Baikonur!

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 9:52 PM - 6 Comments

Perhaps I haven’t been paying attention. But I was amazed to hear tonight on the news that Robert Thirsk, who’s scheduled to lift off tomorrow morning for six months on the International Space Station, will be flying a Soyuz from Baikonur into orbit.

There must not be many places on earth that more vividly demonstrate how the world has changed since the Cold War ended than Baikonur. For decades the name had a kind of dark magic about it: a closely-guarded Soviet state secret at first, then the dimly-imagined, rumour-shrouded site of the technological triumphs with which the Soviets rocked the West: Sputnik, Gagarin, Valentina Tereshkova the first female cosmonaut. Kennedy launched the moon program because the scientists at Baikonur were making it hot for him. And tomorrow a Canadian will take off from its launch pad. The world really has moved on.

Another great day for democracy (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 8:07 PM - 6 Comments

Chris Selley dissents. Sort of.

It is unfortunate that simply ignoring Canadian politics may increase what Radwanski calls a “disconnect” between Canadians and their government, but objectively speaking Canadian politics mostly deserves to be ignored. I’d rather watch old YouTube clips of Crossfire than Canadian party strategists debating each other, which is to say I’d rather be angry than bored to tears. Any format that involves even a 10-second clip from Question Period needs serious tweaking if not outright abandonment, unless it’s designed, like I said before, to mock or pillory the participants.

For sure, there is a debate to be had over the usefulness of what passes for coverage of politics in this country. But it’s unclear how less coverage would result in better politics. Indeed, in his next paragraph, Selley describes the type of show he’d like to watch and as much as he seems to be joking, he’s not far off what’s likely needed.

Movin' On Down

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 6:49 PM - 3 Comments

Rick Porter at Zap2it writes about the relative lack of minority characters (again) on the 2009-10 schedule. He does so by looking at the percentage of lead actors who are minorities but the problem with current TV is not just a matter of percentages (which aren’t really that disproportionate). As Mo Ryan and others have pointed out, the cancellation of The Game and, more sadly, Everybody Hates Chris leaves TV almost devoid of shows that focus on African-American characters. The problem is not that TV isn’t colour-blind, but that it’s too colour-blind these days. The networks had many shows about black characters, particularly comedies, in the ’80s and ’90s — The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, Fresh Prince, Family Matters, to name only some of the big hits. And though these shows started to disappear from the major networks in the late ’90s, the WB (Sister Sister, The Wayans Brothers) and especially UPN filled the gap. Now UPN is gone, all its shows are gone, and black shows are pretty much gone.

However, even though the lead character of The Cleveland Show is voiced by a white guy, the show, as befits Seth MacFarlane’s obsession with the TV of his youth, seems like a sort of tribute to the black sitcoms of the ’70s and ’80s.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2605337&w=560&h=340&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]

The disappearance of African-American shows may also account for some of the Cosby Show nostalgia I noted in an earlier post.

Michaëlle Jean is Canada's Sarah Palin. Really?

By Anne Kingston - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 5:49 PM - 74 Comments

Governor General Michaëlle Jean is smart enough to know that gutting a freshly-killed seal and then eating a piece of its raw heart on the first day of her visit to Nunavut was likely to generate headlines. After all, how often are two such contentious Canadian bickering points—the seal hunt and the GG—served up in such a delectable package? So it was a surprise that the weirdest salvo came not from Canadian media but from south of the border. And brutish it was: “Meet Michëalle Jean, the Sarah Palin of Canada” read the headline on Gawker.com, a New York City-based media website known for its snark.

Its familiarity with the big landmass to its north is another matter. Clearly there was no clue that likening the cosmopolitan GG with the Annie Oakley of the GOP is like comparing former governor general Adrienne Clarkson to Roseanne Barr. Or George Clooney to Tom Green. In fairness to Gawker, which did take the time to scan Jean’s Wikipedia entry before posting, similarities between the two women exist—aside from the fact the word “governor” is in both their titles. Both share a taste for sexy librarian glasses. Both are former journalists. And had Gawker spent another two minutes in research mode, it might have discovered both women were dragged into semi-scandals as a result of their husbands’ “separatist” proclivities (Todd Palin was once a member of the Alaskan Independence Party; Jean’s husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, has been accused of supporting Quebec separatism). And (even more shockingly!) both have committed geography faux pas—Palin boasted she could see Russia from her front porch, Jean told a group of schoolchildren last February that the Rockies could be viewed from Vancouver.

Continue…

It's not how big the deficit grows, it's how long it lasts

By John Geddes - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 5:41 PM - 32 Comments

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s admission that the federal deficit is metastacizing to $50 billion or more this year, way up from the $33.7 billion he projected in his Jan. 27 budget, isn’t really all that disturbing—if you believe such staggering deficits won’t last more than a couple of years.

After all, deficits are supposed to be good for what ails our economy right now. The global policy response to the recession was to embrace the Keynesian fix: inject government stimulus to shore up the economy until spending by companies and consumers picks up again.

But that’s a prescription for bad times. When the slump is over, the deficits are supposed to shrink again, hopefully disappear. And exactly how our federal government will get back in the black is not entirely clear.

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The Commons: It's all fun and games until someone else does it

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 5:26 PM - 53 Comments

The Scene. In a return to routine, the Conservative chorus sang dutifully from the hymn book this afternoon in the 15 minutes before Question Period. A trio of otherwise silent backbenchers were sent up to lend their democratically elected voices to the cause.

“The leader of the Liberal Party recently said, ‘We will have to raise taxes.’ How does the leader of the Liberal Party suppose that a tax increase will benefit hard-working Canadian families?” begged Red Deer’s Earl Dreeshen with his solo. “The leader of the Liberal Party should stand up in the House today, come clean with Canadians and tell them which taxes he will raise, by how much he will raise them and who will be forced to pay these higher taxes.”

It is a song that has been sung so often that only a few pay notice when another member of the government side gets up to sing. On this day, with little fury, the House proceeded directly to Question Period, Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Harper engaging in an altogether calm exchange of views on the sufficiency of the nation’s employment insurance formulas.

Alas, the peace would not hold. Continue…

'That's respect' (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 5:11 PM - 0 Comments

From Peter MacKay’s scrum today.

Question: Can you comment on the Glen Pearson (inaudible) today? Did you see this? He’s thanking you for help with (inaudible).

Hon. Peter MacKay: He’s a class act. I thought it was a very generous thing to do. It was simply a matter of helping his constituents with a very important (inaudible) matter.

Pretty soon, you're talking real money

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 4:47 PM - 8 Comments

Fifty billion—that’s how big Ottawa figures the federal government’s deficit might be before the year is through. After announcing on Monday that the government would likely run a deficit far larger than what he had predicted in his budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty gave reporters the more precise number on Tuesday. And though Flaherty said the extra spending was both “necessary” and “manageable,” it appears the figure will easily surpass the $39 billion deficit in 1992-93—to become the largest in Canadian history.

Financial Post

Addiction: New research suggests it's a choice

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 4:40 PM - 119 Comments

The idea that addiction is a disease is an article of faith in the study of drug and alcohol dependence, providing the foundation for much of the treatment and public policy related to addiction since the early 1900s. In a forthcoming book, psychologist Gene Heyman dismantles this time-honoured assumption, arguing that addiction is first and foremost governed by personal choice, and does not therefore fit clinical conceptions of behavioural illness. Heyman has done research on choice, cognition and drug use. He has done volunteer work at a methadone clinic and he currently teaches courses on addiction at Harvard University. In conversation with Maclean’s correspondent Charlie Gillis, he offers a model of decision-making that he says explains how addicts—from smokers to opiate users—can voluntarily engage in activities that lead to long-term misery.

Q: The title of your new book, Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, is more or less self-explanatory. What led you to think that addiction may not be, as most research literature describes it, a “chronic, relapsing disease?”

A: Like everybody else, my initial goal was to find out how drug use turned from a voluntary behaviour to an involuntary one—that’s what I put down on my grant applications. But when I was teaching, I wanted to give my students at least some feeling for what addiction is like. So I began reading biographies, histories and ethnographies of addiction. This data gave a very different picture than the one I expected. The literature on how addicted people behave showed they stopped using the drugs, and that they did so because of family issues, or there was a choice between their children and continued drug use, or they were moving on to an environment where it was disapproved of.

In other words, the kinds of things that influence all of our everyday decisions were influencing people who are heavy, heavy drug users to stop using. And it was so consistent. Each report supported the other.

Then I began looking at the epidemiological data—these large surveys that have formed the basis for a lot of important psychiatric research in the last 20 years—and they showed the same thing. A huge percentage of people who had at some point met the criteria for lifetime substance dependence no longer did so by the time they were in their 30s. It varied from 60 to 80 per cent.

Q: So why does that preclude it from being a disease?

A: At the heart of the notion of behavioural disease is the idea of compulsivity, by which people mean it’s beyond the influence of reward, punishment, expectations, cultural values, personal values. Alan Leshner [the former head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse] says drug use starts off as voluntary and becomes involuntary. But the epidemiological evidence suggests otherwise. When you read the biographical information, you see individual drug addicts [who’ve quit] saying, “Well, it was a question of getting high on cocaine or putting food on the table for my kids.” Or, “My life was getting out of control.” Or, in the case of William S. Burroughs, “The cheques from my parents stopped coming.”

Continue…

Obama goes against conventional wisdom

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 4:37 PM - 1 Comment

President Obama’s choice of Sonia Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Court is most notable, of course, because (if confirmed) she will be the first Hispanic justice on the court. But it’s notable for another reason: it may be a sign of Obama’s lack of patience with the world of news punditry, which is pretty bad, but usually taken pretty seriously by political insiders. His press secretary, Robert Gibbs, has said that where the public is “may not necessarily be where cable television is,” and Obama may be trying to prove it with this nomination. Continue…

Jason Kenney is appalled by your politicization

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 4:21 PM - 35 Comments

From QP this afternoon.

Mr. Peter Julian (Burnaby—New Westminster, NDP): Mr. Speaker, Dmitri Lennikov graduates from high school this Friday. His gift from the Minister of Immigration could be the deportation of his father and the forced separation of his family. Dmitri has spent all of his school life in Canada. The Lennikov family has been contributing to my community for 11 years. They have never been accused of any crime. Today the Lennikov family has come to Ottawa from B.C. They are no longer just a memo or a briefing note, but a real family. Will the minister meet with the Lennikov? Will he keep this family together?

Hon. Jason Kenney (Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I think it is very unfortunate that a member would try to politicize a case that has been before the Immigration and Refugee Board, before our courts, before our public servants with both an application for humanitarian compassion and a pre-removal risk assessment. We do not politicize cases of inadmissibility that come before the Immigration and Refugee Board, an independent, quasi-judicial body. There is a legal system in place for these matters to be considered. This particular case has been considered by our courts and by the IRB.

They kinda, sorta worked (but not really)

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 4:20 PM - 3 Comments

From an Angus-Reid survey on the impact of the Conservatives’ ad campaign on Quebec voters (emphasis mine):

Overall, the ads appear to have no effect on voting intention, although they do have a slight negative impact on attitudes towards Michael Ignatieff. Respondents who had seen the ad were 12 per cent less likely to describe Michael Ignatieff as strong and seven per cent less likely to describe him as open.

Respondents who had seen the Conservative ad were also less likely to say their opinion of Michael Ignatieff had improved (30%, compared to 39% for those who did not see the ad).

Regardless of whether respondents had seen the ad or not, the overall proportion of respondents who say their opinion of Michael Ignatieff has improved in the past four months (35%) is three times higher than any other federal leader (Layton 11%, Duceppe 10%, Harper 4%). The findings suggest that Ignatieff’s positive momentum in Quebec will likely withstand the current ad campaign by the Tories.

Love Those Kuzuis

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 4:14 PM - 0 Comments

You’ve probably heard already (from our Need to Know section) that Fran and Kaz Kuzui may be planning a movie re-boot of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise. Fran Kuzui, a former script supervisor whose only previous movie as a director was the interestingly quirky Tokyo Pop, directed the original movie and got her husband, a successful Japanese producer, to put up the money for the film; they continue to own the rights to the character and the franchise, and their names have been on every incarnation and spinoff of Buffy since then. They are not well-liked by Whedonites; some Wikipedia vandal wrote this on Kaz’s entry:

Kuzui intends to relaunch the Buffy franchise without Joss Whedon, the man who created the original concept. This fact confirms the rumours that have been circulating for years that he has no soul.

I like them, for the following reasons:

a) The original Buffy movie is criminally underrated and considerably more true to “Joss’s original vision” than almost any episode from the final three seasons of the series (including several episodes “Joss” wrote himself).

b) Tokyo Pop is one of the ’80s-est movies of the ’80s.

c) Kaz also produced Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Orgazmo, and is therefore partially (albeit indirectly) responsible for getting Comedy Central to pick up South Park.

Actually, though it might never happen, I’d be fine with a Buffy reboot movie, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say I would be fine with it with or without Joss Whedon. The original TV cast is probably not going to re-assemble, and the characters were pretty well exhausted after seven years anyway, so why not start over with a new Buffy and a new set of supporting characters? That approach worked out OK in 1997.

Pat Quinn to Oilers

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 4:08 PM - 0 Comments

Alberta’s latest NHL shuffle arrives with the announcement that former Toronto Maple Leafs coach Pat Quinn will join the Edmonton Oilers, which have enjoyed a three-season no-playoff streak. He replaces Craig MacTavish, who left the franchise in April. Quinn most recently led Canada’s world junior team to a gold medal but hasn’t held an NHL job since 2006, when he left the Leafs. Alberta’s beleaguered NHL teams are experiencing their share of shakeups of late. Last week, the Calgary Flames sent coach Mike Keenan packing after the team lost in the first round of the playoffs for the second year in a row.

Calgary Herald

The ballad of John Lennon and a Calgary security guard

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 4:05 PM - 0 Comments

The story of how a Calgary security guard, with a taste for Benny Goodman, came to participate in the recording of Give Peace a Chance, and possess two Beatles’ albums signed by John Lennon—one of which perished with a friend in the World Trade Center’s north tower.

Calgary Sun

A new coalition, a different politics

By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 3:55 PM - 33 Comments

It would be a stretch to claim that Gordon Campbell received much of a “mandate” in last week’s British Columbia election. With 46 per cent of the vote, in an election that saw turnout fall, for the first time, to less than 50 per cent, Campbell is the choice of barely one in five electors.

Still, it is triumph enough that he was not defeated. Not only were Campbell’s Liberals seeking a third term, an honour voters have historically proved unwilling to bestow, but as the incumbents in a recession-year election, they were fighting daunting odds. His win ought to make opposition parties in other parts of the country sit up straight: if they were under any illusion that they had only to show up, and the economy would carry them to power, they can think again.

Continue…

Another great day for democracy (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 3:43 PM - 6 Comments

Adam Radwanski considers the possible loss of Politics.

If the network has determined there’s not enough interest in it … then it says something about just how disconnected the country has grown from what happens in Ottawa. Either way, the national broadcaster’s apparent decision to no longer properly cover federal politics on its news channel will only make that disconnect grow wider still.

The dangers of being a university researcher

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 3:32 PM - 1 Comment

Following the accidental death of a UCLA lab technician, who was engulfed in flames in a chemical spill, a U.S. government investigation has revealed multiple safety violations, and slapped the university with $31,875 in fines. But the technician, who was not wearing proper protective gear and had not received adequate training, is hardly alone. In fact, as Slate writer Beryl Lieff Benderly explains, because universities don’t prioritize workplace safety, “accidents and injuries occur hundreds of times more frequently in academic labs than in industrial ones.”

Slate

Copyright war heats up

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 3:30 PM - 3 Comments

The Conference Board of Canada and other copyright lobby groups are under fire for allegedly plagiarizing from their U.S. counterparts in a report released Friday. Following the report, which calls Canada “the file-swapping capital of the world,” intellectual property expert and Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa, Michael Geist, came out swinging. Accusing the Conference Board of Canada and its allies of “policy laundering,” Geist took aim at the group for lifting language directly from the press releases of other organizations without proper citation. The Conference Board has since added the citation, but is standing by the content of the report.

Ottawa Citizen

Moscow planning another Georgia invasion?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 3:28 PM - 0 Comments

Less than a year after fighting a devastating five-day war against Georgia, Russia is again massing troops near the border, and some Western diplomats fear another invasion may be imminent. Total war may not be necessary for Russia to accomplish its goals, however. Moscow wants Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili deposed, a more pliant leader installed, and the West shut out of its Caucasus backyard. Simply the threat of war, along with some covert destabilization work, may push Georgians into compliance without the additional persuasive power of Russian tanks.

Radio Free Europe

The Storm Cloud Democrats

By John Parisella - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 3:28 PM - 4 Comments

Satirist Will Rogers once said he was “not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” Barack Obama must have understood exactly what Rogers meant after Senate Democrats voted 90 to 6 against his funding request for closing Gitmo.

In recent weeks, there have been grumblings from so-called Blue Dog—i.e., conservative—Democrats about government spending and deficits under the Obama plan. Some have also complained about Obama’s agricultural policies, environmental initiatives, and potential health care proposals. Is Obama about to encounter what Bill Clinton suffered when he, too, took office with control of both Houses of Congress? Recall that Clinton lost control of Congress at the following mid term elections. As a result, much of the Clinton Administration was saddled with compromise legislation for the rest of his presidency, one that failed to achieve its original promise. Is the same fate awaiting Obama?

Continue…

Buffy the Wrong Vampire Slayer

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 3:25 PM - 1 Comment

With reboots of Star Trek and Batman doing so well, why not do the same for a franchise about a vampire-hunting Valley girl? Vertigo entertainment is teaming up with the producer and director of the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer to create a new movie that will reboot the premise of a teenage girl with the power to fight monsters. The planned film won’t have any of the supporting characters from the popular TV series adaptation, and the producers have not asked Joss Whedon, creator of the original film and TV series, to be involved with the new project. A Buffy movie without the characters or creator? This could well be the greatest movie since that direct-to-video Donnie Darko sequel.

Hollywood Reporter

Definitely not bird brains

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 3:24 PM - 0 Comments

New research has revealed that rooks’ ability to use tools rivals that of chimpanzees. Using captive birds, British scientists created a series of increasingly complex problems and observed the rooks creating and using implements to solve the puzzles. As the appropriately-named lead author Christopher Bird said: “We have found that they can select the appropriate tools out of a choice of tools and they show flexibility in the types of tools they use.” They also witnessed the birds demonstrating so-called “meta-tool use”—operating two tools in succession. Amazingly, several of the birds even created a new device by bending a piece of straight wire into a hook in order to retrieve a bucket laden with food from the bottom of the vertical well. That was a skill only previously mastered by a New Caledonian crow called Betty.

BBC News

Literati embraces iPhone art

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 3:23 PM - 0 Comments

It may be a stunt, (or perhaps some viral marketing ploy,) but the cover of this week’s New Yorker was painted on an iPhone. Artist Jorge Colombo reportedly took an hour to capture a Times Square scene, using Brushes a $4.99 application for the phone. This website has a video (from another app) of the progress of the illustration.

Gizmodo