Incredibly with little notice but overwhelmingly positive results, the government of Portugal decriminalised (not legalised but offenses are addressed as a matter of public-health resulting in a referral to counselling services but not incarceration) all drugs—fifteen years ago.
Usage has not skyrocketed (as some opponents to the change feared and use vociferously as an argument against reform in other countries presently) and moreover, deaths from over-dose or infections spread by using dirty needles have plummeted to essentially zero as has gang activity, and probably just as significantly, there’s far less of a problem in Portuguese cities with novel synthetic experimental substances or ones that skirt the pharmacological standards as legalish highs. There are of course probably other systemic problems, like political corruption and inequalities in sentencing that has been reduced as well. I should think that if Portugal’s long-running experiment was the success that it appears to be, other countries would have been emulating it for a long time. The places, however, with the biggest drug and crime problems also reinforce the most wrong-headed understanding of abuse and addiction, I think, treating dependency as a sin or some kind of moral-failing and treating it almost exclusively with the corrective measures, penance, that held that other ailments where a curse that the sufferer brought upon himself. What do you think? No other disease diagnosis questions moral fiber or attributes a relapse to a lack of willpower. Do we expect the addict to take the retribution that he had coming like we did lepers and other outcasts not so long ago?
Sunday, 31 July 2016
narcotrรกfico
Friday, 26 February 2016
have some madeira, m’ dear
Expected to be a direct conduit between South America and Europe ready late next year, the underseas cable that Brazil is preparing to anchor over revelations that that country’s government was one of the many targets of American electronic surveillance is not only courting the interests of those who feel directly affronted and betrayed but also of some giants—not of the same spying-industry per se but at least of the enabling kind—of the internet.
The cable, side- stepping the American monopoly on trans-Atlantic submarine lines of communication, links the former colony with her metropolitan, Portugal, with a landing at Cabo Verde, another former Portuguese holding. Called EulaLink, other nations too are interested in joining this network. I wonder, in response, what sort of slant-drilling operations might be enjoined to siphon-off some of this traffic. The terminus of the cable will be in the coastal city of Madeira—which made me think of the old tune that tells the story of a lecherous old man who tries to persuade an innocent young girl to dally a bit longer by plying her with drink: the result is that she does stay but her character is transformed to something akin to his own, which probably wasn’t exactly what he wanted. Maybe that is a cautionary tale for this enterprise.
Thursday, 18 June 2015
nictotine
Monday, 23 March 2015
cowboys and indians: sacerdotal or the fifth crusade
Separately, two charismatic shepherd boys in Seine-Saint-Denis and Kรถln gathered thousands of children, the poor and disposed to march on the Holy Land and convert the Muslims—both promising that the Mediterranean at Marseilles or over the Alps and in Brindisi would part before them, like Moses crossing the Red Sea. Once the horde made its way to the shore, the Mediterranean did not comply and those who did not try to start their young lives anew at these endpoints or try their fortune at going home were caught by Saracen pirates and sold into slavery. It’s hard to say if the adult population of Europe felt obliged to complete the mission their children were willing to undertake unquestioningly or not (some question the accounts or if such travesties even happened at all), but in any case, Pope Innocent was able to marshal the support of armies that might be able to fulfill the task of recapturing the Holy Land without too much variance. This time, however, the leaders of the Crusader States would rather that Europe didn’t try to help out again. The past few years had ushered in a time of relative peace and great prosperity and Christian and Muslims coexisted due to a constellation of conditions, including the death of Saladin and crises of succession among his heirs, lack of Crusader aggression and very lucrative and mutually beneficial trading arrangements.



Monday, 29 December 2014
boilerplate or ultramar
People were absolutely astonished to see such a beast, which was unknown in Europe since Roman times—the animal described by the classic naturalist Pliny but generally regarded the rhino as some legendary creature. Vilified and curious, Europeans at this time were also rediscovering elements of their heritage that had gone missing during the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages weren’t all that grim and backwards but it is interesting to think how we know more of the Romans than people half a millennium nearer to them, and ruins were being excavated and art uncovered that no one suspected. Manuel was keen on getting this exotic specimen, however, to present to the Pope—thinking it would complement his pet white elephant Hanno, which the Pope rode around the streets of Rome on. Sadly, after being admired in Lisbon and communicated to draughtsman Dรผrer, the rhinoceros went down in a shipwreck off the coast of La Spezia and never made it to Rome—doubly sad because the rhinoceros is an able swimmer and probably would have survived had he not been chained to the deck. Of course, this print became as famous as it did and still remains in circulation because of emerging printing-technology in Dรผrer’s home-haunt of Nรผrnberg, another aspect of the modern age.
Tuesday, 25 November 2014
iberia-hispania or elegant variation
Although we can identify a classic period of the language and Rome had institutions to preserve and promote a standard, there was probably never a universal Latin spoken across the Empire.
Romance languages descended from Latin but as conquests of Gaul, Iberia and the Balkans came centuries apart, the spoken language that supplanted their native tongues had changed as well. Early on during the Punic Wars as the Empire was expanding across the Mediterranean, Rome secured the lands of Spain from Carthage, and through the discontinuity of the French speakers, Spain remains one of the vulgar languages most true to that original language. Euskara, the language of the Basque people, seems to have developed prior to the arrival of Indo-Europeans and has endured to modern times. The subjugation of the Gallic tribes came later, after Rome had absorbed Greece and Macedonia and incorporated many Greek words, reflected in modern French. Of course, other powers came to dominate these provinces as Rome’s influence waned and these Germanic speakers helped shape the vernacular dialects to a greater or lesser extent. Owing to the Franks, French has inherited a smattering of Germanic loan-words.
The Visigoths, however, who came to rule the Iberian peninsula, due to extended contact with the Roman civilization, were bilingual in Latin and Gothic, and Latin and its derivative local languages remained in common-parlance for day-to-day activities and native Gothic remained mostly in the background. Exceptions were found in the Church, Gothic having been the first Germanic language to be written down in order to produce that Gothic Bible commissioned by the Arian bishop Ulfilas, until the Roman Catholic Church consolidated authority, and interestingly in family names to this day. Many of the most common surnames of Spain, Portugal and Latin America reflect remnants of Visigoth rule: Hernรกndez from Ferdinand (protector of the peace and probably a title rather than a name originally), Gutiรฉrrez from Walter—wielder of hosts, Rodrรญguez, son of Roderik, the name of one of the last kings of the Goths before the Muslim incursions into the area and meaning rich in glory.
Wednesday, 26 February 2014
jai alai
The European Union and Brazil will sink a submarine fibre-optic cable beneath the waters of the Atlantic to link Portugal and Latin America directly and provide a relief artery for more of the world's population to avoid using American infrastructure for communications.
Sunday, 3 June 2012
ex ante or porto portugal you are permanently punished
This week’s vote in Ireland whether to accept or reject the conditions of the European Union Fiscal Compact, a treaty meant to promote financial stability and responsibility through punitive measures and supranational controls, was a stirring of an issue that goes dormant as member states shuttle in queue and declare what they expect their prerogatives to be.

Friday, 7 October 2011
korkenzieher or exonymy
I remember when I was little, I had a light and fluffy block of cork wood that I thought was a very rare and exotic thing as part of a larger collection of stones, fossils and pieces of petrified wood. It was eaten with wormholes, and I think I only tried once floating it in the bathtub. Such an unusual grove must have its origins with the Irish second-city of the same name, I was convinced.