-Eapen Thampy

You should read this MIT News article about addiction researcher Natasha Schull’s groundbreaking research on gambling addiction. Excerpt:

Now, in her new book, Addiction by Design, published this month by Princeton University Press, Schull delves into the lives of such gamblers. In particular, she looks at compulsive machine gamblers — not the folks playing social games around a table, such as poker, but those who play alone at electronic slot-machine terminals. For a small percentage of the population, these games become an all-consuming pursuit, a way of shutting out the world and its problems for long, long stretches of time.

But eventually, most compulsive machine gamblers recognize the hold that high-tech gaming has come to have over them. As one gambling addict told Schull: “I could say that for me the machine is a lover, a friend, a date, but really it’s none of those things; it’s a vacuum cleaner that sucks the life out of me, and sucks me out of life.”

Schull thinks this point — that for machine gamblers, it’s not about the money, but the escape into the “zone,” as Mollie and other gamblers call it — has eluded politicians who wrangle over casino openings and expansions throughout the United States, where more than 30 states currently have some form of legalized machine gambling.

“It’s a real stumbling block for policymakers to understand that,” Schull says. She adds: “Everyone believes the harm is how much money is spent, and that what’s driving the compulsive gamblers is a desire to make money. But … the ‘zone’ is really what’s driving this experience. The idea of winning money falls away when you get to the point of addiction.”

And:

Scholars who have read the book praise its exploration of the psyche of gamblers. Tanya Luhrmann, an anthropologist at Stanford University, lauds the way it “captures the intense relationship between humans and machines that is so much part of what people call the addiction experience.” Luhrmann adds that until reading Addiction by Design, she “hadn’t realized gambling was so much about the experience” of playing, rather than winning.

Schull’s research had attracted considerable attention well in advance of the book’s publication: She has appeared on “60 Minutes” and testified about the subject in front of the Massachusetts state legislature.

Yet Schull holds off on offering specific regulatory remedies concerning the way games should be structured. In some countries, legislators have suggested slowing down the pace of electronic slot machines to stretch out payoffs and water down the intensity of the experience — a technological fix Schull calls “wrongheaded” because it may simply encourage gamblers to play for longer periods using an equal amount of money.

Machine gambling, Schull emphasizes, “is not like buying a movie ticket or making a purchase at a store and then going home. This is rapid, fast, continuous spending where people lose track of time and space, and their ability to make decisions shifts over the course of the encounter.”

Instead, Schull asks, “Given the nature of this product and this interface, shouldn’t policymakers, state legislatures, be learning a little bit more about how this product affects people?” She adds: “I think my work is part of an emerging conversation.”

I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman. – Henri Leclerc

No matter what Western religions claim, sex is no different from any other human activity once the possibility of creating human life is removed by birth control.  I strongly suspect that realization is the real driving force behind most of the current American anti-abortion, anti-birth control rhetoric:  moralists (perhaps unconsciously) realize that without the threat of lifelong consequences, people will stop seeing sex as a magical sacrament which is “dangerous” without official sanctification.  Without belief in the mystical significance of sex, prostitution is just another personal service like massage, hairdressing or wet-nursing.  And once one recognizes that, one has to question the necessity for special laws which only apply to sex work.

Take “pimps”, for instance.  If all the stereotypes and drama are stripped away, “pimp” is just a pejorative term for a prostitute’s agent; there is no innate moral difference between such a person and an agent representing a writer, actress, football player, etc.  It’s true that some such relationships are exploitative, but the same can be said of any other agent/performer or employer/employee relationship:  it’s the exploitation which is bad, not the relationship itself.  In my column “Thought Experiment” I wrote,

…as I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions…the abusive, controlling pimp of legend is so rare we can consider him an anomaly.  In fact, the fraction of prostitutes who have such an abusive pimp – roughly 1.5% – is so similar to the percentage of women who report that their husbands/boyfriends are either “extremely violent” (1.2%) or “extremely controlling” (2.3%) that it’s pointless to consider them a different phenomenon, especially when one considers that any non-client male found in the company of a whore will inevitably be labeled a “pimp” by cops or prohibitionists.  The notion that hookers only have relationships with a certain kind of man, who is labeled a “pimp” by outsiders, derives from the Victorian fallacy (alas, still alive today) that we are somehow innately “different” from other women, and therefore our men are different as well.

The rest of that column presents an analogy between whores and barbers which may help you to see through to the truth of the matter.  It’s very important that people do understand, because claims of “exploitation” are used to demonize anyone who has anything to do with a prostitute, including clients, drivers, boyfriends,  secretaries, landlords, dependent adult family members and even other prostitutes working together for safety; a new law in New York even targets taxi drivers who “knowingly” carry hookers in their cabs.  The penalties for these “offenses” are usually greater than those for simple prostitution; the latter is generally a misdemeanor while “pandering” and “avails” charges are often felonies, and if the prosecutor decides to label such relationships “human trafficking” they can result in asset seizure, decades-long sentences and consignment to “sex offender” registries.  But since feminists think it’s just grand for a woman to have employees, agents or even a dependent husband if she’s a politician or corporate executive, why does it suddenly become intrinsically “exploitative” if she’s a sex worker?

Sex worker rights advocates, human rights organizations and health experts all support the decriminalization model; this means that there should be no special laws which apply only to hookers but not anyone else.  Brothels, for example, are subject to the same workplace safety and other applicable laws as govern any other business, and if an employee of such a place feels she’s been treated unfairly she can make a complaint just as any other employee of any other business could.  There is no need for any special “anti-pimp” law, because the existing laws work just fine when the trade isn’t forced into the shadows; in Colombia (which doesn’t have full decriminalization but is much closer than the U.S.), for example, a whore who is cheated out of her fee can summon a cop just as a restaurant owner could…as Secret Service Agent Arthur Huntington discovered to his chagrin.

New Zealand decriminalized in 2003, and though most everyone other than diehard prohibitionists are happy with the results in general, there are still a few bugs:

More than 40 [street sign] poles have been bent, buckled or broken in the past 18 months in one area of south Auckland, New Zealand…“Prostitutes use these street sign poles as dancing poles,” said [a member of the city council.  The claim appears in a pamphlet]…detailing frustrations of residents and businesses struggling to cope with [streetwalkers and calling]…on parliament…to give Auckland Council powers to ban sex workers from certain areas…other…incidents [include]…a transvestite [ramming] a supermarket trolley into a woman’s car before lying across the bonnet, and a school-bus full of children observing a transvestite changing her dress…

While I can certainly sympathize with the residents who have to put up with these antics, I feel compelled to ask:  aren’t vandalism and indecent exposure already illegal for everyone?  Why does there need to be a special law banning all prostitutes from the area?  If the police can’t enforce the existing laws against this kind of aggressive and disruptive behavior, how will even more laws help?  The answer, of course, is that they won’t; belligerent transvestites and abusive pimps are just the excuses used by prudes to restrict the majority of sex workers who are guilty of nothing other than being sexual.

• New Bowling Green, Ohio law allows cops to give tickets to virtually anyone.
• The IRS demands $40 million in inheritance taxes for an item which is literally worthless.
• Girl faces jail time for naming the boys who sexually assaulted her.
• Your daily reminder that politicians are horrible people.
• Disabled man delayed so long by TSA the batteries on his oxygen machine run down.
• Wait, isn’t Cracked supposed to be a humor site?
• Headline of the day.
• Moronic cop moronically makes moronic statements about Chattanooga streetwalkers.
• My column from one year ago today:  ”You’re at work one day…when suddenly a bunch of armed police thugs smash the door down, start pointing guns at everybody, arrest your customers and boss, handcuff you and your fellow co-workers and shove you into a van…”

(Thanks to Radley for the first four items, to Amy Alkon for the fifth and to Mike Siegel for the sixth.)

• Elinor Ostrom, RIP.
• You can stream the forthcoming album from Agitator favorites the Cold Stares here.
• Headline of the day.
• Ft. Wayne city councilman pulled over under suspicion of DWI. He calls the sheriff, who instructs the deputy to let him go.
• Mr. Yummy vs. Mr. Whippy.
• Laws named after dead people, continued . . .
•  ”The author in fancy dress as a side of bacon . . . “
• Maia Szalavitz responds to that hyperbolic New York Times article about teens and Adderall.
• Russia cracks down on dissent. But dissent grows.

• Witnesses shocked after Vista, California deputy shoots broomstick-wielding man.
• New New Jersey law will fine motorists for not putting seat belts on cats and dogs.
• Headline of the day. 
• Daytona’s police chief is outraged that Judge Joseph Will dared to call his lying police officers liars.
• Things cats won’t do.
• Bloomberg’s defenders speak out: “But might there come a day when the New York City Department of Health mandates that burgers be limited to, say, four ounces? Indeed there might. And why not? Eight- and ten-ounce burgers are sick things.”
• Alternate headline: “Drug warriors to chronic pain patients: GFY.”
• Oh. Hi. So you’re home.
• Man arrested for spitting on the sidewalk.
• RIP, Richard Dawson. The only man who ever pulled off the pinky ring.

• Man ticketed for giving money to a panhandler.
• Louisiana school psychologist spouts racist nonsense online.
• There oughtta be a law.
• American Heart Association study says Tasers can cause cardiac arrest.
• Bill Clinton . . . being Bill Clinton.
• That didn’t take long: Texas police agency now wants armed domestic drones.
• The Stone Roses are back.
• Oklahoma State is trying to patent a steak.
• Headline of the day.
• The $1.45 trillion fighter jet.

Stossel takes on overcriminalization. The “wetlands” case at around the nine minute mark is just devastating.

• Here’s a pretty cool CGI tour of ancient Rome.
• I don’t agree with conservatives all that often, especially on social issues, but this is a pretty strong piece on the denigration of conservative women.  It’s the same sort of mentality that lets white liberals think they can use racial epithets against black conservatives.
• Bieber’d.
• Prosecutor pressured to resign after his misconduct contributed to a wrongful conviction. Also, hell’s citizens fitted for ice skates.
• Former Carter administration official takes on Christian Coalition founder over decriminalizing marijuana.
• Washington’s high-powered terrorist supporters.
• There oughtta be a law . . .
• Libertarianism happens to people. (Thanks to T.J. Brown for the link.)
• Fun behind-the-scenes look at the best scene (so far) from the current season of Justified. (Spoiler alert if you aren’t caught up.)

• Three very good posts from Jacob Sullum illustrating the absurdity of hate crimes laws: one, two, and three.
• Coming to California: A new law inspired by a dead person.
• The U.S. Secretary of Transportation enjoys driving around to find drivers talking on their cell phones, then honking his horn at them.
• Federal court bars Mississippi from putting children in solitary confinement.
• U.K. police raid the wrong house after stolen iPhone pings to the wrong address: “Nottingham Police refused to reimburse Kerr for the repairs to his door — because officers ‘reasonably believed’ an offender was in the house.”
• The state of Utah has stopped the family of Matthew Stewart from raising funds for his defense. They say the family must first get a permit.
• Two years after he was stopped and illegally searched, Raleigh man just wants an apology. He hasn’t received one.

• Should vegetarians feel obligated to eat lab-grown meat?
• Minnesota cops use DMV database as their own Facebook.
• Michigan bill would ban toy guns.
• Good takedown of New Jersey’s new cyber-bullying law.
• Dubious.
• Rick Santorum quote or satanic heavy metal lyric?
• Jacob Sullum on the Stolen Valor Act.

• A new Washington state bill would mandate that everyone with health insurance pay into a fund to pay for abortions. As the notion of a “President Santorum” grows from “not a chance in hell” to “under the right conditions, terrifyingly possible” here’s something progressives should keep in mind on this stuff: a government powerful enough to force private insurers to cover birth control or abortion is a government powerful enough to forbid them from it.
• Chicago PD lieutenant “regrets” waiting three hours before administering BAC test to colleague who struck and killed a teenage boy.
• ” . . . a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time.”
• Headline of the day: Santorum jokes never get old edition.
• Interesting, and somewhat odd, poll of state “favorability ratings.”
• Artists who don’t create their own work.
• Oklahoma DAs want a law requiring a prescription for cold medicine.
• Hubble discovers site where terrible movie was filmed.
• Find the treehouse.
• Researchers claim to have proven Alan Turing’s theory of tiger stripes.
• The range of scenarios in which it’s appropriate to use a Taser has expanded from only as a substitute for lethal force to when I’m too lazy to chase down a woman in handcuffs.

• I’d like to see the new White House video game czar develop a video game that encourages players to spend taxpayer money wisely and frugally. But then, that would probably mean not having a White House video game czar.
• The species barrier has been broken, as a non-dog wins Westminster.
• The entertainment industry continues to insult its customers.
• Arizona.
• Man spends time in jail after refusing to license his dog.
• Police chief arrested on drug charges.
• This is not a repeat of the link directly above.
• A+++++ seller. Would buy again.
• New ONDCP ad: Smoking pot isn’t cool. It’s dangerous. You know what is cool and not dangerous? Jumping off of buildings.

• You know you have a crazy story when “accused of feeding his semen to some students” is thrown in as an aside.
• Warren Buffet makes $150 million off the foreclosure settlement.
• Gawker blogger boldly declares that people who live in big houses are assholes.
• Using police composite sketch software to illustrate characters from literature.
• The real problem with the birth control mandate.
• Agitator readers, I give you “Lucy’s Law.” You ask: Is this the latest dumb law named after the victim of a violent crime? No. No, it’s quite a bit dumber than that.
• And that, kids, is how Barack Obama became the first candidate to win every single electoral vote in a presidential election.
• Headline of the day.
• Another dying trade. (Double meaning intended!) Perhaps we should consider some sort of subsidy program for executioners.
• Finally, I would like to wish you all a happy (and safe!) National People Who Have Been Shot in the Face by a Sitting Vice President Awareness Day!

• You will soon be fined $1000 for throwing a Frisbee or football on the beach in L.A. County.
• I’m quoted in this Nashville Scene piece on police militarization in Tennessee’s Rutherford County.
• HIV/AIDS activist faces six months in jail for violating prosecution agreement by smoking medical marijuana. And t’s far from clear that he violated the agreement.
• “The Media’s Shameful, Inexcusable Distortion Of The Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision.” Not written by someone you might expect.
• Brazilian government demands hosting service remove a URL it doesn’t like.
• Here’s another good Mark Hemingway deconstruction of bias in a “fact checking” piece.
• Gay man rates “the ten hottest homophobes on the Internet.”

Back when the smoking bans were spreading across the country, those of us opposed to them made the point that you could make many of the same arguments about perfume and cologne that ban proponents were making about second hand smoke. (And there’s about as much evidence that fragrances are a health risk, which is to say very little.)

But you can’t really make a reductio argument for too long before someone embraces it.

Many women love wearing perfume, but have you ever gotten a headache from someone who has sprayed on way too much of a scent you don’t like? Back in 2008, Susan McBride, sued Detroit under the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming a co-worker’s fragrance made it hard for her to breathe and do her job. She was eventually awarded $100,000, and the city warned workers to avoid using scented products like perfume, cologne, deodorant, lotion, and aftershave. Now New Hampshire is looking to do the same.

State representative Michele Peckham is sponsoring House Bill 1444 which hopes to ban state employees who work with the public from wearing perfume. Apparently a constituent with extreme allergies approached Peckham with the proposal. “It may seem silly, but it’s a health issue,” Peckham told the Union Leader. “Many people have violent reactions to strong scents.”

The author then poses an honest question that puts this nonsense into the proper perspective:

Allergies and annoyances aside, should the government be able to regulate what we smell like?

The bans at the moment are just for state employees. But that’s merely where these ideas start. Just to hammer the point home, this, from  a tweet from Stacy Malkan, head of an organization called the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

Fragrance is the new secondhand smoke.

Of course, body odor is fairly offensive to the senses as well. Don’t we deserve protection from that? Clearly the proper balance here is for the federal government to require regular showers and the application of deodorant, but ban all but the unscented varieties. All of this would be proper under the authority  of the Commerce Clause, of course.

Georgia State Rep. Pamela Dickerson has introduced a silly law that would prohibit Photoshopping someone’s face onto a naked body, then posting the result on the Interent. Naturally, someone on the Internet responded with this. (Possibly NSFW.)

We fight them with ridicule. Conan O’Brien got into the act last night, too. See the video below. (Probably SFW, but not safe for your dreams.)

Meanwhile, a Louisiana parish wants to ban the wearing of pajamas in public.

• New Florida Marlins acquisition Mark Buerhle can’t live in Miami because he own an 18-month old Staffie, and Miami-Dade County has a dumb ban on “pit bulls.”  I explain the numbskullery of breed-specific legislation here.
• Ken at Popehat draws the line between recording police, take-down notices, and SOPA.
• Alabama minister sues after his photo was posted to the local sheriff’s “most wanted” web page. It was posted after a tip from an informant.
• U.K. couple cleared in the midst of a shaken baby trial after post-mortem exam reveals the child had rickets.
• Veteran photographer threatened by L.A. cop for violating the cop’s “right to privacy.”
• Tumblr of the moment: Ron Paul meets Ron Swanson.
• The threatening letter that the FBI anonymously sent to Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Not The Onion: Californians will vote on whether porn stars should be required to wear condoms.
• It’s all just going to get dumber and dumber until November.
• Gene Healy: the five worst op-eds of 2011. His delightfully Friedmanesque closer: “And so, my friends, we roll up our sleeves and limp forward, hunkered down to face what 2012 holds, our boats borne back ceaselessly into the past, yet always, always, twirling toward freedom.”
• Alternet publishes article calling for government monitoring of doctors and their pain patients, a crackdown on prescription painkillers, and generally expanding the drug war, all because . . . corporations are evil. And Florida’s governor loves the Tea Party. Or something.
• A list of all the new reasons for which governments will send you to jail, starting on Sunday.
• Woman says she was arrested, had her phone confiscated after trying to record a police beating in North Carolina.

• Another conservative against the drug war.
• Putin pulls 99.48 percent of the vote . . . in Chechnya. The other .52 percent slipped on a patch of ice this morning.
• After $56 billion and 10 years . . . TSA is junk.
• “There’s absolutely no evidence that anyone has ever been harmed in any way by an unlicensed interior designer.”
• Virginia Court of Appeals exonerates Thomas Haynesworth. He had served 27 years for two rapes in the 1980s.

• Great piece by my HuffPost colleague John Rudolf about an Alabama woman trying to find out why and how her son died in police custody.
• Marist poll (PDF): In hypothetical general election matchup with Obama, Ron Paul is tied. All the other GOP candidates would lose.
• Mississippi Supreme Court admonishes DA Forrest Allgood. (PDF)
• DEA has laundered millions of dollars from Mexican drug cartels. Hey, why not! It’s our policy that made them rich in the first place. Not to mention that we’re also arming them.
• Mitt Romney’s staff spent $100,000 in public funds to wipe out all email from his tenure as governor of Massachusetts.
• I did an interview yesterday with Wall Street Journal Radio about police militarization. You can listen here. My interview starts at about the 22 minute mark.
• New threat: drunken gummi bears.
• The Durbin Swipe Fee Amendment: the latest consumer protection measure that isn’t protecting consumers.
• How Rand Paul prevented World War III.

• Ice finger of death!
• Man falls off bicycle. Cop kills him.
• Red light camera vendor sues Knoxville, Tennessee for not issuing tickets when people turn right at a red light.
• The Pentagon’s $3 billion mercenary war on drugs.
• AFL-CIO, Teamsters, other unions firmly backing SOPA.
• All your fish are belong to government.
• A good reminder as the country goes into panic—and politicians go into “there oughtta be a law” mode—in response to Penn State: False allegations of sex abuse can also ruin lives.

Sigh.

The way the Justice Department wants to interpret a current law, lying on the Internet would amount to a crime.

Richard Downing, deputy chief of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the Department of Justice, argued that in order to properly protect the country, the part of the CFAA that says a person must exceed their “authorized access” to break the law should include a violation of the terms of service.

This is how DOJ went after Lori Drew, the woman who used a MySpace account to pose as a teenage boy in order to torment a girl who was bullying her daughter. The girl later committed suicide, which led to calls for Drew’s prosecution, even though it wasn’t clear that she had committed any crime. The charges were tossed by a judge, so Congress and DOJ want to give prosecutors more power. But in the name of protecting intellectual property and national security.  Here’s how Downing put it in his testimony.

“These are just a few cases, but this tool is used routinely. The plain meaning of the term ‘exceeds authorized access,’ as used in the CFAA, prohibits insiders from using their otherwise legitimate access to a computer system to engage in improper and often malicious activities. We believe that Congress intended to criminalize such conduct, and we believe that deterring it continues to be important. Because of this, we are highly concerned about the effects of restricting the definition of ‘exceeds authorized access’ in the CFAA to disallow prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider.”

The Volokh Conspriacy’s Orin Kerr also testified.

“In the Justice Department’s view, the CFAA criminalizes conduct as innocuous as using a fake name on Facebook or lying about your weight in an online dating profile. That situation is intolerable. Routine computer use should not be a crime. Any cybersecurity legislation that this Congress passes should reject the extraordinarily broad interpretations endorsed by the United States Department of Justice.”

I think we should just bar Congress from passing any law related to the Internet.

Pretty spot-on depiction of how the media responds to tragedy.

Truck Accident That Killed Rafters in Canyon Sparks Truck-Canyon-Rafter Reform Debate

• Bo Diddley’s son arrested for occupying plaza named after Bo Diddley.
• The New York Times delves into the new Beavis and Butthead.
• California bans foie gras.
• Jaw-dropper of the day: Texas DA opposes post-conviction DNA testing because an exoneration “overrides what a jury decided.”
• Stunning collection of old photos from Paris.
• Five myths about healthy eating.

• I for one am shocked to learn that governments around the world fear and want to rein in something beyond their control that gives power to citizens makes governments themselves more transparent and accountable.
• Something new to worry about.
• California makes it illegal to make circumcisions illegal.
• “This is an excellent example of the police and citizens working together.”
• Yet more problems for the Fullerton, California police department.
• Dick Cheney praises Obama, demands apology for suggesting they’re all that different. He probably has a point on the second part.
• What’s that? You’d like to see a photo of Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg? And you’d like for them to be riding an elephant? Lemme see what I can do.