Posted on: November 22, 2007 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

The Die Vol.3, No.1 / :30 / 12L / Red Roach Press, PO Box 764, College Park, MD 20740 / [email protected] /

The Die is the closest thing to a serious journal that I read, and yet it skillfully defies the tedium and dry writing of that form of art time and time again. This time, a few key subjects are broached: the removal of solitude in the age of electronic media and the increasing authority of the federal government. While the solitude piece tends to gloss a little too much over philosophy (instead of scientific fact), the real meat of the magazine comes in the pieces that are reproduced in this issue about the government’s attempt to catalogue juvenile offender’s DNA. While I’m not really sure that the ACLU’s reasoning is solid (they say that “DNA is different because it contains genetic information that should be kept private”) even though fingerprints are much more useable in the negative sense (identity theft, crooked police framing individuals), the focus on this piece by The Die really informs about a policy that until this point I had no clue about. The book reviews are expansive and really show the editor’s academic (professorial) side; I can see these in the back pages of those same journals previously mentioned, and as always the focus on independent zines provides a tremendous service to the community. The Die is quite possibly the best free publication out right now, and is able to print without ads even during a period that is marred by magazines that “boast” of 40% non-advertisement content.

Rating: 6.2/10

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