Reason articles from July 2008

Reason archives from July 2008

The golden collapse: believe it or not, there once was a market crash where participants paid the consequences.(From the Top)
July 1, 2008... WHERE WERE YOU when the bubble burst, Daddy? No, not the housing bubble (see Paul Thornton's "The War on Renters," page 19) and the ensuing wipeout at the exotic edges of the credit market, a contraction so grave that it has jeopardized...

Take them back to dear old blighty.(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... I couldn't help but sigh "Right on!" and "No kidding!" at every sentiment in Michael C. Moynihan's "Take Them Back to Dear Old Blighty" (April). As an American who spent the last two and a half years living in Germany and traveling in other...

The new age of reason.(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... I was heartened to read Ronald Bailey's article about the end of the Fourth Great Awakening, the period of religious fervor that has been infecting our political life for the last three decades ("The New Age of Reason," April). But I have...

Writer on the storm.(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... Bill Kauffman's otherwise enjoyable interview with Carl Oglesby ("Writer on the Storm," April) was deeply marred by Oglesby's blase slander of cowboys. George W. Bush's "handlers," Oglesby said, "grasped that there is a basic collision between...

Whatever happened to tax cuts.(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2008... David Weigel ("Whatever Happened to Tax Cuts?," March) quotes a spokesman for former presidential contender Mike Huckabee saying, "If you're a CEO making $20 million, your biggest concern is not marginal tax rates." The question that needs to...

Correction.(Correction notice)
July 1, 2008... "The Cult of the Presidency" (June) implied that the exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act enacted in late 2006, which made it easier to use the military to "restore public order and enforce the laws" after a Katrina-style disaster, were still...

Open Skies: wild blue yonder.(Citings)(transatlantic flights)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... AIRLINE deregulation isn't very sexy, but trips to Paris are. Thanks to the former, the latter are about to become a lot easier and cheaper. Under the "Open Skies" agreement, which went into effect at the end of March, any airline--American or...

Coca zero: drug war goes native.(Citings)
July 1, 2008... INDIGENOUS people in Bolivia and Peru have been growing, chewing, and drinking tea made from coca plants for thousands of years. It's used habitually in these poor countries to stave off hunger, pain, thirst, and fatigue; as a mild stimulant;...

30 years ago in reason.(Citings)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Last year officials of the 12-square-block town of Kinney applied for a $186,000 federal grant for its water and sewer system. The experience so overwhelmed them with red tape that they declared the town independent...

No shit: FCC censorship fight.(Citings)(Federal Communications Commission)
July 1, 2008... ACCORDING to the Federal Communications Commission, a single fuck or shit on a live awards show can cost a TV network millions of dollars, but the same words are acceptable in a "bona fide news interview." The accidental airing of a celebrity's...

Warcraft on terror: virtual jihad.(Citings)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... Is your game room breeding jihadists? Probably not, but just to be sure the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wants to "study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale...

Quotes.(Citings)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... "These kids are malleable. They will follow the leader, they don't think for themselves, and they are the last ones I want to say, 'Here's a gun, and here's a beer.' They are not adult; that's why they're in the military. They are not adults."...

Striking distance: "three strikes' folly.(Citings)(repeat offenders legislation)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... In the tough-on-crime wave of the '90s, more than 20 states passed "three strikes" legislation, which subjects repeat offenders to increasingly harsh penalties. Few enforced the law with as much zeal as California, which has slapped more than...

Ring barers: TSA reveals T&A.(Citings)(Transportation Security Administration)
July 1, 2008... THE TRANSPORTATION security Administration warns that "incidents of female terrorists hiding explosives in sensitive areas are on the rise all over the world." By "sensitive areas," the TSA does not mean airplane cockpits or cargo holds; it...

Revolution for kids!(List)(Brief article)(Recommended readings)
July 1, 2008... Cory Doctorow is a one-man miniature media empire. He is co-editor of Boing Boing, one of the most popular blogs on the Internet, and he has also written Essential Blogging (2002). He has also written several science fiction books, most...

Needling vaccines: autism's day in court.(Citings)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... In March a federal vaccine court ruled that the preponderance of the evidence suggested 9-year-old Hannah Poling's autism was caused by her childhood vaccinations. Autism activists immediately hailed the decision as the first official admission...

Rent-a-pet: doggy in the window.(Citings)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... Massachusetts state Rep. Paul K. Frost (R-Auburn) owns two dogs--Reese's and Snickers--and they're not for rent. Frost is a co-sponsor of An Act Prohibiting the Rental of Pets, now in committee in the state legislature, and he has the support...

Brickbats.
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In England, a blocked ditch sent water flooding through John and Margie Histed's home. They spent eight months and 250,000 [pounds sterling] fixing the place. But more than a year after the flood, they still can't go...

Gentler failure: our children isn't learning.(Citings)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... What's the best way to deal with chronically failing schools? In Massachusetts, apparently, the answer is to come up with a kinder word for failure. The Boston Globe reports that the phrase chronically underperforming, currently used to...

Meth Math.(Data)(methamphetamine)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... In March meth was back in the headlines, and this time the prognosis was cheerful: The nation's largest drug testing company, Quest, reported that the share of job applicants and employees testing positive for methamphetamine fell 22 percent...

Pirates ahoy! Private security at sea.(Citings)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... Piracy--the sort involving eye patches and parrots, not folks who sell bootleg DVDs--has been on the upswing in recent years. Even in the digital age, the stuff we buy travels mostly by boat, and oil is still pumped at vulnerable offshore oil...

Pop Christianity.(Soundbite)(Daniel Radosh)(Interview)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 2005 Daniel Radosh visited his wife's family in Wichita, Kansas, and tagged along to a Christian rock festival. It was a bizarre experience for a journalist who thought he knew every cranny of pop culture: He was...

Permanent rEVOLution: the next generation of Ron Paul Republicans.(Columns)
July 1, 2008... AMIT SINGH IS 33 years old. If you were tending a bar when he walked in, you'd probably card him. Before his April speech to a slowly filling restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia, he ambles around the room, grabbing shoulders, shaking hands,...

Free the fireworks! Can individual citizens be trusted to celebrate Independence Day with a bang?(Columns)
July 1, 2008... OUTSIDE OF HARDCORE porn, is there any art form as static as a Fourth of July fireworks display? Once you've seen one, you've seen them all, yet year after year, like stoned zombies staring at screensavers, we tilt our heads to the sky and...

The war on renters: aspiring presidents vs. aspiring homeowners.(Rant)
July 1, 2008... ONE OF THE biggest obstacles to my dream of owning a home any time in the near future would be the election of Hillary Clinton. Or Barack Obama. Or John McCain. All three senators hope to move into new digs come January, but they...

Carbon: tax, trade, or deregulate? Something is going to be "done" about global warming, so what should it be? A debate.
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On AUGUST 11, 2005, Ronald Bailey, reason's science correspondent and the author of such enviro-skeptic books as Eco-Scam: The False Prophets of Environmental Apocalypse, wrote the following words at reason online:...

Baby Bust! The world is panicking over birthrates. Again.(Cover story)
July 1, 2008... DR. LOVE IS STRUGGLING. Oh, the business side of things is going well. There's the couples cruise, the magazine, the singles nights, the self-authored sex ideology he calls "bio-communication." And the international media still can't get enough...

Education for profit: why is everyone flaming the University of Phoenix?
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] By many measures, the University of Phoenix is the most successful institution for higher education in American history. With more than 325,000 students currently enrolled--22 times the number at the University of...

The age of Nixon: Rick Perlstein on the left, the right, the '60s, and the illusion of consensus.(Culture and Reviews)(Interview)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In May 1970 the United States saw a wave of political demonstrations--demonstrations in favor of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War. The most famous was the hard hat riot of May 8, when Manhattan construction workers...

Flunk this movie! Ben Stein's Expelled is all worldview and no evidence.(Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed)(Movie review)
July 1, 2008... "This is not a religious argument," Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman asserts in the new anti-evolution propaganda movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Yet the film is free of scientific content: It gives no scientific evidence...

State of discontent: J.M. Coetzee's anti-political fiction.(Diary of a Bad Year)(Book review)
July 1, 2008... Diary of a Bad Fear, by F.M. Coetzee, New York: Viking, 231 pages, $24.95 THE SOUTH AFRICAN novelist John Michael Coetzee is celebrated for his uncompromisingly critical, ethically complex, and highly cerebral writings about the nature of...

'Our flag is hip hop': Planet B-Boy and the globalization of an American art form.
July 1, 2008... THREE YEARS ago in Braunshweig, Germany, a celebrated South Korean dance crew gave what may be the most bizarre show in the history of hip hop. Moving to a heady mix of Daft Punk, Walter Murphy, and Richard Strauss, the 10-man troupe re-enacted...

Classical gasbags: mavens moan about the decline of longhair music, but listeners are hitting all high C's.(classical music)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHILE A HANDFUL of Don McLean scholars may still wonder what day the music died, classical music fans carry the answer around like a yellowed piece of sheet music. The music died today. And it was always better...

Hear! hear the pipes are calling!(Artifact)(bagpipe)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NOTHING SAYS "Scotland" like the great Highland bagpipe, that unwieldy contraption of air, tubing, and hide. You can imagine a grieving piper playing "Scotland the Brave" in 1305 as word spreads across the glens of...