Reason articles from April 2005

Reason archives from April 2005

The best reason for private retirement accounts.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
April 1, 2005... LIKE MANY--probably most--Americans, I got a late start on saving for my golden years, not throwing a single penny into any sort of retirement account until well into my 30s. There were many reasons for this. I grew up in a household in...

Iraq's Summer Soldiers.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... Tim Cavanaugh ("Iraq's Summer Soldiers," January) notes the liberal hawks' supposed hypocrisy in blaming President George W. Bush for mismanaging the postwar situation. This charge is spurious: To acknowledge the neglect or betrayal of an ideal...

Civil Liberties & Enemy Combatants.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... There are two stories in Harvey Silverglate's "Civil Liberties and Enemy Combatants" (January). The first is about the abridgment of civil liberties, about the belief that people under the jurisdiction of our government should be afforded the...

Cut-Rate Diplomas.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... I enjoyed reading Paul Sperry's article on diploma mills ("Cut-Rate Diplomas," January) but feel compelled to correct the impression he left of Thomas Edison State College when he compared it to Hamilton University. Thomas Edison is a...

Imperial Waltz.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... My pleasure in reading Michael Young's "Imperial Waltz" (January) was considerably diminished when I got to the middle of his piece, where I felt that he deviated from his posture of objectivity when he arrived at the Israel-Palestinian issue....

John Locke Lite.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... I haven't read Michael Otsuka's book and don't know his work. Tom Palmer's assessment of it in the January issue could be on target. But his review ironically suffers the disease its title, "John Lock Lite," describes. Palmer correctly quotes...

Among the Nonbelievers.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... Chris Lehmann's review of Sam Harris' The End of Faith ("Among the Nonbelievers," January) made me chuckle in disbelief. If Harris can be accused of flying off the handle in places in his book (and yes, I have read it), Lehmann's review was one...

Corrections.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
April 1, 2005... CORRECTIONS: "Hayek for the 21st Century" (January) misstated the year of F.A. Hayek's birth. It was 1899. "Doctor Sex, Ph.D." (February) mistakenly referred to Indiana University, where Alfred Kinsey conducted his research, as the...

Uncle Sam's barbecue: USDA identity crisis.(Citings)(U.S. Department of Agriculture)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... LAST FALL THE food critic Mr. Cutlets excoriated the Bush administration for bringing its "bloodlust of deregulation" to "the world of smoked meats. "The offending act: the U.S. Department of Agriculture's September announcement that it would...

Coffin break: funeral home protection.(Citings)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... MEMORIAL CONCEPTS Online sells an oak coffin for about $2,000, roughly half the average price at funeral homes in Oklahoma, where the company is based. But in Oklahoma, where only licensed funeral directors are allowed to sell caskets, such...

25 years ago in reason.
April 1, 2005... "How would you like to have your own satellite ground station, receiving up to six channels of first-run movies, live concerts, and sports events? Several years from now you may be able to call your local Sears Roebuck store and order such a...

SuitTorrent: Hollywood vs. downloaders.(Citings)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... FORGET NAPSTER. Newer programs such as BitTorrent have made it practical for Internet users to swap the much larger files required to store movies and TV shows, pushing Hollywood into the same hot seat as the record labels. In December the...

Fizzling lawsuits: guns in the courts.(Citings)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... OF 33 GOVERNMENT-sponsored gun lawsuits filed since 1998, all but three have been dismissed. According to a tally by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the main industry group, 17 of those dismissals (including six that resulted from...

Shocked to death: Tasers under fire.(Citings)
April 1, 2005... TASERS, "NONLETHAL" dart guns with a range of about 15 feet that deliver 50,000-volt electric shocks for five seconds at a time, are under fire for their roles in several civilian deaths and police injuries. About 6,000 law enforcement...

Quotes.(Citings)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... "You almost began to want to put the wall back up." --Robert Bork in the December 31 Washington Times, reacting to the spread of American popular culture in Eastern Europe "Get some devastation in the back." --Senate Majority...

Sources.(Citings)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Congress and blogs: two wonky tastes that taste even wonkier together. Joshua Tauberer's site GovTrack.us follows both legislation and legislators, identifying the most frequent no-shows, the biggest blabbermouths, and those most likely to...

Madrassas molesters: clerical abuse in the Islamic world.(Citings)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... A MINISTER IN Pakistan's religious affairs department says there were 500 complaints last year of child sex abuse by clerics in madrassas, Muslim religious schools. Irfan Khawaja, writing for the Web site of the Institute for the Secularization...

Food, blankets, and medicine meant for Malaysian victims of the tsunami that swept Asia were held up pending the arrival of politicians to take credit for them.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Food, blankets, and medicine meant for Malaysian victims of the tsunami that swept Asia were held up pending the arrival of politicians to take credit for them. "There are mattresses and blankets piled up to the ceiling in the relief centers,...

There were obstacles to aid here at home too.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... There were obstacles to aid here at home too. When 10-year-old Carolyn Lipsick wanted to do something to help the tsunami victims, she decided to sell cookies and drinks in front of her Miami Beach home. The city government refused to grant an...

A Detroit food bank wants to know what happened to 60 frozen turkeys it gave the office of U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to deliver to needy people at Thanksgiving.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... A Detroit food bank wants to know what happened to 60 frozen turkeys it gave the office of U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to deliver to needy people at Thanksgiving. The director of the center got suspicious when federal workers said they'd...

Selling voodoo dolls isn't illegal in Colombia, but that didn't stop police in the province of Quindio from seizing a shipment of 292 dolls and 192 packages of "magic dust.".(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Selling voodoo dolls isn't illegal in Colombia, but that didn't stop police in the province of Quindio from seizing a shipment of 292 dolls and 192 packages of "magic dust." According to intelligence officer Rolando Silva, the interdiction was...

Wearing the wrong clothes can get a woman arrested in Zimbabwe.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Wearing the wrong clothes can get a woman arrested in Zimbabwe. Police have been cracking down on illegal currency traders, who often wear denim skirts and multi-colored tops--so the cops round up any woman dressed like that.

A British man was barred from his home for six months, kept from unsupervised visits or telephone conversations with his 3-year-old son, and placed on two years' probation.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... A British man was barred from his home for six months, kept from unsupervised visits or telephone conversations with his 3-year-old son, and placed on two years' probation. All this for giving the boy a single swat on the bottom after the child...

Colorado paid more than $2 million in 2003 to doctors and others who claimed to be treating people who were already dead.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Colorado paid more than $2 million in 2003 to doctors and others who claimed to be treating people who were already dead. In all, a state audit found $3.5 million in Medicaid overpayments in 2003--and that was the lowest number in several...

Marta Andreasen, formerly the European Commission's chief accountant, says she was suspended from her job and ultimately fired because she refused to sign accounts she believed were unreliable.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Maria Andreasen, formerly the European Commission's chief accountant, says she was suspended from her job and ultimately fired because she refused to sign accounts she believed were unreliable. In 2002 alone, her office found 10,000 possible...

Kelli Billingsley was suspended from her school in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, after she gave Jell-O to her fourth-grade classmates.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Kelli Billingsley was suspended from her school in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, after she gave Jell-O to her fourth-grade classmates. Officials said the small cups looked like Jell-O shots.

Over spray.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Afghanistan's expected war on opium will not include aerial spraying of pesticides onto poppy fields. The U.S. backed the idea (and may have tried it without permission), but the Afghan government thought such spraying would scare and anger the...

Indecent proposals.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... The Federal Communications Commission finally turns off the goofy Parents Television Council, rejecting 36 indecency complaints from the group involving shows like Friends and The Simpsons. The only indecent thing about The Simpsons is that it...

Sun rises.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Sun Microsystems releases more than 1,600 patents in a bid to make its Solaris operating system an open-source darling. The hope is that freelance developers will build on and improve Sun's work, creating value as they go.

White trash.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... After way too much legal wrangling, the Supreme Court lets stand a decision allowing the Ku Klux Klan to be part of Missouri's "Adopt-a-Highway" program. Klansmen can now bag roadside garbage just like decent folk do.

Extreme decision.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... A U.S. district court judge dismisses porn trafficking charges against the owners of Extreme Associates (see "Xtreme Measures," May). The government cannot ban material simply on the assumption that it is objectionable, the judge rules.

Revolution resolution.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... At its annual meeting, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators passes a resolution condemning the war on drugs, which jails African-Americans at alarming rates. "The war on drugs has failed," the resolution declares.

War economy.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... The Iraq war begins to bite into funding for needed anti-terror systems, including intelligence gathering and airlift, while the Air Force confronts its manpower needs with the possibility of bases staffed entirely by Guard and Reserve units.

Beta test.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... The U.S. entertainment industry tells the Supreme Court P2p file-swapping software can provide a "perpetual free pass" to copyrighted material. The court is poised to update its landmark 1984 Betamax ruling, which held that technology cannot be...

Low tech.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Mysterious federal security objectives hold up IBM's sale of its PC division to China's Lenovo Group. Unnamed bureaucrats are said to fear Chinese spying will increase if the deal goes through.

Judicial constraint.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... An Australian judge demands that any information on the Internet about an upcoming case be removed from circulation if potential jurors might see it. Justice Virginia Bell threatens contempt-of-court penalties for anyone, anywhere, who does not...

Dr. Strangelaw.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... The House of Representatives passes a provision that permits a few lawmakers to do the business of Congress in the event a terrorist attack or other disaster kills off scores of congressmen.

Docu drama.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... The Securities and Exchange Commission has to consider cutting back on costly Sarbanes-Oxley documentation regulations almost immediately after they go into effect in January. One international bank estimates that fully 15 percent of its I.T....

Putin on the fritz.(Data)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Russia watchers remember the late 1980s and early '90s as a time when tyrannies toppled and the archetypal Evil Empire was dissolved. The intervening years, alas, have shown that building a free country is more than a matter of switching flags...

Private screening: airports opt out.(Citings)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... IN NOVEMBER the Transportation Security Administration began accepting applications from airports to opt out of using federal security services to screen passengers. The new option, dubbed the Screening Partnership Program, began with a...

When wars collide: war on drugs vs. war on terror.(Citing)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... As DEMOCRACY attempts to take root in Afghanistan, the poppy crop is doing so with greater alacrity. Opium cultivation was up a staggering two-thirds in 2004 over the previous year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,...

Let freedom sing: Iran's mystery diva.(Citings)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... IN IRAN WOMEN are not allowed to sing solo when men are present. But according to the Middle East news site Al Bawaba, "aggravated young Iranians (and there are many...) are tuning nowadays in to a mysterious voice that, according to them,...

Behind the curtain.(Soundbite)(Interview)
April 1, 2005... As the documentary form enjoys a renaissance, the time is ripe for a new version of Orson Welles' underrated masterpiece F for Fake, a tricky pseudo-documentary about a forger that revealed the hidden forgery in all filmmaking. That film may be...

The Pentagon's secret stash: why we'll never see the second round of Abu Ghraib photos.
April 1, 2005... THE IMAGES, DEFENSE Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress, depict "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) viewed some of them in a classified briefing, he testified that...

A wave of hot air: after the deluge, the God talk.
April 1, 2005... LAST DECEMBER, AS the world tried to grapple with the devastating scope of the tsunami that hit South Asia--at last count, the death toll stood at nearly 300,000--the tragedy became fodder for fatuous religious discussions, focusing on an...

Tidal waves and tariffs: the feds' foolish fight against Third World shrimp.(Rank)
April 1, 2005... LESS THAN TWO weeks after a 40-foot wave flattened swaths of Southeast Asia, the United States slapped a new round of tariffs on India and Thailand. As the federal government promised $350 million and private citizens pledged even more, the...

The death of social security: debating Bush's plan for private retirement accounts.(George W. Bush)
April 1, 2005... As GEORGE W. BUSH'S second term begins, no item on his agenda is more controversial than Social Security privatization--that is, allowing Americans to divert at least some of their payroll taxes into personal accounts that they can invest in...

Homeschooling alone: why corporate reformers are ignoring the real revolution in education.
April 1, 2005... IT'S SATURDAY MORNING in downtown Modesto, California, and for a city with 200,000 residents, not much is happening. The streets are mostly empty, and the outdoor tables at Starbucks are unoccupied. Outside the Modesto Convention Center,...

Ancient treasures for sale: do antique dealers preserve the past or steal it?
April 1, 2005... As YOU READ THIS, criminals somewhere in the world are destroying portions of mankind's past. With backhoe and shovel, chainsaw and crowbar, they are wrenching priceless objects from sites in the mountains of Peru, the coasts of Sicily, and the...

Are we just really smart robots? Two books on the mind put the human back into human beings.(Culture and Reviews)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... On Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins with Sandra Blakeslee, New York: Times Books, 261 pages, $25 Mind: A Brief Introduction, by John R. Searle, New York: Oxford University Press, 326 pages, $26 NEUROBIOLOGY'S advances generate anxiety as...

Rock and roll entrepreneur: Frank Zappa's true legacy.(Culture and Reviews)(Biography)
April 1, 2005... Was Frank Zappa, the memorably mustachioed musician who died in 1993 of prostate cancer, rock and roll's answer to Herman Melville? Maybe so, and not just because the Moby-Dick scribe sported some pretty odd facial hair. Writing about...

Deconstructing Chomsky: America's leading leftist intellectual sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.(Culture and Reviews)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... The Anti-Chomsky Reader, edited by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, San Francisco: Encounter Books, 260 pages, $17.95 "ONE OF THE peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal," wrote George Orwell in 1945. He meant not the...

Wide world of sports: soccer mirrors globalization and its discontents.(Culture and Reviews)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, by Franklin Foer, New York: HarperCollins, 261 pages, $24.95 THESE DAYS ONE rarely remembers that soccer legends once traveled to America to die in that elephant's cemetery...

The hippie and the redneck can be friends: two worlds collide in film and music.(Culture and Reviews)(Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... IF YOU'RE A cultural historian, a movie geek, or just looking for an excuse to spend three hours watching TV, here's a video double feature you should try. First watch the premier pot-smuggling flick of the 1970s, Cheech and Chong's Up in...

The spirit of popular art.(Artifact)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... WILL EISNER, who died in January, was a founder of the graphic novel--a medium in which serious, extended narratives appear in comic-book form. With his 1978 work A Contract With God, he began a series of semi-autobiographical tales about...

School performance matters.
April 1, 2005... In recent weeks, two separate reports on international student performance were released. The performance of students in the United States has remained consistent ever the past three decades--dismal. On the Program for International Student...