The Axe Paradox at the beginning of that book haunts my nightmares.

It turns out that spying on Europe is perfectly legal in the US after this law passes, and that spying on the US is perfectly legal in Europe. . . .

Lucky for everyone's citizens, no European country and the US are incredibly close allies.

Both times I've done it, though, I used my phone to look up the generic number for the credit card company. Don't blindly trust anyone* and use their number on their card. God only knows where that's actually going.

* Except Google, apparently. . . . Yikes.

I am woefully out of touch with culture, but you get the idea.

If it's oiled wire, stored in oiled paper, it's actually meant for concrete work with re-bar, but is actually used most often to string low-charge electric fences. It is commonly used with horses in conjunction with white, vinyl warning fence. You get anywhere from 50-200 feet per spool.

Baling wire is substantially thicker, un-oiled, and comes in much larger spools; 500-1000 feet per spool.

The spools in oil paper are meant to be strung by hand and not intended to be used for tying anything long-term; hence the lighter gauge. In fact, it's meant to hold re-bar together long enough for the concrete to be poured, thereby securing the re-bar and negating the need for the wire. Baling wire is intended to be strung by machine, and exists mainly to tie things together for seasons (and hold together the entire Midwest's infrastructure). Square bales that use baling wire must be stored out of the elements, so the wire being un-oiled is not an issue.

To the GP: If you use baling twine, then your machinery sucks, sell that P.O.S. Oliver and buy something made in the last fifty years. I bet you run narrow base Allis-Chalmers too, don't you?

So, I assume you propose a barter system then?

Be less ridiculous.

So, your mom's basement, then?

You're talking about slashdot, correct? Have you ever used that site and looked at the comments? I'll be surprised if half of the people even notice the page changed. As long as it's shiny, they'll be happy.

So all of those websites that you currently access for free then. They were around back in the early days of the internet? All of the free content you consume, it was available, too? All of the people who are currently connected, they've always been on-line then?

Like it or not, now that the entire world is connected, someone has to pay. Please note that I'm not saying I agree with the ad model we currently have, I'm just saying that your view is incredibly short-sighted and immature.

The fact that this isn't recreation to you makes me quite sad for your right hand.

Hyperbole is a terrible argumentative tool

Seriously, though, here are the arguments against what you said first, according to a highly educated young officer that I'm friends with:

"They don't have to do the drugs. An increased cost, and more danger would tell me that I should probably stop doing opiates. Addiction is no excuse for breaking the law. Also, saying that addicts HAVE to break the law to provide for their addiction is really only half of the argument. They have another option: getting clean."

"Those two things are VERY dissimilar in how they act in your body. That's a bad argument. Coke heads don't go to meth. They go to crack. Meth use and cocaine use are in entirely separate areas of the country at the micro-scale, and in entirely separate communities at the macro-scale."

"You could, you know, do something else awe inspiring. Ever seen the grand canyon? If your life is so boring that you MUST have psychedelics to enjoy it, you need to evaluate the choices you make."

Again, I'm the messenger for him, I just felt the need to rebut your argument from one of those "pants on head retarded" people you're talking about.

There are, and this may be hard to understand, people who genuinely believe that the only way to remove drugs from the streets - regardless of proof to the contrary - is to make them illegal and put people in jail for them. These people believe that personal responsibility should be enough to keep people from doing drugs, and that if we make them legal, the problem will only get worse.

For proof of the fact that these people exist, and that they do not agree with your undergraduate statistics and crime course arguments, please consult anyone labeled 'officer'.