One of the long-recurring bits in American society has been the push by a small portion of the population - though sizing varies - to legalize (or I should probably use the term re-legalize) the growing and consumption of the hemp plant, aka pot, marijuana, and a host of other names.

Udolpho, meanwhile, states the following:

I used to be in favor of legalizing marijuana, but the persistent stupidity of marijuana zealots has beaten that position out of me, and now I am against legalization just to spite them. Experience shows that even occasional marijuana smokers are not terribly bright, and it is my belief that stupid people need to suffer.

Putting aside some pretty heated rhetoric, I'm mixed on this topic, mostly because the topic itself is mixed.

Arguments against pot:
- Its listing as a harmful agent by various government agencies.
- Its various mind-altering properties.
- The fact that drug gangs manufacture it right now.
- The fact that it can become an addiction.
- The fact that, when combined with other things (like heavy machinery) it can conceivably be dangerous.

Arguments for pot:
- Its various mind-altering properties.
- The fact that it does seem (depending on various case studies/medical studies) to offer some benefits for certain people, such as those suffering symptoms from chemotherapy.
- The fact that it has an appetite-inducing effect (worthwhile for people who have medical conditions that otherwise destroy appetite).
- The fact that most of the harmful properties come from the smoked-and-inhaled method of application, but it can be derived into pill form or "baked" (pardon the pun) into various foods or made into butter.

Arguments against pot that I think don't quite hold up under scrutiny from above:
1) the involvement of drug gangs. While this is a true statement, it's also a bit of a red herring, since legalization wouldn't mean the drug gangs would control it, but that legal producers could take over and the drug gangs would have to move on to something else. See also: Mafia and Moonshine, Prohibition.

2) The fact that, when combined with other things, it can be dangerous: we have warning labels on plenty of other things that are legal, too, most of which cause much the same problem (drowsiness or inattentiveness). Cough syrup/Nyquil, for example.

Udolpho also comes up with a few other things I question. For starters:

What are the drawbacks? Do we really need more boring, listless, unmotivated people in the world? Do we need more vacant stoners sitting around playing video games and watching the Home Shopping Network? No. And obviously it's not healthy. I am sick of taking shit for smoking a cigarette and hearing all about bogus second hand smoke hazards (if only), then hearing marijuana advocates parrot the simplisitic and as it happens wrong assertion that their drug of choice is completely harmless. Even though they're just pothead losers they need to be challenged about their idiotic beliefs regarding marijuana.

Whether marijuana smoke is more or less healthy than cigarettes is debatable, but since a lot of the harmful portion of a cigarette is chemicals added by the manufacturer, whereas marijuana is pretty much dried leaf product, there's probably a case to be made that marijuana smoke is less damaging than cigarette smoke. This, I think, is something that probably ought to be studied more, and there's probably a case to be made for people being offered cigarettes that are nothing but pure dried tobacco leaf (though the tobacco companies probably wouldn't like this, since they put most of those chemicals into the cigs to make them more addictive in the first place).

He also goes after alcohol, which is another "controlled" substance, and makes a few potshots I won't copy here. Next paragraph down, if you're wondering, but I'll feel safe enough simply pointing out for his reference that plenty of chain-smokers are also alcoholics too, so the argument there is probably just a wash.

The trouble I have overall, though, is his continued insistence that pot-smokers are inevitably stupid. I've known some who are ordinarily bright people, but have a pot habit. The problem with pot isn't that it attracts stupid people, or that it necessarily is limited to them: instead, it's that it is limited to bored people. It's an escape for making them feel ok with being bored. Some people seem to feel a need for that.

And no, the marijuana lobby aren't stupid. Some of their arguments - about the fact that it was legal in the past and was no problem for certain very bright people (George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to name just two), about the relative danger vs cigarettes, and in the tactic of trying to get it approved for medical use as a wedge toward generic use - are actually pretty bright.

But most damning for Udolpho at all in my mind is that while "Marijuana" is illegal,Marinol - which is a synthetic version of the generally recognized "active ingredient" in marijuana, THC - is available by doctor prescription. The difference between the two? $$$$$$$$$ per dose, because a particular pharmaceutical company has patent and trademark on Marinol and makes a mint while giving kickbacks to the government. Conspiracy theory material? In some senses, yes, but as the patent system is in general broken with regard to medicinal research, it's just one part of a larger problem.

Tyler Cowen:

It's liability per se that isn't justified by libertarian standards. Under Lockean property rights theory, you own physical things, not the values of those things. It is for this reason that if you set up shop next to a competitor, you are not infringing his property rights, even if his business ends up being worth less. So let's say I steal your painting. Yes, you do deserve your painting back. It is yours. But say I steal your painting and lose it or wreck it. That should be the end of the story. You never owned the "value of that painting." You simply owned the physical painting. You are not due compensation. If you take my money as compensation for your loss, that is simply another theft.

So next time someone smashes in Tyler Cowen's window, let us remind him that he is due no compensation.

Have libertarians always been this eager to outlibertarianize everyone else? It's almost like with the advent of the blogosphere and the connections of libertarian cells nationwide therein, they have found their individuality encroached by too many people actually agreeing with them.

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post on the 18-and-counting Duggar family:

So the question is, for me, which would be more strange: Coming from a family like this or marrying in to a family like this? I'd say the latter. If you come from an odd family, you don't know any better. But if you're marrying in to it, you already have a somewhat normal view of what a family should look like. Then again, maybe not so much if you live in Arkansas.

To which Sammler commented:

Substitute "Idaho" for "Arkansas" in your last paragraph, and over 98% of the U.S. population will think it equally amusing.

Meanwhile, an interesting discussion on the topic has emerged over at The American Scene. A fellow named Yeselson writes:

Ross admits, tongue in cheek, that the whole thing is a bit excessive. But this is really where the rubber meets the road for conservative, cosmpolitan intellectuals and their relationship to the mass political base that has given these intellectual's a whiff of power. By which I mean this: Ross has written eloquently here and elsewhere about the need to expand theopportunity for working class kids to attend elite universities. But neither this woman nor her children will be socialized or literally have enough time in the day to realize that aspiration--in short, they will never have the opportunity to write elegant essays like Ross Douthat. Nor will the girls have the opportunity to grow and meet witty, thoughtful, perhaps slightly less fertile men like Ross Douthat. Nor would Ross Douthat likely find a woman with the values and life experience of the woman described in the article the slightest bit interesting in anything but an anthropological sense.

Funny thing.

The subject has come up at work on a few occasions. In the process I discovered that no less than two of my coworkers come from families that have children of 13 or more. Half a dozen or so come from families with more than eight. Interesting to me is that I would never have suspected it, having met them. They are, contrary to Yeselson's fears, fully functional members of society. For all I know, they may be perfectly as capable as Douthat at waxing eloquence. The one with 13 siblings, in fact, is in a high-paying service-sector job where he deals with people from all around the country non-stop.

I'm not saying that I advocate such large families, but I actually find them less conspicuous than I find only children, which I'm pretty good at spotting. Frankly, I have to question the sanity of a couple wanting to undertake such an endeavor. I'll also concede that my now-revealed real life examples may be quite atypical. And they're male (a lot of Yeselson's concerned seem to be geared at the female younglings, who lack a good role model).

But at the least, it's gotten me to reconsider my previous snarkiness on the matter.

Aldahlia sent me this picture in the comments section to my TSN post on the Duggars. Note that this picture is three kids ago -- they're up to sixteen. Jim Bob Duggar's site is quite interesting. Unsurprisingly, he's quite a religious fellow and there is a plethora or biblical verses mentioned.

He also seems to be an addict to every self-help book out there. The source of his income? Real estate. I guess some of those late night infomercials really do work, cause he's building a 7,000 square foot house debt-free.

So the question is, for me, which would be more strange: Coming from a family like this or marrying in to a family like this? I'd say the latter. If you come from an odd family, you don't know any better. But if you're marrying in to it, you already have a somewhat normal view of what a family should look like. Then again, maybe not so much if you live in Arkansas.

Via Owen, I discovered this odd little story about a man being cuffed to a pole for paying a $114 installation charge with $2 bills:

He remembers the cashier marking each bill with a pen. Then other store personnel began to gather, a few of them asking, "Are these real?"

"Of course they are," Bolesta said. "They're legal tender."

A Best Buy manager refused comment last week. But, according to a Baltimore County police arrest report, suspicions were roused when an employee noticed some smearing of ink. So the cops were called in. One officer noticed the bills ran in sequential order.

"I told them, 'I'm a tour operator. I've got thousands of these bills. I get them from my bank. You got a problem, call the bank,'" Bolesta says. "I'm sitting there in a chair. The store's full of people watching this. All of a sudden, he's standing me up and handcuffing me behind my back, telling me, 'We have to do this until we get it straightened out.'

I can understand a bit of skepticism and someone pays for something with sequential $2. But even so, this is plain odd to me. First of all, from what I understand the margin of counterfeiting lower bills is so low that the threat of a counterfeit $1 is tiny (one of the reasons that they aren't updated like the larger bills are). Now this was a $2 instead of a $1, but if someone was going to counterfeit money, they'd want it to be as discreit as possible and $2 are the opposite of discreit. Third, it's not as if he was some guy off the street. They had information on him and knew where he lived. No one is going to cut and run for $114 when they had a car to install a stereo system on. Like I said, I can understand a bit of "this is odd" skepticism, but all that is required is making a note of who the customer is so that if there is any problem, you can take care of it then without the bad publicity of a story in the Baltimore Sun.

I'm inclined to cut customer representatives a lot of slack, but someone should lose their job over this.

Ordinarily something like this would be FURLed, but since it's registration-only and most of you (I'd imagine) are disinclined to register with The Oklahoman, I thought I'd put up an excerpt:

TULSA - For the right price, John Cox will change his first name to anything you want, within reason.
Your name here: To view John Cox's auction, go to www.ebay.com and enter 5555381567 in the search field.

The Tulsa man expects the winner of his eBay auction to be a corporation, and hopes to make a couple hundred thousand dollars for him to assume the company's name and act as a spokesman and living billboard.

The auction ends Monday. Friday afternoon, the highest bid was $62.05.

"I'm not really scared because even if my name is 'Procter Gamble Cox' I'll be making some good money," he said. "I mean, who knows, I might regret it in the end but at this point, I'm hungry for some money and a little crazy I guess."

Dag nabbit:

VICTORVILLE, Calif. - When Marine Lance Cpl. David Battle learned he'd either have to sacrifice his ring finger or the wedding band he wore, he told doctors at a field hospital in Iraq to cut off the finger.

[...]

Doctors were preparing to cut off Battle's ring to save as much of his finger as they could.

"But that would mean destroying my wedding ring," he said. "My wife is the strongest woman I know. She's basically running two people's lives since I've been gone. I don't think I could ever repay her or show her how grateful ... how much I love my wife, my soul mate."

With his approval, doctors severed his finger, but somehow in the chaos that followed, they lost his ring.

Part of me thinks that this is the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. Ever. Part of me thinks it's the sweetest.

[link via OTB]

One has to wonder what was running through this woman's mind:
A woman ran over two teenage brothers after they accidentally hit her sport utility vehicle with the golf ball they were bouncing in a parking lot, officials said, leaving one of the boys with life-threatening injuries.

Isiah Grayer, 14, and his 16-year-old twin stepbrothers, Justin and Jamel Marshman, were bouncing the golf ball in a shopping center parking lot Sunday afternoon when it went astray and struck a sport utility vehicle driven by Kathy Feaganes Allen, 47, St. Johns County sheriff's Deputy Greg Suchy said.

Suchy said no damage was done, and the boys apologized and began to walk away. Allen started to drive away, but suddenly made a U-turn, ran over a median and struck Grayer, causing severe injuries, and Justin Marshman before knocking over a light pole, Suchy said.

She then drove after Jamel Marshman, crossing two medians and striking a utility box before her SUV stopped in a ditch, Suchy said. The boy ran away and was not struck.

This is too cute to be true. I'll have to keep my eye on Snopes:

A Canadian man, driving a car packed with weapons and ammunition, was intent on killing as many people as possible in a Toronto neighbourhood but gave up the plan at the last minute when he encountered a friendly dog, police say.

The middle-aged man, who police say is mentally disturbed, had planned to carry out the shooting spree on Wednesday to ensure he would be put in jail permanently.

Police say he had set himself up in an east-end park to load his weapons and then planned to drive around shooting.

He told police that a dog then approached and started playing with him.

Police say the encounter melted the man's heart, and he then went in search of police to give himself up.

[via Seabrook]

Cody Clark links to a fascinating article on a research experiment to make promiscuous rodents into monogamous ones:

Could the day come when a simple bit of gene therapy might cure infidelity?

In a report out today, researchers say they were able to perform that bit of molecular magic on the meadow vole, a mouse-like rodent. The genes involved are the same in humans, they say, though the mechanism is likely to be far more complex.

By transferring a single gene to the pleasure center of the naturally promiscuous male vole, researchers at Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta were able to make it happily monogamous, they say in a letter in the journal Nature.

They're not actually suggesting gene therapy can fix human infidelity, but the research has important implications for brain disorders, such as autism, that make it difficult for people to bond with others.

''It really highlights the connections between social behavior and gene expression,'' says Gene Robinson, director of the neuroscience program at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the study. He calls the research ''exciting.''

The male meadow vole is promiscuous, but his cousin the prairie vole is the settle-down-and-raise-a-family kind of guy. In studying the brain chemistry of the two mammals, researchers found that when the monogamous prairie vole mates, the pleasure hormone dopamine is released in its brain. The receptors for that dopamine are located in the brain's pleasure center, which also happens to be where the receptors for the hormone vasopressin are located. And vasopressin is linked to social learning.

As Cody says, we don't know much yet about how this might effect humans, but it brings up some interesting ethical questions about rewiring human nature.