A bit of politcs

Normally I don't blog about politics, sex, or religion (I try to avoid discussing them socially so why would I want to bring them up here!) but a thought struck me this morning. We're trying to prop up the current government in Afghanistan and before that and to some degree now it was the warlords. All of whom along with the Taliban use opium as the cash crop to help fund ongoing concerns. Now the end result of opium is to produce drugs for human consumption, the product of which is illegal in many countries including the United States. So to prevent even more poverty and instability in a country we're attempting to save (or at least prevent from reverting to religious fanaticism) we turn a blind eye to the massive opium crops which will eventually turn into product that end up in this country.

Now we have a war on drugs. It's been going on a very long time and it has resulted in thousands of people being thrown in prison. It has not really dented the flow of drugs into the country nor has it done much to affect consumption. People in high school and college still experiment. Meth is easy to manufacture, cheap to buy, and easy to consume. It also ruins lives.

Alcohol is easy to manufacture, cheap to buy, and easy to consume. It also ruins lives. We tried banning alcohol in this country in a similar fashion to the ban on recreational drugs. How well did that turn out? Alcohol was made legal again, but controlled and taxed. We have AA, we have social programs to help those who have unhealthy addictions to alcohol. We put people in jail if they do bad things while under the influence of alcohol. If you sit at home and drink until you pass out, unless you hurt someone else society won't notice and in general could care less. If you sit at home and smoke drugs until you pass out, even if you don't hurt someone, society will call you a drug addict, decry the fall of civilization, and hope you're caught so you can go to jail for 10 to 20.

Why is one drug legal and socially accepted and one is not? Social acceptance is the key word. Society and government specify what is accepted and what is not. Society and the government said in the 1920's said that alcohol was not acceptable and suddenly it was illegal. It was in fact the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. You went to the speakeasies, the bootleggers, or the man down the street cooking corn mash in his back yard.

We have a lot of problems in this country. Many of our citizens are in pain and have issues. Our jails are full of people who if they had been found on the street with an unopened bottle of wine in their hand would never have attracted attention.

I am a drug user because I drink wine. Occasionally a martini. I use alcohol. Never enough to get drunk. Never to forget my problems. Society says I'm a normal, well adjusted person because I use a socially accepted drug in moderation and don't hurt other people or do bad things while under the influence of said drug. In the 1920's, I would have been put in jail due to the amount of wine I have at home because I purchased it and did not make it myself. I have never done any recreational drugs other than alcohol and do not intend to. It ain't my bag baby as Austin Powers would say.

We have a lot of problems in this country. We should concentrate on what tears down society and the people comprising it and worry less about what someone does in the privacy of their own home.

/Rant off

Haiku for the working masses

time slowly drags on
ongoing matters elude
next day holiday

Making sound permanent

So you goof around with an instrument or think you've got a half-descent voice and would like to do voice-overs or radio work. You've got a PC or a Mac, a cheap headset microphone and whatever comes with your OS to record with. Suddenly you find nothing sounds right once you record it and play it back. Want to know why? It's because you need tools specific to the task at hand, making sounds permanent digitally. That's when the trouble starts, the bug bites, the audio geek in you comes out and you find that spending a lot of money is the only way to make it sound "right"!

If you find yourself in this position, check out www.insidehomerecording.com. They have a blog and a great podcast about recording at home. Sure they cover the higher end stuff like Logic Studio and Reason, but they also give tips on how to make Garageband work for you on a modest budget.