Mike Wolf

Candidate topics were Putin (again) or the Pope. So the committee to choose topics picked (on) the Pope.

And what’s not to like about a Pope with his own Twitter feed @Pontifex.  (https://twitter.com/Pontifex)

And who has decided not to use Facebook. (Ref here)

Wikipedia background here.

Article from The Atlantic on the Pope’s encyclical on the environment, here.

Interesting interactive map from the World Health Organization here.

Russians are the world champions.

Next week’s topic (28 Sept) is drugs. As we tend to wander around the subject (a good thing), the terrain includes:

1. Medicinal drugs, and monopolistic practices attached thereto (continuation of the IP discussion)
2. Controlled (and outlawed) substances, that may have individually and socially beneficial effects. My favorite (intellectually speaking) is the cognition enhancing drug Modafinil.
3. “Recreational drugs” aka getting high.

I think the focus of our discussion is intended to be (3), particularly thinking about how it might affect the next generation (for most of us that means grandchildren.) But these things slide into one another.

I came across this advocacy site.  I have not looked at it more than superficially, but the ratio of excerpts and links to source material to pure opinion (conclusions without supporting data) seems to be uncommonly high.

Here’s their summary page on adolescent drug use.

So here’s a hypothesis: “The systems intended to control the development and distribution of all drugs has (a) greater social costs than benefits.