News Roundup

• The World Turned Upside Down: I used to think, once, that Dianne Feinstein would make a good future candidate for President -- a woman! a Democrat! from California! -- but no longer. While I find myself surprised and pleased at the recent performance of our state's other female Senator, Barbara Boxer, who is asking tough questions in hearings about voting irregularities and President Bush's lousy cabinet nominees, DiFi is continuing her long slide downward into irrelevancy. Thanks to her and a Republican Senator from Missouri, you may soon have to show your ID and sign a registry before the pharmacist is allowed to reach behind the counter to sell you the cold medicine that you can buy off the shelf today.

  But hey -- anything's okay as long as we're fighting drugs and saving the children, isn't it?

• Western Civilization Is Doomed (from Crooked Timber):

  At the Creative Commons conference last week, I heard a story to the effect that when the owners of one of these games [Everquest and the like] tried to prohibit item trading they were sued and, in the course of litigation discovered that the plaintiff ran a sweatshop in Mexico where workers participated in the game solely to collect salable items.

  A sweatshop full of people playing video games? That's like a bad science fiction plot come to life. Has modern society become that horrifyingly decadent? I guess that employment in a video game sweatshop is better for the workers involved than a job in a clothing factory or a slaughterhouse, but still ...

Posted by Kevin at January 28, 2005 10:28 AM