Are Men Stupid!?

From Slate:

A remarkable new product is on its way that may make it possible to shift the burden of reproductive responsibility—gasp!—to men. Earlier this year, Dutch pharmaceutical giant Organon, along with Germany's Schering, announced that they expect their hormone-based contraceptive for men to hit the European market in as few as five years.

Man, I am all over this! I'd be the first in line. How could it have taken so long for this? Why are men even hesitating? Are men stupid?!

Big Brother Update #2

From Wired News:

As the full Senate and House prepare to vote on competing versions of the 9/11 Commission recommendations this week, most eyes are on how the government's intelligence services will be revamped. But civil liberties advocates, immigration groups and some 9/11 Commission members are criticizing provisions in the House bill that they say go far beyond the commission's recommendations.

This country is changing, and not in a good way. Fear is overtaking freedom.

Big Brother Update #1

From Wired News:

Government lawyers defending the identification requirement at the nation's airports from a lawsuit by privacy activist John Gilmore admitted in a new filing Wednesday that the requirement exists, but argued it cannot be challenged or seen in full because it is a law enforcement technique, not a law.

Absolutely freaking amazing. You couldn't make this stuff up. Oh, wait. that's right: George Orwell did. Or was he just seeing into the future and missed the date by, oh, about 20 years....?

Things I Didn't Know about Che Guevara

From Slate:

The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.

I didn't know any of this. I know of Che only from T-shirts and Evita. Yikes.

Hatch Falls into Himself

From Wired News:

CD burners, jukebox programs and Wi-Fi routers are just a few of the technologies that could be threatened under a new version of the Induce Act, critics say. Like the first version of the controversial bill—which is championed by the music and movie industries—the latest language says that a company that intentionally induces a person to infringe copyright is liable.... Thus, the proposed law could deter companies from investing in new products that may make them liable for billions of dollars—even if they never intended the product to be used to infringe copyright. In addition, the bill would nullify the so-called Betamax decision, which sparked 20 years of innovation in technology. This legislation introduces a new kind of infringement—inducement—which Betamax does not protect.... "Hatch's staff still has not heard what the technology companies have been shouting as loud as they can," Schultz said. "He just rejected them all and went back to his own version. It makes you wonder how much he was actually listening to what people were saying."

This is a terrible development. This government is completely beholden to big business, and apparently whichever big business throws the most money its way, even if that screws over other big business. In 10 years, repeating a conversation will be illegal.

Doctor, My Eyes!

Very cool and very bizarre at the same time. What strange creatures we are. More info here.

Posted by Hello

News Report from Iraq

This is a very funny video clip. I'm told it's very "Monty Python-esque."

Thou Dost Protest Too Much

From Slate:

Depending on where you stand, Brett Bursey is either the world's greatest protester or a giant, unmitigated pain. He's been a thorn in the side of Columbia, S.C., authorities since 1969—when he got two years in prison for spray-painting "HELL NO, WE WON'T GO" on the wall of his draft board office. Except for a stretch in the early 1970s spent hiding in the mountains of northern Georgia, Bursey's been a fixture of Lexington County, protesting everything protestable since Nixon and Vietnam. So, you'd be excused for thinking that Bursey's recent federal conviction stemming from his protest of a 2002 visit by President Bush—a conviction upheld last Wednesday—is his own, special problem. But it comes at a time when hundreds of protesters are being rounded up at presidential visits all over the country, making Bursey the 56-year-old canary in a demonstrators' coal mine.

Read this article!! I can't believe this is America. I can't believe that anyone thinks this is a good idea. I don't want to be a "slippery-sloper," but good God! Why aren't people up in arms about this?!

Bumper Sticker Insubordination

From Slate:

Lynne Gobbell of Moulton, Ala.... was fired from her job... for driving to work with a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker in the rear windshield of her Chevy Lumina. The person who did the firing was Phil Geddes, who owns the company and is an enthusiastic Bush supporter.

Now, maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine the reverse of this happening. Only on the right is there so much intolerance and disrespect for what this country is supposed to stand for. With another four years of this sort of behavior, no one will even remember a time when you could think for yourself. "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength." At least there's a sort-of happy ending to this story.

Sign #424 of the Impending Apocalypse

From Slate:

After years of working in the 'leisure oxygen field' marketing oxygen for salons and spas in the U.K., businessman Dominic Simler came up with a novel idea: Why not create a device that would allow users to inhale vaporized alcohol along with oxygen? The machine Simler invented, called Alcohol Without Liquid, or AWOL, which takes hard liquor and disperses it as vapor in an oxygen mist, has been available at a small number of bars in the U.K. for several months; recently, a Greensboro, N.C.-based company called Spirit Partners purchased an exclusive license to sell the machines in the United States.

As the article goes on to say, this has a far greater potential to create addiction than the standard liquid form (and that form is no slouch at creating addicts). Always building a better mousetrap, I guess.

First Class

From Slate:

Very often, when black people see me alone with my white-looking biracial children, they demand to know that I'm going to teach them that they're black. They do this with great seriousness, usually glaring into my eyes as if they caught me about to steal change from the collection plate. (Most whites, on the other hand, either think I'm the nanny or search for a polite way to ask if they're my biological children.)

Another fascinating article from Debra Dickerson. Or maybe just fascinating to me. It's interesting when life puts people in places they never thought they'd be and forces them to examine their preconceptions.