Reason articles from April 2003

Reason archives from April 2003

Moral panic buttons. (Editor's Note).(Editorial)
April 1, 2003... As Americans, we're quick to congratulate ourselves for having created a thoughtful and enlightened society, one where superstition and inflamed passions are tempered by rational analysis and skeptical inquiry. This is largely true and cause...

A challenge to parents who would never dream of buying insurance online: Have nearly two decades of dogged determination and relentless attention to detail now produced the perfect insurance Web site?
April 1, 2003... Let's face it. We know dozens of friends who would never consider buying insurance online. Is their wait for the perfect insurance Web site now over? Consider these facts: 1. Insurance markets are in a chaotic state. While life insurance...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2003... Jury-Rigged Kudos to Walter K. Olson ("Courting Stupidity," January) for taking on trial lawyers in general and the O.J. Simpson criminal trial jury in particular. I only hope his lonely courage doesn't hurt sales of his book. His...

Revolutionary arts. (Opera Goes Underground).
April 1, 2003... TIJUANA, THE MEXICAN border town south of San Diego, isn't exactly known as an incubator for culture, other than the kind of culture gringos explore after downing mucho tequila. Yet in the last year Tijuana has made headlines in U.S. papers not...

Good for the heart. (Benefits of Drinking).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... SINCE THE EVIDENCE that drinking can help prevent heart disease began to emerge in the 1970s, health nannies have worried that publicizing the connection would encourage alcohol abuse. But the latest study to confirm the health benefits of...

25 years ago in reason.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... "I expect to read any day now that the cannon blasts should be deleted from the 1812 Overture because prolonged exposure to such blasts has been linked with damaged tympanic membranes and anti-social behavior among laboratory animals....

Obscene prosecution. (Comic Book Conviction).
April 1, 2003... IT IS EASY to forget, but you can still be convicted for selling a periodical to an adult in this country. A Dallas comic book retailer, Jesus A. Castillo, was found guilty in August 2000 of distributing obscene material after selling a copy of...

Does size matter? (More Teachers, Same Scores).
April 1, 2003... UNVEILING A PROPOSAL to help public schools hire more teachers several years ago, Bill Clinton said "every parent already knows" that education improves when class size shrinks. As skeptical as they may have been about many other things that...

It's good to lie to your kids. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... It's good to lie to your kids, according to John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that Walters told Louisiana parents they should lie to their children about...

The county executive of Anne Arundel, Maryland, strongly supports tough anti-smoking efforts. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... The county executive of Anne Arundel, Maryland, strongly supports tough anti-smoking efforts. Since taking office in 1998, Janet S. Owens has backed a number of such measures, including a state tobacco tax hike and a "Smoking Stinks" campaign...

The Baltimore City Council. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... The Baltimore City Council has made it illegal to sell a BB gun to anyone under 18. Juvenile homicides were up 50 percent in 2002 from the previous year. None of those people was killed with a BB gun, but city officials say criminals are using...

DARE instructor Michael Thiel got high marks from his police department and from the schools were he lectured kids on the perils of illegal drugs. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... DARE instructor Michael Thiel got high marks from his police department and from the schools where he lectured kids on the perils of illegal drugs. But then he and two other members of the Harris Township, Pennsylvania, police force were...

Villagers from South Africa's Bokna Farm drove two old men and their families from their homes. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Villagers from South Africa's Bokna Farm drove two old men and their families from their homes after three houses were set ablaze by lightning. The area is prone to lightning strikes because of its climate and high altitude, but the villagers...

A Pakistani court sentenced Ahsan Azamtullah, 45, to life in prison and fined him $1,700. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... A Pakistani court sentenced Ahsan Azamtullah, 45, to life in prison and fined him $1,700. His crime? Blasphemy. He was a disciple of the late Sarder Ahmed, whom the government has declared a false prophet.

Speaking of Pakistan, cricket star Wasim Akram has been sued for 25,000 rupees by one of his fans. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Speaking of Pakistan, cricket star Wasim Akram has been sued for 25,000 rupees by one of his fans, Fiaz Ahmed. Ahmed says he is "saddened and disappointed" by Wasim's alleged appearance in an Indian advertisement for liquor. "Pakistan is an...

Finally, police in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province raided 23 cinemas and dozens of video stores. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Finally, police in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province raided 23 cinemas and dozens of video stores, charging them with showing or selling obscene films. The charges surprised the proprietors, since the national censorship board had cleared...

It's not easy being green. (Who's an Environmentalist?).
April 1, 2003... IS THERE A legal definition of environmentalist? It sounds like a question for law students in their cups, but it actually entered a federal courtroom earlier this year. Having successfully sued the government to put a "properly qualified...

High-tech bicycling. (Grassroots globalization).
April 1, 2003... CAN THE INTERNET improve the lives of rural villagers in Laos, where most still don't have access to telephone lines or electricity? The San Francisco-based Jhai Foundation, dedicated to improving the social and economic lives of Lao...

Balance sheet.
April 1, 2003... Die, Robot The Pentagon likes what it sees of combat robots built by small start-up firms such as iRobot. Troops note that a $45,000 "Pack-Bot" is well-suited to replace soldiers in dangerous tasks such as cave clearing and urban warfare....

Box check. (Data).
April 1, 2003... Public financing for presidential elections is nearing collapse, reported USA Today in a breathless late-January cover story. Just ii percent of taxpayers in 2000--compared to 27.5 percent when the system was established in 1976--checked the...

Privacy watch. (Keeping Track of their Man).
April 1, 2003... CANADA'S OFFICIAL privacy watchdog is barking mad over a newly instituted security program. Our northern neighbors are keeping a six-year database detailing the names, birthdays, citizenship status, destination flown, form of payment for...

Total deregulation. (Zoning rebellion in Georgia).
April 1, 2003... WHO SAYS DEREGULATION 15 dead? In December, Habersham County, Georgia, abolished all its land use regulations, fired all its building inspectors, and eliminated its planning commission. "We're going to see if people truly need to be regulated,"...

Disturbed minds. (Soundbite).
April 1, 2003... Joe Bob Briggs, a.k.a. John Bloom, is the nation's premier reviewer of B movies and exploitation cinema--the blood-soaked, sex-laden fare that turns off genteel critics while arousing moralizing politicians. His new book, Profoundly Disturbing:...

Mickey Mouse clubbed: Disney's cartoon rodent speaks out on the Eldred decision.
April 1, 2003... IN JANUARY, THE U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998--so named in honor of the late Rep. Bono, and not because it extended his copyright terms--is constitutional. Prior to the Bono Act, an...

Aborting equality: men's odd place in the abortion debate. (Columns).
April 1, 2003... THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY of Roe v. Wade in January evoked the usual rhetoric from the usual suspects: anti-abortion activists lamenting the slaughter of fetuses, feminists lamenting the threat to women's rights, cautious language from the president...

Space balls. (Rent).
April 1, 2003... NASA fights the future THE CONTINENT-SPANNING field of debris from the tragic breakup of the space shuttle Columbia had barely begun to cool before National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials promised to continue the manned...

The agony and the Ecstasy: How the OxyContin crackdown hurts patients in pain.
April 1, 2003... WILLIAM E. HURWITZ spent much of last year trying to find new doctors for his patients. It wasn't easy, since physicians often are reluctant to treat chronic pain. They worry that repeated prescriptions for large doses of narcotic painkillers...

Is that a computer in your pants? Cyberculture chronicler Howard Rheingold on smart mobs, smart environments, and smart choices in an age of connectivity.
April 1, 2003... SINCE 1968, THE Whole Earth Catalog has been a valuable sourcebook for freethinkers, do-it-yourselfers, and back-to-the-landers. Its most recent full-fledged catalog, published in 1994, opened by noting that the price of computing "has dropped...

Prisoners of digital television: A misadventure in high-tech regulatory policy--and a harry Potter fix.
April 1, 2003... IN Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the young student wizard Harry Potter is pursued by a horde of creatures called Dementors. To make a long, well-plotted story far too short, a future version of Harry suddenly appears and waves his...

The killer fog: when green politics masquerades as environmental science. (Culture and Reviews).
April 1, 2003... When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, by Devra Lee Davis, New York: Basic Books, 336 pages, $26 FACTS MUST COME before philosophy. The question of whether air pollution quietly kills...

Command performances: The civilian-military conflict over the conduct of war.
April 1, 2003... Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, by Eliot A. Cohen, New York: Free Press, 288 pages, $25 "Good morning, good morning!" the General said, When we met him last week on our way to the line. Now the...

Lust-see TV: Small-screen sex and its discontents.
April 1, 2003... In an age of space shuttle catastrophes, Middle Eastern war, apocalyptic terrorism, and--perhaps most on point--declining rates of teen sex, the continuing interest in the quantity and quality of "lust-see TV" seems positively quaint, little...

Hell Hounds: How a musical moral panic destroyed three young men.
April 1, 2003... Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, by Mara Leveritt, New York: Atria Books, 417 pages, $24 ON THE AFTERNOON of May 6, 1993, the dead bodies of three 8-year-old boys were discovered less than half a mile from their homes...

Wicked woman warning: How old vices come back to haunt us.
April 1, 2003... THIS IS AN old Life magazine photo, snapped in 1946 by photographer A.L. "Whitey" Schafer. It's worth a close review. There's a dead cop in the picture, and standing over his body, a gun in her right hand, is a dissipated blond in a black lace...

Capitol culture complex. (Artifact).
April 1, 2003... WHAT HAPPENS WHEN you put the wrong building on the wrong site? As this model demonstrates, you can try to fix both the building and the site. This plan is the work of architect Rafael Vinoly; Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center for the...

A better way to protect endangered species.(Editorial)
April 1, 2003... The fate of many endangered species is in the hands of private property owners. By maintaining habitat for rare species, landholders are providing a public service, and the best way to encourage landholders to protect these species is to ensure...