely be considered irreligious. This distinction between, or clarification of, crime and violence is important, but further muddies the water when it comes to determining causation.
Speaking of which, I take issue with your use of "explaining well". In true slashdot fashion, I submit the standard "correlation != causation". There are too many factors involved in violence and crime (again two related, but very different things) to make a broad statement like that. Maybe violence brings people to religion (a sort of inverse relationship to your suggestion). Maybe it's an economic issue (broad economic divides, etc). Maybe it's a style of economy issue (pure capitalism vs. modified socialism, etc.). Maybe it's a cultural legacy of violence or crime. Maybe it's a combination of all of that. Who knows. But to make a statement like yours is simply not logically sound.
All that to say that I think you're dead wrong about the influence of homogeneousity. I understand that when people say homogeneous in the context of this discussion they probably mean skin color and nationality, but I'd submit that 85% of a population that shares a like view is, even if just in the context of that view, a pretty darn homogeneous population. In other words, if 85% of the people in Sweden shared the same belief in some god instead of that lack of belief in God, the crime and violence may be just as low as it is currently. You make the assumption that the "WHAT" in what they agree about is the main factor. Perhaps it's simply that they agree.
You seem to disregard the medical benEfits of cannabis consuMption, including, but not limited to, anti-nausea, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and my personal favorite, anti-depressant.
As you immediately went for your pot lovers' overused talking points (do they give you guys a manual or something?), you missed my point, which -- in the context of your comment -- is that there are anti-nausea, etc. medications that don't cause the type of intoxication that pot does. So why go for the pot? People smoke pot to get high. Why try to deny it? I'd actually be less inclined to argue about it with someone that just admits they like getting stoned than someone that tries to get all scientific about it and make foolish comparison -- all in attempt to explain why they like getting high.
Re: depression, it's an extremely tricky topic. I even disagree with legal, PRESCRIPTION medication for a lot of clinical depression, but that's a discussion that's even more off-topic than this one. But for the sake of this discussion, pot is an "antidepressant" (relatively speaking) because it makes you high. Stop smoking pot and see how things go.
Fine - alcohol is a drug. Happy? A drug that you can have one portion of without strong intoxication. People drink booze for a variety of reasons. Some, but not all of these reasons, involve intoxication. People take illegal drugs for a variety of reasons as well. But all of these reasons include, in some way, intoxication. The whole point of taking drugs is to get high. If you want to drop just a little bit of your namesake, but not enough to have any noticeable effect on you, fine, have at it. But you don't and you won't. Because the only reason you take drugs is to get high.
Point being, don't make such a tired and silly 10th-grade-speech-class comparison between your precious drugs and booze.
The big issue here is the satellite resolution part; I find the gait part believable.
Anecdotally, I'm (very) pigeon-toed. My hips were "congenitally" screwed up and my gait is very noticeable. I did all the physical therapy stuff when I was a kid and I can walk "normal" now if I concentrate, but I look just as weird.
I worked with high school students at my old church and we had an event where the adult leaders would disguise themselves and walk around a local mall and the students would have to identify them. (Real fun...I know...) I would always be found, even with the most dramatic disguises, because of my gait. When I'd try to disguise how I walked, the students would always say that I looked like someone that is pigeon-toed trying to walk like someone that isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Hurricane Electric is operated by a boatload of fucking imbeciles. As someone who had cage/rack space (as a form of 2nd data centre) from them for numerous years, I can assure you their operational methods are quite possibly the worst (particularly in the Bay).
This raises the question that if things were so bad, why did you use them for "numerous years"?
They should do this for the Democrat party primary too. I think that would be interesting.
If you are _really_ concerned about going green, the biggest (and likely simplest) impact you can have is to never have children, especially in the developed world where per-capita energy consumption is highest.
The generally accepted age of the earth is about 4.5 billion years. Say what you will, but this would indicate the earth is pretty good at maintaining itself. Pump out all the greenhouse gases and pollution you like, the earth isn't going away.
But "going green" (yes, overused phrase) isn't founded on concerns that the earth will cease to exist. It's based on concerns about the earth maintaining itself so that it can sustain human life.
This is why I don't understand why you would then suggest gradually ending human life on earth via a self-imposed ban on reproduction. Either way you end up with no life on earth.
Are you proposing some sort of do-over on the human race? Where a select group of people (apparently only from developing, uneducated places) get to remain on earth following the majority of population's death?
You might counter that other people will still have children, thus maintaining the population. But in order to actually make a dent in energy consumption, would you not need to reduce the population substantially? One person forgoing children isn't going to do much. A lot of people would need to do it, right?
All that as precursor to saying: I think your idea is really stupid, especially if it's serious, given the science of not only climatology, but also sociology, anthropology, economics and, most of all, plain-old, yet surprisingly elusive, logic.
We don't declare war on Ford or General Motors due to this problem, do we? No. Neither should we have declared war on Bin Laden.
Is this a serious analogy? Because it really, really sucks.
If Ford decided that they were going to include a part in a car that would blow up the driver if they also owned a Japanese, Korean or German car, or if GM decided to install something to use the seatbelt to decapitate a passenger if the driver says something offensive, then, yes, it might actually be worthwhile to "declare war" on Ford or GM. But Ford doesn't make killer cars, and GM doesn't make killer seatbelts. Because they're [politically incorrect sign language motions]CAR MANUFACTURERS[/politically incorrect sign language motions]. Furthermore, Ford and GM aren't particularly responsible if a drunk driver t-bones my truck and takes me out. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the fricking drunk driver would be responsible, given that he'd be the actual perpetrator of the act.
Say what you will about the war, but you're making no sense to try and compare Bin Laden to a company that makes cars.
Secondly, the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. in 1941 by surprise, killing about 2400 people and wounding about 1300 people. Everyone agrees this was good enough justification for the the U.S. to then declare war on Japan. (FWIW, the Japanese at least tried to declare war ahead of time and then attacked with the intention of destroying strategic targets, not inflicting mass casualties. They also killed mostly non-civilians.)
So what's the right number? Why was it ok to hit up Japan for killing 2400 sailors and soldiers, but not the group of terrorists that killed about the same or more number of civilians? Because the terrorists are informal and sneaky and it will be hard to catch them?
Point being, there's plenty of validity in discussing if Bush (and don't forget that pesky Congress!) reacted properly, but if you're going to use a certain number of human lives as a gauge for the appropriateness of their response then it would seem that in context of the history of American war the number of civilians killed on 9/11 would indeed merit some action beyond your silly suggestion of sackcloth, ashes and the gritting of teeth as we "get back to living".
Phroggy - Make no mistakes, I'm not saying this isn't an acceptable option for some people. I'm simply questioning whether or not there's some sort of even smallish exodus from the U.S. in relation to medical care because it's too expensive in the U.S. I do not believe there is. Furthermore, I do believe that going to certain, but not all, countries raises the risks/consequences of complications exponentially, as well as reduces the possibility of receiving compensation if they screw you up.
Whether you're a nerdy engineer or a nerdy public policy guy is completely irrelevant to my point. Whether this is a discussion or a dissertation does not matter. Whatever you think it is, this is not a discussion with your buddies over a few beers about the size of a fish you caught. The point is that using words that are misleading does matter -- and even more so when you're trying to make a point.
500,000 sounds like a big number. But it is probably around 2 tenths of 1% of the insured population of the US and 16 hundredths of 1% of the total population of the US.
Futhermore (my emphasis below),
As far as I had time to check, the NCHC stats (used in the MSNBC article quoted above) don't break down who was getting a discount breast augmentation (not usually covered anyway in U.S.), who was getting non-FDC approved treatments (not available in the U.S.) and who was actually getting a hip replacement they could not otherwise afford (obviously, too expensive in the U.S.). These are extremely important distinctions, but would admittedly be tough numbers to gather accurately.
No, buy many Americans jump on a plane to India because they can't afford to get their treatment in the US.
No. No no no. This is terribly and awfully anecdotal. You cannot just sling around words like "common" and "many" without providing even minor evidence of such. You need to provide evidence of the number of Americans that actually travel to India and then conduct a discussion around whether or not this number would qualify as "many" Americans. You cannot take something you read in a magazine or saw on 20/20 and start formulating policy based on that.
If we could see evidence that -- just for sake of discussion -- 0.1% of (just guessing) 200 million insured people had to go to India for a procedure they could not afford in the US, there'd be some merit to your argument. Otherwise, you're just telling stories that may tug at the heart strings, but aren't at all useful for the purpose of making broad decisions.
Again, how many is many?
Andree McLeod received 4 boxes of email and phone records from two of Palin's aides. All but one of the emails was sent to her personal account rather than her state account. That's not evidence??
Sure it's evidence, but not necessarily that she did something illegal. It depends on what the emails were about. That's what I wanted to see and they didn't provide. I think it's fair to ask to see what the emails were about.
That's the thing. It is widely known, but no one provides real evidence. The article from the Daily News doesn't provide any proof. It simply says she conducts official business on the personal account, but does not provide any actual evidence. Just opinions by a bunch of people surrounding why it would be bad if she did (or does, according to their assumptions).
I think people will feel strongly about this if 1) Palin admits she was/is doing this or 2) The account is subpoenaed and we all see the evidence.
So basically, is it widely known like it was widely known that OJ was guilty (the first time)? Or widely known like it was widely known that Saddam Hussein had tons of nuclear weapons?
On one hand, we have the Governor of Alaska and potential VP of the United States using a public e-mail system (with a really simple password hint) for state work.
Sometimes the written word is tough to interpret, so please don't take this as some sort of macho challenge, but do we really have any official proof that the governor was doing what you've said? I don't want anyone to simply answer "Yes" or give some anecdotal diatribe. I want someone to provide some real proof that I and a bunch of other curious people can read.
he [adamengst] may not understand how they work. but for the majority here i might think the understanding is natural.
Oh yeah - natural.
I'm sure you, in your ultimate smugness, knew all this and more before reading the article (you did read it, right?). But I actually learned something from RTFA. Maybe I'm just not in the majority here...
If it were up to me, anyone trying for more than five minutes should get auto-fired. No appeal.
Yeah. I think 4 minutes is fine. But 5 minutes. That's definitely grounds for termination.
Don't be tempted to think that it's someone else's responsibility to handle backups and versioning. Always keep your own when possible, even if you're using some kind of enterprise source code mgt. This sounds paranoid and overkill, but you'll be amazed at how many things it can help you fix in a pinch.
Oh shut up. You've made a tremendous leap using "the armpit of freedom". Such statements discredit everything else you say or write, whether they deserve discrediting or not. Point being, if you want people to listen, if you want to make a difference for something that you claim to care so much about, don't say such obviously stupid and exaggerated things.
I generally can't bring myself to read the entirety of these types of threads. I usually give up after awhile, as I've done today. So can someone please explain why they believe it's a bad summary as it was tagged?
FWIW - quality point. I hope it isn't buried.
Without fanfare, this bastion of the internet is being removed from the mainstream
Was it ever actually a bastion? It hasn't been mainstream in since, well...has it ever honestly? I guess that depends on your definition of mainstream and your timeline of the "internet", but I hope you see at least a sliver of my point. A lot of great (and some poor) anecdotes will pop up in the discussion about how people use or used to use usenet, but if you asked the mainstream internet user between 1999 and 2008 if they utilize usenet, the majority would probably say, "Huh".
and when I watch him, I almost have to smack myself to snap out of it
I think this says more about you than Obama.
Ethics, huh? I think there's enough misunderstanding about ethics to go around, whether it be from right wing fanboys or flaming liberal...liberals. Point being, right wing fanboys don't have the market on misunderstanding or excusing away ethics as your comment suggests. Furthermore, I think the poster's response was more of a comment about the level of scrutiny placed on candidates and his (I'm assuming he's a male, given that this is slashdot) perception that certain candidates are receiving more scrutiny than others.
I feel tempted to launch into a tirade about the supposed ethics of those opposite the right wing fanboys, but it would all be based on an assumption about you and why you used the term "right wing fanboys". So'll I'll just leave well enough alone.
If Matt Damon wants to run for office and get elected, he's more than welcome. Shoot, if he could even write his own "Time For Choosing"-like speech instead of talking about dinosaurs and (sophomorically) offering the current president "a million dollars" to step down, your sarcasm might have a point.
Until then, I think it's a valid point that his political experience and wisdom and the opinions that stem from that experience and wisdom are worth about as much as or less than any random person with the same limited political experience and wisdom that he possesses. The same could be said for the host of other people that get airtime to spew hot air based on credentials that have nothing to do with the topic on which the spewing is focused. I don't care what Matt Damon or Jon Voight or Gary Sinise or Oprah Winfrey think about the presidential race because, frankly, in my infinite arrogance, I think I know considerably more about what's best for me than they do.
First of all, you're kind of mixing crime and violence and religious violence, which are related, but different. Someone stealing a car is different than a person blowing up a car in the name of some god. For example, there's a high crime rate in the United States, a relatively "religious" country. And there's a high violent crime rate too. But there's not a lot of violence between religious groups like you'd see in some Islamic theocracies or predominantly Islamic countries. In fact, in the US the best example of "sectarian violence" is probably gang violence which could safely be considered irreligious. This distinction between, or clarification of, crime and violence is important, but further muddies the water when it comes to determining causation.
Speaking of which, I take issue with your use of "explaining well". In true slashdot fashion, I submit the standard "correlation != causation". There are too many factors involved in violence and crime (again two related, but very different things) to make a broad statement like that. Maybe violence brings people to religion (a sort of inverse relationship to your suggestion). Maybe it's an economic issue (broad economic divides, etc). Maybe it's a style of economy issue (pure capitalism vs. modified socialism, etc.). Maybe it's a cultural legacy of violence or crime. Maybe it's a combination of all of that. Who knows. But to make a statement like yours is simply not logically sound.
All that to say that I think you're dead wrong about the influence of homogeneousity. I understand that when people say homogeneous in the context of this discussion they probably mean skin color and nationality, but I'd submit that 85% of a population that shares a like view is, even if just in the context of that view, a pretty darn homogeneous population. In other words, if 85% of the people in Sweden shared the same belief in some god instead of that lack of belief in God, the crime and violence may be just as low as it is currently. You make the assumption that the "WHAT" in what they agree about is the main factor. Perhaps it's simply that they agree.
You seem to disregard the medical benEfits of cannabis consuMption, including, but not limited to, anti-nausea, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and my personal favorite, anti-depressant.
As you immediately went for your pot lovers' overused talking points (do they give you guys a manual or something?), you missed my point, which -- in the context of your comment -- is that there are anti-nausea, etc. medications that don't cause the type of intoxication that pot does. So why go for the pot? People smoke pot to get high. Why try to deny it? I'd actually be less inclined to argue about it with someone that just admits they like getting stoned than someone that tries to get all scientific about it and make foolish comparison -- all in attempt to explain why they like getting high.
Re: depression, it's an extremely tricky topic. I even disagree with legal, PRESCRIPTION medication for a lot of clinical depression, but that's a discussion that's even more off-topic than this one. But for the sake of this discussion, pot is an "antidepressant" (relatively speaking) because it makes you high. Stop smoking pot and see how things go.
Fine - alcohol is a drug. Happy? A drug that you can have one portion of without strong intoxication. People drink booze for a variety of reasons. Some, but not all of these reasons, involve intoxication. People take illegal drugs for a variety of reasons as well. But all of these reasons include, in some way, intoxication. The whole point of taking drugs is to get high. If you want to drop just a little bit of your namesake, but not enough to have any noticeable effect on you, fine, have at it. But you don't and you won't. Because the only reason you take drugs is to get high.
Point being, don't make such a tired and silly 10th-grade-speech-class comparison between your precious drugs and booze.
The big issue here is the satellite resolution part; I find the gait part believable.
Anecdotally, I'm (very) pigeon-toed. My hips were "congenitally" screwed up and my gait is very noticeable. I did all the physical therapy stuff when I was a kid and I can walk "normal" now if I concentrate, but I look just as weird.
I worked with high school students at my old church and we had an event where the adult leaders would disguise themselves and walk around a local mall and the students would have to identify them. (Real fun...I know...) I would always be found, even with the most dramatic disguises, because of my gait. When I'd try to disguise how I walked, the students would always say that I looked like someone that is pigeon-toed trying to walk like someone that isn't.