The Rise And Fall Of The Blockbuster

Chris Anderson and Lawrence Lessig are going to be in town and discussing The Long Tail on Thursday. Who else is excited?

Scientology

The man behind the camera is Mark Bunker, producer at XenuTV, a website with many hilarious videos and news reports about Scientology. That's why all these people recognize him. Also, I haven't seen the word "enturbulate" in any dictionaries.

Sunday

AYDS

Dennis Hastert

Hang In There

Senator Bill Frist has made Internet gambling one of his top priorities.

"Internet gambling threatens our families by bringing addictive behavior right into our living rooms," Frist said in floor remarks.

Despite the fact that he finds Internet gambling to be such a threat to our families, he is willing to make exceptions for horse racing and state lotteries, the most common source of gambling addictions. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Act (H.R. 4411) that he wants to push through "with as little debate as possible" specifically singles these two out for special treatment for some reason.

Internal consistency aside, the bill still seems very silly. How is internet poker a threat to our families? Lots of things can be addictive, but we don't just outlaw them. Nonetheless, we've continued to arrest not just United States citizens for running online gambling sites, but also foreign citizens such as Peter Dicks and David Carruthers for doing something that is perfectly legal in their own countries. (Jacob Sullum has a very good article at Reason about the topic.)

One more Bill Frist quote:

I visited the various animal shelters in the Boston suburbs, collecting cats, taking them home, treating them as pets for a few days, then carting them off to the labs to die in the interest of science.
-Bill Frist, from his autobiography Transplant

Teach The Controversy?

Despite the fact that 95% of all American scientists (99.85% when you adjust to look at only those in relevent fields) believe in evolution and reject theories of special creation, a large number of people seem to think that there is some sort of controversy.
This graph on the right, gathered in a recent survey, demonstrates that many people in this country are misinformed as to the scientific consensus on the issue. Further, the misconception seems to be linked more heavily to the religious, particularly evangelical protestants.