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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

15 March - Blogpicks + Blogs I'm Following

Marine Week Boston, 2010: Bell-Boeing MV-22B O...Image by Chris Devers via Flickr

 

Level-Headed Nuclear Crisis Round-Up

 

Debunking Theories of a Terrorist Power Grab

A Penn State power-system expert cites laws of physics to pull the plug on worries that a terrorist attack on a minor substation could bring down the entire U.S. electric grid.

An Internet Revolution ? At Least in Signs

 boston.com

Drug experiment

What happens when an entire country legalizes drug use?

Faced with both a public health crisis and a public relations disaster, Portugal’s elected officials took a bold step. They decided to decriminalize the possession of all illicit drugs — from marijuana to heroin — but continue to impose criminal sanctions on distribution and trafficking. The goal: easing the burden on the nation’s criminal justice system and improving the people’s overall health by treating addiction as an illness, not a crime.

New research, published in the British Journal of Criminology, documents just how much things have changed in Portugal. Coauthors Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and Alex Stevens report a 63 percent increase in the number of Portuguese drug users in treatment and, shortly after the reforms took hold, a 499 percent increase in the amount of drugs seized — indications, the authors argue, that police officers, freed up from focusing on small-time possession, have been able to target big-time traffickers while drug addicts, no longer in danger of going to prison, have been able to get the help they need.

 

My Lai Archives 

The more I learn about it, the worse the whole event seems.

( That sounds about right. )

 

Locus Online   Latest SF&F News


SF Signal


( Gary Farber is responsible for SF  links harkening back to a youth spent in dreamland. His notes on  a Fritz Leiber fest reminded me of Fafnir and the Grey Mouser. He's helping to hold down the fort at his foster bloghome - after his Amygdala - Obsidian Wings.

And the invasion of Libya might as well be the topic under discussion there under the deep premise - if we can, we should. )

Tell Me How This Ends

There has been an increasing chorus of voices urging the US (acting with its allies in NATO, the UN or in tandem with some ad hoc coalition of the willing) to impose a no-fly zone over Libyan airspace, with lawmakers from both parties, as well as foreign leaders, making appeals to implement some variation of such a policy in recent days.
To some extent, this impulse is understandable given the increasingly violent clashes in Libya, with government forces making gains on rebel positions and showing a willingness to use indiscriminate force in populated areas.
On the other hand, when pondering the involvement of US forces, first and foremost, elected leaders must consider whether such an intervention is in our national interest, and, if so, what can realistically be accomplished and at what costs.  Along those lines, it is essential to establish what the objective of the intervention would be and what future actions will be necessitated/spurred on by the initial decision to intervene militarily. To paraphrase General Petraeus, "Tell me how this ends."

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