The test was wrong, we’re not pregnant yet.

I’m very disappointed in my sperm, and believe you me, I’ve given them a stern talking-to.

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The Gauntlet was pretty good, but I found the police violence to be unrealistic. Doesn’t shooting the house until it literally falls down because there might be three armed men inside seem over the top? Perhaps I’m just naive, or in the thrall of a Republikudnik conspiracy.*

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Now the anti-Semite Gandhi has is referring to my post as “right-wing war-mongering squawk-box tactics.”

He thinks the last name Goldstein is a “motive,” but pointing out that that’s racist? A tactic.

If Gandhi wants to apologize for his statement about Jeff being a “Jew on the payroll” I might reconsider my belief that he’s a cretin.

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Be careful, Jeff. The only people qualified to criticize Cindy are the mothers of dead soldiers (brothers need not apply) or the dead soldiers themselves.

And the latter are restricted to commenting, from beyond the grave, on Cindy’s shoes and/or new lipstick.

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Go over to Zomby’s place to RSVP for the next blogger bash. Also tell him to design a button that isn’t so big, this one looks ridiculous if you put it in a sidebar.

Hell, it looks ridiculous right here in the blog. I’m only writing this paragraph so that I have enough text to keep the thing from spilling into the next entry. I mean, what the fuck can you say about a blogger bash? We’ll have fun, get drunk, there will be at least three shouting matches that nearly come to blows.

Just trust me, it will be worth your time, so put it on your calendar.

Update: There, that’s better.

Bump: Time and location have been decided. It’s at the Denver branch of the Minturn Saloon, which sounds nice, at 7 pm on August 20th. Meet on the rooftop patio, weather permitting. If you’re interested, click the button and RSVP in Zombyboy’s comments.

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Hey, Gandhi… your blog sucks. I’m an agnostic who was born Catholic, so try to fit that into your conspiracy-addled mind, you anti-Semitic cretin.

(Oh, and learn how to spell anti-Semitic while you’re at it. Semite, Semitic, get it?)

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Don’t bother refreshing if you don’t see them, they aren’t there… unless you got here via Google. Or, more accurately, unless you got here via Google, Yahoo, or a couple other search engines. Brad Choate gave me the idea, although at this point he’s gone and changed his blog to show ads to every visitor. I might do the same in the future.

What I was actually looking for on Brad’s site was how he prints the ad after the first post on every page, but not after every post. I still haven’t figured that out, so for now I’ve got a banner at the very top of the page and a button in the sidebar (If you want to see what the ads looks like search for “matt moore” in google and hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button). Instead I found his brilliant idea to show Google ads only to Google visitors so I don’t penalize my regular readers by trying to make a buck. He used mt-refsearch to display the ads, but that seemed like overkill to me (and that plugin probably isn’t compatible with dynamic pages, anyway). So I wrote a little bit of PHP to do the same thing on a smaller scale.

<?php
$referer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
if ( ereg ( "google.com", $referer ) || ereg ( "altavista.com", $referer )
 || ereg ( "lycos.com", $referer ) || ereg ( "yahoo.com", $referer ) ) {
echo <<<END
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-###";
google_ad_width = 125;
google_ad_height = 125;
google_ad_format = "125x125_as";
google_ad_type = "text";
google_ad_channel ="";
google_color_border = "A3B8CC";
google_color_bg = "DAE0E6";
google_color_link = "36419D";
google_color_url = "36419D";
google_color_text = "000333";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>
END;
}
?>

Of course, fill in your own AdSense code between the END statements. Wherever I stick this script the ad is shown only if the user was referred here by a handful of search engines. Pretty neat, and so far I’ve made 68 cents. Only $99.32 until they cut me a check!

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There’s a bit of an argument raging in the comments of this post over at Goldstein’s place. On one side are the drug warriors, most of whom think that the soft drugs like marijuana and halucinogens should be legalized but hard drugs should (I’m inferring and generalizing here) be criminalized even further. On the other are those that argue that drug prohibition doesn’t work for any drug, and that the good effects of legalization will outweigh the bad. I’m with the latter group.

I think everyone who’s worth arguing with agrees that legalization will have some good effects. Illegal drug use causes many problems in society and many (most?) of those problems are directly due to the drugs illegality. These problems include money flowing into organized crime, money flowing into terrorist organizations, violence caused by turf wars, violence caused by addicts who can’t afford their habits, drug labs that are hazardous waste sites, and drugs of such poor quality that they’re poisonous and kill addicts who otherwise wouldn’t have overdosed.

All that would go away with legalization. Once legitimate businesses started making and selling drugs the price would fall so far the black market would no longer have the profit margins that attract criminals. Addicts would find their drugs to be much more affordable, and many would be able to get them without stealing. Poor quality would become subject to legal remedies, with bad companies driven bankrupt by lawsuits or bad publicity.

The only negative effect of legalization would be a theorized increase in drug use and the number of addicts. But would that happen? Based on our national experience with Prohibition I think it’s obvious that it wouldn’t.

Consumption of alcohol actually rose steadily after an initial drop. Annual per capita consumption had been declining since 1910, reached an all-time low during the depression of 1921, and then began to increase in 1922. Consumption would probably have surpassed pre-Prohibition levels even if Prohibition had not been repealed in 1933. Illicit production and distribution continued to expand throughout Prohibition despite ever-increasing resources devoted to enforcement. That pattern of consumption… is to be expected after an entire industry is banned: new entrepreneurs in the underground economy improve techniques and expand output, while consumers begin to realize the folly of the ban.

That’s from a CATO Insitute paper, so dismiss it as the rantings of lefty freedom junkies if you must. I, for one, think that the many benefits of legalization would far outweigh the single cost of creating a few more addicts.

The pro-drug war crowd seems to rely so much on emotion, anecdote, and personal experience because the historical, economic, and statistical facts don’t support their argument. So I’ll argue on their terms and ask a personal question. If meth was legal, cheap, and widely available tomorrow, would you try it? I, and most people I know, wouldn’t.

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If we’d only hurry up and make hard drugs like meth and crack illegal these anecdotes could have happy endings.

Fuck, they’re already illegal? Can’t we make them illegaler?

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From the, “Did she really say that?” files.

Today’s arrest of Mark (sic) Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.

That’s Karen Tandy of the DEA (the emphasis is mine) trumpeting the role an arrest will play in silencing criticism of drug laws and her agency. Criticism that, last time I checked (McCain-Feingold aside), was political speech protected by the First Amendment. I’m with Walter, she should be fired.

(Shhh… don’t tell Harrell about this. He might wig out, or at least pretentiously disapprove. And he wonders why his friends find him offensive.)

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