This Magazine articles from September 1999

This Magazine archives from September 1999

Naming the Net (Network Solutions Inc amd the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers compete for control of a database).
September 1, 1999... What's in a name? On the Internet, more than you might suspect. The network of networks that brings together computers from all over the world exists because of the names and numbers that allow the machines to communicate with one another....

Bombshell beauty (advertisers exploit the glamour of war and the military).
September 1, 1999... I WAS WALKING PAST A TORONTO STOREfront when the massive poster caught my eye. "Make Peace," it exclaimed. I stopped, my interest piqued. Below the photograph of bottles and tubes, words in smaller type instructed: "End the War." The poster...

"With files from City Hall" (a protest against Toronto's Community Policing program by the homeless is misrepresented in the Toronto press).
September 1, 1999... WHEN A MOTLEY GROUP OF PROTESTers occupied Toronto's Allan Gardens this summer to speak out against the recently launched Community Action Policing program and to lobby for affordable housing, the event was quickly discredited. Mayor Mel...

Shiny new (Jason) Kenney (the rise of one of the Reform Party's brighter lights).
September 1, 1999... In a July 1995 This feature article on the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation (CTF), we described Jason Kenney as "bright, energetic and articulate--the perfect poster child for the antitax movement." Since that time, Kenney has further increased...

Show of hands (voting among Malawi's largely illiterate population is achieved through the casting of ballots by ink-stained thumbprints).
September 1, 1999... LILONGWE, MALAWI IT MADE FOR A strange sight: on a cool Tuesday evening in June, people across the city congregated at their local "bottle stores," with blue ink up to the first joints of both index fingers. They were gathering to predict...

Fat cats in the hat (business writers use children's bestsellers as models).
September 1, 1999... IF THERE IS ONE THING BUSINESS WRITERS know how to do, it's cash in. Want to write a bestseller? Simply steal someone else's "brand" and add your own free-market spin. The latest in the genre is Seuss-isms For Success (with an introduction...

Must-see TV (Youth News Network's offer to high school students of the loan of audio/video and computer equipment came at a price).
September 1, 1999... IN 1992, THE MONTREAL-BASED YOUTH News Network (YNN) approached Canadian high schools with a Faustian bargain. In exchange for the free loan of audio/video and computer equipment, schools would guarantee the attention of students as YNN piped...

In God we trust, eh? With ... a new ... book proposing monetary union, you might think Canada is on a steep slope toward ... dollarization ...
September 1, 1999... EVERY RULING CLASS-OH, HOW GOOD it feels to use that fulsome phrase one last time in this millennium-has its nightmare (it's the people who have the dreams): that the masses will rise up and eat it alive; that it will be caught with its pants...

My name soars like an eagle: ... Drew Hayden Taylor can't help wishing they had colourful names ... on his reserve ...
September 1, 1999... IN A MAGAZINE (THAT SHALL REMAIN nameless) specializing in new ways of looking at life, there was an ad for a "spiritual development" workshop called Cry for a Vision. "Join us for four and a half days on the land as we traverse the shadow and...

Portrait of the artist as a young mannequin (the book trade's adoption of slick marketing technique includes proper packaging of the author).
September 1, 1999... A CLUSTER OF BEAUTIES. SMART WOMEN, ALL HAIR AND smiles, baring shoulders, knees, a flash of thigh: this was the Spring/Summer cover of the fiction journal Blood + Aphorisms. It was the "literary babes" issue, and just so there was no doubt, it...

This is your father.
September 1, 1999... 1. You are driving your father home to Toronto in the brand new Chevy he spent all night on the train going down to the States to buy, to sell tomorrow in Quebec. You've gone with your Dad and your best friend in the back seat out for a...

Up here.
September 1, 1999... Slow hands are pounding a nail through a hand. Her heart against my chest. Asleep, still she holds me. Love, I'm trying to understand this lack of mine. I kiss the lips that will soon refuse me. The throat. Outside, spring...

On the beach.
September 1, 1999... On the beach below the boardwalk the boy is eating ice cream, his mouth swooning around a lush field of cold while his skin burns, armies of soldier ants crawling along his arm, legs, into the tender folds of his groin, between the lids of eyes...

Examiner.
September 1, 1999... I rolled up my pant cuffs, messed up my hair, stumbled into the office. "You the doc?" "Be right with you." "Yessir." I paced about, worrying my hat. On the wall were boxes lit up from inside. One had a sign that read, SYPHILIS....

Fire.
September 1, 1999... MY MOUTH STILL TASTES OF GASOLINE FROM SUCKING IT out of the lawnmower with the crazy straw. My idea. Running barefoot across the grass with a finger stoppering the end of the twisted pink plastic. Spit-drooling into the metal trash can at the...

Falling: to Arthur Davis.
September 1, 1999... Once, he fell from a tree was trimming the view from the kitchen window the ladder tilted and tied on by rope Curling the saw around his finger he thought of other things- Jupiter rising out of the East...

Swan Street.
September 1, 1999... BECAUSE SHE IS NINE YEARS AND SEVERAL MONTHS OLD, AND she can count to 1,000 without stopping, and remembers all the words to new songs after only three tries, and because she knows, in detail, where babies come from, Lucinda Wallace prefers...

I left my heart in Henderson, Nevada or, dial M for marshmallow.
September 1, 1999... THIS IS WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK about vertigo: the room reeling after a sugar binge. Haagen-Dazs honey vanilla drizzled with hot fudge, all turning to velvet under swallows of mochaccino and marshmallow. Ahh, marshmallow....

On The price is right.
September 1, 1999... On The Price is Right a refrigerator can be your best friend a comfort in times of trouble gaping open as outstretched arms & filled with Rice-a-Roni & as Dian embraces, her satin dress sliding against its smooth...

Flat.
September 1, 1999... The front left, this time, like a black Dali clock, a cooling puddle of lava, complete with its own vicious hiss. We're caught, lame, on some sun-pounded off-ramp or interchange; no jack, but a perfectly usable,...

Windows.
September 1, 1999... "WHAT I'M THINKING is a double-hung laid on its edge with a picture across the top. Get a better view that way." Carol looked up but couldn't see. She made a face. "I'd just cut it down about a foot... Here-" The contractor took the pencil...

Giant.
September 1, 1999... THERE WAS A GIANT IN THEIR TOWN. HIS name was Sal. Everybody laughed as he walked by and said things like, "Hey, giant!" and waved and grinned and elbowed their dates in the ribs and stuff like that, which the giant tolerated only because he...

Mercy. The grievous angels.
September 1, 1999... After more than 12 years on the road, playing everywhere from Kujjarapik, Quebec to Faro, Yukon, a band could be forgiven if they wanted to take it easy and hit the creative cruise control. But THE GRIEVOUS ANGELS only seem to be getting more...

Death of the moon.
September 1, 1999... Brian Panhuyzen is a serious writer. Let's hope nobody tells him. His first collection of short fiction, THE DEATH OF THE MOON (Cormorant Books), is a delightful jumble of mad sci-fi theories, hilarious family slapstick and bilious, urban...

Living in the world as if it were home.
September 1, 1999... Speaking of Popes, I suspect Tim Lilburn would like to meet one, or be one. His thoughtful, religiously inclined book of essays, LIVING IN THE WORLD AS IF IT WERE HOME (Cormorant Books), reads like an extended prose poem singing (or, more...

Frame of the book.
September 1, 1999... For sheer, unabashed, full-tilt egg-headism, you can't beat Erin Moure, Canada's leading "experimental" poet (such a useless term, all poems are experiments). Her new collection of postreferential collages, A FRAME OF THE BOOK (Anansi), is her...

Does not live up to potential; more effort required (Ontario's school reform gets poor marks).
September 1, 1999... WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU POUR $150 million into reengineering secondary school curricula? If you're the Ontario government, you get a huge public relations opportunity that allows you to boast of your commitment to quality education. But for...