Today's cover story in the Star reminded Torontonians of something that is easy to forget: many of us are subjects of the Queen and even certain modern, western democracies like Canada still have a monarchy to gossip about. With all the obsessive speculation and rumour-milling of a British tabloid, the Star reports on what has been considered "old news" in The Capital for a while now: the probable engagement of Prince William to Kate Middleton.......

We live in an age of information technology where the influence of television appears quaint; it's nice to speak of the latest Millionaire show or who is f-ing who on the Bachelor. But if we were to take sides with media critic Neil Postman, these sorts of things would be taken up as political issues. Postman notes that Americans, through political process, rejected new technology of supersonic transport planes (SSTs) in the 70's because they......

Odds are good you've read William T. Vollmann only in short form, in periodicals; if you head down to your nearest bookstore and look, between Voltaire and Vonnegut, for any of the Sacramento-based scribe's big fat tomes, you'd be lucky to dig even a single one up. Yet Vollmann is pretty much the most prolific writer around these days. Since the age of 28 (he's 45), the man has churned (absolutely churned) out works left......