Posts by BenWilson
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It would be nice to think that having shed Newman et al, Act could be the classical liberal party it always should have been.
I don't think that's possible whilst they persist in bundling social liberalism with free market economics. It's a demographic thing. If they dropped the addiction to that, and became the 'centrist liberal' as opposed to the 'rightist liberals', they could cast a much wider net, right into Green Party support.
But I doubt they ever will. Their economic policy is much dearer to them than their social policy. Because of the existing support base, to whom tax cuts is a mantra, and social liberalism merely bait for more supporters.
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History is still unfolding in Iraq. I still reserve my judgement on whether the intervention there was good.
Yes, in a thousand years, who will care?
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Yeah, logisticly they could do it no problem but they know darn well what would happen if they pulled out. Absolute civil war. Massive civillian deaths (much worse than now). And that would (will) be on their heads.
It's a possibility. It's also a possibility, which I don't see as any less likely, that the same scenario will happen when they do eventually pull out anyway. In the mean time, this state of 'Iraq on the verge of absolute civil war' continues for a lot longer. It becomes 'Civil war in slow motion'.
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The remarkable thing is the way the wingnut dead-enders eagerly hail such marginally-less-shit news as victory and vindication.
Yup, if the news continues in this pattern it can only get better - when Iraq is completely depopulated, and there is no one left to kill.
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It's interesting how analysis of Iraq's situation inevitably does micro comparisons of the changes from one month to the next in various stats. But for years the overall story has simply been shit. The micro analysis is a good way of losing track of the big picture, and any stat that goes the right way can suddenly be seen as good news.
Civilian death toll is down to 10 a day. Imagine if Australia (as an example of a nation of similar size) had a civilian death toll at all. Or was regularly discovering piles of headless corpses. You wouldn't be saying "Ah yes, but it was only 20 corpses - last time it was 21, so it's 5% better".
It's much like the war on drugs, where any look at the big picture shows a war lost decades ago. But if you focus on seizures and other nebulous statistics of success, then cool, progress is being made.
It's a trick used in management all the time. Once people get accustomed to shit news, then their expectations shift, and the ups and downs can be carefully seized on to achieve various ends (usually getting more money or avoiding work). The overall failure is forgotten. The bigger the failure the more easily it is forgotten - no company wants to believe that one of their earnest and well-meaning managers is losing them huge amounts of money, when they specifically hired him to reverse that trend.
Another trick that seems to have found it's way in is the making of mountains out of molehills. For instance, getting US troops out of Iraq. If you break that particular task down into the steps that will be actually followed, it sounds like a monstrous task. Of course there are millions of things to do to achieve it. But since armies are actually designed to be just up and moved around, and they were able to get themselves into Iraq in only a few months, it seems likely they could get out with similar ease. Especially since it sounds like they really really want to.
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Yes, post 9/11, even ageing hippies are terrorists. It hasn't gone quite as far as the War on Drugs yet though, at least our children aren't enemies of the state just yet.
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so we started on what was euphemistically called "leaf and tips"
Was it euphemism or the sad truth?
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Doesn't seem 10-20 times stronger to me. But it is a lot stronger. If I had to guess I'd say maybe 2-5 times stronger per volume than it was when I was a kid, and as a kid I was at the bottom end of the ripoff food chain. By the early 90s I'd say there's not much difference to now. I think the difference is mainly down to indoor cultivation of clones.
The statistics are clearly aimed at the older middle aged people who may think dope smoking is OK because they did it in the 60s. The idea is to make them think something different is happening now. But in practice, stoners from the 60s just smoked more to get the same high, and any damage to their brains and psychology is the same as today. Their lungs and their wallets may have suffered more.
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You'd only have to smoke (or otherwise consume) a 10th, or a 20th, as much weed to get baked as was once the case.
My memory of what kids could get in the 80s (when I was a kid) was that you needed a joint each to get a buzz on. Now you can happily share one with a few people. Depends though, on how tolerant you have become from habitual use. Everyone I know who uses pot doesn't smoke joints, they have it in small nuggets in some sort of pipe.
And yes, that does mean less total smoke passing through you, which is mostly better. It does also mean that overindulgence is easier. But the most likely outcome from that is sleep. Unless it's been laced with P that has miraculously escaped tamponized incarceration in someone's dirtpipe.
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I often thought it would be kinda neat to equip your car with a NOS system that has two buttons - one for the inlet manifold and one for the car interior. Until you get them mixed up when overtaking.
People who can afford to use NOS in their car probably can afford better highs!
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