Reason articles from October 2005

Reason archives from October 2005

Virtual community, real debate.
October 1, 2005... One of the aims of reason is to act as a virtual community for libertarians, to provide a place where people interested in "Free Minds and Free Markets" can come together not just for news and analysis but also to hash out differences of...

Behind the Jeffersonian Veneer.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... In describing my writing as exhibiting only a "Jeffersonian veneer" ("Behind the Jeffersonian Veneer,"June), Cathy Young reveals herself to be either ignorant of Jefferson's thought--a possibility I cannot reject out of hand--or a liar....

Consumer vertigo.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... I am grateful for the opportunity to offer some comments on Virginia Postrel's thoughtful but critical article ("Consumer Vertigo," June) about my recent book, The Paradox of Choice. I have encountered two major criticisms of my book from...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
October 1, 2005... In "The Search for Real Absinthe" (August/September), the thu-jone content of the Pernod Fils absinthe produced circa 1900 should have been reported as six milligrams per liter, not six milligrams per milliliter.

Honest agents: Narcs on the Web.(members.aol.com/deawatch/daily.hml)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... It's no shock to stumble on an Internet forum devoted to uncovering government conspiracies, but you don't generally expect to find that the contributors are actual agents of the government. At DEA Watch (members.aol.com/deawatch/daily.hml),...

Police tricks: shame and the sex trade.(Chicago Police Department)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... If Chicago's sex workers are ever hurting for business, they can always turn to their police department. Last June the Chicago Police Department started compiling pictures, names, and partial addresses of the city's alleged johns and posting...

30 years ago in reason.
October 1, 2005... "The FBI and CIA still spy and keep secret files on U.S. citizens. The IRS still harasses citizens. Since the Bank Secrecy Act of 1973 requires your bank to microfilm all of your checks and hold these records for six years, the state can get...

Millions of Ghandhis: the power of nonviolent revolution.(liberation movements, Freedom House study)
October 1, 2005... "Spreading freedom" has become the White House's all-purpose justification for war, but wars aren't necessarily the best way to plant the seeds of liberty. A recent study from the D.C.-based group Freedom House suggests that the most...

Passing gas: energy bill giveaways.(Energy Policy Act of 2005)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Presented last summer with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, only 12 senators dared vote against a measure that promised to "ensure jobs for our future with secure, affordable, and reliable energy." The cost of all that assurance: $36 billion over...

Quotes.
October 1, 2005... "The biggest threat to conservatism today is not Peter's brand of liberalism but Nick's version of libertarianism." --National Review Editor at Large Jonah Goldberg at a July 25 Arsalyn Program conference on "Navigating the Media Maze,"...

When soldiers with the Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Brigade Combat Team boarded a charter flight from Savannah to Kuwait, they carried their rifles, shotguns, and pistols.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... When soldiers with the Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Brigade Combat Team boarded a charter flight from Savannah to Kuwait, they carried their rifles, shotguns, and pistols. But they didn't carry any pocket knives, nose-hair clippers, or...

Montana state troopers have been ordered to stop at least one automobile every hour, even if the driver hasn't done anything wrong.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Montana state troopers have been ordered to stop at least one automobile every hour, even if the driver hasn't done anything wrong. State police Col. Paul Grimstad said the stops will reduce traffic accidents and drunken driving. Officials deny...

A British court sentenced Tabrez Khan to prison after he admitted to dealing drugs.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... A British court sentenced Tabrez Khan to prison after he admitted to dealing drugs. They then took him back to court to seize all his assets. Total value: about 53 cents American. "Although 29 pence may seem minuscule," a police spokesman...

Denmark has some of the highest income tax levels in the world.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Denmark has some of the highest income tax levels in the world. It also has the world's largest sperm bank. Authorities have noticed they haven't been taxing the 500-crown payment Cryos Sperm Bank provides for each donation; they hope to start...

China has razed thousands of homes, restaurants, and small shops in Beijing to "beautify" the city before it hosts the 2008 Olympics.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... China has razed thousands of homes, restaurants, and small shops in Beijing to "beautify" the city before it hosts the 2008 Olympics. When Ye Guozhu sought permission to protest the forced evictions of some 300,000 people, he was convicted of...

Vermont received a $24,000 federal grant to put up billboards reminding motorists to buckle their seat belts.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Vermont received a $24,000 federal grant to put up billboards reminding motorists to buckle their seat belts. Unfortunately, the state bans billboards. Solution? Take the money and use it to put up billboards in New Hampshire and Massachusetts...

Firefighters in Hennef, Germany, reportedly found a car parked alongside a junkyard and used it to practice rescues.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Firefighters in Hennef, Germany, reportedly found a car parked alongside a junkyard and used it to practice rescues. They had cut off the roof and doors before they discovered that the car actually belonged to a teenager who had bought it just...

British police have charged an Oxford University student with public disorder for making "homophobic comments" about a police horse.(Brickbats)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... British police have charged an Oxford University student with public disorder for making "homophobic comments" about a police horse. Sam Brown came out of a pub early one morning, encountered two mounted officers, and asked one, "How do you...

How reforms evolve: creationists push "bill of rights".(Academic Bill of Rights, David Horowitz )(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... When the conservative firebrand David Horowitz began thumping the tub for his Academic Bill of Rights, which would require professors to respect "a diversity of approaches to unsettled questions," he waged an energetic preemptive campaign...

Porn inspectors: adult industry fights tight rules.
October 1, 2005... Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is eager to keep a closer eye on porn--and this is one time the adult entertainment industry would prefer a smaller audience. The Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for producers and distributors of...

Payback supreme.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... A California developer draws up plans for the Lost Liberty Hotel on what is now the New Hampshire farm of Justice David Souter, who voted with the majority in the Kelo decision allowing governments to seize property and transfer it to private...

People vs. power.(Balance Sheet)(Heibi, China, locals win back land )(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... After two years of resistance, villagers in China's Hebei province win back their land. The local government had tried to seize it for a state-owned power company.

Don't super size me.(Balance Sheet)
October 1, 2005... A 35-year-old North Carolina woman limits herself to 1,400 calories a day while eating exclusively at McDonald's. She loses 33 pounds in two months.

Wild Europe.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Boars, bears, wolves, and other species return to the European countryside as humans abandon inefficient mines, quarries, and farms, especially in territories once within the Soviet orbit.

False advertising.(Ogilvy & Mather executives receive sentences for overbilling the government)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Two Ogilvy & Mather executives receive prison sentences for overbilling the government. Since they worked on the government's anti-drug ads, overbilling was only a small part of the fraud they perpetrated.

Free spenders.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... A British survey finds Internet users who illegally swap tracks spend four and a half times as much on digital music as those who don't, making it harder for record companies to blame file sharers for slumping sales.

Cost benefit.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff makes the common-sense observation that the reds should focus on protecting airplanes rather than buses and trains from terrorists. Cities with big mass transit investments fume.

Sex games.(Federal Trade Commission reclassifies video game as adults only)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... At the behest of Congress, the Federal Trade Commission eyeballs the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game was reclassified as an adults-only title after hidden sex scenes involving animated characters surfaced.

Aloha cars.(Hawaii puts caps on gasoline prices)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... The state of Hawaii attempts to repeal economics by putting caps on gasoline prices. Probable outcome: long lines and gas shortages.

Routing error.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Cisco Systems goes to court to suppress information about a flaw in its Net routers. Researcher Michael Lynn's presentation to a computer conference was nearly derailed, but Lynn quit his job so his employer could not grant Cisco's demands that...

Tough turf.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Federal prosecutors in Seattle claim their attempt to charge one of the London bombattack planners in 2002 was derailed by Justice Department politics. D.C. told Seattle to lay off Haroon Aswat, since the U.S. attorney in New York City was to...

Phantom hits.(Balance Sheet)
October 1, 2005... The lone bright spot in New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's battle against the "crime" of payola is proof that many hit records aren't so popular after all. Radio execs spun vapid tunes not because they thought the songs were decent but...

Naked power.(Balance Sheet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Teresa Hamaty takes a picture of her naked infant son getting a kiss on the belly from Dad, and the couple is charged with child abuse. Charbel spends six months in prison, and the children are removed from Teresa's care. Prosecutors dropped...

Creative accounting: taking stock of big ideas.(Technological Forecasting and Social Change, analysis on innovation)
October 1, 2005... Is innovation endangered? An analysis in the journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change suggests it may be. Jonathan Huebner, a physicist working at the Pentagon's Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, takes a look at two measures of...

Aiding and indebting.(Sub-Saharan Africa, where does foreign aid go?)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Since 1960 the world has dumped $450 billion in aid on the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Last summer eight wealthy nations pledged to double their assistance to the region by 2010. But despite the push to give, evidence that aid boosts...

DIY Sci-Fi: science fiction, science fact.(private players in scientific research)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... When the first "solar sail" vehicle, Cosmos 1, was lost in space last June, it looked like the ship--which uses pressure from sunlight to ply outer space--had joined a long line of cosmicsized failures. But Cosmos 1 represented a more...

Fifth columnist.(John Tierney)(Interview)
October 1, 2005... Earlier this year, libertarians greeted with enthusiasm the news that The New York Times' John Tierney had been tapped to succeed the Times' William Satire on the country's most influential liberal op-ed page. A libertarian himself, Tierney...

Why the New York Times love eminent domain: elite newspapers and liberal activists embrace the Kelo decision at their long-term peril.(Column)
October 1, 2005... On September 24, 2001, as New York firefighters were still picking their comrades' body parts out of the World Trade Center wreckage, New York Times Co.Vice Chairman and Senior Vice President Michael Golden announced that the Gray Lady was...

Antonin Scalia, judicial activist: how the conservative justice legislates from the bench.
October 1, 2005... With the Supreme Court back at the center of national attention, left and right alike point to Justice Antonin Scalia as the very model of the modern conservative jurist. President Bush has cited him, along with Clarence Thomas, as the sort of...

Pansies of New York: bend over for feel-good policing.(luggage checks in public transport systems)
October 1, 2005... It's been A long time since New York City, home of the Bronx Cheer, the one-finger salute, and at least one headless body in a topless bar, was the world capital of feisty, in-your-face attitude. But who could have predicted that 21st-century...

Rethinking the social responsibility of business: a reason debate featuring Milton Friedman, Whole Foods' John Mackey, and Cypress Semiconductor's T.J. Rodgers.(Cover Story)
October 1, 2005... Thirty-five years ago, Milton Friedman wrote a famous article for The New York Times Magazine whose title aptly summed up its main point: "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits." The future Nobel laureate in economics...

The second Romanian revolution will be televised: the TV show Dallas helped overthrow Ceausescu. Now gangsta rap and pop culture are driving out corrupt post-Soviet thugs.
October 1, 2005... Mr. Benea, regrettably, is not in. Yes, our 12 p.m. interview was on the calendar, and certainly he appreciates that it was a hot three-hour train trip from the Romanian capital city of Bucharest to Slobozia, a forgettable little transit town...

In defense of happy pills: why talk to a shrink if Prozac or Zoloft will do the trick?
October 1, 2005... THE FIRST TIME I did heroin, it was a Listening to Prozac moment. Like the patients that psychiatrist Peter Kramer describes in his 1993 book, I felt the way I wished to be, but better than I'd thought possible. Moments before, I'd been...

Remains of the DNA: how clones, like the rest of us, justify their own misery.(Never Let Me Go)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, New York: Knopf 304 pages, $24 THE SUMMER OF 2005 offered any number of entertainments to the American public, from the latest (and, one hopes, last) Star Wars movie to Johnny Depp as a weirder-than-Jacko...

Racial blind spots: the affirmative action path not taken.(The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action)(Affirmative Action Around the World)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action, by Terry H. Anderson, New York: Oxford University Press, 320 pages, $35 Affirmative Action Around the World, by Thomas Sowell, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 239 pages, $28...

The man who marketed sperm: from eugenicist to entrepreneur.
October 1, 2005... I'm staring at a six-foot, 190-pound, Irish/Italian research scientist who lists his interests as "Golf/Roasting Coffee." If I want him, he's mine--or at least his sperm is, for the piddling price of $300 plus shipping. At the Fairfax...

Full of hot air: a climate alarmist takes on "criminals against humanity".(Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis - And What We Can Do to Avert the Disaster)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis--And What We Can Do to Avert the Disaster, by Ross Gelbspan, New York: Basic Books, 254 pages, $22 Ross Gelbspan and I agree about...

Grand theft scapegoat: the ridiculous jihad against video games.
October 1, 2005... In May, By a vote of 106 to 6, the Illinois legislature passed a measure banning the sale of "violent" and "sexually explicit" video games to minors. The California Assembly is considering its own version of a prohibition on game sales to the...

War's nightmare landscape.(Original Child Bomb)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... This Horrifying Image shows a young boy scarred by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945. Almost unbelievably, he would not only survive, but live into the 21st century. The U.S. military shot miles of color film documenting...

Property and privilege.(land acquisition by government)
October 1, 2005... The recent dreadful decision of the United States Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London held that New London could take the homes of ordinary citizens in the name of urban planning. It didn't seem to matter to the five-member majority...