Are the Oscars recession-proof?

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

Stripped of his usual self-satirizing armour, this year Oscar turned out to have a heart of gold as the emotions flowed and actors paid tribute to actors from an intimate stage. If you missed the low-irony love fest, or want to relive virtually every moment from the red carpet idiocy to Slumdog Millionaire’s Cinderalla triumph, a Salon.com writer speed-types a blow-by-blow report, documenting the show in exhaustive detail—and conveying the gradual thawing of her own cynicism as the night wears on.

Salon

Change your brain

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:45 AM - 0 Comments

Scientists are discovering the brain is incredibly malleable, and that we have the power to change it for the better. Naturally, exercise and diet are two ways of rewiring it through a process called neuroplasticity—when the brain remolds itself. But so do stimulants such as coffee (it can improve short-term memory), video games (they boost mental dexterity), music (it reduces fear) and meditation (which can inhibit anxiety, high blood pressure and even some skin disorders).  

Scientific American

The army's other arm

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Barack Obama can hope all he wants, but here’s one thing the new U.S. President will never be able to change: the American military’s dependence on expensive, and sometimes shoddy, civilian contractors—including the infamous company once controlled by Dick Cheney. Travel to any U.S. military base in the world and you’ll see the letters KBR everywhere you turn. The Houston-based company, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, does everything from prepare meals to clean toilets to oversee billions of dollars worth of construction. Could the Pentagon do anything without KBR’s help? Absolutely not. (Interesting side note: the spokesman for logistical supplies at the largest American base in Iraq is a guy named Tim Horton.)

Salon

No room for gifted kids

By Rachel Mendleson - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:40 AM - 87 Comments

Jenn Marshall hadn’t started teaching her son to read. So she was surprised when she overheard Jeremy, barely four, sounding out words on a page in their basement apartment in Mississauga, Ont. Apparently, he had figured it out himself. Only when he started school did she realize how different he was. As his classmates learned phonics, Marshall says her son, who by five had graduated to the Harry Potter series, sat alone with a novel.

Despite Jeremy’s abilities, his overall performance was poor. Still, at the end of Grade 1, his teacher suggested he might be gifted, and thus eligible for a place in a specialized class. But when Marshall, who asked that her real name not be used, approached the principal, she was told that because of Jeremy’s poor handwriting and social skills, “he would never become a priority for testing.” Desperate, she cut off the family’s Internet service to save for a private assessment. But when she presented the results—Jeremy was found to possess profound giftedness as well as signs of a learning disability—his Grade 2 teacher piled on extra work, and chastised him when he encountered difficulties. “She was always saying things like ‘Aren’t you supposed to be smart?’ ” says Marshall.

Continue…

Cleans sushi? Check. Disinfects toilets? Check.

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Popular in Japan—where people spray it on sushi to kill bacteria—a “miracle liquid,” that cleans, degreases and disinfects, is gaining in popularity in the U.S., where people use it to do everything from treat athlete’s foot to kill countertop salmonella. The “powerful, yet nontoxic,” cleaning agent is a simple mix of salt and tap water, zapped “with low-voltage electricity.” It’s safe enough to drink and currently Michigan jailers mop with it, to keep potentially lethal cleaners out of the hands (and mouths) of inmates. Skeptics abound, but the staff of one L.A. hotel have already ditched “skin-chapping bleach and pungent ammonia,” and hope to replace dishwasher detergent with what they call “el liquido milagroso.”

Los Angeles Times

How steroids saved baseball

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:28 AM - 4 Comments

As the Alex Rodriguez revelations touch off another round of shockedness and appallitude over baseball’s steroid problem, there’s one thing you probably won’t hear many people mention: the steroid-enhanced baseball of the ’90s may have saved the game.

Following the strike-shortened 1994 season, fans were angry and didn’t return when the players took the field the following spring. According to Baseballchronology.com, attendance during the entire 1995 season was the same as for the shortened ’94 season. But the seats filled up again in the late ’90s. What brought the fans back? That’s easy: Power hitting. Steroids were tolerated, in part, because they made certain that the big hitting stats of 1993 and 1994 would get even bigger. The steroids-for-everybody era made 50, 60 and even 70 homers almost commonplace. And the fans loved it. The 1998 home-run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa restored America’s faith in the sport. Continue…

A comedy about incest?

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:25 AM - 0 Comments

The case of Joseph Fritzl, who abused and imprisoned his daughter, incited disgust and revulsion the world over. Yet it’s now the basis of a “comedy” premiering tonight. The controversial drama is being staged in an independent theatre in Vienna, and it has drawn much protest—the theatre has been vandalized, and the stage door was super-glued shut. Police are guarding the show since the star and director, Hubsi Kramar, has received death threats. “The media hunt is beginning to have an effect,” Kramar said. “It will be dangerous for all involved.” Ticket’s for this evening’s performance are already sold out.

Guardian.co.uk

The good, the bad, and the Miley Cyrus

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:15 AM - 0 Comments

Economic appropriateness has emerged as a vital criterion in the raging debate over last night’s Oscar’s red-carpet hits and misses, most evident in the consensus that Miley Cyrus rhinestone-encrusted, fish-scaled extravaganza was the night’s fashion disaster. Angelina Jolie is congratulated by Slate’s fashion panel for wearing vivid green earrings that could have been costume, but probably weren’t. The pervasive inspiration of the Obama presidency was also evident, they note, in the number of one-shouldered gowns that echoed the Jason Wu design Michelle Obama wore to the Inaugural balls, with variations appearing on Kate Winslet, Marisa Tomei and Frieda Pinto, among others to varying degrees of success. Meanwhile, the Hannah Montana star’s dress didn’t exactly score big. Miley Cyrus, reads a caption in the Guardian, wore a gown “made out of granny’s doilies and said neh neh ne neh neh to the recession.”

Slate

Guardian.co.uk (For more hits and misses, see The Guardian’s photo gallery)

In Iceland, the women are now in charge

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

When it comes to banking in Iceland, the men had their chance, and they blew it. Big time. Few other countries have been as badly hit by the financial crisis as Iceland and its free-wheeling banks. But now, the leaders of the clean-up—from the premier to the heads of major investment funds —are increasingly experienced women in their 40s. It’s not overly surprising. Iceland already had one of the world’s highest rates of female participation in the workforce. The one big drawback: “the glass cliff”. By inheriting some very serious problems, there will inevitably be some failures and a long way to fall.

Guardian.co.uk

Possible octo-dad steps into the spotlight

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Yet another character in the octuplet circus emerged today: Denis Beaudoin, who claims he could be the biological father of Nadya Suleman’s eight children born last month. On Good Morning America  Beaudoin says he donated sperm on three occasions to Suleman while they were dating between 1997 and 1999 after she told him that she had ovarian cancer and would have difficulty conceiving without medical intervention. When he heard that she had delivered octuplets he was “shocked,” noting that Suleman is a very different woman — both in appearance and demeanor — than the one he dated a decade ago. The married business owner who has two children says the revelation has taken a toll on his family life: “[My wife is] not real happy about it,” he said “I mean, you can’t really blame her.”

New York Post

Detroit north

By Nancy Macdonald - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 7 Comments

A year ago, in a Red Scorpion gang hit, six men were found murdered in a B.C. residence that doubled as a drug den. Two were innocent victims: collateral damage in a war for guns, money and allegiances. It was the worst gangland massacre in the province’s history, but it didn’t happen in Vancouver. Dubbed the “Surrey slaughter,” the grisly, sextuple murder was precisely the kind of big-city problem the sprawling, postwar suburb of Surrey was created to escape—and is battling more and more these days.

Once, Surrey was a sleepy maze of crescents and cul-de-sacs lined by standard-issue ranch homes and split-levels. No more. Homelessness and violent crime are growing problems. Earlier this month, the suburb, named “auto theft capital of the English-speaking world” in 2003, recorded three murders within a single week. Its transportation hub, Surrey Central, was recently named B.C.’s “scariest SkyTrain station”: patrolled 24 hours a day by gun-toting police officers, it boasts the system’s highest crime incident rate. Surrey even has its own version of the Downtown Eastside: Whalley, famous for heroin, crack, sex work, and the constant threat of violence. Indeed, when, last year, Surrey didn’t rank on the Maclean’s “Canada’s 10 most dangerous cities” list, a Vancouver paper ran a story noting its surprising absence from the roll.

Continue…

Windsor school puts gay-straight student support group on hold

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

A Windsor high school student’s request to form a support group for gay and straight teens has been denied. The board says it needs more time to develop a complete strategy for forging gay-straight alliances. “We need to be addressing all acts of bullying, student-to-student gender-based violence, homophobia and … any behaviour that may be deemed as discrimination,” board director Heather Liffiton said. But the decision isn’t sitting well with the 18-year-old student who petitioned his principal for permission to start the club. Liffiton says she expects the appropriate guidelines in place by September.

The Windsor Star

Been down so long, down looks like up to me

By Paul Wells - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 8:18 AM - 23 Comments

From La Presse:

“Sources indicate Mario Dumont had an offer from Stephen Harper who saw him as an advisor for Quebec before becoming a star candidate for the Conservatives at the next elections. Mario Dumont hopes, however, to leave public life, which is why he has also refused offers from news organizations and television.”

ADQ share of Quebec popular vote, 2008 Quebec provincial election: 16.4%

Conservative share of Quebec popular vote, 2008 general election: 21.7%

The opposition mentality can be hard to shake. One question about Stephen Harper is whether his interlude as a bridge-builder and coalition broadener, which lasted at least from 2002 to 2006, is over and, if so, whether it is ever going to come back.

Joltin' Joe

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 23, 2009 at 1:04 AM - 23 Comments

From the Hill Times.

NDP MP Joe Comartin says he is looking at ways to help author Tom Zytaruk finance a lawsuit against the governing Conservatives…

“I really would like to see if there isn’t something we can do if the Conservatives continue with their really ridiculous position of making these false accusations against him. I really would like to be able to step forward, step up, and see if we can help him,” said Mr. Comartin. 

Mr. Comartin, a lawyer, estimated that it would cost at least $100,000 for Mr. Zytaruk to sue the Conservative Party, and he added that costs could run as high as $300,000. He said the NDP are not in a position financially to cover the costs of a lawsuit but said he’s interested in exploring options such as fundraising and finding him a lawyer who would take the case on a contingency basis. 

Does Michael Ignatieff condone torture?

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 11:59 PM - 97 Comments

If Michael Ignatieff is a ninny, he is a strange kind of tyrannical ninny. At least insofar as his critics persist in repeating two points about him: (1) He endorsed the war in Iraq, and (2) He condones torture.

The first is indisputable, and Mr. Ignatieff has made great and public effort to explain himself in that regard.

The second has always seem a little less straightforward, but if it is to persist as an issue, we might as well try to make sense of it. If only so I can figure out what to think. Continue…

Thoughts In Verse On The Opening Oscar Number

By Jaime Weinman - Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 9:05 PM - 1 Comment

Brian Johnson is liveblogging the Oscars, and he liked the opening medley much better than I did, but I just had to say (to the tune of “Frere Jacques” by way of Allan Sherman’s parody “Sarah Jackman”):

Poor Hugh Jackman, poor Hugh Jackman,
What a night.
What a sight.
Did you hear his medley?
It was kinda deadly.
This ain’t right.
Where’s Snow White?

Poor Hugh Jackman, poor Hugh Jackman,

That was wrong.

Not too strong.

Maybe they were silly

Not to hire Billy

For the long

Opening song.

Oh, well, at least it’s not the Oscar show where Frank Sinatra beat Frank Fane for Best Actor.

'Slumdog Millionaire' sweeps the Oscars

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 6:58 PM - 8 Comments

Liveblogging is print journalism’s extreme sport. A few cautionary notes….I will be liveblogging the Oscars from Helga Stephenson’s annual Oscar party (this year called Slumdog Futures). Alcohol will be involved. I’ll try to spend more typing than tippling, but I apologize in advance for typos, wildly unfounded assertions, slanders, and any outright fiction that may creep into my posts. For those who want to check up on my predictions, or crib suggestions for their own late-breaking Oscar ballot, go to BDJ’s Oscar Picks. But be warned: I have never won an Oscar pool. This year, apparently, the Oscars will salute all movies, not just the nominees. And in that spirit, you should check out the Toronto Film Critic’s Association’s Oscar-like montage of its own nominees and winners at TFCA Awards Video.

The red carpet nonsense has already started on E-Talk. Ben Mulroney’s tan (or is it makeup?) looks alarming in HD. Is he trying to become Canada’s first Obamatone prime minister? Whatever it is, the consensus in Helga’s Living Room is that it’s kinda creepy.

* * *

8:05 p.m. I’m in a room full of people commenting on fashion. Much talk about all the bridal-like white and silver gowns. Jeers at Sarah Jessica Parker’s boob-popping dress, which one of our crowd described, more metaphorically than accurately, as “a Whole Foods bag.” Kate Winslet looks like a female Oscar, a human sculpture sheathed in a steely grey gown by St. Laurent with her hair carved into a living helmet. The interviewer on the red carpet shows a picture of her on the cover of Time with the headline “Best Actress.” She looks flustered when asked her reaction, then talks about how her kids advised her to handle her acceptance speech. One told her to go crazy. Don’t think she’s repeat that Golden Globes faux pas. And she won’t be declaring her undying love to Leonardo Di Caprio this time. Her other kid offered more level-headed advice:”Why don’t you say thank you to all the people for helping you.” Continue…

When Lily did Britney

By Andrew Potter - Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 6:50 PM - 7 Comments

Here’s the song you’re going to be playing all day tomorrow,  from the stupidly addictive hypemachine.

From Bush to Obama: Not everything has changed

By Paul Wells - Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 1:58 PM - 36 Comments

From Charlie Savage, two important stories in the New York Times: a general warning that the Obama administration seems intent on carrying on with some of the Bush administration’s controversial anti-terror policies, including the practice of “extraordinary rendition” by which Maher Arrar was spirited out of our country and into a kind of hell. And a second piece, published today, says the Obama administration has adopted the Bush government’s assertion that Afghanistan military detainees have no legal right to challenge their incarceration.

In closing Guantanamo and announcing a no-torture policy, Obama has made it clear he wants to draw a clear line under some of his predecessor’s choices in the fight against terrorism. But the balance between national security and human rights will always be a judgement call. A lot of people who vilified the Bush regime and are eager to sanctify Obama’s will be surprised to learn how closely Obama’s national-security team has, at least provisionally, modelled its judgement on that of the Bush team.

And suddenly I was thinking of Linda Keen

By Paul Wells - Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 1:38 PM - 11 Comments

In commercial airlines, captains and first officers split the flying duties equally. But historically, crashes have been far more likely to happen when the captain is in the “flying seat.” At first that seems to make no sense, since the captain is almost always the pilot with the most experience. But…planes are safer when the least experienced pilot is flying, because it means the second pilot isn’t going to be afraid to speak up.

— From Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

BDJ Oscar picks

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 12:47 PM - 1 Comment

For those who don’t want to wade through the scattershot performance-art of my Oscar predictions on video, for the record here’s who I think will win, and should win tonight, leaving out the short films, which I haven’t seen. Tune in to my liveblog of the awards for play-by-play commentary . . .

Best Picture

Will win: Slumdog Millionaire / Should win: Milk

Best Director

Will win: Danny Boyle / Should win: Danny Boyle

Best Lead Actor

Will win: Sean Penn / Should win: Sean Penn

Best Lead Actress

Will win: Kate Winslet / Should win: Anne Hathaway

Best Supporting Actor
Will win: Heath Ledger / Should win: Heath Ledger

Best Supporting Actress

Will win: Penelope Cruz / Should win: Penelope Cruz Continue…

Your Sunday Declinism

By Andrew Potter - Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 12:04 PM - 32 Comments

In which David Suzuki wonders whether the world today is better than it was in 1936. 

link

Belated Weekend Viewing: THE CHARLIE BROWN AND SNOOPY SHOW

By Jaime Weinman - Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 9:29 PM - 1 Comment

I am a big Peanuts fan who’s collected all of the Complete Peanuts volumes so far (they’re up to 1970, so they’ve already collected most of the strips from Charles Schulz’s prime); I’ve never been quite as sold on the animated specials as some. This is mostly due to the fact that I came to Peanuts first through the comic strip, so the specials always kind of got to me whenever they would depart from the strip. I’m not just talking about plot points that would never happen in the strip, like showing the Little Red-Haired Girl (something Schulz reluctantly approved for the special but refused to do in the comic strip), but just re-assigning lines: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is great, but it jarred to hear Sally saying the line “All I want is what I have coming to me; all I want is my fair share” when that was originally Linus’s line. More importantly, the more specials they did, the less they had to do with the strip; I remember seeing the first broadcast of the infamous “It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown” and wondering who these people were and what they’d done with Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

Around that same time (early ’80s) the creators of the specials — Schulz, Producer Lee Mendelsohn and director Bill Melendez — did something they’d never done before: a regular weekly series based on Peanuts. Schulz had, as I recall, been reluctant to approve a regular series for fear that it would dilute the effectiveness of the characters in the TV medium. The solution The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show used was not to have any new scripts or dialogue created for the episodes: they used only material that came directly from the strip, with new lines added only when they absolutely couldn’t avoid adding something. Most of the specials drew heavily on the original strips, but they usually added linking material to create a full half-hour story; this show was just a lot of comic strips re-done in animated form. There were short sketches, usually stringing together individual strips with a similar theme, and longer sequences based on long multi-week stories from the strip. They’d already done two specials with this format: A Charlie Brown Celebration and It’s An Adventure, Charlie Brown (which included animated versions of such famous stories as Charlie Brown’s baseball-shaped rash and Charlie Brown being hunted by the EPA for biting the kite-eating tree). The weekly series was similar in approach to the specials and feature films: “wah-wah” sounds for the adults; real kids’ voices (I never really figured out, BTW, why they felt a need to cast Marcie with kids who were so young that they had to learn their lines phonetically); Snoopy was a pure pantomime character with no dialogue or articulated thoughts.

I don’t recall it being particularly successful. Though the material was terrific — maybe too sophisticated for an ’80s Saturday morning show — it didn’t offer anything you couldn’t get by buying a cheap collection of Peanuts strips. And doing the material with almost no alterations or links was probably a mistake: when you string together three weeks’ worth of strips, you get a lot of repetition and recapping. (In “It’s an Adventure, Charlie Brown,” they did the story where Marcie convinces Peppermint Patty that a butterfly landed on her nose, turned into an angel, and flew away, a story that turned into a Schulz satire of organized religion and angel-spotting; every ten seconds, Peppermint Patty would repeat “It turned into an angel, and flew away!” because in the original strip, she was repeating it each day for the benefit of the first-time reader.) They did have to make changes to incorporate the fact that they couldn’t include Snoopy’s thought balloons, but that just created a bigger problem: without Snoopy’s thoughts, a lot of the stories became less fun than they were in the original, especially the ones with heavy Snoopy content.

Still, I enjoyed the show because it was “pure” Peanuts: no showing the Little Red-Haired girl; no tacked-on happy endings; no Flashbeagle-style musical numbers. Just stories and gags that were familiar from the strip, brought to life through animation, where endings are usually unhappy, love is always unrequited and Snoopy can’t even defeat the Red Baron in his fantasies.

This episode is fairly representative of the strengths and weaknesses of this show. The second segment is based on a very good multi-week story from the comics, so the basic material is good, but the animation, voice acting and timing leave something to be desired, and the need to find substitutes for Snoopy’s thought-balloons leads to some very awkward moments, and not just when they have Charlie Brown narrate what was originally a Snoopy thought balloon. (In the strip, when Charlie Brown finds Snoopy, Snoopy thinks “how embarrassing! I forgot who I was looking for!” The substitute here is just not as funny.)

The show lasted one and a half seasons: the second season, which was only five episodes, added a few kid-oriented stories that were not from the comic strip (like “Snoopy’s Giant,” with Snoopy as Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk) and obnoxious new lyrics for the theme song (whose tune came from “Flashbeagle”) as well as another appearance by the Little Red-Haired Girl — and with it, a reminder of why Schulz refused to show her in the strip: if we see her, we just wonder what Charlie Brown was so obsessed about.

Finally

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 7:42 PM - 97 Comments

It took awhile, but we’ve finally come round to the most central question of this moment in Canadian politics.

“Just how tough is Michael Ignatieff?”

One of the greater frauds of this era is the idea that “toughness”—epitomized by a neanderthal standard of masculinity—is the ultimate quality of real leadership. Next to the general disregard for practical and intellectual honesty, it’s the most disheartening aspect of our politics.