- Ceremony on the 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk operation.
- P.J. O’Rourke suggests a new way to make newspapers relevant: pre-obituaries.
- Federal Tories increase their lead over the Liberals. But don’t expect an election call: they’re back to the same margin that delivered a minority last election.
- That “crazy, hateful, fringe lunatic Ron Paul voted” to eliminate the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in the US armed forces.
- Who’s afraid of cannabis? The Taliban.
May 29, 2010
Random links
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May 27, 2010
Canada’s positive experience of US Prohibition
I knew that individual Canadians did well out of supplying booze to thirsty Americans during the period of Prohibition, but I didn’t realize how well:
. . . Prohibition — perhaps the maddest of mad American dreams [NR: in a dead heat with the current War on Drugs, I think] — did pretty well by our nation from 1920 to 1933. As American writer Daniel Okrent points out in his fine social history of the era, Last Call, the rivers of Canadian booze that flowed south enriched not only the Bronfman liquor empire, but our federal government. Canadians did make and smuggle illegal liquor, evading both Canadian taxes and American law, but we also made millions of litres of the legal, taxed stuff, the ultimate destination of which was of no concern to Ottawa. The amount of alcohol subject to excise tax — most of which went south one way or another — went from 36,000 litres in 1920 to five million 10 years later, and the excise tax on it rose to a fifth of federal revenue, twice as much as income tax.
Few in Canada had the slightest inclination to aid the American government in cracking down on alcohol use. When a U.S. Coast Guard cutter in pursuit of a Lake Erie rum-runner ran aground near Port Colborne, Ont., locals looted the vessel, then filled its engines with sand. About the only Canadians Okrent could unearth who thought the Dominion should help Uncle Sam seal his border were those making a fortune selling alcohol to American visitors. One way or another, most Canadians agreed with the smug satisfaction of CNR president Sir Henry Thornton, whose railway was growing fat off liquor tourism: “The dryer the U.S. is,” opined Sir Henry, “the better it will be for us.”
If there was an upside to what was known — at first, without a trace of irony — as “The Noble Experiment” in the U.S. itself, Okrent is hard-pressed to find it. America had always been awash in alcohol. (Johnny Appleseed’s fruit was inedible, but Americans still embraced his trees — virtually every homestead kept a barrel of hard cider by the door for visitors.) During the sodden 19th century, adult Americans downed 27 litres of pure alcohol each annually. That kind of demand wasn’t going to disappear no matter what the law said.
And yet the lesson has been forgotten. When drug prohibition finally comes to an end, historians will have a field day drawing the obvious comparison between the War on Drugs and the “Noble Experiment”. The theses practically write themselves . . .
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May 21, 2010
More developments in the NFL “StarCaps” case
Of interest to Minnesota Vikings fans, the NFL having won the last round, Kevin and Pat Williams managed to get the court to rule in favour of continuing the injunction:
Pat Williams and Kevin Williams are likely going to be available for most or all of the 2010 season after being granted an extension to the temporary injunction granted in an 11-page opinion from Hennepin County District Court Judge Gary Larson this morning.
In his decision, Larson said that the Williamses had “satisfied the standard” for proving that their suspensions should be blocked during the appeals process. In short, what the decision appears to show is that the Williamses can appeal the case to the Minnesota Court of Appeals and, even if they lose at that level, would have the chance to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Given the time that having cases filed and heard at both levels typically take several months, it appears at face value that there is little chance both appeals would be heard during the 2010 season
Of even greater interest is the commentary from the presiding judge, which is quite in line with my own feelings on the matter:
“(The NFL) knew StarCaps contained Bumetanide, that players were ingesting Bumetanide, that Bumetanide was dangerous and withheld information about StarCaps, knowing that players would suffer as a result. (The NFL) created a trap that it knew would result in violations of the program.”
[. . .]
“(The NFL) could have easily avoided this very situation by informing players or teams what it already knew — that StarCaps contained a hidden, dangerous substance. (The NFL) knew that many players were already inadvertently ingesting Bumetanide and continued to the place the health, safety and welfare of its players in jeopardy, so that (NFL General Counsel) Adolpho Birch could play a game of ‘gotcha.’ The league clearly allowed a half dozen other players to use Bumetanide without punishment.”
If the ingredient had been listed on the label, or if the NFL had informed players that the ingredient was in the product, the NFL would be quite correct in trying to suspend these players. Because it was not, and they did not, the NFL should go pound sand.
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May 19, 2010
Haute stoner cuisine
There are so many restaurants now that some of them can even specialize to serve tiny demographics . . . like “restaurants created specially for the tastes of the slightly stoned, slightly drunk chef after work.”
Even preschool teachers unwind with a round of drinks now and then. But in professional kitchens, where the hours are long, the pace intense and the goal is to deliver pleasure, the need to blow off steam has long involved substances that are mind-altering and, often enough, illegal.
“Everybody smokes dope after work,” said Anthony Bourdain, the author and chef who made his name chronicling drugs and debauchery in professional kitchens. “People you would never imagine.”
So while it should not come as a surprise that some chefs get high, it’s less often noted that drug use in the kitchen can change the experience in the dining room.
In the 1980s, cocaine helped fuel the frenetic open kitchens and boisterous dining rooms that were the incubators of celebrity chef culture. Today, a small but influential band of cooks says both their chin-dripping, carbohydrate-heavy food and the accessible, feel-good mood in their dining rooms are influenced by the kind of herb that can get people arrested.
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May 17, 2010
QotD: Standing up for freedom
The Drug Wars in general, and the case of Marc Emery in particular, are a litmus test for those who say they believe in freedom. Everyone is for freedom, their own. It’s everyone else’s that makes them uncomfortable. It is easy to be for low taxes and light government regulation, when you run a business. It is easy to be for freedom of speech, when your livelihood depends on your keypad and fingers. It is easy enough to feel sympathetic for those whose freedom is taken away, when they are like you, when you can see yourself in their position. There, but by grace, go I. But this is not advocacy of freedom. It is nothing more than special pleading. The businessman who demands low taxes, and government subsidies, is not for freedom. The journalist who cries out when some powerful politician tries to silence him, then turns around and supports the Human Rights Tribunals, is not for freedom. The ordinary citizen, who is also the member of a minority ethnic group, who becomes indignant when the rights of his group are threatened, but shrugs his shoulders when those of other groups are trampled upon, he is not for freedom.
Publius, “Martyr to Freedom”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2010-05-17
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May 13, 2010
To the drug warriors, this isn’t a bug: it’s a feature
Jacob Sullum urges against the adoption of DUID (driving under the influence of drugs) laws:
Under these laws, a driver who has marijuana metabolites in his urine is automatically considered impaired, even though he probably isn’t. Because marijuana metabolites can be detected in urine long after the drug’s effects have worn off (up to two weeks for occasional users, months for frequent users), a “zero tolerance” DUID standard punishes pot smokers who have not harmed or endangered anyone. It is a way of imposing an extra punishment for marijuana use under the guise of traffic safety, sending unimpaired drivers to jail as public menaces because they smoked pot days or weeks before getting behind the wheel. It’s like arresting someone for drunk driving on a Wednesday because he drank a few beers the previous Saturday. And it is completely unnecessary, since a standard based on THC in the blood (analogous to the standard for DUI) would be a much better indicator of impairment.
All this is sensible, logical, and totally irrelevant to the mentality of most “drug warriors”: they love the idea of being able to punish drug users out of proportion to any harm they cause (or, in the vast majority of THC-intoxicated users, total lack of harm to the public).
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May 2, 2010
Latest trick to play on your drinking buddies
Roofies are so passé. Now it’s the Girlifier you need to watch for:
German boffins say they have developed a miracle nasal spray which can make men into big girls’ blouses.
Dr René Hurlemann of Bonn Uni’s Klinik für Psychiatrie, working with colleagues in Germany, Arizona and Blighty, has just announced successful tests of the new girlification spray — whose active ingredient is the hormone oxytocin.
[. . .]
Control-group German men who had been given a placebo rather than the soppiness compound reacted normally, either unemotionally or with mild discomfort. But the hapless subjects who had been given the drug showed “significantly higher emotional empathy levels”, according to Hurlemann.
“The males under test achieved levels [of emotion] which would normally only be expected in women,” says a statement from Bonn University, indicating that they had cooed or even blubbed at the sight of the affecting images.
H/T to Chris Taylor who said understated “No good can come of this”.
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April 12, 2010
What is “the difference between the current system and slavery”?
The Whited Sepulchre looks at a new book by Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Age Of Colorblindness.
We have more prisoners than any other nation — 25% of the world’s total, despite having only 6% of the world’s population. According to the Michelle Alexander interview, if we were to go back to the 1970’s-era incarceration rates, we would have to release 4 out of 5 prisoners currently doing time.
We have so many prisoners that we’re having to privatize the cages that we’re using to lock up black kids. Ordinarily, Big Gubmint likes to run everything, but this particular growth industry is beyond them. Marijuana prohibition creates tens of thousands of jobs, public and private.
[. . .]
When the prisoners are released, many of them have to pay for part of the cost of their incarceration. They often have to pay for their own parole officers, counseling sessions, etc. and after talking to ex-cons for about 10 years, I’m of the opinion that most of these counselors couldn’t counsel a 3-year-old to go the potty.
If they fail to make these payments, they’re either locked up again, or their paychecks are garnished. After all, the private prison system has to be paid, right? [. . .] Now that you have all that info, can you explain the difference between the current system and slavery?
Do you understand why the prison lobby, in its public and private form, fights so hard to preserve the system?
April 1, 2010
Also, mandatory sobriety checks for judges, legislators
The Law Society of Upper Canada is planning to do mandatory random drug testing on law students starting this fall:
The move comes in response to requests made by faculty leaders, said Mahamad Accord, director of public relations at the regulatory body. “Why should we accept a lower standard for professional athletes than we do for society’s guardians of the truth?”
Although some professors of law view the move as intruding too far into the personal lives of lawyers and students, others applaud the measure.
“Lawyers play an essential role in society and the impact of drug-addicted lawyers is demonstrable and negative,” according to Professor Shubert at Osgoode Hall. “These changes are long overdue and will have a tangible benefit for legal aid recipients.”
But I’m exaggerating in the title to the post. The guidelines don’t go that far . . . but they probably should. I suspect there’s at least the same level of drug use and alcohol abuse in those selected groups as there is in the general population, even if their chances of detection (and judicial punishment) is demonstrably much lower than “ordinary people”.
March 22, 2010
QotD: American drug warriors will fight to the last Mexican civilian
The astonishing argument from U.S. drug warriors to the violence in Juárez to this point has been: the bloodshed means we’re winning. Or put another way, “If thousands of Mexican need to die to keep Americans from getting high, by golly I, American drug war official, am willing to step up and make that sacrifice.” Now that a few Americans have been killed too, that argument will get more difficult to make.
But as O’Grady writes, don’t expect that to lead to any common sense changes in policy. To this point, the Obama administration and the leadership in Congress have made it clear that the only acceptable drug policy in Mexico is more militarization, more force, and more American funding and weapons with which to do it. If thousands more Mexicans have to die on the front lines so America’s politicians can make it marginally more difficult for Americans to ingest mind-altering substances, so be it.
Radley Balko, “Mary O’Grady on Mexico’s Drug War”, The Agitator, 2010-03-22
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March 18, 2010
What if they could make smoking safer?
My bet would be that the anti-smoking campaigners would still be as stridently opposed to smokers and their habit even if there were no health risks:
Australian boffins have developed a treatment which allows mice to smoke cigarettes without the usual negative health consequences. The method could potentially allow gasper-loving humans to sidestep some of the self-destructive results of their habit.
The key to the business, according to lead cig-boffin Ross Vlahos, is Granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), an agent released by the lungs when they are exposed to cigarette smoke. GM-CSF causes inflammatory leukocytes to activate in the lungs, which then leads to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other complaints such as “oxidative stress, emphysema, small airway fibrosis, mucus hypersecretion and progressive airflow limitation”.
Vlahos and his team at Melbourne uni decided to tackle this by the use of a blocking agent known as “anti GM-CSF”. As called for by tradition, they got hold of a group of mice and dosed half of them with the miracle smoko-proofing drug, and left the others alone. Then all the mice were given “the equivalent of nine cigarettes of smoke each day for four days”.
At the end of the test every single mouse was dead. However, this was simply because the boffins had killed them in order to examine their lungs. According to the mouse autopsies, the ones treated with “anti GM-CSF” were in much better nick than the others.
Of course, “safer” is not “safe”. This research implies that human smokers could benefit from use of this drug or similar formulations, but it doesn’t address all the health risks of smoking (chances of developing cancer appear to be the same, for example).
A rational reader would assume that this new research would be welcomed, but my belief is that anti-smoking groups will condemn it for “encouraging smokers” and call for the research to be discontinued. After all, this is a moral rather than a scientific campaign for many activists.
Full disclosure: I’m not a smoker, and never have been. I’m not particularly fond of being in smoke-filled rooms, but I do think the crusade against smoking long ago passed the health advocacy point and became mostly moralizing (see this for example).
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January 19, 2010
The evolution of music
In spite of the portentious title, this is just an excuse to post an old James Lileks quote from a few years back talking about the difference between popular music of the early 20th century with the worst excesses of the 60’s (the “60’s” being defined for convenience as running from about 1965-1974):
Every note is simple and obvious but it still seems remarkable that no one had thought to arrange them in that particular order. It’s the countertheme, to invent a musical term, that gives it spice, and the middle section has a lovely expansive quality that makes you think of Frank Sinatra peeing off a balcony in Vegas. And of course the beat: bum / bum / bum / bumbum bum / bum / bum / bum / bumbum bum.
The name of the show was a callback to an old song from the early part of the 20th century — “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.” I’ve only heard the first few bars, sung by Bugs Bunny with appropriate alterations: “I dream of Jeannie, she’s a light brown hare.” Old as the song was, audiences in the forties got the joke, just as people today recognize a reference to a song from the 60s.
The difference, of course, is that the 60s aren’t seen as The Past; the 60s are a Timeless Vault of Cultural Touchstones, the apotheosis of Western Civ. Sigh. Well. One of the future Diners will take place in the 60s — don’t ask why, it’ll be explained — and I will use many of the gutbustingly dreadful “psychedelic” records I have collected. It’s obvious from Note One that everyone involved in the effort had so much THC in their system you could dry-cure their phlegm and get a buzz off the resin, but instead of having the loose happy ho-di-hi-dee-ho cheer of a Cab Calloway reefer number, the songs are soaked with Art and Importance and Meaning. You can imagine the band members sitting down to hash out (sorry) the overarching themes of the album, how it should like start with Total Chaos man because those are the times in which we live with like war from the sky, okay, and then we’ll have flutes because flutes are peaceful like doves and my old lady can play that part because she like studied flute, man, in high school. The lyrics are all the same: AND THE KING OF QUEENS SAID TO THE EARTH THE HEIROPHANT SHALL NOW GIVE BIRTH / THE HOODED PRIESTS IN CHAMBERED LAIRS LEERED DOWN UPON THE LADIES FAIR / NEWWWW DAAAAY DAWNNNING!
Five years later it was obsolete. The Jeannie theme, however, will make toes tap in 2476 AD.
There’s more than enough evidence to support James in this notion . . . pick up a random 60’s Psychedelic album and this is what the lyrics are like.
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December 14, 2009
This is interesting . . .
Charles Stross links to this story:
Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor
Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutionsAntonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.
This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. “In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor,” he said.
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November 9, 2009
Coffee and the placebo effect
Neuroskeptic reports on some interesting results from a coffee study:
The authors took 60 coffee-loving volunteers and gave them either placebo decaffeinated coffee, or coffee containing 280 mg caffeine. That’s quite a lot, roughly equivalent to three normal cups. 30 minutes later, they attempted a difficult button-pressing task requiring concentration and sustained effort, plus a task involving mashing buttons as fast as possible for a minute.
The catch was that the experimenters lied to the volunteers. Everyone was told that they were getting real coffee. Half of them were told that the coffee would enhance their performance on the tasks, while the other half were told it would impair it. If the placebo effect was at work, these misleading instructions should have affected how the volunteers felt and acted.
Several interesting things happened. First, the caffeine enhanced performance on the cognitive tasks — it wasn’t just a placebo effect. Bear in mind, though, that these people were all regular coffee drinkers who hadn’t drunk any caffeine that day. The benefit could have been a reversal of caffeine withdrawl symptoms.
H/T to Tyler Cowen for the link.
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November 6, 2009
Those wild and crazy guys . . . in the CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has many purposes, but perhaps its most popular function is to provide some underpinning to the imaginings of conspiracy theorists worldwide. But, according to History House, the CIA was also a pretty weird operation in non-conspiracy terms, too:
[Project MK-ULTRA was] conceived by Richard Helms of the Clandestine Services Department (yes, the CIA actually gives its departments silly names like that), it went beyond the construction of mere truth serums and ventured into disinformation, induction of temporary insanity, and other chemically-aided states. The director of MK-ULTRA, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, figured LSD’s potential as an interrogative agent paled in comparison to its capacity to publicly humiliate. Lee and Shlain note the CIA imagined a tripping public figure might be amusing, producing a memo that says giving acid “to high officials would be a relatively simple matter and could have a significant effect at key meetings, speeches, etc.” But Gottlieb knew that giving LSD to people in the lab was a lot different than just passing it out, and felt the department did not have an adequate grasp on its effects. So the entire operation tripped to learn what it was like, and, according to Lee and Shlain,
agreed among themselves to slip LSD into each other’s drinks. The target never knew when his turn would come, but as soon as the drug was ingested a … colleague would tell him so he could make the necessary preparations (which usually meant taking the rest of the day off). Initially the leaders of MK-ULTRA restricted the surprise acid tests to [their own] members, but when this phase had run its course they started dosing other Agency personnel who had never tripped before. Nearly everyone was fair game, and surprise acid trips became something of an occupational hazard among CIA operatives . . . The Office of Security felt that [MK-ULTRA] should have exercised better judgment in dealing with such a powerful and dangerous chemical. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when a Security informant got wind of a plan by a few [MK-ULTRA] jokers to put LSD in the punch served at the annual CIA Christmas office party … a Security memo writer… concluded indignantly and unequivocally that he did ‘not recommend testing in the Christmas punch bowls usually present at the Christmas office parties.’
The in-house testing phase now over, MK-ULTRA decided to use the drug surreptitiously in the street to gauge its effects. They contract-hired George Hunter White, a narcotics officer, to set up Operation Midnight Climax, according to Lee and Shlain, “in which drug-addicted prostitutes were hired to pick up men from local bars and bring them back to a CIA-financed bordello. Unknowing customers were treated to drinks laced with LSD while White sat on a portable toilet behind two-way mirrors, sipping martinis and watching every stoned and kinky moment.” Lee and Shlain go on to comment, “when [White] wasn’t operating a national security whorehouse,” White threw wild parties for his “narc buddies” with his ready supply of prostitutes and drugs. He sent vouchers for “unorthodox expenses” to Gottlieb, and later said, “I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?” In case one needs reminding, these claims are backed by recently unclassified information. Yes, Virginia, truth is stranger than fiction.
Emphasis in the original.
I have no idea what relationship this account has to the actual facts, but if the mainstream media can get away with running stories without fact-checking, then I certainly don’t feel guilty about this one.
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