Career opportunities

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 5:39 AM - 3 Comments

First, the return of pirates. Now a guy tries to rob a dry cleaner with a sword.

Finally – finally – it looks like my four years at catapult college are going to pay off.

'Canada deserves nothing but the best'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 12:23 AM - 12 Comments

Hopefully Mr. Fleischer tries harder when he’s working on our behalf.

Elizabeth May launches new book in Toronto

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 10:47 PM - 13 Comments

Green party leader Elizabeth May held the launch of her new book Losing Confidence: Power, Politics, and the Crisis in Canadian Democracy (McClelland & Stewart) at Ben McNally Books in Toronto.

Continue…

Will Regis Philbin Have His Guests Flogged?

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 10:43 PM - 1 Comment

This isn’t really new at all, but ABC finally made it official: they’re bringing back Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with Regis Philbin. It’s just another reminder that the best way to get a show on the air is to find a way to tie it in with a recently-successful movie. It’s just that in this case, the successful movie prompted the network to bring back an old show, instead of doing a new show that imitates the movie (that will presumably come later).

The initial announcement suggests that the network has learned its lesson, or wants us to think it has; the return of the show, starting August 9, is being billed as an “11 night event” rather than a continuing series. But you have to figure that if the Millionaire mini-series is successful, ABC will bring it back on a regular basis and wind up making everyone tired of it again. 

But this is an opportunity for them to finally, finally use the theme song that they should have been using all along.

Pakistan slides closer to hell

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 10:06 PM - 25 Comments

Remember the Swat Valley, where the Pakistan government traded Sharia law for peace with the Taliban? The Taliban have used their new secure Swat base as a staging ground for their assault on Buner, the province next door — and that much closer to Islamabad. (Gee, if only somebody had seen this coming. Say, somebody like our own Adnan Khan, with a fantastic cover story in Maclean’s three weeks ago.) Hillary Clinton accuses the Pak regime of “basically abdicating to the extremists.” The man who had hoped to land her job wonders whether Clinton and Obama have any real plan for Pakistan. Three weeks ago I concocted an apocalyptic scenario that does not seem less likely today. Nothing in the world is more dangerous than what’s happening right now in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state on the brink of violent failure. That’s why Canada’s Parliament will hold a thoughtful debate about the situation tomorrow. You’re right, I’m just kidding about that last part.

UPDATE: Susan Boyle does the inevitable

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 10:05 PM - 34 Comments

UPDATE: If the international media was scrutinizing your eyebrows with the sort of zeal that used to attend discussion of the arms race, maybe you’d do something about it. And so, despite Britain’s Got Talent contestant Susan Boyle’s proclamations that she wouldn’t change the way she looked, she has changed her hairdo, bought some new clothes and tended to her unibrow.   According to The Daily Mail, producers at Britain’s Got Talent are “frantic” about Boyle’s “make-over,” reporting: “they wanted to preserve her unique looks for the live finals.” Really? That seems difficult to believe. After all, the sexist discussion over Boyle’s appearance has brought the program priceless publicity. As has this latest minor “makeover” which no doubt will be analyzed with forensic precision. What was once an inspirational story has, sadly, turned to farce.

Susan Boyle: Don’t call it a make-over  (April 21, 2009)

Since Susan Boyle’s audition on Britain’s Got Talent made her the world’s newest instant celebrity, the media has been in a relentless tizzy over whether the 48-year-old should submit to a “make-over.” That’s because unlike many women her age—most notably the two years’ older Madonna—Boyle doesn’t appear preoccupied with combating the realities of aging: she’s had no cosmetic surgery, no hair colouring, no tooth-whitening, no Botox; there are no two-hour-long daily workouts with a trainer. Nor does she seem concerned about being au courant in her clothing or hair style.  Which of course makes Boyle a freak within a culture conditioned by countless make-over shows that churn out anodyne simulacrums of conventional beauty.

Britain’s Got Talent host Amanda Holden, who herself is beautiful, tanned, and made-over, told British newspapers that the minute Boyle changed the way she looked was the moment “it’s spoilt,” suggesting the singer’s value and record sales are linked to the fact that she’s a physical curiosity.  Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan wrote that though it’s “politically correct” to say Boyle doesn’t need a make-over, a minor renovation was in order. Givhan counseled the singer to avail herself of flattering frocks sent by designers, “eye-brow arching and a smart new haircut.” The make-over need not be drastic, she wrote—not the “Extreme Makeover version but the Tim Gunn or What Not to Wear version.”  Jezebel.com weighed in that it would be “creepy” for Boyle not to alter her look slightly given the demands placed on all performers; she needn’t be “transformed” but “polished,” the Web site opined, noting: “To deny her that would be a grave injustice, and anything less would be, at this point, artificial.”

Boyle herself says she has no intention of changing the way she looks. As she told the Times of London in an interview last Saturday: “Why should it matter as long as I can sing? It’s not a beauty contest,” she said, expressing a view that reveals a refreshing naiveté about modern star-making machinery.

Of course, many can’t wrap their minds around the fact that a woman who appears so unworldly and mousy could possibly possess such confidence and independence of mind. So desperate was the British scandal sheet Daily Mail for a Boyle make-over that it made one up today, with the headline: “And you said you wouldn’t change, Susan Boyle! Britain’s Got Talent star shows off her new look.” According to the paper, the Scottish singer had “swapped her matronly look for a new, patterned dress and leather-look jacket, along with a pair of high heels.” Yet the accompanying photographs of Boyle wearing a PVC jacket and bright dress hardly suggest the intervention of a stylist.

Boyle said she didn’t rule out the idea of a make-over later on. “For now I’m happy the way I am—short and plump,” she told the Times. I would not go in for Botox or anything like that,” adding: “What’s wrong with looking like Susan Boyle? What’s the matter with that?” It’s an excellent question, if only because its answer suggests that it’s not Susan Boyle who’s in need of that make-over.

The Commons: Welcome back, Mr. Harper

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 8:05 PM - 94 Comments

The Scene. The Prime Minister leaned on his left elbow and listened. Across the way, two sword lengths in front of him, his rival was asking another of his incessant questions.

“Mr. Speaker, yesterday the governor of the Bank of Canada told Canadians that the recession would be deeper and longer than anticipated,” Michael Ignatieff reported by way of introduction. “Today the International Monetary Fund predicts the most severe recession since 1945. These predictions come as no surprise to the 300,000 Canadians who have lost their jobs since January of this year.”

It’s been nearly a month—not since March 25, in fact—that Stephen Harper has been made to sit in his place and listen to this. Back then, in simpler times, he had been made to answer only for a funding gap at the CBC. Now, back in his place, the opposition had returned to the heavier matters of this global economic crisis. The recession Mr. Harper saw before he didn’t see. The deficit he promised never to foist on the national bank account. The jobs that began disappearing shortly after he assured everyone that Canadians weren’t worried about such.

A month spent travelling the world, trying one’s best to look prime ministerial, suffering the indignity of having one’s bathroom habits internationally ridiculed and for what? To spend the morning telling his caucus not to worry about what his own staff may or may not have said about a former prime minister? To find another prominent columnist speculating in the morning paper about his impending departure? To sit here, in this seat, taking guff from a rival who was now out-polling him?

“What additional measures,” Ignatieff finally asked, “what hope can the Prime Minister offer to the people who may be watching this on television because they do not have jobs to go to?” Continue…

If you're looking for last week's Coyne-Wells video extravaganza…

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 6:03 PM - 0 Comments

… It’s here. (Subject: Liberals lead in polls! Even more election speculation than usual! Not from us, though!) It’s a little hard to find at the moment, but we’ll fix that soon enough.

Fair's fair

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 6:01 PM - 10 Comments

The Prime Minister has announced a short-notice news conference for 6:30 p.m. Ottawa time. At a guess, it’s probably about the glad news of Bob Fowler’s release. At any rate, we complain (well, I do) when he finds reasons to talk to non-Canadian reporters, so I should note he’s coming to talk to us too. At the National Press Theatre, no less. Probably it’ll be televised on the cable nets.

Econowatch

By Steve Maich - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 6 Comments

Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and the man charged with resuscitating the world’s largest economy, thinks we all need to be smarter about our finances. “As the global economy continues to experience extraordinary turbulence . . . the need has never been greater for initiatives that help consumers learn to manage their money wisely,” he told a conference on financial literacy this week. Big Ben should be careful what he wishes for.

In recent weeks, world stock markets have been buoyed by a rebound in confidence, and that confidence appears to be based on . . . well . . . not much, really. Earnings among America’s big banks have been better than expected, but jobs are still being vaporized at an alarming pace, housing prices continue to drift lower and blue-collar industries remain dead zones of fear and misery.

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"I had a little newspaper in New York City! You can't beat that."

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 4:57 PM - 0 Comments

Very few of us ever met him — I never did — but all of us who worked at the National Post owe a debt of gratitude to Peter W. Kaplan as he announces his retirement from the New York Observer, which he edited for 15 years. The Observer‘s retro look, its obsession with the hobbies and failings of a certain cultural elite, and its literate but smartass tone were all a huge influence on the Post when we launched. The two papers could hardly have had less similar politics, but in other ways the debt in, say, the Post‘s first two years was obvious and frequently acknowledged. Post staffers knew which Toronto branches of Lichtman’s — remember Lichtman’s? — would carry the Observer, and when I went to New York I’d always get a copy of the Observer before I did much else. The paper has had a difficult few years, as have many (ahem), and while I understand its conversion to tabloid format I worry that a lot has been lost. But it’s still smart, fun reading, and you can’t say that about a lot of papers.

Quitting smoking could be bad for your health

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 4:31 PM - 1 Comment

A study by the University of London has found that the cancer risk of nicotine gum, inhalers and lozenges used to quit smoking is higher than thought. The scientists discovered a link between mouth cancer and exposure to nicotine, which may indicate that using oral nicotine replacement therapies for long periods could contribute to a raised risk of the disease. Dr. Muy-Teck Teh, who presided over the research explains: “The concern is that with smokers, you are looking at people who are already at risk of oral cancer. I’m worried that some may already have lesions they don’t know about in the mouth, and if they keep on taking nicotine replacement when they stop smoking products they will not be doing themselves any good.”

Times Online

The infuriating confessions of a TARP wife

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 4:30 PM - 0 Comments

The wife of an executive whose company was bailed out by TARP shares her new (relatively) parsimonious regime and bemoans her family’s victimized status in an anonymous testimonial published in Portfolio.com. “Extravagance is out; conservative is in,” she writes, which meant the traditional birthday party she threw for her husband couldn’t be held at their “usual multi-star Michelin hotspot” but rather a “clubbier” place that end up costing more. She’s also had to return the Christmas presents given to her by her husband (but not telling him, lest it further his gloom), dipping into credit to buy gifts for friends and shopping her closet (“God forbid someone find me out in something new.”) Her new life requires “making decisions according to a complex algorithm: balancing the need to look like your world hasn’t crumbled beneath you—let’s not alarm the investors!—with the need to appear duly repentant for your subprime sins.” This means sneaking in late to black-tie galas after the society photographer has left and turning down invitations from arts organizations who’ll hit them up for money. Yet she remains buoyant: “The good news is that Americans have short attention spans. Before long, some other group will come along to absorb all the frustration and anger.”

Portfolio.com

Not underneath my backyard

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 4:25 PM - 0 Comments

In a development that will likely soon hit Alberta also, the Dutch are throwing up opposition to Royal Dutch Shell’s carbon sequestration plans, in large part because Shell has announced it no longer plans to put big money in renewables like wind and solar energy. But the Dutch protests have something to do with fear too: “A large part of the carbon-storage technology is unproved,” Anne-Marie van het Erve, a spokeswoman for one local city council opposed to the move, told the Wall Street Journal. “And we’re saying if it’s an experiment, you shouldn’t be doing it in an urban
environment.”

Wall Street Journal

The ‘golden age’ for cybercrime attackers

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 4:23 PM - 0 Comments

Cyberwar, once the stuff of exaggerated Hollywood movie plots, doesn’t seem so implausible anymore. In response to an increase in cyber-attacks, NATO has assembled some of its brightest computer minds in a military base in Estonia to figure out how to keep dangerous hackers at bay. Guardian journalist Bobbie Johnson takes a trip to the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, or K5, as its commonly called, to get a handle on how serious the threat is, and what NATO is doing about it. The picture he paints is not a rosy one; according to U.S. Navy investigator and cybercrime specialist Kenneth Geers, rushing to connect the world with technology before security was in place means that “this is a golden age for attackers.”

Guardian

Sugary drinks make stomach bug worse

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 4:21 PM - 0 Comments

Treating a child’s vomiting and diarrhea with flat ginger ale or cola—or lemonade—actually makes it worse, according to the British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, adding that they should be treated with rehydration drinks instead. Half of all children under five will develop vomiting and diarrhea over the course of a year, reports the BBC, noting that up to one-fifth will see a health professional, and another 40,000 will go to hospital due to complications from dehydration. Serious cases could be avoided if parents and doctors followed their advice, they say. “The idea that flat coke and lemonade—or fruit juices for that matter—helps is just a myth. In fact, it can make it worse, but unfortunately people are still using them,” said consultant pediatric gastronenterologist Dr. Stephen Murphy, who chaired the panel responsible for the guidance. “Severe cases of diarrhea and vomiting leading to dehydration need treating with oral rehydration solution immediately.” Rehydration drinks have a crucial combination of sugar and salt that help the body absorb fluids, he notes, while pop and lemonade have too much sugar.

BBC News

'Gordo-Five-O' not funny: Liberals

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 4:18 PM - 3 Comments

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell’s party is not laughing about a union’s recent ads. In the Canadian Office & Professional Employees Union Local 378 ads, Campbell is shown drinking in a Hawaiian shirt (a reference to his 2003 impaired driving arrest in Hawaii), reading an email about a raid on the B.C. legislature (hinting at what became a corruption investigation), and slurring his words while he discusses a carbon tax (a dig at his apparent conversion to environmentalism). A spokesman for the Grits says the ‘Gordo-Five-O’ ads, “say more about the NDP and their backers than it does the B.C. Liberals.”

Vancouver Sun

Fake Laughs, Real Laughs, And All The Laughs In-Between

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 1:42 PM - 3 Comments

Since I was talking the other day about laughs that sound fake even when they’re real, I should link to Earl Pomerantz’s post about the history and purpose of the laugh track. He talks a lot about when a show uses canned laughter (it’s not just to “save” jokes that don’t work) and the editing issues involved with the laughter mix; he also addresses the fact that even a real live audience doesn’t sound real when you’re watching at home:

Laughter recorded from a live studio audience sounds “canned” even when it isn’t. Why? Because the recording system is, I believe the technical word for it is crappy, making actual laughs sound otherworldly and fake.

The other reason is – and you’ll have to take my word for this – jokes and comedic situations are exponentially funnier when you’re witnessing them in person. That’s why the studio audience is still cracking up, while you’re at home going, “I’m finished with that. Move on.”

Trust me. It’s funnier when you’re there.

All the methods he mentions — live audience, canned laughter, and playing back to an audience after it’s shot and edited — are still in use today. Canned laughter isn’t particularly Continue…

Respect

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 12:58 PM - 12 Comments

Michael Ignatieff, April 6. “I believe that Mr. Harper is lacking respect towards Mr. Mulroney … after all he was a prime minister of Canada. And I have respect for the institution and I have respect for the character of the person.”

Stephen Harper, April 8. “I think what Canadians will see is when it comes to a very difficult issue of government conduct and government ethics, this government has behaved responsibly and the other party leader has absolutely no moral compass when it comes to dealing with this kind of a matter.”

Conservative caucus meeting, today. “The message was he’s a past prime minister and deserves to be treated with respect.”

Canadian diplomat freed in Mali

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 12:52 PM - 2 Comments

Robert Fowler, the Canadian diplomat who was kidnapped more than four months ago during a visit to a gold mine in Niger, has been released along with his assistant, Louis Guay. According to a report published last month in an Algerian newspaper, the North African arm of al Qaeda had requested 20 of its members be freed from prisons in Mali and elsewhere in exchange for the release of Fowler, Guay, and four other western hostages. So far, four of the six hostages have been released—Fowler, Guay, as well as a German and a Swiss hostage. Their release comes nearly a month after officials in Mali announced they had captured the main suspect in Fowler’s disappearance.

Canada.com

Soft on crime

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 12:46 PM - 9 Comments

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, Question Period, yesterday. “Soft on crime does not work. This is why I always say that when it comes to standing up for victims and law-abiding Canadians, the only people who can be counted on are in the Conservative Party and in this Conservative government.”

Canadian Police Association president Charles Momy, news conference, yesterday. “The Police Officers Recruitment Fund is insufficient both in terms of a lack of long-term sustainable funding, the amount of money being contributed to the funding and the controls over the use of those funds. Our member associations feel betrayed that these moneys are being diverted from front-line policing and are not sustainable for the long term.”

British Columbia Police Association president Tom Stamatakis, news conference, yesterday. “Not one of those dollars has made it to the city of Vancouver to assist with recruiting and deploying more front-line officers in that community. And the same can be said for every community in the province of British Columbia.”

Mr. Ignatieff goes to Washington

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 12:45 PM - 2 Comments

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is off to Washington this week to meet with some of President Barack Obama’s top advisors—including dinners with friends Richard Holbrooke, Larry Summers, Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein, all now close associates of the American president. Ignatieff will also speak to a private conference on Afghanistan and meet with Barney Frank, chairman of the House Representatives Financial Services Committee. Unnamed Liberals are understandably excited. “This shows how highly regarded Michael Ignatieff is to leading figures in the Obama administration,” an “insider” gushes to CTV. Liberals are also hopeful that Ignatieff can meet with President Obama at a later date, just as then-opposition leader Brian Mulroney once travelled to D.C. to meet Ronald Reagan before being elected prime minister.

CTV

"I want to come home"

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 12:35 PM - 0 Comments

What happens when you inadvertently get a Canadian kidnap victim in Africa on the phone? That’s what reporters at the Edmonton Journal found out yesterday when, by fluke, they called the number of a cell phone still in the possession of Julie Mulligan, the Drayton Valley, Alta., woman abducted last Thursday while leading a Rotary Club team in Nigeria. The result is a dramatic, old-fashioned newspaper moment: “Are you OK?” asks the reporter. “I think I’m getting sick,” says Mulligan.

The Edmonton Journal

Money for nothing?

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 12:29 PM - 18 Comments

Oh look.

A former senior executive of Bear Head Industries says he had no idea former prime minister Brian Mulroney was working for the company promoting its proposal to build light-armoured vehicles in Canada in the early 1990s.

Greg Alford, then vice-president of Bear Head’s corporate affairs, was testifying today before a public hearing probing Mulroney’s business dealings with German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber and the $300,000 in cash Mulroney received for unsuccessfully lobbying for Bear Head.

“No,” said Alford when asked whether he knew whether the former Progressive Conservative PM was working in any capacity for Bear Head beginning the summer of 1993.

So. Mulroney says Schreiber hired him to lobby for Bear Head internationally. Schreiber says he hired him to lobby for Bear Head in Canada. But the vice-president of Bear Head testifies that he’s not aware of Mulroney having done any lobbying for the firm, period.

Which doesn’t prove Schreiber didn’t hire Mulroney to lobby for Bear Head; Schreiber says he kept it a closely guarded secret. But there’s precious little evidence that he did, other than the list of dead foreign leaders Mulroney told the ethics committee he’d buttonholed. For his part Schreiber, though he complains that Mulroney did no work on the file, can’t explain what work he expected him to do and admits he never followed up or asked for progress reports.

Let me advance a tentative hypothesis: the whole lobbying-for-Bear Head story was a sham. Whatever reason Schreiber had for slipping Mulroney $300,000 in cash after he left office, it wasn’t to lobby for Bear Head — though it suited both Mulroney and Schreiber to say it was.

A propos of nothing, this is also interesting…
Continue…