JayB

"They were meant to be an oasis of cleanliness and decency. Five gleaming, cylindrical public restrooms. With automatic doors, toilet seats that retract for high-pressure cleanings, and a high-tech system to scrub down the floors, the $6.6 million toilet project was deemed a humane, if pricey, investment -- for tourists, and especially for the city's homeless. On Seattle streets since 2004, each toilet is now flushed an average 332 times a day, down substantially from previous years, according to records kept by the maintenance company, Northwest Cascade. But with regular use comes misuse. Prostitution and drug-dealing were predicted and, it seems, are taking place in the restrooms. "The revolving crack house" is what Luigi Gephart calls the public toilet in Occidental Park. Gephart, who is homeless, uses it but advises tourists to stay away. "These are the worst bathrooms you can go to," he said." http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003867372_toilets04m.html

"City Council OKs removal of 5 high-tech public toilets By Sharon Pian Chan Seattle Times staff reporter Seattle's $5 million experiment with high-tech toilets is over. The City Council decided Monday to remove all five of the public restrooms, saying the silver cylinders became a hideout for illegal drug use and prostitution... Opponents in 2001 said people would use the toilet stalls to conceal illicit behavior, a prediction that came true. The toilets' tech wizardry failed as well. Trash clogged the self-cleaning mechanism, so workers had to clean the stalls. The Downtown Seattle Association observed more, rather than less, human waste on the streets after the restrooms opened." http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004425645_toilets20m.html Maybe an automated blue-bag system that would dispense either a clean needle, a fresh crack-pipe, or a vacuum sealed pouch filled with pure grain ethanol in exchange for packaged feces would have been less likely to run aground on the sandbars of reality...

I may be reading this wrong, but from my angle it sounded like FW was talking about a more general approach to law-enforcement, and law and order. Dinkins vs Giuliani, etc. I'm all for legalizing every drug under the sun, but I'm not for ceding control of public spaces to lawlessness and decay.

Some kind of secure storage option would be a major plus for visitors, I think.

Seems like a happy marriage between the two philosophies would be an approach that combines legalization and treatment (and perhaps education/prevention) on one side, with while keeping the enforcement measures that are already in place for folks that directly endanger or harm others while using them. Also - I wasn't there to observe, but I can't help but wonder if some of the excesses of the times (at least as perceived by those who weren't joining in) provoked a counter-reaction that helped drive the prohibition/law-and-order model forward.

A world featuring quick release catalytic converter mods for Toyota pickups, evidently...

What's the Insight experiment? I wonder if anyone's actually run the numbers on the free meth/heroin/crack + treatment vs enforcement-bureaucracy/crime/incarceration models. That's only on the monetary side. On the freedom and liberty side - It'd be worth contemplating the risks and costs associated with an enforcement bureaucracy that's been empowered to seize property from citizens under "zero tolerance" laws, establishing a social order where the state can criminalize the voluntary ingestion of a particular set of substances by sane, consenting adults, etc... There's a great cautionary note from either Von Hayek or Ludwig Von Mises from the 1920's about the dubious moral and political justifications underlying the arguments for prohibition, and of the larger risks to personal freedoms inherent in these policies. I posted it a while ago, but don't feel like doing the work to dig it out at the moment...

I know this is widely assumed, but is there anything to back it up? I'm not so sure there is a relationship. I don't know. I'm sure the analysis is complicated, but I'd be pretty surprised if there was no causal relationship at all. I'm sure there's literature out there somewhere, though.

I'd be mighty surprised if the data supported a claim that 100% of the increase in murders in those periods where either prohibition or the W.O.D. were in effect. In addition to the percentage of young men enrolled in the military, you'd have to look at what percentage of society is composed of men in their "peak violence" years, the state of the economy, etc, etc, etc. However - it would surprise me if a careful analysis didn't show a substantial, or at least meaningful, correlation between prohibition and murder. Under the various sorts of prohibition that have been attempted, the law of supply and demand pretty much guarantees that all the incentives will be in place for an incredibly lucrative trade in which the primary means of securing "market share" is violence. I also don't think that any realistic legalization and treatment model will completely alleviate the various agonies of addiction, or the crime that addicts engage in to fund their addictions (short of giving the stuff away for free or for next to nothing - which would probably be quite a bit less expensive when you evaluate all of the costs we're on the hook for now). I do think it would be possible to develop a legalization/treatment model that results in substantially less harm to both society and addicts than the one that we have now, and that would cost considerably less to implement. And that's just within our own borders. When you look at the violence, murder, and instability that the combination of prohibition and Americans' massive appetite for pretty much any ingestible substance that will alter their consciousness - the costs are compounded severalfold. I do think it's true that everyone who buys illegal drugs is fueling crime, corruption, and murder at home and abroad - but only because our policy of prohibition makes it impossible to do otherwise. They could choose to do otherwise, perhaps, but I think that their argument that the burden of responsibility falls primarily on the state is sound and correct.

I'd be willing to chip in for something like the NW Forest Pass, with the proceeds going to a pool dedicated to providing enough meth to tweakers to keep their collective fiendage beneath the catalytic-converter-scavenging threshold. Maybe you could work some kind of geocaching riff into the distribution to keep them occupied a bit longer, and introduce a healthy outdoor twist on the typical tweaker lifestyle...

Kinda how I felt about the religious nutcases in Colorado Springs. Climbing, hiking, biking minutes from my door and 300+ days of sunshine a year. Not even in the same league as SLC in terms of the scale and quality of the attractions, but the experience of living there gave me an appreciation for the value of certain kinds of Hiptonite.

I think the new standard in tweaker-deterrent practice will be a move in the other direction - quick-release clips and stashable, weather-proof cases built to look like logs... Incidentally - what'd it cost to replace the cc on your truck?

I think that when people who have a set of convictions about supernatural beings, and they cite those convictions as the central motivation for actions or beliefs that range from straight-up madness to mildly unsettling irrationality - it shouldn't be surprising that folks who don't share those convictions criticize them and/or those who hold them. If you find a case of an atheist or an agnostic who openly cites his atheism or agnosticism, or the desire to champion either cause, or his intent to strike down the enemies of atheism or agnosticism - as the motivation for committing an act of barbarity or madness, or as the justification for persisting in a delusion that's completely at odds with the facts - then you'd have grounds for critiquing those beliefs and those who hold them, IMO. Does communism count? Granted, it's not really a person per se, but a country of like 1 billion people I think it comes down to whether or not the evidence supports the notion that that Communists were committing their litany of atrocities as part of an explicit campaign to advance the cause of atheism, whether it was their atheist convictions that were inspiring them to do so, whether atheism provided the ultimate justifications and moral framework necessary to sanctify their actions. I think that you can have an interesting conversation about whether or not an absence of countervailing absolute moral commitments and beliefs, or some other fixed notion of absolute good provided by a religion, paved the way for Communist atrocities in some fashion. From my perspective, looking at the historical record in explicitly religious societies, I think that'd be a hard case to make. I personally think that you could make a stronger case that the christian cultural heritage paved the way for Communism than you can that the atheist component of communist doctrine was what inspired them to enslave and murder their countrymen.

I think that when people who have a set of convictions about supernatural beings, and they cite those convictions as the central motivation for actions or beliefs that range from straight-up madness to mildly unsettling irrationality - it shouldn't be surprising that folks who don't share those convictions criticize them and/or those who hold them. If you find a case of an atheist or an agnostic who openly cites his atheism or agnosticism, or the desire to champion either cause, or his intent to strike down the enemies of atheism or agnosticism - as the motivation for committing an act of barbarity or madness, or as the justification for persisting in a delusion that's completely at odds with the facts - then you'd have grounds for critiquing those beliefs and those who hold them, IMO.

Seems like SLC has the edge in that contest if skiing is part of the equation...

Here's a keeper: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=612_1210545634

Still waiting, fingers crossed over at the Rapture forum. http://www.raptureforums.com/forum/index.php I think that they need a visit from CHAPS to help them nail the timing. "DH and I were watching this guy, Doug Batchelor, on tv last night and he was SOOOOO condescending to the pre-tribbers. Calling us poor little believers of the "secret rapture" and that we are so deluded into believing in it and there is no scripture to support it. Now, normally, tin hats don't work with what I wear,so I try not to wear them, but with Pat Robertson coming out on TV and saying this, and now Doug Batchelor, both in a week's time, is this classic tactic by Satan to try to humiliate the pre-trib believers, and deceive the others? *admin edit* I really don't want to provide links to other sites that teach garbage like this."

Yeah - probably true in many ways. I think that the time and effort that you have to invest in acquiring the skill, know-how, and gear, the natural fear that heights, cold, exposure, etc generate, and maintaining some semblance of fitness might pose a more substantial barrier to excess than getting the cash and paraphenalia together to try whatever drug is on the menu - but your point still stands.

I never had any real desire to expand the roster beyond caffeine and alcohol - and wound up puking every time I chewed or smoked a cigar (about twice, each) - so even though I'm in favor of legalizing everything, this discussion is kind of academic to me on a personal level. They way I see it - an uptick in the addiction rate, while regrettable, is a less bad option than all of the harmful and costly byproducts of prohibition. I also can't help but believe that what mentally competent adults choose to do to their own bodies is their own business, and should never be criminalized. Having said all that - I couldn't help but wonder how people who intend to use heroin, meth, etc on a recreational basis go about evaluating their capacity to do so without getting hooked, ruining their lives, and dragging everyone they love through a multi-stage nightmare. I believe you when you say that there are people who can do so, and they are probably much more numerous than strict non-users like myself would believe - but to an outsider like me it seems like people who have a desire to try meth or heroin on a recreational basis might (on average) score fairly low on the impulse-control and ability-to-evaluate-risk-rationally scales. It just kind of makes me wonder how many folks have embarked on a plan to use these intensely addictive drugs have had things go badly awry? What have you seen? Have you ever overheard someone hashing out (no pun intended) a plan to try something and found yourself shaking your head and thinking "This guy's not cut out for that stuff, and I think he's about to make a terrible mistake?"

Other folks may have different experiences, but most of the time when I've been out and about on Mt. Rainier, there's been a pretty healthy debris fan below the FF by the first week of June or so. I'd let that thing get the big flush out of the way before hitting it during a warm spell.

Can't believe that the ever-malevolent MMR vaccine didn't make that list...

Oh really? Source on this? Know anyone that it's happened to? Credible news reports? Folks I know working in parts of that system have far more serious abuses to deal with than kids swatted on the butt. "CPS took my kid because I spanked him in the grocery store" is one of those things that smack of urban myth and cover story, like Reagan's much vaunted Welfare Queen with a stable of Cadillacs, which was also a total fabrication. My sense is that at least some the stories of travesties against common sense perpetrated by overzealous bureaucrats are real - see below: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080428/COL04/804280375 I also think that while they're important, I think that the reality is that on average kids are much, much more likely to suffer because overburdened child-protective systems and many, many other factors keep them stuck in grossly abusive situations, sometimes until it's too late. I think that sensational cases of un-checked abuse and/or incompetence by CPS also make the news - but if you are a kid in an abusive home, neither an excess of interest and intervention in your life by state social workers, nor is a surfeit of media attention to your plight likely to top the list of problems that you're dealing with. These stories seem to be pretty similar to "Man arrested for burning flag" stories. Doesn't happen very often, not representative, and not indicative of the more substantial threats that might confine freedom of expression - but a glaring enough contravention of individual rights to warrant attention, and something that people who care about these things will follow closely to see that this particular grievance is remedied, and that the system is reformed enough to prevent something like it from happening again. On a sort-of related topic, I agree with your belief that the ultimate object of any discipline that's introduced into parenting should be to cultivate a sense of self-discipline in-them. From what I've seen - there seems to be a pretty wide spectrum of approaches that work for that purpose, and no set formulas that will work for all kids in all situations. Once you veer off into the extremely permissive, or extremely authoritarian zones - you dramatically increase the odds of your child-rearing experiment ending in unmitigated disaster. From what I've seen, extremely permissive parents seem to reap the whirlwind while their kids are still in the house, and authoritarian parents are more likely to watch their kids self-destruct soon after they leave the house. Then there's the nice, capable parents that raise two or three nice kids - and somehow wind up with a monster on their hands that introduces decades of misery into their lives. Scary stuff.

I think she's got a point there, Jordo. There's a long history of cultural groups agitating for self-rule, but the instances in which the larger state that these groups are embedded in voluntarily accommodated their wishes are few and far between. This isn't directed at Jordo - but I don't think that failing to acknowledge fact that Tibet was a feudal theocracy before the advent of Chinese political control is terribly helpful, either. From the evidence I've seen - the Tibetan grievances are legitimate, their suffering under the Chinese has been sustained and in many cases severe, and I support their desire for greater autonomy. However, any discussion of greater Tibetan autonomy should acknowledge that it's highly unlikely that even the Tibetans would want to restore the kind of society that prevailed in the early 1940s. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I personally think that more autonomy, and more political space for them to preserve their cultural traditions - within the larger Chinese state - is the best that they can realistically hope for. I also think that an approach that embraces violence is the least likely to bring about either. That's just the reality - the more violent the uprisings, the more thoroughly they'll be crushed and the more heavily they'll be subjugated.

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I did read it. I was referring to the “discipline is love” theme he has going on……I was trying to make a point that he is full of shit. This guy's Mom couldn't agree with you more... u95rq9yIoFI