@bobknight33
you realize chaos is from new zealand right?
so while the democratic party may be a disgrace,unless the party is GLOBAL,it certainly is not HIS party.

i truly do not understand your (or anybodies for that matter) continued loyalty to this broken,dysfunctional and utterly corrupt two party dictatorship.

i have no issue with you pointing out the rot that has been bleeding out the democratic parties metaphorical ass.during this election cycle the DNC was caught with their hand in the cookie jar.they were exposed as the rotten and corrupt institution we all had suspected,but couldn't prove,rigging the primaries,changing the rules of application to keep people off the primary ballot (laurence lessig),and crushing one of the most promising,and politically energized campaigns by bernie sanders.(who,just like ron paul,raised his war chest on small donations).

hell,even the recent jill stein voter recount exposed even MORE DNC voter manipulations and fraud!

but are you SERIOUSLY going to sit there,and with a straight face,attempt to make the case the republicans are better?

that they are NOT just as vile,rapacious and corrupt as the democrats?

you think the democrats are the ONLY half of this two party duopoly that engages in voter fraud?
see:crosscheck
or crushes any politician that does not tow the party line?
see:ron paul

can you REALLY,without any sense of irony or sarcasm,tell me that the republican party represents YOU?

the one thing that has given me hope during this past presidential election is that my fellow americans seem to finally be getting it,finally understanding that neither the democratic party nor the republican party represent "we the people".

they represent:wall street,big banks,the military industrial complex and multi-national corporations.

and of course....their own continued power and political domination.

binary politics does not work anymore.
this false left/right dichotomy does not work anymore.
this "lesser of two evils" is no longer acceptable..any...more.

but i gather it still works for you bob.
what a waste..
you seem a decent sort,but to continue to identify with a party that has thrown you overboard decades ago....is just sad.

and i guess you will be just like those obama voters who became disturbingly silent while obama:expanded executive powers,NDAA of 2012,zero indictments to the criminals on wall street,prosecuting more whistleblowers than any other president combined,obamacare(the biggest gimme to the health insurance industry and big pharma),assasination programs,kill lists,expanding military operations into 6 other sovereign countries,regime change in libya...

those little pussies became good little apologists,and it appears YOU ...
bob..
will become a good little pussy and do your partisan duty,and turn into a dutiful little apologist for trump and the inevitable atrocities that are most certainly heading our way.

you know,i do not always agree with chaos,but at least he has BALLS.he stands for something.
you are just rooting for a certain team,might as well be rooting for the packers.
it is just so tired and WEAK...

eh..maybe you are just messing with chaos,but if that is the case,could you bring a little more flair and energy?
your technique is a tad..stale.

so step it up BOB!
your putting the audience to sleep.

They said it wasn't a gateway drug
My homie was takin' subs and he ain't wake up
The whole while, these billionaires, they kicked up
Paying out congress so we take their drugs
Murderers who will never face the judge
And we dancin' to a song about our face goin' numb
But I seen homies turn grey, noses draining blood
I could've been gone, off 30's, faded in that tub
That's Prince, Michael and Whitney, that's Amy, Ledger and Pimp C
That's Yams, that's DJ A.M
God damn they're making a killing
Now it's getting attention cause Sara, Katey and Billy
But this shit's been going on from Seattle out to South Philly
It just moved out about the city
And spread out to the 'burbs
Now it's everybody's problem, got a nation on the verge
Take Activis off the market, jack the price up on the syrup
But Purdue Pharma's 'bout to move that work

My drug dealer was a doctor, doctor
Had the plug from Big Pharma, Pharma
He said that he would heal me, heal me
But he only gave me problems, problems
My drug dealer was a doctor, doctor
Had the plug from Big Pharma, Pharma
I think he trying to kill me, kill me
He tried to kill me for a dollar, dollar

And these devils they keep on talkin' to me
They screamin', "Open the bottle," I wanna be at peace
My hand is gripping that throttle, I'm running out of speed
Try to close my eyes but I keep sweatin' through these sheets, through these sheets
Four horseman, they won't let me forget
I wanna forge a prescription, 'cause, doctor, I need some more of it
When Morphine and heroin is more your budget
I said I'd never use a needle, but sure, fuck it
I'm caught up, I'm on one, I'm nauseous
No options, exhausted
This is not what I started
Walkin' carcass, I lost everything I wanted
My blinds drawn, too gone to leave this apartment

My drug dealer was a doctor, doctor
Had the plug from Big Pharma, Pharma
He said that he would heal me, heal me
But he only gave me problems, problems
My drug dealer was a doctor, doctor
Had the plug from Big Pharma, Pharma
I think he trying to kill me, kill me
He tried to kill me for a dollar, dollar

More, more, more
Re-up, re-up

Death certificate signed the prenup
Ain't no coming back from this percocet
Actavis, ambien, adderral, xanax binge
Best friends with the thing that's killing me
Enemies with my best friend, there's no healing me
Refilling these, refilling these
They say it's death, death
Institutions and DOC's
So God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference
And the wisdom to know the difference

I've been called an oxy-moron
Because I question which drugs our war's on
Why are there more drug stores than liquor stores
You can score on
The healers have become the harmers
They're just pharmaceutical farmers
What we used to call dealers
We now call doctors
I might be a seedy cynic
Cause that crack house is now a clinic
It's time they change the name of the oath to
The hypocritic or the parasitic

It isn't adder-altruistic
By over prescribing
How can we fight them in a [?]
I'll throw a proz-accusation
With a sub-keta-meaning
They'll say my fears are quaa-ludicrous
They should be ati-vanishing
With every demurr-altercation
They'll have a good xan-explanation
You're just cialis-tated
Cause we made your dick deflated

It's oxy-moronic
It's oxy-moronic

It should be doctors getting busted
For their klon-opinions we trusted
We're not the sinners there the ones
That served us the vico-dinners
I don't want to be an alarmist
But in that harmacy there's a harmacist
And those scrips are making us [?] minded pacifists

It's oxy-moronic
It's oxy-moronic
It's oxy-moronic

Don't think that I am being crazy
The medical industrial complex
Keeps us vi-aggravated and hard to come
Because of perco-sex
How can we hydro-condone
Their blatant misconduct
They don't care for patients
They care about pushing product

Are you oxy-moronic
For wanting your daily chronic
And making your mom's house hydroponic
You're oxy-moronic

I've been called an oxy-moron
For getting my metaphor on
Linoleum is the floor on
I'm an oxy-moron

It's time to be alarmed
We're not being healed
We're being harmed
Our country's being factory farmed
It's Oxy-moronic
It's time to sound to alarm-a
We can't put our faith in karma
We got a common enemy
And they're called Big Pharma

And it's oxy-moronic
And it's oxy-moronic
It's all oxy-moronic
It's all oxy-moronic

Daily chronic, now most of your house is, okay
"Most of your house is" what does that even mean?
He's turned most of his house into hydroponic
Why wouldn't he have turned all of it into hydroponic?
Well cause he lives there
"Now all of your house is hydroponic"
Most is sappy
Really? It's like saying maybe
How about "Now your mom's house is hydroponic"
Yeah! That's fucking way better
God you fucking woke up
Come on Mike, where you been
Where you been all month?

*promote

The thing he doesn't talk about that springs to mind is the idea of registering your experiment before conducting it. I know Ben Goldacre is big on this.

The idea is that if you register your experiment beforehand, then you have to publish your results, positive or negative. This reduces both the publication bias and the scattershot approach often attributed to 'big pharma'.

@RedSky
Does he really glorify it any more than we already glorify drinking or smoking (smoking to a lesser extent). Advertising still tells us that it's not really a party unless you're getting hammered, depending on what you're drinking you are hipper, sexier, or just plain more fun. I see most glorification of pot as just a response to the over the top demonization of pot, so just decriminalize it already and eventually it will all reach equilibrium.
@VoodooV
Like he said, it's the corporate interests that will make the difference. They might pay lip service to social conservative causes like abortion, gay rights, etc but the only thing they really care about is the bottom line.
Gay marriage was a total non issue to them, but big pharma, law enforcement, the military industrial complex, tobacco, the prison industrial complex, and many others have a vested interest in keeping pot illegal. They will spend millions or even billions to keep the status quo. Once people saw gay marriage as an issue of civil rights it got a huge boost, but the legalization of marijuana is still seen by many as just a cause for stoners, pot heads and junkies, so nobody is really going to care.

In the case of this particular example the airline did cite that reason (I remember the forum buzz about it at the time).

But, I still agree with your point there. I've never been keen on the vapers who like to belligerently assert their "right to vape" everywhere they can without engaging their brains, or a bit of basic consideration.

Doubly so when snus so easy to order online & "stealth vaping" in public spaces is so easy to do.

That said, most of the negativity I've had & seen personally over the subject has been largely moralistic in nature. Specifically either "still bad for you!" or "think of the children!".

This may have been a bad example, but I could dig you up about as many media & campaign group hit pieces as you'd care to read.

Right now it's resulting in some deeply ill conceived legislation. I recognise that some sensible legal regulation is needed, but that is not what's happening at the moment. It seems like a double pronged shafting from the tobacco/pharma cartel and the morality police.

Maybe I'm just too emotionally invested on that one.

As for the other bit's. Your dealing with classic scattershot Slavoj. He writes in a much more ordered way than he speaks, but he is still very much a stream of consciousness when he gets going.
I enjoy "truffle hunting in the forest of knowledge" like that, but I understand why it rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

I this case, I don't think the specific examples are as important as the idea he is expressing (to him or myself).

That said, couldn't said health organisation be seen as pushing a moral position there? I guess your arguing it was beneficial to their business in some way? (not informed enough to have a strong position either way on that, but I think I can see where your coming from)

As for it being more dangerous than overt totalitarianism. The argument would be that you can see and fight overt ideologies, as such they are considerably less of a threat in modern developed countries.

Here I think, it would be "more dangerous" simply in the sense that there is a greater danger of anything significant actually happening.

Naturally the jackboots and piano wire kind is infinitely worse in practice. But there seems considerably less danger of that kind of totalitarianism gaining a serious foothold in most of our cultures than in times past.

The policing of peoples thoughts, language and consensual behaviour on the other hand (epitomised by the PC gone mad crowd). Could perhaps be said to be more dangerous, simply in the sense that it has more potential to do actual damage.

You could accuse that of being a bit hyperbolic, but that's our Slavoj.

False dichotomy. There are without doubt exceptionally ethically dubious practices within the pharmaceutical industry (look up "patent evergreening" for a start).

However that doesn't mean their products don't work.

Oil companies are working hard to protect their profits by actively lying about climate change, but no-one claims that cars could run on a "natural alternative".

Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft are all spying on us to one degree or another, but we can still search the web, post stupid photos and ignore each other with our phones.

TL;DR big pharma are dicks, but at least they use science.

and i trust MD's to trust everything big pharma says

Well, I for one trust everything big pharma says.

Yes, I was wondering when you would trot out Hooker's paper and the 'CDC whistleblower" bit. You see, in the lack of clear scientific fact, conspiracy theorists tend to grab whatever they can to prove that they are right. I'll dissect your attempt right now.

First, Hooker's paper was covering the data involving African-American children with supposed predilection towards autism. The sample size was small, the math was ludicrous, and he incorrectly analyzed a cohort study. Because of the NUMEROUS failures to appropriately conduct a true scientific study, his paper was retracted. So, when exposed to the light, his theory was decidedly lacking in content and was canned.

http://retractionwatch.com/2014/08/27/journal-takes-down-autism-vaccine-paper-pending-investigation/

This incompetent study was the result, allegedly, of discussions between Hooker and a senior psychologist at the CDC named William Thompson. Hooker then teamed up with Andrew Wakefield to cherry pick bits to make it sound as though Thompson were confessing to some horrible crime of data manipulation to hide this “bombshell” result reported by Wakefield. Thus was born the “CDC whistleblower".

In February 2010, the General Medical Council in the U.K. recommended that Wakefield be stripped of his license to practice medicine in the U.K. because of scientific misconduct related to his infamous 1998 case series published in The Lancet, even going so far as to refer to him as irresponsible and dishonest, and in May 2010 he was. He is a now doing everything he can to prove his theories, like possibly illegal recording of conversations, so that he can regain some credibility. The guy is a hack.

Thompson has admitted to being prone to anxiety disorders, being delusional, and has shown that he is more scared of being 'the bad guy' then doing his job. His career is pretty much finished at the CDC, because he has shown that he will waffle if confronted by angry people who can't understand science. I feel sorry for him, but he has issues.

So, now we can address your link. A congressman, not a scientist, has received information from people who have been laughed out of the scientific community for multiple reasons. He sees buzzwords and decides to get ahead of the bandwagon, calling for further investigation and research. I can, of course, show you knee-jerk reactions by multiple members of congress similar to this, like Ted Cruz calling for immediate investigation into Planned Parenthood over the recent videos. You know, the ones that were chopped and spliced together to make it sound like PP was selling aborted babies? Do you see a pattern with the chop and splice for sensationalism? I hope you do.

In other words, you don't have any scientific facts. Like all anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists, you rely on a few items that seem to tie together to form a true fact, but they don't. When confronted with this, you will say that it's all big pharma and money trails, etc. Do you not see the fallacy in that logic? It's like saying that the the earth was created 9000 years ago...because RELIGION!

Btw, if you want to place your trust in politicians trying to be scientists, I leave you with this gem from former congressman Paul Broun.

"You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don't believe that the earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says."

I agree with everything else you said, but "self-medicating" is bullshit. In the specific case of marijuana, there's plenty of evidence that we should legalise it and use it for treatment, but as a general point, there's no such thing as "naturally occurring medicine".

Medicine is only medicine after it has been tested and found to work. Otherwise, it has either not been proven to work or been proven not to work.

Big pharma might be dicks, but at least they're using science.

This kind of attitude is depressing. It's none of your business what someone does in their spare time when no one else is affected by it. There are functioning alcoholics turning up for work pissed, flying planes, driving buses, teaching children. But no, let's go after the guy who sits in his bedroom playing music with a joint. Let's prevent him from having a life, even if he is self medicating a mental illness. It serves him right - if he's got an illness, he shouldn't be using naturally occurring medicine like our ancestors have for thousands upon thousands of years, no! He should be paying hundreds of pounds to a big pharma company for a pill that they invented a few years ago.

The premise behind drugs testing people is based on many things i disagree with:
1) the spectacular failure of the war of drugs - not only has drug use increased in the timeframe, but it has ruined probably millions of lives, needlessly turning ordinary, hard working people into criminals for no good reason other than "we like this plant, but we don't like this plant, and now neither may you"
2) the origin of the war on drugs - which iirc from a well sourced and produced video on here recently was instigated by a vindictive racist who wanted to go criminalise things that were seen as "black people" pastimes
3) the bias of the war on drugs - where drugs associated with the poor and underprivileged are relentlessly pursued to the detriment of functioning happy families across the world, but drugs associated with rich white folk such as those boardroom jockeys who snort coke in the office bathroom, nah, give them an easy time
4) the american prison business - which demands a steady supply of low cost, low maintenance, low rights workers who have no choice in the matter
5) the spreading of disinformation through formal education/popular media, and lack of actual knowledge or experience of drugs - which has led to a generation of people who now firmly believe that the moment you inhale a particle of THC (or "inject 1 marijuana" to the uninitiated), your brain turns into a fried egg, and you immediately begin stealing, cheating, and peddling dangerous items to children

Some of the brightest and best humans were influenced and inspired by drugs. If i wrote a list of people that i had the greatest respect for and who i considered to have made a positive influence on the world, half of them would almost certainly be drugs users; and i mean scientists, writers and artists. Your philosophy is a detriment to society, but thankfully as the decades pass, there are less and less with that philosophy. I loathe being blunt, but there is nothing worse than someone who feels the need to dictate to others what they should and shouldn't do on the basis of what they personally do or don't approve of.

We might get about 90 years on this planet with a bit of luck - why the hell do the minority spend so much time trying to dictate to the majority what they do with that time? And why do the majority let them? What sort of control fetish is it that inclines people to want to do that?

This guy's life has been fucking ruined by your adopted philosophy towards drugs, and you offer to help him as long as he bends to your will? How magnanimous of you to stoop to gutter level to help a mere drug-addled cretin... I think he'd tell you to stick your job, he's overqualified to work under you.

Understood, and to be fair, the fact that the Lancet (one of the most esteemed medical publications on the planet) got suckered in really leaves the door open for laypeople who have very little medical knowledge to accept these things hook, line and sinker.

When you compound that with historical mishaps such as thalidomide, agent orange and asbestos, or even the big health push away from red meat/fats to a mainly carb based diet (hullo diabetes!), a fair amount of skepticism is understandable.

I've moderated my criticism of anti-vaxxers considerably over the years because of that. There will always be hardline true believers, but most people are acting out of a combination of fear of big pharma (not unjustified) and side effects for their kids. Watching a family member drowning on their own mucous tends to bring things in to perspective, if a little late... = (

Some interesting things about the drug in question. It's generic name is zolpidem and it has a similar effect to benzodiazepines, i.e. it can help people go to sleep, it can produce a 'high' and using it will often result in dependance. So in other words it's not a drug to be taken lightly, there are very serious side effects, and it should only be used for short periods to avoid addiction.

The reason I mention this is that Sam most likely would have been experiencing this high when he asked Sally to marry him. He's feeling 'fucking great' because he's drugged up on what are essentially benzo's.

This is not to take anything away from the fact he can now talk, that part is amazing, but it gives the video some perspective. I am a bit suspicious that big pharma may have somehow funded some of this though, things that seem a bit too good to be true usually are.

Pharma reps also often have a spending quota. You read that write, they HAVE to spend a certain amount of money on dinners etc each month.

They don't care if you are even a doctor in a specialty that could write for their drug.