Cold Turkey

From the Everything You Know is Wrong Department, Theodore Dalrymple sets us straight on how to treat drug addiction:

"And in China, millions of Chinese addicts gave up with only minimal help: Mao Tse-Tung's credible offer to shoot them if they did not. There is thus no question that Mao was the greatest drug-addiction therapist in history."

Dalrymple presents the position that it is time to stop treating addicts as victims.

Viva Vegas

Las Vegas is where I'm at. See you next Thursday.

The Good Days-They Were Rotten

Research from Britain shows that early societies were no edens of folks livng in sylvan peace and eating high fiber food while holding all day tribal drumming fests:

A survey of British skulls from the early part of the New Stone Age, or Neolithic, shows societies then were more violent than was supposed.

Early Neolithic Britons had a one in 20 chance of suffering a skull fracture at the hands of someone else and a one in 50 chance of dying from their injuries.

Once again it looks like the human condition improved as society and technology adcanced.