The FDA’s New and Improved Cigarette Warning Labels

The US Food and Drug Administration recently unveiled nine graphic warning labels that will appear on US cigarette packs in 2012. Some of the more gruesome labels include images of diseased lungs and tracheotomy holes. According to the FDA, these labels are “the most significant advancement in communicating the dangers of smoking and the first change in cigarette warnings in more than 25 years.”

Will the graphic labels reduce smoking? Do Americans really need to be reminded that smoking isn’t good for them?

The FDA’s New and Improved Cigarette Warning La…, posted with vodpod

Gage Speaks: How an iPad and Innovative Thinking Gave Voice to an Autistic Child

Gage Gilbert seemed like a quiet child who rarely showed interest in speaking or making eye contact. His mother thought he was just a late bloomer until a Google search led her to autism. After his official diagnosis, Gage’s family tried educational software with an iPad to help their son communicate. The results were “phenomenal.” Brandi Milloy brings you the story of one family’s journey of adjusting to autism and how innovative technology helped their son develop his own voice.

To learn more about Gage’s story and how you can help other children with autism, visit the http://www.gagerufus.com

Gage Speaks: How an iPad and Innovative Thinkin…, posted with vodpod

Academic fraud, retaliation, and science denial

When Dwayne Whitney started his trucking business decades ago he had only one truck. Today he has eighteen and 20 employees. But that’s about to change.

“The State of California says my trucks are killing people,” says Whitney. “What do you say to that?”

In a few years, new air quality regulations approved by the California Air Resources Board will render Whitney’s entire fleet illegal.

“New CARB rules are putting me out of business,” he says.

CARB claims that diesel particulates, a type of pollution emitted from buses and trucks, contributes to 2,000 premature deaths in California each year. But UCLA epidemiologist Dr. James Enstrom says the number should be closer to zero.

In 2005 Enstrom authored an extensive study that found no relationship between diesel particulates and premature deaths. He says his study, as well as other evidence that agrees with it, have been ignored by an agency bent on passing ever more stringent regulations regardless of their effect on California’s economy.

Enstrom blew the whistle on CARB for, among other things, failing to publicize that the lead author of the study that was used to justify the new regulations falsified his education history (he purchased his PhD from an online diploma mill).

But UCLA didn’t come to Enstrom’s defense. In fact, officials informed him that, after 34 years at the university, he was out of a job.

“The environmental regulation machine in powerful in California,” says Adam Kissel of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is defending Enstrom in the fight to keep his job. “When Dr. Enstrom went up against that machine he was retaliated against.”

A hearing that begins on April 4 will determine whether Dr. Enstrom keeps his job, and the final decision rests with UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.

Says Kissel, “If Dr. Enstrom loses his job because he exercised his academic freedom, then it’s a message to other researchers that you’d better not rock the boat because you might be next.”

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Why It’s So Hard to Make a Movie: Q&A with Filmmaker Joe Gressis

This Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony will be held in Hollywood as usual, but it’s increasingly common for Hollywood films to be produced outside California or even outside the United States.Filmmaker Joe Gressis isn’t surprised when Hollywood productions leave the Golden State. He’s surprised when they stay. “The fact that we remain here is kind of ridiculous,” says the three-time Emmy-nominated Gressis.Reason.tv’s Tim Cavanaugh sat down with Gressis, a founding partner of Secret Handshake Productions, to talk about runaway film production and the headaches of making movies in California (or anywhere else, for that matter).Topics include: tax incentives, the benefits of shooting in Hong Kong, and why Gressis admires Michael Bay.

Why It’s So Hard to Make a Movie: Q&A with Film…, posted with vodpod

Former LA Mayor Richard Riordan on Schwarzenegger, Unions, and Bankrupt Cities

“Throughout the country, 90 percent of cities and states are going to go bankrupt within the next five years, many of them sooner.” So says former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan.

Reason.tv’s Tim Cavanaugh sat down with Riordan to discuss state and local budget crises, public-sector unions, and why Riordan recently became a fan of current LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Former LA Mayor Richard Riordan on Schwarzenegg…, posted with vodpod

 

Why the Feds Banned Four Loko (And is your favorite drink next?)

On December 21, Ramiro Diaz was arrested for selling eight cans of Four Loko to an undercover agent from the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Diaz faces up to a year in jail for the offense, but just a few months ago Four Loko was perfectly legal. What happened?The drink had been the subject of many media reports which suggested that Four Loko’s mixture of alcohol and caffeine causes young people to engage in risky behavior. The drink was even dubbed “Blackout in a Can,” and the story soon moved from newsrooms to Congress, where officials like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded that it be pulled from shelves.”We must protect children from the severe and deadly consequences of drinks like Four Loko,” declared Schumer. The Food and Drug Administration agreed, and in November federal regulators banned Four Loko. The company promised to yank it from shelves by December and replace it with a decaffeinated version.So do drinks like Four Loko pose a unique danger to America’s youth or is this episode more proof that that mixing media and politics can be hazardous to your freedom?

Why the Feds Banned Four Loko (And is your favo…, posted with vodpod

Great Moments in Unintended Consequences

Reason.tv presents Great Moments in Unintended Consequences!

All actions have unanticipated side effects, but government acting through regulation or legislation is particularly adept at creating disastrous unintended consequences.

Great Moments in Unintended Consequences takes a look at three instances of epic government facepalm: Osborne Reef, Corn Ethanol Subsidies, and a particular clause in ObamaCare that is already doing more harm than good.

Great Moments in Unintended Consequences, posted with vodpod

The Legal Way to Rig an Election

And why you need to be alert while your state redraws congressional districts next year in response to the census.Why bother stuffing ballots when you can just draw districts to ensure your re-election? The new documentary Gerrymandering exposes what executive producer Bill Mundell calls “the most effective form of manipulating elections short of outright fraud.”Mundell sat down with Reason.tv’s Tim Cavanaugh to talk about the new documentary, the consequences of political redistricting, and what can be done to un-rig elections.

The Legal Way to Rig an Election, posted with vodpod

Palin, O’Donnell Speak, Dhimmicretins Expose Ignorance

Sarah Palin told supporters Monday they couldn’t “party like it’s 1773″ until Washington was flooded with like-minded conservatives. Intellectually “superior” leftards from Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas to PBS moderator Obama cheerleader Gwen Ifill took to Twitter to snicker about Palin’s historical illiteracy never taking the time to google “party+1773″ and find the 4,240,000 results referencing the Boston Tea Party.

Christine O’Donnell is getting a massive amount of attention today because during a debate with Chris Coons, she asked: “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” He replied fairly well quoting the non-establishment phrase which is not the question she asked. When pressed further the “bearded Marxist” could not list the freedoms contained in the First Amendment. The religion clause reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The “separation of church and state” is a doctrine first referenced by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists Association in 1802. In Jefferson’s letter, he was reassuring the Baptists of Danbury that their religious freedom would remain protected – a promise that no possible religious majority would be able to force out a smaller church. The worst part of this was the students at Widener University Law School laughed at her question. How can you be in Law School and quite obviously not have read the constitution? Or is their reading comprehension so horribly low that they can’t understand that simple phrase? As a PSA for them is this link, Boston College 3L Asks for His Money Back; Hilarity Ensues.

Sharron Angle covered the same ground when Jon Ralston confronted her over her 1995 statement that excluding religious schools from Federal funding is un-American and that the separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine. Then this exchange ensued:

RALSTON: The separation of church and state arises out of the Constitution.

ANGLE: No it doesn’t, John.

RALSTON: Oh, it doesn’t? The Founding Fathers didn’t believe in the separation of church and state?

ANGLE: Thomas Jefferson has been misquoted, like I’ve been misquoted, out of context. Thomas Jefferson was actually addressing a church and telling them through his address that there had been a wall of separation put up between the church and the state precisely to protect the church from being taken over by a state religion. That’s what they meant by that. They didn’t mean we couldn’t bring our values to the political forum.

Now you may quibble over the use of the word “arises”, and if you mean that the constitution raises the point, you might be right, but the actual meaning is almost exactly opposite of the leftists’ use of the term.

What You Can’t Say on Campus

If you think that, like the Macarena, campus speech codes were mocked into obscurity during the 1990s, think again. Approximately 71 percent of American campuses still impose highly restrictive “red light speech codes” on college students, notes Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

What You Can’t Say on Campus, posted with vodpod