This Magazine articles from March 2003

This Magazine archives from March 2003

Blowing smoke. (Under The Hood).(cigarette company tactics, government attitudes to cigarette sales)(Industry Overview)
March 1, 2003... SIGMUND FREUD, WHO SMOKED HIS TONGUE CANCEROUS, ONCE WROTE, "the pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts" On the other hand, Dr. James Maskalyk of the Canadian Medical Association Journal recently remarked: "We all...

Sterilize this. (Salvo).
March 1, 2003... DO YOU HATE THE MESS LEFT ON A CUTTING board after you've chopped chicken? I never really thought about it, but yeah, I guess so. Shouldn't you really be more careful about germs ? Well, I think I'm already pretty... Hey, where are you going...

Hail to the chief. (Red-Handed).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... TORONTO POLICE CHIEF JULIAN FANTINO HAS had a rough time of it recently. First, the Toronto Star exposes his department's practice of racial profiling, then a group of officers charged with beating a homeless man settle out of court, and then...

Has-been highs. (Chart).(humor)(Fictional Work)
March 1, 2003... AT WHAT POINT DOES YOUTHFUL EXPERIMENTATION BECOME EMBARRASSING AND PATHETIC? If Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston aren't on hand to give you the answer, maybe we can help. Join decorum expert Allison Gifford as she reveals the telltale signs...

Burning Bush. (Up Next).(alternative weapons inspectors)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... AS GEORGE W. BUSH'S RHETORIC ABOUT Saddam Hussein becomes ever more bellicose, a group of Canadian activists have started using the president's own words against him, nailing him for behaving exactly like the "rogue states" he seeks to...

Spot the spies. (How-To).(rights under the privacy act, role of secret services)
March 1, 2003... THE SPOOKS DROPPED IN DURING THE DEAD of winter. It was just after dawn at a 50-person protest against tuition hikes at a prairie university, and I was pretending to report on the whole affair. Anyway, we were huddled in tents, when a black...

Trial by ordeal. (Sign Of The Times).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... THE TEAR GAS MAY HAVE DISSIPATED, BUT for many activists and a whole lot of lawyers, the Quebec City protests of April 2001 are far from over. Over the course of the three-day siege, there were more than 450 arrests. While the police suffered a...

The life of the party. (Context).(evolution of the New Democratic Party)
March 1, 2003... WHEN SUPPORT FOR THE NEW DEMOCRATIC Party hit all-time lows, I was invited to a meeting with Howard Hampton, Ontario's NDP leader. It was 1999 and Mike Harris was running for re-election. Howie, as friends know him, was a gracious host, but the...

Trick or treaty. (In The House).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... ENVIRONMENTALISTS UNCORKED MORE THAN a few champagne bottles when Parliament ratified the Kyoto Protocol last December. The Sierra Club held a press conference to congratulate the Prime Minister, and even gave him an award. But how will...

Rebel without a clue. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2003... Chris Koentges's salvo calling for an activism as "precise and innocuously ruthless as the forces it seeks to impede" exhibited the same smugness and immaturity he aims to parody ("Indirect action" Jan/Feb). The poet Audre Lorde exhorted...

All consuming.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2003... I really enjoyed "The Rebel Sell" by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter (Nov/ Dec 2002). It was a lucid and eye-opening look at the hidden inner workings of consumer culture, from a perspective I'd never heard before. I just read it again,...

Pulling the wool? (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2003... I am writing to express my disappointment with Julie Crysler's one-sided view of the knitting renaissance ("Take back the knit?" Nov/Dec 2002). Certainly knitting is gaining popularity in the world of women, but is this really about feminism?...

Whoops!(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2003... In the Jan/Feb issue the names of Dr. Mahzarin Banaji ("Colour blind?" by Kathy Walker) and illustrator Joshua Leipciger ("Iraq and ruin") were spelled incorrectly. This Magazine regrets the errors.

Who's this.(list of contributors)
March 1, 2003... David Bernans is the researcher/archivist for Concordia Student Union, and the author of Con U Inc.: Privatization, Marketization and Globalization at Concordia University (and beyond). Raymond Biesinger is managing editor of The Gatewayat...

Chump change: invest for the long haul: that's the mantra of mutual fund shills. Meanwhile, the big boys make money by getting in and out quick. Your long-term investments stabilize the market, and they pocket the profit. Feel like a chump? You should.
March 1, 2003... EVERY FEBRUARY, CANADIANS ENGAGE IN A strange national custom. Just as those nasty credit card bills start showing up from our Christmas shopping binge, we are confronted with a blitz of advertising reminding us of the looming deadline for RRSP...

No man is an island: British Columbia's Gulf Islands are home to a remarkable group of artists, recluses and eccentrics. Hal Niedzviecki meets the man behind a small but vibrant newspaper that gives voice to this unique community and distinctive culture.(Gulf Islands Gazette)
March 1, 2003... LOOKING BACK, JANE RULE CAN'T HELP BUT marvel at how she went from privacy-obsessed artist to island grandmother. She points to the swimming pool she and her partner put in decades ago. Far from a private sanctuary, it's the place countless...

Guided by vices.(ideas of morality have shifted)(Editorial)
March 1, 2003... MAYBE IT'S A GEN-X CLICHE, BUT I LOVE THOSE old 1950S pulp novels. The purple prose. The dog-eared pages. The lurid cover art, featuring nubile young women in various states of undress. The promise of "shocking" tales of impressionable...

Street smart: in the last 10 years, heroin overdoses have killed thousands on the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Now a group of users have come together to forge their own solutions.(Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users)
March 1, 2003... THE STREET CORNER'S FILLED WITH PEOPLE. The sky-black circles under their eyes. Hanging out, nodding out on walls, drinking coffee handouts, eating foodscraps. Main and Hastings. Pain and Wasting. I'm getting to know their names, their faces....

This is your brain on booze: what's the line between hedonism and addiction? Marnie Woodrow explores the pleasures and the perils of the bottle.
March 1, 2003... FIRST TASTE: MMM, YUMMY. LIKE SWALLOWING the sun whole as it rises. Sneaking drinks at weddings. Hey, that one tastes like Uncle Hank smells--weird! Eating 112 Tootsie Rolls in one sitting: sugar-crazy. Q: What'd you do on the weekend? A:...

Virtual vice: technology makes it easy to do all manner of naughty things in the "privacy" of our own homes. But as Nora Young reveals, it has also fundamentally changed the way we think about ourselves as moral agents.
March 1, 2003... SIN IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE. IT HAS LATELY LOST ITS special, sneaky frisson. Back in the old days, you, the sinner, walked among us. We couldn't see that scarlet letter inside your jacket. You held your lurid desires locked in your heart,...

Steamed up: why straight people should stop worrying about what we get up to in bathhouses.(Column)
March 1, 2003... BEFORE I WRITE ANOTHER SENTENCE, LET'S DEAL with the obvious and utmost question on your naughty, naughty mind--yes, I use bathhouses, and yes, I use bathhouses a lot. I'm a slut. There, that's out of the way. I also must admit that I've...

Confessions of a playa hata: conservatives have mounted a war against envy--blasting anyone who questions CEO pay or tax cuts as jealous, green-eyed wannabes. What are they so scared of?
March 1, 2003... MARTHA STEWART WAS SEARCHING FOR THE PERFECT WORD. She was trying to describe her disastrous year to Jeffrey Toobin from the New Yorker. It began last summer, when Stewart was accused of insider trading, and her good friend, ImClone CEO...

Such sights to show you.(Short Story)
March 1, 2003... I MET MY REAL FATHER ONLY ONCE, AT A BAR IN VANCOUVER for lunch. He was an hour late. He wore a fine brown suit, but it had been slept in and had raspberry jam all down the left sleeve. His eyes were like mine, the colour of tarnished pennies....

Sellyn illusions.(Interview)
March 1, 2003... Nate Sellyn is from Montreal. He is 20 years old. He is in his second year studying English at Princeton. These stories are sad and hopeful, not ironic or mean-spirited. Sellyn is a clear and tender storyteller, and his sentences have the ring...

Wonder family tree.(Short Story)
March 1, 2003... JULIUS WONDER WAS BORN IN BROOKLYN, A beautiful son to two ordinary parents. His father worked in the garment district, stitching ready-to-wear dresses for Fifth Avenue beauty queens. His mother sold newspapers on the street corner outside...

Books. (Cultural worker: a random review of alternative culture).(Uncomfortably Numb)(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... At their heart, the arts are cannibalistic: art galleries are filled with impressionist, post-impressionist, Group of Seven knock-offs. Every couple of years pop music proclaims the new Beatles or the new Nirvana. It must be tough to be...

Performance.(a random review of alternative culture)
March 1, 2003... CANADA'S POET LAUREATE GEORGE BOWERING RECENTLY remarked that "to treat poetry as performance is crude and extremely revolting." Whether he's right or not, I happily there are still those artists who can safely dock in both harbours. ...

Dirty mind: Dr. Brian Pronger isn't just reading skin mags for the articles--it's for science, honest.(study of pornography collection donated to University of Toronto)(Interview)
March 1, 2003... ALTHOUGH PORNOGRAPHY IS A $14-BILLION INDUSTRY--EQUIVALENT to pro football, basketball and baseball combined--until recently, the academic research microscope has steered clear of it. Now Dr. Brian Pronger and colleagues are almost two years...