Reason articles from February 2003

Reason archives from February 2003

Mental failings. (Editor's Note).
February 1, 2003... I'M NOT YET 40, but I'm already losing my mind. Or parts of it, at any rate. I sometimes call one of my sons by the other's name, even though there's a seven-year gap between them. I occasionally stop to remember phone numbers that I've...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... Gun Control Twists In "Gun Control's Twisted Outcome" (November),Joyce Malcolm claims that "in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime [in England] more than doubled." She asserts that British gun control caused the...

Birds do it: sex in the classroom. (Citings).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... A NEW STUDY Ofl teen sex is likely to confound both proponents and critics of sex education programs. Researchers studying a survey of 1,300 unmarried females aged 15 to 19 found no association between their sexual activity or contraceptive use...

Your papers, please: new frontiers in decentralization. (Citings).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... WHEN TALK TURNS to devolving the functions of government from Washington to the local level, the conversation usually centers around education, transportation, health care, and the Like. But immigration policy? While the U.S. and Mexico...

Capitalists, unite! Closing the little red book. (Citings).
February 1, 2003... "THE WORLD is changing;" Chinese President Jiang Zemin told the 16th Communist Party Congress in November. "We must adapt ourselves." Jiang's adaptation, offered as his legacy on officially leaving office, was finally to junk Karl Marx, thus...

Great firewall of China: war on cybercafe society. (Citings).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... COMMUNIST PARTY doctrine may be evolving, but the Chinese government recently renewed its commitment to a time-honored practice: censorship. Long famous for building firewalls to keep its citizens "protected" from foreign Web sites, the...

Zoning speech: freedom of assembly under fire. (Citings).
February 1, 2003... ON NOVEMBER 1, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the City of Tampa and its chief of police on behalf of three peaceful protestors who had been forcibly removed from a presidential rally. Janis Lentz, Mauricio Rosas, and...

Dangerous assumption: sex offender registration. (Citings).
February 1, 2003... "WHEN THEY REENTER Society at large," Solicitor General Theodore Olson said in a recent Supreme Court brief, "convicted sex offenders have a much higher recidivism rate for their offense of conviction than any other type of violent felon."...

Guilt tip: DNA testing and justice. (Citings).
February 1, 2003... THE GUILT OR innocence of a man executed for murder is less important than adhering to legal niceties, the Virginia Supreme Court declared in late October. The court refused to use modern, highly accurate DNA testing in the case of Roger Keith...

Karaoke bar. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... While awaiting trial for robbery, Joseph Banatlao escaped from a jail in the Philippines. Well, actually he escaped from a karaoke bar. It seems that Banatlao slipped out the back while a guard and another prisonerwere singing. Officials want...

U.S. religious figures. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... The Ayatollah Mohsen Mujtahed Shabestari, who is supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's personal representative to Iran's Azerbaijan province, is upset with three U.S. religious figures: Jerry Falwell, who has called the prophet Mohammed "a...

Judeo-Christian. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Wiccan priestess Cyndi Simpson wants her town's Board of Supervisors to add her name to the list of clergy members who say prayers before board meetings. But the board of Chesterfield County, Virginia, refuses. The "nonsectarian" prayers are...

LIPA sucks. (Brickbats).(Long Island Power Authority)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Kip Kohn pays his bill from the Long Island Power Authority each month and usually includes a complaint about his service. So when he wrote "LIPA sucks" on an envelope and stuffed it with his payment and a wad of LIPA newspaper ads marked with...

Kenosha. (Brickbats).(voting fraud)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... At least two absentee votes were cast at a Kenosha, Wisconsin, facility for the mentally disabled immediately after a bingo party where workers for Democratic Attorney General Jim Doyle's 2002 gubernatorial campaign handed out prizes. Staff at...

Linda Gibbs. (Brickbats).(homeless refusing public housing - New York City)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... About one in three homeless families in New York City's shelters refuses offers of public housing. "Some reject more than one home. Sometimes, there is an objection to the size of the apartment. Sometimes, folks do not want to be in the...

Migran Changulyan. (Brickbats).(recycling entrepreneur)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Migran Changulyan and 13 others have been charged by the state of California with fraud and face up to eight years in prison each. What did they do? They recycled cans and bottles. California consumers pay a deposit on glass, plastic, or...

Balance sheet. (Citings).(current events and comment)(Column)
February 1, 2003... Home Court The California Supreme Court rules that Hollywood cannot drag a Texas man into Golden State courts because he posted an unlicensed DVD decoder on the Net. The DVD Copy Control Association should file suit in the man's home state...

All the presidents' employees. (Data).(federal employment growth or shrinkage by president)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... It's often said there isn't a dime's worth of difference between today's two major political parties. But Democrats and Republicans still try to cast themselves as cats and dogs. For example, Republicans label their adversary the party of big...

Drawing 9/11. (Soundbite).(Chip Bok)(Interview)
February 1, 2003... Starting a career in political cartooning is a tricky business. In the case of award-winning scribbler Chip Bok, his first fulltime position, at Florida's long-defunct Clearwater Sun, came after a six-year hunt. It also ended in dismissal after...

Liberal martyrdom in Iran: an academic takes on the ayatollahs. (Columns).(Hashem Aghajari)
February 1, 2003... IT'S A PITY that so much of the attention given to the Islamic world is lavished on its thugs and psychopaths, because its men and women of courage are largely overlooked. The case of the Iranian academic Hashem Aghajari is an impressive...

Consciousness raising 101: inside the gender studies classroom. (Columns).(Column)
February 1, 2003... FOR THE SECOND year in a row, I have had the fascinating experience of playing a role in which I never expected to find myself: professor of a gender studies course. In 2001 David Hendrickson, then chairman of the political science...

The spirit of '73: an ugly nostalgia sweeps the globe. (Rant).(Column)
February 1, 2003... WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH selected mummified diplomat Henry Kissinger to head his investigation into pre-9/11 intelligence failures, he outraged everyone. The left blames Kissinger for extending the Vietnam War and instituting lethal realpolitik; the...

The battle for your brain: science is developing ways to boost intelligence, expand memory, and more. But will you be allowed to change your own mind?
February 1, 2003... "WE'RE ON THE verge of profound changes in our ability to manipulate the brain." says Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. He isn't kidding. The dawning age of neuroscience promises not just new treatments for...

Wrecking property rights: how cities use eminent domain to seize property for private developers.
February 1, 2003... THE CORNER OF Country Club Drive and Main Street in Mesa, Arizona, doesn't look like much, but this dusty plot of land is at the center of a growing debate over property rights. Just a stone's throw from downtown, the corner has touched off a...

Jesus sells: what the Christian culture industry tells us about secular society.
February 1, 2003... No DOUBT THE evangelical Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) picked the Anaheim Convention Center for its annual convention last year because the place is enormous and has a certain architectural inspiration. Conventioneers can pause as...

Scourage of the booboisie: weighing H.L. Mencken's legacy. (Culture and Reviews).('The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken')(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, by Terry Teachout, New York: HarperCollins, 432 pages, $29.95 IMAGINE THE HORROR of writing a great man's biography. Not just your garden variety great man, but H.L. Mencken, the firebrand individualist...

Liberating late night: Saturday Night Live vs. the censors. (Culture and Reviews).('An Uncensored History Of Saturday Night Live')('Saturday Night Live, Equal Opportunity Offender: The Uncensored Censor' )(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... Now that Saturday Night Live is firmly ensconced as a small-screen institution, it's hard to recapture the original energy and excitement behind the show. When producer Lorne Michaels started SNL in 1975, he wanted it to be revolutionary -- for...

Learning to love the bomb: is nuclear proliferation inherently dangerous? (Culture & Reviews).('The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed')(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed, by Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 220 pages, $18.50 WITH THE UNITED States in a wartime mode with respect to both Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, Americans may...

Gone with the vote: for the GOP in the South, reconstruction isn't quite over. (Culture & Reviews).(Critical Essay)
February 1, 2003... The Rise of Southern Republicans, by Earl Black and Merle Black, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 442 pages, $29.95 FOR SUPPORTERS OF limited government, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) was an ideal candidate. Running...

Wherever green is worn? Multiculturalism in contemporary Ireland. (Culture & Reviews).(Critical Essay)
February 1, 2003... Multi-Culturalism: The View from the Two Irelands, by Edna Longley and Declan Kiberd, Cork University Press, 78 pages, $9.95 GIVEN THAT THE FIFA World Cup generates only slightly more interest among U.S. sports fans than the Summer Grand...

Big schlock candy Mountain: the many meanings of Mount Rushmore. (Culture & Reviews).(Critical Essay)
February 1, 2003... UNLIKE THE PRESIDENTIAL statuary and monuments that festoon Washington and later became tourist attractions, Mount Rushmore's quartet of colossal faces was conceived as a tourist attraction (to bolster the faltering local economy) and only...

Loot box. (Artifact).(archaeological looting)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... THIS PLAIN-LOOKING limestone box carries the Aramaic inscription, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." The 20-inch-long box, which once held bones, appears to date from the first century A.D., and may well refer to Jesus of Nazareth....

Leaving many children behind.(failing public schools)(No Child Left Behind Act)(Column)
February 1, 2003... Question: When the public school system fox is placed in charge of the school choice henhouse, what happens? Answer: Not much choice. When Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act last year, it said that any child trapped in a federally...