That's the way the US "justice" system works. Half of my ex-wife's high school graduating class had prison sentences for "conspiracy to distribute cocaine" after Cahokia, IL's biggest dope dealer (who had been in that class) got busted. Most of them had never had anything to do with cocaine at all, some not drugs at all. The prosecution makes a deal and you get innocent people busted and spend half the time in the slammer.
What they did was have him call everyone he knew asking to borrow a thousand dollars for his bail and he'd pay it in a week with 100% interest -- but everyone knows he was a dealer. So everyone who loaned him that money went to prison twice as long as he did.
I guess it depends where you live, but up here in Vancouver BC, healthy fresh food is quite a but cheaper than processed food, fast food, and junk food.
You can't get fast food with LINK. Only groceries. And many poor live in what's known as "food deserts" where a certain high percentage of the population has no transportation and is two or more miles from a grocery. These people rely on "convenience" stores, little mom-and-pop stores with no fresh anything at all.
Education and enlightenment are the enemy of "the faithful" in every religion.
On the contrary; Islam, Judism, and Christianity all share the same old testament, which reads
The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;
2. To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding;
3. To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
4. To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.
5. A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:
6. To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.
"...fools despise wisdom and instruction."
And enlightenment is the very goal of Bhuddism and Hinduism. You're being led astray by looking at a tiny subset of various religions, and miss the fact that unreligious people will use religion for their own foul ends. "Beware wolves dressed in sheep's clothing."
Before you pontificate about religion, first learn what you're talking about.
Sorry, but YOU don't get it. People, plants, and animals were already living in Africa and Australia. NOTHING lives on Mars as far as we know. And nothing can. There's not enough air, not enough water, and terrible radiation.
The bases in Antarctica are a piece of cake compared to Mars.
And let's not forget Section 8 housing, so that these people have a place to live.
Actually I'd like to forget, because section 8 harms everyone, mostly the poor themselves.
I've known section 8 renters and landlords, and it's a gift to the landlords with a few strings. The landlord has an apartment that might fetch $200 on the open market, the renter pays $150 and the government gives the landlord another 250. They're collecting twice what they would get on the open market. This drives up rent prices for everyone, which especially harms the poor (who are getting very little benefit from Sec. 8, the landlord gets the benefit). Waiting lists are years long, so only the long-term poor are helped at all and only after years of wairing.
Section 8 is something that should go away.
Unless we want to engage in some horrible Soylent Green solution
The hunger problem isn't because we don't grow enough food, it's because it's poorly distributed.
Citation badly needed. Over half of all scientists adhere to some religion, and only about 10-20% of the world's population is atheist.
There was a study done a few years ago (I think I saw it here) that showed that the hippocampus of Catholics, Protestants, and agnostics were normal, while fundamentalists and atheists had a smaller than normal hippocampus.
The hippocampus belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation.
I've slowly moved away from my unquestioningly enthusiastic space-geekiness as I've grown older.
I haven't, but then, Sputnik was launched when I was 6. By the time I was 30 I realized I'd never get a chance to go but never lost enthusiasm, although I'm more enthusiastic about robotic exploration.
What comes up must come down? Nonsense, Voyager's never coming back down, and neither are the Rovers.
Now I'm close to 62 it's looking like I may have been more right at age 10 than age 30, there's a tiny chance I'll do it before I die.
I hope you're right but fear you're wrong. Windows 7 has lots of frustrating behaviors and isn't nearly as good as KDE but it's not all that bad. W8 is.
I want to make sure a new machine has no factory defects before I slap Linux on it... laziness has kept it on this one. I'd had the first one a few months before Windows suicided on it (Acer's fault, they've fixed the problem) then it was stolen.
Poor thieves probably asking the same thing people ask me in the bar when I'm writing, "What version of Windows is that?"
I fear you're right but hope you're wrong. My laptop is about 5 years old and I've used it heavily (I wrote Nobots on it, see my sig if you're curious) and have been shopping for a replacement. But all the new ones are either Chrome, W8, or Apple. Apple would be acceptable if they weren't so expensive, but I don't trust Google any more and W8 is an unusable clusterfuck.
And the guy at the store said installing Linux on one (he had Chrome and Windows) would void the warrantee. Screw that, if it has a factory hardware defect that isn't readily apparent I'm screwed.
So I really hope you're wrong and Microsoft pulls its head out of its ass. I do NOT want a phone' interface on my computer and I don't want a computer interface on my phone.
That's because you're married, and since you know for certain that she's going to move the damned thing there's no point in making the effort to remember.
Indeed, which is why when the kids were little and we were poor we grew a big garden in the back yard. About the only things the stamps were used for was flour, meat, eggs, milk, and soda. The rest came from the back yard.
However, it's a lot of work (even though it's rather enjoyable work). And you have to know HOW or your garden will fail (both sets of my grandparents grew gardens).
Folks in apartments, however, are pretty much screwed.
Except for the problem that being a single parent is 100% an individual choice for individuals born with their reproductive systems on the inside.
Tell that to a widow, Bill Clinton's mother or a dead soldier's wife or some poor sod that was t-boned by a drunk or shot while being robbed.
Why would somebody choose to have children they can't afford?
I don't know, why WOULD someone with three kids and a decent job for a company that goes out of business make that business collapse on purpose.
Perhaps it's because we have so many entitlement systems that having a child guarantees a middle-class lifestyle, and perhaps another factor is how much we privilege Mothers.
Ah, now I see where the "troll" moderation came from, but I don't agree with it. You're no troll, you're just pathetically ignorant. Trust me, you would NOT want to be on LINK (known as "food stamps" a decade ago before they did away with paper coupons).
That fat woman you see in the grocery wearing designer clothes and buying steaks on a LINK card? It isn't hers, you're witnessing fraud. She's a dope dealer who trades drugs for LINK at fifty cents on the dollar. I drink in a poor neighborhood, and junkies are always trying to sell their LINK. They don't need it, addicts eat very little but I have no wish to defraud the government.
I sit in front of my computer all day, too, but I've never had a weight problem. If anything, I have a problem keeping it on. Of course, I drink water all day rather than soda, and when I eat at a restaurant I usually take half the meal home because it's just way too much food.
As to the anonymous idiot you responded to who said "Man's eyes were not evolved to read computer screens and mankind's fingers were not evolved to used keyboards," what a moron. Computer screens and keyboards were designed to work with the fingers and eyes we evolved. HFCS wasn't.
Because everybody thinks he's smarter than everybody else. The realization of one's own ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.
I dealt with surveys at work maybe fifteen years ago (maybe more). Most of the folks I worked with held PhDs in various disciplines* and almost all were very intelligent (there was one woman who was a total airhead about everything else but knew statistics, her field. Think Sheldon). And yeah, believe me, they know how trustworthy these people are, it's accounted for in the math (which is over my head).
* One day I saw something unthinkable - fifteen PhDs spending an entire day stuffing envelopes (yes, I helped even though I'm not a PhD).
Where are the moderators?? I laughed at "statisticianololgist" but even harder at the response to that word!
When are they going to study why I and most others like me have smoked pot for four decades, while being productive members of society all that time without succumbing to the Reefer Madness Syndrome?
What percentage of pot smokers who don't partake in other illegal drugs are mentally ill? I would guess that the difference between non-smokers would be negligible.
I'd have modded you funny, I did LOL. But I doubt they passed out questionnaires. More likely it was verbal interviews, which would give them meaningful data. I'd be interested in seeing what the actual questions were.
Drug prohibition was a failure, as is a welfare state.
Indeed, but the welfare state was at the wrong time in the wrong circumstances. Already 1% of the population are farmworkers, who feed everyone. When mechanization makes 80% of the world's population unemployable, what then?
There is enough food for everyone, yet people still go hungry. The failure is from greed; the bible was right. The love of money is indeed the root of all evil.
I'd rather my taxes go to feeding people than killing them.
Now I'm intrigued, I thought there was no lethal dose of LSD; at least, that's what I've read. Do you have a link?
Speaking of LSD which is only kinda on topic, let me bring it squarely on-topic: how many of these folks that were studied for pot were indulging in other drugs as well? LSD can cause psychotic episodes in otherwise mentally healthy people, it's doom for someone prone to schitzophrenia. It's been my experience that crazy people usually don't stick to a single drug. One trouble with assembling statistics is making sure you've accounted for all the variables.
What's the "safe use level" of peanuts? My daughter is allergic to them, they can kill her.
If there's heart disease in your family, you might want to exercise a little and watch what you eat. If there's cancer in your family you might want to avoid gasoline, tobacco, nail polish, hair dye, and other carcinogens.
If there's mental illness in your family, you might want to avoid substances and situations that affect the brain. What's so hard to understand?
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, I used to make my own potato chips (I lost my chipper in the last move). One potato will fill a bag, and potatoes are about $2 per pound.
That is, if you are close enough to a real grocery store. Some people are stuck with Kwiki-Marts.
That's the way the US "justice" system works. Half of my ex-wife's high school graduating class had prison sentences for "conspiracy to distribute cocaine" after Cahokia, IL's biggest dope dealer (who had been in that class) got busted. Most of them had never had anything to do with cocaine at all, some not drugs at all. The prosecution makes a deal and you get innocent people busted and spend half the time in the slammer.
What they did was have him call everyone he knew asking to borrow a thousand dollars for his bail and he'd pay it in a week with 100% interest -- but everyone knows he was a dealer. So everyone who loaned him that money went to prison twice as long as he did.
Everybody wins, my ass. It's disgusting.
I guess it depends where you live, but up here in Vancouver BC, healthy fresh food is quite a but cheaper than processed food, fast food, and junk food.
You can't get fast food with LINK. Only groceries. And many poor live in what's known as "food deserts" where a certain high percentage of the population has no transportation and is two or more miles from a grocery. These people rely on "convenience" stores, little mom-and-pop stores with no fresh anything at all.
Education and enlightenment are the enemy of "the faithful" in every religion.
On the contrary; Islam, Judism, and Christianity all share the same old testament, which reads
"...fools despise wisdom and instruction."
And enlightenment is the very goal of Bhuddism and Hinduism. You're being led astray by looking at a tiny subset of various religions, and miss the fact that unreligious people will use religion for their own foul ends. "Beware wolves dressed in sheep's clothing."
Before you pontificate about religion, first learn what you're talking about.
Sorry, but YOU don't get it. People, plants, and animals were already living in Africa and Australia. NOTHING lives on Mars as far as we know. And nothing can. There's not enough air, not enough water, and terrible radiation.
The bases in Antarctica are a piece of cake compared to Mars.
And let's not forget Section 8 housing, so that these people have a place to live.
Actually I'd like to forget, because section 8 harms everyone, mostly the poor themselves.
I've known section 8 renters and landlords, and it's a gift to the landlords with a few strings. The landlord has an apartment that might fetch $200 on the open market, the renter pays $150 and the government gives the landlord another 250. They're collecting twice what they would get on the open market. This drives up rent prices for everyone, which especially harms the poor (who are getting very little benefit from Sec. 8, the landlord gets the benefit). Waiting lists are years long, so only the long-term poor are helped at all and only after years of wairing.
Section 8 is something that should go away.
Unless we want to engage in some horrible Soylent Green solution
The hunger problem isn't because we don't grow enough food, it's because it's poorly distributed.
Citation badly needed. Over half of all scientists adhere to some religion, and only about 10-20% of the world's population is atheist.
There was a study done a few years ago (I think I saw it here) that showed that the hippocampus of Catholics, Protestants, and agnostics were normal, while fundamentalists and atheists had a smaller than normal hippocampus.
The hippocampus belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation.
So again, citation needed BADLY.
I've slowly moved away from my unquestioningly enthusiastic space-geekiness as I've grown older.
I haven't, but then, Sputnik was launched when I was 6. By the time I was 30 I realized I'd never get a chance to go but never lost enthusiasm, although I'm more enthusiastic about robotic exploration.
What comes up must come down? Nonsense, Voyager's never coming back down, and neither are the Rovers.
Now I'm close to 62 it's looking like I may have been more right at age 10 than age 30, there's a tiny chance I'll do it before I die.
I hope you're right but fear you're wrong. Windows 7 has lots of frustrating behaviors and isn't nearly as good as KDE but it's not all that bad. W8 is.
I want to make sure a new machine has no factory defects before I slap Linux on it... laziness has kept it on this one. I'd had the first one a few months before Windows suicided on it (Acer's fault, they've fixed the problem) then it was stolen.
Poor thieves probably asking the same thing people ask me in the bar when I'm writing, "What version of Windows is that?"
If W9 is rebranded W7 I'll be OK with it.
I fear you're right but hope you're wrong. My laptop is about 5 years old and I've used it heavily (I wrote Nobots on it, see my sig if you're curious) and have been shopping for a replacement. But all the new ones are either Chrome, W8, or Apple. Apple would be acceptable if they weren't so expensive, but I don't trust Google any more and W8 is an unusable clusterfuck.
And the guy at the store said installing Linux on one (he had Chrome and Windows) would void the warrantee. Screw that, if it has a factory hardware defect that isn't readily apparent I'm screwed.
So I really hope you're wrong and Microsoft pulls its head out of its ass. I do NOT want a phone' interface on my computer and I don't want a computer interface on my phone.
It kind of bums me out a little.
I can't even remember where I put my cup.
That's because you're married, and since you know for certain that she's going to move the damned thing there's no point in making the effort to remember.
Indeed, which is why when the kids were little and we were poor we grew a big garden in the back yard. About the only things the stamps were used for was flour, meat, eggs, milk, and soda. The rest came from the back yard.
However, it's a lot of work (even though it's rather enjoyable work). And you have to know HOW or your garden will fail (both sets of my grandparents grew gardens).
Folks in apartments, however, are pretty much screwed.
Or maybe someone doesn't care about consequences, only politics.
Except for the problem that being a single parent is 100% an individual choice for individuals born with their reproductive systems on the inside.
Tell that to a widow, Bill Clinton's mother or a dead soldier's wife or some poor sod that was t-boned by a drunk or shot while being robbed.
Why would somebody choose to have children they can't afford?
I don't know, why WOULD someone with three kids and a decent job for a company that goes out of business make that business collapse on purpose.
Perhaps it's because we have so many entitlement systems that having a child guarantees a middle-class lifestyle, and perhaps another factor is how much we privilege Mothers.
Ah, now I see where the "troll" moderation came from, but I don't agree with it. You're no troll, you're just pathetically ignorant. Trust me, you would NOT want to be on LINK (known as "food stamps" a decade ago before they did away with paper coupons).
That fat woman you see in the grocery wearing designer clothes and buying steaks on a LINK card? It isn't hers, you're witnessing fraud. She's a dope dealer who trades drugs for LINK at fifty cents on the dollar. I drink in a poor neighborhood, and junkies are always trying to sell their LINK. They don't need it, addicts eat very little but I have no wish to defraud the government.
What in the hell is an anti-science dimwit doing at a nerd site?? You just come here to troll?
I guess you'd rather use that money to bomb foreigners and spy on Americans?
Milk, cheese, and eggs are all animal products. Vegans wouldn't touch them.
I sit in front of my computer all day, too, but I've never had a weight problem. If anything, I have a problem keeping it on. Of course, I drink water all day rather than soda, and when I eat at a restaurant I usually take half the meal home because it's just way too much food.
As to the anonymous idiot you responded to who said "Man's eyes were not evolved to read computer screens and mankind's fingers were not evolved to used keyboards," what a moron. Computer screens and keyboards were designed to work with the fingers and eyes we evolved. HFCS wasn't.
What happens if they try and get revenge on you?
How? I can cause a business far more damage than a business can cause me. A business owner would be a fool to start a fight like that.
Because everybody thinks he's smarter than everybody else. The realization of one's own ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.
I dealt with surveys at work maybe fifteen years ago (maybe more). Most of the folks I worked with held PhDs in various disciplines* and almost all were very intelligent (there was one woman who was a total airhead about everything else but knew statistics, her field. Think Sheldon). And yeah, believe me, they know how trustworthy these people are, it's accounted for in the math (which is over my head).
* One day I saw something unthinkable - fifteen PhDs spending an entire day stuffing envelopes (yes, I helped even though I'm not a PhD).
Where are the moderators?? I laughed at "statisticianololgist" but even harder at the response to that word!
When are they going to study why I and most others like me have smoked pot for four decades, while being productive members of society all that time without succumbing to the Reefer Madness Syndrome?
What percentage of pot smokers who don't partake in other illegal drugs are mentally ill? I would guess that the difference between non-smokers would be negligible.
I'd have modded you funny, I did LOL. But I doubt they passed out questionnaires. More likely it was verbal interviews, which would give them meaningful data. I'd be interested in seeing what the actual questions were.
Drug prohibition was a failure, as is a welfare state.
Indeed, but the welfare state was at the wrong time in the wrong circumstances. Already 1% of the population are farmworkers, who feed everyone. When mechanization makes 80% of the world's population unemployable, what then?
There is enough food for everyone, yet people still go hungry. The failure is from greed; the bible was right. The love of money is indeed the root of all evil.
I'd rather my taxes go to feeding people than killing them.
There's got to be a "slip through your fingers" joke there somewhere but I'm too stoned to think one up.
Holy Bible of lethal dose
Now I'm intrigued, I thought there was no lethal dose of LSD; at least, that's what I've read. Do you have a link?
Speaking of LSD which is only kinda on topic, let me bring it squarely on-topic: how many of these folks that were studied for pot were indulging in other drugs as well? LSD can cause psychotic episodes in otherwise mentally healthy people, it's doom for someone prone to schitzophrenia. It's been my experience that crazy people usually don't stick to a single drug. One trouble with assembling statistics is making sure you've accounted for all the variables.
..there probably isn't a "safe use level".
What's the "safe use level" of peanuts? My daughter is allergic to them, they can kill her.
If there's heart disease in your family, you might want to exercise a little and watch what you eat. If there's cancer in your family you might want to avoid gasoline, tobacco, nail polish, hair dye, and other carcinogens.
If there's mental illness in your family, you might want to avoid substances and situations that affect the brain. What's so hard to understand?