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two words: Ford Pinto. Ford was harmed for years after the public lost trust in Ford due to the Pinto.

For those who might not know. The Ford Pinto was a cheap poorly designed car of the 70s that had a nasty tendancy to burst into flames when struck from behind in minor collisions. Ford execs knew of this problem but decided against a recall as the cost was greater then the cost of a few lawsuits. see the internal Frod memo and more information

I used to argue that MS hasn't done anything any other company hasn't done or wanted to do.

I've heard this argument a lot and while I don't disagree, I'd also argue that other companies wanting/doing the same thing doesn't make it right. This is reminiscent of the common conversation between a parent and his/her child:

Parent: why did you do that?

Child: but $FRIEND did it!

Parent: if $FRIEND jumped off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff too?

I find it amusing and discouraging that these simple lessons that we try so hard to instill in our children are completely ignored or forgotten in the business world.

Who is responsible for the disintegration of traditional family values), now?

-- D

For fairness, here is a link to a follow up letters column that disputes some of the facts in the article.

Quite an eye-opener.

For fairness, here is a link to a follow up letters column that disputes some of the facts in the article.

Quite an eye-opener.

For fairness, here is a link to a follow up letters column that disputes some of the facts in the article.

Quite an eye-opener.

Okay, mod this down as flamebait and Anti-American, but this is my opinion:

Unlike Afghanistan? Yes, 9/11 was a horrible atrocity committed by a bunch of nutjobs who we should go after. However, if you don't think that oil is the primary reason we're meddling in Afghanistan then you've bought the US government propaganda hook, line, and sinker.

US oil companies have been drooling over the prospect of building an oil pipeline through Afghanistan for more than fifteen years and were perfectly happy dealing with the Taliban in an effort to make it happen before 9/11. What we have in Afghanistan now is a puppet government installed by the United States.

I comple0tely and utterly support our troops - the soldiers are doing their duty by going where our government orders them to go and doing what they're ordered to do. They are not to blame. The government of the United States and the US foreign policy are to blame for the antipathy toward the United States. 9/11 was horrible, but it was chickens coming home to roost.

We killed just as many, if not more, innocent civilians in bombing the shit out of Afghanistan. Just listen to Democracy Now and some other NEWS organizations like The Progressive and Mother Jones. CNN has become nothing more than the mouthpiece of corporate America. Have you heard or seen of civilian casualties? When was the last time we had press coverage of a military action like we did during Vietnam?

How many more innocent civilians will the United States kill in vengance for the murders of 9/11? 10,000? 100,000? Millions?

Who will we invade next? Will their prisoners be treated humanely, like the Nazis we tried after WWII? Will the prisoners of the next country we capture be "unlawful combatants" or will they be white and thus qualified for "prisoner of war" status. How many "terrorists" will be captured as the definition is expanded to include anyone who objects to what the US government is doing? Will we too be denied civil liberties without legal representation and kept in prison without trial indefinitely? Will citizens face a military courts martial?

A real world historical example of a cost benefit analysis (with respect to saving human lives) undertaken by a major corporation is the well known case of the Ford Pinto.

In 1971 dollars, the cost of a human life (or the "Societal Cost Components for a Fatality" was worked out to be $200,000. Unfortunately for Ford Pinto drivers, the cost for retooling the manufacturing facilities for the Pinto was calculated to be higher than the above cost multiplied by the number of estimated fatalities.

A somewhat biased (but nevertheless engaging) account and analysis of what went on is given here.

So it would be interesting if someone were to do a similar economic analysis of the situation given in this topic, namely the cost of these electron beam scanners versus the 'saved' cost of estimated number of people's lives saved.

Then I guess Microsoft, Exxon, the California Raisin Advisory Board and others are acting illegally and unethically, then. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander-lock 'em all up and throw away the key.

"The government, and corporations, are made up of you and I. They are not unthinking, uncaring robots that kidnap old people, puree them in a big blender, and sell them back to you as baby food."

Hah! What colour is the sky in your world?

Here are just two examples: Union Carbide, Bhopal disaster. Ford Motor Company, Pinto.

In the UC case, shoddy plant maintenance and a shocking reduction in staff training -- a cut from six months of training, to a quick two weeks! -- led to a tragic chemical leak that resulted in 20000 deaths, another 120000 people requiring medical treatment, and a generation of grossly deformed children.

United Carbide really gives a flying fuck, don't they?

Ford Motor company built Pintos from 1969 to 1977, fully aware that it would explode on rear impact, because it calculated that the predicted 180 deaths per year directly attributable to this known design defect would be cheaper than spending an additional $11 per car to eliminate the defect.

Ford really gave a flying fuck, didn't it?

Oh, hey, and let's look at one last case: Kerr-McGee corporation, which was a plutonium fuels processing plant. Yah, that'd be plutonium: one of the most deadly elements, lethal in astonishingly small quantities. The plant had some safety control problems. Karen Silkwood started kicking up a fuss.

It's pretty much acknowledged that the head honchos at Kerr-McGee had Karen Silkwood killed for her efforts to protect the workers and community.

"The government, and corporations, are made up of you and I. They are not unthinking, uncaring robots that kidnap old people, puree them in a big blender, and sell them back to you as baby food."

Hell, no. They're unthinking, uncaring robots that spew forty tons of massively toxic, mutagenic chemicals into third-world cities, build cars that explode in a low-speed rear-end collision because it's cheaper that way, and murder employees who might fink them out.

Then you should also read this!

Your author in not only an "avowed Marxist" waiting for the communist revolution,

he's dangerous " Peaceful protests are doomed to be ignored. Only a dose of destruction leads to real social change" and "Not only has there never been a revolution without violence, but there's never been meaningful social change without violence "

and his "facts" are really fiction!

You need to be more careful when you take the "filter" off of your news sources.

Maybe you should check out what the US media coverage of the massacres in East Timor was like, do a search on Google for "east timor us arms kissinger newspapers" heres one link that gets thrown up here

I don't have time to educate all the ignorant americans in the world. Open your eyes.

Ahhh, Finally a real challenge! Your author Ted Rall is an excellent writer, and makes a strong case. I had to do some tough research on this one.

I thought communism was dead, but he's an "avowed Marxist" and he says he's waiting for the communist revolution. Ok, kinda peculiar, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.

He advocates violence. He says "Peaceful protests are doomed to be ignored. Only a dose of destruction leads to real social change" and "Not only has there never been a revolution without violence, but there's never been meaningful social change without violence"
Well, that doesn't make him wrong either, but it certainly makes him dangerous. Expecially since he's waiting for a communist revolution.

Nope, what makes him wrong is that his facts are really fiction. No joke. He "quotes" Central Asian expert Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban, except the book says nothing of the sort. I bet you don't believe me, well...

I found a website called spinsanity that goes after the idiots on BOTH sides. They soundly thrash Ann Coulter for labeling those who might be against the war "traitors", and they exposed the article you linked to.

In case you can't be bothered to follow the exposed link and read the article, here's a good piece debunking the article you linked to:

To understand just how weak Rall's case is, consider that he argued that the US has oppressed Afghanistan in his previous column , claiming that "[w]e've been at war with Afghanistan for years" and that "[t]his New War is merely an escalation of genocide by trade sanction." How the US could be both "at war with Afghanistan for years" and paying the salaries of Taliban government officials "[a]s recently as 1999" is never explained or even acknowledged.

So, unless you can support the Ted Rall article you linked to, and/or debunk my spinsanity.org article, then you missed again. I'll give you credit though, your link would have been a strong argument if Ted Rall wasn't full of crap. He almost had me fooled too.

Can I have some examples of increased civil liberties?

Lost Rights, a book by James Bovard, is long, thorough, dry, and depressing collection of the MANY losses and attacks on civil liberties.

• American's today must obey 30 time more laws today than at the turn of the century.
• Fedral Agencies publish an average of 200 pages of new rulings, regulations, and proposals in the Fedral register everyday.
• A citizen's use of their land is presumed illegal until it is approved by multiple zoning and plannig commisions.
• Since 1985, there have been over 200,000 properties siezed under forfeiter laws.
• We have 2 million people in prison, a higher percentage than any other nation. Quote Mother Jones, "Since 1980, the national crime rate has meandered down, then up, then down again -- but the incarceration rate has marched relentlessly upward every single year. Nationwide, crime rates today are comparable to those of the 1970s, but the incarceration rate is four times higher than it was then. It's not crime that has increased; it's punishment."

I could go on, but the point I want to make is this: from what I can tell, we have been experiencing a net decrease in rights... If you could point to me to info that shows otherwise, I would happily read that, too.

If we can find Bert, maybe he will lead us to bin Laden.

Now how can we find Dick Cheney?

There are a lot of people in Jail. Around 2 million Americans are currently in jail.

Reference Mother Jones. For a starting place, I recommend reading "How we got to 2 Million".

I'm not endorsing this. I hate it.

We put people in prison because someone is making money off of it. Be it via the people who build the prisons, or those who run them (Private for-profit prisons!).

Remember, this is America... profit IS the bottom line. We lead the world economy for a reason.

There are a lot of people in Jail. Around 2 million Americans are currently in jail.

Reference Mother Jones. For a starting place, I recommend reading "How we got to 2 Million".

I'm not endorsing this. I hate it.

We put people in prison because someone is making money off of it. Be it via the people who build the prisons, or those who run them (Private for-profit prisons!).

Remember, this is America... profit IS the bottom line. We lead the world economy for a reason.

Ah yes, the US government, tirelessly working for our freedoms.

By the way, the US surpassed Russia a few years ago as the country which has the world's highest rate of incarceration.

In this 1998 report entitled "Overseas Invasion", they report how the BSA offices in other countries are often run solely by a Microsoft employee, and act as if they are just an arm of Microsoft marketing.

This included cases where companies were actually investigated and found to be non-compliant on a variety of products from different vendors, but BSA "wiped the slate clean" if the company bought a big site license for Microsoft Office! Quite insidious.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must point out that Microsoft and the BSA responded in a later issue of the magazine.

In this 1998 report entitled "Overseas Invasion", they report how the BSA offices in other countries are often run solely by a Microsoft employee, and act as if they are just an arm of Microsoft marketing.

This included cases where companies were actually investigated and found to be non-compliant on a variety of products from different vendors, but BSA "wiped the slate clean" if the company bought a big site license for Microsoft Office! Quite insidious.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must point out that Microsoft and the BSA responded in a later issue of the magazine.

In this 1998 report entitled "Overseas Invasion", they report how the BSA offices in other countries are often run solely by a Microsoft employee, and act as if they are just an arm of Microsoft marketing.

This included cases where companies were actually investigated and found to be non-compliant on a variety of products from different vendors, but BSA "wiped the slate clean" if the company bought a big site license for Microsoft Office! Quite insidious.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must point out that Microsoft and the BSA responded in a later issue of the magazine.

Mother Jones has an interesting page called Debt to Society . It graphs the amount of per-state and federal money spent on prisons and higher education since 1980. Hint: since 1980, the amount of state and federal money spent per-capita on higher education rose 40%. The amount spent per-capita on prisons rose 200%.

Situationist
Adbusters
CorpWatch
AllYourBrand

etc.:
Independent Media Center
Metropolitic.net
You May Be An Anarchist And Not Even Know It (I too thought the "anarchy movement" was a load of crap from bored aggressive adolescents (they really spoil it for everybody don't they?) until reading this and realizing there really is a legitimate coherent philosophy behind it)
Mother Jones
In These Times
Poliglut
Protest.net (yes, sometimes there are actually legitimate reasons to protest)
PigDog journal
Unabomer Manifesto (he may have been labeled a wacko, but read it - he's not stupid and he does sorta have a point.)

the cost of prescription drugs and drug advertising. A few hypocondriacs out there are going to spend about 20% of the total tax money spent on drugs because their TV told them they might have a disease. A very rare disease that few people have, however, their doctors won't fight them and will sign the prescription. So now your insurance is paying a premium for an unneeded but stunningly marketed drug. Simple answer, you shouldn't promote hard-core drugs on TV. But would you get that from an industry that was paid over $2B (US) by these drug companies that have seen 100% growth in demand for the drugs they can now advertise on TV. (cover story) Anyway, you asked for an example, and this is kinda-on topic...so there.
--

The Bush Administration has the will, the moral committment, and the popular support necessary to put an end to the "War on Drugs". You'll see this in action within a year.

Actually, the War on Drugs is pretty popular with the public, particularly the blue-collar rural populace, which is a strong Republican voting block. Years of Reagan activity against drug use has taken root in the heart of conservative voters. Bush can't and won't end the War on Drugs. If he felt that it needed to be curtailed, he would do it quietly, like he has done for environmental programs under the EPA and Department of Interior in his new budget proposal. There's a lot of research, investigation, and enforcement programs that got cut that the public doesn't know about.

(I spent about an hour watching CSPAN when they had a conference one day on all the environmental budget cuts. I found it ironic that he said that the restrictions on arsenic in drinking water needs more scientific research while cutting several departments responsible for that kind of research and the departments that would've tested the drinking water for toxin if the research did pan out.)

Anyway, if he wanted to cut drug enforcement, he'd do it quietly. However, the Bush administration is taking a tough stance on "renewing" the War on Drugs. You can also note that the Republican-lead Congress last year approved more than $1.3 billion to fight drug trade.

Irrelevant. This Administration is not corrupt.

I believe that have adequately responded to this in another post. If you wish to close your eyes to the truth, that is your problem. George W. Bush has committed perjury and stock fraud. He has been responsible to the condemning of personal property that was later given over as lucrative real estate to the owner of the Texas Rangers. He has been rewarding Oil and Mining companies by rolling back government programs intended to protect our people from pollution and to protect our land for future generations. He has opposed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform measure, the best means of reducing corporate/union purchases of politicians, and supported another bill which institutionalizes soft money in a manner that allows wealthy individuals (Republican backers) to contribute millions while restricting unions (Democratic Party backers). He is attempting a huge tax cut intended to profit the richest 1% of our nation, and he has used previous existing tax holes to get out of millions in property taxes in Texas. Hah! People think this is the "moral" candidate.

Bush comes from the same stock as the man who was up his neck in the Iran-Contra affair, who was responsible for the S&L scandals, and who has an even higher body count surrounding him than Bill Clinton. He and his brothers have gotten their power through illicit business deals and use of the Bush family name. They were born into wealth and have ridden a train of Bush family supporters into power. Certainly, if he wasn't a Bush, the Harken oil fiasco would've taken care of him a long time ago, and we'd never be hearing about him now.

Open your eyes! The Bush administration promises to be the most corrupt in years. It's Teapot Dome all over again, with government kickbacks for oil all the way. The Bush budget cut is rife with budget slashes for everything that Oil, Gas, and Mining didn't like. Bush's past business dealing, and his dealing as a Texas governor shows that he will be more than willing to do what it takes to preserve his own interests and keep his family wealthy.

It's no coincidence that the Left always resorts to personal attacks, smear tactics, and "digging up dirt" on their political adversaries. They can't win any other way.

Three words: conservative talk radio.

<sarcasm>
I'm sure that such respectful, well-known conservative members of the media, such as Rush Limbaugh, have never stooped to character assassination. Why, it would be ridiculous to insinuate that their entire media empires are based off of namecalling and pigeonholing people into a nebulous, evil group known as "liberals" who can have their views safely dismissed as irrelevant for belonging to this group. They're just the nicest people who always stick to the issues and argue their points elloquently without rhetoric and blustering. In fact, they'd never stoop so low as to run comedy segments with people impersonating well-known Democrats and making fools of them.
</sarcasm>

Oh, and how about Attorney General John Ashcroft's character assassination attempts?

You know, it's surprising to hear a conservative willing to call GWB's drug experimentation in 1972 "alleged" when it's clearly on record and to dismiss it as unimportant since it happened so long ago. Where was all this sympathy for experimentation when Bill Clinton admitted to trying pot in the height of the hippie era? You didn't see much sympathy from Democrats about Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct, about the Whitewater affair, or about his pot comment. Republicans were howling for blood. Oh, but now that a Republican is in office, they seem pretty quiet about his lying under oath, his stock fraud, and his excessive seizure of private property for real estate profitteering.

What? You haven't heard about all this? Maybe the Left Wing just isn't as serious about muckraking as you say they are.

There's a difference between personal attacks and revealing that a person has a history of corruption and bad leadership. Facts are facts. His record clearly shows that he is not the man to be leading the war on drugs. This info's all out there. It took me only about 15 minutes with Altavista to find this information. If this is all so clearly out there, why isn't the vast "Left Wing Mudslinging Conspiracy" promoting it more, like the Republicans did with Clinton's shady record?

Your argument is false. Republican's have been far more prone to the use of lies and character assassination than Democrats for as far back as I can remember (the Reagan years).

There's graffiti and then there's art. This is graffiti and astroturf advertising to boot. While it would be nice, I don't expect companies to play "nice." I do, however, expect them not to mess up my neighborhood.

Free speech. If you can afford the lawyers.

Well, given things like the conviction of Michael Diana for drawing a comic book, free speech doesn't exist in the U.S. On the other hand, if you're a famous football player and want to stab some people to death, it appears that you're good to go. Just don't expect to do a Hertz or Disney commercial afterwards.

1.Climate change is the real issue. the normal weather patterns which we have seen for years are changing. formerly inhabitable cold regions become more harsh and un-inhabitable, arable land is becoming dry desert. It remains to be seen what the full effect of our pollution revolution will be.

2.we've all heard that the scientists don't know what they're talking about and there's no way to predict the future of the climate. But why can't we at least acknowledge that what we do to our air will have some effect on our environment?

the fact that we don't know what is going to happen sounds like an excellent reason to be cautious with how much we change (pollute) our atmosphere. Yes, we could continue to be niave and say what we do will not matter; that would be easy. The developed world will cope with climate change but there are cultures won't. Like those who rely on subsistance farming in regions which are going through desertification. An article in the Jan/Feb issue of MotherJones describes the killer winter and famine being experienced by nomadic herders in Mongolia.

...and what do we do when, immeadeatly after launching particles into the atmosphere, a volcano erupts and blocks another % of light. There is so much chaos already in the system. Earth can metabolize the toxins we have fed it, lets quit smoking before this cancer becomes terminal.

-josh

Now, for the first time in the history of the planet Earth, there are no wars whatsoever between nation states anywhere. There is a direct relationship between the number of nuclear bombs in our posession, and the amount of violence our civilisation suffers from.

Ahem. Major unsubstantiable statements. I do agree that the sheer quantity of nuclear weapons owned by the U.S. and C.I.S. are a deterrent, if that is what you are really trying to say. However, this isn't the first time in history. You see, one is never "there", but one is always "going" there. Our relative peace is but a phase between times of war. In just six days, we will have a draft-dodging, crooked, alcoholic, warmonger in the White House. War is in our near future.

As far as your assertion of a negative relationship between quantity of nuclear weapons and the level of violence, that is obvious bosh. Please stop trolling slashdot. Thank you.

The "Lerach" bill

Year 2000 suits

And on Red Herring

When they got sued and lost

Motherjones suggests The United States needs International Election Observers like any other Banana Republic. Given that the Republican districts in Florida primarily used OptiScan systems which show significantly less error than the Punch Card Systems used in primarily Democrat area such as Palm Beach county, one wonders if this was just one of many approaches used to skew election results. There have been many accusations from Florida regarding voting irregularities, from a previous Republican mayoral candidate who had a an election overturned from absentee ballot fraud who was involved in an "Get out the vote" absentee ballot vote drive, to a large number of allegations regarding voter intimidation and outright fraud. Welcome to the United States, where we citizens don't have the right to vote unless we agree with the decision of our power brokers.

This just disgusts me.

You've seen this haven't you?
--

This leads rapidly into a nasty, divisive nature/nurture argument. I personally do believe that the sum total of violent imagery in our society does lead to more violent action (by adults as well as kids - adults are more impressionable than they think, they just have more tools to rationalise away their actions). Nonetheless I was impressed by this essay, which takes a more moderated view (if not the opposite one):

http://www.motherjon es. com/reality_check/violent_media.html

`(a) PROHIBITION ON DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION RELATING TO MANUFACTURE OF CONTROLLED
SUBSTANCES-

`(1) CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE DEFINED- In this subsection, the term `controlled substance' has the meaning
given that term in section 102(6) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802(6)).

`(2) PROHIBITION- It shall be unlawful for any person--

`(A) to teach or demonstrate the manufacture of a controlled substance, or to distribute by any means information
pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture of a controlled substance, with the intent that the teaching,
demonstration, or information be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime; or

`(B) to teach or demonstrate to any person the manufacture of a controlled substance, or to distribute to any person,
by any means, information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture of a controlled substance, knowing
that such person intends to use the teaching, demonstration, or information for, or in furtherance of, an activity that
constitutes a Federal crime.

`(b) PENALTY- Any person who violates subsection (a) shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or
both.'.

(b) CLERICAL AMENDMENT- The table of chapters at the beginning of part I of title 18, United States Code, is amended by
inserting after the item relating to chapter 21 the following new item:

author: Pulina Borsook
publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1891620789
pages: 256
rating: 8/10
summary: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech

I heard about Cyberselfish when driving around Vermont Memorial Day weekend from used bookstore to used bookstore. The NPR station was broadcasting an interview with Cyberselfish author Paulina Borsook, a writer who worked for Wired during its glory years. I was put off by the book's wretched title, but engrossed by the subject: the powerful undercurrent of libertarianism that flows through high-tech circles. I have been astounded but not amazed at the deeply adolescent and peevish libertarian attitudes that so many techies cling to, from gun worship to fear of governmental Internet regulation. Listening to Borsook speak intelligently and cogently about technolibertarianism made me want her book very much.

This month I garnered a copy of Cyberselfish, and I'm still appalled with the title (which comes from an eponymous essay for Mother Jones she wrote in July 1996, when such cyberlanguage wasn't so cybertrite). Cyberselfish is a book-length essay, in fact a somewhat thinly edited series of linked essays. There's a rush of immediacy and wit; for a random example, "Polyamory is the preferred term of art; it's gender-neutral, where polygamy and polyandry are not, and allows for all persuasions of partner choice (gay/straight/bi/it depends)." With the freshness and informality comes flaws. There is too much repeated material in the book. It's clear that essays written at different times have been cobbled together. Reading the book straight through is like reading some multivolume series straight through, in which the characters and history are rehashed at the beginning of each book.

Cyberselfish looks at a few specific examples of technolibertarianism in depth: Bionomics, cypherpunks, Wired magazine, and Silicon Valley's impressive lack of philanthropy. Each time Borsook exposes the compassionless, fearful, posturing, politically myopic core, without dismissing the good aspects of the high-tech culture and individuals. For example, she thinks fighting for privacy rights is good, but obsessing about it and descending into rabid, paranoid ranting on alt.cypherpunks is scary. She moves smoothly from the historical to the academic to the personal, deliberately exposing her own frailities and biases while she examines those of others.

To give a deeper example of the content of Cyberselfish, Bionomics is the use of biological (and particularly Darwinian) metaphors to describe economic processes, as popularized by Michael Rothschild (Bionomics: Economy as Ecosystem) and then the The Bionomics Institute (TBI). Borsook convincingly points out through both empirical observation and reasoned analysis that Bionomics boils down to economic libertarianism, where government involvement is wrong and the most cut-throat, efficient and entrepeneurial businesses are the best. Ecological metaphors are used in Bionomics only when they're useful and sexy: The ecosystem of Hawaii was used as a metaphor for the fragility of protected industries. Under Bionomics logic, Hawaii's beautiful, lush, peaceful ecosystem is to be derided. Bionomics uses metaphors to draw syllogistic conclusions. Doing that can be powerfully convincing but amounts to hand-waving and emotional appeals. Borsook cuts through the smoke and mirrors.

After a few years, the Bionomics Institute conferences were (literally) taken over by the Cato Institute, the premier libertarian think tank in the nation. The annual Bionomics conterences began in 1993. The 1997 conference was the Cato/Bionomics Conference; 1998, the "Annual Cato Institute/Forbes ASAP Conference on Technology and Society." TBI morphed into software-startup Maxager, which intends to offer Bionomical tools to companies. Borsook wonders what meaning can be ascribed to the success or the failure of the company. If Maxager fails, is it because it wasn't Bionomically good enough, or just because of the many uncontrollable factors that cause the vast majority of startups to fail? If it succeeds, does it validate Bionomics, or just the good connections the founder has with Silicon Valley venture capitalists?

The other chapters are just as interesting. Cyberselfish sharply describes all the archetypes of the technolibertarians, from the neo-hippie polyandric Burning Man attendee to the Lexus-driving, 100-hour-a-week, plugged-in entrepeneur with a sprawling bungalow in Santa Clara county.

One of the most crystalline passages in the book describes Eric Raymond's leaking of the Halloween Document, written by Microsoft program manager Vinod Valloppillil. The two clearly have vast ideological differences, the open-source cowboy and the Evil Empire functionary, but they're both hard-core libertarians, an entirely unreported fact. In Borsook's words, "It was rather like discovering that both a liberal and a conservative senator had both acquired their law degrees from Yale: no news here."

As I said before, the book is somewhat haphazardly put together, and nearly every sentence is to some degree contentious; even someone who agrees with her basic position will find reason to quibble. Cyberselfish doesn't come near to answering all the questions it raises. Borsook doesn't really tackle the paradox that "libertarians celebrate the cult of the individual" but Open Source celebrates the collective. What does it mean to be an Open Source libertarian?

I personally think it's somewhat unfair to attack those flaws, as they're inexorably part of Cyberselfish's loose, immediate, opinionated, and conversational style. It's kind of like how Slashdot's open forums allow for a review like this and the inevitable "hot grits" responses.

Violent Media is Good for Kids

Children will feel rage. Even the sweetest and most civilized of them, even those whose parents read the better class of literary magazines, will feel rage. The world is uncontrollable and incomprehensible; mastering it is a terrifying, enraging task. [....] Through immersion in imaginary combat and identification with a violent protagonist, children engage the rage they've stifled, come to fear it less, and become more capable of utilizing it against life's challenges.

food for thought...

This, I know.. There are very few places you can find journalistic integrity. I like to think that Mother Jones has a fair amount of it. Of course, it's pretty leftist. Still - they're not afraid to take on what goes on in the real world.

The point that I was making, was that I think the media should be required by law to inform us about possible sources of bias. Slashdot does this on a regular basis, whenever Andover.net is involved in an article, the guys will remind us of that.

This may be of interest to some... Peter McWilliams, who is mentioned in the MotherJones article, was found dead on June 14. Peter used marijuana to suppress the nausea that was a side-effect of his medications for AIDS and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. After being wrongfully denied access to medical marijuana by the Federal Government, he choked to death on his own vomit. Read all about it on the Libertarian Party website.

http://www.motherjones.com/sideshow/pvc.html

The Phantom Menace was the title of their lead piece. We are driving at the bomb-shelter hysteria of the 50's.

I'm not saying that a biological terrorist threat is impossible. I'm saying that the hysteria surrounding it is causing our representatives and senators to justify pumping billions into preparedness programs that could be better spent elsewhere. If just one economist sat down (liberal or conservative) and did a CBA of this situation the sound of that jaw jitting the floor would be heard for miles. It's insane. It's comparable to $20 dollar screws and $100 screwdrivers.

More frustrating than the spending is the way in which people are buying this without skepticism. Without even questioning the legitimacy of the attack, damage, or threat, they are behind the spending and engrossed in the fear - the vivid images of death and gore, bags of sugar, the images of aerosol cans, salad bars, subway cars.

There are bigger threats to the health of our nation and they aren't solved with military budget increases - as the author mentioned, the problematic state of our health system - could perhaps be the biggest threat to the health and safety of americans.

More money is lost every year due to people missing work than to bio-terrorists. More money needs to be sent reforming healthcare than on anti-terrorist activites. I haven't had a chance to read this book, but I've read other articles along these lines and it sounds like books like this, taken in the wrong context (and even take straight-up) fan the flames of fear and knee-jerk spending.

I will read this at my library, but I'm not buying it.

Cell phone industry research has shown that the phones can cause brain tumors in humans - and the industry is trying to quash their own researcher!