30 Oct 2005
Comfortably Numb 

Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home?
Come on, now.
I hear you're feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain,
Get you on your feet again.
Relax.
I need some information first.
Just the basic facts,
Can you show me where it hurts?
There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're sayin'.
When I was a child I had a fever.
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I got that feeling once again.
I can't explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb.
Ok.
Just a little pinprick.
There'll be no more ...Aaaaaahhhhh!
But you may feel a little sick.
Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working. Good.
That'll keep you going for the show.
Come on it's time to go.
There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're sayin'.
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

-- Pink Floyd

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Writebacks Are Formatted

I think I've finally figured out how to force Blosxom to format your comments correctly, without forcing you to enter HTML tags for paragraphs and line breaks... the <PRE> tag has more attributes and options than I realized. You can set a manual style within the tag, as well as a width. This allows the comments to pass through directly, with your formatting intact, and not make the whole page too wide to be displayed at a standard resolution. Nifty trick ... I've been writing HTML for years and I didn't know your could do that! Which is why I never bothered with <PRE> - who wants to see monospaced Courier text mucking up the look of their carefully crafted page?

This will also help me automate the posting process - although getting used to it may make me crazy for a while, as I'm so used to typing <P> and <BR>. We'll see how it works out.

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Sustainable agriculture: Canadian institute offers definition, recommends tax

Unbelievable! The way to promote sustainable agriculture is to tax it? Do these people not realize that only the large farms they're trying to coerce into sustainability will have the time and expertise required to apply for whatever new subsidies are offered under this program? And they're only apparently planning on giving half the tax back to farmers in any event:

The 7% GST alone on grocery store sales would generate an estimated $3.3 billion annually, still a considerable sum if only half of it were to be dedicated to supporting economic viability measures for farmers linked to sustainability goals and objectives.

It wouldn't surprise me to see big Canadian farmers support this wholeheartedly: what better way to finish off the family farm than to tax it to death?

Applying a levy to groceries to help farms transition to sustainable practices and using immigration policy to bolster rural communities are among several major recommendations in a landmark discussion paper on achieving sustainable agriculture, published by the Agricultural Institute of Canada on the eve of AIC's annual meeting (Quebec City, Nov. 6-9). The paper says as farmers' incomes whither, small farms vanish, rural communities decline and megafarms mushroom, major consequences are underway for future environmental conditions and food safety.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Michael Barone: Spurning America

Not sure I agree with all of his conclusions, but an interesting look at the role of tradition and history in the political life of the United States, and an explanation of why so many of our "cultural elites" seem to be "anti-American". Fascinating stuff, really.

Army Special Forces Soldiers, as my U.S. News colleague Linda Robinson writes in her riveting book, Masters of Chaos, are very much aware of "the tradition of their military history." On the eve of a difficult mission, "more than one soldier went to sleep hoping that the next days would prove him a worthy member of that lineage." That's one reason the military maintains old units, so that soldiers will be motivated to match the deeds of those who came before and prove worthy to those who come after.

(link) [U.S. News & World Report]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

The Mystery of Philip Morris' Nicotine Inhaler

There's more than enough hypocrisy to go around here:

Cloaked in secrecy, the device was invented nearly a dozen years ago at a time the tobacco industry was vigorously denying that nicotine was addictive, internal company documents show.

They (the big tobacco companies) knew that nicotine was addictive ("our business is fundamentally that of supplying nicotine"), yet kept on denying the obvious in press release after press release. But it get's better:

Nicotine is a mild stimulant that helps some people to focus and relax when under stress. Although a crucial part of a deadly product, nicotine by itself is not very bad for most people, experts say.

A lot of the "tobacco activists" are less interested in public health than they are in simply keeping people from enjoying nicotine:

A nicotine inhaler probably would draw a mixed response, similar to the debate over offering clean needles to heroin users. Though some health professionals might object to any product that sustains nicotine dependence, many others say "clean" nicotine could be a powerful weapon in the fight against tobacco-related diseases.

And that's the clincher, for me: it exposes the anti-smoking activity of many crusaders for exactly what it is: another front in the War on Drugs. I don't think anyone could seriously claim that folks using one of these devices after a meal in public place would be exposing others to "second-hand nicotine", but just wait: shortly you'll start seeing studies linking nicotine use to real crime - robberies, murders, etc. After all, most criminals smoke, so the link is "obvious".

If you ever wondered how marijuana went from a harmless and useful plant in 1900 to a dangerous rape-inducing narcotic by 1935, just keep you eyes open: you're about to see the encore production, with the target this time being tobacco.

Los Angeles Times - Cigarette maker Philip Morris has developed an inhaler that could deliver a nicotine mist deep into the lungs, giving smokers a satisfying dose of the addictive drug without the carcinogens, gases and toxic metals that make tobacco smoke so dangerous.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

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