outsourcing punishment to god: beliefs in divine control reduce earthly punishment

Royal Society | The sanctioning of norm-transgressors is a necessary—though often costly—task for maintaining a well-functioning society. Prior to effective and reliable secular institutions for punishment, large-scale societies depended on individuals engaging in ‘altruistic punishment’—bearing the costs of punishment individually, for the benefit of society. Evolutionary approaches to religion suggest that beliefs in powerful, moralizing Gods, who can distribute rewards and punishments, emerged as a way to augment earthly punishment in large societies that could not effectively monitor norm violations. In five studies, we investigate whether such beliefs in God can replace people's motivation to engage in altruistic punishment, and their support for state-sponsored punishment. Results show that, although religiosity generally predicts higher levels of punishment, the specific belief in powerful, intervening Gods reduces altruistic punishment and support for state-sponsored punishment. Moreover, these effects are specifically owing to differences in people's perceptions that humans are responsible for punishing wrongdoers.

alcohol is THE Gateway drug - why it's available on every corner in some neighborhoods....,

Wiley | BACKGROUND: The Gateway Drug Theory suggests that licit drugs, such as tobacco and alcohol, serve as a “gateway” toward the use of other, illicit drugs. However, there remains some discrepancy regarding which drug—alcohol, tobacco, or even marijuana—serves as the initial “gateway” drug subsequently leading to the use of illicit drugs such as cocaine and heroin. The purpose of this investigation was to determine which drug (alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana) was the actual “gateway” drug leading to additional substance use among a nationally representative sample of high school seniors.

METHODS: This investigation conducted a secondary analysis of the 2008 Monitoring the Future 12th-grade data. Initiation into alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use was analyzed using a Guttman scale. Coefficients of reliability and scalability were calculated to evaluate scale fit. Subsequent cross tabulations and chi-square test for independence were conducted to better understand the relationship between the identified gateway drug and other substances' use.

RESULTS: Results from the Guttman scale indicated that alcohol represented the “gateway” drug, leading to the use of tobacco, marijuana, and other illicit substances. Moreover, students who used alcohol exhibited a significantly greater likelihood of using both licit and illicit drugs.

CONCLUSION: The findings from this investigation support that alcohol should receive primary attention in school-based substance abuse prevention programming, as the use of other substances could be impacted by delaying or preventing alcohol use. Therefore, it seems prudent for school and public health officials to focus prevention efforts, policies, and monies, on addressing adolescent alcohol use. Fist tap Dale.

get high for free

slate | It continues to be totally off the radar of prominent politicians, but polls indicate that large and growing numbers of Americans are open to the idea of legalizing marijuana. Gallup broke ground last fall with the first-ever poll showing 50 percent of respondents nationwide wanting to legalize, and a more precisely worded poll from Rasmussen in May had 56 percent in favor of “legalizing marijuana and regulating it in a similar manner to the way alcohol and tobacco cigarettes are regulated today.” Thus far those polls are outliers, and most surveys show more voter skepticism than that. But as elderly voters are more pot-phobic than the young, legalization’s support is likely to increase over time and surely it will work its way onto the national agenda sooner or later.

There’s been relatively little analysis of what a legal marijuana industry might look like. One key but little-appreciated fact is that, according to persuasive research by Jonathan Caulkins, Angela Hawken, Beau Kilmer, and Mark Kleiman in their new book Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs To Know, is that legal pot would be amazingly cheap. In fact, midgrade stuff would be so cheap that it might make sense for businesses to give it away like ketchup packets or bar nuts.

Conventional thinking about pot pricing is often dominated by people’s experience buying weed in legal or quasi-legal settings such as a Dutch “coffee shop” or a California medical marijuana dispensary. But this is badly misleading. Neither California nor the Netherlands permit growing or wholesale distribution of marijuana as a legal matter. If pot were fully legal, its growth, distribution, and marketing would work entirely differently.

chromosomal evidence of your species near demise...,

slate | How did having 46 chromosomes then spread worldwide? It’s possible that having two fewer chromosomes than everyone else gave Guy and Doll’s family a whopping evolutionary advantage, allowing them to out-compete the 48-chromosome sluggards. But probably not. More likely, they happened to be living at a point when the human race nearly got wiped out.

Take your pick for the cause of our near-extinction—ice ages, plagues, Indonesian gigavolcanoes. But humans have far less genetic diversity than most other species, and the most reasonable explanation for this is a genetic bottleneck: a severe reduction in the population of humans in the past, perhaps multiple times. One study suggested that our population, worldwide, might have dropped as low as 40 adults. (The world record for fitting people in a phone booth is 25.) That’s an outlandishly pessimistic guess even among disaster scientists, but it’s common to find estimates of a few thousand adults, below what some minor league baseball teams draw. Consider that these humans might not have been united in one place, but scattered into small, isolated pockets around Africa, and things look even shakier for our future. Had the Endangered Species Act existed way back when, human beings might have been the equivalent of pandas and condors.

But however alarming, bottlenecks and near-extinctions aren’t necessarily all bad. With less competition around, a beneficial brain-boosting gene, say, could have an easier time spreading. And those who slip through the bottleneck become big Darwinian winners, because whatever genes those dumb-lucky survivors have can spread far and wide. Guy and Doll were likely two of those survivors, and they bequeathed to the rest of us our unique arrangement of 46 chromosomes.

global system of hopsin supremacy

Fist tap Dale.

reschedule psilocybin, MDMA, and cannabis?

Fist tap Dale.

study finds voters overwhelmingly want big defense spending cuts

nationaljournal | Americans of all stripes have had enough of massive Pentagon budgets and want significant cuts in defense spending, according to new survey data released on Monday.

In Republican and Democratic districts across the country, 74 percent and 80 percent of respective voters said they want less defense spending, the study found.

On average, voters indicated that they wanted a budget for fiscal 2013 that would be nearly 20 percent less than current defense spending.

With $645 billion enacted for total defense spending this year, the average voter’s preferred budget for next year, an 18 percent cut, would translate into a $116 billion savings—money lawmakers trying to balance the budget could sorely use.

The study’s results will disappoint defense hawks and industry officials fighting against spending cuts, especially those claiming to protect defense jobs in their districts.

Voters participated in an April survey that first presented and explained competing arguments for higher or lower defense spending. Some results of that survey have previously been released. But the authors dived into a deeper examination of party differences and found no statistically significant separation of attitudes on defense spending cuts between Republicans and Democrats. Moreover, voters in districts with or without defense industry jobs overwhelmingly said they want the federal government to spend less.

“The idea that Americans’ would want to keep total defense spending up so as to preserve local jobs is not supported by the data,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation, which conducted the survey with the Stimson Center and the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism group.

“It is the largest rigging of prices in the history of the world, by many orders of magnitude.”

global fight for natural resources 'has only just begun

guardian | The global battle for natural resources – from food and water to energy and precious metals – is only beginning, and will intensify to proportions that could mean enormous upheavals for every country, leading academics and business figures told a conference in Oxford on Thursday.

Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, who convened the two-day Resource 2012 conference, told the Guardian: "We are nowhere near realising the full impact of this yet. We have seen the first indications – rising food prices, pressure on water supplies, a land grab by some countries for mining rights and fertile agricultural land, and rising prices for energy and for key resources [such as] metals. But we need to do far more to deal with these problems before they become even more acute, and we are not doing enough yet."

Countries that are not prepared for this rapid change will soon – perhaps irrevocably – lose out, with serious damage to their economies and way of life, the conference was told.

Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize-winning economist, said that the free market would not necessarily provide the best solution to sharing out the world's resources. Governments would need to step in, he said, to ensure that people had access to the basics of life, and that the interests of businesses and the financial markets did not win out over more fundamental human needs.

Sen has played a key role as an academic in showing how the way resources are distributed can impact famine and surplus more than the actual amount of resources, that are available, particularly food.

David Nabarro, special representative for food security and nutrition at the United Nations Special, defended the outcomes of last month's Rio+20 conference – a global summit that was intended to address resource issues and other environmental problems, including pollution, climate change and the loss of biodiversity, all of which are likely to have knock-on effects that will exacerbate resource shortages.

Many observers criticised the governments represented at Rio+20 for failing to adopt any clear targets and initiatives on key environmental problems, saying it was a wasted opportunity.

But Nabarro said there had been important successes – that governments had agreed to strive for the elimination of hunger and more sustainable agriculture, including an emphasis on small farmers, improvements in nutrition (in both developed and developing countries), and cutting the harmful waste of resources that is currently plaguing economies.

it's very brown right now, ain't no grass at all...,

CNN | The pool is closed in Warrenton, Missouri. Cattle ponds are drying up in Arkansas. Illinois is in danger of losing its corn crop.

Even the mighty Mississippi River is feeling low amid what the National Climatic Data Center reported Monday is the largest drought since the 1950s.

How the drought could hit your wallet

The center said about 55% of the country was in at least moderate short-term drought in June for the first time since December 1956, when 58% of the country was in a moderate to extreme drought.

The hot, dry weather in June, which ranked as the third-driest month nationally in at least 118 years, according to the center, made the problem worse. The portion of the country suffering from severe to extreme short-term drought dramatically expanded in June, up to nearly 33% from 23% the month before.

WLUK: Tree farmers battle drought

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn called it a "natural disaster of epic proportions."

"We've never see a drought like this and we have to make sure we do something about it," he said, calling on Congress to expedite passage of the farm bill. Quinn said seven more counties will be designated Monday as disaster areas, in addition to 26 already on the list, and farmers can apply for federal relief funds.

In Arkansas -- where the National Drought Mitigation Center reported that ranchers are having to haul water for cattle because ponds have dried out and wells can't keep up with demands -- 83-year-old retired farmer Don Hudson said this is about the worst he's ever seen it.

"It's very brown right now, ain't no grass at all," he said. "We're still feeding hay because the cows aren't even going out to graze."

In all, 71% of the country was classified as abnormally dry or worse as of June, the climate agency said, citing data from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska.

That's double one year ago, according to agency statistics.

Mayans may offer insight on drought management

The worst-hit areas are the southern to central Rockies, the central Plains states and the Ohio Valley, the National Climatic Data Center said.

corn seen rallying to record $8.50 as drought kills crops

Businessweek | Corn may rally to a record $8.50 a bushel as the worst U.S. drought in decades cuts production in the world’s biggest exporter, driving global stockpiles lower, according to broker Newedge USA LLC.

The U.S. harvest may drop to 11.8 billion bushels (299.7 million metric tons), said Dan Cekander, director of grain research, who correctly predicted in March that soybeans would trade at the most expensive level relative to corn since 2010. Cekander’s output forecast is 29.75 million tons less than the latest estimate from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and would be the smallest crop since 2006-2007. Futures traded as high as $7.89 yesterday, near the $7.9925 record set in 2008.

The drought is baking farms from Arkansas to Ohio, reducing yields, after frosts followed by drought cut wheat harvests in the former Soviet Union, prompting the United Nations and the USDA to pare estimates for world grain harvests. Dimming corn- crop prospects in the U.S. may push global food costs higher, the Food & Agriculture Organization said earlier this month.

“If it doesn’t start raining the rest of July, you’re going to have a significant shortfall here in production,” said Cekander, a fourth-generation farmer who grows corn and soybeans in Illinois, the second-largest U.S. grower of both crops. “That would put the 2012-2013 world corn carry-out below last year,” he said, referring to year-end stockpiles.
Soybeans Climb

Corn for December delivery gained 0.2 percent to $7.73 on the Chicago Board of Trade at 12:51 p.m. in Singapore, erasing a drop of 1 percent. Since reaching the year’s low in June, the grain has rallied 53 percent. November-delivery soybeans, trading at $15.905 a bushel, reached $16.07 yesterday, the highest price since 2008.

Corn yields will probably drop to 134.9 bushels an acre as crop conditions deteriorate, Cekander said in an interview yesterday, forecasting prices of $8.25 to $8.50 for December futures. That compares with the USDA estimate of 146 bushels, and a forecast of 138 bushels from AccuWeather.com. Last year’s harvest was 12.36 billion bushels, with a yield of 147.2 bushels.

“The fear is that the U.S. corn yield will decline to 125 to 130 bushels per acre if hot and dry weather persists through mid-August,” Cekander said. The 11.8 billion-bushel harvest estimate is based an area of 87.5 million acres (35.4 million hectares), lower than the USDA’s 88.9 million acres, he said.

About 55 percent of the contiguous U.S. states were in moderate-to-extreme drought at the end of June, the highest since December 1956, according to the National Climatic Data Center. USDA ratings for corn and soybeans as of July 15 were the worst for that time of year since a drought in 1988.

on modern servitude

predator nation

cafeamericain | Chapter 1 (an excerpt)

WHERE WE ARE NOW

MANY BOOKS HAVE ALREADY been written about the financial crisis, but there are two reasons why I decided that it was still important to write this one.
The first reason is that the bad guys got away with it, and there has been stunningly little public debate about this fact. When I received the Oscar for best documentary in 2011, I said: “Three years after a horrific financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail. And that’s wrong.” When asked afterward about the absence of prosecutions, senior Obama administration officials gave evasive nonanswers, suggesting that nothing illegal occurred, or that investigations were continuing. None of the major Republican presidential candidates have raised the issue at all.

As of early 2012 there has still not been a single criminal prosecution of a senior financial executive related to the financial crisis. Nor has there been any serious attempt by the federal government to use civil suits, asset seizures, or restraining orders to extract fines or restitution from the people responsible for plunging the world economy into recession. This is not because we have no evidence of criminal behavior. Since the release of my film, a large amount of new material has emerged, especially from private lawsuits, that reveals, through e-mail trails and other evidence, that many bankers, including senior management, knew exactly what was going on, and that it was highly fraudulent.

But even leaving this crisis aside, there is now abundant evidence of widespread, unpunished criminal behavior in the financial sector. Later in this book, I go through the list of what we already know, which is a lot. In addition to the behavior that caused the crisis, major U.S. and European banks have been caught assisting corporate fraud by Enron and others, laundering money for drug cartels and the Iranian military, aiding tax evasion, hiding the assets of corrupt dictators, colluding in order to fix prices, and committing many forms of financial fraud. The evidence is now overwhelming that over the last thirty years, the U.S. financial sector has become a rogue industry. As its wealth and power grew, it subverted America’s political system (including both political parties), government, and academic institutions in order to free itself from regulation. As deregulation progressed, the industry became ever more unethical and dangerous, producing ever larger financial crises and ever more blatant criminality. Since the 1990s, its power has been sufficient to insulate bankers not only from effective regulation but even from criminal law enforcement. The financial sector is now a parasitic and destabilizing industry that constitutes a major drag on American economic growth.

frottage fever and a date with the reaver...,

visibleorigami | It becomes increasingly harder to know what to say; to find that there is anything to say. Obviously it has already been said and the same people not paying attention then are not paying attention now. It's not my alarm clock and it's not my world, that so many are attached to living in. I want the straightest route out of Dodge, too many people want a condo in the center of town. The town expands, intent on drowning the outskirts with its unbearable presence. Implosion looms. Empty rockers rock, in empty rooms.

The density of the spider's web, is conversely equivalent to the density of the web inside the victims heads. Shelob's and she hurls, inky darkness, to swallow the world in night and they're all curled up in their beds of doom, sleep tight. Sleep tight. Tight is the word, tightly wrapped and strapped down by the web. These are the things we dream about. These are the things we dread. It all seemed so nice in the Formica life, till the bombs went off in our heads.

So, it's like that, chattering on in unfortunate rhyme. It seems it amounts to no more than passing the time, while passing through. The same people keep assaulting their associates, like they think there's some light at the end of that tunnel, on that losing proposition. Where they think that is going to take them and what their payoff is, I can't guess. Seek and ye shall find it is the operative consideration but it appears simply finding what is already there, or fabricated to suit them will do. Diminishing returns doesn't seem to factor in. They just keep diminishing, until even the one they are returning to is gone. Maybe that's fitting in any case.

It just makes me tired to see it. Picayune wars, devoid of the conscience that would restrain them, seems to be the order of the day. If you can't come to terms with it or move past it, then you might as well kill it and off yourself in the bargain. I can't see the payoff, I really can't and my words fall on deaf ears, when seeking to reach the aggressive principals, no doubt making myself a target in the bargain. Any time I try to make the peacemaker I get a peacemaker stuck in my ribs, making anything but peace and accompanied by the sentiment that I rest in pieces.

debt slavery 2012: judicially sanctioned extortion racket

NYTimes | Three years ago, Gina Ray, who is now 31 and unemployed, was fined $179 for speeding. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked.

When she was next pulled over, she was, of course, driving without a license. By then her fees added up to more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was handed over to a private probation company and jailed — charged an additional fee for each day behind bars.

For that driving offense, Ms. Ray has been locked up three times for a total of 40 days and owes $3,170, much of it to the probation company. Her story, in hardscrabble, rural Alabama, where Krispy Kreme promises that “two can dine for $5.99,” is not about innocence.

It is, rather, about the mushrooming of fines and fees levied by money-starved towns across the country and the for-profit businesses that administer the system. The result is that growing numbers of poor people, like Ms. Ray, are ending up jailed and in debt for minor infractions.

“With so many towns economically strapped, there is growing pressure on the courts to bring in money rather than mete out justice,” said Lisa W. Borden, a partner in Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, a large law firm in Birmingham, Ala., who has spent a great deal of time on the issue. “The companies they hire are aggressive. Those arrested are not told about the right to counsel or asked whether they are indigent or offered an alternative to fines and jail. There are real constitutional issues at stake.”

Half a century ago in a landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled that those accused of crimes had to be provided a lawyer if they could not afford one. But in misdemeanors, the right to counsel is rarely brought up, even though defendants can run the risk of jail. The probation companies promise revenue to the towns, while saying they also help offenders, and the defendants often end up lost in a legal Twilight Zone.

porn is NOT glamorous....,

recognizing civic virtue

57 more reasons non-violence must always be eschewed...,

WSJ | A ceaseless self-promoter, Gandhi bought up the entire first edition of his first, hagiographical biography to send to people and ensure a reprint. Yet we cannot be certain that he really made all the pronouncements attributed to him, since, according to Mr. Lelyveld, Gandhi insisted that journalists file "not the words that had actually come from his mouth but a version he ­authorized after his sometimes heavy editing of the transcripts."

We do know for certain that he ­advised the Czechs and Jews to adopt nonviolence toward the Nazis, saying that "a single Jew standing up and ­refusing to bow to Hitler's decrees" might be enough "to melt Hitler's heart." (Nonviolence, in Gandhi's view, would apparently have also worked for the Chinese against the Japanese ­invaders.) Starting a letter to Adolf ­Hitler with the words "My friend," Gandhi egotistically asked: "Will you listen to the appeal of one who has ­deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success?" He advised the Jews of Palestine to "rely on the goodwill of the Arabs" and wait for a Jewish state "till Arab ­opinion is ripe for it."

In August 1942, with the Japanese at the gates of India, having captured most of Burma, Gandhi initiated a ­campaign designed to hinder the war effort and force the British to "Quit ­India." Had the genocidal Tokyo regime captured northeastern India, as it ­almost certainly would have succeeded in doing without British troops to halt it, the results for the Indian population would have been catastrophic. No fewer than 17% of Filipinos perished under Japanese occupation, and there is no reason to suppose that Indians would have fared any better. Fortunately, the British viceroy, Lord Wavell, simply imprisoned Gandhi and 60,000 of his followers and got on with the business of fighting the Japanese.

Gandhi claimed that there was "an exact parallel" between the British ­Empire and the Third Reich, yet while the British imprisoned him in luxury in the Aga Khan's palace for 21 months ­until the Japanese tide had receded in 1944, Hitler stated that he would simply have had Gandhi and his supporters shot. (Gandhi and Mussolini got on well when they met in December 1931, with the Great Soul praising the Duce's "service to the poor, his opposition to super-urbanization, his efforts to bring about a coordination between Capital and ­Labour, his passionate love for his people.") During his 21 years in South Africa (1893-1914), Gandhi had not opposed the Boer War or the Zulu War of 1906—he raised a battalion of stretcher-bearers in both cases—and after his return to India during World War I he offered to be Britain's "recruiting agent-in-chief." Yet he was comfortable opposing the war against fascism.

Although Gandhi's nonviolence made him an icon to the American civil-rights movement, Mr. Lelyveld shows how ­implacably racist he was toward the blacks of South Africa. "We were then marched off to a prison intended for Kaffirs," Gandhi complained during one of his campaigns for the rights of ­Indians settled there. "We could understand not being classed with whites, but to be placed on the same level as the ­Natives seemed too much to put up with. Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized—the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals."

sshhh....,

let's draft our kids...,

NYTimes | In late June, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former commander of international forces in Afghanistan, called for reinstating the draft. “I think if a nation goes to war, every town, every city needs to be at risk,” he said at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “You make that decision and everybody has skin in the game.”

This was the first time in recent years that a high-profile officer has broken ranks to argue that the all-volunteer force is not necessarily good for the country or the military. Unlike Europeans, Americans still seem determined to maintain a serious military force, so we need to think about how to pay for it and staff it by creating a draft that is better and more equitable than the Vietnam-era conscription system.

A revived draft, including both males and females, should include three options for new conscripts coming out of high school. Some could choose 18 months of military service with low pay but excellent post-service benefits, including free college tuition. These conscripts would not be deployed but could perform tasks currently outsourced at great cost to the Pentagon: paperwork, painting barracks, mowing lawns, driving generals around, and generally doing lower-skills tasks so professional soldiers don’t have to. If they want to stay, they could move into the professional force and receive weapons training, higher pay and better benefits.

Those who don’t want to serve in the army could perform civilian national service for a slightly longer period and equally low pay — teaching in low-income areas, cleaning parks, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, or aiding the elderly. After two years, they would receive similar benefits like tuition aid.

And libertarians who object to a draft could opt out. Those who declined to help Uncle Sam would in return pledge to ask nothing from him — no Medicare, no subsidized college loans and no mortgage guarantees. Those who want minimal government can have it.

Critics will argue that this is a political non-starter. It may be now. But America has already witnessed far less benign forms of conscription. A new draft that maintains the size and the quality of the current all-volunteer force, saves the government money through civilian national service and frees professional soldiers from performing menial tasks would appeal to many constituencies.