When I was in Victoria (not Vancouver but pretty close) even in the worst parts of town I got the impression that even if I were mugged they would say please and thank you. eh? I don't think you realize how easy you've got it from the larger perspective.
I have always been impressed by the civility of Canadians in general and wish more of my countrymen would follow their example.
In the companies I have worked for the stoners were among the more creative, insightful, pleasant and productive people. They mostly had better attitudes toward their work too. I have to agree with MSimon for a change. And no they weren't stupid enough to come to work stoned. Good grief, there is way too much all-or-nothing thinking going on around here.
If this level of analysis is applied to technical issues also, then we are in deep trouble and are never going to get Polywell to work.
---eschew hyperbole---
I know i'm gonna regret this, but I just can't help myself.
Actually most anti-depressants (marijuana among them) encourage brain cell growth. You can look it up. It is rather common knowledge.Skipjack wrote:I am a very liberal person, but drugs are a no go for me. They destroy your brain! Yes alcohol is bad for you also (and can also cause brain damage), but a glass of beer or a glas of wine is fine. A glass of red wine is actually beneficial for your health. A joint every day for a year will produce very visible calcifications on your brain. This is a fact. Yes there are lots of studies propgating the benefits of certain drugs. Many studies. None of them was a double blind study and none of them was in a peer reviewed magazine. And no, this is not because of the "evil government". That is totally ridiculous. The governments here Europe are to a large extent liberal and e.g. in Germany the (goddamn) green party was in charge (in a coalition with the socialists) for quite a while.
That that had to go to hell is another story. Anyway, they certainly did not hide anything there. So keep your conspiracy theories to yourself, if you want to keep at least a small last bit of believability.
Like wise the brain makes more endorphin receptors when the currently available ones are filled. It is one reason you will never be permanently happy. It is also why you can never get enough heroin. The dose that sufficed yesterday will not do it tomorrow. Still. The stuff is cheap enough that it hardly matters - if it was priced along legal agricultural/processing lines.
A joint every day for a year will produce very visible calcifications on your brain.
You have evidence of this? i.e. before and after studies?
There is a strong correlation between drug use and mental illness. One explanation is that drug use causes mental illness. Of course it could very well be that mental illness causes drug use: the self-medication theory. The latter theory seems to be gaining prevalence in medical circles. The evidence certainly points that way.
If the doctors are right the Drug War is a persecution of the mentally ill. Say. Wasn't that German policy seventy some years ago? Yes it was. Fortunately we live in a more enlightened age. We have given up hate of all kinds. Except for that which is permitted.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Uh oh, this again. You saw that film in health class too, huh?A joint every day for a year will produce very visible calcifications on your brain. This is a fact.
There was actually once a study involving monkeys that claimed this, but it was so heavily criticized (including on the basis healthy monkey brain structures were called "damaged") it was eventually withdrawn. Since then, studies have found no evidence of brain damage.
Nonetheless, quite a few us grew up being taught this in school. Thankfully, today we have the Internet.
Last edited by TallDave on Sat Jun 20, 2009 8:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
True, the but the U.S. government creates a lot of pressure to toe the line on drugs, and has for many decades. There's a great book that explains how we got to this point called "Drug Crazy" by Mike Gray.And no, this is not because of the "evil government". That is totally ridiculous. The governments here Europe are to a large extent liberal
Because instead of creating a legalized system of reputable, regulated companies producing and selling drugs in a responsible fashion, like we have for alcohol and tobacco and coffee and tea and aspirin, they just turned a blind eye to open-air black markets.choff wrote:Nobody that lives here buys into the prolegalization song and dance anymore, they get way too much reality to the contrary.
That's not legalization.
As an aside to all this, years ago I had as part of my employ to service some equipment at a local BC Hydro store,(same moniker as the local power utility). It was an bit of an eye opener, they can sell everything except the actual drug legally. The proprietor was an affable man from Oregan, who gave you the impression of keeping a shotgun under the counter. There were a couple of customers in business suits with long hair and sunglasses talking on a cell phone, ( this was when cell phones were still a novelty). They had a machine shop to die for, if you gave them the spec's for a polywell they could build one no sweat.
What really impressed me was the online tech support center. I was listening to one guy describing the fungus on a plant using the Latin name for it and providing detailed information on how to deal with it, ( PHD level biochemistry). Everything was bleeding edge tech.
What really impressed me was the online tech support center. I was listening to one guy describing the fungus on a plant using the Latin name for it and providing detailed information on how to deal with it, ( PHD level biochemistry). Everything was bleeding edge tech.
CHoff
If we paired such legalization as you suggest with strong and legitimate negative sanction system, with prolific drug testing, including Alcohol, vice could be kept to a minimum, and the pursuit of virtue would not be infringed.TallDave wrote:Because instead of creating a legalized system of reputable, regulated companies producing and selling drugs in a responsible fashion, like we have for alcohol and tobacco and coffee and tea and aspirin, they just turned a blind eye to open-air black markets.choff wrote:Nobody that lives here buys into the prolegalization song and dance anymore, they get way too much reality to the contrary.
That's not legalization.
License your users. Young people would not want to start, and geezers could still get their opiates. They just couldn't drive, adopt children, etc.
License your users.Helius wrote:If we paired such legalization as you suggest with strong and legitimate negative sanction system, with prolific drug testing, including Alcohol, vice could be kept to a minimum, and the pursuit of virtue would not be infringed.TallDave wrote:Because instead of creating a legalized system of reputable, regulated companies producing and selling drugs in a responsible fashion, like we have for alcohol and tobacco and coffee and tea and aspirin, they just turned a blind eye to open-air black markets.choff wrote:Nobody that lives here buys into the prolegalization song and dance anymore, they get way too much reality to the contrary.
That's not legalization.
License your users. Young people would not want to start, and geezers could still get their opiates. They just couldn't drive, adopt children, etc.
Tattoos would be appropriate.
All use of pain relievers will be forbidden. Lest users either become narcotic fiends or sell to narcotic fiends. Either that or people in need of pain relief will need to be tattooed and watched.
It has come to my attention that if things are not perfectly controlled they will be out of control. To prevent that we will have controllers to control every thing. And controllers to control the controllers. On up to the Master Controller who will make sure every thing is neat and orderly.
And we must stop this drugging of children by their mothers. Mother's milk has cannabis analogs in it. Every breast feeding mother is leading a child on the road to ruin.
And to prevent people from making their own heroin we will outlaw sex, exercise, and eating. Or else people who engage in that sort of thing will need tattoos.
People just do not realize how dangerous having fun can be.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Sure, they take away licenses for operating impaired already, and deny adoptions similarly.Helius wrote: If we paired such legalization as you suggest with strong and legitimate negative sanction system, with prolific drug testing, including Alcohol, vice could be kept to a minimum, and the pursuit of virtue would not be infringed.
License your users. Young people would not want to start, and geezers could still get their opiates. They just couldn't drive, adopt children, etc.
Plus, if you run a business or are a licensing organization, drug test away! Just don't make enforcing virtuous abstinence something the government attempts to impose via its monopoly on violence.
Treating drug addiction via the criminal justice system is literally doing brain surgery with a truncheon.
The dinosaurs had very tiny brains but survived for hundreds of millions of years. The bell jar plant and venus fly trap have no brains but they 'snatch' the 'bodies' of insects that do. We have a long way to beat the dinosaurs record with our superior grey matter.
There is no guarantee that the cannabis plant isn't conducting a strategy comprable to the bell jar plant. It could be so insideous as to remain totally undectable in humans for mulitple generations, then all of a sudden, there goes the neighborhood. The only cause for suspicion is the common personality changes to the users. Its impossible to test for without biased or contaminated results, since so many people use.
All kidding aside, I hope I impressed that the DTES isn't your typical American skid row. If you did stay a week you might need a TB check.
So our drug issues probably aren't quite the same either.
Our lifetimes of experience have led to opposite and strongly held positions on the drug issue. Hopefully, in another five hundred years people will look back at these debates the same way we look at 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin' from five hundred years ago.
There is no guarantee that the cannabis plant isn't conducting a strategy comprable to the bell jar plant. It could be so insideous as to remain totally undectable in humans for mulitple generations, then all of a sudden, there goes the neighborhood. The only cause for suspicion is the common personality changes to the users. Its impossible to test for without biased or contaminated results, since so many people use.
All kidding aside, I hope I impressed that the DTES isn't your typical American skid row. If you did stay a week you might need a TB check.
So our drug issues probably aren't quite the same either.
Our lifetimes of experience have led to opposite and strongly held positions on the drug issue. Hopefully, in another five hundred years people will look back at these debates the same way we look at 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin' from five hundred years ago.
CHoff
It is rather worse than that. It is more akin to denying diabetics insulin because with insulin they would be drug injecting addicts.TallDave wrote:Sure, they take away licenses for operating impaired already, and deny adoptions similarly.Helius wrote: If we paired such legalization as you suggest with strong and legitimate negative sanction system, with prolific drug testing, including Alcohol, vice could be kept to a minimum, and the pursuit of virtue would not be infringed.
License your users. Young people would not want to start, and geezers could still get their opiates. They just couldn't drive, adopt children, etc.
Plus, if you run a business or are a licensing organization, drug test away! Just don't make enforcing virtuous abstinence something the government attempts to impose via its monopoly on violence.
Treating drug addiction via the criminal justice system is literally doing brain surgery with a truncheon.
And addiction is bad.
(Except of course when it is accepted).
And if we are going to drug test - I want tests for endorphin addicts - those people can be dangerous. You hear the complaints from women all the time - "after sex he doesn't want to snuggle he just wants to nod off" - there is an endorphin junkie for you. They lose all consideration for the feelings of even their most intimate partners. We need some laws.
Can you imagine people like that being allowed to drive after sex? Suppose they are still nodding after their last fix? Laws? We need prisons. Strong laws and mean prisons.
And the worst are people without sleep. We are going to need to monitor every one (more tattoos - them friggin tattoo artists are going to make a fortune) to make sure they are getting enough sleep. Tired drivers are a menace. Tired people shouldn't have kids. In fact tired people shouldn't be allowed to own a home. Tired people should be denied jobs.
There are no limits to the hazard reductions possible if we treat people like sheep and keep herding them in the right direction with shepherds (often referred to as enforcers). You kill the occasional sheep for stepping out of line and for the most part the rest of the sheep do what they are told.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
What did the dinos do? Live the same day for hundreds of millions of years? Compare with the number of unique livelihoods and amount of different adverse scenarios that the human brain surmounted.choff wrote:The dinosaurs had very tiny brains but survived for hundreds of millions of years. The bell jar plant and venus fly trap have no brains but they 'snatch' the 'bodies' of insects that do. We have a long way to beat the dinosaurs record with our superior grey matter.
There is no guarantee that the cannabis plant isn't conducting a strategy comprable to the bell jar plant. It could be so insideous as to remain totally undectable in humans for mulitple generations, then all of a sudden, there goes the neighborhood. The only cause for suspicion is the common personality changes to the users. Its impossible to test for without biased or contaminated results, since so many people use.
All kidding aside, I hope I impressed that the DTES isn't your typical American skid row. If you did stay a week you might need a TB check.
So our drug issues probably aren't quite the same either.
Our lifetimes of experience have led to opposite and strongly held positions on the drug issue. Hopefully, in another five hundred years people will look back at these debates the same way we look at 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin' from five hundred years ago.
The human brain isn't any fly trap or dino brain. It's self-aware and knows culture and technology. It's in constant flux. It's conscious enough that some drug's influence will only be a passive influence, not an active factor. The drug doesn't tell people to do things. The real problem is education; in the widest sense, not just academics. Just as cavemen knew nothing of anything and might've committed atrocities that'd have civil rights groups frozen in terror, and just as medieval average joes took for granted that epileptic attacks weren't just very temporary, superficial glitches as far as being a productive member of society, so today people haven't really caught up to how little difference there is between alcohol or coffee or being insane with love, and "drugs". If someone was raised (purposedly or not) to be a mindless drone, it won't be drugs that're to blame when he's pushed into drug dependency, but his droning habits. Those are the real root of the problem, as far as society's concerned. The real problem is that the drug junkie doesn't want, doesn't know better than to dig himself into a hole with no way out.
What needs to be done is for education to improve so that people know better and want to make the right decisions, not for heavier shackles to be put on their free will.