The Forever War

Is it time to end the war on drugs?

There was a big article in The Wall Street Journal today, full of nonsense about the War On Drugs. This got me to wondering who are these people who support this war? I do a little digging and I find this quote on Quora, which links to an article on Harper's:

“You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” - John Ehrlichman, interviewed by Dan Baum

Now this thing, this War On Drugs, is so firmly entrenched in the global economy that I doubt anyone short of the messiah will be able to rescind it. Possibly if this country goes broke, the government might be persuaded to legalize drugs so they can tax them, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The government has been on the verge of going broke for years, but somehow it manages to keep schlepping along.

The War On Drugs brings us a whole raft of problems, but the biggest one by far is that a large segment of the population no longer trusts the government to do the right thing.

Floating Heads

1960s Norelco santa ad
"Floating heads, floating heads, . . .' I'm telling my son about the song in this old Norelco TV commercial. He doesn't believe me, so I go looking for it, and . . . bupkiss. Seems I am not the only one to remember it, but so far, no cigar. The ads I've seen look similar, Santa gliding over the snow on a sleigh made from the business end of a Norelco razor, and the tune sounds the same, but none of them use "floating heads" in the lyrics.

I tried to find someone at Norelco I could ask about this, but Norelco belongs to Philips these days and Philips, well, there is something wrong with Philips.

Bees and Neonicotinoids

Neonicotinoids: What We Know - OklahomaGardening
Detroit Steve sends us a couple of links:

I thought Slate was on the up and up,  I now wonder.
Nature article points out that all but Germany had declines.

A giant study costing zillions of dollars, but what exactly did it measure? I have no idea. I wonder if anyone else does.

Let me just say this about that:

• Bees are having problems. Of course, bees are wild animals and wild animals have all kinds of problems. Are their current problems worse than usual? Some people seem to think so.
• Neonicotinoids are new. The did not used to exist, at least I don't think they did. I got it in my head that this chemical was invented in a lab somewhere, but that might not be the case. It might be an extract from a common plant, or from a Peruvian sea slug's gall bladder, I have no idea.
• One thing I read said that 'if the chemical was applied according to directions, it would have no effect on bees'. Well, that's nice, but I somehow doubt whether everyone is following directions. I can easily imagine someone along the distribution chain getting it wrong by a factor of ten or even a hundred. Normally, I would consider this unlikely. Chemicals cost money, farming is a marginal business, so in order to minimize costs you don't want to use any more of that chemical than you need to. On the other hand, if you have a particular nasty problem, you might think it worthwhile to spend a little extra and increase the dose by maybe half or even double to be sure that it takes care of the problem. You don't want to have to come back and do it again, that costs more money, and any delay can mean more damage to the crop. Depending, of course, on just what you are spraying for.

Take those three together and my conclusion is that this new chemical is causing the problem with the bees and the new study is a smokescreen.

Lastly, the new stuff for controlling fleas on cats and dogs uses the same chemical and it's really expensive, like $20 a dose. It's also a little scary, but it seems to work and I ain't dead yet.

Lastly plus one, I looked for a picture and came up with the above video, which kind of slants it the other way. So it might be a case of the know-nothings hollering because that's all they can do. Previous posts here, here and, if you want more, here.

When is a bathroom not a bathroom?

When it's a WiFi connection. Jon F. Wilkins has the story (from 2013). It's all about where to shop and how retail businesses operate.

200 MPH Biplane

I followed a click-bait link to a WW2 aircraft identification quiz. You know, something that I have a passing interest in, and since it's click-bait, it should be easy. If I am lucky there might be something new-to-me in there and I will learn something. The test starts out being very easy. You don't even need to recognize the aircraft. If you know the markings used by the belligerents, and you recognize the manufacturer's names, the answer is obvious. Occasionally they will slip in one like the Seafire, which looks just like a Spitfire, but it's a multiple choice quiz and only one of the answers contains a British manufacturer, so the answer is easy even if you have never heard of a Seafire before.

Rogožarski IK-3

So I'm clicking along through this test and I notice that Rogožarski IK-3 is one of the answers. It's not the answer, but still the name is unusual enough that I go check it out. It was a Yugoslavian airplane developed during the 1930's. They build a dozen before the Nazi's showed up. That put an end to that. In the Wikipedia article there is a note that this aircraft's performance was similar to the Hawker Fury, but the picture shows a biplane and I'm thinking there must be some kind of mistake. No biplane was ever powerful enough to challenged a monoplane, was there?

Hawker Fury by Iain Wyllie

Well, yes, the Hawker Fury was able to hit 220 MPH. I would never have thought such a thing possible. When WW2 came along and things got serious all this piddling about with 200 MPH fighters came to an end.

Mercator Projection

Normal Mercator Projection

 I don't like the Mercator Projection. I much prefer my Pergielian projection, but I haven't written a program to display it. Meanwhile, Richard Morey has a web page where you can play with the Mercator Projection. The images here on this blog are just screen shots I took of Richard's page.

Mercator Projection Centered on the South Pole

Via Detroit Steve.

More about map projections here.

Crossing Lines

Crossing Lines cast
Yes, that's Donald Sutherland on the left.

We've been watching the Crossing Lines series on Netflix lately. It's entertaining though not particularly great, too much time spent on close ups, significant looks and emotional claptrap. It's kind of like a soap opera that way. But they do have some good looking women and plenty of action. And there is an undercurrent of fancy technology that gives my inner geek something to think about.

In the episode we watched last night, Hickman (William Fichtner) is interviewing a psychoanalyst who was taken hostage during a prison escape and he tells her he knows her book. She is surprised because, I mean, who reads books on psychoanalysis? Hickman replies that "Google makes us all look smarter" and that he only knows that she has written a book, he hasn't read it. Later she comments about his injured hand and echoes his phrase about Google. However, this trips her up because she thinks the criminal responsible for his injury is still on the loose, when he was actually apprehended a couple of months ago. This means that she was researching him before then, and the only reason she would do that was that she is was in on the planning of a series jewelry heists. You're going down, lady.

Hickman's injury occurred when he was shot in the hand. This kind of injury has all kinds of ramifications. It's the kind of thing that quickly gets forgotten by everyone else except the injured party and his friends and family. After all, all the news would report was the injury was not life threatening and that he is expected to recover. Well, he didn't die, and he didn't lose his hand, but his hand is still pretty messed up. It doesn't work very well, and since it's his dominate hand, it makes him clumsy at all kinds of ordinary things. It also makes using a semi-automatic pistol problematic because he can't rack the slide. There might be a way to do that one-handed, but this is TV, so I am going to let it slide (heh). It goes to show that even 'minor' injuries can really mess up your life.

Carrie-Anne Moss as Amanda Andrews and William Fichtner as Carlton Hickman

Hickman's injury also causes him continuing pain, bad enough that he is taking morphine. That sounded a little excessive to me, but nerves are funny things. They get messed up and they might decide to just keep screaming at you, even though whatever injury you had is long gone. I can relate being as I am still taking narcotics to deal with my toothache. The troublesome molar was removed yesterday so I should be on the mend, but my jaw still hurts.

Amanda, Hickman's New York girlfriend, tells him they are doing some amazing things with prosthetics these days, which is kind of odd, as his 'Justice League' teammate Arabela points out that he still has his hand. Cutting off your hand because it is painful seems like an extreme measure, but then I suppose it kind of depends on how much pain there is and how long it goes on, but surely there are other ways to control the pain. Besides, don't amputees sometimes experience phantom pain, pain in appendages that are no longer there?

Lara Rossi as Arabela Seeger

I was going to say that all this might be a setup for Hickman getting a prosthetic hand because in an earlier episode they were fighting crime at a cutting edge prosthetic manufacturing company, but then I realized that was The Accountant, not Crossing Lines.

One last thing, what's with William Fichtner's last name? I would expect it to be spelled Fitchner, that is with the T before the CH, not after. Google returns 3,100,000 results on Fichtner, but only 101,000 for Fichtner. Weird, man.