http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129128690&sc=fb&cc=fp
[size=200]‘Superclogger’: Free Theater On L.A.'s Freeways[/size]
^That is awesome. I have to find these guys.
Is Portugal’s Liberal Drug Policy a Model for US?
Updated: 2 days ago, Lauren Frayer, Contributor
AOL News LISBON, Portugal (Aug. 14) – Ten years ago, Portugal had some 100,000 heroin addicts – about 1 percent of its entire population. HIV infections from injecting drugs were among the highest in Europe.
Now the addict count has been cut nearly in half. HIV infections from drug use have fallen more than 90 percent. And the policy shift responsible for such a dramatic improvement in Portuguese life is something U.S. lawmakers – watching an escalating drug war on their southern border – might consider worthy of some attention: decriminalization.
Ten years ago this summer, Portugal became the first country in Europe to decriminalize all illegal drugs – marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and even heroin. Hefty fines and prison sentences still await drug traffickers and dealers, but users caught with less than a 10-day supply of any drug are no longer considered criminals. Instead, they’re referred to a panel comprised of a drug-treatment specialist, a lawyer and a civil servant, who usually recommend treatment – and pay for it, too. If the users decline treatment and go back to abusing drugs, that’s their prerogative.
But statistics show they’re not doing that. Instead, about 45 percent of the 100,000 heroin addicts Portugal’s Health Ministry recorded in 2000 had by 2008 decided to at least try to quit the habit, without the threat of jail time. And the number of new HIV cases among users fell from 2,508 in the year 2000 to 220 cases in 2008, Alun Jones, a spokesman for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told AOL News. “This was a major success,” he said.
Some Americans have noticed. “The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success,” according to a 2009 report from Washington-based Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “None of the nightmare scenarios touted by pre-enactment decriminalization opponents – from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for ‘drug tourists’ – has occurred.”
The law’s passage 10 years ago and implementation on July 1, 2001, was a surprising twist for Portugal, a traditionally conservative Catholic country that by the 1980s had unwittingly found itself at the crossroads of major drug trafficking routes between North Africa, South America and Europe. Even the Netherlands’ drug laws are not as liberal as Portugal’s. There’s been a dramatic shift in the way Portugal and a growing number of other countries view drug abuse – as a public health issue rather than a law enforcement one.
Last week, former Mexican President Vicente Fox criticized his country’s military-led, U.S.-backed war on drugs, which has left more than 28,000 people dead since December 2006. Instead, Fox said Mexico should consider legalizing the production, distribution and sale of drugs.
“Legalizing in this sense doesn’t mean that drugs are good or don’t hurt those who consume. Rather, we have to see it as a strategy to strike and break the economic structure that allows the mafias to generate huge profits in their business,” Fox wrote on his blog.
Portugal wasn’t trying to choke off cash flow to drug cartels as much as it was trying to extend drug treatment to the huge proportion of its citizens who were hooked on illicit substances – an economic drain on the country’s free public health care system. Decriminalization is also different from legalization: Drugs in Portugal are technically still illegal, but the penalty is voluntary treatment rather than jail.
An informal survey of drug dealers on the streets of Portugal’s capital Thursday by AOL News showed most of them aren’t quite sure of the law’s boundaries. “It’s not illegal to have it in your pocket,” said a 29-year-old dealer who refused to give his name. “But when the police come past I still throw it away,” he said, pointing to a small gully in the cobblestone street where he hides his stash.
“The dealers refrain from their little sales pitch, ‘Hash! Coke!’ within a few meters of the police,” said Marc Lupien, 47, who owns a bar in Lisbon’s Bairro Alto neighborhood. “But since the decriminalization, I don’t think they’re really scared.”
Within parts of Europe, Portugal’s liberal drug policy has become a model for other nations. Spain and Italy have both dramatically reduced penalties for drug possession, and the Norwegian government sent two delegates to Portugal in May to study the local strategy. Denmark is also weighing whether to decriminalize drugs.
“For us, this is about the addicts leading a more dignified life,” Danish opposition lawmaker Mette Frederiksen said in March, according to The Wall Street Journal. “We want to lower the death rates, the secondary symptoms and the criminality, so we look keenly to Portugal.”
Americans might consider looking keenly across the Atlantic as well. The U.S. has long championed a fierce law enforcement policy toward drugs, but it still has some of the highest rates of drug use in the world, and more than a quarter of its prison inmates are behind bars for drug-related offenses. Per capita, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have smoked marijuana.
But experts say decriminalization – let alone the legalization Mexico’s Vicente Fox suggested – is a long shot in the U.S.
“The war on drugs is a real industry, especially where prisons have been privatized. There are lobbyists in D.C. that want drugs criminalized so that tax dollars go to these industries,” said Dr. Evan Wood, an AIDS expert at the University of British Columbia who lauded Portugal’s drug law at last month’s 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna. "It’s created a political quagmire in the U.S., where it’s difficult to even open a discussion about the failure of the war on drugs without being branded ‘soft on crime.’ "
“There’s a very strong consensus in the public health world that criminalizing people who use drugs is totally counterproductive,” Wood told AOL News. “And yet resources are still put toward chasing people and locking them up rather than things that work like addiction treatment. … It’s incredibly frustrating.”
But the U.S. is not alone in its reticence to change tack. Even after 10 years, most of Europe has not followed suit, and Portugal retains its title for having the continent’s mildest penalties for drug use and possession. Many countries fear spikes in crime associated with drugs, and several United Nations bodies have criticized the decriminalization approach.
Jones, with the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, points out that even though Portugal has dramatically cut its rate of new HIV infections among drug users, the country still has one of the highest tallies of such infections in Europe.
Asked about whether he thinks Portugal’s decriminalization has worked, bar owner Lupien looked out into the crowded cobblestone street outside his tiny bar.
“Honestly, the way the policy might work is by taking the kick out of drugs,” he said. “Why do it if you don’t have that thrill of it being bad?”
^Jesus! And I thought getting out of Alpine Valley after a show was readicculus! 
^^ That’s unbelievable. I would have pushed my car off an embankment and walked. Either that or shot my brains out. I really don’t deal with traffic jams well at all.
Thought some of you might like this…
Early Muppets become museum pieces
news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625 … s-21585856
^Nice. Jim Henson was one interesting dude.
washingtontimes.com/news/201 … artillery/
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A former U.S. Army analyst who tried to board a flight to China with electronic files containing restricted Army documents poses a danger of the “gravest sense,” a prosecutor argued Tuesday in federal court.
Liangtian Yang, 26, of Lawton, Okla., is charged in Oklahoma with one count of theft of government property. During a detention hearing, investigators testified he had copies of two restricted Army field manuals on multiple launch rocket systems on his computer equipment when he was arrested last week at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Mr. Yang had quit his job days earlier after he lost his security clearance for failing to report his marriage, prosecutors said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeanne Graham ordered Mr. Yang to remain in custody and be transferred to Oklahoma within 10 days to face the charge against him. She said he was a flight risk.
“Obviously, danger to national security is a concern,” Judge Graham said. “There are too many questions and shadows, and maybe more light will be shed in Oklahoma.”
FBI Special Agent Michael Stukel testified that Mr. Yang, also known as Alfred Yang, worked on experimental weapons for the Army. Along with the manuals on rocket systems, investigators found evidence indicating a classified document once had been on Mr. Yang’s computer equipment but no longer was, he said.
Authorities found more documents that are being reviewed, Agent Stukel said.
Court testimony didn’t reveal why Mr. Yang may have had the documents, which are not supposed to be loaded onto personal computers or released to foreign nationals.
Mr. Yang’s attorney, Scott Johnson, said his client has lived in the United States since 2001, became a U.S. citizen in 2006 and had been with the Oklahoma National Guard. Mr. Johnson said Mr. Yang intended to return to the United States after attending a university in China.
Agent Stukel testified Mr. Yang had told Army officials he planned to attend school in China. But, he said, investigators found an e-mail in which Mr. Yang expressed interest in jobs and salary opportunities in China, suggesting Mr. Yang had no intention of returning to the United States.
story continues on website
Maybe this would be better as its own thread for some more open discussion but wat da eff.
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100902/lf_ … in_hawking
God did not create the universe, says Hawking
LONDON (Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.
In “The Grand Design,” co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking writes.
“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time,” an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.
Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics – Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.
His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.
He wrote in A Brief History … “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.”
In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.
“That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings,” he writes.
Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.
He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world’s leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in “Star Trek” and the cartoons “Futurama” and “The Simpsons.”
Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.
“The Grand Design” is due to go on sale next week.
^Sounds pretty reasonable, and credible. I see no problem.
In the “What A Way to Go” department…
Founding member of ELO dies in freak accident
Sept. 6, 2010, 11:22 AM EST WENN
A founding member of rock band Electric Light Orchestra was killed on Friday in a freak accident with a giant runaway bale of hay.
Cellist Mike Edwards died instantly after the 1,320-pound bale came tumbling down a steep hill and onto the van he was driving through Devon, England. The bale is believed to have fallen from a tractor working nearby.
Edwards swerved into another vehicle as he was struck but the other driver was uninjured in the crash.
Now authorities are reaching out to the Edwards’ relatives to help with their investigation and formally identify the musician, who was 62.
Sergeant Steve Walker of the Devon and Cornwall police says, "This was a tragic accident and we have now identified the victim as Michael Edwards, a founder member of ELO.
“We have used photographs and YouTube footage to identify him but we now need help contacting his family for formal identification.”
Edwards quit the band at the height of its fame in 1975 to become a Buddhist.
Whoa…
I was gonna say, how do you get killed by a bale of hay? Then they said he swerved and hit another car.
Should have just plowed right into that and kept going.
Still a pretty shitty way to go.
Yeah…they played Evil Woman on the radio this morning…great song. Great band overall.
This has GOT to be fake…I always though A.C. Slater was, you know what!
Here is my County Commissioner being led away in handcuffs… flipping the bird!
^ 
It’s the long lost lovechild of Sobchak and Epic Beard Man!
But, yeah… that is one corrupt ass county you live in, Will! 
