Aha moment

I was lying in bed waiting for my nose to clear so I cold go to sleep. I was reading a magazine and hit an article on drug addiction. Now, I've always known that the "War on Drugs" isn't working, and that it has really bad side effects like making drug dealing more profitable and encouraging passage of laws that infringe on our rights.

But suddenly I realized something. The whole concept is flawed in the first place. The people that the "War on Drugs" is *supposedly* going after take drugs for a reason. Essentially, they take them, or at least started to take them, because their lives *suck* to a greater or lesser extent.

Even if we could wave a magic wand and make it *impossible to misuse drugs and alcohol, all we'd be doing is causing them to find another way to reduce the suckiness of their lives. And I suspect that we'd like it even less.

The *real* solution is to make life worth living for these people. But that requires spending money on things like getting them real jobs,. decent housing and so on.

And neither the public nor the politicians are willing to come out in favor of that. Because it doesn't fit the prevailing ideology.

Damn.

web geekiness

I threw the following menu and the pages it calls up together to show someone the "possible" color choices (i.e. stuff that won't break browsers and isn't too weird or subtle).

http://www.shadowgard.com/~shadow/colors/color-check.html

Suggests as to how to better arrange things are greatly appreciated.