Ted Rall
http://rall.comTed Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
6 Comments.
Ah, the good old wholecloth construct of how drugs=creativity.
In a very limited range of activities, I suspect a little drugging might be useful. In writing (but not editing), in sketching and some forms of painting (but not sculpting) a slight disconnection (be it from pot or booze or whatever) can produce new concepts. So can going for a walk or riding a bus (remember Kekule?)
I think the real problem is exactly what Comey describes: kids who want to light up at the wrong times. These aren’t people who are given a complex security programming issue and who say, “You know, I think that if you give me the weekend, I can go to my cabin, smoke a little dope, do some doodles on my notepad, and I may have a great approach for this when I get back.” These are people who are being asked to come to a job interview and who can’t handle it without a bracer. That’s not creativity. That’s not brilliance. That’s addiction.
What I do on my own time is my own business, my employers’ only concern is whether I can do my job on their time. Back in the day (Seventies?) Intel workers were given a surreptitious warning before the government-mandated drug tests. They certainly had no illusions about those pony-tailed highbrows.
It’s nice to see the gubbmint facing reality on this issue – it’s about time – but I sure can’t see anyone *passing* a tech interview high.
The mooks who let the 9/11 guys on the plane passed a drug test. Dorme bene.
So apparently the idea behind relaxing the drug prohibition is that you will attract very bright people who might also toke. If this works out it would amount to very bright people working for dumb people in an idiotic system, particularly the FBI, who spend much of their effort hatching fake plots against the country, and when they have any free time left over from that, spying on and harassing non-conformists. So they’re hiring non-conformists to harass non-conformists. A real life example of an Escher drawing.
A skilled hacker is a skilled hacker whether or not he or she is under the influence of drugs. This logic is broken. And since hackers are so common nowadays, we should all practice added safety measures. In my case, I use cheap shared proxies I got from http://squidproxies.com/shared-proxies/
Private proxies and VPNs are great too but are more expensive.
Spammers are all too common nowadays, as well.