This Magazine articles from March 2008

This Magazine archives from March 2008

Fight for your rights.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... I was interested to read Sara Minogue's article "Paper Route" (January/ February) on the work of Journalists for Human Rights in Africa. However, I was disappointed that Minogue used questionable sources and misinterpreted JHR's mandate,...

Fundamentally flawed.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... In your January/February 2008 issue, author Misha Warbanski, in "Speaking Out: A Muslim poet gets political," shows a complete lack of understanding of the issues raised by the Bouchard-Taylor commission, which recently completed its public...

Highway to the danger zone.(Editorial)
March 1, 2008... WHEN I WAS IN GRADE 3, my mother took me to Disneyland. Staying with friends in Santa Cruz en route, we got to experience another, unexpected California phenomenon: an earthquake, and a pretty big one, at 6.7 on the Richter scale. We were in a...

Travel tales.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... I enjoyed Maria Amuchastegui's article on how tourism is fuelling a growing class divide in Cuba between those with access to tourist dollars and those without, but I felt she missed an important, and positive, piece of the picture by ignoring...

No small part.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... For the record, the "female taxi driver" referred to on the cover of your November/December issue had a name and a life ("Crime scenes"). She was Lucie Turmel and she was 23 years old in 1990 when she was murdered. She died of multiple...

Oops.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... In an otherwise excellent article on Cuban tourism ("Last Resorts," January/ February), Maria Amuchastegui does drop one frightful clanger: "The baseball player Joe Louis visited Cuba in 1960..." Joe Louis was of course one of the...

The state of apartheid.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... The reaction to your Israel issue (September/October) shows that, unfortunately, ethnic loyalty and historical denial are still the automatic reaction of Canada's Jewish community to perceived criticism. The word "apartheid" is used by...

This land is our land: a Mohawk woman's border battle.(PROFILE)(Katenies)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN NOVEMBER 2003, Katenies, an Akwesasne Mohawk grandmother from Quebec, decided to deliver some hockey equipment to her nephew in Ontario. But what should have been a simple trip has led to a one-woman showdown with...

Stuck in neutral: greener cars come slowly to unions.(EASILY MISSED)(unions are opt to use electric cars)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... SHOPPING for a new car presents the socially responsible consumer with an ethical dilemma: buy the gas guzzler manufactured by unionized workers or the low-emission, non-union-made alternative? But for Canadian labour union members, there's no...

Lights, camera ... robots? Canwest's new cuts bring sci-fi to local news.(WTF)(Canwest plans to lay off 200 employees)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... YOUR LOCAL NEWS may soon be coming to you with a sci-fi twist. Media giant Canwest has announced plans to lay off 200 employees in regional newsrooms, in favour of a high-tech system that uses robotic cameras controlled from four broadcast...

All the buzz on the B-movie baddies.(WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ... KILLER BEES?)(Africanized honeybees)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... WHEN "KILLER BEES" started heading north toward the United States more than 50 years ago, they brought with them mass panic and B-movies, embedding their fearsome little stingers in the North American cultural imagination. [ILLUSTRATION...

3 reasons to be afraid, very afraid: some (not-so) far-out scenarios to keep you on your toes.(LIST)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... (1.) Plague If you thought the plague was a relic of the Middle Ages, think again. Every year there are 1,000 to 3,000 cases of this deadly disease, including an estimated 10 to 15 cases in the United States. Caused by Yersinia pestis...

The path ahead: why cities need to take cycling seriously.(ARGUMENT)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] RIDING DOWN THE STREET, passing cars and feeling free, I often wonder why there are so few cyclists commuting to work or school. The benefits of cycling are many: health, happiness and a clearer environmental...

Pol psychology: are conservatives just born that way?(POLITICS)(Right Wing Authoritarianism)
March 1, 2008... With all the energy that right- and left-wingers spend on preaching to and persuading their ideological opposites, wouldn't it be disquieting to learn that most people's political views are set for life by the time they can ride a tricycle? ...

How can I cut taxes? Let me count the ways: election courtship, Harper style.(ECONOMICS)(Stephen Harper)
March 1, 2008... Stephen Harper faces a tricky dilemma. Leading up to another election, the Conservatives need to make nice with some of their antsy allies. Income-trust investors are still seething over Harper's retreat from his promise to keep income trusts...

A convenient untruth: charting the rise of environmental "declinism".(CONTRARIAN)
March 1, 2008... One of the most disturbing aspects of the growing concern over climate change is the giddy delight with which some members of the left await the coming global catastrophe. Of course they don't admit to being delighted. Instead, they claim to be...

Plastic unfantastic.(plastic is a growing problem for the environment)(Cover story)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FAR OUT OF SIGHT, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean--roughly between Hawaii and San Francisco--lies the North Pacific Gyre, popularly known as "the Pacific trash vortex" or "great Pacific garbage patch." Estimated...

Courting catastrophe.(Interview)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Calgary investigative journalist Andrew Nikiforuk's first book was The Fourth Horseman: A Short History of Epidemics, Plagues, Famines and Other Scourges. His latest, Pandemonium: Bird Flu, Mad Cow Disease, and Other...

Outbreak! Why is our resistance to antibiotics escalating? The villains may be different than we think. Some scientists say the cause could be the genetically modified E. coli casually used in industrial labs--and high-school classrooms.
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Four high-school students from the tony Ridley College boarding school walked among the science teachers, offering pointers. Decked out in lab coats, the teens were helping attendees of the Science Teachers...

Server error: millions of people a day rely on Google to search, email, schedule, map, work, study and YouTube. So what happens if it fails?
March 1, 2008... On balmy Toronto day in late December 2009, 34-year-old Gregario Esteban woke up thinking of Jessica Simpson. Only he didn't know it was Jessica Simpson he was thinking of. As he swung out of bed and pulled on his slippers, he was hanging on to...

Walking along Steeles at midnight.(Fiction & poetry)(Short story)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] We are six courses into Clarence Lau's wedding banquet up at the north edge of the city. Two courses left to go. A waiter moves from table to table pouring red wine. Another carries pitchers of Orange Crush and Coke....

A Yellow Book Sits Beside Us. We Must Not Look in It. It Frightens Us.(Three poems)(Poem)
March 1, 2008... A YELLOW BOOK SITS BESIDE US. WE MUST NOT LOOK IN IT. IT FRIGHTENS US. The naughty schoolteacher lit the books on fire. She hesitated before the bell rang, but was sure after dinner. Lobsters and monsters changed her mind. ...

Childhood.(Three poems)(Poem)
March 1, 2008... CHILDHOOD Opening my head to the heavens, I look to fevered children hopping into my arms like perfectly round potatoes. Sometimes all I could hear was a raging ragtime piano on our never-ending journey. ...

Pigeons (1).(Three poems)(Poem)
March 1, 2008... PIGEONS (1) the image of seven perfectly combed moustaches walking down the street side by side frightens me sometimes a pigeon leads the way and says "Come on, let's get you beautiful." and the men...

Pigeons (2).(Three poems)(Poem)
March 1, 2008... PIGEONS (2) yes, my name is forklift as the sun rose the day that I was born the clouds hurled bits of pale blue sky at me crumpled up by a gang of delinquent pigeons that hated my mother fuck the pigeons ...

Cafe in Bodrum.(Two poems)(Poem)
March 1, 2008... CAFE IN BODRUM Season's end. The seaside patio is scuttled with upturned chairs. Piped-in pop tunes crackle out mid-song as the call to prayer begins. Flags sigh in the silence, lift and drop--a crescent, a star,...

The Old Year.(Two poems)(Poem)
March 1, 2008... THE OLD YEAR I wake, blink, stretch and take in the light, birds like stitches in the rubbed-denim sky above the wide white lawn of winter. Is this morning? I dress. I wrap the chill in my flesh against the...

Shake 'n quake: art that's a disaster waiting to happen.(PROFILE)(disaster globes)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SNOW GLOBES typically represent wistful worlds we dream of stepping into, but the scenes inside Sherri Hay's disaster globes are not places you would want to visit. In her series Wish You Were Here, the Toronto...

Braving it by bike.(FILM)(Paul Davis' film -40 Degrees Celsius)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... TO CALL Paul Davis a dedicated cyclist is an understatement. His daily year-round, 90-minute morning bike commute to work, which he repeats on the way home, takes him over highways, city streets and trails. It would be exceptional for anyone,...

Facing the facts.(CLOTHES)(Joy Apparel)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... YOU MAY never meet Megumu from Japan or Liza from Guatemala, but you can wear T-shirts bearing their visages--or choose from over 100 other faces of people from around the globe. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Joy Apparel, a T-shirt company...

Art for war's sake.(PAINTING)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "WAR," says 29-year-old Toronto artist Matt Bahen, is "the most intense level of human interaction." Bahen has been painting war-related images since he was a student at the Ontario College of Art & Design, which he...

Your Secrets Sleep with Me.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Your Secrets Sleep with Me By Darren O'Donnell Coach House Books, 2004 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Toronto of Darren O'Donnell's 2004 novel Your Secrets Sleep with Me only seems far from the real thing. In the book, a flood of...

Falsework.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Falsework By Gary Geddes Goose Lane, 2007 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Vancouver poet Gary Geddes' Falsework builds a narrative of poems around the collapse of that city's Second Narrows Bridge on June 17, 1958. A miscalculation...

Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? By Anita Rau Badami Random House, 2006 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In her third novel, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, Anita Rau Badami tells the story of three women and the complexities of their...

You have one new death notification: social networking: it's not just for the living anymore.(WEB)(obituaries in online social networks)
March 1, 2008... So I'm procrastinating on Facebook late one night when my news feed updates, exclaiming that 25 of my friends have sent public messages to a close pal from high school. Curious, I scroll down to the bottom of her profile, which now brims with...

Watch and learn: when it comes to green cinema, action beats aesthetics.(FILM)(The Planet)
March 1, 2008... If you'd like to watch a film about the end of life on earth, there are a lot of choices at the moment. You can literally pick which incipient disaster you'd like to see: the collapse of the environment (The 11th Hour, An Inconvenient Truth),...

True confessions: Gunter Grass and Jan Wong spill their beans.(BOOKS)(Peeling the Onion)(Beijing Confidential)
March 1, 2008... In his controversial 2006 memoir, Peeling the Onion, Nobel laureate Gunter Grass questions the value of a re-examined past, especially a past in which there is much that might be better forgotten. "Why go back...?" he wonders. And then he...

Was the grass always greener ...? Lawn care through the ages.(THEN & NOW)(Chronology)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Medieval period Lawn lore has it that castle-dwellers protected their turf, literally, by having their peons scythe down grass surrounding their strongholds, the better to spy advancing enemies. 1640s Early...