narcotráfico

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?

winzer oder vitis vinifera

Over the weekend, H and I were treated to a tour of an award-winning vineyard and wine-tasting on the escarpment over the River Main outside of Volkach. This chalky cliff-face (Volkacher Mainschleife) winds around the river and produces an ideal micro-climate for the cultivation of grapes. The guide was quite funny and informative, teaching us about how the colour of a grape is not an indicator of the character of the end product and cultivars are only identifiable before they ripen by the shape of their leaves.
At another juncture before climbing further into the vineyards, the guide explained the origin and advantages of the distinctive canteen-shaped bottle of that region, called the Bocksbeutel—which folk-etymology suggests was named for its resemblance in shape to a ram’s (Bock) scrotum (Beutel, sack)—but was probably derived from the term for a book satchel that one could swing over his shoulder for easy transport, such containers also being the approximate size of a book in the hands and amenable to being carried in such a way.
Moreover, the design was easy to balance and would not roll away out of doors. Higher up and among the vines, we learnt about the vagaries of the weather and what impact that had on harvests and found out that the hedgerows used for wind-breaks were always rose-bushes, sometimes centuries old like the grapevines, because like the proverbial canary in a coal-mine, they were the first to show signs of disease and might also be a stop gap for the spread of pests. The local wines we sampled while on our hike were exquisite and a very pleasant reminder that there is a lot to explore close to home as well.

soy cuba

This collection of vintage Cuban political posters (propaganda is always such a dicey and loaded word) of curator Michael Taylor of Bath, UK comes to our notice via Messy Nessy Chic’s intrepid searches. Circa the early 1970s, most of these artworks were commissioned to mark the annual Tri-Continental Conferences that Cuba hosted through its Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL in Spanish) to bolster support for human rights, social development and the ideals of socialism as a counter-weight to imperialism and globalisation. Due to a lack of ink, during the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, production dropped off, but there was a resurgence beginning in the year 2000 and still publish to this day. A comprehensive gallery of organisation’s posters can be found at this partner-site, Docs Populi.

beyond the uncanny valley of the dolls

Apparently, there is a market (novelty restaurants or Renaissance Faires, I am thinking) for talking automaton, which a firm specialising in such custom, made-to-order dolls.
Dangerous Minds features a selection from the company’s exactingly bizarre and surpassingly creepy catalogue, and while these animatronic characters aren’t realistic they nonetheless can elicit unease and there’s a strange resemblance in all of the models to celebrities and politicians that does not seem intentional but comes through.