Author: Simon

I found this at Sign The Petition. The url seems to jump around so you may have to do a search on a text phrase to find the original. In addition I’m posting the whole thing. With links. ============== Criminal Justice Petition: Give Texas Prisoners Three Meals a Day | Change.org The Texas Department of…

H/T Conservatives4Palin

Eric has been repeating the Hillary Clinton bit about why we can’t end the Drug War. “because there’s just too much money in it.“ Which brings to mind and old post of mine from February of 2005 that hasn’t seen the light of day here. So here it is. ===== This came out about 16…

‘Dismissing addictions as “bad habits” or “self-destructive behaviour” comfortably hides their functionality in the life of the addict.’ Vincent Felitti , MD Physician and Researcher I have been saying this for years. Nice to see a professional who has come to a similar conclusion. H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

My latest article on the revival of crystal radios can be read at Solid State Radio. It is a treasure trove of links and nostalgia for those interested in crystal radios. Cross Posted at Power and Control

I was looking around for some electronics information and got this amusing 404 notice. Cross Posted at Power and Control

My friend Karridine has some news from Thailand ====================================== Friends, Don’t misunderstand, the Thais as a nation do NOT celebrate Thanksgiving Day, but as individuals they certainly are thankful and are showing gratitude for the several-hundred dollars in donations that came through this week. (BkkFloodHelp(at)Gmail.com) Keep it up, just a week or two more, and…

Commenter Frank alerted me to this story about a man being tased by police for riding his bicycle on a public road but giving insufficient deference to authority. There may have been a reason for that. “A 61-year-old Halifax County [North Carolina, U.S.] man died Tuesday, a day after police shocked him with a stun…

I don’t know about mixing but burning definitely seems to be a possibility.

Evidently the merest twitch around police is grounds for immediate execution. And just for you geographically challenged (like me) East Point is in Georgia. Here is the story. Dwight Person, 54, was shot Thursday afternoon when, according to police, he made a threatening gesture at a female officer “that put her in fear of her…

I was following a track back to Frank‘s Trifonov and came across this post on High IQ Kids More Likely To Use Drugs. I found an interesting turn of phrase explaining such “evidence” there. I’d chalk it up to hushing the internal carousal that’s still spinning like a mad, cackling bastard at two in the…

My friend Karridine has a new update from Bangkok. He has some news on what he has been doing with the money you have sent. Send him some more. BkkFloodHelp(at)Gmail-dot-com ====================== Another week, another million cubic meters pass over the sandbags and around the retainer walls, showing the people of Bangkok that SOME areas get…

Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log has more. An unnamed source on the OPERA team told ScienceInsider that the controversy over the faster-than-light findings was exhausting. “Everyone should be convinced that the result is real, and they are not,” the source was quoted as saying. Other researchers, including physicists with the MINOS experiment at Fermilab, are working…

In my haste to get this up I totally forgot to mention that commenter Frank wrote this and I did some very minor stuff like making the links work and embedding the videos. ==== A wonderful thing happened this past May in Tel Aviv, Israel. In a tiny country beseiged by enemies and former allies,…

Libertarians/liberals have a utopian view of foreign policy. Forgetting that the leadership of most countries could be compared unfavorably to outlaw motorcycle gangs.

The Department Of Health and Human Services (it has very little to do with health and is into denying services) has denied permission for an FDA approved study of cannabis for treating PTSD. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has blocked a pilot study to examine the benefits of marijuana for veterans…

You can watch the full video here. About 5 minutes in to the video there is a discussion about society and mind altering substances. Every society has them except for Eskimos. Only one or two though with the rest frowned upon or actively discouraged. There is no universal agreement on which two mind altering substances…

I have an article up at ECN wondering how can the Smart Grid be secure? And in case you missed it they had a very nice bit up for Veterans Day. Cross Posted at Power and Control

I’m reading a very interesting article about how Darwin better informs economics than Adam Smith. It goes heavily into “keeping up with the Joneses” or relative economic position and why it matters. For one, you can not get your kids into the best schools unless you live in the best neighborhoods. That costs a lot…

I’d use a different word for the title but this is a semi-reputable blog. But the word I used is pertinent. A guy has a theory. The theory is that falling cocaine prices led to a drop in the murder rate. But despite drug busts and stricter regulations, cocaine prices kept declining. In fact, prices…