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Comment Re:Anti-opiate forces actually "pro pain"? (Score 1) 217

They're against addiction, and they're against recreational drug use. Agree or disagree, why not take them at their word?

Because the evidence is all to the contrary.

Portugal ran the biggest experiment - 8 million people - and upon legalization, their drug use fell in half. The UK experienced the same thing in the reverse direction upon criminalization of e.g. heroin. The result is consistent with rational views of human incentives as well, so no logical surprises.

People who are pro- drug criminalization are for increased addiction rates. That's what reason predicts and that's what the empirical results are.

Whether or not these people are rational is immaterial to the consequences of their actions. We shall not give them a "pass" on "good intentions" if they lead us down the Road to Hell. The JAMA research suggests they're responsible for a minimum of one 9/11-scale effect every year.

Comment Re:Anti-opiate forces actually "pro pain"? (Score 1) 217

It's like there's some kind of morality subtext that's really "pro pain" and opposed to feeling better

Yes, that's exactly right - Puritanism is a terribly destructive mindframe and thoroughly-ingrained in American culture.

Three things:
1) there a slight chance that these patients could have some fun or pleasure on these drugs. That's reason enough to put a foot down on society.
2) suffering is a virtue. God will lessen the suffering of those who are themselves virtuous, but for the same reason people whip and crucify themselves "for God", those suffering horribly from disease should not be brought from that blessing.
3) people with these afflictions may deserve them.

and those who profit handsomely from such ugly undercurrents in society are all too happy to exploit them for wealth and power.

c.f. A Renegade History of the United States for more on this. The author was fired from a university professorship for publishing such "radical" views on the failures of Puritanism.

Comment Re: The Double Standard keeps growing (Score 2) 463

people need to get out and start protesting and getting people on ballots to oust the cronies.

sorry, but that's the strategy which has been employed for the past two hundred years. The very best that could be said for it is that it has slowed the decline into totalitarianism. Even that is hard to prove.

I suggest a new strategy, Artoo.

Comment Re:5820K is an extremely nice part (Score 2) 181

I was just looking at that one a few hours ago (need to replace my desktop ... Mozilla apps are pigs with high core-affinity).

I decided against it because it has many fewer of the new instructions than the 4790K, slower clock, and almost double the TDP (and I prefer quiet/low power).

Obviously for highly parallel tasks that can fit nicely in the 5820K's bigger cache, it will win handily. I'd love to see an ffmpeg coding shoot-out, but I'm concerned that the 5820K's disabled PCIe lanes might hamper other system performance (vs. e.g. the 5830K).

If anybody here has an ASRock Z97 mobo that they love, I'd like to hear about it.

Comment Risk Management (Score 3, Insightful) 91

Look, I'm all for getting as much Zmapp to patients as is possible. I think a lot of people are agreement on this.

But we also need to do something about the effed up process of the approval of drugs and vaccines for these deadly diseases.

I'm thinking specifically about the malaria vaccine that has been known to be effective since '96/'97, but which has been held up for extended testing trials by (IIRC) the British drug regulators, who again put a hold on it this spring because it might not be entirely effective in newborn infants.

Meanwhile two million children are dying every year from malaria. This is a really, really, really, screwed up situation, and we have an ethical obligation to do what we can to put an end to these processes.

Even if the latest delay is "only" three months, that's a half million kids or so. It's unconscionable how poor the risk management analysis is - the perfect can be the very, very deadly enemy of the good. And so can drug-agency bureaucrats.

Comment Re:Employers don't want employees who LOOK lazy. (Score 2) 133

I personally got in it because I like the idea of solving problems, rather than taking care of them for a short while.

Just don't mistake any of the trades for not being problem-solving professions. Laying out a plumbing stack, electrical plan, etc. and making it work seamlessly (err... perfectly), or welding together a skyscraper are very valid and worthy problem solving engagements. Same with shoeing a horse from rods of iron. You just get to move more in these jobs.

I'd love to hear from somebody who feels that writing a finance report module is more worthy an endeavour than building a house for a family. I'm not even confident that it could be proven to be a better productivity enhancer on a macro level as your report module will be thrown away in a few years, but that house will be there for a century.

Comment Re:Even Better idea... (Score 1) 248

End every punishment doled out by the government without a trial by jury.

Hey, but 93% of prosecutions end in plea bargains; we could not have nearly so many codified crimes and extensive prison systems if every person received a trial by a jury of his peers!

You monster - those prison guards have families to feed!

Comment Re:This Just In! (Score 1) 111

Because you can't have the government competing with them in an area that they might, someday, begin to consider serving.

Yeah, so ... don't let them hear this too loudly ... one way to get Comcast into a town (where that's the only neighboring monopoly) is to lay out plans on paper to have a market competitor build out a WISP to serve the town. It doesn't even have to be a great-coverage plan and you don't have to have affordable backhaul, but have some public hearings and make sure the papers cover it thoroughly - Comcast will be along shortly to talk to the town administrators about pulling cable, on their dime.

I've even seen this happen in sequence, from town to town.

Comment Re:Jail them for contempt (Score 1) 248

It's long past time that federal judges start jailing these bureaucrats for contempt for not answering simple questions about the no-fly list.

Your mistake is assuming that the judges are interested in rule of law and justice, rather than perpetuation of the power of the State, and by extension their cushy jobs, pensions, and really nice cars and houses. When the first excuses the latter, you'll find synchronicity, but not by the converse. Otherwise a simple constitutional challenge would not be thrown out in deference to statute in 99.3% of cases.

You're probably thinking of Jedi, not Federal Judges. *Big* difference (and this is why we can't have nice things).

Comment Re:No-Fly List, TSA, nudeo scanners. it's all thea (Score 1) 248

Billions spent, law abiding people treated like criminals without due process

And where exactly do you think it's spelled out plainly that the government may not deprive you of liberty without due process of law?

Is there something relevant in 2014 that says this? And by relevant, I mean something that the People are willing to fight to protect?

Comment Re:Crowding Out Effect (Score 1) 111

The truth is that infrastructure just isn't that conducive to competition.

Heh, just ten years ago I heard people saying that - shortly before Comcast offered phone service and before Verizon offered TV service. Both cable TV and telephone were "natural monopolies" before they weren't. To offer that Verizon had to replace their entire cable plant and Comcast had to replace much of it. What they didn't have to do was go through an extremely expensive political and regulatory process to get access to pole space (in the "public right of way").

Who'd want 3 different water/sewer systems connected to their house?

When the first two are charging $1000/mo for water and the third offers it for $50 a month, then the cost of laying the new piping can be amortized over a short enough time period that either customers or investors are willing to put up the money for the time-value return of the subscribers' rates.

It's exactly the same calculation for anything anybody calls a 'natural monopoly'. Absent an interfering government, the money flows to the best service provider.

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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