It's a Trap!

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 8:41 PM - 9 Comments

This scene from last night confirms that Admiral Akbar’s line from from Return of the Jedi is now a full-on universally-acknowledged meme. Because I am lacking in Star Wars knowledge, I never used to know what people meant when they would yell “It’s a trap!” and then giggle. But eventually it became clear.

I guess mocking one weird or redundant line in a movie is nothing new. My Dad told me that he and others used to quote a moment in this one movie where Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez said “The sheep have come in!” Just quoting “the sheep have come in!” was a meme before the word “meme” was invented.

Actually, “It’s a trap!” references appear to go back to the ’90s, the same time that Dave on NewsRadio was being pilloried by his co-workers for knowing that Boba Fett Continue…

Canada, Obama, and the G20

By John Parisella - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 6:52 PM - 14 Comments

Whether it is energy, Afghanistan, global warming, fiscal stimulus, or auto bailouts, it seems the Canadian government is constantly scrambling to adjust to the policy initiatives of Barack Obama and his administration. While Obama is unquestionably leading, we seem to be following.

On oil, Obama may be preaching energy independence and recognizing Canada as a friendly supplier, but he is no fan of Alberta’s so-called “dirty oil” from the tar sands. So Canada is now looking into reducing carbon emissions from the sands through technological means. Obama has also acknowledged our role and contribution in Afghanistan, and he is aware of Canada’s 2011 deadline for withdrawal. Yet, just last week, he announced a new strategy calling on NATO to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” al Qaeda, even though he tacitly acknowledged Harper’s suggestion that a clear victory against insurgents is increasingly doubtful. Harper and his minority government can’t easily reverse course on Afghanistan, but Obama’s new plan has made it so there is no way we can walk away from an active military role without consequence. Over the weekend, Obama announced he would host a 20-country forum, where Canada, along with big polluters like China and India, has been invited to discuss how to fight climate change at a post-Kyoto summit scheduled later this year. There is no way the Harper government will be able to keep its lukewarm environmental policy intact nor will it be able escape trying to sound green when that forum occurs. Finally, on stimulus and bailouts, it is hard to see where we differ. The only difference is that Obama is doing what was in his program, while the Canadian government seems to be constantly adjusting its own policies to follow Obama’s lead. Continue…

Michelle Obama's European adventure — in pictures

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 6:15 PM - 45 Comments

Technical difficulties

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 6:14 PM - 0 Comments

Today’s sketch will be a bit delayed on account of Internet troubles.

Formula for disaster

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 4:57 PM - 0 Comments

Oxford University’s James Murray has studied 700 couples and from their answers in interviews, he’s created a mathematical formula that predicts whether they are headed for a split. Speaking at the respected Royal Society last week in London he claimed his formula, which awards marks to couples’ responses to contentious marital topics, correctly predicts marital outcomes 94 per cent of the time. “Some couples might as well get divorced right away,” the mathematician said.

Agence France-Press

Recession or no, Lingerie Football will go on

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 4:40 PM - 9 Comments

And lo, upon the horizon . . . behold the emblem of our looming recovery, a harbinger of happy times, proof positive that the great nation of America has the capacity to rise, to rally and, yes, to prevail. The financial crisis be damned. Pessimism be damned. Come the fall of 2009, no matter the economic and societal hardship that endures, the Lingerie Football League will be expanding.

You heard me. While others retrench, the Lingerie Football League—better known as either “the LFL” or “What??”—has announced that it will play its first full season with 10 franchises located in cities across the United States. Sexy ladies in their underpants tackling each other for money? You had a nice run, recession.*

Continue…

The rise of ‘Talqaeda’

By Adnan R. Khan - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 4:30 PM - 11 Comments

He’s not your typical-looking militant, nothing like the tall, ascetic Osama bin Laden or the choleric Ayman al-Zawahiri. He says nothing to a visiting reporter about destroying the evil West or raining vengeance down on the infidels. Sufi Muhammad, by most measures, is what any Canadian might affectionately call grandpa—in the right setting. But here in Mingora, the main city of Pakistan’s Swat valley, 150 km northwest of the capital Islamabad, the moniker doesn’t quite fit. Given the fact that he is surrounded by black-turbaned militants, the soft-spoken octogenarian inspires a different kind of respect than the one normally bestowed on elders, a respect based on fear.

In Swat, a mountainous former tourist mecca wracked by nearly two years of conflict and now overrun by Taliban militants, Muhammad seems an unlikely peace-broker. The head of Pakistan’s most feared militant outfit, the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM), and a one-time jihadi who now claims to have renounced violence, Muhammad is positioning himself to be the new face of the Pakistani Taliban. This is the man whom Pakistani government officials view as a member of the “moderate” Taliban, a man dedicated not to global jihad but to Islam and Pashtun traditions, who can perhaps bring calm to paradise. Indeed, a Feb. 16 deal, brokered by him, between the provincial government in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Taliban militants led by his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, has brought some reprieve to Swat.

Continue…

The sticky-finger discount

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 4:13 PM - 4 Comments

It’s tasty, expensive and awfully hard to come by these days. Maybe that’s why people are stealing it. Last weekend, bandits made off with $15,000 worth of maple syrup from a producer in Lac-Brome, about 90 minutes southeast of Montreal. The nearly 1000-litre haul was the first of the season; police worry that the recession and the comparatively high price of maple syrup might make it a tempting target this year.

Cyberpresse.ca

MUSIC: Grote glimmende tunes

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 4:03 PM - 0 Comments

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is 120 years old and they’re giving away free mp3s of 10 symphony performances over the years. I listened to Lenny conducting Mahler’s First last night. They’re a peppy bunch, these Amsterdamers.

Zimbabwe’s prisons likened to death camps

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 3:18 PM - 1 Comment

As Zimbabwe opens up, acts of unspeakable horror are coming to light. Today, the South African Broadcast Corp. aired the documentary, Hell Hole. Footage reminiscent of Nazi-era death camps, obtained using cell phones and hidden cameras, shows emaciated, near-dead, prisoners—some, political—in jails in Harare, Mudadi and Beit Bridge. Ex-inmates, meanwhile, talk of uncollected bodies piling up by the hundreds, and of sleeping in crowded cells next to dead prisoners as maggots ate their rotting flesh.

The Washington Times

Nip and tuck biz is booming in China

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 3:16 PM - 1 Comment

Even as the recession forces plastic surgeons in America to put down their scalpels for lack of business, the nip and tuck industry is booming in China. Young women in particular are going under the knife to better their odds in the job market. In some Chinese hospitals, business up 40 per cent from a year ago and half of all patients say their surgeries are job related. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, during the Olympic opening ceremonies last year Chinese officials kept the real seven-year-old singer of a patriotic song hidden away while a prettier little girl was put on stage to lip sync.

Los Angeles Times

A handsome plug

By Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 2:41 PM - 3 Comments

Photo Liam Maloney

Still not sure why, so I guess freedom-hating terrorists get the blame, but several years ago there was a surge of Wolf-related bands: Wolfmother, Peanut Butter Wolf, AIDS Wolf, We Are Wolves, Wolf Parade. Stranger still: Two of the better ones came from Montreal. Wolf Parade, a personal fave, came, went and came back again, and I’m told they are on a wee hiatus right now. This is at least part of the reason why. Dan Boeckner, singer-guitarist with Wolf Parade, just put out his second album with the missus. The Handsome Furs, who grace the cover of the Montreal Mirror this week, are an artfully sleazy husband-and-wife duo who make lovely, lo-fi, synth-thick music together. “Right now, with things being as fucked up economically as they are, I think it’s really important to make cheap music,” says HF singer-guitarist Dan Boeckner. A true band for the times. They are playing at Il Motore this Friday. 

Dear Brad and Angie

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 2:34 PM - 12 Comments

According to new reports, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will soon move one child closer to convening their own underage G20. The couple is said to be looking to adopt a child from India.

An open letter to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie:

It has come to my attention – through stories in the press and the telltale sound of millions of orphans simultaneously raising their arms and shouting, “Oooo, pick me!” – that you are thinking of adopting another child. I commend you both on your noble impulse. And I humbly prescribe a provocative course of action as you plan an even larger family.

You should adopt me.

There’s no denying I would be an unconventional choice. For one thing, I am a full-grown adult – which puts me at something of a disadvantage. For instance, I couldn’t find a wicker hamper big enough to leave myself on your doorstep.

But believe me, I’ll fit right in, and not just because I too hate Jon Voight. For instance, you both work tirelessly to ease suffering among the world’s least fortunate – whereas I had an Amnesty International sticker on my math binder in high school.

In media interviews, you’ve indicated that you place a priority on achieving further diversity in your family. Advantage, Feschuk. You are two of the most attractive people on the face of the Earth, whereas I am neither beautiful nor thin. Talk about balancing the ticket.

And that’s not all. Your oldest child, Maddox, is Cambodian. Shiloh was born in Namibia. What a happy coincidence that I too hail from an exotic and mystical land. Perhaps you have heard of Canada? No? Well, it’s very much Continue…

Shows With Studio Audiences That Sound Like People

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 2:32 PM - 3 Comments

If I were looking for a single word to sum up why Chuck Lorre has managed to build a comedy empire in an era that didn’t seem very sitcom-friendly, the word would be “efficiency.” Two and a Half Men may be kind of cruel and mean, but every element of that show is calculated to make the show an efficient laugh machine, and remove anything that might stand in the way of generating jokes on a regular basis: no needless set clutter, no extra plot complications, no verisimilitude in staging or lighting. It is, as all multi-camera sitcoms need to be, a machine that can produce 20 minutes of jokes every week. Not that efficiency doesn’t matter in other forms of TV, but it’s just even more important in a multi-camera comedy because every joke has to land in front of a studio audience, which means that the writers are literally writing for two audiences at once.

One little thing that can sometimes be a test of comedy efficiency is, believe it or not, how well the studio audience is recorded. It’s a tiny thing, but I think it has a subliminal effect: flop sitcoms often have audiences that don’t sound like real human beings. The default assumption is that when audience laughter sounds fake, that’s because it is fake. But while there’s usually some fake laughter in there, many comedy shows, even the bad ones, can get a studio audience to laugh at the jokes. But real laughter in the studio sometimes sounds like fake laughter to the people watching at home, which can make it harder to laugh along with that audience. A show where the laughs sound real and “live” has the subliminal effect of making us feel like we’re in an audience, and that makes it easier to laugh. (Shows that film without an audience and add a laugh track, like How I Met Your Mother, are a different story; the laughter is just there to brand the show as a comedy, so it needs to be at a low volume level. But with a live-audience show, it’s important to give us the feeling of being there in the studio.)

I suspect that the key to making laughs sound real is to mike them in such a way that they sound like they’re the product of real individual voices: instead of one big undifferentiated blob of laughter, the listener should be able to detect differences between frequency and timing and volume of laughs. Oddly enough, as Continue…

House Democrats release climate and energy legislation

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 2:14 PM - 8 Comments

Remember Henry Waxman, the congressman who wanted to ban the US government and military from purchasing oil sands oil? He is now the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and has co-authored and today released a draft of the Democrats’ new climate and energy legislation. You can read the text on the committee’s web page.

The draft legislation includes a cap-and-trade system and requires the US to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020. American utilities will have to source one quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. The draft legislation does not answer the key question of whether industry will have to buy carbon permits or whether some will be given to them for free. That will be up to the committee to decide.

Reuters also reports that the legislation would “give industry ‘rebates’ so U.S. firms can remain competitive with overseas companies.” I haven’t seen an analysis yet of how this proposal affects Canadian producers or renewable and non-renewable energy.

Hearings on the proposed law begin the week of April 20th. House leaders tell the NYTimes that they hope to pass the law by fall. Given high economic stakes involved at a time of recession (and regional interests that cut across party lines) that sounds a tad optimistic.

CSIS won't rule out use of info obtained through torture

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 2:13 PM - 3 Comments

Testifying before a parliamentary committee today, a lawyer for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said Canada’s spies will use information obtained through torture if they feel lives are a stake. Such situations, he said, are “once-in-a-lifetime,” but human rights advocates say only an absolute ban is acceptable. The committee is studying the government’s response to Maher Arar, the Canadian who was detained in New York and sent to Syria where he was tortured on suspicion he was linked to terrorism.

The Toronto Star

Do we endorse torture? (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 1:55 PM - 8 Comments

This recent story from the Washington Post is probably relevant to the discussion here.

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.

Obamaland in London: "We're not here to be defensive"

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 1:45 PM - 1 Comment

This exchange took place today at an Obama administration briefing on the G20 meetings in London. It’s not quite a mea culpa for the financial crisis. More of a Bushea Culpa…

Question:  Could you talk about the sense in some parts of Europe that the United States is to blame for this economic crisis, and how that dynamic could play out over the next couple of days?

Deputy National Security Advisor, Mike Froman: First of all, I think President Obama has been fairly — very open in sort of saying what he believes the causes of this crisis are and that some of them rest in the weakness of the regulatory environment in our own country, our gaps in regulation.  He talks about the era of irresponsibility.  So I don’t think we are at all averse to having an open dialogue about the causes of this crisis.  The causes are many, they’re not limited to the U.S.  But we — we’re not here to be defensive or to shirk any responsibility.

Full transcript of briefing below.

Continue…

Cronenberg is keen to cast Viggo in a sequel to ‘Eastern Promises’

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 1:34 PM - 0 Comments

Is David Cronenberg finally warming to the notion of Hollywood success? First he teams up with Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington to adapt a Robert Ludlum novel (The Matarese Circle). And now he’s enthusiastically talking up the prospect of making his first sequel. Viggo Mortensen, the star of Eastern Promises, is on board, and so are the producer and screenwriter of the original film. The sequel would be Cronenberg’s third movie with Mortensen, who has become a “special” personal friend, says the director. “We giggle a lot.”

MTV Movies Blog

From Russia, with love

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 1:31 PM - 0 Comments

Interesting how Moscow manages to sound supercilious even when it’s extending an olive branch. Recognizing that it’s in both countries’ interest to thaw relations with the United States, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has penned an op-ed piece for the Washington Post urging closer co-operation on a raft of issues, from disarmament to Afghanistan to the global economy. But either Medvedev has a tin ear for metaphors, or he can’t resist taking a poke at once-mighty Washington in its time of troubles. “I believe that removing such obstacles to good relations would be beneficial to our countries—essentially removing ‘toxic assets’ to make good a negative balance sheet—and beneficial to the world,” he writes, in a none-too-subtle reference to President Barack Obama’s mortgage bailout plan. Still, one can assume the hand of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is behind any such public gesture, so the piece may be a key step in bridging the East-West divide that developed during the administration of George W. Bush.

The Washington Post

'The Third Reich At War' by Richard J. Evans

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 1:31 PM - 1 Comment

In Dr. Strangelove, on his mission to end the world as we know it, USAF Major “King” Kong has some has some final words of sympathy for his crew: “Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be human beings if you didn’t have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat.” Indeed, yes, indeed. It seems much the same with any writing about Nazi Germany. Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans’ trilogy on the coming, consolidation and destruction of Hitler’s regime has just reached its culmination with the newly published final volume, The Third Reich At War (Penguin). What strikes me when reading them all at once is how staggeringly complete they are—there must be some aspect of German society or some twist along the road to the utter destruction of Europe that Evans missed, but whatever it is isn’t immediately evident. A close second, though, is how well that old-fashioned but apt adjective, “magisterial,” applies: the trilogy is even-handed, authoritative and convincing, a judicious mixture of detail and sweep, the antithesis of hysterical. Continue…

Hey look

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 1:18 PM - 4 Comments

New Wells column. This week’s topic is torture. The source document is here; its author told me that “What is Obama going to do about his predecessor’s actions?” may turn out to be a false question, because Barack Obama doesn’t get to decide what happens in his country’s courts. Extra information about one of the black sites’ detainees, Abu Zubaydah, is here.

Do we endorse torture?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 1:10 PM - 6 Comments

The Toronto Star reports from today’s public safety committee meeting.

CSIS will still use information that may have been obtained by torture in national security investigations “if lives are at stake,” a senior CSIS official says.

Geoffrey O’Brian, a CSIS lawyer and advisor on operations and legislation, under questioning by the public safety committee, admitted there is no absolute ban on using intelligence that may have been obtained from countries with questionable human rights records on torture.

The Globe with a fuller account of O’Brian’s explanation.

“We only do so if lives are at stake,” Mr. O’Brian told the standing committee of the House on public safety. “The premise to that is that it happens rarely in the exchanges of information that we have. Second of all, information that may have extracted by methods which are less than the kinds of methods we would like applied to people … the recipient of that information doesn’t know how that information was obtained,” he said.

Missing biker's Al Capone-era cars up for auction

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 12:51 PM - 0 Comments

Cedric Baxter Smith, a member of the Vancouver Hells Angels, hasn’t been seen in a year and is presumed assassinated after falling for an undercover RCMP sting operation. Late next month in Calgary, the 37 vintage cars Smith obsessed over will go on auction because his family can no longer afford to keep them, the Calgary Herald’s Robert Remington reports. “Among them is a 1937 Cadillac Fleetwood that was used at the ceremonial opening of the Golden Gate Bridge. As befitting a Hells Angels biker, many of Smith’s 11 vehicles are Al Capone-era ‘gangster’ cars, including a black 1936 Cadillac, a dark maroon 1936 Lincoln and a dark blue 1938 Buick.”

Calgary Herald