Over the course of this weekend, we'll be giving Reason Online a long-awaited, much-anticipated redesign and update. On Monday, you'll awaken to find a website powered by quicker servers than ever before and packed with new features such as:

—automatically generated lists of articles sorted by topic and author

—a large selection of syndicated content (RSS) feeds, including Hit & Run posts, all new articles, Brickbats, select topics, and select authors

—printer-friendly and emailable versions of all content

—an end to server delays while commenting at Hit & Run (yes, we killed all the server squirrels)

—a cover gallery of all print issues of the magazine, going back to 1968

 As with all upgrades, we expect that there will be glitches in the coming days (and weeks). Not all older articles will be available during the transition period, for instance, and I'm sure other weird issues will arise.

You can help us fix any problems you encounter by sending emails to webmaster@reason.com.

50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images from Charles Darwin's pen, available--searchable--online. So go ahead, find out Everything You Wanted to Know About Evolution But Were Afraid to Ask.

Highlights from Darwin's notebooks, letters, and testimony:

* Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!!--The Devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather! More

* Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world. More

* Chairman of a Royal Commission Hearing on vivisection: Then to hesitate to perform experiments, though painful in their nature, when the animal was rendered insensible, would not be, in your opinion, a judicious course to recommend to the Queen and Parliament?

Darwin: Certainly not. It is unintelligible to me how anybody could object to such experiments. I can understand a Hindoo, who would object to an animal being slaughtered for food, disapproving of such experiments, but it is absolutely unintelligible to me on what ground the objection is made in this country. More

This, and so much more, here.

Via Marginal Revolution, and Adam Gopnik's recent New Yorker article on Darwin (not online).

Ronald Bailey sees dark cumulonimbi looming over California and the UK's new climate change agreements.

Hate speed cameras? Angry, speed-addicted Brits will put your camera animus to shame. The New York Times chronicles the ways the British express their considerable displeasure:
Among the ways that motorists have made this clear: spraying the cameras with paint; knocking them over; covering them in festive wrapping paper and garbage bags; digging them up; shooting, hammering and firebombing them; festooning them with burning tires; and filling their casings with self-expanding insulation foam that, when activated, blows them apart.

A federal lawsuit filed yesterday by Brooklyn property owners and tenants promises to test whether Kelo v. New London, last year's Supreme Court case approving the use of eminent domain for economic redevelopment, left any meaningful limits on the government's authority to forcibly transfer land from one private owner to another. The majority in Kelo said the prospect of jobs and increased tax revenue can be enough to justify condemnation, but it suggested that officials need "a carefully considered development plan" and emphasized that they may not seize land "simply to confer a private benefit on a particular private party." The plaintiffs in the Brooklyn case, who are challenging a huge redevelopment project in Prospect Heights that relies on eminent domain, charge that the project was developed without a comprehensive plan, competitive bidding, or meaningful public input and that it is driven exclusively by the interests of the developer, the Forest City Ratner Company. "This is not merely favoritism of a particular developer in the classic sense," their complaint says. "Here, the 'favored' developer in fact is driving and dictating the process, with government officials at all levels obediently falling into line. This is precisely what the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause forbids." Since the government no doubt will argue that the project mainly serves the public interest and only incidentally benefits Forest City Ratner, the case could indicate how deferential the courts will be following Kelo in reviewing the process by which public officials reach such determinations.

Brian Doherty's plea for not politicizing pop culture has fallen on deaf ears, as far as Battlestar Galatica fans are concerned. Two liberal writers use the Sci-Fi hit to explain some of our current foreign policy fantasies, fantasies the show's writers are obviously aware of. In the American Prospect, Brad "Sadly No!" Reed remembers how conservatives glommed onto the show in previous seasons.
Over the sci-fi show's first two seasons, many conservatives saw it as a pitch-perfect metaphor for the United States' post-9/11 battle against Osama bin Laden and his Muslamonazi horde. Galactica, which has become something of a surprise hit on the Sci Fi Channel, takes place in a post-apocalyptic universe where humanity has been decimated by a nuclear strike launched by an enemy race of robots known as the Cylons. Most of the action revolves around a noble band of 50,000 survivors who hurtle through space searching for a new home planet. Along the way, they have had to deal with Cylon sleeper agents, suicide bombers, and even a sinister pack of left-wingers who use violence to try to force humanity to make peace with their enemies.
...
But alas, this love affair between Galactica and the right was not to last: in its third season, the show has morphed into a stinging allegorical critique of America's three-year occupation of Iraq. The trouble started at the end of the second season, when humanity briefly escaped the Cylons and settled down on the tiny planet of New Caprica. The Cylons soon returned and quickly conquered the defenseless humans. But instead of slaughtering everyone, the Cylons decided to take a more enlightened path by "benevolently occupying" the planet and imposing their preferred way of life by gunpoint. The humans were predictably not enthused about their allegedly altruistic rulers, and they immediately launched an insurgency against them using improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers. Needless to say, this did not go over very well in the Galacticon camp.

Over at Slate, Spencer "15 is not 25" Ackerman tries to crack Galactica's code: What's the lesson the show's trying to impart with its occupation plot?
The big question that arises from the first few episodes of this season of BSG is whether the resistance is worth it. For all the show's admirable treatment of the moral complexities and the uncertainties of insurgency, its answer is an unequivocal yes. The Cylons believe themselves to be righteous, but they are monsters. They are infinitely more powerful than the humans, yet live in fear that humanity will "nurse a dream of vengeance down through the years so that one day they could just go out into the stars and hunt the Cylon once more." The Cylons occupy New Caprica, impose their will in place of any elected human leadership, round up and torture those who resist, and then do not understand why the humans refuse to accept their promises of benevolence. It often seems as if the whole motive of the creative talent behind BSG is to make you feel uncomfortable about being an American during the occupation of Iraq.

On one level I'm just glad for the expansion of cable TV, iTunes and DVD technology for making a show like this viable off one of the major networks: There's no way this show could have tackled these issues and kept its advertisers if it was on CBS, NBC or ABC.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest runs what it calls its Integrity in Science project. That project aims to be a watchdog over industry-funded science blowing the whistle when CSPIers detect a foul. To this end, the project emails out a weekly Integrity in Science Watch newsletter detailing instances of what CSPI believes is conflicted science. So far, so good.

However, this week's Watch featured an item (2nd one down) based on a Wall Street Journal article about a newly released study on cancer rates at IBM factories. Apparently IBM had tried to suppress this study.

The CSPIers properly cocked a skeptical eye toward an earlier study which found lower than average cancer rates published by epidemiologists hired by IBM--nothing wrong with that. What was curious about the the Integrity in Science Project item was its apparent lack of skepticism about the newly published study, which was financed by trial lawyers. As I say, curious.

Over the course of this weekend, we'll be giving Reason Online a long-awaited, much-anticipated redesign and update. On Monday, you'll awaken to find a website powered by quicker servers than ever before and packed with new features such as:

—a large selection of syndicated content (RSS) feeds, including Hit & Run posts, all new articles, Brickbats, select topics, and select authors

—printer-friendly and emailable versions of all content

—an end to server delays while commenting at Hit & Run (yes, we killed all the server squirrels)

—a cover gallery of all print issues of the magazine, going back to 1968

As with all upgrades, we expect that there will be glitches in the coming days (and weeks). Not all older articles will be available during the transition period, for instance, and I'm sure other weird issues will arise.

You can help us fix any problems you encounter by sending emails to webmaster@reason.com.

In the November Washington Monthly, Christina Larson reviews Jan Whitaker's history of American department stores -- retailers who were destroying community, homogenizing the planet, and putting mom and pop on the street before Sam Walton was born:
Established venders feared being driven out of business, and indeed many Main Street tea merchants, booksellers, crockery stores, and glassware dealers did lose patrons and close shop. Other early critiques were less about cents than sensibility. In 1897, Scribner's lamented the big stores' tawdry sales events; banal and homogenous goods; and appeals to customers as crowds, rather than as selective individuals. Mark Twain found maddening the stores' practice of heaping goods of no practical relation on adjacent tables for customers to simply rummage through. Of particular offense was the sight of an autobiography of President Ulysses S. Grant strewn alongside the rugs and teapots at John Wanamaker's store in Philadelphia. Clemens, who had co-published the book, blasted Wanamaker as "that unco-pious butter-mouthed Sunday school-slobbering sneak-thief."

Bad publicity aside, as Whitaker points out, "outweighing all the department store negatives was one huge positive fact: millions of people shopped in them."

I'm no Wal-Mart enthusiast, and something is clearly lost as we move from the pre-Bloomie's era to city-centered department stores to suburban Sam's Clubs. But given that small retailers have long been defined in opposition to their "banal and homogenous" counterparts -- just as the hipster coffee shop downtown is as emphatically not Starbucks as it is anything else -- it seems obvious that big boxes create opportunity for creative competition even as they trounce those who fail to innovate.

Julian Sanchez spotted a community of Wal-Mart haters back in December.

In a Washington Times op-ed piece, economist John Lott and former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith portray Air America as a scheme to avoid campaign finance restrictions by disguising long commercials for Democratic candidates as talk radio programming. "With $41 million in losses since 2004, and $9.8 million owed just to Robert Glaser, RealNetworks' chairman, Democrats who bankrolled this 'company' weren't so much investors as campaign contributors," they write. "With McCain-Feingold's 'hard money' donation limits of $2,000 per candidate and 'soft money' limits to party campaign committees of $57,500, there is no way that Mr. Glaser or other wealthy Democratic donors could have legally given such large sums directly to Democrats."

This end run around McCain-Feingold would, like the NRA's foray into talk radio, be understandable, even admirable, if it weren't for the fact that the people responsible for it supposedly favor the restrictions they're dodging (just as 527 mega-donor George Soros supposedly wants to stop rich guys like himself from having a disproportionate influence on elections). Instead of demanding that this gaping loophole be closed, Lott and Smith suggest tearing it wide enough to accommodate anyone who has a political message to communicate: "We'll call it the First Amendment solution...Deregulate the system, let the voters hear what people (even those with 'big money') have to say, and trust the voters to choose wisely. The alternative is to extend restrictions to the press."

According to the BBC, an exhibit at the Oslo Natural History Museum
says homosexuality has been observed among 1,500 species, and that in 500 of those it is well documented.

The exhibition - entitled Against Nature? - includes photographs of one male giraffe mounting another, of apes stimulating others of the same sex, and two aroused male right whales rubbing against each other.

"Homosexuality is a common and widespread phenomenon in the animal world," says an exhibition statement.

"Not only short-lived sexual relationships, but even long-lasting partnerships; partnerships that may last a lifetime."

The BBC also reports that one unnamed American commentator described the exhibit as "propaganda invading the scientific world." The commentator in question turns out to be one Nathan Tabor, described in his author's bio as "a conservative political activist based in Kernersville, North Carolina." His arguments are...well, read them for yourselves:

* "If homosexuality were truly strong in the animal kingdom, there would be no animals left, since they would be unable and unwilling to reproduce."

* The museum "claims that bonobos, a type of chimpanzee, are all bisexuals. This is significant, because those who believe in evolution rather than in intelligent design can then make the case that we humans must all have bisexual tendencies too, since, in their view, we're all descended from apes."

* "For years, homosexual activists have tried to make the case that there's a special homosexual gene hiding in the gene pool. Yet, that simply doesn't explain why one human twin might pursue a homosexual lifestyle and another would not."

* "With liberals such as these running scientific exhibits and some schools, we can fully expect a version of the beloved storybook 'The Three Little Pigs' to give rise to 'The Three Gay Pigs.'"

Readers are invited to write their own versions of The Three Gay Pigs in the comments section. Keep it clean -- this is a family blog, dammit -- and try to do something more clever than making a pun on the word "blow." You get extra credit if your story includes even more misunderstandings of evolution and genetics than can be found in Tabor's column.

In response to a bill that would impose a penalty of up to five years in prison for selling bongs and up to three years for possessing them, Israeli Deputy Public Defense Attorney Hagit Larnau this week slammed not only the proposed paraphernalia law but the government's general treatment of cannabis users. (Bongs currently are sold openly in Israel, but this ban is substantially harsher than state and federal paraphernalia laws in the U.S.) Echoing the Nixon-appointed National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, Larnau told a Knesset committee that drug law enforcement aimed at pot smokers causes more harm than the drug use it's supposed to prevent. "The 'enforcement paradox' is that much greater when the issue in question is the use of drugs which cause relatively little harm to users and the nature of which is infrequent and, for the most part, ends with the beginning of serious employment and a person's domestication," she said. "[It's] the social effect and not the drug use itself which ends up harming individuals. It harms their ability to evolve professionally and economically and become normally integrated in society."

[via the Drug War Chronicle]

Brian Doherty sits down to enjoy a Bob Dylan record and tries to shush all the would-be cultural critics who link every piece of art to politics.

50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images from Charles Darwin's pen, available--searchable--online. So go ahead, find out Everything You Wanted to Know About Evolution But Were Afraid to Ask.

Highlights from Darwin's notebooks, letters, and testimony:

* Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!!--The Devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather! More

* Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world. More

* Chairman of a Royal Commission Hearing on vivisection: Then to hesitate to perform experiments, though painful in their nature, when the animal was rendered insensible, would not be, in your opinion, a judicious course to recommend to the Queen and Parliament?

Darwin: Certainly not. It is unintelligible to me how anybody could object to such experiments. I can understand a Hindoo, who would object to an animal being slaughtered for food, disapproving of such experiments, but it is absolutely unintelligible to me on what ground the objection is made in this country. More

This, and so much more, here.

Via Marginal Revolution, and Adam Gopnik's recent New Yorker article on Darwin (not online).

Even before the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage, Tennessee's U.S. Senate candidates were brawling over who was more steadfast in defending the sacred institution against the homosexual onslaught. Now the competition has intensified. Yesterday Harold E. Ford, the Democrat, responded to a Republican National Committee ad that accused him of supporting gay marriage with a spot slamming the RNC's "despicable, rotten lies." Ford says he will vote for the gay marriage ban that's on Tennessee's ballot next month. His opponent, Bob Corker, does him one better by saying he already voted for it, presumably via absentee ballot. Ford, whose morality has already been questioned, can't afford to back down from this fight. He should say he plans to vote for the ban twice.

In the dying days of the campaign, some Republicans are winning over the media by puffing out their chests and talking about the war in Iraq in high-minded, "take your medicine" terms. The war's been so unpopular for so long that Rick Santorum's current gambit - a series of speeches dubbed "The Gathering Storm Tour" (after Churchill) - looks almost heroic.
Santorum linked Iran and North Korea with a network of enemies that include Venezuela, Cuba, Syria and Islamic extremism in general. Quoting Winston Churchill, Santorum said that, as in the lead-up to World War II, America does not recognize the "gathering storm."

"Unlike the past, the wicked are not just building a military machine that can threaten us with a large war on the ground and in the air, they are building weapons of mass destruction unlike anything we have ever seen... . The consequences are higher than they've ever been," Santorum told cadets at Valley Forge Military Academy and College in Wayne.

It's impressing the hell out of conservatives, but Matt Yglesias has an analysis that's probably more in line with what voters think.
And just think -- what if the Venezuelan terrorists get on the Iranian space station? What then Mr. Casey, huh? huh? Seriously, these people are morons. Dangerously dishonest or (I fear) dangerously confused about what's going on in the world. "Say what you will," remarks [National Review's Kathryn Jean] Lopez, "but this is leadership." Custer-quality leadership at that.

Meanwhile, Minnesota Senate candidate Mark Kennedy (last seen here) is getting a ton of soft media coverage, including a block on Fox News later today, for an ad where he hikes up his John Mark Karr-brand khakis and defends the war in the wheeziest possible terms.
None of us like war, and we've made some mistakes in Iraq. We're facing an enemy that must be defeated. Leaving Iraq now will create a breeding ground for new attacks on America. That's the harsh reality. My opponent says the answer is diplomacy, but you can't negotiate with people who wanna kill ya. I'm Mark Kennedy. Securing the peace is a lot harder than wishing for it. I approve this message, even though it may not be what you wanna hear.

I've watched that ad twice and I can't see what's substantially different between his message and the Bush administration's message. It's just phrased in a mopy, self-righteous way. So, why do media and political experts see stuff like this and stroke their chins thoughtfully at the "honesty" on display? Pro-war Republicans refuse to take responsibility for the conduct of the Iraq war, refuse to consider alternative arguments in the "war on terror," and want to be taken very, very seriously. I see some light at the end of the tunnel: After election day, maybe some few think tanks will have openings for former Senators and congressmen to make these very, very serious arguments.

Ronald Bailey sees dark cumulonimbi looming over California and the UK's new climate change agreements.

Hate speed cameras? Angry, speed-addicted Brits will put your camera animus to shame. The New York Times chronicles the ways the British express their considerable displeasure: Among the ways that motorists have made this clear: spraying the cameras with paint; knocking them over; covering them in festive wrapping paper and garbage bags; digging them up; shooting, hammering and firebombing them; festooning them with burning tires; and filling their casings with self-expanding insulation foam that, when activated, blows them apart.

A federal lawsuit filed yesterday by Brooklyn property owners and tenants promises to test whether Kelo v. New London, last year's Supreme Court case approving the use of eminent domain for economic redevelopment, left any meaningful limits on the government's authority to forcibly transfer land from one private owner to another. The majority in Kelo said the prospect of jobs and increased tax revenue can be enough to justify condemnation, but it suggested that officials need "a carefully considered development plan" and emphasized that they may not seize land "simply to confer a private benefit on a particular private party." The plaintiffs in the Brooklyn case, who are challenging a huge redevelopment project in Prospect Heights that relies on eminent domain, charge that the project was developed without a comprehensive plan, competitive bidding, or meaningful public input and that it is driven exclusively by the interests of the developer, the Forest City Ratner Company. "This is not merely favoritism of a particular developer in the classic sense," their complaint says. "Here, the 'favored' developer in fact is driving and dictating the process, with government officials at all levels obediently falling into line. This is precisely what the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause forbids." Since the government no doubt will argue that the project mainly serves the public interest and only incidentally benefits Forest City Ratner, the case could indicate how deferential the courts will be following Kelo in reviewing the process by which public officials reach such determinations.

Brian Doherty's plea for not politicizing pop culture has fallen on deaf ears, as far as Battlestar Galatica fans are concerned. Two liberal writers use the Sci-Fi hit to explain some of our current foreign policy fantasies, fantasies the show's writers are obviously aware of. In the American Prospect, Brad "Sadly No!" Reed remembers how conservatives glommed onto the show in previous seasons.Over the sci-fi show's first two seasons, many conservatives saw it as a pitch-perfect metaphor for the United States' post-9/11 battle against Osama bin Laden and his Muslamonazi horde. Galactica, which has become something of a surprise hit on the Sci Fi Channel, takes place in a post-apocalyptic universe where humanity has been decimated by a nuclear strike launched by an enemy race of robots known as the Cylons. Most of the action revolves around a noble band of 50,000 survivors who hurtle through space searching for a new home planet. Along the way, they have had to deal with Cylon sleeper agents, suicide bombers, and even a sinister pack of left-wingers who use violence to try to force humanity to make peace with their enemies.
...
But alas, this love affair between Galactica and the right was not to last: in its third season, the show has morphed into a stinging allegorical critique of America's three-year occupation of Iraq. The trouble started at the end of the second season, when humanity briefly escaped the Cylons and settled down on the tiny planet of New Caprica. The Cylons soon returned and quickly conquered the defenseless humans. But instead of slaughtering everyone, the Cylons decided to take a more enlightened path by "benevolently occupying" the planet and imposing their preferred way of life by gunpoint. The humans were predictably not enthused about their allegedly altruistic rulers, and they immediately launched an insurgency against them using improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers. Needless to say, this did not go over very well in the Galacticon camp.Over at Slate, Spencer "15 is not 25" Ackerman tries to crack Galactica's code: What's the lesson the show's trying to impart with its occupation plot?The big question that arises from the first few episodes of this season of BSG is whether the resistance is worth it. For all the show's admirable treatment of the moral complexities and the uncertainties of insurgency, its answer is an unequivocal yes. The Cylons believe themselves to be righteous, but they are monsters. They are infinitely more powerful than the humans, yet live in fear that humanity will "nurse a dream of vengeance down through the years so that one day they could just go out into the stars and hunt the Cylon once more." The Cylons occupy New Caprica, impose their will in place of any elected human leadership, round up and torture those who resist, and then do not understand why the humans refuse to accept their promises of benevolence. It often seems as if the whole motive of the creative talent behind BSG is to make you feel uncomfortable about being an American during the occupation of Iraq.On one level I'm just glad for the expansion of cable TV, iTunes and DVD technology for making a show like this viable off one of the major networks: There's no way this show could have tackled these issues and kept its advertisers if it was on CBS, NBC or ABC.