US General Erection 2012

[Kamber Parrk]

How'd you vote on prop. 502, Kamberr?

Haven't marked the ballot yet. But, will probably vote for it despite my lectures to VK on the evil weed!

But, I'm a realist-- the Constitution's "Supremecy Clause" governs, and it ain't legal 'til the Feds say its legal.

But, if you're following the issue, it's the Medical Marijuana folks that're against it-- one of the main reasons being that it sets a 5 nanogram BAC for DUI-- a standard that would set most med users up for a DUI if pulled over.

Same with Gay Marriage-- ain't really over til both sides get the fight in SCOTUS they're hankering for!

[bill618]

You do know in the UK red is the colour of Socialists and far Left while blue is the Right Wing?

Some folks would say that the parties switched ideologies over time, and neglected to take their respective colors with them.

[Kolbenito]

In the grand scheme it really doesn't matter between these two. I think both more or less would have the same result on whatever is going to happen in the next 4 years. Most of what you hear out of politicians is double talk and trying to polarize voters on issues. The dread "Obama Care" has actually been pushed by both parties in the past 20 years but they want you to believe that whichever side has the ball is going to turn the U.S. into Soviet Russia. It's a joke, but that's what makes it fun to watch.

[Velocity Kendall]

Haven't marked the ballot yet. But, will probably vote for it despite my lectures to VK on the evil weed!

But, I'm a realist-- the Constitution's "Supremecy Clause" governs, and it ain't legal 'til the Feds say its legal.

god i hope they never legalise weed here.
the price would drop through the floor and itd be bye bye lovely superstrong lemon haze, hello crap weak factory grown rubbish like you get on the beach. no thanks.

[JFierce]

I don't know how I feel. It needs to be legalized. But how is the tricky issue. Don't want just one little bit where only a select group of privileged companies can get involved in. Then they find it profitable so they try to keep those regulations in their favor. Would need to be open for those to in general invest in, make a bunch of small business and suppliers that can compete since it would be a very large new market.

[Stacybean]

I don't know how I feel. It needs to be legalized. But how is the tricky issue. Don't want just one little bit where only a select group of privileged companies can get involved in. Then they find it profitable so they try to keep those regulations in their favor. Would need to be open for those to in general invest in, make a bunch of small business and suppliers that can compete since it would be a very large new market.

It's a relative free-for-all. I don't think anyone's going to try to dominate a market where you can get raided by the feds at anytime, have all your assets seized, and face 10 years to life in prison (i.e. Aaron Sandusky in CA). Smaller your operation is, more chance you can fly under the fed's nose.

[JFierce]

Naw I'm not talking about now. Right now it's a joke from what little I know. Oh look it's legalized to sell medicinally in certain areas but oh wait the feds can just come in and fuck you over. Along those lines from what I gather but I don't know much.

I mean once it's taken serious steps to actually legalize it even on a federal level. It shouldn't be set up in a way where giant weed corporations selling crap are legal but smaller businesses can't be made.

[blogmatix]

god i hope they never legalise weed here.
the price would drop through the floor and itd be bye bye lovely superstrong lemon haze, hello crap weak factory grown rubbish like you get on the beach. no thanks.

I quit smoking weed precisely because cultivars that were way too strong to my taste began to dominate the market. :-)

If you want strong stuff, go do crack cocaine or something (which I ALSO want legalized, along with every other form of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll known to man). I want my weed MILD, I say! :-)

[Velocity Kendall]

If you want strong stuff, go do crack cocaine

Just say yes kids.

How can weed be too strong??

[Flake]

How can weed be too strong??

As a youth, I would have agreed with this, I was all about bongs, buckets, cookies.
Having got old, I decided a more mellow background buzz was the way to go, this does indeed get trickier when everyone is now bonging Northern Lights.

How can weed be too strong?

By knocking you out and making it problematic for you to go about your day.

I recall my last year at college sharing one with a mate, I suddenly felt very ..surreal, turns out it was 100% some bizarro hydroponic skunk thing, I then get to spend 3 paranoid hours staring 1000 yards behind the XSI or Maya interface on my monitor pondering the meaning of life.

Turned out alright, as you'll know weed does give you that kinda tunnel vision focus, so I was able to finish the college stuff..

I think Blog has a good point, it's nice to be able to decide just how monged out you planned to be. Too weak? smoke more.
It's tricky trying to remain just mildly tipsy all Bank Holiday when the only drink you can find is 48% single malt whisky..




Disclaimer. Haven't smoked for years, not a filthy, filthy hippy.

[Velocity Kendall]

haha nicely put, although i find the edginess is all in that just-a-bit-stoned zone, and it goes away when youre totally baked.
plus like you say, focus! its like ADHD-remover!

making mushrooms from completely legal to as illegal as crack and smack is absurd though and needs correcting.

[LordLouis]

You do know in the UK red is the colour of Socialists and far Left while blue is the Right Wing?

Political Party colours are so interesting. The right-wing blue was indeed invented by the Conservatives. Red is traditional left since the early 1900s in Europe and communism really only the far wing of it. It is always interesting to how parties change their corporate design over time. For example, right-centre CDU in Germany is black in colour (because priests' robes are black), but all corporate design nowadays is blue.
The colours have also found their way into EU parties.

Interesting BBC article on party colours: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4923050.stm

[blogmatix]

Just say yes kids.

How can weed be too strong??

By being so strong that it induced mild hallucinations and then knocked me on my ass, so stoned that I was unable to enjoy the feeling. :-)

[Velocity Kendall]

By being so strong that it induced mild hallucinations and then knocked me on my ass, so stoned that I was unable to enjoy the feeling. :-)

hahahaha

[Kolbenito]

Drugs should really be a health and welfare issue and not a criminal one. I'm not personally interested in taking anything, I just think it's an insane law that doesn't accomplish anything positive.

[bill618]

By being so strong that it induced mild hallucinations and then knocked me on my ass, so stoned that I was unable to enjoy the feeling. :-)

[karta tajba]

They are Marxist Leninist, not every socialist organization is Maoist.

[Velocity Kendall]

i love how socialism and communism are dirty words in america. doesnt it just mean sharing out stuff so everyone in the community has enough or something? how unamerican.

i dont mean that rubbish version they had in the USSR, as Charley Stross puts it "Like Communism, Libertarianism is a superficially comprehensive theory of human behaviour that is based on flawed axioms and, if acted upon, would result in either failure or a hellishly unpleasant state of post-industrial feudalism."

[Shorinji_Knight]

We don't like socialism or communism because they equalize everyone to the point that you're not rewarded for working harder nor penalized for slacking. We're all for helping people when they're down, but we don't want a system that holds people down. That's what we proudly refer to as the American dream. It is the hope that through hard work and initiative we can build a better life for our families. Sure we're all a little jaded, but most of us still believe in the promise of a better tomorrow and are willing to work for it.

[Velocity Kendall]

it sounds like a story to comfort children, and to encourage worker bees to keep working.

[Shorinji_Knight]

Maybe, but what else do we have?

[Stacybean]

i love how socialism and communism are dirty words in america. doesnt it just mean sharing out stuff so everyone in the community has enough or something? how unamerican.

Scarcity. What is it?

[Velocity Kendall]

Maybe, but what else do we have?

call me a filthy pinko commie bastard if you like (my mum does) but let me add a quote from Iain Banks' lovely, clear minded but optimistic manifesto of an imaginary civilisation, A Few Notes on The Culture

"Let me state here a personal conviction that appears, right now, to be profoundly unfashionable; which is that a planned economy can be more productive - and more morally desirable - than one left to market forces.

The market is a good example of evolution in action; the try-everything-and-see-what- -works approach. This might provide a perfectly morally satisfactory resource-management system so long as there was absolutely no question of any sentient creature ever being treated purely as one of those resources. The market, for all its (profoundly inelegant) complexities, remains a crude and essentially blind system, and is - without the sort of drastic amendments liable to cripple the economic efficacy which is its greatest claimed asset - intrinsically incapable of distinguishing between simple non-use of matter resulting from processal superfluity and the acute, prolonged and wide-spread suffering of conscious beings.

It is, arguably, in the elevation of this profoundly mechanistic (and in that sense perversely innocent) system to a position above all other moral, philosophical and political values and considerations that humankind displays most convincingly both its present intellectual [immaturity and] - through grossly pursued selfishness rather than the applied hatred of others - a kind of synthetic evil.

Intelligence, which is capable of looking farther ahead than the next aggressive mutation, can set up long-term aims and work towards them; the same amount of raw invention that bursts in all directions from the market can be - to some degree - channelled and directed, so that while the market merely shines (and the feudal gutters), the planned lases, reaching out coherently and efficiently towards agreed-on goals. What is vital for such a scheme, however, and what was always missing in the planned economies of our world's experience, is the continual, intimate and decisive participation of the mass of the citizenry in determining these goals, and designing as well as implementing the plans which should lead towards them.
...
The Culture, of course, has gone beyond even that, to an economy so much a part of society it is hardly worthy of a separate definition, and which is limited only by imagination, philosophy (and manners), and the idea of minimally wasteful elegance; a kind of galactic ecological awareness allied to a desire to create beauty and goodness."

http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm

Stacy, I didnt understand your post. Please elaborate.

[Shorinji_Knight]

That would be wonderful... The problem is this part:

"What is vital for such a scheme, however, and what was always missing in the planned economies of our world's experience, is the continual, intimate and decisive participation of the mass of the citizenry in determining these goals, and designing as well as implementing the plans which should lead towards them."

How would you get that to happen?

[Flake]

The biggest problem I always saw with The Free Market and to an extent most right wing politics is this mad idea that it's all some kind of meritocracy, everyone starts on the level playing field, ultimately hard work and good intentions will be rewarded.

No, that guy on the board of Union Carbide who authorised less regular safety checkups on the chemical plants probably made more in a week than the yearly salary of the A&E nurse who stiched up your sister after that particularly horrible car crash.
The bankers who kinda collapsed an entire system ? Still got bigger bonuses than the salary of the guys who put out that fire in your street.

It's a fixed game with loaded dice and unless you're particularly lucky, the dice are loaded against you.

Imagine a game of Monopoly where players A, B, and C start with the regulation £1500 but a fourth player gets to start with £100,000 , title deeds to Mayfair and the green bits and a get out of jail card. Player "D" gets the bonuses because his great, great, great, great, grandad won East Kent in a swordfight in 1670 or something..

Barring statistically unlikely throws of the dice, or utter lunacy on the part of player "D" , he wins.
Welcome to Capitalism.

Yay!

[Velocity Kendall]

That would be wonderful...

it would, wouldnt it?

How would you get that to happen?

ha no idea. maybe some admixture of democratic due process and ubiquitous wireless ultraconnectivity, the long view an artificially extended lifespan would bring and some serious but non-sentient computing power.

but hey youve got your dream and Ive got mine. In yours, you are treated like a resource to be deployed until you are no longer useful, lead by the carrot of material weath and the stick of poverty and social stigma.
In mine, "nothing and nobody is exploited. It is essentially an automated civilisation in its manufacturing processes, with human labour restricted to something indistinguishable from play, or a hobby."



i should clarify i write this as someone with a lot of love for the USA; I lived there for a while and have a lot of affection for its citizens and their its can do spirit, and think the US Constitution is one of the most beautiful artefacts ever created by Humanity. But we all know something is rotten in Denmark.

[Velocity Kendall]

one last tidbit of Banks:

People - and, I'd argue, the sort of conscious machines which would happily cooperate with them - hate to feel exploited, but they also hate to feel useless. One of the most important tasks in setting up and running a stable and internally content civilisation is finding an acceptable balance between the desire for freedom of choice in one's actions (and the freedom from mortal fear in one's life) and the need to feel that even in a society so self-correctingly Utopian one is still contributing something. Philosophy matters, here, and sound education.

[blogmatix]

But we all know something is rotten in Denmark.

Indeed, but what is rotten in Denmark and similar welfare states is, in my opinion, not so much the regulated economy or the many public services, but the seemingly unstoppable creep of the nanny state. Western Europeans are increasingly living in a gilded cage. I find the very thought of it suffocating.

I seem to be one of that very rare breed, namely a left-leaning libertarian: I don't mind if the state regulates the economy to some extent (as long as it doesn't regulate it to death), but I want the bloody bureaucrats out of my bedroom, off my computer screen, out of my bookstore and out of my drug stash. I do NOT need to be "protected" from myself, or from people whose ideas may just possibly offend me, or from naughty pictures, or from smokers, or from ladies who prefer to cover themselves from head to toe, or from a free internet.

It seems to me it should be possible to have a society which is both humane and free.

[Velocity Kendall]

"but I want the bloody bureaucrats out of my bedroom, off my computer screen, out of my bookstore and out of my drug stash. I do NOT need to be "protected" from myself, or from people whose ideas may just possibly offend me, or from naughty pictures, or from smokers, or from ladies who prefer to cover themselves from head to toe, or from a free internet. "

Apart from Frances laughably wrongheaded thing about the Burka, Im not really sure how any of those things are specifically or uniquely european problems. The War on Drugs is an American thing the rest of us have to go along with if we dont want to be embargoed. In the same way you dont like bloody beaurocrats sticking their noses in your business, the rest of the world is sick of the US doing the same.

"but the seemingly unstoppable creep of the nanny state."

I think you'd like The Daily Mail. They love phrases like that. Another favourite is "Its political correctness gone mad!" They always arrive packaged the same way every time. Theseeminglyunstoppablecreepofthenannystate. Itspoliticalcorrectnessgonemad. All one word. Its lazy thinking, peddled by newspaper sellers who want to manipulate your righteous indignation into forcing you to buy their rags. What seems to slip past everyone is that political correctness is effectively the enshrining in law of a bit of basic human decency. And that what you call a 'nanny' state isnt just to 'protect' you. Its to protect other people from you, from your smoke, your guns, your sexual proclivities, from your freedoms.
I think images of the nanny state, a suffocating veil of governmental interference into every corner of your private life that annoy you so much exist much more in your mind than in reality.

[blogmatix]

Apart from Frances laughably wrongheaded thing about the Burka, Im not really sure how any of those things are specifically or uniquely european problems. The War on Drugs is an American thing the rest of us have to go along with if we dont want to be embargoed. In the same way you dont like bloody beaurocrats sticking their noses in your business, the rest of the world is sick of the US doing the same.

You speak almost as if you think I am an American. Anyway, I agree on the above point: the insane war on drugs seems to be mostly an American export that they now ram down everybody's throats. It's also where just about all the creationists come from.

"but the seemingly unstoppable creep of the nanny state."
I think you'd like The Daily Mail. They love phrases like that. Another favourite is "Its political correctness gone mad!" They always arrive packaged the same way every time. Theseeminglyunstoppablecreepofthenannystate. Itspoliticalcorrectnessgonemad. All one word. Its lazy thinking, peddled by newspaper sellers who want to manipulate your righteous indignation into forcing you to buy their rags. What seems to slip past everyone is that political correctness is effectively the enshrining in law of a bit of basic human decency. And that what you call a 'nanny' state isnt just to 'protect' you. Its to protect other people from you, from your smoke, your guns, your sexual proclivities, from your freedoms.
I think images of the nanny state, a suffocating veil of governmental interference into every corner of your private life that annoy you so much exist much more in your mind than in reality.

Actually, I seldom read newspapers at all. It's not clear to me why society needs to be protected from anything I do: in public I am a model of courtesy.

I do not watch films I find offensive. I don't read books I find offensive. If there's too much smoke in a restaurant I simply leave. As long as my neighbour keeps his naughty pics and sexual proclivities inside his own house, none of it bothers me either.

Thus I'm not sure we need to enshrine everything into law. This is especially true when the laws in question cannot be effectively enforced, because then they achieve little more than to breed disrespect for the law in general.

You are of course right that ultra-libertarians sometimes greatly exaggerate the extent and scope of such laws, and some of the worst of these laws are in force in America, land of the free, rather than in Europe. But I am concerned about the witch hunt against smokers, for example - if we are not careful we're going to end up with yet another Prohibition. I am also concerned about constant calls for anti-blasphemy laws (though perhaps we needn't worry too much about that.) Anti-porn laws or regulations can sometimes be of some concern to artists (and they're pretty silly because it is another instance where nobody is forced to look at images they don't like, and where the stuff is in any event freely available on the web).