Remember those old commercials from the hypocrites at the "Partnership for a Drug Free America" (a group that was, at least back in the day, funded partially by tobacco, alcohol, and pharmaceutical companies) that said: "No one ever says, 'I want to be a junkie when I grow up'?" Seems like maybe some people do say that. Maybe if we point and laugh we can make it clearer to kids that (absent a good medical reason) putting opiates into your body is a dumbass thing to do.

(And if you think this is only an inner city problem, I live in a nice suburb of Bmore and I've still had a guy leaning out on my sidewalk. It'll come to you too, if we don't get serous about treating drug addition as a health issue rather than this macho bullshit "War on Drugs".)

That Guy's On Heroin

This blog comes out of Baltimore, MD and is a real depiction of heroin addicts wandering city streets in a wacked-out, semi-conscious state. My wife and I were always amazed at the ability of these malnourished zombies to somehow stay vertical in ways that are both gravity defying and mind boggling.

I'd say the "WAR" part is more offensive than the "SUX" part, myself.

Michigan says ‘WAR SUX’ license plate is too offensive for state roads

After rejecting an anti-war license plate for being offensive, the state of Michigan defended its decision in court by arguing that it was protecting children by prohibiting an area driver from registering a vanity tag that would have read “WAR SUX.”

The attention on "cyber attacks" again infrastructure may be leading us to forget more old-fashioned threats:

'Military-Style' Raid on California Power Station Spooks U.S. (Foreign Policy)

Around 1:00 AM on April 16, at least one individual (possibly two) entered two different manholes at the PG&E Metcalf power substation, southeast of San Jose, and cut fiber cables in the area around the substation. That knocked out some local 911 services, landline service to the substation, and cell phone service in the area, a senior U.S. intelligence official told Foreign Policy. The intruder(s) then fired more than 100 rounds from what two officials described as a high-powered rifle at several transformers in the facility. Ten transformers were damaged in one area of the facility, and three transformer banks -- or groups of transformers -- were hit in another, according to a PG&E spokesman.

Review of "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety", by Eric Schlosser. Looks like an interesting read.

The Tyee – Nuclear Weapons: Forgotten, But Not Gone (The Tyee)

Damascus is a very small rural town in central Arkansas. In mid-September, 1980, it came close to vanishing in a nine-megaton nuclear explosion -- not because the Russians had attacked it, but because a U.S. Titan II missile, sitting in its silo near Damascus, suffered minor damage that caused it to explode.

So ThinkGeek came out with a line of those family car window stickers -- as one web commenter put it, the modern day equivalent of the Baby on Board that survivors of the 1980s will remember. ThinkGeek's new line is of Star Trek characters. Great. Except...they're all white. Including a figure of the groundbreaking black character Lt. Uhura.

Why Think Geek Whitewashed Star Trek's Lt. Uhura
(and Why It Matters) (EBONY)

ThinkGeek’s official public statement that “the original design is intended to focus on the unique and distinct TOS uniforms and not the differences found in the human characters,” the designers made each of the Enterprise crew distinct in some way beyond their uniforms—different hair, different props, pointy ears. That consideration just didn’t extend to skin color.

That it happened matters a great deal. Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura was a groundbreaking character on a groundbreaking television show. She served as an inspiration and a role model for generations Black people, from little girls who grew up to be actresses...to little girls who grew up to be astronauts...and many more of us in-between. That she is Black is important. Having her racial identity erased, even in a medium so minor as stickers for your SUV’s back window, is still a huge problem.

...ThinkGeek doesn’t plan to order more until there’s a decision about the redesign sometime in the next few days or weeks. ...

It's not like this is a new problem. But the government and corporate entities who keep the records on us don't really care about the dignity of our names, they need just enough of them to keep tabs on us.

New Jersey Suggests People Change Their Names To Fit With Antiquated Driver's License System (Consumerist)

The people of New Jersey represent just about every racial and ethnic group you could imagine, so not everyone is going to fit into the standard mold of first name/middle initial/last name. And even though state authorities are well aware of this fact, they would rather have drivers legally change their names than update the state’s outdated license database.

...

...Just ask the woman who recently moved from Pennsylvania to New Jersey only to find that her first name, Hao Ling, had been changed to “Hao L.” because in spite of all the Mary Anns and Ann Maries in New Jersey, the MVC’s computers still haven’t figured out that some people have two parts to their first names.

Knocking Wood Could Help Avoid Trouble (NPR.org)

Researchers at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business have found that knocking wood, spilling salt, and other old medieval gestures might actually help people expel some of the fear they have that they've done or said something that could invite bad luck. Dispelling that stress might help them avoid what they dread.

"Ludwig says the Warren case matches what Pollack found in his study of other youth homicides in Chicago: "Most serious violent events are almost Seinfeldian in their origin — someone saying something stupid to someone else, and that escalating and basically turning into a tragedy because someone had a handgun in their waistband at the time." When human beings are stressed -- by grinding and hopeless generational poverty, social injustice, racism, and all the other ills that affect the most violent parts of our nation -- any additional stressor can cause a disproportionate reaction. That shooting that seems to have been caused by something "Seinfeldian" is often the end result of years of pressures, and the "straw that broke the camel's back" can seem trivial it itself.

Therapy Helps Troubled Teens Rethink Crime (NPR.org)

The solution to the problem, Ludwig, Pollack and their colleagues surmised, might lie in getting kids to slow down and think about their actions. The researchers conducted a randomized controlled experiment to test their hypothesis. They had about 1,400 school kids in grades seven to 10, drawn from high-crime areas of Chicago, undergo a 30-week training course called . A similar group of students, also chosen at random, was tracked, but did not go through the course. At the end of the year, Ludwig said, researchers found 44 percent fewer arrests among the students who had been through the course.

...

In one exercise, Ludwig says, the students were grouped into pairs, and one member of each pair was given a ball. The other was told to get the ball out of his partner's hand. This invariably led to a fight, Ludwig says, as the kids brawled over the ball. After watching the fight, the program leader would ask the student who was trying to get the ball a question: "Why didn't you ask the other kid to give you the rubber ball?"

None of the adolescents, Ludwig says, ever thought to ask their partners for the ball.