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I enjoy pot. That being said, it's not a big deal to me. I understand the irritation with the condescending attitude from virulent advocates and devotees of weed who act as though anyone who doesnt choose to smoke is somehow missing something vital. Same with psychedelics. Though I love tripping, it's not for everyone and it's not something to be overdone.

I swear I heard on Colbert report that the "corporations are people" bit was an off the record remark made by a justice or attorney that was only retrospectively mixed in with the actual decision. Either way it seems ludicrous to me. Corporations aren't people until you can kick them in the genitals.

That's great Nigel!

     Regret, I agree my wall of text was obnoxious and I'll definitely watch that in the future. Apologies to all. These points are excellent, and I'm certainly reconsidering my thoughts on this issue. This is, of course, only the second time I've seen any non-religious type arguments on the prohibition side of the issue, and I genuinely appreciate the chance to have this kind of interaction with you folks.
     Nigel, to your original point, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to want to avoid dating people who'd been to prostitutes, nor do I think it says anything about your attitude toward prostitutes or feminism generally.
     I only know one guy who has gone to prostitutes, I didn't think it was especially common, but I guess it all depends. He is the craziest person I know, though. By far. Really far.
     

Agreed on the iPhone camera. I needed some essays from a textbook I hadn't got yet, so I just borrowed somebody else's for 5 seconds, took pics of the pages, went home and printed them, totally legible. Battery life is something I'd like to see improved. It that seems to be an issue with all the smartphones.

Yeah that's where my last conversation about this went. I'm sensitive to the point. If it's inevitably/inherently exploitative and dehumanizing then of course it's no good. I'm not convinced that this is the case, but I'm receptive to the point. I still wonder how much of this outlook is due to our particular historical perspective, our views of how relationships should work, and how labor should work. Agreed, people aren't a product. Prostitution needn't make people a commodity exactly, though that's one way to view it. It could also be considered a service. Think of a model--if a magazine hires a model for an ad, they're not really buying the person, they're paying them to pose. If you pay a prostitute, you're not buying them, you're buying sex, and maybe it's by the act, maybe it's by the hour, I don't know how this works, but at the end of the day, everybody goes home. Now if there's a real ethical dimension to this, and there are certain essential characteristics to interpersonal relationships that cause all prostitutes to be exploited and all their clients to be exploiters, that's one thing, but I'm skeptical of essentialism. It's one thing to say it's exploitative given a certain social and historical framework, and another to say that it is always and invariably the way things will be, across all cultures and at all places and times. A prostitute needn't be viewed as an object. I heard on NPR a few weeks ago a report about a prostitute whose clients were all either terminally ill or seriously disabled people, and sometimes she'd just go help them around the house, sometimes she'd just sleep next to them, sometimes she'd have sex with them. I can imagine that there are possible situations and contexts where this trade is respected and legitimatized. But again, these are the objections that really got me thinking, shit, maybe I'm completely wrong and this is an inherently unethical practice. I just always thought the criticism of prostitution stemmed from the Judeo-Christian outlook that saw women as property of husbands or male relatives, rather than agents endowed with self-ownership. So these concerns about exploitation really strike me, because they actually make the objection to the practice seem relevant again.

I support legalization of prostitution from a civil liberties and public health perspective but a friend of mine once brought up the counter argument that the conditions that may drive some women to prostitution are abhorrent and exploitative, but I wonder if that's the result of the black market generally. Also prostitution is not an exclusively female enterprise, I wonder if a more matriarchal society would see a higher proportion of male prostitutes? Legalizing prostitution, in my opinion, may very well reduce the detrimental effects that I think may stem largely from the practice's status as a criminalized occupation. But note that long after the legalization of prostitution women will still be exploited in advertising and in patriarchal discourse.

Im reminded of something from a modern philosophy course...Can't remember if it was a response to Berkeley or what but there is this famous response to an argument regarding sense-skepticism and the critic of the argument goes "I refute him thusly" and kicks a nearby stone. I like the forum version much better.

NPR! I'm at work driving and alternate between public radio and my iPod but I tend to listen to NPR when I'm parked awaiting a call.

I've been wondering where Discordia fits right now myself. The world seems to get crazier every day. I suppose it's an escalation of disorder to match the imposition of order. I guess what I'm wondering is where and how to push most effectively (And whether that push is a push forward or a push back).

I say push sideways. People get bogged down in dichotomies debating contentious issues. They tend to think in terms of two mutually exclusive possible positions on a given issue. The voice of reason would be trying to reconcile the two to compromise, but the voice of unreason might adopt a position outside rather than between bounds of the ideological framing of the issue, a position so bizarre as to indicate the inherent instability of the binary view of things. We should be the crazy space chimp in the room that sprinkles the world with fairy dust wherever said dust is wanting. Salvation through nonsense and all that jazz. Let's not be too serious, that seems a large part of the problem. Refuse to takes reasonable positions and undermine these futile dichotomies.

I have a bad habit of reading multiple books at once until I get really sucked into one. Right now I have several up in the air, including Walt Whitman complete works, Complete works of HP Lovecraft, retracing the King in Yellow, been reading Foucault History of Madness and The Order of Things. Anybody know of any genuinely good horror stuff? Im on a bit of a kick there.

Some folks find pot helpful--but those folks tend to be pot heads anyway. 
Writing can help. Free-write anything you want, be creative, or hell, try to be boring if you want, whatever...make up fake news stories for an alternate universe if it makes you giddy for a couple of minutes, or you could keep a periodic journal, or just write out what you're thinking about at the time. If you can't think of anything to write, write about how you can't think of anything to write.
It may help you cool off, and it may also give you a way to really analyze what's going on that's getting to you. You may find your problems less intimidating on paper, because they tend to come into clearer focus one at a time that way. You can actually alter the way you are looking at circumstances by nailing the fuckers down to the page so they just sit still for a while. When I used to have similar kinds of experiences, I felt afterwards that a lot of what I seemed to be doing was "running in circles" in my own head, retreading the same worn steps, feeling the same frustrations and never budging from the same basic set of worries. Writing things out helped me get a better picture of what it is that was really bothering me, and what I could do about it.
Think about the fact that there is a cliche that says "at least it can't get any worse" and another that says, "it could be worse". One or the other is always applicable, so no worries there.
On second thought, give the pot a try.

Municipal Waste!!!

I think you gotta sign in to view anything but the abstract. Or you can find it for purchase by highlighting the title and/or page numbers/journal title and then searching in a web browser. Not sure, I hate those school databases, I always hit the same kind of dead ends.

I try to ignore the insane until they're either immanently dangerous or just really amusing. But yeah, the anti-intellectual and anti-scientific tendencies in the USA can be pretty disappointing, especially considering how many other countries are not encountering these problems. Canada's looking mighty sexy from here.