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
