JayB

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

Lab rat in a virology group for another couple of weeks. I can't remember much about immunology other than we have different types of white cells that perform different functions - but the case for the safety and efficacy of vaccination against a certain roster of diseases is so thoroughly established that it just can't be disputed. I'm sure that you're correct in saying that once you have a kid of your own, the way that you look at the world changes quite a bit.

Can you point me to these studies? I'm interested in seeing how in depth this has been studied. JayB et al....one of anecdotes in this thread and elsewhere is that the those that choose not to vaccinate are either religious wackos, or paranoid ignorants gobbling up conspiracy theories. The irony is that one of the primary discouragers of the MMR vaccination is Dr. Sears, the father of attachment parenting (family bed, anti sleep training, etc.). His reason for not giving your infant the MMR vaccine is that, according to him, the probability of side effects from the vaccine are greater than the odds of contracting the diseases themselves. You can choose to agree or disagree with this reasoning, but it's still REASONing. It might be a side effect of literally going days at a time when I don't interact with anyone who isn't an M.D., a PhD in the life sciences, or a combination of both - but I no longer automatically grant these folks the same deference when they're speaking on topics that are not strictly within the scope of their professional competence. My hunch is that the guy's position on vaccination relegates him to the lunatic fringe amongst those M.D.s or M.D./PhD's who specialize in these matters, and who are most competent to evaluate the validity of his claims. Depending on the risks that we're talking about, which presumably excludes autism in the case that this Dr. puts forth, I agree - there's a certain kind of reasoning at work here. However, my own unqualified position is that this guy's stance is highly contingent on the assumption that the vast majority of parents will continue to vaccinate their children against these diseases - and that if that this changes because significant numbers of parents heed his advice on these matters - we'll see a rapid resurgence in the incidence of these diseases, and the risks to unvaccinated children will escalate until enough children are killed or debilitated by them to knock the complacency out of parents. I said earlier that if parents choose not to vaccinate their children - I'm not comfortable with a state that's powerful and intrusive enough to compel them to do so - but if they choose to piss in the proverbial pot of public immunity, then I'm quite comfortable granting schools, employers, etc the right to exclude them based on the risk that their absence of immunity poses to others around them. I'm not a parent at the moment, but I'm certainly looking forward to the day when I am - and any kids that we do have will be vaccinated right on schedule, no question about it.

Can you point me to these studies? I'm interested in seeing how in depth this has been studied. There is a *vast* literature available on this. "1: Drug Saf. 2004;27(12):831-40.Links MMR vaccination and autism : what is the evidence for a causal association? Madsen KM, Vestergaard M. Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, The Danish Epidemiology Science Centre, Aarhus, Denmark. KMM@dadlnet.dk It has been suggested that vaccination with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism. The wide-scale use of the MMR vaccine has been reported to coincide with the apparent increase in the incidence of autism. Case reports have described children who developed signs of both developmental regression and gastrointestinal symptoms shortly after MMR vaccination.A review of the literature revealed no convincing scientific evidence to support a causal relationship between the use of MMR vaccines and autism. No primate models exist to support the hypothesis. The biological plausibility remains questionable and there is a sound body of epidemiological evidence to refute the hypothesis. The hypothesis has been subjected to critical evaluation in many different ways, using techniques from molecular biology to population-based epidemiology, and with a vast number of independent researchers involved, none of which has been able to corroborate the hypothesis." "1: Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2007 Dec;82(6):756-9. Epub 2007 Oct 10.Click here to read Links Vaccines and autism: evidence does not support a causal association. DeStefano F. Statistics and Epidemiology Unit, RTI International, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. fdestefano@rti.org A suggested association between certain childhood vaccines and autism has been one of the most contentious vaccine safety controversies in recent years. Despite compelling scientific evidence against a causal association, many parents and parent advocacy groups continue to suspect that vaccines, particularly measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs), can cause autism." Etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, It might be worthwhile for you to look through the literature in Pubmed. If there are any journal articles that you find that you'd like to get PDF reprints of, shoot me a PM and I can send it to you via e-mail.

"Bleh. Between the bolting and this nefangled sticky-mucus, there's no challenge left in this sport.."

I think that you are largely correct about the fact that no small part of the confusion here is a consequence of the fact that this vaccine is given right around the time that it becomes possible to differentiate between a normal baby and an autistic one. Autism aside - I think that you can make a reasonably good case that the roster of objective threats that imperil the health and well being of first world children is both smaller, and more abundantly characterized at this point than at any time in human history. I think on the whole, we're much more aware of and better able to detect and control acutely toxic substances in the environment than we were in - say - the early 70's. The air and water are cleaner, the food is safer, the etc. Ditto for our ability to protect children from head injuries, drowning, electric shock - you name it. When it comes to the subjective hazards that children have to contend with on account of parents that are simultaneously overindulgent and overprotective - there are an awful lot of kids today that face a gauntlet quite a bit more formidable than anything that most of us had to face while cruising down to the 7-11 sans helmets, walking past the creepy dude who'd spent the past 9 months of his life trying to log the high-score on Galaga, and buying some Cokes with the pull-top lids before setting off to play in the vacant lot next to the junkyard.

I think it's worth noting that increased incidence and increased diagnosis are two very different things. Take a gander at the stats for "ADHD" in the US in the 1960s versus the present, or compare virtually any industrialized nation with demographics similar to the US in this decade. With regards to autism, I'm not entirely convinced that what we're seeing isn't a consequence of an increased awareness of all of the manifestations of autism here, rather than any actual increase in the incidence of the disorder. Virtually every child in the world who isn't an inhabitant of a festering, god-forsaken shithole that's relapsed into a state of barbarism and madness - or never emerged out of it - gets vaccinated as a child, and I suspect a substantial portion of these get the same vaccines. The only place where this autism-vaccination hysteria has manifested itself are those places where people no longer have a living memory of watching their children die before their eyes after succumbing to entirely preventable diseases. Dealing with an autistic child looks like a protracted, life-long nightmare to me - and I have an enormous amount of sympathy for anyone who is unfortunate enough to have to shoulder that burden. However, ignoring the indisputable facts concerning the safety and efficacy of the single most beneficial medical intervention in the history of mankind and flattering the anti-scientific delusions brought forth in response to this bizarre, destructive, and profoundly irrational manifestation of their grief is something that any sane society should denounce and resist.