Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 08:05:31 -0500
From: reason@free-market.net ("Jeff Taylor")
Subject: Reason-Express: REx15, v4
To: ReasonExpress@free-market.net (Reason Express List Member)
Welcome to REASON Express, the weekly e-newsletter from REASON magazine.
REASON Express is written by Washington-based journalist Jeff A. Taylor and
draws on the ideas and resources of the REASON editorial staff. For more
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REASON Express
April 10, 2001
Vol. 4 No. 15
1) New Delhi vs. the Smog Monster
2) Inside the Secret World of Movie Ratings
3) Canada Turns Over a New Leaf
4) Quick Hits
- - Clearing the Air - -
Extreme problems seldom have easy solutions. But tough nuts can very
effective in pointing out when a particular fix is headed in the wrong
direction.
So it is with New Delhi's horrid smog. The city's 13 million souls and
claptrap vehicle fleet of 2 million help produce some of the world's worst
air.
Two years ago India's Supreme Court that they could fix that. It decreed that
public transport vehicles in the city must use compressed natural gas (CNG).
The deadline for the switchover was last week.
So then, Delhi's air must be much improved by now? Not exactly.
Mobs of jobless bus workers burned five buses and damaged another 39. Generic
rioting broke out. A bus fleet of 13,000 was cutto 1,400. The city ground to
a halt.
The court responded with 10 more days to issue temporary operating permits to
vehicle owners who have placed orders for CNG vehicles or conversion kits but
do not have them installed yet.
But the court can do nothing about the cost. Some $114 million must be spent
on new buses, refit old ones, and find ways to deliver CNG to would-be uses.
Only 43 gas stations in New Delhi can now sell CNG and everyone knows that
isn't enough.
"I spend at least four hours every day now waiting in queues," said Naresh
Chand, 60, owner of a new CNG-compliant auto-rickshaw.
"My earning has dropped from $6 a day to $2 now because of these queues,"
Chand added. "What do I feed my family? First I have to live. I will think
about clean air later."
That, in handy capsule form, is the issue. How to do poor countries move to
create what are in effect luxury public goods, like clean air? A toughie to be
sure, but edicts from on high usually do more harm than good.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4083-2001Apr5.html
- - Movie Violations - -
Blame Jay Landers for that PG movie that taught your 8-year-old those colorful
words for human anatomy. Or for those inane cuts your favorite director had to
make to avoid the dreaded NC-17.
For nearly five years Landers was a movie rater for the Motion Picture
Association of America. It is top-secret work, although it only pays $30,000 a
year. But now Landers is talking and has a few interesting things to say.
For one, the 13 MPAA raters don't have computers. They write out their reports
on the movies they are rating in long hand. And it isn't clear that anyone
ever reads these reports either, Landers says.
Landers confirms that sex--even sexy language used in sexual way--will always
produce a harsher rating than violence. But other than that general rule,
raters are pretty much on their own to evaluate the films on their own sliding
scale.
That bugged Landers so much that he wrote memos asking for a more objective
set of criteria. But it is not clear those memos were ever read either.
Lander's grandiose plan was for the creation of an MPAA Office of Culture,
Ethics and Ratings Philosophy. What good that would've done is hard to
discern, but the response it met with is more telling still.
" 'What do ethics have to do with rating movies, anyway?' "is how Lander's
recalls the ratings board chairman's response.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49613-2001Apr6.html
- - Pot Luck - -
The Canadian government has come up with court-mandated guidelines for the
cultivation and use marijuana for medicinal purposes. Beginning July 31,
patients could have access to medi-pot provided they could show that nothing
else has worked.
"Canada is acting compassionately by allowing people who are suffering from
grave and debilitating illnesses to have access to marijuana for medical
purposes," said Health Minister Allan Rock.
The decisions provoked the usual knee-jerk responses in the lower 48.
"It sends a bad message to kids that marijuana has positive benefits and that
it is a so-called medicine," Kristin Hansen, a spokeswoman for the Family
Research Council, said.
"We believe the best way to help people who are sick and dying is to utilize
the drugs we have that are approved to give relief."
Which is to say, if the approved drugs do not work, tough.
So far, Canada has approved 220 people for marijuana use. All have a
recommendation by a physician and all have filled out the requisite proper
forms.
Canadian officials also say that the rule only applies to Canadian citizens.
Oh, really?
Good luck on keeping Americans away from medicine they think will help them.
Cancer clinics in Mexico have long been populated with gringos convinced they
are getting what they need there.
So just how far will Canada go to keep Americans from paying good money to
Canadian doctors--the ones who haven't already fled to the U.S. that is--for
access to medi-pot?
There are so many factors at play on both side of the border--national pride,
law enforcement hubris, medical professionalism, simple compassion, and cold
hard economics--that the issue is sure to simmer along.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50487-2001Apr6.html
QUICK HITS
- - Quote of the Week - -
"I'm technologically illiterate," Motion Picture Association of America
president Jack Valenti after attempting to show the Senate Judiciary Committee
it would only take 32 seconds to download an illegal copy of the movie
Gladiator. It didn't.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/18130.html
- - Teaching Moment - -
An assistant principal at a Long Island high school was convicted of disabling
the computer systems of several universities after college students refused to
cooperate in videotaping themselves being tickled. The tickle fetishist was
also the director of guidance for the school. David D'Amato, 39, pretended to
be a woman--"Territickle"--and paid up to $600 for vids of guys being tied up
and tickled.
http://www.newsday.com/news/daily/tick407.htm
- - Nation Building - -
It was Croat nationalists' turn to go off in Bosnia last week as they attacked
international peacekeepers. The NATO force was trying to take control (rob?)
of a bank that funds a Croat-nationalist movement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52628-2001Apr7.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52441-2001Apr7.html
- - That Makes Two of Us - -
McBaine, Missouri voted unanimously to approve the sale of liquor by the
drink. The vote was 2-0, thereby allowing McBaine's only business--a bar--to
sell booze.
http://home.post-dispatch.com/channel/pdweb.nsf/pd/86256A0E0068FE5086256A28002
7774D?OpenDocument&PubWrapper=Metro
- - Glasnost - -
Friendship Heights, Maryland Mayor Alfred Muller, late of the effort to ban
outdoor smoking on public property and more recently guilty of fondling a
teenager in a Washington National Cathedral restroom, declared his intention
not to seek a 14th consecutive term.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52421-2001Apr7.html
REASON NEWS
Lynn Scarlett, President of the Reason Foundation and nationally recognized
environmental policy expert, will be nominated by President George W. Bush for
the post of Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget of the
United States Department of the Interior.
htp://www.reason.org/040301.html
The Scene! Check out Reason Editor-at-Large Virginia Postrel's frequently
updated observations on current events and ideas. Visit The Scene at
http://www.dynamist.com/scene.html
For the latest on media appearances by Reason writers, visit
http://www.reason.com/press.html.
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