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I’ve been thinking about drugs

 I think that some people are going to use drugs no matter how bad it is for them or how much it costs.  If the person using drugs doesn’t have the money for their drugs, they will commit crimes to get the money.  The amount of crime a person is willing to commit is disproportionate to the benefit received; the criminal will cause $1,000 of damage to get $100 of benefit.  Unencumbered by knowledge as I am, that’s what I think. I also think that if there is a demand for drugs, some people are going to fill that demand no matter the penalty or cost.  The market will provide.  The market is not driven by bad guys forcing us to use drugs, it is driven by the market responding to our demand.  The harder it is to fill that demand, the more the drugs will cost.  The more drugs cost, the more crime that will be done by the users to pay for their drugs (and the more violence by the sellers for the right to provide those drugs). Our government has a huge role in the price of drugs.  It’s not the drugs themselves that cost a lot.  Drugs are essentially simple and cheap.  The harder we prosecute the drug supply chain though, and the more scarce we make drugs, the more expensive we make them.  The more drugs cost, the more crime and violence will be committed in their name. So that brings me to wonder: If we stopped our drug intervention would the price of drugs plummet? If drug prices plummeted and they were legally available, would crime decrease? If drug prices plummeted and they were legally available, would a major reason for drug cartels to exist have just gone away? If we spent even a small fraction of that money we just quit spending on prosecution and incarceration, on education and treatment instead, would the number of drug users decline? Just wondering…. And I think we’re not the ones paying the biggest price for our war on drugs.  Imagine the effect this has on our neighbors to the south.  We have to tolerate mostly property crime from the users that can’t afford the drugs they want, and pay for their capture and incarceration.  That’s nothing compared to the reign of terror in Mexico from the drug cartels, with kidnappings, ransoms, and murders run rampant. Please, somebody help me.  I’m trying to sort through this logically and I keep coming up with illogical conclusions; like the more we spend on the war on drugs, the greater the cost to all involved.  Nothing could really be that simplistic or backwards, right? 
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Happy New Year

 We get to start a new year-bird list. Last year we birded a lot in January.  This year we’re being more careful, so we only birded a little.  Mostly we drove around and birded where I could just look out straight ahead.  A fun day.  We started our year with about 60 species.  The best birds were: Fulvous whistling ducks (some years these can be hard to get). Solitary sandpiper (harder to find than spotted sandpipers). Ringed kingfisher (One of the three kingfishers to get.  A South Texas specialty.  We always get it, but now we don’t have to look for it.) Northern bobwhite (just because I like quail so much). Wilson’s snipe (these can be hard to find too).  Citizen Science – We use ebird, a global database to track our sightings.  They make the program free, easy to use, and useful; and in return, they have thousands of birders all over the planet providing free data on what birds are where when.  I love what they do and am an enthusiastic participant. We finished 2015 with 403 species.  That was enough to rank us number 365 in the country.  Ebird is such a success and has grown so much in the last five years.  In 2010 our sightings of 397 birds ranked us 109 in the country; just outside the top 100.  We’re reporting about the same number of birds, but falling way back in the standings.  That’s a pretty good indicator of the growth of their data. (I don’t mean to suggest that we are really good birders.  I would better describe us as enthusiastic and persistent.  Our fairly high ranking, in the top few hundred birders in the country, is not a reflection of how good we are as birders.  There are a lot of people that are way better at finding and identifying birds than we are.  Our success is more a matter of us living in one of the best place in the nation to see a large number of year-round and migrant birds, plus we travel.) With our slow start in the first couple months of 2016 as we continue to be careful and not turn my head, it may be difficult to match our 400 bird standard.  The pace should pick up after we spend the month of May in Colorado though.  We’ll spend the month of June in Arizona and they’ve got a lot of birds there we don’t get in South Texas.  We may get our 400 birds again in 2016 anyway. I’ll report back.  
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Happy New Year’s Eve

 We’ve been enjoying our weather in the 70s and 80s.  It’s cool and cloudy tonight though; a little rainy.  A quiet day today; we’ll stay home in the Central Time Zone and declare Happy New Year when it’s time, even if that time is Atlantic Standard.  
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Happy New Year’s Eve Eve

 Six weeks.  It has been six weeks today since my neck surgery.  Last time around, I got to take the neck brace off at six weeks and pretend I was healed.  This time around, I’m halfway through a twelve week sentence.  It’s going to be *more* completely healed before I take this thing off this time.  No problem.  The recovery is going just fine.  I can do this. I figure attitude is everything.  Stiff upper lip and all that.  This is me… …keeping my chin up.