Reason articles from October 2003

Reason archives from October 2003

Is Schadenfreude a good thing?(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
October 1, 2003... HAS THERE EVER been a defendant as thoroughly unsympathetic as this month's cover gal, Martha Stewart, currently in trouble for selling stock in the pharmaceutical company ImClone? I suspect that on some level we're all rooting for the...

Gay Rights Go to Court.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... I am gay and have been a big fan of reason for many years, so I was disappointed to see Cathy Young spend two pages on a discussion of "gay rights" ("Gay Rights Go to Court," June). Since when do groups have "rights"? Only individuals have...

H.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... I've just finished reading Jacob Sullum's "H: The Surprising Truth About Heroin and Addiction" (June) and am not at all impressed. I find it interesting that while Sullum quotes a sociologist who wrote that "narcotic addicts tend to 'mature...

Quacks and Flacks.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... Chris Mooney ("Quacks and Flacks," June) captures very well some missteps in alternative medicine, some practitioners of which have done a disservice to their profession in not adhering to rigorous scientific standards. What got left out...

Look Who'S Rocking the Casbah.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... Chuck Freund's article "Look Who's Rocking the Casbah" (June) touched on a fascinating topic, but I could not help but conclude that his evaluation of female sexuality in Arab cultures incorporated stereotypes and elements of Western bias. ...

Teddy Roosevelt's Hidden Legacy.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... Michael McMenamin ("Teddy Roosevelt's Hidden Legacy," June) convincingly shows not only that Theodore Roosevelt had his own foreign policy, but that it was infinitely better than and antithetical to Woodrow Wilson's. What he does not say is...

What Next for U.S. Foreign Policy?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... The impressive accuracy of the interview with me by Jesse Walker ("What Next for U.S. Foreign Policy?" June) was unfortunately counterbalanced by the rifle placed above it: "The Pacifist." That term is not accurate, and it may confuse...

Sacred music: zoning vs. groovy theology.(Citings)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... MARRIED COUPLE William and Alex Pritts wanted to hold a concert on their 147 wooded acres in Bullskin Township, near Pittsburgh, but the local zoning commission insisted their land could not be used for commercial purposes. Undeterred, the...

Lawsuit pre-emption: no Big Mac attacks.(Citings)
October 1, 2003... SHOULDN'T PEOPLE KNOW that if they eat too much they'll get fat? Maybe, concedes John Banzhaf, a George Washington University law professor who promotes lawsuits against fast food chains. But as Banzhaf points out, tort law is no longer based...

25 years ago in reason.
October 1, 2003... "In recent weeks the world has once again witnessed the spectacle of political trials in the Soviet Union.... It is for this reason that we urge a boycott of the Moscow Olympics--not as a mandate from our government but as a spontaneous...

Static controls: copyrights and printer cartridges.(Citings)
October 1, 2003... THE DIGITAL Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was intended to thwart music and software piracy. But the printer manufacturer Lexmark has found a novel use for the law: They've sued to prevent a competitor from making cartridges that work in...

The chill is on: fighting raves, squelching speech.(Citings)
October 1, 2003... WHEN SEN. JOSEPH Biden (D-Del.) introduced his anti-rave legislation, critics warned that it could have a chilling effect on unpopular speech, especially criticism of the war on drugs. They were proven right barely a month after President Bush...

Quotes.
October 1, 2003... "This magazine dues everything well: culture, politics, religion, philosophy, and while other mags redesign to simplify and commercialize, reason's redesign actually made it better." --from "The 50 Best Magazines," an article in the June 12...

Source.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... The First Amendment is surprisingly compact when you consider all it covers: freedom of speech and the press, the prohibition of establishment of religion, the exercise of religious liberty, and the rights of assembly and petition. The body of...

Jake Brown disliked the bike racks around Philadelphia's Independence Hall, so one day while eating lunch on a nearby bench he propped up a sign saying "Free Independence Hall" next to him.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Jake Brown disliked the bike racks around Philadelphia's Independence Hall, so one day while eating lunch on a nearby bench he propped up a sign saying "Free Independence Hall" next to him. A park ranger told him to get rid of the sign, and...

Sheriff Mike Hale of Jefferson County, Alabama, directed one of his deputies to get rid of evidence in a case that had been closed.(Brickbats)
October 1, 2003... Sheriff Mike Hale of Jefferson County, Alabama, directed one of his deputies to get rid of evidence in a case that had been closed. Among the items the deputy burned was $2,100 in cash.

Rumors ran rampant when several students at New York City's public Intermediate School 164 cut classes.(Brickbats)
October 1, 2003... Rumors ran rampant when several students at New York City's public Intermediate School 164 cut classes. Some said they had attended a party where students had sex. When the children returned to school, school officials reportedly demanded that...

Party members attending the national assembly of the United Malays National Organization got a special gift this year.(Brickbats)
October 1, 2003... Party members attending the national assembly of the United Malays National Organization got a special gift this year. The party of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad distributed copies of Henry Ford's anti-Semitic 1920 book The International Jew....

Ad designer Grandison Taber met garbage man Larry Heyes and decided the man would be perfect for an ad campaign to foster civic pride in New Bedford, Massachusetts.(Brickbats)
October 1, 2003... Ad designer Grandisoo Taber met garbage man Larry Heyes and decided the man would be perfect for an ad campaign to foster civic pride in New Bedford, Massachusetts. But after the ad featuring Heyes came out, someone contacted the paper about...

The federal government has given the state of Tennessee millions of dollars for ad campaigns promoting highway safety.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... The federal government has given the state of Tennessee millions of dollars for ad campaigns promoting highway safety. Where has the money gone? Well, $40,000 of it was spent on bobblebead dolls of forward Scott Hartnell that were given away to...

According to a custodian at Spaulding High School in Barre, Vermont, Officer John Mott used his authority as a uniformed, on-duty police officer to gain access to the high school at 1:30 a.m.(Brickbats)
October 1, 2003... According to a custodian at Spaulding High School in Barre, Vermont, Officer John Mott used his authority as a uniformed, on-duty police officer to gain access to the high school at 1:30 a.m. He then asked to be let into the classroom of Tom...

New York City is running a deficit, but the city council still dredged up $75,000 to organize city residents in support of rent control.(Brickbats)
October 1, 2003... New York City is running a deficit, but the city council still dredged up $75,000 to organize city residents in support of rent control. The city spent $27,900 just to bus residents to Albany for a pro-rent control rally.

That's the ticket: summer of summonses.(Citings)
October 1, 2003... NEW YORKERS WERE sorely vexed this summer by an alleged "ticketing blitz" a spate of summonses issued for violations of obscure or trivial laws in what many see as an attempt to fill dwindling city coffers. Even the people handing out the...

Texas two-step.(Balance Sheet)
October 1, 2003... A dozen of 38 people convicted in the infamous Tulia, Texas, drug sweep of 1999 are freed from prison pending further investigation into the case. They appear to be guilty of being from the wrong side of town.

Pub fair.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... The House of Commons votes to rid Britain of early "last call" regs that encouraged people to drink as much as they could, as fast as they could, before being turned out.

Book markers.(Balance Sheet)
October 1, 2003... The U.S. Government Printing Office shuts down 13 retail locations across the country, noting that online orders can fill the need. Only Washington, D.C., will keep stores, as the city's interns must be kept busy.

Big easy.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... A New Orleans ban on sidewalk bookselling is struck down when a federal judge notes that the law impinges on First Amendment rights to free speech.

Cleansing agents.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... The General Accounting Office finds that the number of FBI field agents tasked with drug crimes has been cut nearly in half, from 1,400 in the fall of 200l to around 800 in spring '03. New drug investigations also fell from 1,825 in 2000 to 944...

Wet bar.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... South Carolina reverses decades of blue law tradition and allows retail beer and wine sales on Sunday Bars and restaurants in S C. have served on Sunday since 1993.

Bell ringer.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Pacific Bell Internet Services fights Recording Industry Association of America legal tactics, arguing that nothing in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows the RIAA to issue "shotgun" subpoenas of Net users. These raise "constitutional...

Read-write error.(Balance Sheet)
October 1, 2003... A Massachusetts school superintendent making $156K a year fails to pass a basic literacy test after three tries. The state education commissioner won't say how many chances Wilfredo T. Laboy will get.

Tracking adjustment.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... The Homeland Security Department's inspector general finds that using the department's "air interdiction" center to track down Democratic members of the Texas, legislature was "appropriate." Turns out that such tracking is a "nominal" use of...

Name gamed.(Balance Sheet)
October 1, 2003... The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit backs the Bush administration's assertion that it can keep secret the names of hundreds detained as part of 9/11 investigations.

Twisted norm.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Researchers from Johns Hopkins University find that over half of Zimbabwean women believe wife beating is OK. Transgressions like burning dinner or leaving the house without the husband's permission can justify a beating, a survey of 5,907...

Tally whoa.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Computerized voting systems are only as good as their security, and experts at the Information Security Institute find that isn't so good "A 15-year-old computer enthusiast" could make fake cards allowing every voter to cast multiple ballots,...

Busting CAPPS.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Two MIT grad students find that the airlines' Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS) provides worse security than utterly random searches would. Terrorists could "game" their CAPPS profiles with as few as six flights.

The poor get richer.(Data)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... You know the catechism: The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and globalization is exacerbating inequality at an unprecedented rate. The message is hard to avoid. Representative of the conventional wisdom is the claim, in a...

Jury-rigged: sidestepping the constitution.(Citings)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... THE FEDERAL government has transformed grand juries into "inquisitorial bulldozers that run roughshod over the constitutional rights of citizens," warns a new study from the Cato Institute. The study argues that grand juries, once checks on...

Meat markets: PETA praises McDonald's.(Citings)
October 1, 2003... IT'S NOT OFTEN that you find People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) praising McDonald's. Yet that's what has happened as the nation's top burger peddler has begun to show a more animal-friendly face. The company has begun funding...

Romancing wired magazine.(Soundbite)(Interview)
October 1, 2003... As a defining media presence of the 1990s, Wired did more than change the way magazines looked (though it certainly did that, in vivid Day-Glo colors). The brainchild of editor/publisher Louis Rossetto, Wired gave the world a way of talking...

Liberty Belle: France's new libertarian youth leader.(Columns)
October 1, 2003... MOST FRENCH PEOPLE devote their summers to quintessentially Gallic pursuits: celebrating Bastille Day, spending some of their mandatory eight-week vacation time, going on strike. But Sabine Herold, to put it mildly, is not your typical...

Bipartistan coulterism: who's meaner, conservatives or liberals?(Columns)
October 1, 2003... LAST JUNE THE Democratic National Committee sponsored an ad portraying the president as Frankenstein creating a monster for a federal judgeship. This, Fox News host Scan Hannity declared, was a typical example of Democratic demonization....

Denial of service: the battle over AmeriCorps.(Rant)
October 1, 2003... "ENEMIES WILL USE any weapon at their disposal," warned Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), in their ideological "attack on things that we believe in." The senator was referring not to Ba'athist hard-liners but to the insidious congressional...

St. Martha: why Martha Stewart should go to heaven and the SEC should go to hell.
October 1, 2003... June did not bring much sunshine for New York City or good news for Martha Stewart. After twisting in the wind for nearly a year and a half, the Diva of Domesticity was sued for insider trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)...

Why the States are broke: bloated governments, budget gaps, and Parkinson's laws.
October 1, 2003... "FOR THE FIRST time in a long time, someone is going to be minding the store," declared the newly elected governor of a large Midwestern state. The occasion was an April speech defending his proposed budget and restating his campaign promise...

Designing rules: making room for different tastes.
October 1, 2003... IRVINE, CALIFORNIA, IS the epitome of tightly controlled urban design, a squeaky-clean edge city of office parks and master-planned neighborhoods. The Orange County town is so tidy that when my husband started teaching at the University of...

Everyone's a winner!(Culture and Reviews)
October 1, 2003... ONE STATE'S--AND ONE PERSON'S--LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH LEGALIZED GAMBLING-- JUNE 2003: THE GRAND OPENING OF THE TULALIP INDIAN TRIBE'S BRAND NEW CASINO, 30 MILES OR 50 NORTH OF SEATTLE, WA... THE "OLD" CASINO WASN'T EVEN ALL THAT...

Enough already: a leading environmentalist makes a foolish case against technological innovation.(Book Review)
October 1, 2003... Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, by Bill McKibben, New York: Times Books, 288 pages, $25 ENVIRONMENTALIST BILL McKibben has had enough, and he thinks you've had enough too. That's why he wants to stop the development of...

Stranger in a strange land: the enduring American appeal of existentialism.
October 1, 2003... Of course I remember my first time. Only a true cad--or a true liar--doesn't. When I look back on it, I was way too young--just 14. It happened, of all places, in the musty basement of the house I grew up in, during a lazy summer afternoon...

Accidental genius: is Karl Rove really Bush's brain?(Book Review)
October 1, 2003... Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush, by Lou Dubose, Jan Reid, and Carl M. Cannon, New York: Public Affairs 253 pages, $15 Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,...

Subversive style: resisting the mullahs with nail polish, rock music, and great novels.(Book Review)
October 1, 2003... A TEENAGER'S REBELLIOUS night on the town, if the town was Tehran in its early days under the mullahs, meant a trip to Kansas. That was a burger joint on Jordan Avenue, a place where the city's upscale sons and daughters set the tone and...

Dirty secret.(Artifact)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... HERE'S THE right hand of Michelangelo's David; those colored spots and lines mark the cracks, blemishes, and grime that have accumulated over 499 years. David's flaws have been digitally mapped in preparation for his first cleaning since 1843,...

What Harry Potter can teach the textbook industry.
October 1, 2003... As the world knows, the latest installment in the Harry Potter series sold five million copies on the first day it was available. Many thousands (or millions) of American children stood in line for hours to buy the book. Here's the rub:...