"Starting early next year, any adult with a craving or curiosity will be able to stroll into a strip mall or downtown shop in Colorado or Washington State and do what has long been forbidden..."

"... buy a zip-lock bag of legal marijuana."

No, not any adult. Only adults who think federal law that isn't being enforced still counts as law and who feel bound to follow the law. And, I, for one, feel that this discrimination against us rule-followers is unfair. Why are we — of all people — the last to be free?

I am the person who — when the fences were torn down at Woodstock and the hippies were declaring "It's a free concert now" — would have respected the rights of the landowners and the concert promoters.

If something is to be legal, make it truly legal, or explain to me why there is some special reason to fence out those who still believe in order.

Madison's Snuggle House closes for good — because "the push back and harassment is not worth it, honestly."

"It has nothing to do with the services. It has to do with how much hate you want to tolerate. It’s not worth it. Not these days."

Ooh. Sounds like somebody needs a hug.

What happened? Too much regulation... or just not enough customers? I don't know. Who were the haters? The city or the citizens?

Anyway, goodbye to Snuggle House, we here at Alt House enjoyed talking about the concept. I went from assuming it was a hoax, to facilitating a conversation about what it would be, to more or less rooting for it. 

Knowing there was — at least once — a dream of people paying $60 an hour to be snuggled, maybe we can all feel a little more warmly rewarded by the snuggles we get at home.

Snuggle House finally opens.

"Lonnie Johnson, one of four staff members at the touch-therapy business... said staff were relieved to see the business get past the city paperwork problems and regulatory issues that had prevented the business from opening as planned on Oct. 15."

6 opinions on regulating vaping e-cigarettes.

Should people be allowed to deliver nicotine to themselves, in public, while looking quite a bit like they are smoking?

Beyond banning large cups for Cokes... ban large bottles for Tylenol.

That's the suggestion in "A Simple Way to Reduce Suicides."

We need to make it harder to buy pills in bottles of 50 or 100 that can be easily dumped out and swallowed. We should not be selling big bottles of Tylenol and other drugs that are typically implicated in overdoses, like prescription painkillers and Valium-type drugs, called benzodiazepines. Pills should be packaged in blister packs of 16 or 25. Anyone who wanted 50 would have to buy numerous blister packages and sit down and push out the pills one by one. Turns out you really, really have to want to commit suicide to push out 50 pills. And most people are not that committed.... 

Why haven’t we seen more blister packages? One reason is money. Manufacturers would have to redesign packaging, and the blister packaging would cost more compared with loose pills in a bottle. The other main reason is that some consumers — notably people with arthritis — might find it challenging to open the packages.

But if we could save one life... the life of the insufficiently committed... suicidal but too lazy to poke enough pills out of the blister packs...

You know the type. For them, life is not worth the trouble. And then suddenly killing yourself is also a lot of trouble. What's more trouble? Living or these damned blister packs?

"Now, you might say, 'Well, turtles are dangerous' — but why do you have to have two codes?"

"Your doctor has to inform the government whether you've been struck by a turtle or bitten by a turtle."

"I'm offended by a $4 trillion government bullying, berating and badgering one of America’s greatest success stories."

"If anyone should be on trial here, it should be Congress... I frankly think the committee should apologize to Apple. The Congress should be on trial here for creating a Byzantine and bizarre tax code."

"We should immediately distinguish between paternalism about means and paternalism about ends."

"Means paternalism is like a GPS. You can ignore what the GPS says and try your own route, but if you do so, there is a serious risk that you will get lost. To return to the fuel efficiency example: means paternalists would steer consumers in the direction of considering all relevant costs at the time of purchase, certainly by providing relevant information, and if a fuel economy mandate would help consumers on balance, they would be willing to consider it."

Cass Sunstein is talking up paternalism again. Yes, we've heard it before, but I thought you might like the GPS analogy, and it seems to summarize his new book, "Simpler: The Future of Government."

"Why should food stamps pay for junk food?"

Charles Lane doesn't "get" the argument that "it’s not fair to restrict poor people’s grocery choices."

Of course the federal government should be able to leverage its purchasing power for socially beneficial purposes. If you take Uncle Sam’s help, you play by his rules.

And, really, when you think about it, isn't that the point? Here, let me help you.... Aha!

Smoking marijuana and driving — when is it a crime...

... to a state, like Colorado, that legalizes marijuana?

Prosecutors and some lawmakers have long pushed for laws that would set a strict blood-level limit for THC, the key ingredient in cannabis. A driver over the limit would be deemed guilty of driving under the influence, just as with alcohol....

But what's the level that's comparable to the blood alcohol level that's deemed to be too much impairment? It shouldn't just be arbitrary!

Though research and opinions vary widely, studies have shown that smoking marijuana tends to affect spatial perceptions. Drivers might swerve or follow other cars too closely, as well as lose their concentration and suffer from slowed reaction times....

Every state bars driving under the influence. But convictions in drugged-driving cases generally rely on police officers’ observations rather than blood tests. The White House in a drug policy paper last year called on states to adopt blood-limit laws in an effort to reduce drugged-driving incidents by 10 percent by 2015.

There are so many things that impair driving — sleepiness, distraction, low intelligence — why single out anything (including alcohol) for a special law as opposed to relying on observation of actual impaired driving? You could say single out the things that are measurable in the blood. Or you could say: Alcohol deserves to be singled out the way it is because there is a huge, specific, and much-studied problem.

How are people who use marijuana supposed to know when they're over the limit? With alcohol, the products are labeled and there is at least some rough information about the number of drinks and the amount of time that must pass before you can drive. What if you had a drink with dinner and then couldn't figure out whether it was legal to drive the next morning? Isn't that what will happen with marijuana? You'll have no idea what your blood level is, even days later.

Or will there be little blood test kits so you can check? Will the government provide all sorts of labeling requirements for marijuana? They might make legal marijuana production very expensive by requiring predictable calibration of THC and accurate labeling. Then the product could be very expensive, and lots of sales tax could be collected. Isn't that the real puzzle: how to regulate and collect taxes when you've got a product that already thrives as contraband?

"Photo of breast cancer survivor's tattooed chest is shared by thousands after Facebook's attempts to ban it."

The nudity rules don't bend for cancer or for art. What can you really expect? But, anyway, I'm no fan of tattoos but I love this adaptation to mastectomy.

"So far, few traditional farmers lining up to grow marijuana in Washington state, Colorado."

WaPo reports:

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law....

The Justice Department has not said whether it will try to block the two states from implementing their new laws, passed late last year.....

In addition, marijuana is a crop that can’t be insured, and federal drug law bars banks from knowingly serving the industry....

Both states are in the process of developing rules for a legal marijuana industry....

How can state rules possibly make the industry legal? They can only make chaos that might conceivably move Congress to change the federal law. I don't see that coming any time soon. The Justice Department might say something encouraging, but will the next President's Justice Department stick with whatever position Eric Holder embraces?

Even if you felt sure you wouldn't be prosecuted, would you want to sign up on an official list as someone who is conspicuously committing an ongoing felony? Would you switch from a legal crop and expose yourself like that? And even if some farmers would go ahead and violate the criminal law — presumably because the upside profits are high — does the inability to buy crop insurance and use banks wreck the whole idea?

Dozens of marijuana experts, who have been growing plants for medical use or in secret for illegal use, are educating state officials about the potential for the crop. Probably 95 percent of those people choose to grow their plants indoors, despite higher costs, to control light and temperature, improve quality and increase yields....

Indoor crops generally allow for up to three harvests per season, compared to just one harvest for an outdoor crop, and allow for easier security measures. 

So "traditional farmers" have an entirely separate reason for not responding to the new program. You can't be growing marijuana amber-waves-of-grain-on-the-fruited-plain style. This stuff will be grown in big warehouses, pulling in loads of electricity for intense lighting and heavily guarded with guns! guns! guns!

Oh, but here's a little old lady, "Gail Besemer, who grows flowers and vegetables near Deming, Wash., [who] has expressed interest in a producers’ license."

Besemer already has three hoop houses, which are essentially temporary greenhouses, but could see expanding her business slightly to grow marijuana for a local clientele in northwest Washington.

Slightly! Flowers! Grandma!

However, “I’m concerned about druggies invading my property — ne’er-do-wells invading my property to steal, to get free dope,” she said. “Security would be an issue.”

Where do you get off with that contempt for the consumers of the product you want to grow? Seems to me, these are your people. Don't insult them.

“My family is not particularly excited about me being interested in this. But if someone has an integrated farm, growing a number of different crops, I would think it would be a high profit plant,” she said. “Taxation and security might get in the way of profits, and it might end not being so profitable.”

Yeah, you'd better think about it, lady. There's a reason it's a high profit plant. If it weren't for all these problems, any idiot could grow his own in his house. Take away the obstacles, and it's not a business at all. Which removes half of the attraction for the government, since there won't be anything to tax if there isn't a big rules-heavy structure burdening business. This isn't a game for the little old lady with her flowers and hoop houses. But that's the screwy, sentimental anecdote The Washington Post ties to plant in our brain.

"What sort of people were these? What were they talking about? What office did they belong to? K. was living in a free country, after all..."

"... everywhere was at peace, all laws were decent and were upheld, who was it who dared accost him in his own home?"

A Kafka quote begins Roger Kimball's op-ed "This Metamorphosis Will Require a Permit/Sandy wrecked our house, but bureaucrats are keeping it broken."

Kimball also quotes Hayek:

[T]he power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionnaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work.

And Tocqueville:

"[A] network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules"... reduces citizens "to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd."

Books:

Franz Kafka, "The Trial"
F.A. Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom"
Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America"
Roger Kimball, "The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia"

"Madison City Council quietly abandons effort to create code of conduct for members."

The most amusing lines come from  Alder Lauren Cnare: "We could have come up with a set of guidelines that would have helped people behave in situations that are sort of gray" and "I think it's over until something happens again."

The something that happened this time, sending the council into a tizzy about codification, was that one alder allegedly did something sexual to another alder the morning after a long night drinking together.

"Boston’s becoming a town devoid of nightspot fun as some bars in the city eliminate board games and water pong..."

"... fearful that city regulators will come crashing in and accuse the pubs of sponsoring drinking games."

“If two friends at a bar say, ‘I’ll buy your next beer if you make this shot on the dartboard,’ the bar may have to go before a board. It’s silly how arbitrary it can be,” said Chris Mitchell, general manager of the Better Off Bowling league, who has seen the bar crackdown firsthand.

"The ordinary people were not happy. They loathed the Emperor's interference in every detail of their daily lives."

"Why should they be forbidden to bake ginger-bread just because Joseph thought it bad for the stomach? Why the Imperial edict demanding the breast-feeding of infants? Why the banning of corsets? From these and a thousand other petty regulations, enforced by a secret police, it looked to the Austrians as though Joseph were trying to reform their characters as well as their institutions. Only a few weeks before Joseph's death, the director of the Imperial Police reported to him: 'All classes, and even those who have the greatest respect for the sovereign, are discontented and indignant.'"

From the History of Austria. Joseph II, who ruled from 1780 to 1790.



Austria is our "History of" country today, as we proceed through the 206 countries of the world using the Wikipedia summaries. So much has happened in Austria over the ages. The "History of" project cannot begin to summarize the summary. I merely offer up a snippet, one thing that struck me as something that might have particular resonance. But it is only one of many things. For example, from 25,000 BC:

"A revolution has begun against the perception of beauty in Israel..."

"...  this law shatters the anorexic ideal serving as an example for the country’s youth."

The new law, known as the “photoshop law,” requires models to present their employers with a current doctor’s note confirming that they meet a minimum body mass index (BMI) – a calculation of weight to height proportion – of 18.5, which is considered the lowest threshold for a healthy weight. Advertisements featuring models who are “photoshopped” or otherwise digitally altered to make them appear thinner must be clearly marked as manipulated images.

Here's a BMI calculator if you want to check whether you're too skinny to be a model in Israel. I've been 5'5" for more than 40 years, and I've weighed lots of different weights, including the weight of 107, which I regarded as my ideal weight (based on a chart in the Stillman diet book) when I was a college student. But based on that BMI calculator, I see I'd need to weigh at least 111 to be permitted to be a model in Israel! I know you need to be taller to be a model, but my point is that 107 wasn't anorexic for a 20-year-old.

Certainly, for modeling clothes you want a body that doesn't really call attention to itself, that works more like a clothes hanger. It's an aesthetic choice, a way to feature the clothing, the product. The Israeli law is ridiculously repressive. People need to take responsibility for their own bodies, not blame the fashion/magazine industry and certainly not use the government to cut off messages that supposedly feed their irresponsibility.

Chief Justice Roberts informs Congress that the federal judiciary is scraping by on a mere $7 billion a year.

$7 billion! Why, if that were one person's entire fortune, he'd only be #50 on the Forbes list of richest Americans. He'd only just butt ahead of Charles Butt.

The Chief stressed the bargain we the people are getting:

“Yes,” he went on, “for each citizen’s tax dollar, only two-tenths of one penny goes toward funding the entire third branch of government!”

In the report, Chief Justice Roberts said the judiciary was doing what it could to cut costs in rent, salaries and computer services...

The federal courts went to great lengths last year in trying circumstances, notably after Hurricane Sandy. “As just one example,” he said, “the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York conducted emergency hearings in Lower Manhattan the day after the storm hit, working in a building without heat or hot water that was only sparsely lit by gas-fueled emergency generators.” Though Chief Justice Roberts did not say so, the Supreme Court also showed fortitude the day the storm hit, hearing arguments when the rest of official Washington was closed.

I could think of quite a few ways to economize on the federal courts — things Congress could do. The courts are forced to handle the cases that fall within their jurisdiction, but Congress could target litigation-generating laws for repeal.

ADDED: Another way to increase that "two-tenths of one penny" proportion would be to reduce spending on things that are not the judiciary.

Electronic devices on planes are dangerous...

... but not for the reason the FAA seems to want you to believe.

If progress [toward changing the rules] is slow, there will eventually be an episode on a plane in which someone is seriously harmed as a result of a device being on during takeoff. But it won’t be because the device is interfering with the plane’s systems. Instead, it will be because one passenger harms another, believing they are protecting the plane from a Kindle, which produces fewer electromagnetic emissions than a calculator.

"[W]hen does regulating a person’s habits in the name of good health become our moral and social duty?"

Asks David B. Agus, a USC medicine and engineering professor, in an op-ed that's #1 on the NYT "most emailed" list:

The answer, I suggest, is a two-parter: first, when the scientific data clearly and overwhelmingly demonstrate that one behavior or another can substantially reduce — or, conversely, raise — a person’s risk of disease; and second, when all of us are stuck paying for one another’s medical bills (which is what we do now, by way of Medicare, Medicaid and other taxpayer-financed health care programs).

Get ready. It's coming.