The focus of prisons (from my limited observation) is rarely to rehabilitate.

In the United States, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 explicitly states that imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation. In other words, according to both Congress and the Supreme Court, prison is useless for rehabilitation, and judges are legally barred from considering prison as a rehabilitative measure. Our official incarceration policy exists solely to punish behavior, never to correct it or prevent future crimes. This has always seemed to me like the keystone of the "Reagan Revolution", with Ted Kennedy and Ronald Reagan allying to fundamentally derail the American Dream of an optimally free society, so it seems very appropriate that it was passed in 1984.

The reason everybody is so up in arms is that the opiate is not mixed with acetominophen. The only purpose of putting acetominophen in an opiate painkiller is to make it so it will fry your liver if you take more of it than it was designed for. Basically, such drugs are designed to be deliberately fatal to addicts. So much for "do no harm".

I don't know why you got modded "flamebait". My current doctor and my previous one both told me exactly the same thing. They said they can't prescribe opiates without acetaminophen or their practices will systematically harassed by the government's drug warriors, and they can't help people if they are driven out of business.

Dr. Brad Galer, executive vice president and chief medical officer at Zogenix, says "Zogenix is working on an abuse-deterrent version of Zohydro that should become available in three years."

To me, that says as soon as they add toxicity it'll be acceptable. Because in the USA, the goal of punishing addicts has become more important than the goal of helping people in pain. Authoritarianism is ascendant over compassion.

We, as human beings, only use 3 - 5% of our *NATURAL* brain capacity.

Your assignment for today is to find out where this statement originated. Extra credit will be awarded if you can manage to tie in Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy and Cyril Burt's twin studies.

The National Science Board's biennial book, Science and Engineering Indicators , consistently finds that the U.S. produces many more STEM graduates than the workforce can absorb. Meanwhile, employers say managers are struggling to find qualified workers in STEM fields. What explains these apparently contradictory trends?

If a great many "STEM graduates" are not actually qualified to do real creative work in high tech, that would be a sufficient explanation.

Automobile user interfaces have become increasingly complex and de-standardized as computerization reaches into the driver's seat. The major vendors don't seem to care about possible legal liabilities of designing inherently dangerous UIs.

Google has enticed Honda, GM and Audi to join the Open Automotive Alliance, but that project seems more oriented towards selling android and nVidia products than providing an objectively better car OS.

Do you see a future where a real Free (or at least Open Source) car operating system is a reality, or do you think the car makers will just continue to create unsafe and unstandardized vehicle UIs indefinitely?

sed 's/complying with/breaking/' <previous post >coherent post

That'll teach me to use preview mode... oh well, at least the link worked.

No threat of punishment == no compliance.

Don't worry, there's no lack of authoritarian punishment built into the system.

But you know, if merely punishing people stopped them from complying with rules we'd be living in paradise. Our punishment-oriented culture serves to gratify the sadism of our rulers, and doesn't really do much to prevent crime. In real life the most effective way to prevent crime is to ensure the availability of rewarding work... and hospital paperwork, I have to tell you, is the opposite of rewarding labor.

Solution for the US? 1950s income tax rates and strengthen the unions: try to bring back the institutions and policies we had during our boom times.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but that's the opposite of what the rich people who control our legislatures are paying for.

They pulled the ladder up behind them on purpose; they don't want an egalitarian society.

My dog and .40 are the best DIY home security.

Yeah, my dog gets pretty crazy after 40 ounces of malt liquor too.

The USA has always had megacorps that were willing to attack scientists in order to keep on poisoning the people of the USA.

See, for example, how Kehoe, Kettering and Midgely (working for GM, DuPont and the Ethyl Corporation) attacked the reputations and careers of whistle-blowing scientists (like Patterson, Landrigan and Needleman) in order to hide the horrific effects of lead poisoning. The high toxicity of lead was known in the 19th century, and well quantified by the mid-1930s, but hidden from the US public until the 1970s by a concerted corporate disinformation campaign.

In just the last century, we increased our exposure to lead in the environment by 625 times and the effects are going to last for several more generations at least. This poisoning of generations of children, with literally many millions of victims, was done to maximize corporate profits for America's ruling class. And in today's political climate - with Reagan corporatist Obama actually considered to be left-wing or even socialist - you can expect this sort of behavior will continue.

If we can be sued by the copyright holders for crap like this, I fail to see why it should be any different for the feds.

I guess I wasn't the only one who slept through elementary school civics classes, eh? Turns out you can't sue the government unless it decides to let you.

"The government is not liable to suit unless it consents thereto, and its liability in suit cannot be extended beyond the plain language of the statute authorizing it." --US Supreme Court, Price vs. United States, 1899

I wish I could "like" your post, but on the other hand slashdot on its worst day is probably still better than Facebook.

Women can do anything men can do...

WRONG.

A woman cannot pee around a corner without using special equipment. Men for the win!

Look, I know it's not much, but we have to work with what God gave us, you know? Men, be proud of your uniquely male corner-around-peeing ability, and the ease with which you can write your name in the snow. To the drum circle, boys!

But we've got rats here in Chicago who can chew through a heavy-duty plastic municipal garbage bin.

All rodents can do that, including mice and voles. The thing that's different about Chicago is that the humans are so detached from nature that they don't know this.

Rodents cannot chew through glass, and it takes them a very long time to chew through metal or concrete. If you live near rodents, use a galvanized metal can; if you live near raccoons or possums use raccoon springs.

. Yeah, your blood work tends to improve when you eat a simple vegan diet, and that's all soylent contains.

Because fish are just extremely fast moving vegetables? And commercially obtained calcium is never made from crushed bones?

A real vegan diet would kill a lot of people; some of us physically require animal-derived nutrition. Which is unsurprising, given our dental structure.

And the vegan ethical/moral argument appears to be bankrupt too. A mindful omnivore, who eats grass-fed beef, kills far fewer animals than a vegan who eats tofu.

Veganism aside, though, I have to agree with you that he's laying the pseudo-scientific health claims on with a trowel.