Reason articles from June 2003

Reason archives from June 2003

Ozymandias redux. (Editor's Note).
June 1, 2003... I'M WRITING THIS as U.S.--excuse me, coalition--troops are rolling into Baghdad virtually unopposed. As statues of Saddam Hussein are pulled to the ground all over Iraq, it's tough not to think of Shelley's "Ozymandias of Egypt," in which a...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2003... Gun History Disarmed Thanks to Joyce Lee Malcolm for her well-written and well-presented piece on Michael Bellesiles' Arming America ("Disarming History," March). I've read a few other articles and criticisms of the issue, but Malcolm's...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
June 1, 2003... In Jeremy Lott's "Jesus Sells," (February), book publisher Luci Shaw's name was misspelled. Also, the owner of the Christian publishing house Zondervan was misidentified. It is HarperCollins.

Text talk. (Language Revolution).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... "My SMMR hols wr CWOT," a 13-year-old Scottish student wrote recently in a school essay. "B4 we usd 2g02 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr3: -kds FTF.ILNY, it's a gr8 plc." According to the British newspaper The Telegraph, the rest of the assigned...

Trading places. (White House Rhetoric and Reality).
June 1, 2003... IN MATTERS economic, Democrats are supposed to be the party of big government, Republicans the faction of fiscal and regulatory restraint. That distinction is reflected by the parties' rhetoric and, in relative terms, by their legislative...

30 years ago in reason.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... "[Antonin] Scalia startled liberal newsmen and professors by pointing out that the fairness/free press controversy arises out of the wording of the Federal Communications Act itself. The Act contains the inherently contradictory provisions that...

Mother's little helpers. (Welfare-to-Work Kids are all Right).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... THE WELFARE REFORM act of 1996 put many single welfare mothers back in the work force. While there was widespread concern that this would have bad effects on their children--who presumably benefit from a mom around the house, especially with no...

The dubious anarchist. (Lihya's Libertarian Rhetoric).(Muammar al-Qaddafi)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... SINCE 9/11, Muammar al-Qaddafi has played a schizoid role in American foreign policy. On one hand, the Libyan dictator appears regularly on lists of terrorist statesmen the administration may intend to depose. On the other, he has repeatedly...

Thoreau Institute. (Source).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... The Thoreau Institute offers up a neat photo essay at www.ti.org/og. html, detailing urban planners' meddlesome scheme for the rustic Oak Grove suburb of Portland, Oregon. The institute also has a useful compendium of links on...

Rent-a-country. (Prince for a Day).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... CARE TO BE king for a day? Rent Liechtenstein. Actually, Liechtenstein doesn't have a king; it has a prince. But for $375 to $500 a head, with a minimum of 450 heads, corporations can now rent the entire 160-square-kilometer country, with...

Drink up anyway. (Wine Label Censorship).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... IT WAS MORE than a decade ago that wineries first tried to inform their customers about the health benefits of moderate drinking. Since then the evidence has only gotten stronger, but the federal government still won't let them talk about it....

Baghdad rock. (Heavy Metal Dissent).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... MEET IRAQ'S ONLY officially tolerated heavy metal band. According to the German weekly Der Spiegel, A. Crassicauda (the Latin designation for the black scorpion) is a five-man group that models itself on Slayer, Metallica, and Machine Head....

Tainted by drugs. (The War on Pipes and Dancing).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... TOMMY CHONG SAYS his colorful glass pipes, featured at a Hollywood exhibit last fall, qualify as art. The Justice Department says they qualify as illegal drug paraphernalia. There's little question about who is going to win this argument....

Lightening up. (Soundbite).(Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment)(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... Ten years in the making and boasting more than 300 contributors, Oxford University Press' new Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment is one of the most ambitious and important reference works to be published in recent years. Edited by University of...

British Medical Association. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Work crews tore down billboards across the United Kingdom as the country's ban on tobacco advertising took effect. Government officials and health groups say the ban will help reduce cigarette smoking, but they aren't waiting to see if that...

Selangor. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Khir Toyo, chief minister of the Malaysian state of Selangor, wants women to air their dirty laundry. Literally. He told wives who suspect their husbands of visiting prostitutes to look for stains on their men's clothes and strange receipts in...

Stairways and lobbies. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Faced with soaring crime rates, the French government has passed a law imposing two months in prison on people caught loitering in stairways and lobbies of buildings and on prostitutes found guilty of "passive soliciting," i.e., trying to...

India Tracy. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... India Tracy says she was bullied and beaten for years by other children in her Union County, Tennessee, school. Her troubles started four years ago when the school excused the children and teachers to attend a fundamentalist revival. Tracy, a...

Jordan's top court. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Jordan's top court sentenced Muhammad Mubaideen, Roman Haddad, and Nasser Qamash to two to six months in jail and shuttered the newspaper they worked for. Their crime? Writing and publishing an article, drawn from religious and historical...

Great Britain's Department of Work and Pensions. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Employees of Great Britain's Department of Work and Pensions average 12.9 sick days per year, compared to an estimated 6.7 days for workers in the private sector. They also average more days out than employees in many other government...

Pacoima. (Brickbats).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... When Linda Del Toro's 18-month-old daughter had a seizure, she called 911... and waited half an hour for an ambulance to arrive. The driver had first gone to Sylmar, California, instead of the family's home in Pacoima. It turns out that the...

Balance sheet.
June 1, 2003... Wax On Starting August 1, North Dakotans can legally get a bikini wax from state-licensed cosmetologists. Previously, the nether regions were not a recognized service area. On Principle National Security Council anti-terror...

Not keeping the faith. (Data).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... As Osama bin Laden could tell you, religious extremism--especially Islamic fundamentalism--is a major force shaping world events today. But is Christian fundamentalism in America on the rise? A Gallup poll analyzed in the March Scientific...

Gay rights go to court: sodomy laws, same-sex marriage, and the future of homosexual rights.
June 1, 2003... THE U.S. SUPREME Court is set to rule, for the second time in less than 20 years, on the constitutionality of state laws prohibiting consensual sodomy. At the same time, the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts is weighing a lawsuit that...

Gulf of misunderstanding: what this war says about the state of the media. (Rant).
June 1, 2003... BACK DURING THE first Gulf War, most of us got our news from the grimy, black and white pages of daily newspapers and from safari-jacket-sporting broadcast bobbleheads on ABC, CBS, and NBC (only the grim visages of Peter Jennings, Dan Rather,...

What next for U.S. foreign policy? Power, stability, and the post-Iraq world order.
June 1, 2003... IT'S BEEN CLEAR since September 12,2001, that U.S. foreign policy was going to change radically. The only questions were which direction it would move in and how far. The invasion of Iraq has answered some of those questions but raised still...

H: the surprising truth about heroin and addiction.
June 1, 2003... In 1992 The New York Times carried a frontpage story about a successful businessman who happened to be a regular heroin user. It began: "He is an executive in a company in New York, lives in a condo on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, drives...

Quacks and flacks: the pitfalls of seeking a scientific foundation for alternative medicine.
June 1, 2003... IN 1979, SHORTLY after the United States established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, a young Harvard Medical School student named David Eisenberg became the first American in decades to visit the country on a medical...

Look who's rocking the casbah: the revolutionary implications of Arab music videos. (Culture and Reviews).
June 1, 2003... ONE OF THE more interesting music videos released last year features an attractive brunette who, according to the video's narrative, is involved in a liaison taking place in a Paris hotel room. The visual narrative seems to offer the woman's...

Teddy Roosevelt's hidden legacy: how an "imperialist" president's record makes the case for military restraint. (Culture & Reviews).(First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power)(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power, by Warren Zimmermann, New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 576 pages, $30 IN THE EARLY years of the 20th century, American troops were in the Philippines putting down a...

God only knows: the conflicting demands of wartime prayers. (Culture & Reviews).
June 1, 2003... You gotta feel a little sorry for God these days. The hotline from the White House has been hopping off the heavenly hook; the pope has been urging his flock to "persevere in unceasing prayer"; cries of "Allahu Akbar" echo from the streets of...

Studied stupidity: respect to do ali G show. (Culture & Review).(Product/Service Evaluation)
June 1, 2003... "Yo," SAYS THE host, awannabe rapper named Ali G who wears a tracksuit accessorized with wraparound sunglasses, a Tommy Hilfiger skullcap, and massive amounts of gold jewelry. "Science. What is it all about? Technology. What is that all about?...

The pull of culture. (Artifact).(Clark Whittington's Art*o*mat*)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... YES, THAT'S A cigarette machine, or at least it was. The goods it currently vends aren't packs of butts; they're works of art. Each is about the size of a Lucky Strike package, and you buy it by inserting your coins and yanking on the machine....

Mom and dad; she's counting on you: experts recommend that you carry ten times your annual income in life insurance. Insure.com can show you how to buy the lowest-priced insurance from the highest-rated companies.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Is your wait for the perfect insurance Web site now over? Maybe. Please consider these Insure.com features and benefits: * Instant quotes from 300+ insurance companies. * Instant quotes for auto, life, health, home, dental, ion g-termn...

The Silemma of reforming a Post-Saddam Iraq.
June 1, 2003... Two crucial debates underlie America's present situation in the Middle East. The first concerns whether the United States can graft a democratic system on an authoritarian regime such as Iraq's, a state that has no history of democratic rule....