Reason articles from May 2007

Reason archives from May 2007

Peace on the Border.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... David Weigel's "Peace on the Border" (February) is billed as an explanation of "why anti-immigration conservatives fell flat in 2006." Weigel pulls the mainstream media trick of labeling people who are against illegal immigration as...

After the Damascus Spring.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... Guy Taylor did a great job writing about Syrian bloggers and Internet freedom in "After the Damascus Spring" (February). If you're looking for a delicious irony, consider my story: I created a political website for Syrians inside Syria. It was...

Pot Clubs in Peril.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... Thanks for a great job on the article "Pot Clubs in Peril" (February). I operate the club at 194 Church Street that is mentioned in the article. I hope the article brings attention to the fact that no access is worse than limited access. We now...

We the Living Dead.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... An intriguing side note to Tim Cavanaugh's review-essay on zombie films ("We the Living Dead" February): George Romero has pointed to Richard Matheson's 1954 horror novel I Am Legend as an inspiration for Night of the Living Dead. Matheson's...

The Politics of Pants.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... Charles Paul Freund's "The Politics of Pants" (February) brought back memories. My late father used to complain about the love his baby boomer kids had for wearing jeans or, as he invariably called them, dungarees. Dad's comment whenever...

A Chilling Tale of Global Warming.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... Katherine Mangu-Ward's article on the U.N.-sponsored children's book ("A Chilling Tale of Global Warming," February) was a hoot. The climatology contingent from the Planetary Society must be rolling in the aisles even as its past demigod...

Corrections.(Letters)(Correction notice)
May 1, 2007... In "We the Living Dead" (February), Resident Evil was incorrectly described as having inspired four Hollywood movies starring Milla Jovovich. It has inspired three. Contrary to a statement on the March "Contributors" page, the title of...

Hold your cards: States vs. the Real ID Act.(Citings)(Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief Act of 2005)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... IF THE federal government gets its way, every state will have to comply with the Real ID Act as of May 11, 2008. Each American will have an ID card encoded with vital information using an undefined machine-readable technology, with the same...

House rules: fair housing and free speech.(Citings)(roommates.com sued by Fair Housing Council of the San Fernando Valley and Fair Housing Council of San Diego )(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... LOOKING FOR a gay black Buddhist to share the rent? It may soon be illegal to say so in an online advertisement. The Fair Housing Council of the San Fernando Valley and the Fair Housing Council of San Diego are suing the popular website...

25 years ago in reason.(Citings)
May 1, 2007... "New York's subways are notoriously bad today, and their condition, like the rubble of the South Bronx, symbolizes the municipal decay that is becoming commonplace in America." --Peter Samuel, "Unload the Subways" "Reagan's game plan...

I, tax robot: Internet tax traps.(Citings)(Xenon software used by Internal Revenue Service)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... NO ONE who surfs the Internet should assume her activity is confidential. Malicious spyware hides behind annoying Web ads. Harmless search engines use data crawlers to collect information from almost every site online. And if you live in...

Blogged down: censoring the Web.(Citings)(Texas and Tennessee )(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... IN THE last few months, legislators in both Texas and Tennessee have explored the idea of slapping blogs with special "online defamation" regulations. A Tennessee proposal, pushed by state Sen. Jamie Woodson (R-Knoxville), would give...

Wireless boondoggles: public broadband rip-offs.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... HUNDREDS OF cities are planning to provide Internet access to their citizens. But a new study from Jerry Ellig, a former Federal Trade Commission official, suggests such projects probably will turn out to be boondoggles. The study,...

Quotes.(Citings)
May 1, 2007... "Why not a nap at work? It can't be a taboo subject." --French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand on a government-sponsored study to determine the benefits of sleeping on the job, quoted by the Associated Press, January 29 "The number of...

Pop-up crackdown: sex panic in Connecticut.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... IN JANUARY, Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, was convicted of "four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child." Prosecutors said she had intentionally exposed a class of seventh-graders to...

Hurricanes happen: insurance price controls.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... EIGHT HURRICANES hit Florida in 2004 and 2005, causing some $36 billion in property damage. With forecasters predicting more of the same during the next decade, homeowner's insurance rates rose sharply, which some might interpret as a signal...

Fat checks: bloated obesity programs.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... WEST VIRGINIA taxpayers may soon be paying for portly citizens to attend Weight Watchers meetings. The state claims it's spending $100 million a year on obesity-related health care. Now, in an effort to reduce those costs, the state's largest...

Exporting drug prices: who's afraid of reimportation?(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... WHEN MEMBERS of Congress first suggested legalizing the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada several years ago, some erstwhile supporters of free trade opposed the idea, arguing that Canadian price controls would be imported along...

Power splurge: the daylight-saving time myth.(Citings)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... LAST YEAR'S energy bill extended daylight-saving time (DST) by a month, on the theory that it would encourage Americans to save energy.A recent working paper from the Center for the Study of Energy Markets suggests otherwise. An ideal...

Durrell Jones woke one morning in his Sarasota, Florida, home to find sheriff's deputies standing over him and his 4-year-old son, pointing guns at them.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Durrell Jones woke one morning in his Sarasota, Florida, home to find sheriff's deputies standing over him and his 4-year-old son, pointing guns at them. The deputies were looking for a man wanted for a shooting, and they believed he was at...

When a movement to offer free hugs to strangers on the street started in Australia, people around the world embraced the concept.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... When a movement to offer free hugs to strangers on the street started in Australia, people around the world embraced the concept. But in Beijing, police briefly detained and questioned four huggers.

Darling Velez waited years to become a Spanish citizen.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Darling Velez waited years to become a Spanish citizen. But after finally accepting the Colombian woman's application, the government reversed itself. Spanish law forbids the government to register names that do not clearly indicate gender or...

Margaret Lieder meant to dial 411 for information.(Brickbats)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Margaret Lieder meant to dial 411 for information. She accidentally dialed 911, but she promptly hung up when she realized she'd made a mistake. A dispatcher called her back to say that police were on the way. When the North Vancouver, Canada,...

Denver authorities gave Cynthia Roberson 24 hours to remove the snow from the sidewalk in front of her home or face a $150 fine.(Brickbats)
May 1, 2007... Denver authorities gave Cynthia Roberson 24 hours to remove the snow from the sidewalk in front of her home or face a $150 fine. Roberson is 60 years old and disabled. But what really galled her is that she had already paid someone to remove...

Forget staging Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(Brickbats)
May 1, 2007... Forget staging Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Denver. Judge Michael A. Martinez of Colorado's 2nd Judicial District has refused to exempt theatrical companies from a statewide smoking ban. Performers can't even light up herbal cigarettes.

The government of Kenya has barred the sale of secondhand underwear, socks, and bras.(Brickbats)
May 1, 2007... The government of Kenya has barred the sale of secondhand underwear, socks, and bras. Government officials say the move will stop the spread of skin diseases. Doctors say the clothes just need to be properly laundered.

Who supports free trade?(Data)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... In theory, the Republicans are the party of free trade. In practice, it doesn't always work out that way. According to a new survey from the Pew Research Center, voters on the right are nearly as likely to doubt the benefits of trade as their...

Mixed-up raid: artists under attack.(Citings)(DJ Cannon, DJ Drama)
May 1, 2007... ON JANUARY 16, 2007, 30 police officers in SWAT gear stormed the studio of Atlanta's DJ Drama, one of the most influential hip-hop figures in the country. Footage provided by a local TV station shows officials from the Recording Industry...

The Milton Friedman Show.(Soundbite)(Interview)
May 1, 2007... Bob Chitester was a public TV station manager in Erie, Pennsylvania, in the late 1970s when he had the idea to make an original series about the libertarian economist Milton Friedman's ideas. To produce the programs he raised the current...

More money, no problem: the death of taxpayer-financed campaigns.(Columns)
May 1, 2007... THE FIRST TIME I covered Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) he was enjoying the raucous cheers of liberal college students. It was 2001, and McCain and Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.)--the anti-war Sam Gamgee to McCain's Frodo Baggins--were on a...

Assault behind bars: how big a problem is prison rape--and what can be done about it?(Columns)
May 1, 2007... SHORTLY AFTER THE Enron scandal broke in 2001, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer declared that he would love to personally escort the company's CEO "to an eight-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name...

There is power in a Unity08: send in the centrists? Don't bother; they're here.(Rant)
May 1, 2007... AMERICA WILL HAVE a new choice in 2008, and like so many good things it's coming to you via Sam Waterston. Thanks to him and the organization for which he's a celebrity front man, Unity08, Americans weary of Democratic and Republican rule might...

An epidemic of meddling: the totalitarian implications of public health.
May 1, 2007... IN FEBRUARY, upon introducing the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said the legislation "would give FDA broad powers to regulate tobacco products and protect public health." In 2004 Sen....

Superhuman imagination: Vernor Vinge on science fiction, the Singularity, and the state.(Interview)
May 1, 2007... A FEW DECADES ago, the most popular science fiction epics were works like Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy or Frank Herbert's Dune series--stories that were set thousands or even tens of thousands of years in the future but involved human...

The folly of Southern hospitality: Dixie leads the way in lavish corporate subsidies. As other parts of the country follow suit, it's time to ask whether such incentives work.
May 1, 2007... IN 2006 THE Korean car maker Kia decided to build a $1.2 billion plant in West Point, Georgia. To land the project, the state offered a $420 million incentive package that included free land (bought from the previous owners at about 2.5. times...

The wealth of LibriVox: classic texts, amateur audiobooks, and the grand future of online peer production.
May 1, 2007... IN THE DIM, humid basement of his Maryland home, Michael Scherer, a tall 38-year-old with the long, square beard of a mandolin player or a monk, leans toward a rebuilt Russian tube microphone, desperate for silence so he can begin recording a...

Monopoly's staying power: why the most famous board game in history continues to flourish.(Culture and Reviews)
May 1, 2007... En route to selling a mind-blowing 250 million copies worldwide since it was first mass-produced in 1935, Monopoly has generated a story more epic and entertaining than playing the game itself. From its prehistory as The Landlord's Game...

How the wolves survive: Los Lobos' Louie Perez on immigration, cultural mixing, and his band's new album.(Culture and Reviews)(Interview)
May 1, 2007... THE MEXICAN -- American rock band Los Lobos--Spanish for "the Wolves"--has always claimed it isn't trying to document the immigrant experience, at least until their most recent album, The Town and the City (Hollywood/Mammoth). But the group's...

Ghetto capitalists: the inner cities are bustling with informal enterprises, but the government has cut them off from the larger economy.(Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, by SudhirAlladi Venkatesh, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 448 pages, $27.95 IN THE IMMEDIATE aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Superdome became a font of myths...

Girly mags vs the censors: the changing standards of sexiness.(Culture and Reviews)
May 1, 2007... ALTHOUGH THEY may sound like part of Bodies... The Exhibition," "bifurcated girls" were a popular attraction in American men's magazines at the turn of the 20th century. "The Bifurcated Girl Is Coming!" announced a May 1903 magazine cover....

Scars of war.(Artifact)(Brief article)(Photograph)
May 1, 2007... "SUPPRESS IT!" Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman reportedly told the Ohio State Fair in 1880, referring to his experience during the Civil War, the first American conflict to be heavily photographed. "You don't know the horrible aspects of war. I...