Facebook Psychological Effect

Facebook is a very interesting psychological phenomenon. The reason it seems like everyone is doing great when looking at FB is that people almost NEVER post anything bad that happens to them. So you compare everything that happens in your life to only the greatest things that happen to other people.

Drug users need medical HELP, not prison time

If I were to discuss the many problems facing America today, I could write a book a million pages long, and I still would only cover the tip of the iceberg.

In today's post, I'd like to focus on the so-called war on drugs that America has been waging. Unfortunately, if the true purpose of this war was to eradicate drugs, perhaps things would not be so bad. But, it's not. The true purpose is to put more people in prison to generate profits for the prison industry and lawyers. The problem is that drugs, as many other things in our country, are a profit driven industry.

Since prisons are a huge for-profit industry, every drug user put in prison generates income for the criminal justice system. Lawyers make money, local governments make money, private prison corporations make money. That is cruel and barbaric - and frankly I think it violates the US constitution forbidding cruel and unusual punishment. 

America's response to someone using drugs is to put them in prison. A huge percentage of America's prison population (the larges in the world on a per-capita basis) are there for drug offenses. It could remotely make sense if they were there for selling drugs, but alas, no - most are for USING drugs.

And what are the causes of drug use? Easy answer: lack of education, lack of opportunity - a culture of mass media glorifying get rich quick schemes, rappers, movie stars and alike.

How cruel and barbaric is our society for putting drug users in prison? Drug use is an addiction and a medical condition, much like diabetes or heart disease. Drug users are SICK. Well, how is putting a sick person in prison going to help them? Answer - very little. Instead, it takes people already in a difficult spot and makes their life worse.

Drug users need to be treated by a doctor - not go to prison. These people need help. They are crying out for help and our society fails them. It's very sad and unfortunate.

Travel to distant stars could take a very short amount of time if spaceship travels close to speed of light

A common notion that traveling to other stars will take generations upon generations of people living and dying on a spaceship is only true if the spaceship travels relatively slow (in relation to the speed of light).

An important thing to consider is that "An object traveling AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT arrives to its destination in an instant, from its point of view" . TRAVEL TO OTHER STARS COULD TAKE A VERY SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME if we got the spaceship to travel close to the speed of light.

According to Einstein's theory of relativity, time slows down relative to the observer the closer you get to speed of light, so they theorize that if you travel at the speed of light, time stops and that for a photon, particle of light, from its point of view, its absorbed as soon as its emitted, ie in an instant.

So, let's say someone gets into a ship traveling at light speed to a star 5 light years away. FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE, it takes them 5 years to travel there, but from their perspective, it's instant?

Well, then that would make star travel a piece of cake, because if you can get a starship very close to speed of light, trip will seem VERY short ... ?

That does make sense, because time slows down, so 5 years on Earth will seem like MUCH LESS than 5 years to the people on the ship itself

Serge Bronstein
6/6/2015