The Alaska Chat Thread (work, medicine, cost)

[Metlakatla]

If they ever build a starbucks where I live I am going to burn it down.

[Xa'at]

Originally Posted by Metlakatla

If they ever build a starbucks where I live I am going to burn it down.

And... that was my cue to go do other things.
Peace out, everyone!

[Dusty Rhodes]

Originally Posted by Rance

If I had any idea what those phrases meant I might be able to answer that. But I don't so I won't.

Right wing means that they fly in a counter clockwise circle. D

[warptman]

Right Wings?

[HG_75]

and agree on decriminalization of marijuana.

Why? I can't fathom why people want this.

[Glitch]

Originally Posted by Xa'at

You and house burning... violence is not the answer! Although I can see how the whole deer skull thing would get annoying, fast.
For 'da record, I don't abhor hunting either, although I'm not a fan of guns themselves. If someone wants to go out in the forest, kill an elk, bring it home and eat it, I say more power to 'ya. The whole sport hunting thing that people do down south grinds my gears like no other, though. Taking a life... for what? There is no purpose, other than simple human greed, and that is wrong.
There is a native parable of a man who goes out to hunt an orca (keet). He has tea and food with him, but he does not share it with the whale he is about to kill, nor does he thank the whale for giving its life for him and his village. He merely kills it, takes it home, and there is a great feast. But the next year, there the orcas are gone, the salmon don't run, and all the people starve. I've heard it several times, plus different renditions (in some cases it's a Walrus) from different tribes, but the idea remains the same.

My father took me hunting beginning at age 8. Over the course of two years he taught me firearm safety, gun etiquette, and the philosophy that "if I shoot it, I eat it." After shooting a couple of squirrels I came to find out that I burned more calories skinning those buggers than I got from their meat, so I stopped shooting squirrels. He bought me my first 12-gauge shotgun when I turned 10 and I have been hunting ever since. He did not abide sport hunting, and neither do I. For me it is about supplementing my food requirements. For around $50 in gas and $1.20 in ammo I can add approximately 180 pounds of fully dressed caribou to my diet. That works out to about $0.28 per pound, as opposed to $4.79 per pound of beef at the local grocer.

While I don't personally "thank" the game I kill, I do understand the importance of maintaining a balance so as not to deplete a valuable resource. I have every confidence in the State of Alaska's Department of Fish and Game to manage Alaska's game resources for the benefit of everyone in Alaska. To that end, I am fanatical about abiding by their regulations and will gladly report anyone I find violating them.

Hunters have done more to help conserve the wildlife and their habitat throughout the US than any other organization in existence today. It is in their best interests.

[User 2]

Originally Posted by HG_75

Why? I can't fathom why people want this.

The social costs of criminalizing marijuana are much higher than the alternative.

Look at prohibition, someone decided to impose their moral standard on everyone else and the result was increased criminal behavior and increased social costs trying to enforce what everyone continued to participate in.

Prohibition didn't change people's attitudes about drinking, throughout the strata of society drinking continued as always.

The only thing prohibition did was to create a black market and an opportunity for criminals, (read, not the government) to take the profits.

Imposing moral standards on every one else is at the root of the problem, the loss of individual freedom is what is sacrificed.

Criminalizing someone's preferential drug, while legally promoting and condoning someone else's preferential drug is unAmerican. It runs counter to the ideals this country was founded on.

And if you think you're going to argue that marijuana is a gateway drug to hard drug use, that's total bunk. I can just as well say milk drinking will lead to heroin, after all, most heroin addicts started out drinking milk.

What I do in my own home, and what I do that does not impose on my neighbors is nobody's business but for the idea that they are wrong if they do not support my right to personal freedom.

[mal_flisk]

Metla! Arson seems to be your answer for everything. (Closet pyro!) LOL

[User 2]

Originally Posted by mal_flisk

As a former pot-head, I have told my sons I did not want any in the house

You might want to carefully explain to them that the only place they can legally possess pot under state law in Alaska is in their own house.

[User 2]

Originally Posted by Glitch

I don't buy into "medical" reasons for using marijuana, common sense dictates that anything foreign inhaled into your lungs can't be good for them.

That 'you don't buy into it' is little reason to hold that opinion or keep that opinion, If everything you inhale is bad for you there are going to be a lot of dead asthma sufferers, among others, who would be denied their inhalers.

Plenty of drugs are best administered through absorbtion through the lungs. That's only one method of delivery for some drugs, but for others it's the only effective method.

Medical marijuana is sometimes ingested by mouth, sometimes it is smoked. It depends on whether the relief is desired to be slow and steady, or only at times calling for more immediate occasional relief.

Let the scientists and the medical professionals make decisions about what does or does not have medical benefits in treatment. Learn to leave your opinions out of it.

Your opinion could cause needless suffering and death.