Leonard Cohen live

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 7:02 PM - 0 Comments

Leonard Cohen’s new album, Live in London, due out later this month, is available for listening on NPR’s site, and it’s worth sampling. Now 74, Cohen’s cigarette and drink-cured voice transforms old tunes like Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye or Suzanne—what was once youthful but endearing faux world-weariness in the original recordings is now the real thing, not a young poet’s reaching but honest-to-God knowing.

NPR

The Commons: A morality play

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 6:57 PM - 16 Comments

The Scene. It was Jack Layton who, yesterday, tried to impose some perspective on the proceedings.

“We are talking about real people here,” he said in the Prime Minister’s general direction, implicitly acknowledging the difference between what happens here and what’s going on everywhere else.

It was Libby Davies who, filling in today for an absent Layton, dared to suggest there were morals to be found in all this.

“Mr. Speaker, the minister knows full well that the number one issue when it comes to employment insurance is eligibility. A five-week extension does not help the 57 per cent who do not qualify to begin with. This House has spoken loudly and clearly that EI eligibility must be reformed, but this Prime Minister has refused to listen,” she said, referring to an opposition motion, passed 152-140 in the House a few weeks ago, that demanded changes to the government’s distribution of aid to the unemployed.

“This is the same person who said that a prime minister ‘has a moral responsibility to respect the will of the House,’ ” she continued. “I would like to ask the Prime Minister, what happened to those morals, why is he ignoring the will of the House and denying the unemployed the EI benefits they so desperately need?”

The Prime Minister did not stand and answer this one, leaving the matter to Diane Finley, the Human Resources Minister who suggested last month that she was hesitant to make unemployment too lucrative a lifestyle and has since become the government’s primary spokeswoman on our current economic peril. Continue…

Dodge says not so fast with the stimulus spending

By John Geddes - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 6:29 PM - 10 Comments

David Dodge, the former Bank of Canada Governor, is starting to sound like the closest thing we have to an economic sage. I guess it goes without saying that he will be respectfully ignored.

Earlier this afternoon, Dodge was interviewed by Don Newman on CBC Newsworld’s Politics, and he urged the government to ease up on its unseemly rush to start spending billions, ostensibly to stimulate the economy.
Continue…

Try the veal (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 6:20 PM - 8 Comments

Liberal whip Rodger Cuzner’s member statement before QP today. 

Mr. Speaker, we read in today’s news that Conservatives have finally come up with a plan to address poverty. The Conservative senators have a truly novel plan. They suggest that we simply shoot all the Canadian geese that are becoming a nuisance at their summer homes, and feed them to the poor. Given that this is a Conservative plan, I am surprised they have not suggested to raffle off handguns, let them shoot, and then let the poor people have the geese. 

We all know that Tory times are tough times, but where will it stop, squirrel burgers, pigeon McNuggets, gopher burritos, maybe beaver tails made from real beaver tails?

It may surprise Conservatives to learn that the Canada goose is recognized internationally as a national symbol of our country; it is not an anti-poverty plan. It is high time the Conservatives came up with a real plan to address poverty and unemployment during this recession.

Stop the silly goose games. The Conservatives have to get their ducks in a row and stop goosing Canada’s poor.

Try the veal (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 6:17 PM - 1 Comment

Because it went over so well the first time, Gerry Ritz responded to a question today from Wayne Easter about listeriosis with a joke about the Liberal’s health.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot understand what the member for Malpeque is braying about. I hope someone has a set of paddles over there. He may need them one day.

Academic research laundering

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 6:00 PM - 10 Comments

Outspoken academic Ward Churchill is suing to get his job back. He claims he was let go because of his opinions on 9/11 (you’ll recall he called the WTC victims “little Eichmanns”) while the school says it was for academic misconduct, with offenses that include plagiarism and something that appears to be a form of research laundering. Under cross examination yesterday, Churchill admitted “that he had ghostwritten works for other scholars and occasionally cited them to support his own theories” — something that a faculty committee found clearly violated academic standards.

It gets better. One of the people for whom he ghost-wrote a paper is his ex-wife where he wrote part of her paper, and it was published under her name. Ok, so maybe it isn’t plagiarism, but the problem is that he subsequently cites the paper as an independent source in his own work. Here’s his explanation for why it’s not unethical:

Mr. Churchill said the practice violated no academic standard at the university. And he argued that it was acceptable for one scholar to ghostwrite for another and then cite that work in other writings as long as the second scholar embraced the original premise.

I’m not sure what to make of this — there is no second scholar.

In this class, everyone gets A+

By Karen Pinchin - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 30 Comments

At first glance, Denis Rancourt is a self-proclaimed anarchist with a history of causing trouble. Over the past five years, the University of Ottawa professor has unsuccessfully sued his employer for millions of dollars over a cancelled course, claimed that the school’s president is part of a continental Zionist conspiracy, taught a controversial activism course, and denied the existence of climate change. But that’s not why the university says it’s firing him. In a move that’s becoming increasingly popular in post-secondary education, Rancourt decided last year not to grade his students—something that has fuelled a wide-ranging debate not only about his methods but also over academic freedom. And the outcome of his dismissal, which is pending, could change the balance of power between professors and university administrations across the country.

A native of North Bay, Ont., Rancourt has taught at the University of Ottawa for more than 20 years. Colleagues consider him a highly regarded physicist; Rancourt has published more than 100 scientific journal articles. But like a growing number of Canadian university professors, he also believes students learn better when they’re not being graded. In 2008, he was denied permission to make his two fourth-year physics classes “pass-fail,” in which students either get through or they don’t. So he announced that everyone in the classroom was going to get an A+. According to Rancourt, grades are only a means of exercising power in the classroom. “It’s not about optimizing education,” he says, “it’s about obedience.”

Continue…

Four Different Intros, Four Different Approaches

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 4:58 PM - 3 Comments

Having mentioned Rhoda in the previous post, I realized that that’s a good example of how shows used to have opening titles that reflected the way they were re-tooled. Unlike its more successful cousins at MTM, Rhoda had a different main title every year, because it was adding and dropping new characters every year and trying to reach a different demographic.

The season 1 intro is the type of main title that’s mostly given over to narration and exposition; Rhoda tells her life story and makes it clear who she is and what she’s like and that she has a tendency to make self-deprecating jokes and even that her mother is a possessive nut. This is done so that anyone who didn’t see her on Mary Tyler Moore will be up to speed, while the show itself won’t have to spend a lot of time inroducing her to new viewers (which would be boring for longtime Mary Tyler Moore viewers). Note also that the star is the only person mentioned in the opening titles; the same went for Mary Tyler Moore, and Bob Newhart only had billing for Newhart and Suzanne Pleshette.

But as often happens when you pay an outside company a lot of money to create an opening title, this one got dumped after only one year and replaced with lots and lots of clips. The second season keeps only a tiny bit of the Rhoda-through-the-ages photo montage, and instead uses clips from the show (plus a few New York location clips) to replace the rueful putdown humour of the first season intro with an illustration of how cool her life is: she has her own business, she smiles a lot, she makes out with her husband. The theme song, kept to a few bars in season 1, here not only takes up the whole minute but is sung by off-key children. I still don’t know what they were thinking with that one, but then, I never liked this theme song in any form.

Season 3 was when the show completely fell apart: the sensible decision to split up Rhoda with her boring husband was handled in the clumsiest way possible, and the ratings Continue…

UBC professor to Harper: Your drug laws stink

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 4:33 PM - 4 Comments

Stephen Harper’s drugs laws are antiquated, counterproductive and harmful to Canadian society, says Evan Wood, a professor at the University of British Columbia. Wood used 900 words in the Vancouver Sun to excoriate the Harper government’s hard line approach to drug-related crime, suggesting it has done nothing to curb the abundance and availability of drugs in the country. “Under the Tories, arrests for drugs, particularly the possession of marijuana, have increased, while drug supply and use has been unaffected,” Evan writes. He suggests Harper’s drug policy may actually be responsible for the escalating drug-related violence in several Canada’s cities.

The Vancouver Sun

Jason Kenney is impressed

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 4:07 PM - 19 Comments

Again, from his Twitter feed.

Diane Finley is awesome in QP. She’s substative, on her brief, articulate in both languages.

The "Global War on Terror" is over!

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 3:34 PM - 4 Comments

For some time, reports of the imminent death of the phrase, “Global War on Terror,” have been making the rounds amongst senior administration officials. Yesterday, speechwriters and Defense staffers received an email requiring them to “please use the term Overseas Contingency Operation.”

Foreign Policy

The tiny dancer treatment

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 3:31 PM - 0 Comments

There was something dignified about the Joni Mitchell-Alberta Ballet collaboration back in 2007. She’s Canadian, ethereal, a poetic Prairie girl whose songs lend themselves to abstraction. So it’s with some reservation that we greet news the company is now joining forces with the man responsible for such pop hits as Crocodile Rock, Candle in the Wind and Tiny Dancer. What could an Elton John ballet production look like? Says the troupe’s artistic director, Jean Grand-Maitre: “I see Fellini, I see burlesque, I see Brecht.” Oh brother. “I had sex for the first time to an Elton John song … I’m not going to tell you which one.” Ok, enough already. 

Edmonton Journal

Oil crews try Iraq as jobs here dry up

By Nicholas Köhler - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 7 Comments

As oil and gas work in Canada evaporates, Alberta oil patchers are seeing the rise of a strange new opportunity: working the oil fields in northern Iraq. “We’re seeing day rates from US$400 upwards and, apparently, it is much safer in the north in Kurdistan,” Calgary recruiter Margi Storey wrote in an online ad for seismic surveyors last fall. “The fighting is all in the south, around Baghdad. All work is done in compounds and employee safety is ensured at all times.”

Despite the dangerous locale, Storey was inundated with queries. She has since placed almost 200 workers, mainly from Alberta, on crews exploring the oil fields of Kurdistan. Though she compares the terrain there to Alberta’s Rocky Mountain foothills, “this is not like working in Canada,” she says. “They’re always under guard and there’s land mines—so it is Iraq.” Still, “jughounds,” “vibe techs” and “party chiefs” can earn anywhere from US$500 to US$800 a day—almost double the Canadian wage. “They really have to have a lot of moxie,” says Storey, who stresses the challenges of running mixed crews of Kurds and Canadians, and negotiating with local authorities.

Continue…

What Obama really meant

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 2:26 PM - 5 Comments

The love-fest between most of the media and Barack Obama continues unabated. But certain corners—and not just Fox News—are eager for the honeymoon to end. Politico.com has been snipping at the President’s heels for weeks. Here, they break down his answers from last night’s press conference, with their own snarky interpretation of “what he really meant.”

Politico

Can’t afford your car? Burn it.

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 2:25 PM - 1 Comment

That seems to be the approach a growing number of desperate car owners are taking in Las Vegas. Saddled with car payments they can no longer afford, many are driving their SUVs and sedans into the Nevada desert and setting them alight, hoping to cash in on the insurance claim. According to the Wall Street Journal, tow yards are filled with the blackened hulks of vehicles pulled from the desert. In one 36 hour period, police investigated eight car fires. “They look at this as their own personal stimulus package,” says one insurance industry spokesman.

The Wall Street Journal

Shovel 'em if you got 'em

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 2:12 PM - 11 Comments

Check back for full coverage of Kevin Page’s very first budget progress report, which he will deliver to the Finance committee at 3:30 p.m.

3:22:12 PM
Well, this is exciting: even for the Finance committee, this is a near unprecedented media turnout for a non-ministerial appearance, which should give you some idea of what we’re expecting from the inaugural budget progress report from the parliamentary budget office.

Wow, even the chair is excited — he could barely restrain his gavel hand until the clock struck half past three. We’re on. The PBO himself – who looks unflappably dapper, given his often precarious position vis a vis the object of his oversight – introduces his “panel”.

Continue…

UPDATED: Meanwhile, in another part of the diplomatic forest …

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 1:34 PM - 14 Comments

It’s going to be an interesting day for Langevin/Blackburn relations if this potentially incendiary teaser from National Newswatch turns out to be true.

UPDATE: Rumour denied? So says Colleague Potter.

Let there be more

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 1:12 PM - 8 Comments

Michael Ignatieff talks to Bloomberg.

“We’ve got to bet the store on post-secondary education, investments in research and technology, because that’s where, it seems to me, safety lies.”

Television Shows Need Restoration Too

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 1:05 PM - 2 Comments

Shout! Factory is understandably getting hammered by fans for making a season 1 DVD of Rhoda where over half the episodes are syndicated versions. (The only upside for the historically-minded is that because these are really old syndication prints, it gives an idea of how filmed shows were edited for syndication before digital editing technology existed: because the edits had to be done directly on film, they were incredibly clumsy and obvious.) The company has recently released three filmed shows under license from Fox where the prints are in poor condition: not just Rhoda, but Room 222, where the prints are all uncut but mostly look terrible, and The Paper Chase, mostly beat-up old prints. In the case of all three shows, there are a couple of episodes that look the way the show could look: one or two episodes of Rhoda look gorgeous and pristine, while the others range from fair to poor. It’s a reminder that television shows, no less than movies, are in need of substantial restoration work, but nobody wants to pay to do the work that’s required.

Up until the ’90s, filmed shows were edited as well as shot on film, and most of them were on 35 mm film, just like features. If you take the original negatives of a filmed show and do proper restoration work on them, to get the original colours and look of the film, they can look absolutely beautiful. Paramount has done that with some of its filmed properties; it’s why the early episodes of Cheers look better than the later ones, because the early ones were shot and cut on film, and they look pristine and vibrant. But it costs a lot of money to do that; restoring a full season of 25-minute episodes is the cost equivalent of restoring several feature films. And while some shows have been properly restored, or at least remastered from good prints, many more have not. Before its collapse, MTM probably paid to restore its most famous property, The Mary Tyler Moore Show; it almost certainly didn’t do the same kind of work on its other properties, because while Mary Tyler Moore episodes mostly look great, Bob Newhart Show and St. Elsewhere episodes range from good to terrible, and Rhoda, we now know, is an absolute mess.

With the decline in DVD sales (and Blu-Ray isn’t going to help TV-on-DVD much, particularly catalogue titles) and the overall decline in purchasing power, doing a full-scale Continue…

Red meat! Get your red meat here!

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 12:46 PM - 58 Comments

A couple of days’ worth of headlines…

Tories ‘prepared to defend’ polygamy ban

Toews supports new crime rate measure

Tories want to kill ‘two-for-one’ prison-time credit

Spike in refugee claims shows ‘abuse’ of system, Kenney says

There you go, Tory base. We may be spending at all-time record levels. We may be running $40-billion deficits, and bailing out auto companies, and ditching across-the-board tax cuts in favour of dozens of little social-engineering tax credits. We may have abandoned everything we ever stood for on Afghanistan, on Quebec, on corporate welfare, on foreign investment. We may have set up a regional development agency for southern Ontario.

But we’ll still protect you from a lot of imaginary threats like polygamy. We’ll still beat up on refugees, and prisoners. We’ll still whip up hysteria over crime. Because sometimes you just have to do the unassailably popular thing, when it’s the unassailably popular thing to do.

ShamWow, the all powerful

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 12:44 PM - 2 Comments

Popular Mechanics has settled it once and for all: ShamWow is better than Zorbeez. The two brands of reusable cloths featured in cult-inducing infomercials were caught in a battle for the ultimate absorbency crown when Billy Mays, the Zorbeez pitchman, dissed ShamWow, represented by the mononymous Vince. The science magazine tested the absorbency and speed of each rag in sopping up blueberry beer. The results: “Shamwow sucked it up as if with a straw.” ShamPow!

Popular Mechanics

CBC To Cut 800 Jobs

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 12:43 PM - 10 Comments

It was already announced that the CBC was going to try and make up some of its shortfall by cutting jobs and salaries, rather than adding U.S. shows or commercials. All that happened today is that they made it official and gave a few more details (not many, really) about where they cuts are going to come. But the official news is still very dispiriting to read.

“I wish I could be standing here in better circumstances,” CBC President Hubert Lacroix said, but “these are tough times for the public broadcaster.” He said, “we need $171 million to balance our budget, which will mean 800 positions.”

The plan is to raise about $125 million through the sale of assets he said. It’s based on the assumption that the government will allow the CBC to keep the proceeds of those sales. But even with those sales, balancing the books “still results in 800 positions,” Lacroix said.

Lacroix also said that the most senior managers would see a minimum 20 per cent reduction in take home pay, through bonus cutbacks, and the corporate level will face a five per cent cut across the board.

The layoffs would start over the summer months, and finish by the beginning of September.

(Via DMc.)

More twits, less Dieppe in British schools

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 1 Comment

A proposal to overhaul the British primary school system would result in children no longer studying WWII or the Victorians and becoming proficient in Web-based skills, including how to use Wikipedia and Twitter, reports the Guardian. Response has been mixed. John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, said: “It seems to be about trends on the one hand, then political pressure on the other hand-the government didn’t want to look like it is scrapping traditional education.” Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, praised the proposal as “giving the profession more flexibility to meet the needs of their pupils: “Children need to be enthused by learning, so they want to learn and gain the skills which will enable them to learn in later life. The debate is not about whether the Victorians are in there or not.”
 
Guardian.co.uk

GallowayWatch: Well, that's something that probably didn't come up in the CBSA recruitment pitch.

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 12:32 PM - 39 Comments

So it turns out that the final decision on George Galloway’s admissibility to Canada will be made by the CBSA officer on duty when he rolls up at the border, according to the letter sent to the British MP by the Canadian High Commission in London, which has finally gone up on the website of the organizers of the speaking tour:

If we do not receive any submissions on or before March 30, 2009, and you present yourself at the Port of Entry, the Canadian Border Services Agency officer will make a final determination of inadmissibility based on this preliminary assessment and any submissions you make at that time.

In order to overcome this inadmissibility, you could submit an application for a Temporary Residency Permit. I have been asked to convey to you that it is unlikely the application would be successful. However, a final determination with respect to a temporary residency permit will only be issued upon application.

First thought:

Yikes. I wouldn’t want to be that border guard.

Second thoughts:

“Asked to convey” by whom, exactly? Does this explain how Jason Kenney’s office got involved before Galloway had even been informed of his looming inadmissibility? Does CBSA always consult with the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to find out if an application for a temporary residency permit would “likely” be unsuccessful, and advise the target accordingly? And finally, the increasingly frequently asked, yet still pointedly unanswered question: Why was this “preliminary assessment” prepared in the first place? Was it conducted on CBSA’s own initiative, or was it the result of a request by a third party?

Final thought: Seriously. That poor, poor border guard.

UPDATE: Galloway’s official response to the CBSA, which was prepared by his Canadian legal team, is now available. A sampling:

We are writing to respond to the invitation to Mr. Galloway to make submissions as to  why he should not be determined to be inadmissible to Canada. This invitation does not appear  to have been made in good faith, but merely to give the appearance of fairness when it is clear  that a decision has been made – not only with respect to admissibility but as well with respect to  an exemption from the inadmissibility bar. The letter is misleading because it leaves out  reference to the ‘reasonable grounds’ standard which governs the conclusions drawn. An officer  need be satisfied that it is possible that Mr. Galloway is a member of the Hamas and engaged in  terrorism. Even on this low standard, however, such a conclusion is perverse. [...]