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Cziltang wanders the trackless wastes in search of truth, beauty and personal enlightenment. He had tried to be self-sufficient, growing his own ideas, but they withered and died in the great intellectual drought that gripped the land in his youth. One day, as he gazed at the parched landscape around him, he realized that somewhere there must be ideas growing. Somewhere, rational discourse must still survive. Since that day, he has searched for a mythical land of fields and forests of living ideas. Now and again he finds a thought or two in the rubble of an occasional deserted outpost of civilization. Its a hard way to live and its not much of a life, but that's just how it is, out here in the Ratlands |
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City, Not Fosse
link As a fan of English Football, I just can't help mentioning here that over the weekend, fans of the Leicester City Football Club turned down an opportunity to change the team name back to Leicester Fosse, the original name of the team from 1884 to 1919. I was kind of hoping for Fosse, I like that sort of thing. But I don't live in Leicester City and wouldn't be shelling out the pounds for new kit.by Cziltang Posted: Tuesday, February 25 2003 07:13:06 PM
U.S. Says It Has Cut Off Supplies of Drug Paraphernalia
link If we can't stop drugs, lets take away all the bongs??? Wow, I'll bet drug users all over the country are flushing their stash down the toilet now that they can't get any paraphernalia. Seriously, if I hadn't seen this in the NYT, I would have sworn it was a joke plant from the Onion or something. I wonder what it cost to investigate and arrest these 55 people. I wonder how many people won't be doing drugs anymore due to this set of raids. I wonder how many people wouldn't have done drugs anymore if the money had been spent on effective treatment programs... Federal officials said the raids had yielded several tons worth of drug paraphernalia used both by suppliers to help produce drugs for resale and by users to conceal drugs. Investigators said the items - which included drug pipes hidden in school highlighters, soft-drinks cans and lipstick cases - would sell for tens of millions of dollars on the open market. OK, maybe the processing equipment, but if there are any half-bright stoners (no pun intended... well, maybe a little...) out there who can't make a pipe out of a soft-drink can and have to have a specialty pipe hidden in a soft-drink can, they've probably already been arrested for aggravated stupidity. Don't get me wrong. I'm not making a pro-paraphernalia statement. I just think my tax dollars could be better spent going after the drugs and not the pipes. Or better yet, since we've been pursuing supply-reduction for decades with no noticeable results other than filling up our prisons, maybe an all-out demand-reduction strategy? Pour a significant portion of the money we now spend on our attempts to eliminate drugs from the country into effective treatment programs? Just a thought. (Truth-in-advertising statement: As mentioned previously, whenever I make statements like this I always try to point out that one of my job functions is to run a treatment program for felons. Feel free to make any inferences about bias on my part that you feel appropriate.) Update: I wish I had seen the AP version of this story before I wrote this. Oliver Willis has an interesting take on the story. by Cziltang Posted: Monday, February 24 2003 07:18:28 PM |
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