You might make a few few people who still hate the damned Yankees or any number of other groups upset for comparing them to criminals.

"...while providing no substantial benefit."

I'm going to be pedantic and call BS on this one. If they hadn't been so bold and instead said "while in almost all cases failing to provide enough benefits to justify the cost" I wouldn't be making this reply.

Why am I upset about their hyperbole? Because it cuts into their credibility.

What's the specific counter-example I can provide? Read on..,.

In some societies, criminalization leads to social stigmatization even if the laws are not enforced or only lightly enforced, a stigmatization that would be absent or less strong otherwise. You see this in some parts of the United States, where the existence of little-enforced laws such as laws against littering, talking on the cell phone while driving, etc. reinforce and amplify the existing social stigma against such activities to the point that it's the stigma of being seen doing "the wrong thing," not the fear of getting a ticket or getting arrested, that drives people to follow the social norm.

Even if the enforcement of drug laws doesn't lead to reduced usage in and of itself, the stigmatization can.

Reducing the use of harmful drugs can benefit society in many ways, including fewer early deaths and fewer health problems.

The key though is that whether stigmatization by itself will lead to less drug use or not will vary from society to society and even sub-culture to sub-culture. A sub-culture which is known for being defiant of the larger society may in fact see doing things that are stigmatized by the larger society as a way to rebel. The 1960s young-adult/youth counterculture sub-culture in the United States is one example where a "main culture" stigmatizing an activity may lead to more, not less, overall use.

Now, does the existence of drug laws result in an enhanced stigma that leads to overall reduced drug use worldwide? I don't know. Is there someplace on this planet where drug laws are creating or reinforcing a stigma where the social stigma (not necessarily the fear of being caught by the police) is driving lower drug use? Almost certainly.

What's the bottom line?

* Don't summarily throw out drug laws worldwide.
* Do encourage every country and locality to ask itself to examine the totality of effects of its drug laws both within its own borders and on the rest of the world, and make an educated, informed decision about whether to change the drug laws to achieve the desired goals (which I assume are nominally a safer and healthier society, but which I sadly acknowledge may include things like keeping trading partners happy, keeping a dictator's friends flush with cash, and other factors that are irrelevant to the nominal purpose of drug laws), and if so, how.

A wearable medical-alarm device that detects when I'm driving and when I'm dozing off (or legally drunk, or whatever) at the same time. Let it beep at me and let it do whatever per-programmed task I tell it to do if I don't respond.

This task may be to alert the car that the driver is impaired, so the car can take action (assuming the car is equipped to receive such a message). On the other hand, I may program it to call my doctor or the local police.

A device that can tell I'm driving can also tell my phone to send all calls to voicemail and defer notifying me of texts until I am no longer driving.

Don't they teach kids how to use a pencil in Germany?

Plus, pencil marks are easier to erase!

Seriously, when it comes to creating hard-to-copy data, it's cheaper to have a manual typewriter and a stack of paper in a secured, sound-proof room than it is to come up with an EM-proofed room with a computer. For making local copies, use a non-electronic, secured photocopier or non-electronic, secured microfilm/microfiche-creation system and a microfilm/microfiche reader. For applications where you don't need to do transmit documents off-site and where you don't need to be able to search the document, a non-electronic solution may be better than an electronic solution.

Another advantage of paper is if and when you do need to put it on a computer, it's not all that hard to do.

Paper-and-ink was the way most government documents - secret or otherwise - were created and stored until a few decades ago (yes, there is still a lot of new work being done on paper today inside of governments, but electronic copies exist for almost all new things that will have any lasting value, at least in industrialized countries).

Thanks! I'm getting ready to post chapter thirty in a minute. I screwed up in this post, though, I forgot I already posted the chapter where Knolls finds that Green is Destiny's dad.

For real-estate purposes, especially for 1-2 story buildings, a tethered powered aircraft should be fine. The question is, does the FAA claim jurisdiction over tethered flying machines flying at low altitudes (e.g. under a few hundred feet) and not close to "regulated airspace" like an airport or close to "an obvious federal jurisdiction" like crossing a state line or in the "airspace" of federal property, a U.S. Highway or Interstate Highway, or a navigable waterway?

If the FAA does claim jurisdiction over tethered flights that don't have any obvious "federal jurisdictional nexus" then it's ripe for a court challenge.

Sure, medicinal cannibas may have 250 active compounds, but how many of those - individually or in combination - are necessary to treat 95% of patients?

If we can identify the ones needed to treat the vast majority of patients and synthesize them or find a bio-factory (e.g. yeast) that we can control much better than the traditional source (the plant), we can deliver drugs that are more pure and more consistent than your average joint or brownie, yet still do the job for almost all patients.

If I get cancer and need this for medical reasons, I would much prefer to take a drug that has a known, consistent potency and known, consistent nominally-inactive ingredients than something I cut off a plant.

As I said, sometimes the problems are not technical in nature.

Maybe back when the maintenance window was created it was created for a valid technical reason, BUT technology moved on and management didn't.

In other words, in some environments, the technical people won't have a sympathetic ear if they ask to cancel the off-hours maintenance window simply because of local politics or the local management, BUT if the maintenance gets botched and services are still down or under-performing through normal business hours, nobody outside of IT will notice.