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A senior editor at Reason talks about the premise of his book Saying Yes:In Defense of Drug Use: that most drug users are moderate and functional. One example he sites is former Progressive Insurance CEO Peter B. Lewis.

Although he declined to comment on the question while he was CEO, friends said Lewis was a regular marijuana smoker. In 2000, these reports were confirmed in a very public way: Lewis was arrested for marijuana and hashish possession at the Auckland, New Zealand, airport.

| Via Zenarchery

Summary: Within days of Sen. Orrin Hatch advocating the development of "new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet" (Washington Post article), the good folks at p2pnet find a licensing breach on hatch's website involving a nice piece of menu-generating javascript.

From Boycott-RIAA.com: "What Senator Hatch fails to realize is that the very act of accessing the internet and visitng any website ALL users have copyrighted files from someone else on their computer. Some of the computer industires lobbyists need to get off of the rear end and explain that to the uninformed and misguided Senator from Utah. In addition YOU need to get busy was well.

The first place to start is to write your Senator and Congressperson and let them know just how inconceivable this is. The second that you write anything, hmm a song, paint anything it is copyrighted. Emails included. Senator Hatch has opened Pandora's Box with these comments, but even worse he has shown America how little he really understands about the way computers work. And this is the man that presides of the Committee that has control over technology and copyright issues..Be Afraid, Be very Afriad." | Via Boycott-RIAA

"Several months ago, alcohol stores around Australia began selling varieties of faux Absinthe, often with catch-cry "Absinthe is now available!" despite the fact that original recipe Absinthe is still illegal in the majority of countries, including Australia."

If you want to order real absinthe, or make your own, check out La Fee Verte.

Your friends and mine who sit atop the financial heap want to make your work weeks longer -- without overtime compensation. Why shouldn't they? The Fat Cats are feeling pretty smug with their Republican lackeys in place, ruling Congress and the executive branch (thanks to a non-violent presidential coup, in case you've forgotten that Mr.War Thug was not elected by vote, popular or otherwise). I'm sure they're trying to march this one through in the name of small business or Middle American Values or something, but give me a freakin' break: the lobbyists pushing for H.R. 1119 and S. 317 ain't being paid by Joe's Corner Deli and Mom & Pop's Lemonade Stand. These are the jackbooted stormtroopers of the wealthy. Now go shut 'em down.

Go here to let your legislators know what you think of this Dickensian bullshit, or find out more.| Via Magdalen Sez

i don't usually buy poets and writers magazine because the words in it tend
to be precious and sweet enough to make me sick. but i
did buy a copy last month because i wanted to read about nadine gordimer.
nadine gordimer is magnificent and imperious and
when i grow up i want to be like her. by the way, this magazine is
expensive even though it appears to be heavily subsidized.
i guess there's money in poetry.

but i wander. in this issue, there was (besides nadine gordimer) an
aritcle by mr eric mchenry, who let us know that he also writes
for slate and (gasp) the new york times book review. i am humbled
by the mere idea, or perhaps i am supposed to be. i can't tell. mr.
mchenry's article, entitled IMPERATIVE: AN MFA MANIFESTO is
an apologia for academic creative writing programs and workshops
almost worthy of cardinal newman. (does mr mchenry know who
cardinal newman was?). mr mchenry begins his article nicely, of course,
by telling us his bias: he has an MFA from boston university. he calls it
a "wussy degree" and i note that those are his words, not mine.

mchenry's point in this article is to tell us that graduate programs
in creative writing and especially poetry exist. he goes on to say
that he knows that people like to make jokes about them. we feel
his pain. everyone makes jokes about these programs, he says, and
they write anti-MFA essays. he says that there are so many anti-MFA
essays being written that soon the anti-MFA people will be
publishing their own anthologies and giving prizes.
wonderful, i say. bring them on. i am willing to grant that MFA programs
are probably good for university enrollment and retention figures.
he goes farther and tries to suggest that they are good for Literature. and Poetry. he
suggests that the anti-MFA essay writers have backgrounds in the
corporate advertising industry. he appears to suggest that the poetry of
TS Eliot and Walt Whitman might have been even better had they gone to an
MFA program. we see from this that mr mchenry is a generous man.
he is kind, wishing others to share in the benefits that he has enjoyed. we are only sorry that
mrmchenry's familiarity with poetry and literature appears limited to
that body of work published by academic and mainline presses. there
is no mention of hakim bey, for example.

let us consider what passes for poetry nowadays: there are the
confessional, poetry-as-therapy poets. there are the poets who write
prose with line breaks in odd places. there are the hip-hop, poetry slam
people who owe more to wordsworth than they probably want
to think about. there are the academic and mainline poets. there are the
People Who Wear Black. of all these poets, those with the least
credibility are the academic and mainline poets. they have less
credibility because much of their writing suggests that they have
mostly never permitted life experience to interfere with their artistic
aspirations. there is a kind of naivete about their work that reminds
me of the lines about hollow men (and women). one cannot blame them
for this, though, even if their work has more in common, philosophically,
with the work of soames forsyte than it does with the work of sappho.
somewhat more credible are the therapy poets, who at least are trying
to make sense of experience. in addition to the types of poets named
above, there is another, interesting beast: the faux translator. the
faux translator does not actually know the language of the poem being
translated: this person hires a person, perhaps a native speaker, to
prepare a literal translation then comes back, pretties it up and signs
their name to it. it gets published as a translation.
i say that this is not translation. it is forgery.

what mr mchenry's article does not address, but seems to imply, is that poetry
is becoming a joke, something that people giggle about behind closed doors.
so let's ask the questions: why does so much published poetry suck? why is it so vapid?
why are literature programs on TV (starting with Ms BigHat) so irritating?
why do people feel compelled to read poetry in a special voice previously
reserved for eulogies of the dead? why do writing group discussions of new works by members
inevitably disintegrate into psychobabble? could it be that our logical materialistic
super-scientific-method thinking society has forgotten how to communicate
and appreciate the unrepeatable? why is poetry an academic industry?

poets and writers is a trade rag. the articles in poets and writers are concerned with
publication and reviews and prizes. they are not concerned with communication.
they are not concerned with language. they are not concerned with poetical forms.
they write about how to address bad reviews. they do not mention bad poetry. why is that?

CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion And Numbering) has developed federal legislation calling for mandatory labels on RFID-equipped consumer products, called the "RFID Right to Know Act of 2003".

They are currently seeking a Congressional sponsor to introduce the legislation.

MSIE -- RADIO -- MICROSCOPY -- HOSTING
ECONOMICS -- BLOGGING -- DEMOLITION -- ID
DOWNSIZING -- G8 -- FIRE -- PYKRETE -- ETC,

Howdy everybody, welcome to the 52nd issue of Ten Thousand Monkeys, our official "let's get this summer started already" issue. (I'm not sure what it's like where your from, but here, well, we're getting a little sick of the rain.)

So here is some literary and artistic heat to (hopefully) break through the clouds up there. We've dug up some of our original monkeys to start us off right and finished off with some brand new stuff by some brand new members of the troop.

Cannibalism is increasing in North Korea following another poor harvest and a big cut in international food aid, according to refugees who have fled the stricken country.

Aid agencies are alarmed by refugees' reports that children have been killed and corpses cut up by people desperate for food. Requests by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to be allowed access to "farmers' markets", where human meat is said to be traded, have been turned down by Pyongyang, citing "security reasons".

Anyone caught selling human meat faces execution, but in a report compiled by the North Korean Refugees Assistance Fund (NKRAF), one refugee said: "Pieces of 'special' meat are displayed on straw mats for sale. People know where they came from, but they don't talk about it."