Letters to the Editor

• ondelette

  [Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Thalidomide was banned in 1962. It is not made or sold in the United States. There has been talk recently of lifting the ban, but only on people for whom there is absolutely no chance of pregnancy. Strychnine is not legal as a drug, you can go to jail for selling it in that form. Plenty of people went to prison for selling it in past years, usually claiming it was LSD.

  Poisoning people is indeed a crime. I did know that.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_urban_legends

  [aside: no bucky1 I don't think I'm a kind daddy who knows best. I think trained medical personnel who are qualified to write prescriptions, together with the whole schedule/prescription method of dispensing drugs, is a good idea, and can be used effectively to make drugs safe or safer. I am an opponent of The War On Drugs, just not in your camp.]

  Iatrogenic mishap is one of the leading causes of death in the USA and physicians have the highest rate of addiction of any profession.

  The global warming statistics are a combination of what happens when the glaciers melt (they form the water source for such bread baskets as the Kilimanjaro watershed, the Gangetic plain, most European farming, the California Central Valley, and others), and what happens if the number of Rayleigh-Benard cells changes, causing the weather patterns that water non glacially fed areas to move to other areas.

  When other areas get water then those areas will be farmed.

  Farming in arid California is not a very good idea anyway, salinity is poisoning the soil.

  It's an easier estimate to get if you just consider that the 1 billion people currently without adequate water and the 2 billion without potable water just lose what they have, as a way to get a back of the envelope. The regions are slightly different in the latter estimate, with the Sahel being a prime area involved, and regions of China which undergo periodic drought.

  We are under level four drought conditions where I live, no outside water use at all and a penalty being assessed if you do not cut your water use by ten percent.

  And yet, development continues apace.

  The Rayleigh-Benard cell problem is one I've been personally worrying about since the 1980's. So I would guess it qualified as something I think is a major problem. Do I think global warming has a solution? I've been somewhat active in trying to get people to consider solutions they so far haven't considered. I have very little hope on it, but believe it is worth trying anyway.

  Just as I think there is very little hope in ending the drug war and yet I keep trying anyway.

  You must admit, there are far more people in the USA discussing global warming than there are the drug war.

  I don't necessarily think your problem, the drug war and the prisons, is trivial or not worth worrying about. I just don't think it is the only one, and since I do think global warming is cataclysmic --as in the end of the world as we know it--, it's best not to ask me for superlatives unless you want to hear about it.

  I don't think I have ever even implied that the drug war is the only one we face, just that it is a very important one and one that is basic to freedom.

  On a more local level, last week the most important issue for me was Pakistan and I'm sure most people on this board knew it. I apologize if I went too far with it. I had friends kinda pinned down there. So I'm not a laser beam. But I guess I just don't get to the point where I accuse others of things because they don't think it's important. I did, on the other hand, accuse people who thought all drugs should be available to all, of not being concerned with the deaths and emergencies that would create. I took a lot of thrashing for that, maybe I should have, I was quite harsh.

  I wasn't one giving you a hard time about Pakistan, I do think it is an important situation there but the US has very little influence there and what influence we do have more often than not leads to blowback.

  On supporting presidential candidates I'm actually mostly lurking. I have to make up my mind by February, but if the past is any guide, it may already be technically over before we vote in my state. It's the most populous state in the Union, but usually the election is over in the media before our polls have closed.

  I don't have to worry about who I vote for, my state will vote Republican. Think Saxby Chambliss and Max Cleland. If either Obama or Clinton get the nomination the knuckledraggers will be out in droves.

  Permalink Sunday, January 6, 2008 03:59 PM

• RMP

  [Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Is there anything we can do to help these people who we made homeless and countryless?

  I'm about as obsessive on craigslist as I am about the drug war. I constantly see people in dire straits begging for help.

  It breaks my heart to read those pleas and not be able to do anything for them.

  Yes, I have great sympathy for the Iraqis we made homeless as well as those we made dead. There is a great deal of need here in this country as well though.

  If we will not help our own, do you really think there will be any help for the Iraqis?

  We spend trillions do destroy and kill.. To build and help, not so much.

  Permalink Sunday, January 6, 2008 04:17 PM