Economist , June 13 (posted Saturday, June 13, 1998) Bill Gates answers the Economist , which endorsed the Justice Department antitrust lawsuit in a May 23 cover story. His (much-repeated and now familiar) argument: Microsoft's "open standards" have created a prosperous, competitive industry worth $40 billion a year, and the government has no place deciding which applications Microsoft can and cannot include in its products. ... The cover editorial and story tell Europeans to stop fretting about genetically engineered crops. Extremely popular in the United States, such crops are largely unwelcome in Europe. The efficient, bug-resistant plants contain few, and mostly simple, genetic alterations: They are not terrifying Frankenplants that will rage out of control. ... Cuba's young are growing increasingly rebellious because of the nation's terrible poverty, says a story. A violent, youth-fueled uprising--à la Indonesia--is not impossible this summer. Vanity Fair , July 1998 (posted Saturday, June 13, 1998) An issue of photos and history. The five much-anticipated Monica Lewinsky pics include: Monica lolling on grass in a red-checked gingham shirt (see: Marilyn Monroe), Monica wistful on the beach, Monica wrapped in an old American flag, Monica vamping with pink feather boa. There are coy captions: "Was this the face that launched a thousand subpoenas?" (What on earth was William Ginsburg thinking when he arranged this?) ... The other major photos: Ronald and Nancy Reagan are on the cover and inside, the first public pictures of them in years. Reagan's Alzheimer's shows in his slightly vacant expression but not in his upright, presidential bearing. A long piece--the first of a two-part series--recounts the Reagans' rise to the presidency, focusing on their rich California social circle (Betsy Bloomingdale et al.). Conclusion: The Reagans drifted right as they climbed the social ladder. ... There are three other long histories: An appreciation of Sinatra as the "greatest interpretive musician" of the century, yet another piece on former New Yorker editor William Shawn (the gist--he was too careful and too afraid to ever really live), and a long recounting of the Jeffrey ( Fatal Vision ) MacDonald murders. After 18 years in prison, MacDonald may get a new trial. The author's presentation of evidence suggests MacDonald is guilty as hell. New Republic , June 29 (posted Friday, June 12, 1998) The magazine publishes the results of its investigation of former Associate Editor Stephen Glass. Of Glass' 41 TNR stories, 27 contained fabrications, including several that were entirely fabricated. Among the invented characters and organizations: "Daniel, a young professor at an Illinois college"; the "Cops & Justice Foundation"; and (sadly) "The First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ." ... The long cover story argues that only gender-blindness will save us from the morass of sex harassment law. "Gender essentialists," notably Catherine MacKinnon, have turned workplaces into battlegrounds by insisting that almost any sexual interaction between a man and a woman is coercive. This must stop. The author also proposes limiting employer liability for sex harassment: To prevent lawsuits, companies have adopted sexual policing policies that strip employees of privacy and stultify offices. These policies would be unnecessary if sex harassers, rather than companies, were sued. New York Times Magazine , June 14 (posted Thursday, June 11, 1998) The cover story about New Jersey charter schools worries about the rise of free-market education. Parents are rushing to enroll kids in charters, which generally offer smaller classes and more enthusiastic teachers. Among the problems: Kids with unmotivated parents are left behind in bad public schools, and charters dupe parents by promising more than they deliver. (One charter company claimed all its kindergartners could read when most couldn't.) ... A piece previews Sen. John Glenn's space shuttle ride as a medical guinea pig. The research on Glenn will be a decent starting point for space gerontology, but the mission mostly matters for its symbolic value. One worry: Glenn will be so exhausted from the flight that he'll have to be carried off the shuttle on a stretcher. (For more on the flight, see Slate 's "Assessment" of Glenn.) Time and Newsweek , June 15 (posted Tuesday, June 9, 1998) The summer slowdown arrives. Time 's cover story warns that children know more about sex than their parents suspect. Newsweek 's says the aging of baby boomers has prompted a surge in research about memory. (Conclusion: Your kids know everything you have already forgotten about sex.) Time says teens and preteens are learning technical details about sex from television (notably Dawson's Creek ). Problem: Kids don't know enough about sex's moral dimension, largely because parents aren't imparting the sex education they should. A sidebar applauds Dr. Drew Pinsky, who dispenses sensible sex info and advice on MTV's popular Loveline . (Another sidebar interviews three 12-year-old boys about sex. They undermine the premise of the cover story by being charmingly naive: "The frenching thing is the edge.") ... Newsweek 's package on how memory works says that alcohol, high blood pressure, and too little sleep can damage recall. Physical activity, mental exercises, and estrogen (for women) can protect it. More and better therapies are coming. Newsweek is agnostic about supposedly memory-enhancing vitamin and herbal supplements such as ginkgo, saying the medical evidence isn't in yet. The mags agree that Monica Lewinsky's new lawyers will be more discreet than William Ginsburg and are more likely to strike an immunity deal with Kenneth Starr. (Check out Slate 's "Pundit Central" for the commentariat's take.) Time trumps Newsweek by running one of the shots from a forthcoming Vanity Fair spread, a bizarre picture of Lewinsky vamping with a pink feathered fan. ... Time claims the United States secretly deployed the nerve gas sarin--the same gas used in the Tokyo subway attack--during the Vietnam War. The United States claimed to have a no-first-use policy for chemical weapons. The article describes one such deployment in grisly detail: a special operations mission to murder American defectors in Laos. Newsweek 's World Cup preview says the low-scoring U.S. team must rely on its fabulous goalie, Kasey Keller. ... A profile of Magic Johnson, who launches his late-night talk show this week, admires the ex-basketball star for starting businesses in inner cities--his strategy is called "Black Capitalism." U.S. News & World Report , June 15 (posted Tuesday, June 9, 1998) While Time explains how kids learn sex, U.S. News explains how kids learn language. According to the cover story, new research has confirmed that grammar is hard-wired in the brain (all languages share basic grammar). At 10 months, children stop paying attention to foreign languages; at 18 months, they recognize ungrammatical sentences. Unsurprising fact: Children whose parents talk to them a lot have larger vocabularies. ... U.S. News ' Monica story says the Lewinsky family soured on Ginsburg after he arranged the Vanity Fair photo shoot, which transformed Monica's image from romantic innocent to celebrity-seeker. ... An article says circumcision rates in the United States have plummeted from 90 percent to 64 percent. Parents are deciding that the few small health benefits of circumcision are not worth the pain of the procedure. The New Yorker , June 15 (posted Tuesday, June 9, 1998) A Manhattan dominatrix called "Nurse Wolf" is profiled. "One of the busiest mistresses in Manhattan," she has a medical exam room, a dungeon, a cage, whips, muzzles, and even a mace (not "Mace"--a mace). Among her methods: dressing clients in diapers and having them soil themselves, tying clients in excruciating Japanese rope knots, urinating on clients and, of course, standard whipping and clamping. It's exhausting work, she says. ... A piece marvels at Gillette's new Mach 3 razor, which took $750 million to develop and seems to be worth every penny: It has three blades that are more than twice as hard as steel. According to the article, Gillette is the only company manufacturing a product that is not only the world's most popular but also its best. (Full disclosure: The author is Slate 's James Surowiecki. For more on the Mach 3, see Slate 's review, "The Cutting Edge." ) ... An article claims that a new painkiller called Celebra relieves inflammation much better than aspirin or ibuprofen, with no side effects. The "COX-2 inhibitor" could be a godsend for those suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. It also may prevent colon cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Weekly Standard , June 15, and National Review , June 22 (posted Tuesday, June 9, 1998) The conservative mags eulogize Barry Goldwater. In the National Review , William F. Buckley Jr. remembers the private Goldwater, a straight-talking man who loved to fly his plane. ... The Standard 's cover package echoes the popular wisdom that Goldwaterism (small government, internationalism) has triumphed and that Ronald Reagan completed what Goldwater started. A piece by Robert Novak admits Goldwater was not a serious political strategist or deep thinker. ... The NR mocks the current vogue of "Tibetan Buddhism." The soft, New Agey religion popularized in the West bears little resemblance to the actual religion of Tibet, which is full of idol worship and thorny theological questions. Even the Dalai Lama seems to have abandoned real Buddhism for the flaccid Western imitation. --Seth Stevenson