Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
By Johann Hari
400 pages
Bloomsbury, 2015
This is a remarkable book. If it were widely read and heeded, the drug war would end tomorrow. Maybe yesterday.
Category: Books and Movies
If you’re a geeky kid who likes inventing electronic gadgets your name better not be Ahmed Mohamed. Poor kid. That’ll teach him to want to be a maker instead of a destroyer. (UPDATE: Looks as if Ahmed might come out of this in good shape, though.) I love it! And A.G. was so right when he asked in comments, “How did this ever make it into the New Yorker?” (Speaking of coming-of-age novels, as we were) “The Politically Correct Lord of the Flies.” Ulp. I always thought snakes in toilets was a myth. Damn! The world is ending. Again. This…
Pat sent me a list of 11 classic coming-of-age novels. I’ve read 7 of the 11 (only saw the movie of another); Pat can account for 7-1/2. The ones I’m familiar with are great books everybody will probably encounter at some time, and some may (at the right moment) even be life-changing, as the article claims. But I also noticed the whole list is from another age. Where’s The Giver? And The Chocolate War? And The Hunger Games trilogy? Not to mention quite a few others, both modern and classic. For that matter, what constitutes a coming-of-age novel? I never…
Library joins the TOR network to give its computer-using patrons privacy. Local cops intervene. Hope is not yet lost, however. Skunk water. Cops’ latest weapon against we the uppity — and anybody else who happens to be in the way. Yes, that 13-year-old boy was stupid. But then, 13-year-old boys are. Law enforcers ought to know better. If you happen to be passing through Colorado on Wednedsday … Those new, more complicated (and vastly more invasive) medical codes Shel warned about in a recent comment section are to become official on October 1. Quadruple the info for doctors and medical…
This oughta keep you busy for a while. Major hat tip to faithful contributor MJR, who went on a link-hunting tear this week. Um … Yes, Wired, you can do something about Spotify’s weird new anti-privacy policy: don’t use Spotify. And y’know, Spotify’s “clarification” doesn’t help one little bit. It amounts to, “Oh, we’ll never, ever abuse all those bits of your life we’re requiring users to give up to us. Trust us …” Now this is funny. How North Korea is handling shooting range budget cuts. Over at TZP, Nicki and Y.B. write about a pair of killers and…
Prisons and the reading matter they prohibit. $15 minimum wage: The Tony Soprano Enabling Act. Well. That’s yet another reason not to go to movie theaters. (H/T LA) Another puppycide by cop. Another example of sociopathic contempt for life, including human life. This in the City of Brotherly Love. Any maroon who’d sign up with an adultery website, handing over all manner of personal details in the process, is probably dumb enough to deserve this. And it’s yet another opportunity to snicker at that ubiquitous commercial Christian, Josh Duggar. (Less amusing is that some in their faction would prefer to…
🙂 Sword + righteous determination beats knife-wielding cowards. And that reminded faithful reader PT of “I’ll see your six …”. A rough, tough novelist pulls himself back from the brink of death. How well do you know Gandalf from Dumbledore? I was thinking about that while re-reading the Harry Potter books recently, so naturally I had to steal this when Wendy McElroy posted it. The 2015 Human Freedom Index from Cato, the Frasier Institute, and three other think tanks around the world. Once again, the U.S. doesn’t crack the top 10. “I Made an Untraceable Ghost Gun” by Andy Greenberg…
I assume most everybody knows the Harry Potter stories, but if you’ve never read the books or seen the movies, be forewarned that this post contains major spoilers.
I’m about 2/3 of the way through a remarkable (and remarkably entertaining) novel, The Sentinels of Andersonville by Tracy Groot.
It focuses on a small group of Confederates determined to help the Yankee prisoners in the ghastly Andersonville stockade, though others around them view their mercy and humanitarianism as treason.