Entries Tagged 'Memewars' ↓

Some college bureaucrats around the country are banding together to send a message that the federal nanny system isn’t working in regards to drinking age.

Top university officials in Maryland - including the chancellor of the state university system and the president of the Johns Hopkins University - say the current drinking age of 21 “is not working” and has led to dangerous binges in which students have harmed themselves and others.

Six college presidents in Maryland are among more than 100 college and university presidents nationwide who have signed a statement calling for a public debate on rethinking the drinking age.

One of the biggest gripes I’ve had with the drinking age is the mentality that goes with it. Parents should set the drinking age. When the state sets the drinking age it sends a subtle message that the state owns you. This is the same message that is sent with any prohibition type rules, regulations and legislation.

If you believe, as I do, that you own your own physical being and your own mind, then the state has no place telling you which substances are legal to put into your body. As long as you are not injuring other people you cannot commit a crime by ingesting a substance. Injuring yourself is not a crime because you are damaging your own property. The problem with this is that our current society teaches that the state has an obligation to take care of all of us individuals collectively. That means that all of us are expected to give up individuality to some extent.

We teach young adults that they are not responsible enough to decide for themselves what they put into their bodies instead of explaining the available options and allowing them to decide for themeselves in responsibly managed environments. Because of the nanny state, young adults have to hide their experimentation with substances that alter reality. This means that they are more likely to get into serious trouble or be injured during the learning process.

Instead of patronizing young people, we should teach them individual responsibility. Few legal adults, no matter how young or old, want to be coddled and talked down to. It’s time we recognized the hypocrisy of making someone a legal adult at 18 while telling them they are still not responsible enough to consume an alcoholic beverage. It’s time we understood that prohibition always causes more problems than it addresses.

So what exactly is the legal status of the nearly 20,000 people who forgot or simply didn’t want to present ID in order to fly?

The TSA began storing the information in late June, tracking many people who said they had forgotten their driver’s license or passport at home. The database has 16,500 records of such people and is open to law enforcement agencies, according to the TSA.

Asked about the program, TSA chief Kip Hawley told USA TODAY in an interview Tuesday that the information helps track potential terrorists who may be “probing the system” by trying to get though checkpoints at various airports.

Do officials and authorities consider these people to be troublemakers? Terrorists? Future felons? After all, according to Mr. Hawley, it is likely many of these people were “probing the system.” The usual response is that government bureaucrats will “probe their systems.”

Later Tuesday, Hawley called the newspaper to say the agency is changing its policy effective today and will stop keeping records of people who don’t have ID if a screener can determine their identity. Hawley said he had been considering the change for a month. The names of people who did not have identification will soon be expunged, he said.

Civil liberties advocates have been fearful that the database includes passengers who have done nothing wrong yet may face extra scrutiny at airports or questioning by authorities investigating possible terrorism. “This information comes back to haunt people,” said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Frankly, there is no security oriented reason to present ID in order to fly. If you’ve been physically screened then you present very little security threat once you have boarded the plane. Knowing who you are serves no security purpose. Should you decide to cause trouble on the flight, it is very easy to land the plane and find out who you are for the purpose of putting you into the “bad people” databases that have sprung up in the last 30 years almost as fast as tax rates have increased.

I think it is great that the TSA has the common sense to realize that lack of ID doesn’t automatically represent a threat to airport or in-flight security. Now when in the hell will they develop a screening program so I no longer have to wait in the retarded lines and go through the idiotic boarding process? It’s been seven years since the towers went down. How long does it take to identify the 99.89% of passengers who represent a zero risk of terrorism? Is Homeland Security just a big jobs creation program or is it a massive exercise in permanent stupidity?

Scientists sometimes introduce a predator into an ecosystem in order to take care of a pest that is threatening say, the potato crop. These experiments often go wrong - the predator turns out to be more dangerous than the pest. Social engineers do the same thing as scientists, except with human beings. One example is China’s one child policy to control overpopulation. The jury is still out on whether or not that policy will benefit the world or China in the long term. It certainly doesn’t benefit human freedom.

In the United States, our greatest social engineering experiment is something most people called The War on Drugs. The War on Drugs is actually a war on freedom, when thought about literally. It is also an experiment in introducing a predator to take care of a pest. What do you do when the predator you introduced to take care of the pest turns out to be much worse than the pest?

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The violent assault on Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home late last month was certainly not the first bungled raid by a government SWAT team, but the bad publicity it generated should make it the last time these trigger-happy squads target innocent civilians. Tracking a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been addressed to Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic, Prince George’s sheriff’s deputies forcibly entered the mayor’s home on July 29 and killed his two dogs before handcuffing him and his mother-in-law.

But like so many other SWAT team raids across the country, this one turned out to be a big mistake. After reviewing the case, State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey acknowledged that the Calvos were victims of a multistate drug ring that used innocent people’s names and addresses to hide shipments of contraband drugs. But the mayor and his family were also victims of a home invasion by the SWAT team, based entirely on what turned out to be a false premise.

Some of you who read these words may want to argue with me. The police are here to help us you’ll say. Yes, some of them help some people some of the time. Unfortunately the helping is on the decline and the abuse is on the uptick. Survey 100,000 random citizens of the United States before the so called drug war began on their level of trust in the police. That would probably be a pretty high number. Survey 100,000 random citizens now. Most likely the numbers will be pretty low. Chances are that a lot of these people know someone who has been locked up for a consensual non-violent crime. You only have to be beaten up once by uniformed authorities to develop a lifelong distrust of all authorities. You only have to be locked up for a few months to learn to lie to the cops when they come around. After all, they are not your friends. They protect and serve only themselves. That is the lesson many have learned.

Public servants do not shoot family dogs. Peace officers do not initiate violence, they are supposed to prevent it. SWAT teams should be used so sparingly that when they are used, people are amazed. Instead, they are used so frequently it is almost like a car alarm going off - no one pays any attention. We’ve learned to ignore the sights and sounds of our freedom going away.

When the men in masks come to your neighborhood with concrete barriers and rolls of concertina wire just remember that they are there to protect you from yourself. If your family dog gets shot or you get beaten while trying to stop them from raping your daughter or your wife it is your own fault for questioning the authorities. They are just here to deal with pesky drug addicts and you got in the way.

Hmm. Maybe you shouldn’t have been so willing to give away the Constitutional rights of others. Maybe it is time to stand up and let your government know that you aren’t going to tolerate this sort of behavior.

Today, Mikheil Saakashvili has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal wherein he expounds on the reasons the West should intervene in the conflict.

On Friday, hundreds of Russian tanks crossed into Georgian territory, and Russian air force jets bombed Georgian airports, bases, ports and public markets. Many are dead, many more wounded. This invasion, which echoes Afghanistan in 1979 and the Prague Spring of 1968, threatens to undermine the stability of the international security system.

AP

An apartment building, damaged by a Russian air strike, in the northern Georgian town of Gori, Saturday, Aug. 9.

Why this war? This is the question my people are asking. This war is not of Georgia’s making, nor is it Georgia’s choice.

The Kremlin designed this war. Earlier this year, Russia tried to provoke Georgia by effectively annexing another of our separatist territories, Abkhazia. When we responded with restraint, Moscow brought the fight to South Ossetia.

Ostensibly, this war is about an unresolved separatist conflict. Yet in reality, it is a war about the independence and the future of Georgia. And above all, it is a war over the kind of Europe our children will live in. Let us be frank: This conflict is about the future of freedom in Europe.

I understand the yearning for freedom. I have it too. And I have a different perspective than most on what freedom is. You see, I don’t believe the West is all that free.

Georgia (the country) used to be a part of the USSR. Georgia (the state) is a part of the United States and happens to be my state of residence. If most Georgians today decided that the United States didn’t represent the type of government they wanted and declared independence by seceding from the United States of America, I think the same thing that is happening in Georgia would happen in the United States. I’m certain that the federal government of the U.S. would use force to keep a member state from declaring independence. That’s not freedom.

When Mikheil Saakashvili asks for the West to intercede in Georgia he is just trading one master for another. Perhaps one master is gentler than the other, and maybe existence under that other master is more tolerable. And that might be OK for some people. It’s not enough to satisfy me.

A truly free society always emphasizes as wide a range of choices as possible. That is not what the West offers, although it may offer more choices than Russia is most matters, it is still a master. Georgia will not be independent in the foreseeable future, anymore than South Ossetia has been. Georgia is a pawn in larger struggles between Western authoritarians and Russian authoritarians.

The most powerful thing about independence is a that it is a state of mind that the state cannot defeat. Have you really thought about your state of mind? Or the state you live in? Or the range of choices available to you in life? War can visit anyplace, at anytime. Are you mentally ready to fight the important battles? Do you even know what is important to you?

Transhumanist technologies are going to explode in the next two to three decades. We already have a crude artificial heart on the market. Now it appears that an artificial pancreas is just around the corner.

Today, people with diabetes have a range of technologies to help keep their blood sugar in check, including continuous monitors that can keep tabs on glucose levels throughout the day and insulin pumps that can deliver the drug. But the diabetic is still responsible for making executive decisions–when to test his blood or give himself a shot–and the system has plenty of room for human error. Now, however, researchers say that the first generations of an artificial pancreas, which would be able to make most dosing decisions without the wearer’s intervention, could be available within the next few years.

Type 1 diabetes develops when the islet cells of the human pancreas stop producing adequate amounts of insulin, leaving the body unable to regulate blood-sugar levels on its own. Left unchecked, glucose fluctuations over the long term can lead to nerve damage, blindness, stroke and heart attacks. Even among the most vigilant diabetics, large dips and surges in glucose levels are still common occurrences. “We have data on hand today that suggests that you could get much better diabetes outcomes with the computer taking the lead instead of the person with diabetes doing it all themselves,” says Aaron Kowalski, research director of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Artificial Pancreas Project.

The artificial pancreas project is good news for diabetics. However, barriers to implementation remain.

Technologically, the remaining obstacles for researchers are those of refinement–for example, constructing algorithms that are exquisitely honed to predict in which direction glucose levels are moving and at what rate. Other researchers are working on sensors that can monitor blood glucose over an extended period of time (currently, sensors must be replaced every three to eight days) and with improved accuracy.

Despite the fact that much of the technology is on the market, researchers must still prove to the FDA that their system is safe when combined with the algorithms, and that if anything goes wrong–if a sensor goes wonky or the insulin pump clogs up–the computer can sense it and either set off an alarm or turn the whole system off.

I’m irritated anytime the FDA is mentioned in a news article. Personally, it’s not clear to me that this organization has helped more people than it hurts. FDA rules slow down the medical technology development process and make it much more expensive. If I ever become a chronically ill patient, I’ll goddamn well seek the medical treatment I want regardless of FDA rules. If I have to leave the United States to get a particular treatment, so be it. I own my own life.

Remember those “rebate” checks Uncle Sugar sent out earlier this year? They failed to achieve a “stimulus.”

The evidence is now in and that optimism was unwarranted. Recent government statistics show that only between 10% and 20% of the rebate dollars were spent. The rebates added nearly $80 billion to the permanent national debt but less than $20 billion to consumer spending. This experience confirms earlier studies showing that one-time tax rebates are not a cost-effective way to increase economic activity.

These conclusions are significant for evaluating the likely impact of Barack Obama’s recent proposal to distribute $1,000 rebate checks to low- and middle-income workers at an estimated cost of approximately $65 billion. His plan, to finance those rebates with an extra tax on oil companies, would reduce investment in refining and exploration, keeping oil prices higher than they would otherwise be.

I fail to see how giving me back some money that you’re just going to steal again from my next paycheck is going to solve 50 years of rampantly irresponsible entitlement programs and the deleterious effect said programs have had on the American public, which is now, by and large, a bunch of whiners and gimme, gimme sycophants who vote for whichever stinking rotten liar promises the most free stuff.

The poor effects of the Bush tax rebate as fiscal stimulus, however, let Feldstein now attack the Obama plan for a $1000 tax rebate.  Nothing wrong with that - McCain has nothing better however - but what Feldstein doesn’t say is that if you follow the logic of his two op-eds (and this is not something I would necessarily buy into) the conclusion should actually be that fiscal stimulus would work better if it ran through government spending.

Government will always do the most expensive and least efficient possible job of managing any given problem. Government has no motivation to solve any given problem because if it did, then it would have to shrink itself. How many bureaucrats do you know who would be willing to eliminate their own job?

Most people are at least dimly aware that regular exercise generally produces health benefits. But not everyone knows that those benefits extend beyond the body and into the human brain.

The bottom line: Exercisers learn faster, remember more, think clearer and bounce back more easily from brain injuries such as a stroke. They are also less prone to depression and age-related cognitive decline.

But why should a mindless half-hour on a treadmill affect your brain?

Exercise, like hunger, is a stress on your body. “And sometimes,” said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla of UCLA, “stress can be good.”

Exercise alone, however, isn’t the complete prescription for an extended and healthful life.

“Diet, exercise and sleep have the potential to alter our brain health and mental function,” he said. “This raises the exciting possibility that changes in diet are a viable strategy for enhancing cognitive abilities, protecting the brain from damage, and counteracting the effects of aging.”

Gómez-Pinilla analyzed more than 160 studies about food’s affect on the brain, an analysis published in the July issue of the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

If you’re wondering why it is so hard to get off the couch and get outdoors, maybe it’s that bag of Cheetos you’ve been masticating for the last hour. Try skipping those next time you sit down to watch Paris Hilton acting retarded in reruns of The Simple Life.

Calorie restriction

Controlled meal skipping or intermittent caloric restriction might provide health benefits, he said.

Excess calories can reduce the flexibility of synapses and increase the vulnerability of cells to damage by causing the formation of free-radicals. Moderate caloric restriction could protect the brain by reducing oxidative damage to cellular proteins, lipids and nucleic acids, Gómez-Pinilla said.

The brain is highly susceptible to oxidative damage. Blueberries have been shown to have strong antioxidant capacity, he noted. And smaller food portions with the appropriate nutrients seem to be beneficial for the brain’s molecules, he said.

Junk food, junk brain

In contrast to the healthy effects of diets that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, diets with high contents of trans fats and saturated fats adversely affect cognition, studies indicate.

“Junk food” and fast food negatively affect the brain’s synapses, said Gómez-Pinilla, who eats fast food less often since conducting this research.

Brain synapses and several molecules related to learning and memory are adversely affected by unhealthy diets, said Gómez-Pinilla.

At least that’s what Aubrey de Grey believes. I want to believe it as well. I am not interested in dying at this time. Transhumanists may not be in the media spotlight now, but it’s likely the future will change that.

…James Hughes, an administrator and instructor at Trinity College in Hartford, is a leading transhumanist theorist. The executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, which he co-founded when he was the executive director of the World Transhumanist Association, Hughes has written several books on transhumanist ideas, including Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future.

It would appear that Hughes, a buttoned-down professor-type with a close-cropped goatee, is dealing with ideas better suited to science fiction than the real world. However, he traces transhumanist history back to old, earth-bound traditions.

“It goes back to the enlightenment, about 400 years or so,” Hughes said. “And when you go back to those original ideas, you see a number of things emerging, among them the notion that science and tech can be applied to human affairs, and things can be engineered and improved upon.”

While the average earth dweller of 2008 may feel uncomfortable with the idea of engineering a human being they will still pay for LASIK surgery or a hip replacement. If they could safely and cheaply replace the human heart with a model that wasn’t prone to spasms we call heart attacks that often lead to death, most people would get the replacement put in without much serious consideration. In the next two decades, we should see a massive increase in the number and type of life extending, life quality enhancing surgeries available. This is assuming we can avoid universal health care, which will cause stagnation, in my opinion. I am unaware of pioneering surgeries recently developed in France or Britain. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that government socialized health care is statist in nature.

There is no reason not to expect to live 150-200 years if you are 20 today and in good health. Assuming you’re not a partner in a meth lab, wearing a soldier’s uniform or engaged in extreme sports, you have a shot at living a very, very long time in comparison to people born 50 years ago. Depending on social upheaval and battles over the world natural resources you might live to see the middle or the end of the millenium.

Many people are not interested in this idea, particularly those who have not yet faced death and found it to be a distinctly unpalatable notion. For those among you who do not believe in one or another of the various death cults of the world, I highly recommend keeping an eye on the activities of the Methuselah Foundation.

Stem cell research is just the beginning of the end of aging.

The small penises and social skills part is just made up. Sorry about that. Had to grab your attention somehow. It’s my big brain. I can’t help myself. The truth of the matter is that researchers have concluded that smart people have larger parietal and frontal lobes.

Within hours of his demise in 1955, Albert Einstein’s brain was salvaged, sliced into 240 pieces and stored in jars for safekeeping. Since then, researchers have weighed, measured and otherwise inspected these biological specimens of genius in hopes of uncovering clues to Einstein’s spectacular intellect.

Their cerebral explorations are part of a century-long effort to uncover the neural basis of high intelligence or, in children, giftedness. Traditionally, 2 to 5 percent of kids qualify as gifted, with the top 2 percent scoring above 130 on an intelligence quotient (IQ) test. (The statistical average is 100. See the box on the opposite page.) A high IQ increases the probability of success in various academic areas. Children who are good at reading, writing or math also tend to be facile at the other two areas and to grow into adults who are skilled at diverse intellectual tasks [see “Solving the IQ Puzzle,” by James R. Flynn; Scientific American Mind, October/November 2007].

Most studies show that smarter brains are typically bigger—at least in certain locations. Part of Einstein’s parietal lobe (at the top of the head, behind the ears) was 15 percent wider than the same region was in 35 men of normal cognitive ability, according to a 1999 study by researchers at McMaster University in Ontario. This area is thought to be critical for visual and mathematical thinking. It is also within the constellation of brain regions fingered as important for superior cognition. These neural territories include parts of the parietal and frontal lobes as well as a structure called the anterior cingulate.

I’m not sure how I feel about all the brain slicing and dicing. As a cryonicist, I really prefer that knives by kepy away from my body post-demise. I don’t want to end up in slices like Albert. That’s not really relevant to the big brain equals big intellect thing.

In 2004 psychologist Richard J. Haier of the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues reported evidence to support the notion that discrete brain regions mediate scholarly aptitude. Studying the brains of 47 adults, Haier’s team found an association between the amount of gray matter (tissue containing the cell bodies of neurons) and higher IQ in 10 discrete regions, including three in the frontal lobe and two in the parietal lobe just behind it. Other scientists have also seen more white matter, which is made up of nerve axons (or fibers), in these same regions among people with higher IQs.

My IQ is around 127 on tests. If someone sold brain hats, I’m guessing I would be wearing the medium size. Size isn’t the only thing that appears to matter however. Let’s not forget about that sexy part of our thinking organ called the cerebral cortex.

Scientists have identified other shifting neural patterns that could signal high IQ. In a 2006 study child psychiatrist Philip Shaw of the National Institute of Mental Health and his colleagues scanned the brains of 307 children of varying intelligence multiple times to determine the thickness of their cerebral cortex, the brain’s exterior part. They discovered that academic prodigies younger than eight had an unusually thin cerebral cortex, which then thickened rapidly so that by late childhood it was chunkier than that of less clever kids. Consistent with other studies, that pattern was particularly pronounced in the frontal brain regions that govern rational thought processes.

The article concludes with a couple important notions. The brain shrinks with age which translates to use it before you lose it because you’re going to lose it. Also, your bigger brain is like bonus points. You have stacked cards, but that doesn’t mean you are going to win at life. Practice and persistence are more important than that huge noggin.

You can limit access to guns, but crazies will still find a way.

As horrified travelers watched, a Greyhound Canada bus passenger repeatedly stabbed and then decapitated the young man sitting beside him, who was sleeping with his head leaning against the window, a witness said Thursday.

While not all the details of this horrific knife wielding incident are yet available, I would rather be shot than be stabbed and decapitated.

This sort of tale reinforces my viewpoint that society should be investing resources in mental health improvements instead of implementing bans on various weapons. In Canada, Mr. Crazy McStab doesn’t have access to a pistol but needs him some killing. So he gets a big butcher knife, sits quietly on the bus for a while and then chops up the guy next to him. Maybe it was planned. Maybe he knew the guy and wanted revenge. Who knows?

The point is this - if you really, really want to kill someone horrifically you will find a way. If you want to kill a large group of people, you will find a way. There are, in fact, thousands of ways to kill a large group of people with readily available means that are not projectile based. They can all be researched on the Internet or found elsewhere. Think of the guy in China who poisoned 30-plus of his competitor’s customers.

That’s why we should be focused on what makes people mentally ill in the first place instead of on the inanimate tools these people use to go on rampages when their sicknesses take control of them. No one in Canada is calling for a knife ban but some idiot will. And it won’t fix anything.