Reason articles from July 2009

Reason archives from July 2009

Corrections.(Letters)(Correction notice)
July 1, 2009... CORRECTIONS: In "The Politics of Superheroes" (May), writer Sonny Bunch's name was misspelled.

Militia member memo: paranoia in Missouri.(Citings)(Missouri Information Analysis Center's "modern militia movement" report)
July 1, 2009... UNTIL RECENTLY, the Missouri Information Analysis Center, a state agency created by the Department of Homeland Security, distributed a report to state troopers that aimed to aid them in understanding the "modern militia movement." It also gave...

The unrepentant D.A.: prosecutorial error in Santa Clara.(Citings)(Brief article)
July 1, 2009... IN 2007 THE San Jose Mercury News revealed that Deputy District Attorney Jaime Stringfield of Santa Clara County, California, had introduced a fake DNA report into evidence in a sex abuse case. In February, responding to the revelation that the...

Sympathy for the investment banker: who killed Bear Stearns? After all, it was you and me.(Culture and Reviews)(Book review)
July 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, by William D. Cohan, New York: Doubleday, 450 pages, $27.95 BearTrap: The Fall of Bear Stearns and the Panic of 2008, by Bill Bamber and Andrew...

Downsize me.(Briefly Noted)(Tom Naughton's research on fast food health effects)(Brief article)
July 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I don't like what you re proving here," Tom Naughton's doctor tells him toward the end of Fat Head, his sharp; funny rejoinder to Morgan Spurlock's 2004 fast food expose Super Size Me. Naughton has just spent a...

The prehistory of porn presecution: how "Licentious Gotham" gave rise to today's obscenity laws.(Book review)
July 1, 2009... Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Its Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century New York, by Donna Dennis, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 408 pages, $29.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHEN EVEN THE most computer-challenged preteen can...

The southern lifestyle will rise again.(Briefly Noted)(Garden & Gun magazine)(Periodical review)(Brief article)
July 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Garden & Gun is not a practical, down-home magazine with ads for handguns and advice columns on coaxing that stubborn rhododendron to bloom. The Charleston-based magazine, founded in 2007 by a former publisher of The...

Death of a dystopian: the life and legacy of J.G. Ballard.(James Graham Ballard )(Obituary)
July 1, 2009... ON THE THIRD week of April in 2009, the news included stories about celebrity obsession, empty foreclosed properties, a young medical student who murdered prostitutes, and the death of the man who forecast this media landscape years ago. James...

We often dream of trains.(Briefly Noted)(The Lionel Legend: An American Icon)(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Although its text is thin (and, according to some aficionados, error-prone), Robert S. Schleicher's coffee table history The Lionel Legend: An American Icon (Voyageur Press) suggests why industries grow more...

A foreign policy they can't refuse.(Briefly Noted)(analogy between "The Godfather" and American foreign policies)(Brief article)
July 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film The Godfather has become a cultural landmark, referenced in everything from The Simpsons to The Sopranos. With The Godfather Doctrine (Princeton), John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell...

Stripping away free expression: a Pennsylvania town tries--and fails--to ban a form of exercise.(zoning case)
July 1, 2009... DRESSED IN A low-cut pink shirt, tight black booty pants, and thick, plastic platform stilettos, Stephanie Babines doesn't look the part of a political rabble-rouser. Yet an activist is exactly what Babines became when her efforts to help women...

Dickens is back. Watch your wallet. If you want to understand the economy, don't turn to the author of Oliver Twist for answers.(Charles Dickens )
July 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] HOW CAN Charles Dickens come back if he never went away? Acolytes of the Victorian novelist have recently arisen to champion his rescue from imaginary obscurity. In a masterful false-consensus lead, an April Los...

A scary thing indeed.(Artifact)("A Scary Thing Happened: A Children's Coloring Book to Help Cope With Disasters" on Federal Emergency Management Agency website)(Brief article)
July 1, 2009... AS APRIL ENDED, America faced fears of a flu epidemic, a low-flying plane over Manhattan brought back 9/11 flashbacks, and New Orleans remained a disaster area almost four years after Hurricane Katrina. The folks at the Federal Emergency...