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“[N]early a decade later, there’s evidence that Portugal’s great drug experiment not only didn’t blow up in its face; it may have actually worked. More addicts are in treatment. Drug use among youths has declined in recent years. Life in Casal Ventoso, Lisbon’s troubled neighborhood, has improved. And new research, published in the British Journal of Criminology, documents just how much things have changed in Portugal. Coauthors Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and Alex Stevens report a 63 percent increase in the number of Portuguese drug users in treatment and, shortly after the reforms took hold, a 499 percent increase in the amount of drugs seized — indications, the authors argue, that police officers, freed up from focusing on small-time possession, have been able to target big-time traffickers while drug addicts, no longer in danger of going to prison, have been able to get the help they need.”
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“This panel is the user interface to call the elevator. The most used element is the button to call the elevator – and there is absolutely no clue as to function. The unlabelled least obvious button at the bottom panel is the button to call the elevator. (No idea what the other button does.)
This in a building that hosts talks on advanced user interface design. The level of irony is truly sublime.”
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“The virtue of Mr. Gabler’s essay is that it gives energetic and eloquent voice to a pervasive ideological fantasy. None of the “commissars” and “imperialists” in his tableau of cultural dictatorship are named, and that is for the simple reason they are imaginary creatures. I don’t mean like straw men erected for purposes of debate, but instead like ogres and dragons invented to scare children. But belief in these monsters is remarkably widespread, in part because they answer the need for scapegoats, and no one is easier to blame these days than “elitists” of various kinds.
Ignoring their instructions thus becomes a heroic assertion of liberty, a way of striking out against illegitimate and arrogant authority. But who are we kidding? There is very little in cultural life that is easier than ignoring what critics have to say, and for more than 200 years normal Americans have been doing just that.”
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“”If I was on the visiting team, I wouldn’t want to go there for a postseason game, because the environment would be incredibly hostile,” Urlacher said. “The pressure just gets more intense the deeper you go, and the whole place just gets totally raucous because you’ve got to contend with 500 mph winds. Plus, the surface probably gets really slippery from the helium rain. Any team from Saturn who gets home-field advantage would make it to the Super Bowl easy.””