Category: reason

“We came out and said there was a digital revolution happening
and it was going to change everything,” says Louis Rossetto, who
co-founded Wired magazine 20 years ago in 1993. “And
[that] it wasn’t the priests, the pundits, the politicians, and the
generals who were creating positive change.”

Rossetto was no stranger to bold predictions. In 1971, he
co-authored a
cover story in the New York Times
Magazine announcing that libertarianism was the next
great transformative ideology and that young people were rejecting
the played-out politics of the right and the left. After editing a
publication called Electric Word in the late 1980s,
he and Jane Metcalfe launched Wired, the
publication that not revolutionized magazine design but chronicled,
critiqued, and in many ways created the Internet Age. The
concept was to cover the real change makers, far from the
halls of power in Washington or established business capitals such
as New York, who were ushering in a new digital era that would
transform society. “That meta-story,” says Rossetto, “was
absolutely spot on.”

View this article.

The latest research into the
impact of video games on children’s minds comes from studying the
behavior of more than 11,000 children between the ages of 5 and 7
across the United Kingdom. That’s a pretty big pool. Their
conclusion: No correlation between playing video games and any sort
of conduct problems whatsoever. The study also focused on
television viewing and determined that kids who watch lots of
television but don’t play video games were more likely to have
conduct problems than those who do play video games.

The study from the University of Glasgow is available
here (pdf) and is a fairly easy read. As with any mass study
like this, there are some gaps. Because of the voluntary scope of
participation, the sampling isn’t fully representative and depended
on the accuracy of information reported by the children’s mothers.
They separated children by gender and by how much time they spent
each day playing video games or watching television. They evaluated
the “psychosocial adjustment” of participants in several categories
to determine emotional or conduct problems after they reached 7
years. They really did not find that much, but they did note:
“Children playing no games were more likely to show increased
problems (except peer problems) compared with playing [less than
one hour] daily.” The only statistically significant association
they discovered was among children who watched three or more hours
of television a day. They showed more conduct problems, but even
then the number was low. And they didn’t notice any difference
based on gender.

Still though, the total gaming exposure of these young kids is
pretty low – less than four percent reported playing video games
for more than three hours per weekday. The game panic these days is
focused on teens who go on marathon Call of Duty binges
for hours on end. I don’t see this study taking the wind out of
that argument, but it could come a as a relief to parents who feel
judged by those media nannies suggesting that their little loved
ones are being turned into monsters by their Nintendo Wii.

* No, of course it doesn’t.

Jacob Sullum reviews
Straight Flush: The True Story of Six College Friends Who Dealt
Their Way to a Billion-Dollar Online Poker Empire-and How It All
Came Crashing Down. He says the engaging, novelistic style
brings home the human consequences of the moralistic crusade
against online gambling. 

View this article.

Did a top Obamacare tech
official lie to Congress about whether or not a key Obamacare
website function was delayed for political considerations?

In a congressional hearing earlier this month, Henry Chao, the
Deputy IT director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, was asked whether there were any political considerations
involved in the last-minute decision to delay the “anonymous
shopper” function at Obamacare’s online insurance portal,
Healthcare.gov.

He responded that there were “none whatsoever.”

“I look at the facts of whether—if a system is going to be
ready,” Chao
said, “and of course not everything is going to be 100 percent
perfect, and there are certain tolerances. But in this case it
failed so miserably that we could not consciously use it.”

But that’s not what happened,
according to CNN, which reports that insider documents confirm
that, in fact, the feature passed a test of its functionality
shortly before the October 1 launch of Healthcare.gov. From CNN’s
report: 

When the troubled federal health care website came online,
the key “Anonymous Shopper” function was nowhere to be found —
even though it passed a key test almost two weeks before
HealthCare.gov launched.

That successful test, noted in documents obtained by CNN and
confirmed by a source close to the project, contradicts testimony
from an Obama administration official overseeing HealthCare.gov,
who told lawmakers earlier this month the function was scrapped
because it “failed miserably” before the October 1 launch.

Perhaps the CNN story is missing some key information. We don’t
know, for example, if there was perhaps another test that did
fail—one that convinced the health site’s tech team that the
function wasn’t worth implementing.

But there’s some reason to think that CNN’s story is not
incomplete, and that Chao, in his response, did not tell the truth.
The CNN report backs up, and seems to confirm, an October report in
The Wall Street Journal, which
said that the federally run insurance portal “was initially
going to include an option to browse before registering, but that
tool was delayed.” The Journal report included an
explanation for why the function was removed—an explanation that
said nothing about technical failures. “An HHS spokeswoman said the
agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility
for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started
seeing the prices of policies.”

In other words, officials didn’t want people to see the true
price of the insurance premiums on offer through the exchanges, so
they created a system which only allowed for plan shopping after
subsidy eligibility was confirmed. 

That doesn’t sound like it was simply a question of system
readiness, as Chao claimed before Congress. And if Chao lied about
the test results, it’s reasonable to wonder whether he also misled
about the reasoning for disabling the feature.

Did a top Obamacare tech
official lie to Congress about whether or not a key Obamacare
website function was delayed for political considerations?

In a congressional hearing earlier this month, Henry Chao, the
Deputy IT director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, was asked whether there were any political considerations
involved in the last-minute decision to delay the “anonymous
shopper” function at Obamacare’s online insurance portal,
Healthcare.gov.

He responded that there were “none whatsoever.”

“I look at the facts of whether—if a system is going to be
ready,” Chao
said, “and of course not everything is going to be 100 percent
perfect, and there are certain tolerances. But in this case it
failed so miserably that we could not consciously use it.”

But that’s not what happened,
according to CNN, which reports that insider documents confirm
that, in fact, the feature passed a test of its functionality
shortly before the October 1 launch of Healthcare.gov. From CNN’s
report: 

When the troubled federal health care website came online,
the key “Anonymous Shopper” function was nowhere to be found —
even though it passed a key test almost two weeks before
HealthCare.gov launched.

That successful test, noted in documents obtained by CNN and
confirmed by a source close to the project, contradicts testimony
from an Obama administration official overseeing HealthCare.gov,
who told lawmakers earlier this month the function was scrapped
because it “failed miserably” before the October 1 launch.

Perhaps the CNN story is missing some key information. We don’t
know, for example, if there was perhaps another test that did
fail—one that convinced the health site’s tech team that the
function wasn’t worth implementing.

But there’s some reason to think that CNN’s story is not
incomplete, and that Chao, in his response, did not tell the truth.
The CNN report backs up, and seems to confirm, an October report in
The Wall Street Journal, which
said that the federally run insurance portal “was initially
going to include an option to browse before registering, but that
tool was delayed.” The Journal report included an
explanation for why the function was removed—an explanation that
said nothing about technical failures. “An HHS spokeswoman said the
agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility
for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started
seeing the prices of policies.”

In other words, officials didn’t want people to see the true
price of the insurance premiums on offer through the exchanges, so
they created a system which only allowed for plan shopping after
subsidy eligibility was confirmed. 

That doesn’t sound like it was simply a question of system
readiness, as Chao claimed before Congress. And if Chao lied about
the test results, it’s reasonable to wonder whether he also misled
about the reasoning for disabling the feature.

A bipartisan group of Wisconsin politicians are
working on legislation to limit the use of automatic license plate
readers by police. Local police chiefs have voiced their
disapproval, but the politicians contend that protecting civil
liberties must take precedence.

The Wisconsin State Journal
explains the basic features of a new bill, which Republicans
Rep. David Craig and Sen. Tom Tiffany and Democrat Rep. Fred
Kessler (D) circulated for co-sponsorship this week:

The bill would allow the cameras to be turned on only during the
investigation of a crime. It also would prohibit sharing the stored
information with non-government entities and require data
destruction within 48 hours, unless it was necessary for a criminal
investigation.

This would be a dramatic reduction of what officers are
currently allowed to do. The State Journal
revealed earlier this year that police agencies in Dane County,
where the capital city Madison is located, used 24-hour
surveillance to record over 4 million licenses plates in 3 years.
They planned on holding onto those records for 7 years.

Local police chiefs responded critically to the bill, stating
that no civil rights violations have occurred and that limiting
their use of license plate recorders would impair their ability to
effectively solve crimes. Nevertheless, they offered this week to
limit the license plate data retention to a single year.

This is not enough for Craig, though. “Seven years is
unacceptable. One year is unacceptable,” he said to the State
Journal, explaining that the practice is “imperiling civil
liberties. You have this technology that has been used that without
limits by the Legislature can lead to some very, very bad outcomes
for constitutional rights.” The representative told
WXOW, a local ABC affiliate, that he’s “concerned not about
criminals, I’m concerned about ‘John Q Public’ that obeys the
law and how long his information is on the books,” because
“government has the propensity to bungle personal information.”

Craig’s concerns may not be unwarranted. As Reason‘s
J.D. Tuccille and Scott Shackford have highlighted, the use of this
police technology in other states has led to behavior that ranges
from
creepy to outright
abusive. The American
Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier
Foundation have also covered the various dangers license plate
readers pose.

It’s crazy to pay people to burn more
fossil fuels if one is concerned about man-made global warming. At
the 19^th Conference of the Parties (COP-19) of the
U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Warsaw,
one of the best ideas for lowering the emissions of greenhouse
gases is to eliminate billions in consumer and producer fossil fuel
subsidies. Eliminating agricultural subsidies would lower the
emissions of nitrous oxide that also contribute to global warming.
Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey points out that cutting
these enormous subsidies would not only help reduce any future
global warming, it would definitely cut tax bills.

View this article.

Yesterday,
I posted a column at Time.com arguing that casual drug use
shouldn’t be seen as categorically different than casual alcohol
use.

The news hook, of course, was Rep. Trey Radel’s pleading guilty
to cocaine possession after getting nabbed in a Washington, D.C.
drug sting (great use of police resources, by the way, nabbing a
guy buying a few grams of coke in a Dupont Circle bar from an
undercover cop).

I document in the piece that exceedingly few people who use
currently illegal drugs go on to become regular users of those
substances, much less addicts. Even Radel, a conservative
Republican from Florida, didn’t say he was a cocaine addict –
instead, he blamed his decision to buy coke on his alcoholism.

Here’s a snippet from my article:

Prohibitionists typically deny the very possibility of
responsible or voluntary use of currently illegal substances. They
argue that drugs such as coke, heroin, ecstasy, methamphetamine and
even marijuana are verboten precisely because they simply can’t be
used casually. Any use either already constitutes abuse or quickly
leads to it. “Drugs are not dangerous because they are illegal,”
former drug czar William Bennett and former Health, Education and
Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano wrote in a 2011 Wall
Street Journal op-ed, “they are illegal because they
are dangerous.”

Nearly 50% of people have tried an illegal drug at least once,
yet most don’t repeat the experience. With cocaine, most who have
tried it not only don’t go on to became addicts under even the most
expansive possible definition of the term, they don’t even go on to
become regular users.

According to the
latest National
Survey on Drug Use and Health, 14.5% of Americans ages 12 and
older have tried cocaine at least once, but just 1.8% report using
the drug recreationally in the past year. And just 0.6% have used
it in the past 30 days, which would seem to be the minimal
definition of a casual user.

The same pattern is true for heroin, which is typically talked
about as magically addictive. Fear of the drug is surely one of the
reasons why just 1.8% of Americans have ever tried it at all. But
only 0.3% report using it in the past year and just 0.1% in the
past month. That pattern simply shouldn’t be possible if these
drugs were as addictive as commonly thought.

Read the whole thing here. And check out the comments
section, where a thoughtful and full-blooded discussion is taking
place over the question of whether drugs should be illegal and
whether people can in fact use these substances responsibly.
“Gifting the market in narcotics to ruthless criminals,
foreign terrorists, and corrupt law enforcement officials is
seriously compromising our future,” writes one commenter, while
another says, “You’re only addicted when you can’t
afford it.”

Opponents of legalization are well represented too, but I think
it’s a sign of the times that Time.com is not only open to running
articles titled “What’s So Bad About Casual Drug Use?” but readers
are seriously debating the merits of a major change in federal
policy.

Yesterday,
I posted a column at Time.com arguing that casual drug use
shouldn’t be seen as categorically different than casual alcohol
use.

The news hook, of course, was Rep. Trey Radel’s pleading guilty
to cocaine possession after getting nabbed in a Washington, D.C.
drug sting (great use of police resources, by the way, nabbing a
guy buying a few grams of coke in a Dupont Circle bar from an
undercover cop).

I document in the piece that exceedingly few people who use
currently illegal drugs go on to become regular users of those
substances, much less addicts. Even Radel, a conservative
Republican from Florida, didn’t say he was a cocaine addict –
instead, he blamed his decision to buy coke on his alcoholism.

Here’s a snippet from my article:

Prohibitionists typically deny the very possibility of
responsible or voluntary use of currently illegal substances. They
argue that drugs such as coke, heroin, ecstasy, methamphetamine and
even marijuana are verboten precisely because they simply can’t be
used casually. Any use either already constitutes abuse or quickly
leads to it. “Drugs are not dangerous because they are illegal,”
former drug czar William Bennett and former Health, Education and
Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano wrote in a 2011 Wall
Street Journal op-ed, “they are illegal because they
are dangerous.”

Nearly 50% of people have tried an illegal drug at least once,
yet most don’t repeat the experience. With cocaine, most who have
tried it not only don’t go on to became addicts under even the most
expansive possible definition of the term, they don’t even go on to
become regular users.

According to the
latest National
Survey on Drug Use and Health, 14.5% of Americans ages 12 and
older have tried cocaine at least once, but just 1.8% report using
the drug recreationally in the past year. And just 0.6% have used
it in the past 30 days, which would seem to be the minimal
definition of a casual user.

The same pattern is true for heroin, which is typically talked
about as magically addictive. Fear of the drug is surely one of the
reasons why just 1.8% of Americans have ever tried it at all. But
only 0.3% report using it in the past year and just 0.1% in the
past month. That pattern simply shouldn’t be possible if these
drugs were as addictive as commonly thought.

Read the whole thing here. And check out the comments
section, where a thoughtful and full-blooded discussion is taking
place over the question of whether drugs should be illegal and
whether people can in fact use these substances responsibly.
“Gifting the market in narcotics to ruthless criminals,
foreign terrorists, and corrupt law enforcement officials is
seriously compromising our future,” writes one commenter, while
another says, “You’re only addicted when you can’t
afford it.”

Opponents of legalization are well represented too, but I think
it’s a sign of the times that Time.com is not only open to running
articles titled “What’s So Bad About Casual Drug Use?” but readers
are seriously debating the merits of a major change in federal
policy.

Hate the oh-what-a-night nostalgia of
JFK assassination anniversary stories? Then read this
acidic Jack Shafer take about the coverage, wash it down with
Nick Gillespie’s
skewering of Boomer narcissism, and browse through the recent
JFK musings of our resident conspiracy-historian,
Jesse Walker.

Or, if you prefer sidestepping the whole tawdry business
altogether and making your own anniversary memories instead, choose
among these sadly neglected Nov. 22 events from years gone by. For
instance, this 1987
broadcast-hijacking by a Chicago man dressed as Max
Headroom:

Terrifying.

Prefer a more momentous conspiracy, at the highest levels,
involving murder and the mass confiscation of property? Then strap
on your Dan Brown boots and luxuriate in the 1307 Papal Bull
Pastoralis
Praeeminentiae by the Goth French Pope Clement V,
ordering Christian monarchs to persecute the
Knights of Templar. It’s more creepy with a soundtrack:

Today is the 9th anniversary of the beginning of Ukraine’s
Orange
Revolution, the 24th anniversary of all kinds of stuff relating
to the collapse of communism (such as this
massive rally on Prague’s Wenceslas Square), the 38th
anniversary of Spanish King Juan
Carlos‘s ascension to the throne (Señor Franco, he still
dead!), the 70th anniversary of Lebanon’s independence from
France, the 85th anniversary of
the premier of Ravel’s Boléro (celebrate with Bo Derek!), and
the 155th birthday of
Denver, Colorado.

As Professor Barack Obama
taught us, we are the anniversary we’ve been waiting for, so
there’s no need whatsoever to accept other people’s historical
priorities. Nominate your favorite Nov. 22 alternatives in the
comments, and I’ll update the post with good ones.