@lewis82: how would that make sense?

What I do know having had lots of people over to my place over the years is that the one thing I've had to replace was the seat, not the toilet. I guess it also has to do with my toilet not really having been visited by anyone whose weight would be a danger for it. I always reckoned they'd break my lounge chairs before they broke the toilet bowl. However - and my point being - is that within the last 10 years I've had to shell out roughly 150 Euro on new seats, seeing how some drunk (yes, my friends and even I get drunk sometimes), ill (in the medical sense), exasperated, etc. person slams it up and down, others wobble on it, et al...

The screws are metal, the surfaces are plastic, polymer, multi-pley (dunno if you have this in the new continent, even though I lived there about half my life).. What happens if metal grinds against any of them? In due time, they give way...

Carbon wouldn't... And at 270 it's, over time, not even that expensive...

Logic behind the idea (which I, of course, also see as somewhat abstruse) revealed?

A single hair strand can carry so much information. And it would fit through a needle's eye.

If Art Garfunkel wasn't right about the days of miracles and wonders, I have no idea...

Awesome.

That's the ESTS (Extensible and Safe Ticketing System).

Wow. That much artificial light? Wow.

Having grown up with 3 languages (4 if you include a dead one) it is my belief that language(s) have an enormous effect on how we perceive things. Individual word definitions can be translated, but the subtle conotations of what the word "means" are lost during the translation. In this sense each language offers a variety of "texture and color" to individual words.

My personal opinion is time doesn't exist. Or why is it so fickle in its perceptivity?

One should take the words of the judge in context. Yes, insults make up psychological violence, at least in part. Calling someone an expletive over and over again certainly doesn't represent harmony, that's for sure.

And much like protons, neutrons and electrons make up atoms, which in turn make up that which we know as "matter" I would consider this an elementary but not an exclusive part of the actual issue. And in that sense the stipulation is perfectly acceptable.

Some countries don't write "This medication causes drowsiness" as a warning label on sleeping tablets. So let's not mock France for laws that actually make sense.

Larry Page.

Astounding! Particularly due to its impermanence... If that's even a word.

I'm flabbergasted...

Last Summer, I found a mouse peering in through the window of the basement light chute. I put on some working gloves and got a hold of the wee one, dropping him in a box with cheese, salami, crackers, and some damp paper towels. It wasn't until I started closing the window that I saw the gnawed-to-the-bone carcass of a second mouse. It didn't take long to understand why the mouse I had just saved seemed so well fed.

Everyone thought the FB pictures were cute (of the mouse, when we released it). No one said anything after I mentioned it was a canibal.

How is that even humanly possible? O.O

@jsteward: true that.

I forgot to add: it's not as if the current laws have done anything to avoid the spread of drug usage (like wildfire, actually). If we don't have a better model, while not try something different? History has taught us that when we stop seeing the world in a narrow-minded fashion, we often do stumble on real solutions.

I recall attending a conference where high-ranking members of both the FBI and the FDA agreed that decriminalizing drugs, potentially even legalizing pot would be a more feasible solution to the issue than the continued "war on drugs". But, just as on the "war against terror" it is easier to propagate populism than sitting down to consider alternatives.

I don't need to mention that, in general, journalism is intended to at least try being objective. I don't see that in this post, on the contrary: it is direly missing.

Prostitution is legal in a couple of European countries and the general population has not been negatively affected by this move. Quite on the contrary, the prostitutes now belong to the "productive" parts of society, i.e. the ones paying taxes, etc. The prostitutes themselves benefit from healthcare and better legal protection (I mean: pimps have become a thing of the past). So, if we stick to this example without applying conservative US moralism it would seem that, yes, this pans out.

Let's move that one further and have a look at the Czech republic that has decriminalized marihuana and has since not encountered an increase in usage, but definitely a decrease in pot-based criminality. The Netherlands, btw, experienced a similar decrease when they first introduced decriminalized cannabis. If it has increased against since then, one should pose the question if that doesn't mainly have to do with the large amount of (mainly US) drug tourists (which, btw, is the real reason why the government has decided to restrict access again).

To be honest, if US citizens weren't so bent on consuming drugs, the entire war on drugs in Mexico could be cancelled. Where there is demand, there will be supply - that is an ancient axiom of economics. And it's not the Mexicans who are getting high and wasting their brains, it's the US Americans.

Attack the problem at the source, don't try to outsource it.