"Photo of breast cancer survivor's tattooed chest is shared by thousands after Facebook's attempts to ban it."

The nudity rules don't bend for cancer or for art. What can you really expect? But, anyway, I'm no fan of tattoos but I love this adaptation to mastectomy.

"So far, few traditional farmers lining up to grow marijuana in Washington state, Colorado."

WaPo reports:

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law....

The Justice Department has not said whether it will try to block the two states from implementing their new laws, passed late last year.....

In addition, marijuana is a crop that can’t be insured, and federal drug law bars banks from knowingly serving the industry....

Both states are in the process of developing rules for a legal marijuana industry....

How can state rules possibly make the industry legal? They can only make chaos that might conceivably move Congress to change the federal law. I don't see that coming any time soon. The Justice Department might say something encouraging, but will the next President's Justice Department stick with whatever position Eric Holder embraces?

Even if you felt sure you wouldn't be prosecuted, would you want to sign up on an official list as someone who is conspicuously committing an ongoing felony? Would you switch from a legal crop and expose yourself like that? And even if some farmers would go ahead and violate the criminal law — presumably because the upside profits are high — does the inability to buy crop insurance and use banks wreck the whole idea?

Dozens of marijuana experts, who have been growing plants for medical use or in secret for illegal use, are educating state officials about the potential for the crop. Probably 95 percent of those people choose to grow their plants indoors, despite higher costs, to control light and temperature, improve quality and increase yields....

Indoor crops generally allow for up to three harvests per season, compared to just one harvest for an outdoor crop, and allow for easier security measures. 

So "traditional farmers" have an entirely separate reason for not responding to the new program. You can't be growing marijuana amber-waves-of-grain-on-the-fruited-plain style. This stuff will be grown in big warehouses, pulling in loads of electricity for intense lighting and heavily guarded with guns! guns! guns!

Oh, but here's a little old lady, "Gail Besemer, who grows flowers and vegetables near Deming, Wash., [who] has expressed interest in a producers’ license."

Besemer already has three hoop houses, which are essentially temporary greenhouses, but could see expanding her business slightly to grow marijuana for a local clientele in northwest Washington.

Slightly! Flowers! Grandma!

However, “I’m concerned about druggies invading my property — ne’er-do-wells invading my property to steal, to get free dope,” she said. “Security would be an issue.”

Where do you get off with that contempt for the consumers of the product you want to grow? Seems to me, these are your people. Don't insult them.

“My family is not particularly excited about me being interested in this. But if someone has an integrated farm, growing a number of different crops, I would think it would be a high profit plant,” she said. “Taxation and security might get in the way of profits, and it might end not being so profitable.”

Yeah, you'd better think about it, lady. There's a reason it's a high profit plant. If it weren't for all these problems, any idiot could grow his own in his house. Take away the obstacles, and it's not a business at all. Which removes half of the attraction for the government, since there won't be anything to tax if there isn't a big rules-heavy structure burdening business. This isn't a game for the little old lady with her flowers and hoop houses. But that's the screwy, sentimental anecdote The Washington Post ties to plant in our brain.

"What sort of people were these? What were they talking about? What office did they belong to? K. was living in a free country, after all..."

"... everywhere was at peace, all laws were decent and were upheld, who was it who dared accost him in his own home?"

A Kafka quote begins Roger Kimball's op-ed "This Metamorphosis Will Require a Permit/Sandy wrecked our house, but bureaucrats are keeping it broken."

Kimball also quotes Hayek:

[T]he power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionnaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work.

And Tocqueville:

"[A] network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules"... reduces citizens "to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd."

Books:

Franz Kafka, "The Trial"
F.A. Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom"
Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America"
Roger Kimball, "The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia"

"Madison City Council quietly abandons effort to create code of conduct for members."

The most amusing lines come from  Alder Lauren Cnare: "We could have come up with a set of guidelines that would have helped people behave in situations that are sort of gray" and "I think it's over until something happens again."

The something that happened this time, sending the council into a tizzy about codification, was that one alder allegedly did something sexual to another alder the morning after a long night drinking together.

"Boston’s becoming a town devoid of nightspot fun as some bars in the city eliminate board games and water pong..."

"... fearful that city regulators will come crashing in and accuse the pubs of sponsoring drinking games."

“If two friends at a bar say, ‘I’ll buy your next beer if you make this shot on the dartboard,’ the bar may have to go before a board. It’s silly how arbitrary it can be,” said Chris Mitchell, general manager of the Better Off Bowling league, who has seen the bar crackdown firsthand.

"The ordinary people were not happy. They loathed the Emperor's interference in every detail of their daily lives."

"Why should they be forbidden to bake ginger-bread just because Joseph thought it bad for the stomach? Why the Imperial edict demanding the breast-feeding of infants? Why the banning of corsets? From these and a thousand other petty regulations, enforced by a secret police, it looked to the Austrians as though Joseph were trying to reform their characters as well as their institutions. Only a few weeks before Joseph's death, the director of the Imperial Police reported to him: 'All classes, and even those who have the greatest respect for the sovereign, are discontented and indignant.'"

From the History of Austria. Joseph II, who ruled from 1780 to 1790.



Austria is our "History of" country today, as we proceed through the 206 countries of the world using the Wikipedia summaries. So much has happened in Austria over the ages. The "History of" project cannot begin to summarize the summary. I merely offer up a snippet, one thing that struck me as something that might have particular resonance. But it is only one of many things. For example, from 25,000 BC:

"A revolution has begun against the perception of beauty in Israel..."

"...  this law shatters the anorexic ideal serving as an example for the country’s youth."

The new law, known as the “photoshop law,” requires models to present their employers with a current doctor’s note confirming that they meet a minimum body mass index (BMI) – a calculation of weight to height proportion – of 18.5, which is considered the lowest threshold for a healthy weight. Advertisements featuring models who are “photoshopped” or otherwise digitally altered to make them appear thinner must be clearly marked as manipulated images.

Here's a BMI calculator if you want to check whether you're too skinny to be a model in Israel. I've been 5'5" for more than 40 years, and I've weighed lots of different weights, including the weight of 107, which I regarded as my ideal weight (based on a chart in the Stillman diet book) when I was a college student. But based on that BMI calculator, I see I'd need to weigh at least 111 to be permitted to be a model in Israel! I know you need to be taller to be a model, but my point is that 107 wasn't anorexic for a 20-year-old.

Certainly, for modeling clothes you want a body that doesn't really call attention to itself, that works more like a clothes hanger. It's an aesthetic choice, a way to feature the clothing, the product. The Israeli law is ridiculously repressive. People need to take responsibility for their own bodies, not blame the fashion/magazine industry and certainly not use the government to cut off messages that supposedly feed their irresponsibility.

Chief Justice Roberts informs Congress that the federal judiciary is scraping by on a mere $7 billion a year.

$7 billion! Why, if that were one person's entire fortune, he'd only be #50 on the Forbes list of richest Americans. He'd only just butt ahead of Charles Butt.

The Chief stressed the bargain we the people are getting:

“Yes,” he went on, “for each citizen’s tax dollar, only two-tenths of one penny goes toward funding the entire third branch of government!”

In the report, Chief Justice Roberts said the judiciary was doing what it could to cut costs in rent, salaries and computer services...

The federal courts went to great lengths last year in trying circumstances, notably after Hurricane Sandy. “As just one example,” he said, “the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York conducted emergency hearings in Lower Manhattan the day after the storm hit, working in a building without heat or hot water that was only sparsely lit by gas-fueled emergency generators.” Though Chief Justice Roberts did not say so, the Supreme Court also showed fortitude the day the storm hit, hearing arguments when the rest of official Washington was closed.

I could think of quite a few ways to economize on the federal courts — things Congress could do. The courts are forced to handle the cases that fall within their jurisdiction, but Congress could target litigation-generating laws for repeal.

ADDED: Another way to increase that "two-tenths of one penny" proportion would be to reduce spending on things that are not the judiciary.

Electronic devices on planes are dangerous...

... but not for the reason the FAA seems to want you to believe.

If progress [toward changing the rules] is slow, there will eventually be an episode on a plane in which someone is seriously harmed as a result of a device being on during takeoff. But it won’t be because the device is interfering with the plane’s systems. Instead, it will be because one passenger harms another, believing they are protecting the plane from a Kindle, which produces fewer electromagnetic emissions than a calculator.

"[W]hen does regulating a person’s habits in the name of good health become our moral and social duty?"

Asks David B. Agus, a USC medicine and engineering professor, in an op-ed that's #1 on the NYT "most emailed" list:

The answer, I suggest, is a two-parter: first, when the scientific data clearly and overwhelmingly demonstrate that one behavior or another can substantially reduce — or, conversely, raise — a person’s risk of disease; and second, when all of us are stuck paying for one another’s medical bills (which is what we do now, by way of Medicare, Medicaid and other taxpayer-financed health care programs).

Get ready. It's coming.

"A Texas teenager whose mother died of breast cancer was sent home from school for 'going overboard' with an awareness costume on Pink Day."

"Dustin Drake was reportedly told to leave the school when the costume he wore to honor his mother was allegedly deemed inappropriate for school."

Officials knew his mother had died, but he wasn't the only kid punished for a "garment violation."

"The right to work for a living in the common occupations of the community is of the very essence of the personal freedom and opportunity that the Constitution was designed to protect."

Wrote the federal judge who struck down Utah's requirement that you need a cosmetology license to work as a hair braider.

This is a sharply libertarian result, so I find it amusing to see NPR and Matthew Yglesias celebrating the decision. Why would liberals love a decision second-guessing the legislature's judgment about the extent of government regulation in the economic realm? Click on the links and see if you too are amused.

"Especially in a bearish economy, entrepreneurs need to be able to operate without the fear that inadvertently breaking an obscure regulation..."

"... or unknowingly violating a foreign statute could shut down their company and land them or their employees in jail," wrote Henry Juszkiewicz, the CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp., in a WSJ column last month.

Without warning, 30 federal agents with guns and bulletproof vests stormed our guitar factories in Tennessee. They shut down production, sent workers home, seized boxes of raw materials and nearly 100 guitars, and ultimately cost our company $2 million to $3 million worth of products and lost productivity. Why? We imported wood from India to make guitars in America...

The Aug. 24 raid was authorized under the Lacey Act. Originally enacted as a means to curb the poaching of endangered species, the law bans wildlife and plants from being imported if, according to the interpretation of federal bureaucrats, the importation violates a law in the country of origin.

The fingerboards of our guitars are made with wood that is imported from India. The wood seized during the Aug. 24 raid, however, was from a Forest Stewardship Council-certified supplier, meaning the wood complies with FSC's rules requiring that it be harvested legally and in compliance with traditional and civil rights, among other protections. Indian authorities have provided sworn statements approving the shipment, and U.S. Customs allowed the shipment to pass through America's border to our factories.

Nonetheless, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to enforce its own interpretation of Indian law, arguing that because the fingerboards weren't finished in India, they were illegal exports. In effect, the agency is arguing that to be in compliance with the law, Gibson must outsource the jobs of finishing craftsmen in Tennessee.

This morning comes the news that Gibson has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle the case. The company has also given up on getting $261,844 worth of ebony returned.

"If my rule-breaking is ethical and safe (and Idaho-legal), why does it annoy anyone?"

Asks Randy Cohen, the original NYT "ethicist," who admits to treating stop signals as yield signals when he's on his bicycle.

I choose my riding style mindful of my own safety and that of my neighbors, but also in pursuit of happiness. Uninterrupted motion, gliding silently and swiftly, is a joy. 

And you ask why it annoys anyone! There will always be some people who are annoyed by somebody else having fun — you know, the people H.L. Mencken was knocking when he defined Puritanism as "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." But there's something else about rule-following that matters. If there's a system of rules, individuals can always subjectively, flexibly, pragmatically spin out all sorts of applicable exceptions that let them do what they want. Randy Cohen has used his big brain to determine that he's right about the unnecessary severity of the rule in this case, but he's promoting a style of thinking, an approach to ethics, that others will use in all sorts of self-serving ways. If we're not going to follow the rules anymore... then what?

Interestingly, Cohen ends his little essay with a quote from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who, we're told sometimes bikes to work:

“The advantages? Exercise, no parking problems, gas prices, it’s fun. An automobile is expensive. You have to find a place to park and it’s not fun. So why not ride a bicycle? I recommend it.” 

Now, Breyer isn't saying anything about whether or not he follows the rules, and Cohen seems to be injecting relevance by quipping: "I don’t know if he runs red lights. I hope so." But if you know a few things about Supreme Court Justices and their theories of interpretation, you shouldn't think Cohen dragged in Breyer because he's some random celebrity who, like Cohen, bikes for fun.

Breyer is not a rules guy:

Breyer has six interpretive tools—text, history, tradition, precedent, the purpose of a statute, and the consequences. In his view, it's a mistake to ignore the last two. Scalia replies that to look at either the purpose or the consequence of a statute is to invite subjectivity and beg the question.

And yet, Scalia admits he's "exceeded the speed limit on — on occasion."

PIERS MORGAN: Have you ever been caught?

SCALIA: Oh, yes. I've gotten tickets. None -- none recently.

MORGAN: That's it? That's -- that's the only criminal act..

SCALIA: Yes. I...

MORGAN: -- in your life?

SCALIA: -- I am pretty much a law-abiding sort.

MORGAN: I like the phrase "pretty much." It gives me somewhere to go.

SCALIA: No I -- I'm a law-abiding citizen.

"New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something."

"I think that’s what the public wants the mayor to do."

Elsewhere, "all over the United States," they "are wringing their hands saying, ‘Oh, this is terrible,’” but not in New York. In New York, they are doing something.

Do something — what a wonderful concept, often heard in the old cry for help: "Don't just stand there; do something."

It's the the motto of the liberal. The corresponding motto of the conservative is: First, do no harm. Or to put it in the form that I thought up (in another context) and have adopted as a kind of a personal motto: Better than nothing is a high standard.

Federal regulators are about to require rearview cameras in all new cars.

Because something must be done about all those drivers who keep backing up into and over children. This will add $160 to $200 to the price of every new car, but what is money when there is a device that might make up for the people who fail to turn around and look when they are backing up?

Why with a camera built into the front view, people might shake off their old training and quit turning around, trust the little digital video, and come up with whole new ways of backing up into children.

“We haven’t done anything else to protect pedestrians,” said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington. “This is one thing we can do and should do.”

If it weren't for the concision and frankness, I'd say that quote is the perfect manifestation of the mind of a bureaucrat. There are 3 chilling steps: 1. We haven't doing anything recently about X, 2. There is something we could do, and 3. We should do it.

The new requirement stems from a 2008 law, the Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act, named for a 2-year-old boy who died in 2002 when his pediatrician father was backing a sport utility vehicle into their driveway....

In urging Congress to help reduce backover injuries, KidsAndCars created a public-service announcement showing that 62 children could fit behind a large S.U.V. without being visible to the driver in any of the mirrors.

What about vehicles that are not large SUVs? The regulation applies to all cars. Also, you're supposed to turn around and look when you back up, not rely on mirrors.

Here's the very impressive KidsAndCars PSA that invokes deep fears:



ADDED: Now, the rule is being delayed. Today was the deadline, but it "may be delayed until after November's presidential election, regulators said."

The proposed rule, estimated to cost $2.7 billion, was listed as one of the five most expensive pending U.S. regulations in an Aug. 30 letter President Barack Obama sent to House Republican leaders.

Wow. What a difficult problem! You've got the voters who empathize about children and voters who worry about too much regulation. What do you do? Obviously, you delay the rule. More study is needed.

"Under the threat of federal action, everything about kids' food..."

"... from cereal sugar levels to mascots to TV ads, is under scrutiny."

"Not every human problem deserves a law."

"While I appreciate the value of wearing a ski helmet, I am concerned about the continuing and seemingly inexorable transfer of authority from parents to the state."

Who said it?



Jerry Brown!

United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms.

The Fish and Wildlife Service agents come after the manufacturer of electric guitars.

And why you don't want to travel outside of the country with a vintage guitar... or maybe any wooden guitar.

Feds reject Bloomberg's anti-obesity experiment.

Not because it's too much nannyism. It's just too much trouble.

Federal officials on Friday rejected Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal to bar New York City’s food stamp users from buying soda and other sugary drinks with their benefits....

But in a letter Friday, an administrator of the food stamp program in Washington said the city’s proposed experiment would have been “too large and complex” to implement and evaluate.