Articles 2026
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The Golden Formula for Hollywood Success
The New York Times, "Economic Scene", March 23, 2000
As Hollywood gathers on Sunday to heap Oscar praise on such surprise hits as "American Beauty" and "The Sixth Sense," producers and studio marketing heads are revamping their idea of what makes for box-office success. Action heroes, happy endings, special effects and high-concept synopses are out. Flawed protagonists, shock value, downbeat twists and hard-to-explain plots are in. The formula movie is dead. Long live the formula movie.
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We Are Not All Hayekians Now
Forbes, March 19, 2000
LAST YEAR THE GERMAN NEWSWEEKLY DIE ZEIT asked Berkeley philosopher John Searle to single out a "book of the century." He chose Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. With its argument that socialist planning would inevitably collapse into stagnation and oppression, it was a prophetic work--remarkable for 1944.
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"Prescription for Trouble"
Online pharmacies challenge traditional medical models, and the regulatory backlash threatens broader Internet freedoms.
Reason, March 2000
Ah, the Internet! A new world of pure thought, free of the limits and coercion of the physical world. "Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live," wrote John Perry Barlow four years ago in "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace."
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The Ethics of Boosterism
Forbes, February 06, 2000
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES RECENTLY RAN A 14-PAGE, ad-free "special report" investigating itself. The charge: that the newspaper breached journalistic ethics when it agreed to split advertising income from a special issue of its Sunday magazine with the issue's subject, the new downtown sports palace called the Staples Center. The verdict: guilty by reason of ignorance, incompetence and excessive devotion to financial goals.
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"Seattle Surprise"
The WTO protests caught free-traders off guard. They shouldn't have.
Reason, February 2000
When protesters descended on Seattle in the tens of thousands, blocking World Trade Organization delegates and ordinary citizens from going about their business and, in some high-profile cases, wrecking "corporate" stores, the mainstream media and political establishment finally woke up to an ideological movement that has been building for at least a decade. International trade is no longer just a matter of interest-group politics. It has become a highly charged symbol of markets in general and, even more broadly, of the cultural dynamism that they unleash
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Got Milk?
Forbes, January 09, 2000
WHEN PROTESTERS TOOK TO THE STREETS of Seattle to denounce international trade, there were no reports of milk mustaches among their many colorful costumes. But the look would have been appropriate. One of the best examples of the protesters' ideals in action can be found in the dairy case of every California supermarket.
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Sometimes the Patient Knows Best
The New York Times, January 03, 2000
LOS ANGELES -- The Internet's abundance -- of information, goods, tastes and sources of authority -- creates unparalleled opportunities for individuals to get exactly what they want. But this plenitude threatens political and cultural authorities who believe in telling individuals what they can have rather than letting them choose for themselves. It was inevitable, therefore, that the growth of the Internet would lead to complaints that its diversity undermines media standards, traditional morality and political authority. It was inevitable that the Internet would face calls for censorship.
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Surprise!
The Wall Street Journal, January 02, 2000
From the late 19th century through the middle of the 20th, futurists imagined electric lighting, but no electric guitars; supersonic jets, but no hang gliders; laser weapons, but no laser surgery or compact disks; giant computer databases, but no Palm Pilots or video games; nuclear power, but no nuclear medicine; government surveillance cameras, but no baby monitors.
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"High-Tech's Starr Report"
The consequences of a software culture war.
Reason, January 2000
On November 5, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson released the high-tech version of the Starr report: the finding of facts in the antitrust case against Microsoft. It is as angry and, in its own way, as lurid a document as Kenneth Starr's account. And it is also the product of a culture war
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"Reactionary Running Mates"
Susan Faludi sounds like Pat Buchanan.
Reason, December 1999
If Pat Buchanan is going to run for president, he’ll need a running mate. And with the Reform Party a shambles, he needs to get creative, to find someone who can attract positive attention and reach out to a different base