The Meridian Archive
MER
September 1999
The Grid, After Dark

The Grid, After Dark

Closed mid-August 1999 · On stands late August 1999

The Front

The Pill, Approved

The FDA approved Plan B on July 28th, the first dedicated emergency-contraception pill

The Summer of the Boy Band

A short front note on the summer's inescapable pop act, its single owning the radio and the video countdown alike, and the magazine's belated discovery that its readers' kids can't stop talking about it

The Essay

The File That Would Not Stay Shared

Napster launched June 1st, converting the album into a freely traded file and reopening, without settling, the question of who owns a recording once it leaves the store

The Unanimous Vote

The House of Representatives voted 355 to 0 on July 12th to condemn the Rind et al. Psychological Bulletin meta-analysis — the only peer-reviewed article Congress has formally condemned

The Foreign File

The Ground Gave First

A magnitude-7.4 quake levels the industrial belt east of Istanbul before dawn; the stringer files on the collapsed apartment blocks and the shortage of cranes, not the death toll, which is still climbing at press time

The City

The Grid, After Dark

A Con Edison blackout struck Washington Heights and Inwood on July 6th, traced to deferred maintenance on aging feeder cable

The Back

The Long Table

A restaurant review of a new supper club outside Nashville, one seating a night at a single shared table, the kind of quiet opening that outlasts its louder neighbors