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Graeme Wood of The Atlantic gets it: the combination of drug-testing and position-monitoring technology with a swift, predictable sanctions process means that Bentham’s Panopticon no longer requires beds, walls, or guards.
Archive for August, 2010
August 16th, 2010
Category: Health and Medicine, Spirituality and Religion
The normal jolt most of us get when we run into someone well-known was accentuated for me when I turned to see Christopher Hitchens standing a few feet away from me at a party on the night of the recent UK election. On top of “Wow, there is someone famous” was a more intense, visceral [...]
August 14th, 2010
Category: Republican Party, Watching Conservatives
Wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt is just as bad as opposing the Civil Rights Act!
August 14th, 2010
If one shining example of everything going right can redeem an awful couple of weeks, this is it. You have to read the whole story and watch the video. Just go do it and come back here (or not; what I have to say about it will be at best a few flowers strewn before [...]
August 13th, 2010
Category: Drug Policy
A legal cannabis industry would be just as devoted to producing and sustaining addiction as the legal beer industry.
August 13th, 2010
Category: Crime Control
A man just got out of prison in Texas after doing 27 years for rape he didn’t commit. And we’re still using the demonstrably error-prone identification process that sent Michael Green away. Inexcusable.
August 12th, 2010
Category: Drug Policy, Health and Medicine
Dr. Bankole Johnson, a justly respected addiction researcher, published an op-ed in the Washington Post last week that lambasted 12-step mutual help organizations such as AA. In the Washington Post today, I correct Johnson’s assertion that there are no randomized clinical trials supporting 12-step interventions. The amount of benefit to addicted patients in the trials [...]