This is a page for links to news articles, political action pages, things about interesting ideas, etc, that just make you want to RIOT. (feel free to add!) Web Sites: http://www.slashdot.org (geek-news) http://www.thenewrepublic.com (In depth political comentary) http://www.ruf.dk (Dual-Mode transport/electric hybrid cars/busses) http://faculty.washington.edu/~jbs/itrans/ ("Inovative Transit Technologys" lot's of interesting links) Articles: http://www.fair.org/press-releases/juan-gonzalez.html (about the Pasifica Radio Network, basically the precurser to NPR & PBS) http://www.a20.org/feature.cfm?id=47 [1] (fun with Nike) http://www.thenewrepublic.com/03050 1/trb03050 1.html [2] (Swiss Cheesing the "Drug War") [1] Nike now lets you personalize your shoes by submitting a word or phrase which they will stitch onto your shoes, under the swoosh. So Jonah Peretti filled out the form and sent them $50 to stitch "sweatshop" onto his shoes. Here's the responses he got.. fun and games with nike... From: "Personalize, NIKE iD" nikeid_personalize at nike.com To: "Jonah H. Peretti" peretti at media.mit.edu Subject: RE: Your NIKE iD order o16468000 Your NIKE iD order was cancelled for one or more of the following reasons. 1) Your Personal iD contains another party's trademark or other intellectual property. 2) Your Personal iD contains the name of an athlete or team we do not have the legal right to use. 3) Your Personal iD was left blank. Did you not want any personalization? 4) Your Personal iD contains profanity or inappropriate slang, and besides, your mother would slap us. If you wish to reorder your NIKE iD product with a new personalization please visit us again at www.nike.com Thank you, NIKE iD From: "Jonah H. Peretti" peretti at media.mit.edu To: "Personalize, NIKE iD" nikeid_personalize at nike.com Subject: RE: Your NIKE iD order o16468000 Greetings, My order was canceled but my personal NIKE iD does not violate any of the criteria outlined in your message. The Personal iD on my custom ZOOM XC USA running shoes was the word "sweatshop." Sweatshop is not: 1) another's party's trademark, 2) the name of an athlete, 3) blank, or 4) profanity. I choose the iD because I wanted to remember the toil and labor of the children that made my shoes. Could you please ship them to me immediately. Thanks and Happy New Year, Jonah Peretti From: "Personalize, NIKE iD" nikeid_personalize at nike.com To: "Jonah H. Peretti" peretti at media.mit.edu Subject: RE: Your NIKE iD order o16468000 Dear NIKE iD Customer, Your NIKE iD order was cancelled because the iD you have chosen contains, as stated in the previous e-mail correspondence, "inappropriate slang". If you wish to reorder your NIKE iD product with a new personalization please visit us again at www.nike.com Thank you, NIKE iD From: "Jonah H. Peretti" peretti at media.mit.edu To: "Personalize, NIKE iD" nikeid_personalize at nike.com Subject: RE: Your NIKE iD order o16468000 Dear NIKE iD, Thank you for your quick response to my inquiry about my custom ZOOM XC USA running shoes. Although I commend you for your prompt customer service, I disagree with the claim that my personal iD was inappropriate slang. After consulting Webster's Dictionary, I discovered that "sweatshop" is in fact part of standard English, and not slang. The word means: "a shop or factory in which workers are employed for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions" and its origin dates from 1892. So my personal iD does meet the criteria detailed in your first email. Your web site advertises that the NIKE iD program is "about freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are." I share Nike's love of freedom and personal expression. The site also says that "If you want it done right...build it yourself." I was thrilled to be able to build my own shoes, and my personal iD was offered as a small token of appreciation for the sweatshop workers poised to help me realize my vision. I hope that you will value my freedom of expression and reconsider your decision to reject my order. Thank you, Jonah Peretti From: "Personalize, NIKE iD" nikeid_personalize at nike.com To: "'Jonah H. Peretti'" peretti at media.mit.edu Subject: RE: Your NIKE iD order o16468000 Dear NIKE iD Customer, Regarding the rules for personalization it also states on the NIKE iD web site that "Nike reserves the right to cancel any Personal iD up to 24 hours after it has been submitted". In addition it further explains: "While we honor most personal iDs, we cannot honor every one. Some may be (or contain) others trademarks, or the names of certain professional sports teams, athletes or celebrities that Nike does not have the right to use. Others may contain material that we consider inappropriate or simply do not want to place on our products. Unfortunately, at times this obliges us to decline personal iDs that may otherwise seem unobjectionable. In any event, we will let you know if we decline your personal iD, and we will offer you the chance to submit another." With these rules in mind we cannot accept your order as submitted. If you wish to reorder your NIKE iD product with a new personalization please visit us again at www.nike.com Thank you, NIKE iD From: "Jonah H. Peretti" peretti at media.mit.edu To: "Personalize, NIKE iD" nikeid_personalize at nike.com Subject: RE: Your NIKE iD order o16468000 Dear NIKE iD, Thank you for the time and energy you have spent on my request. I have decided to order the shoes with a different iD, but I would like to make one small request. Could you please send me a color snapshot of the ten-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes? Thanks, Jonah Peretti no response [2] TRB FROM WASHINGTON Fine Lines by Andrew Sullivan Post date 02.22.01 | Issue date 03.05.01 The most frustrating part of the interminable debate about the "war on drugs" is the word "drugs." Strictly speaking, after all, there is no war on drugs in this country; there is a war on some drugs. America boasts a vast legitimate pharmaceutical industry, and personal expenditures on its products go up every year. Very, very few of us go even a week without taking some kind of drug, be it an over-the-counter cold medicine, a doctor-prescribed medication, or a self-medicated legal substance The salient question behind the "drug" war, then, is not simply the usual libertarian-authoritarian conundrum. It's much simpler: What is the criterion that makes one drug the object of a "war" in which millions are incarcerated for illegal use and another drug the object of a vast marketing machine through which millions are regularly sold to and hooked? The more you think about the question, the more elusive the answer becomes. Once upon a time, medicine was relatively unsophisticated. The few medicinal drugs there were saved lives or cured obvious debilitating illnesses; the few recreational drugs there were gave people pleasure or excitement or oblivion and were regulated on an ad hoc but vaguely sane basis. In a puritanical culture, drugs that were extremely pleasurable, physically harmful, and highly addictive And then technology had its way. It seems to me that the last decade or so has largely invalidated whatever sanity lay behind this practicable scheme. Our deeper understanding of the chemical effect of even a candy bar has made us think about everything we consume in pharmacological terms. (You can partly thank the Food and Drug Administration's labeling for that.) And our ability to take pharmaceutical substances and alter them in minuscule ways has further blurred the distinction between "good" and "bad" chemicals. The result is a hopelessly contradictory scheme in which fat-drenched hamburgers And these are the easy cases. Further up the chemical-sophistication ladder, the ironies only multiply. Take the designer drug Ecstasy. "E" is now classed in the same group of illegal drugs as heroin. But as recently as the 1980s it was completely legal; Merck patented it in 1914. E works by flooding the brain for a few hours with serotonin, the "happy" chemical, a substance our body naturally produces but in much smaller and more consistent amounts. Now compare Prozac. Prozac and its sister and successor drugs help regulate the production of serotonin for people with suppressed or unstable serotonin levels. The effect of such drugs is far less intense than that of Ecstasy Yes, there are differences in degree here, and some in kind. Long-term, persistent use of Ecstasy has been correlated with depression. But long-term use of Prozac may affect the structural composition of the brain as well. Neither is clearly dangerous unless taken in massive doses. Both are designed to make people "happier." What rationale is there in making one drug illegal and marketing the other to literally millions every year? Similarly, Starbucks profits by marketing coffee, a legal substance that addictively wires people for hours on end. Health-food stores sell stronger versions of speed in the form of pills and even chocolate. There are no laws preventing anyone from drinking ten double espressos or downing several packets of No-Döz. But one sniff of a much more concentrated methamphetamine My point is not that there is no sense at all in these distinctions. Clearly, crystal meth is more potent, more addictive, and easier to take than ten triple espressos. Clearly, excessive steroid use can wreck people's livers in ways that even massive use of legal androstenedione won't. But we're dealing here with degree as much as kind. And as the sophistication of pharmaceuticals develops exponentially each year, the lines we draw between legal and illegal, between stigmatized and accepted, will become more and more arbitrary. In exactly the same way, the very definition of "health" is up for grabs. Do most people take Prozac for their mental health or their sense of well-being? Is there a moral difference between taking Xanax to get some sleep and smoking a joint? If someone wants to take modest amounts of anabolic steroids to look good and feel sexy, why should that be illegal when a legal, multibillion-dollar industry is aimed at achieving the same effects with the stone-age technology of swallowing creatine, eating steak, and pushing pieces of iron up and down? Similarly, human growth hormone was developed to accelerate the growth of stunted children. It's now popular among retiring baby-boomers who enjoy its rejuvenating effects on their bodies and minds. But the boomers often have to fake weight loss and impotence to get it legally. Why shouldn't retirees have access to it I wish I knew the answer to these questions; to me they seem the ones we need to confront. The war on soft drugs is built on such logical sand that it cannot be sustained forever NBTSWikiWiki | Recent Changes Edited 8 times, last edited on March 10, 2001 by zakarria@nbtsc.org. © 2000 NBTSC Webmasters |
a cigarette, a shot of tequila, a double espresso, a McFlurry. And the variety and sophistication of these substances are growing as fast as their use. Do you remember the day when you could simply ask for a cup of coffee and no further elaboration was required?
