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EFF history and overview
Scott Harris has written an excellent history and overview of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that was published in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times.Harris quotes Dave Farber summing up the...
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Bowling for Columbine opens tomorrow
Michael Moore‘s latest film, Bowling for Columbine, opens tomorrow in New York and Los Angeles. Asking the timeless question, “are we a nation of gun nuts, or just plain nuts?” Bowling for Columbine...
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Feeling the boot heel of the Patriot Act
“Feeling the bootheel of the Patriot Act” is an especially disturbing — and revealing — first-person account of life under Homeland Security. Jason Halperin is a resident of New York City, and you...
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Are you safer now?
Ronald Reagan, when he was awake, got more than a little campaign traction when he asked, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” This time next year, you can bet the farm that any...
View ArticleDistrict court judge strikes part of USA PATRIOT Act
In another clear sign that the federal judiciary intends to reign in the Bush administration, Judge Audrey B. Collins of the Los Angeles District Court has struck down a portion of the USA PATRIOT Act....
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The Center for American Progress fact-check’s Condi’s ass
Fact-checking asses on the web has become such a widespread participatory sport that it’s almost a cliche. The Center for American Progress has published two truly masterful — and painstakingly...
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It’s like a ghost is writing a song like that
Bob Dylan, Minnesota’s favorite son, rarely gives interviews. Los Angeles Times staff writer Robert Hilburn got a good one that was published last Sunday but managed to evade me until today. Kicking...
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Flashback!
LA Weekly has published Michael Hoinsky Hoinski’s wonderful retrospective of Ken Kesey’s adventures in Los Angeles, on this, the 40th anniversary of the first acid test, including this quote from...
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New York Times under fire
The New York Times, often mischaracterized as a newspaper with a left-wing agenda because of its opposition to the Iraq war on its editorial page, is coming under increasing fire for its government...
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China to crack down on journalism
China has a new draft law — one that is surely the envy of President Bush and his administration — that fines media outlets for reporting on “sudden incidents.” The proposed legislation would levy...
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Kidney transplant and the mathematics of “net lifetime survival benefit”
Is it ethical to transplant a kidney in an 85-year-old dialysis patient?Before answering, consider that unlike heart and liver transplants — which go to the patient most likely to die without them —...
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Paul Krassner on Chicago 10
Last Sunday, the Los Angeles Times ran a piece by Paul Krassner about his involvement in Chicago 10, a documentary about the 1968 police riots during the Democratic convention.Krassner’s article was...
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Jobs baits, RIAA spins
Steve Jobs is getting lots of link-love with his initial “Thoughts on” column, which almost — but not really — calls for the abandonment of digital rights management (DRM) schemes on music distributed...
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New verb alert: Klein-spiked
Mark Klein, the former AT&T engineer who was the source for the New York Times story revealing the telecommunications giant was wiretapping the internet under the auspices of the US government,...
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The remedy for American health care’s pre-existing condition
In America, unlike the rest of the industrialized world and much of the developing one, you get exactly how much health care you can pay for — and even then, not always. Call it a pre-existing...
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As journalism goes, so goes democracy
That’s what Bill Moyers said in the middle of his plenary address at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis yesterday morning.Last evening I twittered that there wasn’t much worth...
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Has Boing Boing jumped the shark?
Boing Boing was one of the first things I read every day, and not just because it was near the top of my RSS aggregator. It really was a “directory of wonderful things.” Now I’m not so sure. The group...
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Twitter-enhanced luminary spectacle, indeed
First the Wall Street Journal publishes a breathless article announcing Steve Jobs’s liver transplant. The article was unsourced and disgraceful in its violation of the Apple chief executive’s...
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A different kind of car; a different kind of car company: Not so much
Yesterday, US carmaker Saturn — a subsidiary of General Motors — failed. As soon as I heard the news, I tweeted: “Different kind of car — different kind of car company. Well, not so much:...
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Is Google selling out net neutrality?
Google and Verizon are reportedly close to an agreement ending network neutrality — the principle that all information traversing the internet is treated equally — and allowing Verizon to offer higher...
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