#67 albatross: My suggestion is that first they decided they wanted to protect society from the shocking degradation it was heading for... Which "shocking degradation" was kids listening to jazz and using chemicals other than the fruit of the barley. The problem they were looking to solve was "brown people getting more visible", and the solution was, "let's try blocking off some stuff that THEY do that we don't (right? right?)".
If meth, or extacy, or another white-associated drug had existed back when the drug war started, they might have been given a pass... But probably only if they were used by the rich guys who made the laws, since classism is a factor, too. Now that the drug war is endemic, anything new is going to get plowed into it.
#30 James D. Macdonald: Naw. Marijuana was easy to outlaw because it's something that anyone can grow at home and get a product that's as good as any you can buy (just try that with beer, whisky, or music).
Since people can do it at home cheaply and easily, the Mafia couldn't make any money on selling it, and Congress couldn't make any money on taxing it.
Well, that's probably an additional factor adding to the outlawing of marijuana, but I can't see it being a prime cause: there are lots of things you can do at home to avoid the economy that are legal... Like, growing tomatoes. I mean, they're a member of the nightshade family! Should dear little old ladies be risking themselves with such things?!
The campaign against pot, though, back in the day, focused on stuff that seems just totally nuts until you look at it as a standin for race fears. Like, "pot will make you violent and crazy"? What? But there's always the stereotype of the violent black guy to back that up.
On a separate thread, about classical music: my favorite modern classical is the stuff Joe Hisaishi does for Miyazaki films. I pop the soundtrack to "Howl's Moving Castle" into my car CD player at least once a month.
To tie music and whiteness and drugs together: my theory is that marijuana was easy to outlaw because the perception was that it was a thing black people did, with their jazz and their dreadlocks. Scary! And because marijuana is one of the best mind-altering drugs (that is, hardly addictive at all, pretty much impossible to overdose on, not particularly causative of assholery, potentially even protective health-wise), it's the flagship for the rest. So because of racist cooties the whole armada was sunk.
You notice that far worse drugs which white people were long accustomed to, ie alcohol and nicotine, are perfectly acceptable. Morphine I think lost out because of its associations with the scary Orient.
Guys! So there are dumb-sses who come on strong right outta the gate here! We're solid enough to let them. It's getting a bit insular at ML IMNSHO, and I think we should treat the noobs gently to see if they sort out into interesting people after the first firey clash has simmered down. Like, I regarded placeholder's "uncle" on the other thread as a mark of someone not wholly lost.
#144 mjfgates: ...do anything more than 60 is just silly
I drive a Honda Insight, so I'm keenly aware of the mpg vs speed tradeoffs: the Insight has a constant readout of the mpg you're getting at that instant, and calculates mpg over trips and over the lifetime of the car. So I play a game of maximizing my mpg on the Bay Area highways, with a car whose main mpg savings come from being light and having extremely low air resistance, with a bit of the energy lost in braking fed back into acceleration via the electric aid system (instead of having a separate electric propulsion system a la the Prius). It's a car more like most cars on the highway than Toyota's hybrids.
The trouble with driving below the speed limit is jack-sses on the road... NorCal drivers have a real problem with passing people on the left. A significant percentage will go around on the right on a completely open highway with two lanes open on the left and only the getting on/getting off lane on the right. A significant percentage will ride the bumper of a car for miles before tossing a coin to decide whether to pass in the wide-open lane to the left or the right. Since I came from a state where you passed on the left like a person maximizing safety, the right-passers come off to me like people out to consciously be jerks... So driving below the speed limit requires a lot of zen to not get pissed off and become in anger a worse driver or a worse person, and the tailgaters make it a more dangerous proposition than going the usual 68ish of the highway.
#140 John L: I doubt there are cars out there that get their best mpg per speed at 70, and even 60 seems unlikely. Air resistance is a huge factor at the high speeds.
What I think is neat is that this scam is coming out of Japan. I haven't heard anything about great Japanese cons or con men, though surely they must exist... We had some brilliant cons in my home state of Colorado (which, note, does not have any good diamond mining sites).
Scott Taylor #149: Thanks for bringing the news here. After carrying it to a couple other places myself, I was feeling too sad to want to do much more.
The Something Awful thread starts getting relevant at page 2. Having read pages 2-6, I feel like the guy was kind of knowingly taking the piss in those photos. Someone asked him for a shot with poor trigger discipline, and he went all out, thanks to the SA crazy gross culture and the way his life is not probably what he wanted.
I feel some sympathy for his situation, but on the whole, he does hang out with the wretches of SA.
Oh right! Yay! It's "ask the internet a question" time! So, internet, I have a mechanical/hardware question which has baffled at least five learned people so far. Say you have two metal tubes that telescope, one inside the other, and each has a hole drilled through its diameter, and inside the innermost tube is a peg being driven to expand by a spring (the setup I saw was on a hang glider, I think, with the peg being cylindrical with a half-dome on either end), and when the tubes line up the peg springs through the holes and holds the tubes in that position until you press it in with your fingers and can slide the tubes again.
What's that peg called? I want to buy one, but various combinations of "spring pin peg lock telescoping" aren't getting me to the right doodad.
While ML is a splendid place, I feel like it's incumbent on someone to toss in a memento mori every once in awhile... :)
As for ecologies, I actually really liked Doc Smith's stuff from the Lensmen books. A Venus-like planet with insane temperature gradients and tons of water, where every day was a hurricane... What lived there? Plants that shot up in the few calm hours of noon and aerodynamic turtle-ish critters. The gutters of torture chambers had worms living in them. The aliens had billboard-equivalent advertising they ignored. He really thought things through, but doesn't let it get in the way of a rollicking story... And this was all lifetimes ago before thinking of things as systems was a major thing.
I second the cheer for the ecology of _Dust_, and note that it's qualified for the Hugos next year...
One of the scientists I work with happened across a neat finding with regards to stroke... Apparently once the clot is dealt with and blood flows back into that area of the brain, the white blood cells called neutrophils, the shapeshifting motile gooey ones, look at all the cells that have been starved for food and say, "Eh, looks wrong, destroy it!"... So you lose a lot of brain to your own white blood cells. But W.H. Chou found that neutrophils without Protein Kinase C Delta didn't move/stick/work as well, so the same amount of stroke caused much less brain damage in PKCd knockout mice because their neutrophils couldn't wipe out as many cells which apparently recovered fine.
I'm not sure if that finding is being medicalized; I'm not sure if there are blockers of PKCd. But it is interesting that all the time new stuff is being learned... I mean, they're an addiction lab studying PKCd for its effect on choices to drink, and yet random other useful info appears.
Xopher #386: I think Terry's correct about the completeness of a life. I'm picturing lives as a combination Venn diagram/Escher circle limit thing... Bounded, but infinite nonetheless. Otherwise, why not argue that a person who hasn't been to Paris really is missing an essential part of their life?
It's an interesting comparison you raise, though. What are the implications? Unlike deafness and Parislessness, there's no cure for asexuality. Also, it's not a toggle but a range: there are some people who want sex every month or so, some less, some a bit more but still not so much... Also, how much does one consider other people in bounding oneself? Most people expect to be able to make sounds to a person and have them respond; but most people don't expect to be able to act sexually with everyone they meet.
As for the Hellenizations of the Egyptian names, keen! Thanks for the info.
Xopher: Scanned though on a Find for "Setesh", as I'd never heard of that one. Set, though, sure yah. I believe he was actually worshipped in some of the cities upriver, where he was more of a typical clever/powerful head god; the myths of his Bleak Evil to me have the taste of "our city's god is more l33t than your city's god, and we won the war so nyah."
Curious, though, if sexuality is necessary, what are your thoughts on asexual folks?
Scott Taylor #43: For me it's of a set with the "well, things kinda suck, and that's how they are, and you should know them for what they are and not fear what is not" quotes, like Ecclesiastes, a la 2:12-21And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness and folly; for what can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath been already done. 13 Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness. 14 The wise man's eyes are in his head, and the fool walketh in darkness: and yet I perceived that one event happeneth to them all. 15 Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so will it happen even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also was vanity. 16 For of the wise man, even as of the fool, there is no remembrance for ever; seeing that in the days to come all will have been already forgotten. And how doth the wise man die even as the fool! 17 So I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun was grievous unto me: for all is vanity and a striving after wind. 18 And I hated all my labour wherein I laboured under the sun: seeing that I must leave it unto the man that shall be after me. 19 And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20 Therefore I turned about to cause my heart to despair concerning all the labour wherein I had laboured under the sun. 21 For there is a man whose labour is with wisdom, and with knowledge, and with skilfulness; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion.Or Hemingway, from the Old Man and the Sea,I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We are born lucky. Yes, we are born lucky.
I guess the class is, quotes which illuminate that getting what you deserve is pretty unlikely, and you might as well think about how that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Scott Taylor #19: Hah! Just two comments earlier I had paused and searched up that quote to include when I got to the end of the thread. :)
There once was a coddle so molly
He spoke in a glot that was poly
His gaws were so gew
That his laps became dew
And he only ate pops that were lolly.
Not mine; James Thurber's, from _The 13 Clocks_. Rare for that particular memorized poem to be at all relevant, but this would be the place if ever it was... :)
Because of spam, the email address I use at Making Light is one that goes to a dead box I never check. If I changed to a new clean email address which I could munge, though, wouldn't I lose connection to the last five years of my comments here? "View all by" works on email address, so far as I can tell. I'm like a raccoon who can't get out of a trap because I won't let go of the shiny thing.
(I spin off a new address for every new place, and forward them all on to my main address... But not tblog ("Teresa blog"), which goes to a dead box, because it was nothing but waves and waves of spam. What if someone has tried to get in touch with me? What if someone has tried to take some discussion to email? I would never know. It eats at me. But asking for a search and replace that changed all "tblog at z-amber.com" to something unspammed... That seems like too much work to put on the fine blogrunners here, if it's even possible.)
I read Bowie's comments as "liberalism is lying around rotting and
what it needs to get up and dance again is a terrible facist government
to react to". Same stuff we were getting here from some liberals a
couple years ago, people who were trying to find a silver lining in the
crappy situation in America. As for the "Hitler was the first rock
star"... He kinda was, if you're talking "a guy who consciously makes
himself an image that involves going up in front of crowds of screaming
fans". It's not like rock stars are known for being good people.
Still, I'm glad that he backed away from those garishy-worded messes.
22! I'm smug. Alright, so the average is 23... I once had a fellow
student in college give an incomprehensible lecture on Dutch font
history that lasted more than 40 minutes, 10 of which were after class
had ended before I just left... So I understand there will be those who
break the curve. :)
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