Ignoring Laws

Tim Wu has an interesting series of posts on how laws are quite different in theory and practice. Specifically, he talks about how lots of laws – important laws – are not enforced, resulting in a world that operates rather differently that what you would expect based on a strict reading of the existing laws. He takes some great examples from copyright law, pornography, legal (prescription) drugs, to argue that sometimes, it is not the congressmen and courts that are making the laws, but rather a de facto standard that emerges out of the actions of various public prosecutors, police, and juries that really determines what is “legal”. (Had you thought of the rule of law in this way? I hadn’t!)

Long, but definitely worth reading. Link.

Interesting website: Erowid Experience Vaults

Erowid.org is a website where people write about what they experience when they do drugs. If you ever wanted to do drugs vicariously, this is your chance. For example, this is an excerpt from a post on doing cocaine for the first time:

I sat there for a few minutes after my line. First thing I noticed was my front teeth being completely numb. I told the group that and they chuckled. After those first words, I didn’t shut up til I crashed. I felt complete euphoria. We did lines about every 15 minutes until the stash was gone. It was abosuletly phenomenal. When each line hit me, I just had another jolt of the feeling that everything was good. and i mean everything. and I just wanted to talk about it.

I just kept telling stories about my past and the emotions they brought up when I remembered things. I told my friends how much I loved them, what I loved about them, what I didn’t (and friendly advice on how to change), my memories of them.
I was in a state of calm, even though my body was uncontrollably jittery. But I didn’t care, in fact I loved it. Everything was just cool. I was the fonz.
Everybody else was real cool during the whole thing, even with me blabbering away like a fool most of the night.

We listened to a lot of music that night while stuffing our noses. We just kept playing songs from my roommate’s mp3 collection that had emotional connections for each of us. With each new one, we would point out the emotion connected to it and the lyrics we loved. Each story led to another and another and another. I have never had that much fun listening to music and talking. I’ve had good times doing it clean, but with the coke I just on top of the world.

The relentless pursuit of knowledge takes you to interesting places…

History of Religion in 90 seconds

See this page for a neat little video of how the major religions spread across the world from their beginnings until now.

Not only is the content interesting in itself, but I also think this is a great example of presenting data well. Think about it: if you were asked to present the information in 90 seconds, how would you have done it? Would it have been as effective?