November 2004
"Art is like medicine - it can heal. Yet I've always been amazed at how many believe in medicine but don't believe in art, without questioning either."
- Damien Hirst
November 2004
The Numbers Game
by Tom Fennell
Larger, richer, more powerful than ever: that’s the forecast for the U.S. as its birth rate exceeds that of any other industrialized nation — and nearly doubles that of Canada.illustration by R.O. Jones
More Stories in this issue
Books
A Manual’s Labours
by Don Gillmor
The self-help sex book, like its first readers, has crossed middle age. With Viagra, both get a little lift
Elections
Gore Redux
by Paul Jay
Gore Vidal is leaving his Italian villa to fight his biggest battle yet
Ideas
Life, at What Price?
by Ivor Shapiro
Canada does not have universal health care, but it could. The secret might lie in the Oregon experiment, a radical and life-promoting solution
Culture
Amateurs Like Us
by Hal Niedzviecki
Those incredible men and women and their sort of doable, not-too-daunting feats
Sightings
Fall Classic
by Ken Alexander
Facts all come with points of view Facts don’t do what I want them to Facts just twist the truth around—Talking Heads, Crosseyed & Painless
Politics
A Love Affair with Secrecy
by David Berlin
The Access to Information Act was supposed to get government documents into the hands of Canadians. Instead, it has created a state in which there are often no documents to get.
Anthropology
Rough Justice
by Shawn Blore
Illegal diamonds are the prize. But death in the Amazon rainforest is the price, as Indians, Brazilian miners, and a mysterious third party fight over the richest deposit in South America.
Field Notes
Smacking Down the Vote
by Christopher Flavelle
stamford, connecticut—At July’s Democratic National Convention, among the motley crew of talk-show
Field Notes
The Fruit-Punch Tree
by Jen Ross
santiago — Luis Carrasco’s invention is, at first, hard to make out among the shrubs, trees, and rose
Media
Sounds of Motown
by David Hayes
Thirty years ago in Windsor, cklw, one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll stations ever, lost an angry battle with the newly created CRTC who demanded more Canadian content.
Field Notes
Death Takes a Holiday
by Alisa Roth
beijing — Controlling the use of highly toxic pesticides, Dr. Michael Phillips is saying, is the single most
Field Notes
Money for Nothing, a Reno For Free
by Deborah Campbell
cairo— In Khan al-Khalili bazaar, near the two-hundred-year-old al-Fishawi café where the Nobel laureate Naguib
