Reason articles from December 2003

Reason archives from December 2003

The reason for reason.(Editor's Note)(Periodical Review)
December 1, 2003... "Logic, not legends. Coherance [sic], not contradictions. This is our promise; this is the reason for REASON."--from the first issue, May 1968 IN A COUNTRY that prides itself on stories of humble origins, reason has an especially good tale...

Suspected Terrorist.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... In Brian Doherty's excellent article, "Suspected Terrorist" (August/September), he touches on one of the critical reasons why we should be concerned about privacy and data collection in the name of security. We cannot know the future uses for...

Forcing Freedom.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Ronald Bailey's "Forcing Freedom" (August/September) and the ensuing debate from Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Preble, and Ivan Eland would deserve to be presented with mason's Most Important Article of the Year Award, if there were one....

Account Balance.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I enjoyed Tim Cavanaugh's article ("Account Balance," August/September) but believe it only touched the tip of the iceberg. In contrast to the public mess of Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, etc., U.S. citizens have no clue of the rampant fiscal abuse...

Why Buffy Kicked Ass.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Virginia Postrel's piece on Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("Why Buffy Kicked Ass," August/September) is a welcome meditation on the libertarian aspects of that series, although Buffy is not always consciously or consistently an advocate of free...

Carry on.(concealed weapon laws)
December 1, 2003... THE NUMBER OF states that allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms hit 36 in September, up from 10 in 1986. The three-dozen mark was reached after Missouri's legislature voted to override Guy. Bob Holden's veto of a right-to-carry...

25 years ago in reason.(Citings)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... "[The CIA] was so sure that Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko was a KGB double agent that they confined him in a secret underground vault for over three years while trying to force him to 'confess.'" --Bill Birmingham, Brickbats "No...

Dueling discriminations.(Religion vs. gender)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... CAN A HANDSHAKE be grounds for a lawsuit? Perhaps, under a European Union directive passed in 2000 requiring member states to crack down on workplace discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, and religion. The United Kingdom...

Time enough for love.(Heinlein's new oldie)
December 1, 2003... ROBERT A. HEINLEIN'S late wife, Virginia, used to tell people that before the science fiction legend died in 1988, the couple decided to burn all the remaining copies of his unpublished first novel, For Us, the Living: d Comedy of Customs. The...

Quotes.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... "I'm almost tempted to go onto Kazaa and download some of my own music, just to see if the RIAA would sue me for having MP3s of my own songs on my hard-drive." --musician Moby on the Recording Industry Association of America's lawsuits...

Former Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio) notwithstanding, the United States' government is only the world's 87th most corrupt--slightly more honest than Chile's, though not quite as clean as Austria's.(Source)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Former Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio) notwithstanding, the United States' government is only the world's 87th most corrupt--slightly more honest than Chile's, though not quite as clean as Austria's. Maybe it's because the politicians are scared...

When some students from the Lubbock Independent School District in Texas asked to start a gay-straight alliance, Superintendent Jack Clemmons said no.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... When some students from the Lubbock Independent School District in Texas asked to start a gay-straight alliance, Superintendent Jack Clemmons said no. But it wasn't prejudice against gays that prompted his decision, he claimed. "I would have...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree forbidding the media from revealing details of political candidates' personal lives or analyzing their policies.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree forbidding the media from revealing details of political candidates' personal lives or analyzing their policies. It also forbids them from forecasting the results of any election and requires...

China's rulers don't seem to be handling criticism well either: They've banned Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, saying it portrays the country negatively.(Brickbats)
December 1, 2003... China's rulers don't seem to be handling criticism well either: They've banned Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, saying it portrays the country negatively. Censors complained the film made China appear to have no government and...

The village board in Colfax, Illinois, mandated that all village employees be subject to random mandatory drug tests.(Brickbats)
December 1, 2003... The village board in Colfax, Illinois, mandated that all village employees be subject to random mandatory drug tests. But when the city clerk explained that they, too, were technically village employees, and therefore subject to the tests, the...

Charleston, South Carolina, wanted help tracking down the man who robbed a local bank, so officials released a surveillance photo of the robber to newspapers, TV stations, and other media outlets.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Charleston, South Carolina, wanted help tracking down the man who robbed a local bank, so officials released a surveillance photo of the robber to newspapers, TV stations, and other media outlets. After receiving an unhappy call from the family...

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's retirement home will be as large as a medium-sized hotel.(Brickbats)
December 1, 2003... Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's retirement home will be as large as a medium-sized hotel. The three-story home, which sits on three acres of land, includes an office suite, two-story reception rooms, and up to 25 bedrooms, complete with...

If you ask the IRS a question about your taxes, you've got a better than even chance of getting a correct answer, but just barely.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... If you ask the IRS a question about your taxes, you've got a better than even chance of getting a correct answer, but just barely. Treasury Department investigators posing as taxpayers found that IRS help centers gave correct answers just 57...

Economic education.(Skyrocketing college costs)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... IT DOESN'T TAKE a Ph.D. to see that college tuition costs are skyrocketing. Data from the Census Bureau and College Board show it will cost you 202 percent more to sport a mortarboard today than it did in 1981, and during the last year alone...

Moving violation.(Redmond's ad restrictions)
December 1, 2003... THE STATE OF Washington's constitution guarantees that "every person may freely speak, write and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right." But according to the city of Redmond, some subjects are so objectionable...

Balance sheet.
December 1, 2003... Political Poison A survey of people aged 15-26 by the Representative Democracy in America Project finds the job of politician is held in low regard by young people. The most popular profession among respondents is businessperson. Red...

Music meltdown.(Data)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Ever since Napster mainstreamed unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials, record labels have been singing the blues--and for pretty obvious reasons. The October issue of Wired reports that overall revenue for prerecorded music in 2002 was...

What's left?(Libertarians for Dean)
December 1, 2003... REGISTERED Libertarian Brady Joslin laughs when asked if he ever expected to vote for a Democrat, then exclaims, "Hell, no!" So how did he come to launch a Web site with the double-take-inducing name "Libertarians for Dean"? Joslin says he...

A bolshie born every minute.(Defrauding the left)
December 1, 2003... ON AUGUST 14, 2003, two British Trotskyists made an unnerving discovery. One, part of a group called Workers Power, had been showing off a photo of himself with two comrades from Ukraine. The other, from the rival International Bolshevik...

Agency provocateur.(Soundbite)
December 1, 2003... Federal regulators wield enormous power over American life and commerce, but anyone seeking to understand the reams of rules these agencies produce each year is soon lost in a labyrinth of inscrutable acronyms, technical jargon, and overlapping...

Misreading millennials: the politics of a rising generation.
December 1, 2003... THE MILLENNIALS--THE teens and young twentysomethings born after 1981--are coming of age at a time when American culture's longstanding youth fetish is reaching autoparodic proportions. Adults today may not smoke dope with the neighbor kids...

Divorcees and social engineers: fathers face off against the marriage movement.
December 1, 2003... IT IS NOW a truth more or less universally acknowledged that children are better off when they have fathers and when their fathers are actively involved in their lives. But where do we go from there? Should the government be promoting...

Drug rush: Limbaugh to listeners: I belong in jail!(Rant)
December 1, 2003... RUSH LIMBAUGH MAY not be arrested, let alone spend time behind bars, for illegally buying narcotic painkillers. "We're not sure whether he will be charged, a law enforcement source told CNN in early October. "We're going after the big fish,...

Do your own thing unto others: celebrating 35 years of baby boomer tyranny.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... 1968... IS THIS THE CATERWAULING HARLOT YOU'RE LISTENING TO? MOTHER, PLEASE... JANIS REPRESENTS TODAY'S WOMAN'S FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION! 2003... UGH! THE WAY THAT BRITNEY SPEARS PARADES AROUND HALF-NAKED MAKES ME SICK......

35 years of reason: a history in excerpts.
December 1, 2003... "INTRODUCING REASON: We accept the responsibility that others have defaulted on. Others preferred to smear the issues with irrelevancies and falsifications. We don't. Others preferred to be incomprehensible and incoherant [sic]. We don't....

The smaller the better: the limitless promise of nanotechnology--and the growing peril of a moratorium.
December 1, 2003... "THE BEST WAY I can describe it is if you close your eyes and dream. You could never be hungry, never be sick, have all the energy you need, all the water, all the food and no diseases. There is no aspect in the world economy or your personal...

Poor man's hero: controversial writer Johan Norberg champions globalization as the best hope for the developing world.
December 1, 2003... IF THERE IS any moral certainty underpinning today's anti-globalization movement, it's that desperate actions from sometimes violent street demonstrations to public crop burnings to dressing up as giant sea turtles--are needed to protect the...

35 Heroes of freedom: celebrating the people who have made the world groovier and groovier since 1968.(Culture and Reviews)
December 1, 2003... "THINGS ARE A lot groovier now," declared former reason Editor-in-Chief Robert W. Poole back in 1988, on the occasion of reason's 20th anniversary. During the magazine's first two decades, he pointed out, all sorts of political and cultural...

Live from chapel perilous: we're living in Robert Anton Wilson's world.
December 1, 2003... In 1973 Thomas Pynchon published an enormous experimental novel called Gravity's Rainbow. In 1975 Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson published an enormous experimental trilogy called Illuminatus! Both were written at about the same time, and...

Balls: the joy of watching ideas win.(Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 275 pages, $24.95 IF EVER YOU were going to judge a book by the reaction to it, an excellent candidate would be Moneyball, reporter Michael Lewis'...

Orient obsess: a lackluster look at Americans abroad.
December 1, 2003... American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945, by Douglas Little, chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 424 pages, $34.95. IN HIS BOOK The Dream Palace of the Arabs (1998), the Middle East scholar Fouad...

Bob Barr, civil libertarian: the right wing of the ACLU.(Interview)
December 1, 2003... AFTER ENTERING THE House of Representatives in 1995, Georgia Republican Bob Barr acquired a reputation as one of the most conservative members of Congress. It was Barr who in 1996 wrote the Defense of Marriage Act, which said states didn't have...

Tanks and tales.(Artifact)(significance of Tiananmen Square tank photo)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... IN THE YEARS since World War II, there have been many variations of this famous tank image. There are whole photo libraries of tanks in the streets of East Berlin in 1953, in Budapest in 1956, and in Prague in 1968, all portraying civilians in...

Five forgotten schools.(movement against charter schools in New York City)
December 1, 2003... The increasing demand for charter schools, and the educational options they provide, has been elevated by the belief that urban schools need dramatic improvement. But why hasn't this push produced more results? The story of five forgotten...