Next Week

I'm going to try going vegan. Just for a week, to see if I have the self-discipline to do it. The situation is not helped by the fact that dining halls are not too vegan-friendly, even if they usually have a "vegan special" that is scary to look at.

This isn't a health issue. I'm barely 150 pounds, so if anything I need to gain weight. Rather, it's more of a social-conscience issue, and, like I said earlier, an exercise in self-discipline. The last time I experimented with food, I tried fasting for a day. I made it to 9pm, so at least I got the sunset thing in. But I couldn't go the whole day. Whether this will be easier or harder I cannot say. I'll try to keep a short record of how I'm doing through the week and post it when I'm finished.

Which might be Wednesday.

In scouring the archives for the link above, I found some of my old posts appalling. I have some distancing to do...

Living With The Living

Ted Leo's newest CD. It is excellent. It combines the poppiness of Shake The Sheets with the styling of Tyranny of Distance for a great combination. I think that overall it is closer to Tyranny than Sheets.

I'm not going to go song-by-song (I tried and it was looking ugly) but I will say that the only dragger is "The Unwanted Things" and the rest of the CD is very solid. "C.I.A." and "La Costa Brava" are my favorites, but "A Bottle of Buckie" and "Sons of Cain" are also standouts. And the outro to "The Lost Brigade" kept me humming it whenever I was walking (a safe distance from ears) for a few days.

The same cannot be said of the B-sides that came with the preorders. But, I don't think they're doing that anymore, so no worries. They weren't bad, but, well...not good.

So: Tyranny of Distance > Shake the Sheets > Living With The Living > Hearts of Oak

And I love Hearts of Oak. So use that as a reference point.

ONDCP

Just watched another one of those idiotic anti-drug commercials the Office of National Drug Control Policy puts out. So I decided to mosey on over to the ONDCP website. Their section on marijuana was my destination, since that is the target of the majority of their commercials and they spend the most money on anti-marijuana work by far. Plus, this is where the most stretching takes place. And "stretching" is a kind term.

According to their own data, 40.1% of the US population age 12 and over has used marijuana at least once in their life, which comes out t o 97.5 million people. An important question here is whether the government has any right regulating something which nearly half of adults have used. I understand (and often argue) that numbers don't make things right, but there should be a realization of the realities and an end to the treatment of marijuana as a fringe drug that only "bad people" use.

Then we move on into health effects. We have to wade through the shite about how addictive marijuana is (which I'll address more fully later), and then come to a bunch of half-truths. First, we have the smokers of "marijuana regularly may have many of the same respiratory problems that tobacco smokers do." No argument here. Smoke is smoke. Now we have "Marijuana has the potential to promote cancer of the lungs and other parts of the respiratory tract because marijuana smoke contains 50 percent to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke." And here is a problem. I have my doubts about the veracity of the 50-70% more carcinogenic compounds claim, but we'll let it be since I don't have anything contradictory available. The issue is how this is presented.

The above quote is cited at the bottom of the page as:
National Institute on Drug Abuse, Research Report Series—Marijuana Abuse, October 2001.

So I clicked the link, and had to find my way to the area in the text that is relevant. The result? A footnote leading to this:
Hoffman, D.; Brunnemann, K.D.; Gori, G.B.; and Wynder, E.E.L. On the carcinogenicity of marijuana smoke. In: V.C. Runeckles, ed., Recent Advances in Phytochemistry. New York: Plenum, 1975.

So now we're off the internet, and for the sake of this discussion, out of the realm of accountability. Hopefully this report doesn't end up citing something else. And the fact they're citing evidence that is 26 years old (at the time of the study) instead of more recent evidence is questionable as well. Once again, I'm not declaring this is fake, but the roundabouts are worrisome. And there is a bigger issue here. And that is that cigarette smokers smoke a lot more than marijuana users do, even heavy ones. So even though this is presented as "smoking marijuana is 50-70% more likely to give you cancer" this isn't the reality. I would imagine the odds are about the same if not less when compared honestly.

Ok, next! Now we have the "10 myths about marijuana" section of the main ONDCP site. The one that I want to go for first is #2, "marijuana is not addictive." We get to open a PDF file for a 2-page report (wee! Loading fun!) which contains no hard data. They even have the gall to give us footnotes without feet! For all we know the government could just be making this shit up. Not like they haven't done it before. But anyway. According to this flier, marijuana is not only mentally addictive (no argument here, but just about anything can become so), but also physically addictive! "Users trying to quit often report irritability, anxiety and difficulty sleeping. On psychological tests they also display increased aggression [italics mine]." There are a couple potential issues with this. First, if they're comparing their behavior to when they are using marijuana, they are going to have increased irritability, anxiety, and difficulty sleeping, because marijuana suppresses these feelings to begin with. The person is just returning to a normal behavioral pattern. As for them displaying increased aggression on pencil-and-paper tests, I have nothing to say here. I think the issue should be whether they actually show more aggression. I mean, c'mon, I have a bad game of Civilization and I'll probably show increased aggression on a psychological test. Doesn't make me physically addicted to Civ. Anyway. They then go on to declare that marijuana usage by early-teens leads to addiction to heavy shit, but that's another issue I'll address later.

But this here is the best part. Myth #7, "If I buy marijuana, I'm not hurting anyone else." The government's claims of terrorist ties (remember the commercials with the "I killed a judge" kids?) have been disproven so many times I thought they would've given it up by now. But no, we must continue.

The most important part to keep in mind here is that marijuana's harmful effects on society as a result of distribution networks are entirely the result of the drug control policy of the government. If marijuana was not illegal, all the societal effects listed in the pamphlet wouldn't exist. There wouldn't be secret farms where people get shot for venturing onto the property and there would be no drug cartels in Mexico and Columbia shooting judges and taking hostages. Marijuana is a "gateway drug" because it's illegality means that the same dealer you get your marijuana from also has heroin and crack. See the Dutch way of doing things for a more realistic portrayal. Page 3 is where they start to run out of things to say and try to salvage it. "It hurts teen users who betray the trust of their parents, and it hurts the parents who are confused and dismayed by their kids’ use" it reads. What shit. It doesn't even say anything! For the record, sending 19-year olds off to kill and be killed is a lot more detrimental to society than smoking anything, and we've been doing that in this country since the beginning. Never heard any politicians have any problem with that. Next is the old driving thing. 33% of reckless drivers in a Tennessee study who weren't under the influence of alcohol tested positive for marijuana. Ok, where to begin? The fact that they cite a study from a single state is worrisome, and them not saying how many reckless drivers were drunk also detracts from any merits of this claim. It could be 97% drunk drivers and 1% high drivers for all we know. It fits the stats!

The end result here is that our drug policy is based on half-truths and outright lies that keep the American people uninformed about the realities of many drugs. If the truth was told, I think many would not approve of paying billions of dollars to fight a pointless battle and throwing millions of otherwise-law-abiding people into jail (53% of the federal prison population are drug offenders, and another 20% of state inmates are as well).

The Politics of SimCity

SimCity is a game from a different time. There is no arguing with that. Back when the original was made, video games were still a niche industry, and most game designing companies were small places, and often took care of all the steps of creation. For instance, Maxis designed, developed, marketed, and distributed SimCity 2000. For comparison, Firaxis Games designed and developed Civilization IV, which was then marketed and distributed by 2KGames. Because Maxis (and similar companies) were operating with only themselves and the customer to answer to, things were much different than they are now in terms of freedom of speech.

This is quite evident when comparing the overall tones of the games. Maxis was located out in the San Francisco region. In SimCity 2000, there is a definite anti-industrial, pro-environmental tone, as when you bulldoze forests and get a warning from the population. This was the way of thinking of many Bay Area residents, but not necessarily as much so throughout the rest of the country and world. Regardless, those messages are visible in the game because the designers felt they had the right to use their own views in setting up the system, and if someone else didn't like it, well, after all it was just a game. Plus, there was a zaniness that has since disappeared from most games. The Loch Ness Monster, Superhero Man, and the "Braun Llama Dome" are all excellent examples.

Now compare it with SimCity 3000, which was designed and developed by Maxis but at the behest of Electronic Arts. The game takes a much more neutral tone through the game as to politics; no forest warnings, no churches that did more harm than good, nothing of the sort. Everything is straightforward and moderate. Likewise, most of the absurdities from the previous game were absent. Some of the query-tags were the most interesting items in the game, and it was usually something mediocritically witty at best.

I just think that a game loses an aspect of itself when it is forced into blanding to appeal to the widest possible audience. Nowadays cheat codes are they only interesting aspects of games. Whether this is the result of the political correctness inherent in sue-wary corporations or a failing of game design itself, I believe it to be a major mistake.

Juxtaposition

Commentators have long pointed out the surrealism of the juxtaposition of ads and war reporting, but I think the following reaches new heights: