As someone in a rather regulated industry.... regulation, as much as it has a reputation for being stifling to innovation actually can help move it along.
See the thing is.... companies can't really stop BYOD. It is already in the culture. You really going to tell me I can't have a personal phone? You mean my personal phone that works everywhere, lets me get my personal email etc wont work here? Right, thats going to work out.
The thing is, other companies, unregulated ones, they can ignore it. They can enact useless rules that so "no" and then ignore their own rules. They can do that. We can't. We already have rules about how safe our data must be. We already have rules about device access etc. You would think we would fall back on them and just say "see we have rules" but the fact is, we need to have our rules work. We can't ignore them and hope for the best.
Its like hard drive encryption. Everyone knew it was a problem. There were major leaks due to lost laptops. However, a lost laptop is a lost laptop, its an accident...what you gonna do about it? Well... when the rules come down that we can't do that anymore and we will be liable....boy you should have seen how fast every single laptop got encrypted.
BYOD is just a matter of admitting reality and working with whats possible rather than working with whats "within your rights as an employer" but completely unreasonable and unrealistic. If you are an employer, your employees already have these devices, and already have their lives revolve around being within reach of them 24/7.
Wasn't trying to, was just pointing out that other people agree. You can interpret it any way you like, its just silly words on paper to me. However, some of the people who interpret it otherwise do seem to believe that shit.
But isn't that a bit of a pipe dream? I mean, you probably agree that there are ethical boundaries. Certainly, few would argue that we should be rounding up humans for testing, especially testing that would involve necropsy.
Once we agree that there should be ethical boundaries, we then have to agree on what those ethics are, and where the lines need to be drawn....
In the end, politics creeps in somewhere in there, no matter what. This is especially evident when they hold the purse strings.
Um I mustn't do anything. I don't even think its a particularly good book for literary purposes. For all I care, they can interpret it that two men can't sleep in the same house at the same time, or only banning the vaginal penetration of men, or whatever the fuck they want. Its their beliefs.
The point is... Christians are not in agreement over what the book says.
That doesn't change that.... there are real Christians out there.... who really interpret it that way.
If you want to argue with them about how to interpret their book, be my guest, I was just pointing out that not everyone who actually says they follow that group agrees.
Thats a fine hypothesis. Sounds like it could be falsified by surveying atheists vs non-atheists and seeing which group, on the whole, when adjusted for other factors (income, education level, family background, genetics) takes better care of their health (need some specific metrics to judge that by too).
However, unless someone has done something like this, or you plan to, then your logic is simply a hypothesis... an educated guess.
Your logic assumes that an atheist believes that a long life is worth the cost of that extra care. It also assumes that his philosophy/beliefs strongly inform his health related decisions.
Perhaps he decides that all this extra care isn't worth it, since it just adds on to the end of life, and that period isn't so great anyway... better to burn out than to fade away.:)
I don't see how atheism would predispose a person to one view or the other on this. Remember, as Dawkins put it.... everyone is an atheist. There are litterally hundreds of gods that christians don't believe in. Atheists are little more than people who take it one god further.
An atheist doesn't even have to be particularly rational. I was 11 when I realized that the stories I was being told were silly and unlikely to be true. It certainly wasn't a well reasoned and thought out position at that point, just a gut feeling.
Actually.... one of the really interesting things here is health care. As you may know, here in the US about 20% of our GDP goes to health care (or so I hear when we have big company meetings). Anyway, 50% of all that spending is spent on the last 5 years of life. We, as a culture, spend about 10% of GDP trying to stave off death, even if it means slow atrophy in a hospital bed.
Now it gets interesting.... what happens when you correlate these habbits with religion? Is it atheists who put off death the longest.... trying to hold on to this one life as long as they can before the eternal black? Afterall, Christians have it all set, as do most religions.... afterlife? Looking at celestial palaces or maybe reincarnation.... way better than laying ina hospital bed...right?
Wel....... survey says.... WRONG
In fact, its the atheists who, on average, spend the least amount of time prolonging life, and hanging on the longest.
Now, I can only speak for myself but I connect with this article on it.. I have no vision of heaven to fall back on, no belief in some afterlife. SO.... I personally realized that my life was going to come to an end fairly early on. I was 11 when I left the church, and by 15 or 16 had already come to some early terms with my own mortality. Yes, at some point, I end. Its not a big deal, everyone does it.
I don't need to worry about it... what if what I believed my whole life was wrong? Well shit... whats that even mean? If I am wrong then just about anything could be true, and its going to be an adventure no matter what, I have no reason to believe the epic hell afterlife is any more likely than any others, and the most likely.... well... is just nothing.
So I have nothing to dwell on, nothing to be afraid of...beyond the normal urge to live, and avoidance of pain. I don't want to go to my death bed but, someday I will, and I have known that for half my life now. I feel bad for people who suddenly, at 70 years old, suddenly come to feel doubt and worry if it was all worth it.
I would say the atheist thinks that this idea of a powerful god creature creating the world is highly unlikely, based on his perceived utter lack of evidence. (I say percieved because, even though I am an atheist, I know other people who, while living in this same objective reality, perceive such evidence... incorrect as they may be:) )
Beyond that, how one approaches life is up to them. Being an atheist neither makes one happy or sad, confident or confident, depressed or maniacal. We are just as much products of our environment, physiology and experiences as anyone else. No atheist has suddenly sprouted pointy ears and lost all emotion but for a period 7 year blood lust.
It really depends what conclusions one comes to about the world and their place in it, and has very little to do with religion.
Right.... except that it isn't hard at all to find that different people have interpreted it differently. A quick google search will bring up some interesting articles on the topic. Interesting if you find biblical interpretation debate interesting. I usually attribute my interest to the sort of bemused fascination that comes from having been an atheist who went to catholic schools...
The main quote on the topic is:
"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." (Lev 8:22)
Some bibles have reinterpreted this to "Homosexuality is a sin", which would include lesbian acts, etc. Clearly thats a debatable stretch, but, before even debating that part, arguments about the context of the statement lead to different conclusions:
many religious liberals have interpreted the beginning of this verse as referring only to sexual activities between two males during a Pagan temple ritual. If there were a liberal translation of the Bible, it might say "Ritual anal sex between two men in a Pagan temple is forbidden."
Under that interpretation, its kind of hard to use that as a condemnation of all gay sex.
I mostly agree, but by the same token, the NIH is publicly funded. So, while its great to say "look how many lives saved" is great, and it wins my support, but to justify using public funding, I think you need more than that. If people have objections, those objections are legitimate as long as they are being made to contribute, even indirectly.
Also, I must note, the summary says the NIH is simply no longer funding these studies. That is distinct from banning the research. Private funding is still possible.
Saudi Arabia has the same situation....no wait... we actually had to use media exposure and pressure to convince them not to stone a woman to death for being raped. Its ok though...they are our allies and good friends. As long as those women neither are American citizens nor part of a relatively small group that could be advantageous to crush as a means to bump the bottom lines of defense contractors, the default position is that they are just chattel animals like the rest of us peasants.
But doesn't that just give any prostitute the incentive to claim she was being kept as a slave?
How do you separate out the willing liars from the genuine article? Seems to me registration, licensing, and inspection would do a better job of that than these shortsighted laws.
But...thats only if you want to solve the problem of slavery...if all you want to do is moralize and throw more people in jail and feel good about "doing something", then these laws sound about perfect.
Ok, so legalize prostitution and sever ties between the now legal sex trade and the illegal sex trade.
There is plenty of money to be made in selling alcohol to minors, how many legitimate places are willing to risk their prized liquor licenses over it? They may make mistakes, employees may make exceptions for friends and other shit, but.... outside of those minor incidents, nobody does it as a matter of course. Nobody has a back room for kids to go buy liquor at.
Now, I know the drug markets more than the flesh but... the paralells are easy to see.
The average drug dealer is just a user who needed a way to afford his habbit. No matter how honest of a businessman, no matter whether he denies sales to kids, or advices customers when their habbits seem to be going out of control (all things i have seen from real dealers), he still has to worry about being robbed, threatened, or blackmailed. There is no real separation between him and abusive predators.
There is just no excuse for submerging these people into the criminal underground and leaving them with no reasonable legal recourse to protect themselves from dangerous predators. Thats what it really comes down to. When you make it illegal, you lump all people doing it together, you force them into the same boat as the abusive people. This helps the abusive hide, and gives them victims.
A legal prostitute has no reason to not report illegal activities, in fact, she has every reason to do it. Do you want her on your side, or do you want her to be just another victim? Thats the real question.
Do you want to give abusive criminals an ocean to hide in? Or would you want to shrink his world, and leave him fewer places to hide?
Because in the end, the basic transaction of sex for money, no matter how you feel about it, has no victim. It is nearly invisible, and it is impossible to stop. Why fight it, when its not really the actual problem?
Well then we disagree, because I feel it is incumbent upon those who want to have restrictions to justify them and not really the other way around. The default state is, and should be, one of no restriction. Any restriction means enforcement, it means unintended side effects, it means interference. It really should be justified first, before implementation. Always.
> See here's the thing, the difference may be obvious to you, but how you feel when you are drunk or stoned doesn't matter, because, as your example states, > your perceptions are probably wrong.
There was a point, you flew right by it. Of course it alters your perceptions. The point is, the alterations are not the same and you can't just lump them together, because the differences actually matter. Case in point... that tests on alcohol and marijuana specifically and separately come out with different results. So, in fact, my perceptions were exactly correct as stated...they are not the same.
> it illegal to drive high on meth saves even one life, then it seems like a worth it tradeoff to me, since it's exchanging a life for a bunch of meth-heads pleasure. > Easy tradeoff to make.
A very easy tradoff to make.... its also a completely unrealistic tradeoff. It is NEVER that simple. You are never going to be given that choice, nor are law makers.
Oh and... why would you expect that to save any lives. As I mentioned, meth is, actually not "illegal". It is a schedule II substance, meaning it can be prescribed, and has medical uses. Maybe you have newer info than me, but, as recently as the beginning of the now ending war, there were articles about how it is STILL given to military pilots.
Its fine to trade off people's pleasure for others safety.... but don't you think you should actually show that the harm which you intend to prevent is actually real and not just some hypothetical imagining of a sobriety obsessed mind BEFORE enacting restrictions?
This is nothing new, just a new study that confirms what has been said before.
Previous studies have found that, when adjusted for economic differences, geographical, ethic, racial etc..... the only consistent difference in math achievement was found to be between people who believed that math was a ingrained talent and those who believed it was a learned skill.
That this attitude is partially cultural is hardly surprising. Even the original study noted that cultures which had the highest percentages of people believing math was a learned skill, outperformed people in cultures with more people believing that it was innate.
RTFA man, they caught them with a shitton of pot. Mexico is still a major supplier of pot to the US. Local and BC grown tends to be higher quality and more expensive. Mexican "brick" is still the staple amongst the people who can't afford the better stuff.
Coke is good profits but, pot is a bigger market. There are more pot heads than all the coke and heroin users combined... and a large number of them... smoke crap.
I don't think you understand the economics here. These guys must be getting somewhere in the $100-$200/lbs range. Separating seeds out will break up buds, decreasing saleability, plus, the byproduct seeds, are not going to fetch that same price per lbs. They already separate bud from main stock and leaves, but I believe its a mostly manual process. That could potentially be put to other uses.
Actual trimmed leaves from buds, are better put to use by extracting the resin glands to make hash.... though... hash isn't very popular here in the US.
Also I am pretty sure the cartels don't have a labor cost issue, transporting is more expensive. What the cartels really need, is to be put out of business.
Hadn't thought of that. I was thinking of the articles I have seen on chemical restrictions causing them to use benzene and other solvents for extraction. I hadn't thought about that aspect. Once its already extracted, that should be quite easy.
ROTFL you do realize that they already compact it? What I was referring to an already compacted, or as its usually called "bricked", hence terms like "Brick weed".
They probably could compact it a bit more but, if all that comes out of the bag is "shake", then guess what? That lowers the sale price significantly. I have seen dealers who sell all the intact bud at normal prices, then sell the "shake" off in larger bags for cheap, because few people really want it.
Seriously, yah it could be done but.... why bother?
For the same quantity by weight it would be several times more work, and the end result would be harder to store and move, and worth a fraction of the street price.
You build the tunnel for coke, then move other stuff through it because you can. You don't build it for pot.
Well I see, if "some guy on slashdot" went and "put a camera on his car" that sounds way more valid than a test done by a real organization whose entire existence is to research how to make highways safer. Of course, your assessment of that rigorous study does, in fact, agree with the UK Highway Safety Council. They did, in fact, find they could measure reaction times as slower.... but... thats not really the whole story.
Driving is not all about reaction time and who can twitch on the brakes the fastest, The person who gives more following distance, and avoids situations where he doesn't have an out (among other good habbits) doesn't put himself in as many situations where he needs those twitchy reactions.
Having been drunk and stoned at various points, I can honestly say, the difference is pretty fucking obvious to me. Alcohol's worst effect, in my mind, is that for many people it increases confidence and makes people think they are capable. I remember my first time drunk, sitting on a couch next to a friend of mine, plastered off my ass, saying "I don't see the problem, I could totally drive right now, no issue"... at which point i stood up, took one step, and fell flat on my face. I have seen similar countless times, and even seen people jump in the car and drive away in that state.
This is an effect, very specifically, of alcohol. By the same token, ive seen people take a few hits of some pot, and then insist that they can't get off the couch, and are far too stoned to even talk (or so they claim.... verbally.... talking....)
Some drugs have similar effects to alcohol, but many don't. Hell even cocaine shouldn't be in the same discussion, or meth. Can you really argue that meth causes impairment when its given to fighter pilots who have to stay up for inordinate amounts of time?
Each is different, if we are going to have these sorts of regulations, they should be based on scientific evidence not guesses and anecdotes.
they would need too many cylinders. Have you ever seen a lbs of pot? Its dry plant matter man. Its not compact. These guys move tons of pot. Logistically, large tunnels are needed.
Plus, such a tunnel could not move slaves (human trafficking sounds too respectable) or weapons.
However, it could move coke, and it could move a shitton of coke. Just dissolve it in solvent and start piping. Hell their profit margins are so high on that, I bet they could just toss the solvent and not use a return pipe. Great for them, probably suck for the environment around their receiving station. But it is hard to get those illegal businesses to comply with environmental regulation in general.
I bet you could push enough down a 1 or 2" pipe to keep the other end busy flowing out the coke.
Funny, I was thinking the same thing, tho.... I don't give to shits about the feds. If they were smart, they would give up on this fools errand entirely, and realize that they created this problem by creating the huge black market. Pfizer wouldn't do this, Glaxco-Smith-Kline would produce these people out of business. There is a much simpler solution here....its called ending prohibition (again).
In the mean time.... a cocaine pipeline would be easy to build. Dissolve in vats of solvent on one end, send it through, distill the solvent out at the other end, and send it back.... assuming you want to reduce waste and recycle. Sadly as there are no evnironmental regulations on the black market, and prohibition has sent their profit margins so high, they would likely just evaporate it off or dump the left over solvent into a sump.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, I don't believe the DPRK gained a single inch of territory under his rule, much less really tried to.
Perhaps "Thumb Sitting Leader" was more like it?
As someone in a rather regulated industry.... regulation, as much as it has a reputation for being stifling to innovation actually can help move it along.
See the thing is.... companies can't really stop BYOD. It is already in the culture. You really going to tell me I can't have a personal phone? You mean my personal phone that works everywhere, lets me get my personal email etc wont work here? Right, thats going to work out.
The thing is, other companies, unregulated ones, they can ignore it. They can enact useless rules that so "no" and then ignore their own rules. They can do that. We can't. We already have rules about how safe our data must be. We already have rules about device access etc. You would think we would fall back on them and just say "see we have rules" but the fact is, we need to have our rules work. We can't ignore them and hope for the best.
Its like hard drive encryption. Everyone knew it was a problem. There were major leaks due to lost laptops. However, a lost laptop is a lost laptop, its an accident...what you gonna do about it? Well... when the rules come down that we can't do that anymore and we will be liable....boy you should have seen how fast every single laptop got encrypted.
BYOD is just a matter of admitting reality and working with whats possible rather than working with whats "within your rights as an employer" but completely unreasonable and unrealistic. If you are an employer, your employees already have these devices, and already have their lives revolve around being within reach of them 24/7.
I think there were a few more in there, certainly, the mormons were not the last... remember the Davidians?
Wasn't trying to, was just pointing out that other people agree. You can interpret it any way you like, its just silly words on paper to me. However, some of the people who interpret it otherwise do seem to believe that shit.
But isn't that a bit of a pipe dream? I mean, you probably agree that there are ethical boundaries. Certainly, few would argue that we should be rounding up humans for testing, especially testing that would involve necropsy.
Once we agree that there should be ethical boundaries, we then have to agree on what those ethics are, and where the lines need to be drawn....
In the end, politics creeps in somewhere in there, no matter what. This is especially evident when they hold the purse strings.
Um I mustn't do anything. I don't even think its a particularly good book for literary purposes. For all I care, they can interpret it that two men can't sleep in the same house at the same time, or only banning the vaginal penetration of men, or whatever the fuck they want. Its their beliefs.
The point is... Christians are not in agreement over what the book says.
That doesn't change that.... there are real Christians out there.... who really interpret it that way.
If you want to argue with them about how to interpret their book, be my guest, I was just pointing out that not everyone who actually says they follow that group agrees.
Thats a fine hypothesis. Sounds like it could be falsified by surveying atheists vs non-atheists and seeing which group, on the whole, when adjusted for other factors (income, education level, family background, genetics) takes better care of their health (need some specific metrics to judge that by too).
However, unless someone has done something like this, or you plan to, then your logic is simply a hypothesis... an educated guess.
Your logic assumes that an atheist believes that a long life is worth the cost of that extra care. It also assumes that his philosophy/beliefs strongly inform his health related decisions.
Perhaps he decides that all this extra care isn't worth it, since it just adds on to the end of life, and that period isn't so great anyway... better to burn out than to fade away. :)
I don't see how atheism would predispose a person to one view or the other on this. Remember, as Dawkins put it.... everyone is an atheist. There are litterally hundreds of gods that christians don't believe in. Atheists are little more than people who take it one god further.
An atheist doesn't even have to be particularly rational. I was 11 when I realized that the stories I was being told were silly and unlikely to be true. It certainly wasn't a well reasoned and thought out position at that point, just a gut feeling.
Actually.... one of the really interesting things here is health care. As you may know, here in the US about 20% of our GDP goes to health care (or so I hear when we have big company meetings). Anyway, 50% of all that spending is spent on the last 5 years of life. We, as a culture, spend about 10% of GDP trying to stave off death, even if it means slow atrophy in a hospital bed.
Now it gets interesting.... what happens when you correlate these habbits with religion? Is it atheists who put off death the longest.... trying to hold on to this one life as long as they can before the eternal black? Afterall, Christians have it all set, as do most religions.... afterlife? Looking at celestial palaces or maybe reincarnation.... way better than laying ina hospital bed...right?
Wel....... survey says.... WRONG
In fact, its the atheists who, on average, spend the least amount of time prolonging life, and hanging on the longest.
Check this out.... http://www.alternet.org/belief/148825/why_atheists_are_better_prepared_for_death_than_believers?page=1
Now, I can only speak for myself but I connect with this article on it.. I have no vision of heaven to fall back on, no belief in some afterlife. SO.... I personally realized that my life was going to come to an end fairly early on. I was 11 when I left the church, and by 15 or 16 had already come to some early terms with my own mortality. Yes, at some point, I end. Its not a big deal, everyone does it.
I don't need to worry about it... what if what I believed my whole life was wrong? Well shit... whats that even mean? If I am wrong then just about anything could be true, and its going to be an adventure no matter what, I have no reason to believe the epic hell afterlife is any more likely than any others, and the most likely.... well... is just nothing.
So I have nothing to dwell on, nothing to be afraid of...beyond the normal urge to live, and avoidance of pain. I don't want to go to my death bed but, someday I will, and I have known that for half my life now. I feel bad for people who suddenly, at 70 years old, suddenly come to feel doubt and worry if it was all worth it.
The Atheist? We are all a single being now?
I would say the atheist thinks that this idea of a powerful god creature creating the world is highly unlikely, based on his perceived utter lack of evidence. (I say percieved because, even though I am an atheist, I know other people who, while living in this same objective reality, perceive such evidence... incorrect as they may be :) )
Beyond that, how one approaches life is up to them. Being an atheist neither makes one happy or sad, confident or confident, depressed or maniacal. We are just as much products of our environment, physiology and experiences as anyone else. No atheist has suddenly sprouted pointy ears and lost all emotion but for a period 7 year blood lust.
It really depends what conclusions one comes to about the world and their place in it, and has very little to do with religion.
Right.... except that it isn't hard at all to find that different people have interpreted it differently. A quick google search will bring up some interesting articles on the topic. Interesting if you find biblical interpretation debate interesting. I usually attribute my interest to the sort of bemused fascination that comes from having been an atheist who went to catholic schools...
The main quote on the topic is:
Some bibles have reinterpreted this to "Homosexuality is a sin", which would include lesbian acts, etc. Clearly thats a debatable stretch, but, before even debating that part, arguments about the context of the statement lead to different conclusions:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibh4.htm
Under that interpretation, its kind of hard to use that as a condemnation of all gay sex.
I mostly agree, but by the same token, the NIH is publicly funded. So, while its great to say "look how many lives saved" is great, and it wins my support, but to justify using public funding, I think you need more than that. If people have objections, those objections are legitimate as long as they are being made to contribute, even indirectly.
Also, I must note, the summary says the NIH is simply no longer funding these studies. That is distinct from banning the research. Private funding is still possible.
Or crashed near some homes and self destructed while some kids were dragging it home.
Saudi Arabia has the same situation....no wait... we actually had to use media exposure and pressure to convince them not to stone a woman to death for being raped. Its ok though...they are our allies and good friends. As long as those women neither are American citizens nor part of a relatively small group that could be advantageous to crush as a means to bump the bottom lines of defense contractors, the default position is that they are just chattel animals like the rest of us peasants.
But doesn't that just give any prostitute the incentive to claim she was being kept as a slave?
How do you separate out the willing liars from the genuine article? Seems to me registration, licensing, and inspection would do a better job of that than these shortsighted laws.
But...thats only if you want to solve the problem of slavery...if all you want to do is moralize and throw more people in jail and feel good about "doing something", then these laws sound about perfect.
Ok, so legalize prostitution and sever ties between the now legal sex trade and the illegal sex trade.
There is plenty of money to be made in selling alcohol to minors, how many legitimate places are willing to risk their prized liquor licenses over it? They may make mistakes, employees may make exceptions for friends and other shit, but.... outside of those minor incidents, nobody does it as a matter of course. Nobody has a back room for kids to go buy liquor at.
Now, I know the drug markets more than the flesh but... the paralells are easy to see.
The average drug dealer is just a user who needed a way to afford his habbit. No matter how honest of a businessman, no matter whether he denies sales to kids, or advices customers when their habbits seem to be going out of control (all things i have seen from real dealers), he still has to worry about being robbed, threatened, or blackmailed. There is no real separation between him and abusive predators.
There is just no excuse for submerging these people into the criminal underground and leaving them with no reasonable legal recourse to protect themselves from dangerous predators. Thats what it really comes down to. When you make it illegal, you lump all people doing it together, you force them into the same boat as the abusive people. This helps the abusive hide, and gives them victims.
A legal prostitute has no reason to not report illegal activities, in fact, she has every reason to do it. Do you want her on your side, or do you want her to be just another victim? Thats the real question.
Do you want to give abusive criminals an ocean to hide in? Or would you want to shrink his world, and leave him fewer places to hide?
Because in the end, the basic transaction of sex for money, no matter how you feel about it, has no victim. It is nearly invisible, and it is impossible to stop. Why fight it, when its not really the actual problem?
Well then we disagree, because I feel it is incumbent upon those who want to have restrictions to justify them and not really the other way around. The default state is, and should be, one of no restriction. Any restriction means enforcement, it means unintended side effects, it means interference. It really should be justified first, before implementation. Always.
> See here's the thing, the difference may be obvious to you, but how you feel when you are drunk or stoned doesn't matter, because, as your example states,
> your perceptions are probably wrong.
There was a point, you flew right by it. Of course it alters your perceptions. The point is, the alterations are not the same and you can't just lump them together, because the differences actually matter. Case in point... that tests on alcohol and marijuana specifically and separately come out with different results. So, in fact, my perceptions were exactly correct as stated...they are not the same.
> it illegal to drive high on meth saves even one life, then it seems like a worth it tradeoff to me, since it's exchanging a life for a bunch of meth-heads pleasure.
> Easy tradeoff to make.
A very easy tradoff to make.... its also a completely unrealistic tradeoff. It is NEVER that simple. You are never going to be given that choice, nor are law makers.
Oh and... why would you expect that to save any lives. As I mentioned, meth is, actually not "illegal". It is a schedule II substance, meaning it can be prescribed, and has medical uses. Maybe you have newer info than me, but, as recently as the beginning of the now ending war, there were articles about how it is STILL given to military pilots.
Its fine to trade off people's pleasure for others safety.... but don't you think you should actually show that the harm which you intend to prevent is actually real and not just some hypothetical imagining of a sobriety obsessed mind BEFORE enacting restrictions?
This is nothing new, just a new study that confirms what has been said before.
Previous studies have found that, when adjusted for economic differences, geographical, ethic, racial etc..... the only consistent difference in math achievement was found to be between people who believed that math was a ingrained talent and those who believed it was a learned skill.
That this attitude is partially cultural is hardly surprising. Even the original study noted that cultures which had the highest percentages of people believing math was a learned skill, outperformed people in cultures with more people believing that it was innate.
RTFA man, they caught them with a shitton of pot. Mexico is still a major supplier of pot to the US. Local and BC grown tends to be higher quality and more expensive. Mexican "brick" is still the staple amongst the people who can't afford the better stuff.
Coke is good profits but, pot is a bigger market. There are more pot heads than all the coke and heroin users combined... and a large number of them... smoke crap.
I don't think you understand the economics here. These guys must be getting somewhere in the $100-$200/lbs range. Separating seeds out will break up buds, decreasing saleability, plus, the byproduct seeds, are not going to fetch that same price per lbs. They already separate bud from main stock and leaves, but I believe its a mostly manual process. That could potentially be put to other uses.
Actual trimmed leaves from buds, are better put to use by extracting the resin glands to make hash.... though... hash isn't very popular here in the US.
Also I am pretty sure the cartels don't have a labor cost issue, transporting is more expensive. What the cartels really need, is to be put out of business.
Hadn't thought of that. I was thinking of the articles I have seen on chemical restrictions causing them to use benzene and other solvents for extraction. I hadn't thought about that aspect. Once its already extracted, that should be quite easy.
ROTFL you do realize that they already compact it? What I was referring to an already compacted, or as its usually called "bricked", hence terms like "Brick weed".
They probably could compact it a bit more but, if all that comes out of the bag is "shake", then guess what? That lowers the sale price significantly. I have seen dealers who sell all the intact bud at normal prices, then sell the "shake" off in larger bags for cheap, because few people really want it.
Seriously, yah it could be done but.... why bother?
For the same quantity by weight it would be several times more work, and the end result would be harder to store and move, and worth a fraction of the street price.
You build the tunnel for coke, then move other stuff through it because you can. You don't build it for pot.
Well I see, if "some guy on slashdot" went and "put a camera on his car" that sounds way more valid than a test done by a real organization whose entire existence is to research how to make highways safer. Of course, your assessment of that rigorous study does, in fact, agree with the UK Highway Safety Council. They did, in fact, find they could measure reaction times as slower.... but... thats not really the whole story.
Driving is not all about reaction time and who can twitch on the brakes the fastest, The person who gives more following distance, and avoids situations where he doesn't have an out (among other good habbits) doesn't put himself in as many situations where he needs those twitchy reactions.
Having been drunk and stoned at various points, I can honestly say, the difference is pretty fucking obvious to me. Alcohol's worst effect, in my mind, is that for many people it increases confidence and makes people think they are capable. I remember my first time drunk, sitting on a couch next to a friend of mine, plastered off my ass, saying "I don't see the problem, I could totally drive right now, no issue"... at which point i stood up, took one step, and fell flat on my face. I have seen similar countless times, and even seen people jump in the car and drive away in that state.
This is an effect, very specifically, of alcohol. By the same token, ive seen people take a few hits of some pot, and then insist that they can't get off the couch, and are far too stoned to even talk (or so they claim.... verbally.... talking....)
Some drugs have similar effects to alcohol, but many don't. Hell even cocaine shouldn't be in the same discussion, or meth. Can you really argue that meth causes impairment when its given to fighter pilots who have to stay up for inordinate amounts of time?
Each is different, if we are going to have these sorts of regulations, they should be based on scientific evidence not guesses and anecdotes.
they would need too many cylinders. Have you ever seen a lbs of pot? Its dry plant matter man. Its not compact. These guys move tons of pot. Logistically, large tunnels are needed.
Plus, such a tunnel could not move slaves (human trafficking sounds too respectable) or weapons.
However, it could move coke, and it could move a shitton of coke. Just dissolve it in solvent and start piping. Hell their profit margins are so high on that, I bet they could just toss the solvent and not use a return pipe. Great for them, probably suck for the environment around their receiving station. But it is hard to get those illegal businesses to comply with environmental regulation in general.
I bet you could push enough down a 1 or 2" pipe to keep the other end busy flowing out the coke.
Funny, I was thinking the same thing, tho.... I don't give to shits about the feds. If they were smart, they would give up on this fools errand entirely, and realize that they created this problem by creating the huge black market. Pfizer wouldn't do this, Glaxco-Smith-Kline would produce these people out of business. There is a much simpler solution here....its called ending prohibition (again).
In the mean time.... a cocaine pipeline would be easy to build. Dissolve in vats of solvent on one end, send it through, distill the solvent out at the other end, and send it back.... assuming you want to reduce waste and recycle. Sadly as there are no evnironmental regulations on the black market, and prohibition has sent their profit margins so high, they would likely just evaporate it off or dump the left over solvent into a sump.
Another "win" for prohibition.