Iceland Is Crowdsourcing Its New Constitution - Politics. Vikings. They're the vanguard of 21st-century democracy. In the wake of the devastating collapse of Iceland's commercial banks, the country is drawing up a new constitution, and it's doing things a little differently: It's crowdsourcing the process. For real. The country's 25-member constituional council is posting draft clauses on its website and inviting the public to comment on them there or on its Facebook page. And their comments are actually being incorporated into the document.
The council also has Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr accounts and is streaming all of its meetings live. It's perhaps the most open and participatory constitutional process in modern history (the Greeks were pretty good at democracy in their time). Chaos Begets Chaos. A 5-Euro note serves as bait in a sociological experiment. Credit: AAAS Last month social scientists in the Netherlands empirically demonstrated a phenomenon observed by policymakers and law-enforcement officials for years.
When an envelope visibly containing a five-euro note was left hanging out of a mailbox on a sidewalk, 13 percent of the passersby snatched it up. When the same mailbox was covered in graffiti, however, more than double the number of the pedestrians (about 27 percent) stole the envelope. Graffiti was not the only misdemeanor that fostered a cavalier attitude toward theft. When the ground near the mailbox was covered in litter, 25 percent of the subjects stole the envelope.
These results are significant for both social and statistical reasons. Broken window theory (BWT), first proposed by James Wilson and George Kelling in 1982, holds that the presence of disorder — in the form of broken windows, litter, and graffiti — can encourage delinquent behavior. The 12 States of America. Partisan Trends. Drug Freedom Works in Portugal : Narco Polo. Posted: April 6th, 2009 | Filed under: drugs, legalization, marijuana | 33 Comments » On Friday I attended Glenn Greenwald‘s presentation of his report, “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal,” at the Cato Institute. Greenwald studied how Portugal’s policy of decriminalizing the personal possession of all drugs in 2001 has fared. Portugal’s policy has been a “resounding success.” Decriminalization is dismissed out of hand by those that consider drugs a moral issue, but prohibitionists that stoop to debate argue decriminalization will bring a “parade of horrors.” Some of these are that usage and addiction rates will explode, more children will do drugs, and decriminalized areas will become drug tourist havens that will spread addiction throughout the world.
None of these things have occurred in Portugal. These results are unsurprising to those that understand how exaggerated the evils are surrounding “hard” drugs. Sources: 1.