Meet the airport homeless

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 10:05 AM - 0 Comments

Next to bleary-eyed travelers, tattered clothes and weathered bags are the only hint the displaced men and women holed up at airports across the U.S. aren’t waiting for a flight. They are the airport homeless. According to an Associated Press story, despite efforts to remove them, the round-the-clock warmth, water and safety of an airport keeps them coming back.

Associated Press

Well, that certainly didn't come up at last night's science awards ceremony …

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 9:45 AM - 120 Comments

But if the story in today’s Globe and Mail had come out just a few hours earlier, we probably would have paid considerably more attention to what the PM’s pointminister on science and technology had to say to the crowd during the NSERC research awards last night at the Chateau Laurier last night.

Oh, who am I kidding? If Goodyear’s comments – or rather, refusal to comment – on evolution had been reported before last night’s awards ceremony, I suspect that reporters who turned up to cover it would have discovered that it had suddenly become closed to the media. (Maybe that’s why those PMO staffers were in such a rush to hustle us out the door after the presentations were over.)

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The Present was Written in the Past

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 8:42 AM - 4 Comments

There is a lot of stuff being written about the decline of the news business right now. Most of it is very unoriginal, repeating the same points about the same issues, and  most of it is a year late  – all of these are themselves probably signs of what is wrong with the business. I’m as guilty of anyone else of casting about, somewhat helplessly, for answers to questions that have no obvious solution. But here’s something original and valuable, from (no surprise here) the FT:

“One inescapable conclusion of our study is that our cost base is significantly out of line with the revenue available in our business today,” Mr Swartz told his staff: “It is equally inescapable that during good times our industry developed business practices that were at best inefficient.”

What is in play here is not the future of democracy, or about fixing a business model, or about coming up with new ownership schemes. It is about an industry that has been mugged by reality. 

More reality here about the non-starter that is micropayments, and here about the non-starter that is a news cartel.

"You Have No Idea How to Play Bridge, Do You?"

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 12:24 AM - 5 Comments

Tonight’s How I Met Your Mother was the kind of episode I like, after a batch of episodes that have had entertaining moments but haven’t really been my style. (This was a sequel to last week’s episode, “Sorry, Bro,” and while that episode had its admirers, I thought the story was a bit pointless and way too heavy on scenes with no other regulars besides Ted.) This has been an uneven season, but when the show gets a story that really works, it reminds me why it’s still my favourite comedy: because it gets comedy and storylines out of every character’s relationship with every other character, and tries to take familiar relationships in unexpected but appropriate directions. In this case, the fact that Lily has been responsible for breaking up Ted’s unsuitable relationships, including his second-season breakup with Robin, is true to what we know about her, but expands on it.

And speaking of expanding, since both the female leads on the show are pregnant, we’re going to see a lot of stories written around the necessity to keep them sitting down a lot or otherwise not too close to the camera. In this episode, Alyson Hannigan spent most of the episode in a chair, and Cobie Smulders spent most of the episode on a TV screen way in the background. It worked fine in this episode. Additional trivia: this was like the second episode in four seasons not directed by Pamela Fryman. Veteran writer/producer Rob Greenberg, a consultant on HIMYM, did this one.

In some ways, How I Met Your Mother is a show where the writers use all kinds of gimmicks, flash-forwards, characters in funny wigs and makeup, to lend a hip veneer to one of the most old-fashioned sitcoms on television, one that is extremely sentimental and incorporates a huge amount of pre-Seinfeld hugging and learning. But that’s all right with me, and I think the weakest episodes are often the ones that are the least sentimental and serious.

If HIMYM reminded me of its strengths, its time-slot mate, The Big Bang Theory, reminded me a bit of what keeps it from being a really great sitcom (or even an intermittently first-rate one like HIMYM). This was a good episode, so I’m not singling it out as a bad example, but just as a typical example of the way this show tells its stories, which is to keep them very simple and unadorned. They often don’t really end so much as peter out, a bit like the stories on The Office, but The Office is usually trying to convey some over-arching theme underneath the simple stories. (Penny’s business might be carried over to another episode, or it might not, but the episodes almost always end abruptly, and the resolutions are not much more complicated than the guys deciding they can’t make a thousand more Penny Blossoms.) Not that I want TBBT to try and get deep and emotional; it doesn’t pretend to have depth or to want to teach lessons, and that’s fine. But the stories are so simple that they can feel incomplete, and because almost nobody ever appears besides the five main characters (in this episode, they were the only ones who appeared), I sometimes wish they’d push them just a little farther. Pushing the characters and stories to more interesting places is what separates a great show from a good one; it’s what separates, say, Cheers from Wings. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a solid show with a fine cast, like Wings, except that there are higher expectations for a good sitcom in an era that doesn’t have many of those things.

Google is a time machine

By Andrew Potter - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 10:47 PM - 6 Comments

Oh, to be back in 2005:

Bernanke: There’s No Housing Bubble to Go Bust

U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years, noted Bernanke, currently chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, in testimony to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee. But these increases, he said, “largely reflect strong economic fundamentals,” such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the number of new households.

 

UPDATED: Hey, you! Having trouble posting comments?

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 9:27 PM - 84 Comments

We’re not quite sure what’s going on, but we want to fix it as soon as possible, so if you could send along any information that might help us out – your IP address, email, name, that sort of thing – we’re hoping to narrow down the problem. (And no, this isn’t a sneaky way to collect personal data on our commenters. Promise.)

UPDATE: Okay, I think  – fingers crossed – that we’ve got it. There’s still a stack of comments in the moderation queue, but someone is checking it regularly, so you don’t have to repost — it’ll get up there eventually, we promise. Thanks for all the help!

Gearing up in Calgary for George W.

By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 5:48 PM - 31 Comments

George W. Bush’s speech in Calgary on Tuesday will mark his first public appearance since Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20, a day in which some gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue to boo the outgoing president. In Calgary, where Bush is scheduled to speak about his legacy to a well-heeled crowd at the TELUS Convention Centre, he may receive a more sympathetic reception.

But then, who knows, considering that even Calgary has fallen upon hard times. Early on, event organizers with tinePublic Inc. expected about 1,500 people would attend, with tables of 10 selling for $4,000, singles for $400 (GST not included). The group has since become more reluctant to discuss numbers. Ticket holders have been sent detailed instructions requesting that they arrive at 10:30 a.m. for the noon-hour event, and cautioning them they will frisked. The RCMP won’t discuss the security measures in place but have warned Calgarians to expect traffic delays. Continue…

See, he does have a soft spot for research scientists

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 8 Comments

ITQ will be liveblogging the Prime Minister tonight as he makes an appearance at the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council Excellence Awards, so check back at around 5:45 p.m.6:00 p.m. for whatever the research science equivalent of the red carpet pre-show turns out to be.

Colleague Wells has helpfully assembled all the background links you need to cheer on whatever researchers you feel are most deserving of recognition.

5:31:19 PM
Attention, attention! Quick scheduling update: Apparently, the Prime Minister will not be arriving until 6:30 p.m. – a half hour later than the official PMO media advisory had led us to believe. I’ll spare you the realtime play by play of the bombsniffing adventures of the very cute Labrador retriever currently bounding around the room and sign off for the interim, but check back in at 6pm for the pre-show. (Note: If anything actually happens between now and then, rest assured that ITQ will leap into instant updating action.)

6:15:56 PM

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Is National Identity Really What We Need?

By Andrew Potter - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 4:09 PM - 18 Comments

That question is the last line of Bryan Palmer’s new book, Canada’s 1960s: The ironies of identity in a rebellious era, out now from UTPress. I used to think it was the most important question facing Canadians; the fact that I now think the search for a Canadian identity is both misguided and counterproductive is what (partially) explains the somewhat negative tone of my review of John Ralston Saul’s latest book, in a forthcoming edition of the LRC.

What women don't want

By Cathy Gulli - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 19 Comments

Contrary to the popular impression that men are the only ones who can’t stand condoms, a recent study reveals that women find rubbers frustrating too. “I’m surprised by the striking similarity,” says University of Guelph sex professor Robin Milhausen, who teamed up with researchers at Indiana’s Kinsey Institute and Oxford University in England on this project.

In some ways, women are more turned off by condoms than men. Many said that the smell and taste of condoms was unenjoyable. Women also reported that condoms signaled a lack of trust in their partners, and made them feel distant. For some, condom use suggested that one partner had a disease from which the other needed protection. Complaints that condoms cause physical discomfort were also common. “[Condoms] can be drying and abrasive,” explains Milhausen, or the latex or lubricant may be irritating. Women also reported that condoms interfered with or decreased their partner’s orgasm and sensation. Continue…

How will 'Battlestar Galactica' end?

By Patricia Treble - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 3:47 PM - 22 Comments

The final episode of Battlestar Galactica airs on Friday night. Heading into the series finale, Admiral Adama and his band of brothers are mounting a suicide mission into the enemy’s black hole lair to rescue little Hera, the half-human half-Cylon hope for the future, from the evil Cylons. There are just two hours left and creator Ron Moore has a track record of shocking fans with unexpected plot twists.

So how will it end?

After years devoted to picking apart every nuance and analogy, here’s my theory, based on no inside knowledge: they mount a successful, albeit very bloody, rescue mission for Hera. The bad Cylons die. The humans and good Cylons settle on the only inhabitable planet they know—Cobol. But eventually tensions build and everyone leaves; the humans form another 12 colonies and the Cylons head out on their own. “All this has happened before and will happen again.”

Then there’s the tongue-in-cheek prediction from Luiza Ch. Savage, our Washington bureau chief: “They all get sucked into the black hole. The end.”

What do you think?

When Enough Is Enough

By John Parisella - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 3:39 PM - 13 Comments

Two stories have dominated American news coverage in recent days: the first involved a public condemnation of the excessive rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh by a prominent and respected GOP operative; the second featured Jon Stewart’s frustration with the quality of reporting on a popular business news TV show. The spat between Limbaugh and David Frum speaks to a theme this blog has touched upon in recent weeks—namely, that the Republican party must come to grips with a new reality and start work on becoming a viable alternative to Obama and the Democrats. This is essential for a sound democracy. The showdown between Stewart and Jim Cramer, on the other hand, put a spotlight on news shows that try to justify the erroneous and contradictory information they reported regarding investment choices. What both media events have in common is that they are likely to become defining moments for both the future of the GOP and the coverage of the economic crisis hitting America and beyond. I believe it was about time both conflicts occurred, and I would like to add another ongoing source of frustration that needs to be addressed: the public resurfacing of Dick Cheney. But first, let us deal with the Republican infighting over Rush Limbaugh.

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The Commons: The baby face of Canadian conservatism

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 2:50 PM - 46 Comments

Pierre Poilievre climbed on stage, extended a hand and greeted Bernard Lord as “premier.” Noticing a couple dignitaries in the first row of seats in front of him, he smiled and struck up a conversation.

Organizers walked around handing out a workbook for “personal reflection.” Poilievre—baby-faced and not yet 30, short hair parted to the left and slick with product, wearing rimless glasses, a dark blue suit, light blue shirt and maroon-and-blue-striped tie—sat and studied his audience, a group of maybe 25, many of them his age or younger.

To his left sat Patrick Brazeau, a 34-year-old Aboriginal man, recently appointed to the Senate and the subject of various controversies. To his right, sat Fraser Macdonald, a 20-something who had already managed a campaign for federal office. At the microphone, stood Bernard Lord, emcee for this forum. In 1999, at the age of 33, Lord was elected premier of New Brunswick and was quickly hailed as a potential saviour for the federal Progressive Conservative party. Seven years later, the PC party now in the past tense, Lord was voted out of office in New Brunswick. Still charming and boyish, though with as much grey hair as black hair, he’s now a lobbyist for the telecommunications industry.

The panel, part of a weekend conservative conference in Ottawa, was entitled “Next Generation: For those new to politics, particulary students and young people—Imagine what could be, imagine what you could do.”

Though 14 years older, Lord introduced Poilievre in tones approaching reverence. “I’m very pleased to introduce Pierre Poilievre. He is an energetic and outspoken member of parliament, who gets results and is not afraid to take principled stands on difficult issues … a great example of youth, energy, results and success in Canadian politics.” Continue…

Extra! Extra! Read a few hundred kilobytes about it!

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 2:47 PM - 7 Comments

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer prints its last edition tomorrow. But it’s not shutting down: it will continue publishing online — the largest American newspaper to go paperless to date. But stay tuned: the San Francisco Chronicle may be next.

In fact, Hearst has announced plans to start providing subscribers with wireless tablets for reading newspapers online. Hmmm… Where have I heard about that recently?

$150-million “Watchmen” outflanked at box office by $50-million “Race to Witch Mountain”

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 2:29 PM - 3 Comments

The violent graphic novel picture slipped 67 per cent in its second weekend, earning just $18 million in North America, indicating that all the nuts had seen it within 48 hours of its opening. Meanwhile, a Disney remake of a 1970s kids film earns bug bucks: $25 million in its first weekend. Last week, Watchmen’s screenplay writer wrote an open letter to fans: Please, for god’s sake, go out and see it again.

The New York Times

The New York Times (open letter)

David Chase Goes Meta

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 2:01 PM - 3 Comments

David Chase hasn’t been doing much since The Sopranos ended (he was supposed to go into writing and directing movies, but it’s hard to get those things greenlit), and HBO hasn’t had many successes, so it’s not altogether surprising that they’re going to re-unite. Chase will create and executive-produce the miniseries A Ribbon Of Dreams, tracing the story of Hollywood from the early days to its decline. The odd-couple lead characters will be representative of the two very different pools of talent that Hollywood drew on: one’s an intellectual with the mechanical and technical know-how that movies require, and the other is a roughneck cowboy type who winds up in Hollywood making movies about the Old West culture that is now dead. According to the link, “the miniseries will cover the age of rough-hewn silent Westerns, to the golden era of talkies and the studio system, to the auteur movement, to television, and finally to the present day.”

You can see why Chase and HBO would be attracted to this material. HBO is always trying to make shows that are Metaphors For America, and Hollywood is like the ultimate metaphor for America; a place built out of incompatible people trying to work together, whose job it is to figure out what stories Americans will want to buy. Chase is fascinated by movie references and the way real life intersects with popular culture — The Sopranos was in part about gangsters who have all grown up watching gangster movies — so this is his kind of thing too. And with the success of Mad Men, an idea HBO turned down, it isn’t surprising that they would be on the lookout for similar material: something about 20th century America and the people who sell fantasies to America and the world. Besides, one of HBO’s few remaining successes is a Hollywood meta-story, Entourage.

Of course, Hollywood meta-stories have a way of being self-congratulatory and insular, even the good ones, which always tend to be made from the point of view of people who have no idea what a good movie is. (What I mean is that a lot of Hollywood meta-movies seem to express the very misguided opinion that movies would be better if they’d have more respect for screenwriters and deal with more “provocative” subjects. There are some honourable exceptions like Barton Fink, which takes an ironic attitude toward know-it-all pretentious screenwriters.) And the last project that tried to deal with the early days of Hollywood, Peter Bogdanovich’s Nickelodeon (based on stories told by Hollywood veterans like Raoul Walsh), was a box-office flop. But hey, it’s David Chase; HBO needs him, he needs HBO, and unlike the other David (Milch) he usually gives the impression that he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Of Cs, big and little, and how size sometimes matters.

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 1:23 PM - 26 Comments

This is something that came up more than once over the weekend, during my attempt at liveblogging a panel at the Manning Centre conference, but has cropped up before as a unintentional ambiguator:  When listening to those of a conservative – or nonconservative, for that matter – persuasion speak, how does one discern whether they are referring to capital-C, card-carrying Conservatives or the Conservative Party, or plain old small-c conservatives, who may or may not be affiliated with the party itself?

Continue…

MPs, nachos and a loon: The All-Party Party

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 7 Comments

Every year Nova Scotia NDP MP Peter Stoffer (below) organizes the All-Party Party for everyone who works on the Hill, from MPs to the cleaning staff. This year’s event was packed as usual.

Stoffer with Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau with his aide, Louis-Alexandre Lanthier.

Continue…

UPDATED: Well, that's something that ITQ didn't hear about at that Manning Centre conference this weekend …

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 12:35 PM - 97 Comments

.. at least, not at Saturday’s session on political social networking: a (not actually all that secret as of this morning) strategy to “take over student unions”, as reported (or, to use their phrase, “exposed”) by the Ryerson Free Press:

Audio recordings, photographs and documents that were leaked from a recent Conservative Party student workshop at the University of Waterloo expose a partisan attempt to take over student unions and undermine Ontario Public Interest Research Groups (OPIRGs) on campuses across Ontario.

At a session held in early February by the Ontario Progressive Campus Conservative Association (OPCCA) and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, campus Conservatives, party campaigners, and a Member of Parliament discussed strategies to gain funding from student unions for the Conservative Party and ways to run for—and win—positions within student unions. [...]

Among those present at the workshop were Member of Parliament for Kitchener-Waterloo, Peter Braid and his campaign manager, Aaron Lee-Wudrick. Lee-Wudrick is heard on the recordings providing advice on how to siphon money from students’ unions through “front organizations” that would work to further the goals of the Conservative Party. [...]

In the presentation caught on the recording, Lee-Wudrick and Ryan O’Connor, a former Vice-President of the Waterloo Federation of Students, spoke about how they were able to manipulate the student union board to run a referendum to refund the fees of the Waterloo OPIRG (WPIRG) chapter in the early 2000s. They disclose that when O’Connor was a Vice-President, he worked with Lee-Wudrick, then President of the campus Conservative club, to push forward their partisan agenda, often by using the resources of the students’ union.

In the presentation, Lee-Wudrick said, “If it’s possible if, in one fell swoop, to take over the Board of Directors [of OPIRG], I think that it would be pretty impressive, and you’d be a hero to the Conservative movement if you can pull that off.” [...]

NOTE: SCROLL DOWN FOR IMPORTANT UPDATE/CLARIFICATION!

The leaked recordings, as well as related material, are available via Wikileaks here for now. It will be interesting to see if any legal threats result from the claims being put forward by the newspaper; although several of the presenters, including a sitting MP, do have ties to the party and/or the Manning Centre, it’s by no means clear if they were there in an official capacity, or as private individuals. It’s also possible that this sort of cross-pollination between parties and ostensibly nonpartisan student organizations happens all the time, and these Conservatives were just unlucky enough to get caught on tape.

This is going to sound odd coming from a journalist, but the whole surreptitious-recording-people-who-think-they’re-talking-amongst-friends thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth — how different is this, really, than what happened to the NDP during that conference call last December? Well, other than the fact that it’s not PMO putting out the audio, that is. Okay, maybe it is a little different, but still. Where do you draw the line? Conversely, is it really a good idea to encourage the theoretically idealistic young political leaders of tomorrow to manipulate the rules to further the cause by whatever means necessary?

Anyway, I’ll try to keep y’all posted on any further developments.

Courtesy of Colleague Wherry, here’s a slightly different take on Conservative youth politics.

UPDATED AGAIN:

According to self-described “staunch Young Liberal” Emile Scheffel, at least one of the people alleged to have attended one of these presentations — Nick Bergamini, VP-elect for student issues at Carleton University –  was not, in fact, present. It is, in short, a “complete fabrication,” he told ITQ by email this afternoon. At least one other individual alleged to have taken part in the Waterloo meeting has also categorically denied that he was present, and dismissed the story as “a highly slanted, unresearched hit job by student activists who obviously don’t believe there’s a place for conservatives in student activism”.

In fact, it’s probably worth pointing out that the audio and quotes available on Wikileaks are all from the session held in Waterloo, which means that it would be unfair to assume that the other meetings included similar commentary and advice, particularly since there were different people involved in the events in Ottawa and Toronto. In fact, the meeting in Ottawa hasn’t even happened yet – it’s scheduled for March 21, 2009.

Of course, if anyone out there attended one of these meetings and wants to share what they heard with the world, feel free to drop me a line and I’ll update this post with  any additional information.

UPDATE: Richard Ciano also denies being at the meeting in Waterloo.

We are watching (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 12:28 PM - 13 Comments

Senator Grant Mitchell is a big fan.

At first, I thought she was simply using her Blackberry for all the things that each of us uses them. But, she never put it down. She was riveted to it, writing feverishly with her thumbs as she blogged the proceedings.  There was a compelling intensity and urgency in her demeanor and in her eyes.

Not so bankrupt after all?

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

Peter Pocklington, the Canadian businessman perhaps best known as the man who traded Wayne Gretzky out of Edmonton, is facing charges he hid assets from creditors when he filed for bankruptcy last summer. According to Pocklington, the charges stem from a simple misunderstanding. The disputed assets, including thousands of dollars worth of artwork, aren’t his at all, he says; they’re his wife’s. Pocklington declared bankruptcy last August, claiming he was nearly $20 million in debt and had less than $3,000 to his name. (His golf clubs and his watch, worth $500 each, were Pocklington’s most valuable possessions.) But creditors claim the former owner of the Edmonton Oilers has been transferring money to Eva, his wife of 35 years, from an offshore bank account, and that the assets she claims to own are in fact controlled by Pocklington. Eva Pocklington has acknowledged receiving monthly payments from her husband, but told officials she didn’t know where the money came from.

Edmonton Journal

Smart people live longer

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

People who score poorly on intelligence tests also seem to have a higher risk of heart disease, fatal accidents and suicide, according to new research reported in the Telegraph. The study, which looked at the health records of one million Swedish army conscripts, established a connection between IQ and mortality. “People with higher IQ test scores tend to be less likely to smoke or drink alcohol heavily. They also eat better diets, and they are more physically active. So they have a range of better behaviours that may partly explain their lower mortality risk,” explains Dr David Batty, a Wellcome Trust research fellow at the Medical Research Council’s Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, and one of the researchers involved.

Telegraph.co.uk

Someone's looking to get kicked out of caucus

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 11:44 AM - 13 Comments

Another excerpt from Saturday’s panel discussion. This from Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau.

We have to stand up for what we believe in, as opposed to what we’re against. And I think, it doesn’t matter what walk of life, what type of work you do, what type of studies you do, everybody, by human nature, is looking for leadership. And I think that, often times, unfortunately, we get into the game of also opposing and such as the attack ads, for example. I would much rather, as a Canadian citizen, see what our government is working towards, what they’ve achieved and what they actually believe in, as opposed to doing the easy work, such as the attack on the Dion campaign for example, where I don’t think the attack ads were necessary. I think the individual spoke for himself … But it’s a question of leadership, standing up for what you believe in and individuals will attach themselves to that. I think that’s what’s needed.

Moving in with the in-laws

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

In this latest installment of Salon’s series “Pinched: Tales from an economic downturn,” writer Rosecrans Baldwin reflects on life from inside the confines of his in-laws’ home. He’s not alone; the current economic climate has forced many adults to move back in with their parents. Initially, Baldwin and his wife had intended to stay for only a few weeks on the heels of an 18-month stint working abroad. But months later and with no end-point in sight, he considers the bad (“My father-in-law has ear hair like a wolverine”) and the good (“Loving relatives and home-cooked meals are solid levees against a recession”).

Salon.com