I've seen surprisingly little discussion of this: as of Thursday, Mexico has eliminated criminal prosecution for possession of "personal use" amounts of illegal drugs. Those caught with drugs in amounts under the limit will be encouraged to seek "treatment". (Treatment is supposedly mandatory for a third offense, though there are no penalties specified penalties for noncompliance.)

Under previous law, possession of any amount of drugs was punishable by stiff jail sentences, but there was leeway for addicts caught with smaller amounts. In practice, nobody was prosecuted and sentenced to jail for small-time possession, said Bernardo Espino del Castillo, the coordinator of state offices for the attorney general's office.

"We couldn't charge somebody who was in possession of a dose of a drug, there was no way ... because the person would claim they were an addict," he added.

...

In the past, police sometimes hauled suspects to police stations and demanded bribes, threatening long jail sentences if people did not pay.

"This is not legalization, this is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty ... for a practice that was already in place," Espino del Castillo said.

...

The maximum amount of marijuana considered to be for "personal use" under the new law is 5 grams — the equivalent of about four joints. The limit is a half gram for cocaine, the equivalent of about 4 "lines." For other drugs, the limits are 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams for methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams for LSD.

...

Mexico has emphasized the need to differentiate drug addicts and casual users from the violent traffickers whose turf battles have contributed to the deaths of more than 11,000 people during Calderon's term. In the face of growing domestic drug use, Mexico has increased its focus on prevention and drug treatment.

Sen. Pablo Gomez of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party praised the legislation: "This law achieves the decriminalization of drugs, and in exchange offers government recovery treatment for addicts."

I'm going to hope that the opening sentences of this Telegraph story about research into a genetic link between physical and emotional pain reflects the dullness of the reporter, not the opinion of the scientists:

Researchers have found a genetic link between physical pain and social rejection, which means that breaking up with a partner really can be painful.

I hope that the researchers are cluefull enough to understand that an experience of pain is real regardless of our understanding of genetic or neurological mechanisms. Any scientist who thinks that reductionist explanations validate or invalidate the existence of the phenomenon they are trying to explain, needs a good smack. I don't need a neurologist to tell me that getting dumped can be painful, I have my own direct experience, thank you very much. The physiological correlates are not the experience.

Anyway, the research itself is very interesting, especially the evidence that people who are more sensitive to physical pain are also sensitive to social rejection.

xkcd on the history of calculus. When I was in high school, my physics teacher and my calculus teacher had a bit of rivalry over who really invented calculus...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k

From March 23 2009: in a promotional stunt for a Belgian reality-TV program "In Search of Maria" "The Sound of Music", more than 200 dancers (with just two rehearsals!) put on this number from "The Sound of Music", in the Central Station of Antwerp. It's staged of course(!), but the passengers weren't in on it. Some discussion here.

Is health care a right? In his recent odious Wall Street Journal editorial, John Mackey argues that "A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America."

(Markey is co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc., and his Thatcher-quoting article promoting a "you're own your own, buddy" version of health care has spawned a boycott movement.)

Now, if Mr. Mackey had actually read the Constitution, he would have seen Amendment IX: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." I.e., the fact that a right is not enumerated, can not be used to argue that it does not exist.

There is, for example, no right to privacy mentioned in the Constitution. That does not mean that one does not exist.

And something may not be a "right", and yet might be expected as a basic government service. In cases like Warren v. District of Columbia and Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the courts have found that there is no right to a police response -- yet we expect tax-funded, government-provided cops to show up if we dial 911. There is no "right to food", but a government that does not deal with hunger and famine is going to at minimum have a lot of crime, and quite possibly political unrest -- hungry people are ready-made followers for radicals, and so we have food stamps and agricultural policy.

Warning: this may make you feel ill. In fact, it ought to.

From The American Chronicle, back in May when the House was debating legislation to expand the 1969 federal hate-crime law. The proposed "Matthew Shepard Act" would expand the law to include crimes motivated by gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

Now, there are some legitimate concerns about some hate-crime laws, "thought crime" and all that; I haven't read the details of this bill and don't know if I'd support all of it's provisions. But that's irrelevant to this:

While Matthew's mother, Judy Shepard looked on from above in the House gallery, [Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC)], who managed the floor for those opposed to the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, spoke saying, "The hate crimes bill that's called the Matthew Shepard Bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that the young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn't because he was gay. The bill was named for him … but it's really a hoax that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills."

Matthew Shepard, of course, was a young man who was tortured and murdered by two homophobic lunatics, and whose death brought national attention to gay-bashing and to hate crimes in general. The "it was a robbery gone bad" defense that the defense attempted at one point, was contradicted by the thug's own testimony. That someone can claim that this is some sort of a hoax, and not be instantly run out of town on a rail, is the most stomach-churning thing I've read this week -- and I've been reading a lot of politics this week, my friends.

I am not surprised that this insane bitch's position on health care reform is that "There are no Americans who don’t have healthcare", and that she's one of the GOP politicos spreading the "death panel" Big Lie.

Johann Hari, writing in The Independent (UK), on how the insanity of the contemporary GOP looks from the other side of the pond:

Something strange has happened in America in the nine months since Barack Obama was elected. It has best been summarised by the comedian Bill Maher: "The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital."

...

Since Obama's rise, the US right has been skipping frantically from one fantasy to another, like a person in the throes of a mental breakdown. It started when they claimed he was a secret Muslim, and – at the same time – that he was a member of a black nationalist church that hated white people. Then, once these arguments were rejected and Obama won, they began to argue that he was born in Kenya and secretly smuggled into the United States as a baby, and the Hawaiian authorities conspired to fake his US birth certificate. So he is ineligible to rule and the office of President should pass to... the Republican runner-up, John McCain.

These aren't fringe phenomena: a Research 200 poll found that a majority of Republicans and Southerners say Obama wasn't born in the US, or aren't sure. A steady steam of Republican congressmen have been jabbering that Obama has "questions to answer". No amount of hard evidence – here's his birth certificate, here's a picture of his mother heavily pregnant in Hawaii, here's the announcement of his birth in the local Hawaiian paper – can pierce this conviction.

...

You have to admire the audacity of the right. Here's what's actually happening. The US is the only major industrialised country that does not provide regular healthcare to all its citizens. Instead, they are required to provide for themselves – and 50 million people can't afford the insurance. As a result, 18,000 US citizens die every year needlessly, because they can't access the care they require. That's equivalent to six 9/11s, every year, year on year.

Joe Klien, in Time:

...How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?

I'm not going to try. I've written countless "Democrats in Disarray" stories over the years and been critical of the left on numerous issues in the past....

Back in 2004, when the Department of Homeland Security raised the terror alert level during the campaign season, czar Tom Ridge claimed, "We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security."

But, surprising no one who's been paying attention, it now comes out that the whole thing was intensely political: Ridge was pushed by Rumsfeld and Ashcroft to raise the security alert on the eve of the 2004 Presidential elections.

(Just in case fanning the flames of homophobia, and election fraud in Ohio --including a nonexistent terrorist threat made up by GOP election officials to keep reporters from monitoring the ballot coun -- weren't enough to ensure a Bush "victory", I suppose.)

Ridge refused, and resigned -- after the election. Rather then speak out when it could have made a difference, this cowardly sack of partisanship kept silent for five years.

I used to be disgusted. Now I'm just kind of numb.

I missed this lovely bit of dialog between Glenn Beck and Craig T. Nelson back in May, but it just came up on The Daily Show.

It's just so perfectly illustrative of the same sort of mindset that has 39% of Americans agreeing that the government should "stay out of Medicare".

For readers outside the U.S., or for fatally ignorant Americans, I should note that Medicare is a government program to provide medical care to senior citizens and the disabled. I'm guessing there's a large overlap between these folks, and the astounding 24% of Americans who think that Obama wasn't born in the U.S. -- including 6% who think he was born in Hawaii but that Hawaii is not a state. (I'd also bet that almost every one of these folks is in the 50% of Americans who think that a woman should be legally required to take her husband's last name after marriage. Remember folks, when you're dealing with a bell curve like intelligence, half the people are going to be below average...)

Anyway, in this gem Nelson says he's not going to pay taxes anymore because the government is cutting funding for important things like education and fire fighters. And he goes on to say, "What happened to society? I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No. No." (Again, for readers outside the U.S., or for fatally ignorant Americans, welfare and food stamps are tax-funded government programs that help people like Craig T. Nelson out when they fall on hard times.)