Admittedly amphetamines have their downsides, and some big ones especially with frequent use, but lets not kid ourselves, caffiene isn't exactly brussle sprouts.
Hacking your body chemistry is just like anything else, it can achieve the desired effect, or it can miss wildly. Often it involves trade offs.
I dunno about you but I sleep better, and feel all around better starting about 4 days after I quit a caffination cycle (usually I quit caffiene about the time I start to feel groggy in the morning).
Of course I eventually have a few nights where I am up too late (often involving the weekly poker game these days), and end up needing to see joe in the morning.
I make no illusions though. I am not pretending that joe is health food. Its drugs, pleasant, sweet smelling, black as as a steers ass on a moonless prairy night, tasty drugs. Definitly in the top five of non-medicinal drugs ever. (though if I ever get glaucoma and pot becomes medicinal, it will make it to 4 - and with the amount of time I spend in front of pc monitors, there is a fair chance)
You would have to REMEMBER McGruff and "Don't talk to strangers"
They don't teach that now. The new thing is, if you are lost or need help, go to the nearest adult, any adult and ask for help.
The reason being that a lost child can't deal on his own and needs help. A child that is afraid to talk to strangers and is separated from the people that he knows is in a much worst situation than one who has been taught to find the first adult he sees and get help.
99.999% of the time when a lost child walks up to an adult, he is going to get some form of help, or at worst ignoired. The chances that someone he asks for help is going to hurt him is so small as to not be worth considering. Most people are going to make a few shouts to try and get his parents attention if they are nearby and then call the police. (or whatever else may be appropriate for the situation, building security, store manager etc)
The point is, the less time the kid spends without an adult focusing some amount fo attention on him, the better.
What did you say motherfucker? We with the bomb squad nigga, now step off before I show you just how bomb we are. Unless maybe you want to examine the front side of my gatt? Because thats all the bomb I need.
The thing that gets me, ive seen these and almost bought one. Now I wish I had.
Counterfit or not, it was a great idea! A nintendo the size of a controller that had all those old games loaded on it. Good product, its really too bad that the legitimate companies like nintendo didn't come up with the idea themselves. It would be a great way to give people a product that they would think is really cool and buy (there would be no issue here if nobody was buying them, the counterfiters would just go out of buisness on their own).
So instead of using their old products to make a little more cash by giving people a cool new toy, they spend money going after the people who are doing it.
As was replied by another - many states allow you on the ballot if your party nominates you and your party has enough support. So the Kerry and Bush campaigns did NOT need to throw money down getting signatures, they were short listed.
So while the campaigns with less money, where every dollar spent getting hteir message out counts, they have to waste large amounts of their money in just getting enough signatures to get on the ballot....
and the major parties that already have plenty of money to toss at campaigns? They effecitvly get a subsidy by the states, because they get a pass on this very expensive process.
Theres several problems with our voting system (not the least of which is that I think the 1 vote for one candidate thing is silly, I would rather see a ranked voting system)
1. There are no standards
every system has its problems, differences in how votes are counted, error rates, etc. I find it amusing that in 2000 the SCOTUS stopped the recount because different systems in different counties for doing recounts meant that ballots were not bein gcounted in a univorm manner... so they tossed it on equal protection grounds.
Speculation as to their motives aside, its true, and you would think they could fix it. However nothing was done.
2. Political Parties are way too involved.
In most states to be involved in the elections, you effectivly have to be aproved by the parties. In flordia high level election officals were also high level Bush campaign people.
Now I am not saying that they cheated, but if anyone was going to cheat, then they were in the position to do so. This is a matter of conflict of interest. People who are strongly invested in one candidate winning are involved with vote counting? That has an air of inpropriety that should be avoided.
What we need is a central elections authority with very strict non-partisan rules. The entire system needs to be made completly transparent so that there is nothing to contest after the fact.
3. The system is biased
Sure you can bet a Dem and a Repub will be on the ballot, but who else can get on the ballot in every state? Nader can't, but he probably came the closest. I think we need to a) drop ALL offical recognition of political designations and parties. b) make it easier to get on ballots.
John Kerry and George Bush campaigns should have had to go through exactly the same process that Nader had to go through to get on the ballots. That would be much more fair. It just should not be so hard to get on the ballot.
In addition to this, I think there should be one ballot, on in one state, on in every state.
4 Debates
There should be federally regulated debates. Every candidate on the ballot should be invited to the debates. There should be several of them, and the candidates should be GIVEN the rules, not allowed to try to negotiate them for their own favor.
Beyond that its up to the candidates to deliver their message and call eachother on their shit. Overall I think Kerry's mistake was not calling Bush on his shit.
Kerry got in there with policy talk. He came out with concrete actions and numbers. These are things that you can disagree with though. He let Bush get away with talking in vague generality and metaphore about values and whatnot.
Frankly, if I don't rea dbetween the lines, I find myself agreeing with Bush in his speaches and his debates. he never says anything that you will disagree with. Its all visual metaphores. There is no "we are going to reform taxes, help fammilies etc", whereas Kerry is "we are going to cut this, put the money here to do that". Well nobody is going to disagree with "reform" or "helping fammilies", but they may disagree with specifics about how you do that.
But, thats up to the candidates, reforming the system can only go so far, some steps they have to take on their own.
Actually very topical. This is my larval attempt at refining my arguments.
I was reading Lakoff's "Don't think of an Elephant" which is aimed at helping liberals learn what the right wing learned years ago - how to talk about their issues.
I don't think I did a very good job but, didn't manage to draw too much fire either so maybe I was convincing?
I try to remember its not about defense budgets or thanking jesus, but appealing to a certain temperment about the government and what it should be. Note my repeated appeals to "treat people like adults".
This is an attempt to appeal to whats been called the "strict father model", and attribute drug laws to the other side the "nuturing parent", which si more associated with liberals usually.
Basically my goal (which I strayed from), was to portray drug laws as weak, and an avoidance of what we really need to do, to associate it with "not taking responsibility for ourselves", which are all "conservative" values.
Yah heh I know it seems silly but think of it more like this, people are going to do it. This is going to make it more available to people that want it, but you still have to want it. This just ensures that people who do want it will talk to their doctor about it.
Nobody who is going to use heroin for the first time is going to act their doctor about it.
People will be introduced to heroin the same way they always have. Friends who use it will offer, they will try it, and some of them (despite the propaganda not all of them) will continue to use it.
So they have to go to their doctor and tell him and talk to him to get a prescription to buy it on their own. It gets it into the discussion at least.
This keeps it out of the hands of children as much as one ever can (no doctor or pharmacist is going to risk his license, just like most bars these days don't risk their liquor licenses), and it lets adults make the decision for themselves and opens up a dialog with someone who is trained and license to advise him.
Now im not saying prescription drug coverage should cover it or anything, just a step to safegaurd the supply from kids and get adults to talk to their doctor.
hhh good point. Yes. That prices are comming down indicates a supply and demand equilibrium. I hadn't thought of it that way. Still, it points to the fact that neither the supply nor the demand is responding to these efforts anymore.
Even when the price was 5 times what it is today, people still used it, it still flowed into this country.
I am not ready for drugstoe heroin yet either. I think we need to not lose the spirit of experimentation here. The drug war was an experiment. A hypothesis was made that use of our police to enforce prohibition could fix the problem. That has, for the past 60 years, proven false time and again. It proved false for alcohol, its proving false for heroin, its proving false for coke, its proving false for marijuana.
We need to declare this experiment over and try a new one.
We should regulate these things. Maybe make heroin available with a doctors prescription, so at the very least you need to go see a doctor and tell him you want heroin and talk with him before you can get it.
As it is now, they can't even prescribe it for what it is medically good for: chronic pain. There are many terminally ill people who could benefit, and THEY can't even get it, because we have decided we need to keep it out of the hands of other people.... people who we have failed to keep it from.
Sure its easy to spray plats and kill them. However there is real economic incentive for the people cultivating them (the people, incidently, who you are also exposing to these chemicals), to find ways to make the plants resistant through breeding or engineering (which the cartels do thave the economic ability to develop) or to otherwise mitigate the damage caused by spraying.
It is an arms race and has not managed to stop the flow of drugs into this country.
As the link posted by another respoinder mentioned the price of coke is down now. Not down to the levels it would be without prohibition (still over 10 to 20 times that if you read the link), but down none the less.
You can't get at the root of a problem that you are forcing underground. You need to bring it above ground and attack it where it should be attacked, in the doctors office. This is a medical issue, and a personal responsibility issue.
We need to start treating people like adults, and let them and their doctors take upo the issue, and decide for themselves.
Addiction is complex, but that doesn't mean you duck the issue. SPray all the plants you want, you are not going to erradicate the problem. You are attacking a symptom not a disease. The disease is here at home. The disease is a medical issue of the users. Lets stop hurting them more than they already are by their affliction.
Attacking the plant for the sins of its user is ducking the issue at best.
Well thats simply absurd. They may not be continuing to increase but realise this... if you are setup ot make drugs, then making drugs is cheap. The marginal cost is so small as to be ridiculous.
Many drugs, including coke, are more expensive by the gram than gold.
Tylanol and Heroine can be produced at about the same cost. Heroin however costs a hell of alot more than tylanol for no other reason than the drug war. Risk in moving it, artifical difficulty in producing it caused by restrictions on chemical sales intended to make it harder to produce, difficulty shipping it, all these things lead to higher prices.
Take cocaine. It should be extracted from coca leaves with certain solvents that dry cleanly and don't leave harmful residues. These are generally not legal to ship to columbia for the exact reason that thats what they are used for.
So the cartels (which are not FDA regulated of course) use whatever they can get their hands on, often using benzine, result? Coke users are regularly exposed to benzine. Prices are insane (a book from the early 90s lists the price at 17 grand per kilo, and broken up into individual street level amounts that same kilo will bring in over 100 grand)
Swiss heroin studies that allowed users to buy heroin at a price that is about what it would be if it were legal found that they generally were able to live normal lives and reduced other illegal activities by 90% in the course of just a few weeks.
This war on drugs makes no economic sense. It doesn't stop users, it gives huge economic incentives to the criminal gangs. It increases the harm involved with drugs both by adding artifical harm (prison terms) and by reducing the quality of the drugs themselves.
It is the work of people who are too weak of mind to face the issue as it should be. People who arn't willing to allow people to make their own decisions like adults, and then marvel at how those people act like children.
Yes yes... lets start fires in the jungles of columbia
Thats a great idea. Of course it will be good for the soil and all the plants (including the coca) will grow back faster. Sure, we might kill a whole bunch of columbians, but... hey... they are columbians, not people right?
I think this is an example of what we like to call poetic justice
A few people with an irrational fear of plants, have gone around killing them, and the plants have grown resistant to their methods. Good for them.
This is proof that you really can't outlaw nature.
Maybe its time to rethink this strategy of flailing wildly at anything that we percieve as potentially bad, and consider leaving people be to grow and use the plants that they want to.
Then if there are problems with how people use those plants, we can deal with that. We can train doctors to deal with that (and we have) we can foster an environment where people feel safe telling their doctors about what they are doing, an atmosphere of open honest discussion will lead to healthier attitudes.
Harm reduction is the key. These attempts to defeat nature arn't working, and instead are just inflating prices and making criminal gangs filthy rich. Hell the cartels that produce cocaine are known to have built submarines for drug trafficing. A cost that is passed directly on to the users.
Is it really so bad that people who like cocaine use it? Wouldn't it be better to decrease its effect on their wallets so they don't need to resort to crime? Wouldn't it be better to foster openness so those with problems are easier to help? Wouldn't it be better to take the money out of the hands of criminal gangs and use it to fund education initives to help keep people from starting in the first place?
Why are we in columbia? The problem is here at home. We need to fix the problems here at home, and the answer to that is not fighting a war on plants in some other country. It means growing up and taking responsibility for our own peoples actions. It means showing them the error of their ways, and then letting them make their own decisions on the matter.
A) The "Hitman" here is "God". There are no legal proscriptions whatsoever about god killing someone. Hence it wouldn't actually be murder (murder is by definition illegal killing - as long as its legal it can't be murder). If this were not the case then the FBI shpould be looking for god as he has several billion suspicous deaths to answer for.
B) No law can possibly apply as any law that applied to a request made to god would be to make a law 'respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof' (which is also why point A is the case..)
C) Satire
Read the post. This is obviously not even a serious prayer as it begins with a statement that the prayer does not believe in the existance of the prayee (herein refered to as "god"). Hence this is more of a stylized wish than a prayer. I am aware of no proscriptions about wishing bad things would happen to people.
Can I conspire with a hitman that I don't believe exists? Maybe. What if there is reason to believe that I didn't know he was serious and was joking? Think, throw momma from the train.
The man was on the ground, surrounded by at least 4 cops, and was being kicked and hit with batons. I don't care what he did or said before that point. Really no I dont. He was on the ground and they continiued to hit him. They did not even try to cuff him or otherwise restrain him until they were done getting their jollies off.
Now if the tape showed him be hit to the ground with batons and immediatly one of the police jumped on top of him and restrained him and all other violence stopped... then we might talk about context leading up to that point. Thats not what happened. They continued to hit him after they should have stopped and moved to restraint.
Why they started hitting him is not important at that point.
I will have to keep this in mind for a practical joke.
I am thoroughly convinced that if I put some tape over the IR port of the TV, my roomates would never figure it out, and if I left it on too long, would swap out the TV, or even shop for a new one.
No the US is suposed to be a government for the people by the people.
If the people want communism, then it damned well better become communist, because it is supposed to be for the people and by the people.
Actually it was "supposed to be" by the rich and for the rich... but thats just my cynical socialist take on only wealthy land owners being able to vote originally.
Anyway... I do agree with it up to a point. I however object strongly to your assertion that I want the government runnin gmy life. No. I want the government protecting our land and providing general services to make sure we stay an educated and stable country. Capitalism is fine for distribution of scarce resources, the government is more appropriate for providing general services that can be provided equitably to everyone. (like health insurance)
I am all in favor of the fair tax if it is applied fairly. I LIKE the idea of a consumption tax as long as it is applied to all things that everyone buys, like stock.
Stock is buying part of a corperation, and is where more of the money of the wealthy goes than to regular consumption. So as long as the tax applies as much to financial products as it does to other products, then I am just fine with that.
That does not appear to be what they have in mind however.
Its like LA Franken said in terms of the liberal media (I don't have his book in front of me so I am not quoting) Basically the media is not liberal.
Ok, certain issues sure. Journalists have all been to college, and when you go to college, or spend time near one, you will meet a much wider range of people than you will in other places. (I live in Boston, where if you throw a rock, chances are it will land on University property). So Journalists have generally met gay people, and probably even have had gay friends.
So, journalists generally are aware that gay people don't have some cohesive gay agenda, and generally arn't trying to "turn everyone gay". So In that sense yes, the media is very liberal towards gays, and you have seen much more acceptance of gays there than in society at large (unless your in Boston or osme other city with a very large gay population)
Well the chinese are just amazing. I find more respect for them every time I hear a story about anything other than human rights abuses or their internet censorship.
I would like to think that they will eventually come around on both.
The interesting thing is that china is rather progressive in its communism. They have been experimenting with more capitalists systems for years now. The changes that they are making to their economy now come out of ideas that they began small scale experiments with back in the 1980s
They seem to do alot of experimentation and planning, and it seems to work. China has a booming economy. I am glad someone out there is trying to advance.
Most debates between communists and laissez-faire capitalists (I tend to argue with them anyway;-) ) tend to be about rights and theoretical market forces etc. You see claims like "the market self-regulates". Common arguments are "well if a company sold bad beef, they would get a bad reputation and people would stop buying from them, so they have no incentive to" are way overly simplistic, and even demonstratably false even under our current regulations. People are only as rational as what they know about, and obscuring information or making it hard to tell what the best value or best product is, many companies seem to have down to an art form.
That said, its hard to find good examples of large scale working communism. Sure there are some communities here and there, but generally no larger than a small town. (The Farm is the only one I know off the top of my head, some artists community I forget the name of, stuff like that).
However china... china is activly out there experimenting and trying to make things work better and more equitably.
I kinda like it, and again really do hope they come around in terms of human rights and free speech.
Of course libertarians don't seem to believe in the public, only private interests.
As far as I can tell they are really just anarcho-capitalists that are trying to get into the government so that they can completely dismantle it.
I would like to see how they plan to fund what little of the government would be left (military and police maybe? since they want to do away with schools, and just about everything else) when they abolish taxes. Maybe we will voluntarily pay for them.
Beyond that I agree, we don't have a democracy. We have a really fucking broken republic that has been hijacked by private interests.
I would argue that there are no third party candidates. None of them are allowed to participate in debates, the entire system is biased against them. They are at best tokens to make it appear that we have a functioning participatory government when really we just have a little contest between factions within the ruling class.
So You can vote for the republican team, or you can vote for the democratic team. However, then that management team that wins gets to run things for 4 years until the next contest.
Now if you vote for one of the tokens, then thats it. You expressed your preference, and it didn't win. Now you don't get to express any opinion electorally on whether you prefer the D or the R, which is what the real question is.
Its kind of like ordering a hamburger at Friendlies "How do you want it cooked?" "Medium rare" "Oh we only do medium well or well" (yes I was actually given that "choice" once)
Well there is foolish, then there is right, and the two arn't always mututally exclusive.
The fact is they expected to get arrested. Thats why they called it an act of civil disobedience. They were nonviolently disobeying police orders in order to make a point. Partially to get their names out there, and partially to expose "the violence inherent in the system".
Sure they could have been beaten or shot or whatnot, and if it were you or I that would be the end of it, but if a third party presidential candidate got shot while unarmed and nonviolently making a statement, that statement would be picked up by every major news outlet, it would be huge.
As it is, this will be a minor footnote on this election. I, for one, applaud them. Civil Disobedience is a good way to get a point accross.
Maybe its an issue with the google translation, I didn't look, but thats not how I read the article (admittedly my french is rusty)
Anyway: <<Au vu de cette expertise et préoccupé par l'impact de cette affaire sur l'image de ses produits, Renault a décidé d'engager une action en justice>>
I read that as: "In view of this expertise, and the impact that this has on the image of their products, renault decided to begin legal action"
So this doesn't sound like a court action "to get at the truth", it sounds like a suit for making false claims about their product to protect their image.
I never think about that show, ive only seen it once or twice, but yah its good.
The thing that strikes me... even tho John Stewart calls his show "the most respected name in fake news"... its not really fake news. They don't make shit up (like the onion), they take real news, and insert funny little quips.
The fact is THEY ARE REAL NEWS. They are biased, they poke alot of incessant fun at the news. However, they still report real news and, I think, do it better than the average news show.
Most news shows spend alot more time on car accidents, shootings and just generally parading out the clowns and disasters in society, whereas the daily show generally reports on relevant political and social issues (only occasionally parading out some freaks).
Sure they make fun of them alot, and don't really try to cover the whole story. But they do make the issues fun, and they talk about more real issues. That instantly puts them ahead of any network news I have seen . Who seem to try and make the political news as short and boring as possible.... so they can as quickly get back to scaring the shit out fo you with the human freaks.
Slashdot Mirror
And why does coffee get a pass?
Admittedly amphetamines have their downsides, and some big ones especially with frequent use, but lets not kid ourselves, caffiene isn't exactly brussle sprouts.
Hacking your body chemistry is just like anything else, it can achieve the desired effect, or it can miss wildly. Often it involves trade offs.
I dunno about you but I sleep better, and feel all around better starting about 4 days after I quit a caffination cycle (usually I quit caffiene about the time I start to feel groggy in the morning).
Of course I eventually have a few nights where I am up too late (often involving the weekly poker game these days), and end up needing to see joe in the morning.
I make no illusions though. I am not pretending that joe is health food. Its drugs, pleasant, sweet smelling, black as as a steers ass on a moonless prairy night, tasty drugs. Definitly in the top five of non-medicinal drugs ever. (though if I ever get glaucoma and pot becomes medicinal, it will make it to 4 - and with the amount of time I spend in front of pc monitors, there is a fair chance)
You would have to REMEMBER McGruff and "Don't talk to strangers"
They don't teach that now. The new thing is, if you are lost or need help, go to the nearest adult, any adult and ask for help.
The reason being that a lost child can't deal on his own and needs help. A child that is afraid to talk to strangers and is separated from the people that he knows is in a much worst situation than one who has been taught to find the first adult he sees and get help.
99.999% of the time when a lost child walks up to an adult, he is going to get some form of help, or at worst ignoired. The chances that someone he asks for help is going to hurt him is so small as to not be worth considering. Most people
are going to make a few shouts to try and get his parents attention if they are nearby and then call the police. (or whatever else may be appropriate for the situation, building security, store manager etc)
The point is, the less time the kid spends without an adult focusing some amount fo attention on him, the better.
-Steve
What did you say motherfucker? We with the bomb squad nigga, now step off before I show you just how bomb we are. Unless maybe you want to examine the front side of my gatt? Because thats all the bomb I need.
The thing that gets me, ive seen these and almost bought one. Now I wish I had.
Counterfit or not, it was a great idea! A nintendo the size of a controller that had all those old games loaded on it. Good product, its really too bad that the legitimate companies like nintendo didn't come up with the idea themselves. It would be a great way to give people a product that they would think is really cool and buy (there would be no issue here if nobody was buying them, the counterfiters would just go out of buisness on their own).
So instead of using their old products to make a little more cash by giving people a cool new toy, they spend money going after the people who are doing it.
-Steve
As was replied by another - many states allow you on the ballot if your party nominates you and your party has enough support. So the Kerry and Bush campaigns did NOT need to throw money down getting signatures, they were short listed.
So while the campaigns with less money, where every dollar spent getting hteir message out counts, they have to waste large amounts of their money in just getting enough signatures to get on the ballot....
and the major parties that already have plenty of money to toss at campaigns? They effecitvly get a subsidy by the states, because they get a pass on this very expensive process.
-Steve
Theres several problems with our voting system (not the least of which is that I think the 1 vote for one candidate thing is silly, I would rather see a ranked voting system)
1. There are no standards
every system has its problems, differences in how votes are counted, error rates, etc. I find it amusing that in 2000 the SCOTUS stopped the recount because different systems in different counties for doing recounts meant that ballots were not bein gcounted in a univorm manner... so they tossed it on equal protection grounds.
Speculation as to their motives aside, its true, and you would think they could fix it. However nothing was done.
2. Political Parties are way too involved.
In most states to be involved in the elections, you effectivly have to be aproved by the parties. In flordia high level election officals were also high level Bush campaign people.
Now I am not saying that they cheated, but if anyone was going to cheat, then they were in the position to do so. This is a matter of conflict of interest. People who are strongly invested in one candidate winning are involved with vote counting? That has an air of inpropriety that should be avoided.
What we need is a central elections authority with very strict non-partisan rules. The entire system needs to be made completly transparent so that there is nothing to contest after the fact.
3. The system is biased
Sure you can bet a Dem and a Repub will be on the ballot, but who else can get on the ballot in every state? Nader can't, but he probably came the closest. I think we need to a) drop ALL offical recognition of political designations and parties. b) make it easier to get on ballots.
John Kerry and George Bush campaigns should have had to go through exactly the same process that Nader had to go through to get on the ballots. That would be much more fair. It just should not be so hard to get on the ballot.
In addition to this, I think there should be one ballot, on in one state, on in every state.
4 Debates
There should be federally regulated debates. Every candidate on the ballot should be invited to the debates. There should be several of them, and the candidates should be GIVEN the rules, not allowed to try to negotiate them for their own favor.
Beyond that its up to the candidates to deliver their message and call eachother on their shit. Overall I think Kerry's mistake was not calling Bush on his shit.
Kerry got in there with policy talk. He came out with concrete actions and numbers. These are things that you can disagree with though. He let Bush get away with talking in vague generality and metaphore about values and whatnot.
Frankly, if I don't rea dbetween the lines, I find myself agreeing with Bush in his speaches and his debates. he never says anything that you will disagree with. Its all visual metaphores. There is no "we are going to reform taxes, help fammilies etc", whereas Kerry is "we are going to cut this, put the money here to do that". Well nobody is going to disagree with "reform" or "helping fammilies", but they may disagree with specifics about how you do that.
But, thats up to the candidates, reforming the system can only go so far, some steps they have to take on their own.
-Steve
Actually very topical. This is my larval attempt at refining my arguments.
I was reading Lakoff's "Don't think of an Elephant" which is aimed at helping liberals learn what the right wing learned years ago - how to talk about their issues.
I don't think I did a very good job but, didn't manage to draw too much fire either so maybe I was convincing?
I try to remember its not about defense budgets or thanking jesus, but appealing to a certain temperment about the government and what it should be. Note my repeated appeals to "treat people like adults".
This is an attempt to appeal to whats been called the "strict father model", and attribute drug laws to the other side the "nuturing parent", which si more associated with liberals usually.
Basically my goal (which I strayed from), was to portray drug laws as weak, and an avoidance of what we really need to do, to associate it with "not taking responsibility for ourselves", which are all "conservative" values.
-Steve
Ahahahahahahahha thats awesome.
Yah heh I know it seems silly but think of it more like this, people are going
to do it. This is going to make it more available to people that want it, but you still have to want it. This just ensures that people who do want it will talk to their doctor about it.
Nobody who is going to use heroin for the first time is going to act their doctor about it.
People will be introduced to heroin the same way they always have. Friends who use it will offer, they will try it, and some of them (despite the propaganda not all of them) will continue to use it.
So they have to go to their doctor and tell him and talk to him to get a prescription to buy it on their own. It gets it into the discussion at least.
This keeps it out of the hands of children as much as one ever can (no doctor or pharmacist is going to risk his license, just like most bars these days don't risk their liquor licenses), and it lets adults make the decision for themselves and opens up a dialog with someone who is trained and license to advise him.
Now im not saying prescription drug coverage should cover it or anything, just a step to safegaurd the supply from kids and get adults to talk to their doctor.
-Steve
iz a dam fule hoo kan ownly think ov won whey two spel a wurd
Anyway yah, I never noticed that. My spelling sucks, and I have never claimed otherwise.
-Steve
hhh good point. Yes. That prices are comming down indicates a supply and demand equilibrium. I hadn't thought of it that way. Still, it points to the fact that neither the supply nor the demand is responding to these efforts anymore.
Even when the price was 5 times what it is today, people still used it, it still flowed into this country.
I am not ready for drugstoe heroin yet either. I think we need to not lose the spirit of experimentation here. The drug war was an experiment. A hypothesis was made that use of our police to enforce prohibition could fix the problem. That has, for the past 60 years, proven false time and again. It proved false for alcohol, its proving false for heroin, its proving false for coke, its proving false for marijuana.
We need to declare this experiment over and try a new one.
We should regulate these things. Maybe make heroin available with a doctors prescription, so at the very least you need to go see a doctor and tell him you want heroin and talk with him before you can get it.
As it is now, they can't even prescribe it for what it is medically good for: chronic pain. There are many terminally ill people who could benefit, and THEY can't even get it, because we have decided we need to keep it out of the hands of other people.... people who we have failed to keep it from.
Its time to try something different.
-Steve
And you call my thinking simplistic?
Sure its easy to spray plats and kill them. However there is real economic incentive for the people cultivating them (the people, incidently, who you are also exposing to these chemicals), to find ways to make the plants resistant through breeding or engineering (which the cartels do thave the economic ability to develop) or to otherwise mitigate the damage caused by spraying.
It is an arms race and has not managed to stop the flow of drugs into this country.
As the link posted by another respoinder mentioned the price of coke is down now. Not down to the levels it would be without prohibition (still over 10 to 20 times that if you read the link), but down none the less.
You can't get at the root of a problem that you are forcing underground. You need to bring it above ground and attack it where it should be attacked, in the doctors office. This is a medical issue, and a personal responsibility issue.
We need to start treating people like adults, and let them and their doctors take upo the issue, and decide for themselves.
Addiction is complex, but that doesn't mean you duck the issue. SPray all the plants you want, you are not going to erradicate the problem. You are attacking a symptom not a disease. The disease is here at home. The disease is a medical issue of the users. Lets stop hurting them more than they already are by their affliction.
Attacking the plant for the sins of its user is ducking the issue at best.
-Steve
Well thats simply absurd. They may not be continuing to increase but realise this... if you are setup ot make drugs, then making drugs is cheap. The marginal cost is so small as to be ridiculous.
Many drugs, including coke, are more expensive by the gram than gold.
Tylanol and Heroine can be produced at about the same cost. Heroin however costs a hell of alot more than tylanol for no other reason than the drug war. Risk in moving it, artifical difficulty in producing it caused by restrictions on chemical sales intended to make it harder to produce, difficulty shipping it, all these things lead to higher prices.
Take cocaine. It should be extracted from coca leaves with certain solvents that dry cleanly and don't leave harmful residues. These are generally not legal to ship to columbia for the exact reason that thats what they are used for.
So the cartels (which are not FDA regulated of course) use whatever they can get their hands on, often using benzine, result? Coke users are regularly exposed to benzine. Prices are insane (a book from the early 90s lists the price at 17 grand per kilo, and broken up into individual street level amounts that same kilo will bring in over 100 grand)
Swiss heroin studies that allowed users to buy heroin at a price that is about what it would be if it were legal found that they generally were able to live normal lives and reduced other illegal activities by 90% in the course of just a few weeks.
This war on drugs makes no economic sense. It doesn't stop users, it gives huge economic incentives to the criminal gangs. It increases the harm involved with drugs both by adding artifical harm (prison terms) and by reducing the quality of the drugs themselves.
It is the work of people who are too weak of mind to face the issue as it should be. People who arn't willing to allow people to make their own decisions like adults, and then marvel at how those people act like children.
-Steve
Yes yes... lets start fires in the jungles of columbia
Thats a great idea. Of course it will be good for the soil and all the plants (including the coca) will grow back faster. Sure, we might kill a whole bunch of columbians, but... hey... they are columbians, not people right?
I think this is an example of what we like to call poetic justice
A few people with an irrational fear of plants, have gone around killing them, and the plants have grown resistant to their methods. Good for them.
This is proof that you really can't outlaw nature.
Maybe its time to rethink this strategy of flailing wildly at anything that we percieve as potentially bad, and consider leaving people be to grow and use the plants that they want to.
Then if there are problems with how people use those plants, we can deal with that. We can train doctors to deal with that (and we have) we can foster an environment where people feel safe telling their doctors about what they are doing, an atmosphere of open honest discussion will lead to healthier attitudes.
Harm reduction is the key. These attempts to defeat nature arn't working, and instead are just inflating prices and making criminal gangs filthy rich. Hell the cartels that produce cocaine are known to have built submarines for drug trafficing. A cost that is passed directly on to the users.
Is it really so bad that people who like cocaine use it? Wouldn't it be better to decrease its effect on their wallets so they don't need to resort to crime? Wouldn't it be better to foster openness so those with problems are easier to help? Wouldn't it be better to take the money out of the hands of criminal gangs and use it to fund education initives to help keep people from starting in the first place?
Why are we in columbia? The problem is here at home. We need to fix the problems here at home, and the answer to that is not fighting a war on plants in some other country. It means growing up and taking responsibility for our own peoples actions. It means showing them the error of their ways, and then letting them make their own decisions on the matter.
-Steve
While true, there are a few issues here.
A) The "Hitman" here is "God". There are no legal proscriptions whatsoever about god killing someone. Hence it wouldn't actually be murder (murder is by definition illegal killing - as long as its legal it can't be murder). If this were not the case then the FBI shpould be looking for god as he has several billion suspicous deaths to answer for.
B) No law can possibly apply as any law that applied to a request made to god would be to make a law 'respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof' (which is also why point A is the case..)
C) Satire
Read the post. This is obviously not even a serious prayer as it begins with a statement that the prayer does not believe in the existance of the prayee (herein refered to as "god"). Hence this is more of a stylized wish than a prayer. I am aware of no proscriptions about wishing bad things would happen to people.
Can I conspire with a hitman that I don't believe exists? Maybe. What if there is reason to believe that I didn't know he was serious and was joking? Think, throw
momma from the train.
-Steve
Who needed context for Rodney King?
The man was on the ground, surrounded by at least 4 cops, and was being kicked and hit with batons. I don't care what he did or said before that point. Really no I dont. He was on the ground and they continiued to hit him. They did not even try to cuff him or otherwise restrain him until they were done getting their jollies off.
Now if the tape showed him be hit to the ground with batons and immediatly one of the police jumped on top of him and restrained him and all other violence stopped... then we might talk about context leading up to that point. Thats not what happened. They continued to hit him after they should have stopped and moved to restraint.
Why they started hitting him is not important at that point.
-Steve
I will have to keep this in mind for a practical joke.
I am thoroughly convinced that if I put some tape over the IR port of the TV, my roomates would never figure it out, and if I left it on too long, would swap out the TV, or even shop for a new one.
-Steve
wow I got responses, I should check more often.
No the US is suposed to be a government for the people by the people.
If the people want communism, then it damned well better become communist, because it is supposed to be for the people and by the people.
Actually it was "supposed to be" by the rich and for the rich... but thats
just my cynical socialist take on only wealthy land owners being able to vote originally.
Anyway... I do agree with it up to a point. I however object strongly to your assertion that I want the government runnin gmy life. No. I want the government protecting our land and providing general services to make sure we stay an educated and stable country. Capitalism is fine for distribution of scarce resources, the government is more appropriate for providing general services that can be provided equitably to everyone. (like health insurance)
I am all in favor of the fair tax if it is applied fairly. I LIKE the idea of a consumption tax as long as it is applied to all things that everyone buys, like stock.
Stock is buying part of a corperation, and is where more of the money of the wealthy goes than to regular consumption. So as long as the tax applies as much to financial products as it does to other products, then I am just fine with that.
That does not appear to be what they have in mind however.
-Steve
Exactly.
Its like LA Franken said in terms of the liberal media (I don't have his book in front of me so I am not quoting) Basically the media is not liberal.
Ok, certain issues sure. Journalists have all been to college, and when you go to college, or spend time near one, you will meet a much wider range of people than you will in other places. (I live in Boston, where if you throw a rock, chances are it will land on University property). So Journalists have generally met gay people, and probably even have had gay friends.
So, journalists generally are aware that gay people don't have some cohesive gay agenda, and generally arn't trying to "turn everyone gay". So In that sense yes, the media is very liberal towards gays, and you have seen much more acceptance of gays there than in society at large (unless your in Boston or osme other city with a very large gay population)
-Steve
Well the chinese are just amazing. I find more respect for them every time I hear a story about anything other than human rights abuses or their internet censorship.
;-) ) tend to be about rights and theoretical market forces etc. You see claims like "the market self-regulates". Common arguments are "well if a company sold bad beef, they would get a bad reputation and people would stop buying from them, so they have no incentive to" are way overly simplistic, and even demonstratably false even under our current regulations. People are only as rational as what they know about, and obscuring information or making it hard to tell what the best value or best product is, many companies seem to have down to an art form.
I would like to think that they will eventually come around on both.
The interesting thing is that china is rather progressive in its communism. They have been experimenting with more capitalists systems for years now. The changes that they are making to their economy now come out of ideas that they began small scale experiments with back in the 1980s
They seem to do alot of experimentation and planning, and it seems to work. China has a booming economy. I am glad someone out there is trying to advance.
Most debates between communists and laissez-faire capitalists (I tend to argue with them anyway
That said, its hard to find good examples of large scale working communism. Sure there are some communities here and there, but generally no larger than a small town. (The Farm is the only one I know off the top of my head, some artists community I forget the name of, stuff like that).
However china... china is activly out there experimenting and trying to make things work better and more equitably.
I kinda like it, and again really do hope they come around in terms of human rights and free speech.
-Steve
Of course libertarians don't seem to believe in the public, only private interests.
As far as I can tell they are really just anarcho-capitalists that are trying to get into the government so that they can completely dismantle it.
I would like to see how they plan to fund what little of the government would be left (military and police maybe? since they want to do away with schools, and just about everything else) when they abolish taxes. Maybe we will voluntarily pay for them.
Beyond that I agree, we don't have a democracy. We have a really fucking broken republic that has been hijacked by private interests.
-Steve
It depends on how you look at it.
I would argue that there are no third party candidates. None of them are allowed to participate in debates, the entire system is biased against them. They are at best tokens to make it appear that we have a functioning participatory government when really we just have a little contest between factions within the ruling class.
So You can vote for the republican team, or you can vote for the democratic team. However, then that management team that wins gets to run things for 4 years until the next contest.
Now if you vote for one of the tokens, then thats it. You expressed your preference, and it didn't win. Now you don't get to express any opinion electorally on whether you prefer the D or the R, which is what the real question is.
Its kind of like ordering a hamburger at Friendlies
"How do you want it cooked?"
"Medium rare"
"Oh we only do medium well or well"
(yes I was actually given that "choice" once)
-Steve
Well there is foolish, then there is right, and the two arn't always mututally exclusive.
The fact is they expected to get arrested. Thats why they called it an act of civil disobedience. They were nonviolently disobeying police orders in order to make a point. Partially to get their names out there, and partially to expose "the violence inherent in the system".
Sure they could have been beaten or shot or whatnot, and if it were you or I that would be the end of it, but if a third party presidential candidate got shot while unarmed and nonviolently making a statement, that statement would be picked up by every major news outlet, it would be huge.
As it is, this will be a minor footnote on this election. I, for one, applaud them. Civil Disobedience is a good way to get a point accross.
-Steve
> By the time I can see it on my screen, that document is part of my computer.
Thats right, there is no data, there are no documents there is NO SOFTWARE.
There are only internal states of hardware.
-Steve
Maybe its an issue with the google translation, I didn't look, but thats not how I read the article (admittedly my french is rusty)
Anyway:
<<Au vu de cette expertise et préoccupé par l'impact de cette affaire sur l'image de ses produits, Renault a décidé d'engager une action en justice>>
I read that as: "In view of this expertise, and the impact that this has on the image of their products, renault decided to begin legal action"
So this doesn't sound like a court action "to get at the truth", it sounds like a suit for making false claims about their product to protect their image.
-Steve
I never think about that show, ive only seen it once or twice, but yah its good.
The thing that strikes me... even tho John Stewart calls his show "the most respected name in fake news"... its not really fake news. They don't make shit up (like the onion), they take real news, and insert funny little quips.
The fact is THEY ARE REAL NEWS. They are biased, they poke alot of incessant fun at the news. However, they still report real news and, I think, do it better than the average news show.
Most news shows spend alot more time on car accidents, shootings and just generally parading out the clowns and disasters in society, whereas the daily show generally reports on relevant political and social issues (only occasionally parading out some freaks).
Sure they make fun of them alot, and don't really try to cover the whole story. But they do make the issues fun, and they talk about more real issues. That instantly puts them ahead of any network news I have seen . Who seem to try and make the political news as short and boring as possible.... so they can as quickly get back to scaring the shit out fo you with the human freaks.
-Steve