Reason articles from August 2004

Reason archives from August 2004

Battle of the bulge.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
August 1, 2004... FOR MORE THAN a decade, I weighed about 35 pounds more than I wanted to. During the last year or so, through a combination of diet, exercise, and calorie-burning irritability due to diet and exercise, I've taken the 35 pounds off. Yet with a...

Xtreme measures.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... Back in 1986, reason had a cover story on the Meese Pornography Commission. Being a strong opponent of censorship, soon after reading that article I left the Republican Party. Now, 18 years later; reason has another article ("Xtreme Measures,"...

"It's so simple, it's ridiculous".(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... I read with interest Brian Doherty's article on the tax protest movement ("'It's So Simple, It's Ridiculous,'" May), particularly since I am a friend of one of the protesters he profiled, Vernie Kuglin. I think the article was fair and...

Traditional prejudices.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... I was dismayed to read Cathy Young's unbelievably shoddy account of the writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ("Traditional Prejudices," May). Despite a deceptively calm and authoritative tone, she engages in nothing less than character...

Silent suits: challenging secrecy ... in secret.(Citings)
August 1, 2004... ALMOST A YEAR ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran the headline "Revised Patriot Act Will Make It Illegal to Read Patriot Act." That restriction is still confined to the world of parody--but just barely. In April the American Civil...

30 years ago in reason.(Citings)
August 1, 2004... "The army not infrequently lies to the volunteer, promising him many options but in practice determining his service path and duty station." --David Brudnoy, "A Libertarian Critique of the Military" "New York City today is skittering...

Aiding and betting: online gambling crackdown.(Citings)
August 1, 2004... IF YOU LIKE to gamble, you might want to go to 888.com, where you can play blackjack, poker, craps, slots, and roulette. If you prefer sports betting, try betonsports.com. According to the U.S. Justice Department, publishing the previous...

Judicial choice: Shariah comes to Canada.(Citings)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... STARTING THIS YEAR, Muslims in Ontario can settle their disputes in religious Shariah courts. This development shocked pundits on both sides of the border: Andrew Sullivan wrote that it's "horrifying," the Muslim-bashing blog Little Green...

Cotton belt: trouble for farm subsidies.(Citings)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... KEN COOK, PRESIDENT of the Environmental Working Group, is happy. Bryan Edwardson, director of public policy at the agricultural giant Cargill, is worried. But both agree that a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling against government aid to...

Quotes.
August 1, 2004... "It made me long for the good old days when Republicans went to jail for taking bribes or covering up burgLaries.... Now they're under investigation for covering up massive social spending.... It's like Oliver North running a secret Head Start...

Source.(narco-corruption )(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... In Nineteen Eighty-Four, records that contradicted the official version of events were dropped down "the memory hole." But in 2004 Russ Kick is there to catch inconvenient information on its way to oblivion and post it at thememoryhole.org....

For years, those who work at the English National Opera have called each other "darling.".(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... For years, those who work at the English National Opera have called each other "darling." But now they've been warned against using it: A new code of conduct says some may view the term as sexual harassment.

When Daniel Clauson spotted a man apparently trying to jimmy the door of a neighboring building, he called the cops.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... When Daniel Clauson spotted a man apparently trying to jimmy the door of a neighboring building, he called the cops. But officers from the Pinellas Park, Florida, police force mistakenly came to Clauson's home instead. When Clauson came out to...

Competition among retailers has pushed the price of beer too low, according to the government of Norway, which maintains some of the highest alcohol taxes in Europe.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Competition among retailers has pushed the price of beer too low, according to the government of Norway, which maintains some of the highest alcohol taxes in Europe. To entice customers, some stores have been selling beer at a loss. The...

Zimbabwe has sent armed policemen to close all the country's private schools and send the children home, on the grounds that their fees are too high.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Zimbabwe has sent armed policemen to close all the country's private schools and send the children home, on the grounds that their fees are too high. The education minister says the schools set fees high to keep out blacks. In fact, the...

Many self-employed workers, especially young people, aren't paying into Japan's social security system because they don't think they'll get their money back.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Many self-employed workers, especially young people, aren't paying into Japan's social security system because they don't think they'll get their money back. Contributions are 37 percent below where the government says they should be. The...

When officials at Connecticut's York Correctional Facility learned that an inmate in a prison rehabilitative writing program had won a national writing award, they took swift action to recognize her achievement.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... When officials at Connecticut's York Correctional Facility learned that an inmate in a prison rehabilitative writing program had won a national writing award, they took swift action to recognize her achievement. They halted the program, ordered...

Brian Kentwell has been pounding livestock and wild animals to death with a hoe.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Brian Kentwell has been pounding livestock and wild animals to death with a hoe. No, he's not a sadist--the animals have been injured in Australian irrigation channels. Previously, he would use a firearm to put down dying animals. But when...

Police officials in Bel-Ridge, Missouri, say department officials are pressuring them to spend less time catching robbers and more time writing tickets.(Brickbats)(Municipal tickets)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Police officials in Bel-Ridge, Missouri, say department officials are pressuring them to spend less time catching robbers and more time writing tickets. "When it comes down to it, money is what counts," says a department memo obtained by the...

RFID roundup: trying to keep the chips down.(Citings)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... RADIO-FREQUENCY ID chips (RFIDS) are exploding into public consciousness, with institutions ranging from casinos to the government of Singapore announcing plans to use them. RFIDS are tiny chips that can be programmed with identifying...

Extra credit: charge it to Uncle Sam!(Citings)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... NOTE TO embezzlers: An April report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) suggests that if you want to get away with ripping off your employer, you should consider a job in government. An audit of charge cards issued to federal employees...

Balance sheet.(brief items)
August 1, 2004... iPod Person It took buying an iPod to do it, but Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) says he now understands that consumers really do have a stake in digital copyright issues. Congress weighs tweaking copyright laws to make it clear that fair...

Segregation forever?(Data)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... When Brown v. Board of Education turned 50 this year, the Brookings Institution offered some qualified but heartening news about the state of racial integration in America: While a majority of neighborhoods (55 percent) in the 10 largest...

Fat of the land: fighting obesity with pork.(Citings)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... THE GROWING national obsession with obesity has been a gold mine for everyone from fad diet hucksters to documentarians. Eager to join in, Congress has determined that the answer to obesity is... more federal spending in every congressional...

Not for lovers: banning same-sex contracts.(Citings)(Virginia's Affirmation of Marriage Act)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... As GAY COUPLES in Massachusetts celebrate their newfound right to marry, Virginia couples find themselves stripped even of the right to create marriage-like private contracts. The state's Affirmation of Marriage Act, which takes effect in July,...

Space oddities: owning the heavens.(Citings)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... WHEN YOU FIRST fell in love, you had the International Star Registry name a star after your lover. But now that the romance has gone south, what's an equally dramatic way to get rid of the clothes, gifts, and jewelry that remind you of your...

Who's right?(Soundbite)(Interview)
August 1, 2004... America's postwar political history is arguably best seen as the story of the right's rise to power. Mainstream press coverage of the conservative movement often reads like the account of an anthropologist encountering some inscrutable tribe....

Watergate blowback: the White House's ongoing battle against post-Nixon sunshine laws.(Columns)
August 1, 2004... IN NOVEMBER 1974, a reform-hungry Capitol Hill gave the newly sworn-in President Gerald Ford one of his first real challenges. Congress had passed a significant expansion of Ralph Nader's 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), aimed at prying...

Taking science seriously: conservative dogma about sex roles ignores inconvenient realities.(Columns)(Critical Essay)
August 1, 2004... THE FEMINIST DENIAL of biological differences between the sexes can be downright hilarious. Who could forget Gloria Steinem, interviewed by ABC's John Stossel in 1995, deriding research on sex differences in the human brain as "anti-American...

The wrong lesson: teaching college reporters to be meek.(Rant)
August 1, 2004... WHEN STAFFERS AT Baylor University's newspaper published an editorial earlier this year that supported same-sex marriage and likened discrimination against gays to religious intolerance, the president of the Baptist school in Waco, Texas, did...

The war on fat: is the size of your butt the government's business?(Cover Story)
August 1, 2004... KELLY BROWNELL WON'T talk to me. I can't say I'm surprised. He's miffed that I called attention to his weight at the beginning of a column I wrote last year after attending a conference on obesity at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). It...

American slender: when did freedom become just another word for 10 pounds left to lose?
August 1, 2004... "We're just too darn fat, ladies and gentleman, and we're going to do something about it," proclaimed the formerly plus-sized, multiple-chinned Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson last spring while announcing a new government...

Dr. Feelscared: drug warriors put the fear of prosecution in physicians who dare to treat pain.
August 1, 2004... ON FEBRUARY 1, 2002, Cecil Knox was seeing patients in his Roanoke, Virginia, clinic when more than a dozen federal agents burst through the doors with guns drawn. Helmeted, shielded, and wearing bullet-proof vests, they terrified waiting...

John Perry Barlow 2.0: the Thomas Jefferson of cyberspace reinvents his body--and his politics.(Interview)
August 1, 2004... JOHN PERRY BARLOW is one of those fascinating figures that American culture regularly produces to our great benefit and occasional consternation. Born in 1947 in Wyoming, he ran his family's cattle ranch for 17 years. Unique among Equality...

Try, beloved country: rumors of South Africa's decline are greatly exaggerated.
August 1, 2004... IF YOU BELIEVE what you read and hear about South Africa, you'll think the country is in horrible shape, with 42 percent unemployment, runaway crime, and 5 million people dying of AIDS. After nearly a decade of democracy, sub-Saharan Africa's...

"Real" "art": or "Mr. Grumpy goes to an art museum and comes out belaboring the obvious!".(Culture and Reviews Comic)
August 1, 2004... SEATTLE'S HENRY ART GALLERY IS A TYPICALLY CONFUSING CONCRETE LUMP, HOUSING EQUALLY INCOHERENT ART WORK... LIKE MANY SUCH ARTS INSTITUTIONS, THE HENRY IS BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY ATTACHED TO A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY, THUS BLURRING IT'S...

Chatroom revolutionaries: Iran's dissidents and exiles discover the Web.
August 1, 2004... "GOT A MULLAH?" asks a stainless steel coffee mug for sale on the Web. Emblazoned alongside the question is a cartoon of a giant hand clenching two irritated-looking clerics who resemble Iran's late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. One click...

Historia Discordia meet Kerry Thornley, the second Oswald.(Critical Essay)
August 1, 2004... Kerry Thornley lived and died in obscurity. But while few people noticed, he invented one of the 20th century's more influential religions, helped launch '60s-style sex-and-nature neopaganism, and was a major force behind the first modern...

Globalization Without Tears: an economist debates the NGOS.(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... Globlization Without Tears An economist debates the NGOs. In Defense of Globalization, by Jagdish Bhagwati, New York: Oxford University Press, 308 pages, $28 ONE'S FIRST IMPULSE on coming across yet another book on globalization, even...

Invisible cities: the changing faces of Washington, D.C.
August 1, 2004... DOWN ON LOWER Pennsylvania Avenue, amid the courthouses and federal buildings, there used to be a run-down old diner called Barney's. Bureaucrats, after all, want to eat lunch too. Barney's was a real urban fossil, a reminder of the days when...

Bare virtue.(Artifact)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... PICTURED HERE IS a British-woodcut of the 17th century; it's typical of hundreds that once illustrated the era's cheap ballad sheets. The most striking aspect of this nearly 400-year-old image is that it portrays a woman covered quite modestly,...