Is this the year for Libertarians?

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Ken

With Trump and Clinton competing for the title of “most unfavorable candidate” the Libertarian party has a chance to make its best showing ever. It helps that they have nominated a former state governor as their candidate, who had 2 terms in New Mexico. According to an article in the Daily Beast, all the LP has to do to break 10% of the presidential vote is to “have a credible, experienced candidate show up”.

I think the Libertarian approach of being liberal on social issues while being conservative on fiscal issues fits best with what I believe so I think the Libertarians may have my vote this year.

Marijuana prohibition ending in the Americas

Posted on April 24, 2016 by Ken

According to the front page of the Washington Post this morning, there is significant movement toward ending the prohibition on marijuana in many countries in North and South America. Mexico has just made it OK to possess up to an ounce. Canada may introduce legislation next year to make marijuana legal. Uruguay already has, and so have several states in the US. So it seems like the ball continues to roll in the right direction.

Teaching the immune system

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Ken

A couple of years ago I wrote a post that explained my theory of how some allergies start. I think a person’s body can learn to react to something that is usually harmless, if it is exposed to that harmless substance during an exposure to a toxin. The immune system learns to associate one with the other. I searched in vain to find this theory mentioned somewhere else.

But I recently found an article on mosaicscience.com (that site is no longer active) that describes how doctors can “teach” a patient’s immune systems to react to inert substances as if they are medications. They give them a medication and at the same time give them a substance with a distinct taste or smell. They are finding that later they can give just the substance and the body’s immune system will react the same as if they had received the medication.

I can’t say for sure but this sounds like it is the exact same mechanism at work. The reason my search didn’t find this is because I was looking for the immune system learning a ‘bad’ lesson and here it is learning a useful lesson.

Coursera survives the MOOC hype and draws capital

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Ken

It is a sign that online college education is here to stay. Coursera has found a way to make money, provide value to colleges and was rewarded with some fresh investment. According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education investors poured in an additional $60 million in venture-capital. They may have heard that colleges are finding more ways to make use of the Coursera platform and very few are dropping out of the project once they get involved.

And the platform is now generating revenue. They are providing shorter professional-development courses and project-based courses, both of which have nominal fees. They have also started to offer graded assignments for a fee. I think they may have or be close to a sustainable model.

Using Snowden and Silicon Valley as a scapegoat

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Ken

Here is a great editorial by Glenn Greenwald in the LA Times. Apperntly, Edward Snowden and Silicon Valley are being blamed for terrorists “going dark”. Snowden’s revelations about government surveillance and Silicon Valley’s recent toughening of encryption are being blamed, but Greenwald quotes a USA Today article from 2/5/2001 (well before the 9/11 attacks) which said that even then “encryption has become the everyday tool of Muslim extremists.” My favorite line? This one:

“Are we ready to endorse the precept that no human communication can ever take place without the U.S. government being able to monitor it?”

Canada to legalize marijuana

Posted on December 8, 2015 by Ken

Last month I wrote about Mexico’s ruling that said marijuana use was a protected right. And now to the North, Canada’s new government is working on plans to fully legalize marijuana. Canada would be the first G7 country to legalize marijuana for recreational use. And the US can’t object since recreational marijuana is already legal in two US states (CO and WA) with a combined population of around 12 million. Canada’s population is 35 million, roughly 3 times the size of those 2 states, but its status as a country marks a major political shift. And since Canada borders more than a dozen US states, it will increase the pressure on those states to adjust their policy.

Mexico Supreme Court rules for legal marijuana

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Ken

According to this article in the Guardian, the Supreme Court in Mexico has ruled that marijuana use is a protected right, the “right to the free development of personality”.

According to an article in the NY Times, the ruling on Wednesday applies only to the plaintiffs in this case. For the ruling to apply to all Mexican citizens, the court would have to rule the same way five times. Or alternately, 8 of the 11 members of the full court could vote in favor of the ruling.

What is surprising is that, according to the Guardian article, a recent opinion poll found that 3/4 of Mexican citizens are opposed to legalization. This means that the court is way out in front of the citizens on this issue, but they are certainly on the right side of history.

Why I don’t recycle

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Ken

When we first moved into our new home we had trash service that involved recycling. I hated spending time trying to rinse mayo and old pasta sauce out of glass jars, because the had to be clean to be recycled. Then our trash company added new fee for recycling and I suddenly realized that recycling was optional in our area. I had also read an article in the NY Times that said recycling was waste of time and agreed. I was taking time to wash my trash and paying extra for the privilege. So I stopped using the recycle bins.

I do care about the environment. I pay to have our old electronics recycled. I save hazardous waste for special drop-off events. But I am not alone thinking that the time and money spent on household recycling provides minimal benefit or is possibly a complete waste. If you could add the cost of the time people spend sorting and preparing their trash I think it is clearly a losing proposition. A local government might consider this extra time free, but I value my time.

The law of supply and demand also agrees with me. If landfill space was truly running out then the cost of trash disposal would go up and it certainly hasn’t around here. If recycled raw materials were truly of value then the savings would at least cover the cost transport and process it. The fact that I have to pay extra and do extra work means that recycling raw materials is not worth the effort. This was true way back when the NY Times wrote about it, and the costs of raw materials recently fell further, putting many recycling programs in financial jeopardy.

So my wife thinks I am a heretic and my neighbors have offered to pay for my recycling service, but I am going to hold off on principle.

This article in Popular Mechanics pops myths on both sides of the argument.

Marijuana arrests remain high

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Ken

Many states have been opening doors to marijuana use. Most are for medical use but several states are now even allowing recreational use. So I was surprised to learn that according to the Washington post, there were over 600K arrests for simple possession of marijuana in 2014, making up over 5% of all arrests in the nation. This was an increase over 2013, one of only two increases in the past 10 years.

Apparently, police departments still want to waste resources on these arrests, and don’t care that most people think marijuana prohibition is a bad idea. Hopefully 2015 will see a continued and significant drop in marijuana arrests.

Amnesty International: decriminalize sex work

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Ken

Now that the ball is rolling on the decriminalization of recreational drugs, there is another area where decriminalization is being considered. That is in the area of professional sex work. This is not a new idea, but the moral stigma associated with this position has made it difficult to gain traction. Now Amnesty International, the group whose goal is to look for human rights abuses, has come out in favor of removing all criminal penalties associated with sex services. They recommend:

“…a policy that would decriminalize all aspects of adult, consensual sex work, while still classifying coercion into sex work or having sex with a minor as a major human rights violation. The resolution is intended to protect adult sex workers from stigma and abuse by decriminalizing aspects of sex work including buying sex, pimping and operating a brothel.”

I agree. It is the same principles as the decriminalization of recreational drugs. No, I don’t think that these activities are completely harmless to everyone and I am sure that there are horrible abuses. But those abuses exist NOW, despite all the criminal statutes. The laws seem to have no significant affect on the volume of the activity or the abuses. Both sex work and recreational drugs are major pillars of organized crime financing and create opportunities for law enforcement corruption. By regulating and taxing these activities in the open we have the best chance of controlling the abuses without further marginalizing the current victims.

Of course there are those like Jimmy Carter who disagree with the position taken by AI. Some feminists disagree because to them all prostitution, even voluntary adult sex work, is inherently bad. Others disagree because there are abuses. They seem to assume that it is possible to eliminate this activity by making laws. The US experience shows exactly how ineffective these laws are. And the failed war on drugs shows the result of trying to ramp up the laws and penalties. Lets focus on fighting the abuses and not the trade.

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My view of the world