What are bank proxies?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:03 PM - 4 Comments

Good question from an astute reader.

Upon further review, Mr. Ignatieff may have referred to “record bankruptcies” with his first question today. But the early House transcript recorded his comment as “record bank proxies.” And, quite frankly, it’s more entertaining to think he actually did lament a sudden surge in banking by proxy.

Countercyclical Creatives

By Andrew Potter - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 8:47 PM - 17 Comments

Via MR comes this little nugget:

As the nation’s most populous metro area feels Wall Street’s pain, the fourth-largest—Washington—is barely sensing the recession. In fact, Moody’s Economy.com estimates that metro Washington’s economy will actually grow 2.5% from mid-2008 through mid-2010. New York’s economy is expected to shrink 4.2%.

This doesn’t surprise me. I’ll bet it is because Washington has far more creative class workers than New York.

Strombo v. Mulroney

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 8:30 PM - 28 Comments

On Newsworld just now, but originally aired last week.

The full, uncut interview is online here.

The shocking truth about the value of your home

By Duncan Hood - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 6:50 PM - 238 Comments

There are still people out there who don’t believe Canada is about to be hit by a devastating housing crisis, but Riaz Kassam isn’t one of them. For him, the crisis has already arrived.

Last July, he made an $80,000 pre-sale payment on a $1.5-million penthouse condominium in Vancouver’s tony H&H Yaletown building, just a few blocks away from where he lives. Kassam, a 42-year-old computer analyst, who’s married with no kids, expected to move in by the end of 2008. But when he put his current apartment on the market, he didn’t get a single offer. He thought maybe he had priced it a little high, so he knocked a bit off. Still, no offers. He lowered it again, and again, until eventually he was offering his apartment for a full $120,000 less than his initial asking price. That’s when he realized he was in trouble. “We reached the point where we couldn’t drop the price any more,” he says, “or we wouldn’t have enough for the down payment on the new property.”

Continue…

The Commons: Back to our regularly scheduled doom

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 6:33 PM - 16 Comments

The Scene. It was, if even for just a few hours, nice of hope to visit. A pleasant distraction, if nothing else.

But the crushing business of reality could only be ignored for so long. And back to work we went today.

“Mr. Speaker, first, it was the unemployment numbers. Then, record bank proxies. Then, collapsing housing starts. Then, soaring trade deficit figures. Now, it is retail sales,” Michael Ignatieff began, putting his index finger and thumb together to list the harbingers of our doom. “They fell 5.4 per cent in December; the largest drop in 15 years. Bad news seems to be overwhelming this government’s strategy. So, the question is, is it going to revise this strategy as the situation worsens? The Prime Minister said one thing. The Minister of Finance said another. What is the government’s position?”

The Prime Minister was elsewhere, so up came Jim Flaherty. “Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister and I have been clear that what needs to happen is that Canada’s economic action, the major stimulus to our economy, that is contained in budget 2009, needs to be implemented,” he explained. “To be implemented, of course, it has to be passed by this House and go to the Senate.”

The Liberal leader stood again, apparently unsatisfied with the minister’s attempt to clarify the rudimentary basics of legislative democracy.

“Mr. Speaker, the minister did not answer the question,” Mr. Ignatieff said. “Will he answer that question?”

He most certainly would not.

“Mr. Speaker, in the budget, we were very conservative in our fiscal estimates for this year,” Flaherty said instead. “In fact, our prognostications are below the predictions by the private sector forecasters.”

Hurray, perhaps, for low expectations. Continue…

Executive Chernin at Newscorp

By Andrew Potter - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 6:08 PM - 4 Comments

Peter Chernin, President and COO of Newscorp, has split. The NYTimes has a piece about Murdoch and how his romantic love of print is killing his company (the NYPost alone loses tens of millions a year; he spent way too much on the wsj), but it looks like Chernin’s departure has more to do with simply realizing he’s never going to get to run the Death Star.

Besides, check out his compensation deal:

“Mr. Chernin will likely activate a six-year production deal in his contract that calls for News Corp. to buy some films he produces. Mr. Chernin’s current contract also calls for him to receive $40 million in cash if he leaves News Corp., along with other benefits.”

The 'Economist' criticizes Canada's climate record

By Alex Shimo - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 5:12 PM - 22 Comments

A biting article from the Economist magazine on Canada’s green policies, published here. The author highlights several ways that we have been lax on the environment, saying Canada is one of the two top “profligate energy users on the planet,” yet it has spent “little time over the last eight years” discussing what we might do “to combat climate change and the environment.”

On a discussion of our “dirty oil”, it discusses how we have been fighting for an exemption from a 2007 rule that bars the American government from buying fuels that produce too much carbon dioxide, or at least more than produced by conventional sources. The Energy Independence and Security Act, was signed into law in December 2008 by President Bush, and it puts the oil ssands at a disadvantage compared to easy-to-harvest oil from the wellhead. Continue…

Can Canada's bus biz bounce back?

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 5:09 PM - 1 Comment

Bus companies across Canada are facing the same business climate everyone else is, but before the recession hit they were already struggling with a burden far more macabre: riders spooked by the memory of Tim McLean’s brutal murder last July. McLean was the 22-year-old carnival worker who was stabbed to death and eventually beheaded aboard a Greyhound bus across the Prairies. Vince Li, who was arrested for that terrifying deed, goes on trial in Winnipeg next week. Meanwhile bus companies are trying to recover. One Northern Ontario company saw its ridership fall 13 per cent in the second half of 2008; companies hope enhanced security, like metal detectors in several big-city bus stations, will calm jittery riders and bring business back.

Winnipeg Free Press

Vancouver, New York, What's the Diff

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 4:27 PM - 1 Comment

This will be good for Vancouver, not so much for the TV business as a whole: with New York’s tax credits about to run out, Fringe is the first show to move production out of the city, and it may not be the last.

According to Stuart Suna, head of Long Island City’s Silvercup Studios—where Fringe currently films—the [tax credit] program’s $685 million budget, which was put into place in April 2008, was initially expected to last until 2013. But because of its popularity, “all of the allocated money was used up. So many productions came to New York. It was more than anybody expected.”

With the potential expiration of these tax incentives, the future shooting locales for certain NYC-based shows—like 30 Rock, In Treatment, and Life On Mars—remain in limbo.

New York’s tax incentives were so successful that Tina Fey even plugged them in awards acceptance speeches. Fringe isn’t even set in New York, but filmed there because it made financial sense to do so. But production companies are fickle, and now that there’s a chance that the city might no longer be able to throw free money at them, the producers are running back to Vancouver, the traditional home of confusing conspiracy-theory shows on Fox.

Meanwhile, California’s new (and and much-fought-over) budget includes tax incentives for movie/TV production, something the Governator has been pushing for a while but only just managed to get through, correctly noting that with the popularity of the tax-incentive system in New York and elsewhere, California was in danger of losing too many productions. Not to be outdone, the government of Ontario announced that it would institute permanent tax relief for producers who want to shoot their movies and shows over here. There’s going to be plenty of competition to see who can offer producers the most goodies in exchange for filming in a certain place, but with the Fringe incident, we can also see the potential problem: after the money’s gone (water flowing underground…) so are the producers.

I don’t know how the move will or won’t affect Fringe; I wish I could remember more about how certain shows changed when they moved from the U.S. to Vancouver. (I’m not even going to discuss the X-Files move from Vancouver to L.A., since I had stopped watching it by then.) They’ll be drawing on a different pool of local actors, but other than that, I’m not sure the change will be that big, because in both cases they’re pretending that the city is some other city. It’s different when a show that’s set in New York or L.A. moves from that place to some other place; the look of a show can change a lot in that case, because they’re going from a mostly-undisguised city to a disguised city. So if 30 Rock ever had to move out of New York — I doubt it’ll come to that, because the city wouldn’t let Lorne leave — that would be a huge problem. Gossip Girl, too, but the article says that they’ve already signed up to continue in New York.

Everyone has something to hide: Liveblogging the Privacy Commissioner at the Ethics committee

By kadyomalley - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 3:02 PM - 9 Comments

ITQ POSTMEETING MICRO RECAP:

Thanks to the miracle of liveblogging technology, you can pinpoint the exact second when the penny dropped for ITQ on what was actually going on during yesterday’s Ethics meeting:

5:15:54 PM
OMG, YOU GUYS – I AM AN IDIOT. I assumed – and yes, I don’t need to hear the joke – that the [Carole] Freeman motion had something to do with Access to Information, because that’s what she moved last time the committee met, but it doesn’t – not at all. She wants the committee to pick up where it left off with Camp In and Out last summer, and she has the support of the Liberals and maybe the NDP, which is why the government members are dragging this meeting out to the bitter end — so she can’t table the motion until the next meeting.

Read on for the full report.

Continue…

The PM meets with NYC business leaders, and YOU ARE THERE

By Paul Wells - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 2:30 PM - 35 Comments

Thanks to the exhaustive emails sent by the PMO, here’s a blow-by-blow account of the Prime Minister’s lunch with business types in New York City. And I quote:

“The PM met with a distinguished group of business leaders, primarily from the financial sector.  Among the topics covered were the Canadian and American responses to the economic crisis in terms of fiscal stimulus, stabilising the financial system, and real estate markets.  They discussed approaches to international financial regulation in view of the upcoming G-20 meetings, the relative strength or Canada’s financial and regulatory system, but also areas where reform is still needed, such as implementing a pan Canadian common securities regulator.

“The PM discussed his recent meetings with President Obama and the constructive relationship that they are establishing.  They discussed the need for all countries to avoid protectionist measures.”

From an earlier email, here’s who was at the lunch:

Participants:
Gerald Corrigan, Director, Goldman Sachs
Jay Cross, President, Related Hudson Yards
Ken Ottenbreit, Managing Principal, Stikeman Elliott New York Office
Jerry Del Missier, President, Barclays Capital
Mark Standish, President, RBC Capital Markets
Marie-Josée Kravis, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
Thomas Glocer, Chairman and CEO, Thomson Reuters
Rich Bagger, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Public Affairs and Policy, Pfizer

NHL Trade Deadline: Predictions from the experts

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 1:58 PM - 19 Comments

With only nine days left before the NHL Trade Deadline, Hockeycentral analysts Nick Kypreos, Doug MacLean and Mike Brophy from Rogers Sportsnet look at a few of the players rumoured to be on the move, and what they are worth. Continue…

Airing grievances

By Debra Ward, Takeoffeh.com - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 1:44 PM - 2 Comments

Don Quixote tilted at windmills and now a Canadian Member of Parliament is aiming his lance directly at the airlines.

New Democratic MP Jim Maloway tabled a Passenger Rights bill in the House of Commons that is designed to protect and compensate travellers when they’re bumped, delayed or cancelled. Continue…

ITQ Committee Lookahead – Special Monday Finance Committee Marathon Edition

By kadyomalley - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 1:33 PM - 9 Comments

What with one thing and another, the ITQ committee lookahead preparation team is running a little bit late today, which means there won’t be a complete overview of the week until later tonight – or possibly even tomorrow morning, in which case I promise that it will totally be worth the wait. To tide our fellow committee junkies over in the meantime, however,  here’s what’s going on behind the committee room doors this afternoon:

As predicted by the Hill Times, the Finance committee will be whipping through the budget bill in record time, with just two days of hearings on the schedule. Those are actual days, however -  ten hours in total, from 10 am to 10 pm, stopping only for a combination lunch/QP break at 1:30 pm and an hour for dinner at 6pm. The list of witnesses reads like — actually, like the list of witnesses at a traditional pre-budget consultation meeting, not one of which the Finance committee was, of course, able to hold due to that nasty case of prorogation flu that Parliament caught last December. Flaherty aficionados take note: the ministerial bearpit session, which lasts only an hour, starts at 3:30 pm.

Continue…

Jian Ghomeshi, host laureate of Oscar punditry

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 1:14 PM - 3 Comments

After live-blogging the Oscars last night, in a marathon of typing and tippling, this morning I hauled my ass off to the CBC bunker to do a radio post mortem with “Q” host Jian Ghomeshi and the Globe and Mail’s Johanna Schneller. And frankly, I was knocked out by the poetic punditry of Jian’s thoughtful introduction. You gotta love a morning broadcaster who can sit down after midnight and rap an Oscar wrap that rolls through the mood swings of a marathon night—and still finds time to rhyme “pristine” and “Joaquin.” Check out the podcast of the show, by clicking Q Oscar item. Meanwhile, here’s the text of Jian’s demi-rhymed oral deposition:

Hi there. Happy Monday.

It came. It happened. It was cut back and “redesigned.” It still lasted

about 4 hours.

Yes, kids, the Academy Awards happened last night and I’m not sure if

it was the fast food happily congealing in my belly…

but I quite enjoyed what transpired on the telly.

not . . . so bad.

Oh there were the inevitable ups and downs,

the intense fascination with gowns.

But Oscar lived up to some of the hype in strange ways.

Here are some quick observations:

Hugh Jackman—talented, self-deprecating, and lovingly pristine.

Ben Stiller—outrageously funny sending up Joaquin.

Penélope Cruze satisfying victory, and the same with Sean Penn.

And do we have to see a shot of John Mayer and Jennifer Anniston again?

John Legend was a bit out of tune.

Queen Latifah sounded noticably auto-tuned.

A R Rahman looked strangely hobitt-like when he crooned.

And Beyonce lip-synching her parts on the “live” Oscar broadcast—

embarrassing.

Really Beyonce? Really? What a sad spectacle that was.

All the more satisfying to watch Hugh Jackman huff and puff through his

production numbers.

Beyonce doing karaoke.

We’ll take a radiant Anne Hathaway

singing live anyday. Eh? Continue…

Men and women differ at heart

By Cathy Gulli - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Talk to most doctors about heart disease for long enough and one phrase is bound to come up: “It’s an equal-opportunity threat,” says Dr. Beth Abramson, a spokesperson for the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada and director of the cardiac prevention and rehab centre and women’s cardio division at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. Today, just about the same number of men and women succumb to heart disease and stroke, about 36,000 annually. Yet “when people shut their eyes and think of someone having a heart attack, they think often of a man,” she says. “It’s perceived to be a man’s disease. It’s not.”

In fact, one in three Canadian women will die of heart disease and stroke—compared to one in 18 from lung cancer and one in 28 from breast cancer. By 2050, stroke mortality in the U.S. is projected to be 30 per cent higher for females than males. Despite the staggeringly high risks, the issue is only now gaining widespread recognition. “We noticed [female] patients were so surprised to have had a heart attack,” says Dr. Susan Bennett, director of the women’s heart program at George Washington University Hospital in Washington. The thinking was, “ ‘Everybody was checking my breasts and uterus, but nobody was talking to me about heart disease.’ ”

Continue…

Let's play Cut the Granting Councils!

By Paul Wells - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 25 Comments

From a concerned source, here’s the text of emails the presidents of the three academic granting councils sent out to stakeholders last Thursday…while a certain lanky visitor to Ottawa was providing handy cover. I don’t think the cuts detailed here are catastrophic, in and of themselves, but I am not expert and I look forward to hearing from informed readers.

First, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, or SSHRC:

Dear Colleague:

We are writing to summarize the results for SSHRC of the recent
federal budget.

1) In Budget 2009, the Government of Canada allocated $17.5 million
over three years to SSHRC for Canada Graduate Scholarships to fund an
additional 400 master’s and 100 doctoral scholarships “focused on
business-related degrees.” Subsequent to this Budget decision by the
Government of Canada, our responsibility here at SSHRC is the
administration of these additional scholarships in keeping with our
mandate to support excellence in research and research training in the
social sciences and humanities.

As demonstrated over SSHRC’s thirty-year history, students pursuing
research-based graduate degrees across the social sciences and
humanities significantly enrich understanding of topics important to
our society. Moreover, SSHRC award-winners from all research degree
programs go on to benefit all sectors, including the business world.
Directly, and indirectly, the results continue to make significant
contributions to addressing the world’s most pressing challenges, as
illustrated in the current financial crisis by the central role of
business historians focused on the 1930s; philosophers focused on
business ethics; political scientists focused on regulatory
frameworks; economists focused on stimulus strategies; management
researchers focused on corporate operations; sociologists focused on
labour markets; literary scholars focused on the new digital economy;
musicologists focused on the creative industries; and so on.

At the origins of such diverse contributions is SSHRC’s hallmark
commitment to excellence; every student who receives a SSHRC award has
been selected through a rigorous expert adjudication process involving
top scholars in the social sciences and humanities. It is with this
principle of adhering to the highest levels of international
excellence that SSHRC fulfills its mandate and thereby enables the
“best and brightest” to contribute so significantly to Canada and the
world.

2) The Budget also included the results of Strategic Review, a process
which requires all government departments and agencies, on a four-year
cycle, to review all program spending, and to assess how and whether
these programs are aligned with core mandates, and how they are
effective, efficient and meet the priorities of Canadians. SSHRC was
one of 16 organizations, along with NSERC and CIHR, that participated
in the process this past year. The outcome of Strategic Review for
SSHRC is as follows:

a) SSHRC funding is reduced for health-related research that is
eligible under the mandate of CIHR. Out of approximately $20 million
currently invested by SSHRC in health research, a reduction of $5.59
million will be phased in over three years: approximately $1.05
million in fiscal year 2009-10, $2.65 million in fiscal year 2010-11
and $1.89 million in fiscal year 2011-12. SSHRC will continue to fund
research and training for which the intended outcomes add to our
understanding and knowledge in the social sciences and humanities. A
set of guiding principles has been developed to assist applicants in
determining whether their applications are suitable for SSHRC
consideration. These guidelines will be made publicly available as
soon as possible. In the meantime, SSHRC has begun working with CIHR
to ensure a coordinated approach to the implementation of this decision.

Continue…

Mythbusters

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 11:57 AM - 22 Comments

Stephen Harper, speaking with Fox News this morning. “There was a long tradition up until about the 90s of U.S. presidents often making Canada their first foreign visit.”

Canadian Press, two weeks ago. “Canadians like to think it’s a tradition that a newly elected president of the United States comes to Ottawa for his first foreign trip, but it’s a tradition that’s been breached as much as honoured in recent years. President Barack Obama is to visit on Feb. 19, but of his seven immediate predecessors, only three made Ottawa their first foreign destination.”

Jane Austen + Zombies = Action Movie?

By John Intini - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 11:30 AM - 1 Comment

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies might sound like a bad example of fan fiction, but it is the title of a new book slated for publication based loosely on the Jane Austen classic. In separate reports, a movie deal is imminent. This follows on last week’s announcement that Elton John’s Rocket Pictures is developing a movie called Pride and Predator, an Austen interpretation with aliens who have a penchant for human blood. Both projects aim to make Austen more accessible to boys, who tend to be less enamored with the novels than girls. Needless to say, some fans are none too pleased.

New York Times

We report, you…probably won't watch

By Paul Wells - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 11:14 AM - 44 Comments

From the PMO:

The Prime Minister will be appearing live on “Money For Breakfast” with Alexis Glick at 7:30 am this morning.

He will also be taping an interview with David Asman for “America’s Nightly Scoreboard” also on Fox Business. It will air at 7:00 pm tonight.

And how’s Fox Business doing?

For the first three weeks of July [the most recent figures I could find — pw], according to Nielsen figures obtained yesterday that have not been publicly released, Fox Business Network is averaging just 8,000 viewers during daytime hours, and 20,000 in prime time.

CNBC, by contrast, is drawing an average of 284,000 viewers during the day and 191,000 in prime time.

This Washington Post story notes that as of last summer, Fox Business was available in 40 million households — which meant that at its prime-time peak, Fox Business was being watched by one-twentieth of one percent of all those homes that had the option of watching it.

THAT’S-BETTER UPDATE: The selfsame PMO is now spreading word that the PM will also appear on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC show and that he will tape an appearance for Fareed Zakaria’s eerily literate CNN Sunday show. He’ll also sit down with the Wall Street Journal ed board today.

Way out there

By Lianne George - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 11:10 AM - 2 Comments

Grammy night was, for millions of TV viewers, their first exposure to the explosive, frenetic, Day-Glo energy that is M.I.A. Some may have heard her mega-hit Paper Planes—nominated that night for Record of the Year—but this was their first glimpse of the woman herself: nine months pregnant, her dress a mash-up of a bug-themed bikini and a mesh body stocking, performing MC-style on T.I.’s Swagga Like Us, alongside Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Jay-Z. Moving across the stage in a waddle-strut, she displayed a bravado and irreverent sense of humour not everyone in the audience shared (as expressed by shrill fashion post-mortems), but still they had to marvel.

The father of M.I.A.’s child, her fiancé, Benjamin Brewer—a musician and the eldest son of Canadian billionaire music-mogul Edgar Bronfman Jr.—brought a stopwatch to the awards show, which happened to be her official due date, in the event her contractions should start. “Sunday night I came home from the Grammys still in the mood to party,” she later wrote on her MySpace page. “I coulda easily gone out but I went home instead. Lucky I did! Coz my early stage labor kicked in around 2 a.m.” (Her son was finally born last Wednesday.) M.I.A. lost the Record of the Year to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on Grammy night. But she walked away 100 per cent more famous, leaving some fans dazzled and other long-time adherents wondering: is she an iconoclast or a pop star?

Continue…

Hugh Jackman Beats Jon Stewart

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 10:24 AM - 2 Comments

After all the advance talk about how this might be the lowest-rated Oscar telecast of all time, it looks like this year’s ratings were 10% higher than last year’s.

If these numbers hold up, there’ll be plenty of speculation on what went right; the improvement is unexpected because this is probably the least-popular batch of Best Picture nominees ever. (You’ve got one genuinely popular movie, Slumdog Millionaire, but you’ve also got a movie that most people seem to hate, Benjamin Button, and one movie, The Reader, that was so unpopular that the best line in Jackman’s medley was “The Reader, I haven’t seen The Reader.”) But it might be that the re-formatting helped draw viewers in and keep them. One thing I got from the more intimate look of the show was that it made the evening feel a bit more like a Hollywood party, except without the booze. The choice of Jackman just re-enforced the idea that this was a gathering for movie-industry insiders. I think a lot of us like seeing movie stars looking comfortable.

From Langevin to Pennslyvania Avenue

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 8 Comments

Hope you weren’t looking forward to cherry blossom season in Washington, Ambassador Wilson, because the PM’s right-hand mandarin may be headed down south to take your job. This week’s Hill Times reports that Privy Council Clerk Kevin Lynch is “locked for the job,” according to a tantalizingly anonymous “Hill insider.” The former Finance deputy minister has DC experience—he repped Canada during his tenure at the International Monetary Fund—and although the rumour has been officially denied by a PCO official, you know what they say about official denials. Wilson’s term doesn’t officially expire for another couple of years, but he’s been seen as a Former Ambassador Walking since that whole NAFTA memo leak unpleasantness exploded during the Democratic primaries last spring. Of course, this wouldn’t be Ottawa without a competing theory: the same story notes that “another name” being “talked about” is that of Liberal turned Conservative Industry Minister David Emerson. Diplomatic speculators, start your engines!

The Hill Times

Texting is good for kids, study shows

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Conventional wisdom suggests the rise of texting will only harm children’s literacy skills. But in fact, new research suggests the opposite could be true, reports New Scientist. In the study, researchers at Coventry University in the UK asked 88 children aged 10 to 12 to write text messages describing 10 different scenarios. After comparing that to a separate study of the kids’ reading ability, they found those who used more textisms were also better readers. Beverly Plester, who led the study, believes texting could improve literacy: “Phonological awareness has long been associated with good reading skills,” she says. “These kids are engaging with more written language and they’re doing it for fun.”

NewScientist