Generic TV Speech Patterns

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 10:18 PM - 7 Comments

I read the pilot script of Accidentally On Purpose, the Satan Jenna Elfman vehicle that the network is going to try and make us watch after How I Met Your Mother. It does not look promising. (Though I will note that it seems less like a Knocked Up knockoff and more like a series-length version of that Frasier episode where Roz got knocked up by a guy much younger than she was.)  Apart from the generic characters and unsustainable premise, the thing that depressed me was that it’s seemingly yet another show where everybody talks the same.

Update: The original version of this post quoted a few lines from the script as an example of how all the characters talk alike, but on relfection that’s not good form (if only because bad lines might not turn up in the final version). But most of the lines in the official promo below are in the script, and they’re pretty generic. Anyway, the point is that none of the lines are that funny, but — and this may actually mean more to me than the funniness or unfunniness of a particular line — they don’t convey any sense that different people talk in different ways. (The 23 year-old character is occasionally distinguished by the fact that he says the word “buds,” but otherwise the script keeps trying to prove he’s “charming,” meaning that he can wisecrack in a generically witty manner that sitcom writers always mistake for charm. Think Ted’s exchanges with Stella on How I Met Your Mother, but worse.)

And not to pick on this show, a lot of television has this problem. The characters are often carefully, methodically distinguished by what they do, what they like, what they want in life, but they all talk more or less the same way, in the same rhythm. This is sheer hell in sitcoms, where everybody’s already in danger of falling into an identical rhythm (the danger of comedy), but it’s a problem in any kind of show. Again, not to pick on this one script; there are already plenty of comedies on the air where no character has his or her own way of talking. Gary Unmarried?

I think some of this comes, oddly enough, from a tendency toward over-naturalism. Writers understandably want to make dialogue sound at least a little bit like the way people really talk. But to give a character a distinctive speech pattern in relatively few lines (which is all most characters have in an episodic TV script) requires their dialogue to be a little stylized and heightened and even stereotypical. I mean, think of a Marx Brothers movie: Groucho talks in insults, Chico talks with a ridiculous fake accent, and all their antagonists talk in an absurdly heightened parody of “proper” speech (“As chairwoman of the reception committee, I welcome you with open arms!”).  This is one reason why I have affection for The Nanny and other broad, crude comedies of the ’90s.  When a show does broad, stereotypical, ethnic humour, at least they have different people talking in different ways, and they abandon any attempt at naturalism for simple and effective speech cliches. 

And over on 30 Rock, it is understood that several important characters talk like no human has ever talked.  Once you have characters who talk differently, you have characters who each offer a different type of humour. That’s true character comedy. But if  most of the characters have similar speech patterns, it makes it less likely that any of them will develop into distinctive characters. Not impossible; Friends sort of pulled it off, but Friends, as we have learned, should never be imitated by any network or production company. That way lies the current state of NBC.

Foreign Affairs: pursuing all channels to protect Canadians, as long as it doesn't involve leaving the embassy compound

By Michael Petrou - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 10:17 PM - 2 Comments

Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout has been held captive in Somalia since August. In January, her Somali colleague Abdifatah Mohammad Elmi, was released. The CBC’s David McGuffin tracked him down in Kenya, where he revealed that no one from the Canadian government has been in touch since his release.

Foreign Affairs, as per usual, said it is pursuing the case through all appropriate channels  but offered no details. Apparently it feels that talking to the man who spent some six months with Lindhout and her kidnappers wouldn’t be useful or appropriate.

I wish this suprised me. Unfortunately, this chasm  between Canada’s rhetoric and action when it comes to protecting its citizens abroad is not new. As I wrote last year, despite making several chest-thumping statements about how it wants to bring the Iranian government officials who tortured and murdered Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi to justice, Canada refused the help of an Iranian dissident who had first-hand knowledge of her abuse,  and hasn’t bothered to talk to Shahram Azam, the doctor who examined her and now lives here.

One of the virtuous few

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 8:50 PM - 15 Comments

Roy McGregor traces Stephen Harper’s lineage to its Canadian root.

When the various county offices were re-organized, Harper was made Commissioner of Roads and then Justice of the Peace. The inhabitants of the area were furious. They complained that he was “exceedingly obnoxious” in his dealings with them.

Catchphrases Rarely Last Long, Or, Did They Do That?

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 7:55 PM - 0 Comments

The end of the regular season means the beginning of “summer filler specials” season, and NBC kicks it off tomorrow with a special devoted to “TV’s 50 greatest catchphrases.” (Suit up, sit on it, dy-no-mite, whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, would you believe, I’m Larry, is that your final answer, yada yada yada — that last one is not an actual catchphrase).

“TV’S 50 FUNNIEST PHRASES”

05/26/2009 (08:00PM – 10:00PM) (Tuesday) : NBC AND THE PALEY CENTER COUNT DOWN TV’S 50 FUNNIEST CATCH PHRASES — Get ready to laugh your way down memory lane with an array of amazing stars both past and present. Jeremy Piven, Dana Carvey, Neil Patrick Harris, Jean Stapleton, Ron Howard, Andy Griffith, Jackie Gleason, Regis Philbin, Bob Newhart, Penny Marshall, Polly Holliday and Redd Foxx are among some of the legendary stars being featured when NBC and The Paley Center for Media counts down 50 of the all-time funniest catch phrases said on television in a two-hour special. With great scenes from the shows and interviews with the stars who brought the lines to life, this program will celebrate the history and humor of catch phrases.

I talked in an earlier post about how many shows have replaced series-long catchphrases with single-episode catchphrases, which are easier to come up with and easier to treat in a semi-ironic way. Also, even when shows have actual multi-episode catchphrases, they tend to abandon them or at least use them in a self-referential or even self-mocking way. You’ll notice that on How I Met Your Mother, Barney hardly ever says “suit up!” after the first season, and when he does, it’s usually part of a joke about the fact that he uses annoying catchphrases. “Sit On It” was only heard for about two years; even “Would you believe” mostly stopped being a full-on comedy routine and just became a quick throwaway joke. Shows that hang onto a catchphrase and use it, unchanged, in every episode are often left looking kind of desperate.

In TV (or radio, or short film series) a catchphrase is perhaps the ultimate example of how a lot of comedy comes from familiarity rather than wit. People laugh when they hear a catchphrase not because they’re surprised by it, but because they’re not: they’ve heard it before and they’re laughing because they’re happy to hear it again. (“What’s up, doc?” was very funny the first time Bugs Bunny ever said it, because audiences thought it was hilarious that a rabbit would use a colloquial Texas phrase to the hunter who’s trying to kill him. After that, except for occasional variations, it’s not really funny, it’s just something we expect to hear him say.) But that means that after a certain point, the catchphrase is almost unnecessary. We associate a character with a phrase, we know what the phrase says about his character, and it’s done it’s job of making us feel safe and comfortable while watching the show. If the show then goes a long time without actually using the catchphrase, the audience may not even notice, because we already associate the show in our minds with that phrase.

Then there’s the unintentional catchphrase, something that’s not really intended as a catchphrase but nonetheless becomes one because the writers keep repeating it. Star Trek was like that. I don’t think “I’m a doctor, not a…” was ever really meant as a catchphrase; they certainly didn’t try to act like it was; but because there were several episodes where McCoy said it, or something similar, it is one of the most famous catchphrases in television history.

The Commons: Shovel-ready answers

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 6:41 PM - 39 Comments

The Scene. At each MP’s desk, a red box had been placed with a gift package of sporting equipment intended to celebrated the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. While he waited for Question Period to begin, Peter MacKay removed the swimming goggles, put them on his head, then put one of the socks on his nose. 

Class resuming after a week off, the mood was relatively light. The 15 minutes before Question Period included just one shouted denunciation of the Liberal leader. The Speaker advised that he would be looking into a report of unparliamentary language made before the break. Then Michael Ignatieff stood in an attempt to be serious.

“Mr. Speaker, the country is facing record unemployment, record bankruptcies, record hardship for small businesses, especially auto dealers,” he began, congratulating the government on its acheivements. “And still the stimulus is not flowing. It is nearly June. Cities and municipalities are still waiting for the infrastructure funding that was promised in the budget. The government has already missed the June construction season. Why has only six per cent of the stimulus gotten out of the door?”

The Human Resources Minister was in Oshawa, reannouncing something from January’s budget. The Finance Minister was in Quebec, warning that the wild guesses on which that budget was based now seem “substantially” off the mark. The Prime Minister was unaccounted for. So the day would belong to John Baird.

“Mr. Speaker, we are working co-operatively with provinces and municipalities,” the Transport Minister said. “We are getting the job done. That non-partisan work is really paying dividends.”

Having not said a single thing of any consequence, he proceeded to read into the record something Mr. Ignatieff had said that seemed to be only vaguely related. Continue…

A show of respect

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 5:55 PM - 3 Comments

From QP this afternoon. Lawrence Cannon tries to respond to a question about Sri Lanka from Bob Rae.

Cannon: Mr. Speaker, the honourable minister knows very well from the beginning of this—

(Liberals applaud. Bob Rae stands and bows.)

Cannon: The honourable former prime minister knows full well, that’s even better.

(Liberals applaud. Bob Rae stands and bows)

The Speaker: Order, order. The Minister of Foreign Affairs has the floor. We will have to have some order so his response can be heard.

Cannon: The former premier of Ontario, how is that?

(Conservatives cheer.)

Vultures in the desert

By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 5:55 PM - 19 Comments

In her form-fitting power suit, in a beige-toned Calgary hotel conference hall, Nancy Bacon greets a crowd of would-be real estate investors with a question: “How many people in this room like to be told what to do?” Bacon, VP of financial planning development with CBI Group, is flattering the Calgarians in their after-work jeans, who like to think they don’t need Sarah Palin to tell them what a maverick is. And CBI is pitching a scheme only mavericks could love: invest a minimum $10,000 in a foreclosure acquisition fund created to make massive real estate purchases in one of the worst-hit subprime cities in the United States—Phoenix, Ariz.

As of February, prices there had fallen 35.2 per cent in a year, and by slightly more than half from their peak in June 2006, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index. That annual decline is the worst in the country. One in 40 Phoenix homes received foreclosure notices in the first quarter, according to RealtyTrac, which monitors U.S. foreclosure data, the country’s ninth-highest rate—visible on the desert cityscape as discrete patches of unwatered browns amidst a checkerboard of green lawns.

ALSO AT MACLEANS.CA: For those house hunting in Canada, here’s what you can get these days for $150,000, $350,000, $500,000 and $1 million.

Continue…

All Television Is Local?

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 5:16 PM - 3 Comments

My main thought on the “Save Local TV” campaign is this: it’s making me nostalgic for the time when the endlessly-repeated commercial on CTV-owned stations was the Discovery Channel’s “boom-di-yadda” song. (Speaking of endlessly-repeated commercials: for God’s sake, somebody make the Comedy Network stop repeating their “Upload Yours!” promo several times every day. I’ve nearly memorized the thing. “Got a treasure box of comic gold…”) Apart from that, here’s a round-up of links from bloggers and columnists commenting on the campaign and the state of local television in Canada:

- Denis McGrath: “Localize Pain, Nobody’s Gain”

- Will Dixon: “What Are We Saving, Exactly?”

- Jim Henshaw: “Weaving the Tangled Web”

- John Doyle: “Stop the Silliness”

- Bill Brioux: “What am I saving again — the right for rich guys to simulcast Lost?”

Finally, let’s not forget what local news programming is all about.

Jim Flaherty calls off the attack ads

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 4:48 PM - 8 Comments

Well, not really, but still…

“We’re all Canadians. We’re all in this together.”

Diane Finley calls off the attack ads

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 4:45 PM - 5 Comments

Well, not really, but still…

“It’s important we focus not on partisan politics right now.”

Nuclear test linked to succession

By macleans.ca - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 3:53 PM - 0 Comments

An underground explosion, on par with the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, rocked North Korea as the rogue nation tested a nuclear weapon today. However, what would have past been considered posturing for US attention and concessions, may now be linked to the question of who will replace North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in August, leading to questions about his successor and a marked increase in North Korean aggressiveness. Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong-un, will likely replace his father and carry the Kim leadership legacy into its third generation. Any transition will require the support of the north Korean military—and the nuclear test may have been an attempt to gain it. The blast was many times more powerful than previous tests, a possible indication that North Korea is also attempting to set up a strong nuclear deterrent. However, the test could simply have been aimed at showing North Koreans the power of the Kim dynasty. In any case, the detonation’s been condemned by other nations, including China, North Korea’s closest ally.

The New York Times

Hitler's non-German collaborators

By Michael Petrou - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 3:31 PM - 6 Comments

Spiegel’s detailed and, to my mind, well crafted article about the role non-Germans played in the Holocaust is upsetting people in Poland and drawing heated response across Europe and around the world.

Ottawa tops up EI program

By macleans.ca - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 3:03 PM - 5 Comments

The Conservatives announced an expansion of employment insurance benefits on Monday amid calls from the opposition to overhaul the program’s eligibility requirements. The federal government now plans to pour an extra $500 million into the program to re-train long-tenured workers who’ve lost their job. All three opposition parties have been loudly clamouring for a slackening of eligibility requirements (to 360 hours worked), with the Liberals hinting they might move to defeat the government on the issue. However, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley re-iterated the Conservatives’ opposition to the proposal on Monday, saying, “This government does not support this ’45-day work year’ idea and neither do Canadians.”

Reuters

Scientology could be banned in France

By macleans.ca - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 3:02 PM - 4 Comments

The Church of Scientology is on trial in Paris for organized fraud after a woman accused the church of pressuring her into paying £18,400 (nearly $33,000 Canadian) on lessons, books and medicines she allegedly was told would cure her poor mental state after being offered a free personality test. While the church denies any mental manipulation, if the organization loses the case it could be banned in France since the country regards it as a sect and not a religion. Germany declared the Church unconstitutional last year, while a Spanish court ruled the Church should be re-entered into the country’s register of officially recognized religions.

BBC News

Alberta's Brokeback rodeo

By macleans.ca - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 3:01 PM - 0 Comments

After outgrowing its perch northwest of Calgary, the 15-year-old Canadian Rockies International Rodeo, sponsored by the Alberta Rockies Gay Rodeo Association, moves to otherwise macho Strathmore next month. The event, according to the Calgary Herald‘s Robert Remington, has grown into “one of the best-kept secrets around,” featuring first-rate country music performers and surprisingly skillful rodeoing. “To those in the know, the gay rodeo is also much more than its frivolous ‘camp events’ like goat dressing, which are the gay rodeo equivalent of an entertainment event like wild cow milking at a traditional rodeo,” writes Remington. “The all-amateur gay rodeo has the conventional bull riding, steer riding, barrel racing and roping events, with the major difference that men and women compete equally.” Conservative Strathmore—Remington points out that 10 churches there serve a population of just over 11,000—doesn’t seem overly bothered by the prospect of a gay rodeo. “I have had absolutely no negative feedback,” Mayor George Lattery tells Remington, who paraphrases the Alberta Rockies Gay Rodeo Association assertion that the 4,000 gay and lesbian visitors it will attract will spend double the amount of straight tourists.  

Calgary Herald

Jim Balsillie donates $50 million to non-hockey-based excellence

By Paul Wells - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 2:11 PM - 13 Comments

In Waterloo, where all the billionaires are philanthropists, Jim Balsillie today donated $50 million to match donations from the federal and Ontario governments to create the Balsillie Centre of Excellence. This will work with his Centre on International Governance Innovation and Canadian International Council to ensure the Kitchener-Waterloo region remains a world leader in creating vaguely exciting names for think tanks. The news release announcing the Centre contains few details, although we can report the new thing will engage in “networking, capacity-building and knowledge sharing” and that it will look like this:

Somalia Is A "Libertarian Paradise"

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 2:04 PM - 12 Comments

Via alicublog, this video explains that if you’re looking for a vacation getaway that hasn’t been spoiled by socialistic concepts like “public” beaches and “health” inspectors, there’s only one place to be this summer.

The old normal

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 1:46 PM - 4 Comments

On the one hand, Quebecers seem to be warming to Liberals/federalists:

The latest Léger Marketing-Le Devoir survey, taken between May 13 and May 17, attributes 37 per cent support to the Liberal party of Canada 37, against 33 per cent for the Bloc.

And on the other, they seem to be turning away from them:

The strength of the Parti Québécois among Francophones would have carried Pauline Marois to power had elections taken place in the middle of May in Quebec.

Throw in massive government deficits, high unemployment and crappy U2 albums and, pretty soon, it’s all easily explained: The nineties are back with a vengeance.

[Photo by Daniel Jalbert]

Why do we travel?

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 1:29 PM - 3 Comments

Over the last century, travel has evolved from an elite pastime to a multi-billion dollar industry in Canada and one of our largest economic drivers. This spending also generates billions of dollars in government revenues, so naturally the feds are keen to understand what drives it. What motivates us to ‘get-away-from-it-all,’ sometimes in spite of poor finances or other deterrents? When and how do we choose where we go and for how long? And what benefits do we expect to gain?

According to a recently released StatsCan study titled Going On Vacation: Benefits Sought From Pleasure Travel: “People travel for pleasure because they want to escape the everyday, to feel rejuvenated, to acquire status and prestige, to socialize, to learn something, or just to enjoy the scenery.” The research also suggests that the benefits Canadians gain from travel can be a more powerful motivation than affordability – which is good news for a beleaguered travel industry.

Continue…

Time to play the mix-and-write Phil Crawley memo game!

By Paul Wells - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 1:25 PM - 22 Comments

You know, the mark of really excellent communication is that the mere order of words has no real significance. A great memo achieves a sort of meta-significance that ensures lasting value regardless of whether it actually is… you know… comprehensible.

Take today’s memo from Globe publisher Phil Crawley about the, er, the defenestration. I’ve discovered that it makes no real difference to the comprehensibility of the thing whether the words come out in anything resembling the order Crawley wrote them. So it’s all equally fine reading whether you read it the way Crawley wrote it…

Reimagination-inspired teamwork during the last four years has reinforced the value of a more collaborative way of managing our
business.  By drawing on the collective strengths of the team, we are all better able as individuals to contribute to the success of The
Globe and Mail.  With that objective in mind, I have reviewed the composition of the Executive Team, and identified priority areas for improvement.

New skills and different styles of leadership are needed to take The Globe and Mail to levels of achievement which meet the ambitions of our shareholders, to cement our standing as the best in Canada at creating high-quality content for consumption on whatever platform is most desirable for our readers, users and advertisers.

We are building on a position of strength not enjoyed by many of our competitors. The executive changes outlined below are intended to ensure that The Globe and Mail is in the prime spot to take advantage of the market opportunities that will arise when the recession eases.

…or whether you shake it up a tad:

We are building on a position of strength not enjoyed by many of our competitors. With that objective in mind, I have reviewed the composition of the Executive Team, and identified priority areas for improvement. New skills and different styles of leadership are needed to take The Globe and Mail to levels of consumption which meet the ambitions of our content for cement, to achievement our standing as the best in Canada at creating high-quality shareholders on whatever platform is most desirable for our users and advertisers.

The executive changes outlined below are intended to to take advantage of the readers. Ensure that The Globe and Mail is in the prime spot that will arise when the  market-opportunities recession eases.

Reimagination-inspired teamwork during the last four years has reinforced the value of a more collaborative way of managing our business. By drawing on the collective strengths of the team, we are all better able as individuals to contribute to the success of The Globe and Mail.

…or even if you shake it up a lot:

We are building on a position of new skills and different styles of leadership. With that objective in mind, I have strength not enjoyed by many of our competitors. Priority areas for improvement are needed to take The Globe and Mail to levels of achievement which reviewed the composition of the Executive Team. Meet our cement shareholders! Standing as the best in Canada and creating high-quality consumption, identified  to  our ambitions of the  content at our desirable readers, for most users, on advertisers’ platform. Whatever.

And is a teamwork during the last four years inspired? Has the value of prime intended to ensure the success? The Globe and Mail is in the spot: arise! Contribute to the collective-reinforced collaborative of strengths that will better take advantage, below the market, of recession business managing. Of reimagination! More of our Globe and Mail way. We are the drawing team. On the executive. Able by all, as individuals, to the changes that are outlined when the opportunities eases.

'The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work' by Alain de Botton

By Brian Bethune - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 1:14 PM - 1 Comment

These are, as noted by many, salad days for pessimists, and especially so for one of the most graceful writers among them, who just happens to have a new book out called The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. British philosopher Alain de Botton’s tome arrives at a time when far fewer people than only a year ago are experiencing anything at all from work. It’s as good a time as any for de Botton’s bracing message: we invest too much emotionally in something that can be taken abruptly, impersonally, clinically snatched away from us in moments. And to what result? “To be out of work means, quite literally, to be a nobody: one is what one does,” he notes. But for all the emotional distance he recommends keeping from work (best to think of it, he says in his cheerfully pessimistic way, as something that puts food on the table while filling the time until “the inevitable cataclysm, personal or planetary”), his remarkable book doesn’t stint on work’s pleasures simply to build up its sorrows.

He’s particularly good at recapturing a child’s evaluation of jobs, the way the very young always regard interesting occupations more highly than the merely lucrative, “judging with favour the post of crane operator” over, say, banker. De Botton doesn’t share what he calls “the terrific prejudice still against the machine age—we’re rarely prepared to admit that machinery, factories and the like can have their own beauty. Our ideas of beauty remain very pre-industrial. In a modest way, I was tugging my reader to recognize the overlooked beauty of some of the furniture of modern society.” So he was quite happy to join a pylon devotee on an eye-opening, 572-pylon-long walk from a nuclear power plant in Kent to a substation in east London, following the path of one of Britain’s most important power lines. De Botton was even enthusiastic to get a move on when he met up with his companion, once he noticed the worrying state of the Dungenes plant—its outside pipes rusting in the sea air, the large cloth tied in a knot that appeared to be all that was holding a cooling tower upright. “It seemed a particular folly that the English had been allowed to involve themselves with fission technology. For what people could be less appropriate to toil in this precise and rule-bound industry, given their instinctive distrust of authority, their love of irony and their aversion to bureaucratic procedure? It was evident that the field should more wisely have been left entirely in the hands of the Teutonic races.”

De Botton, as that passage shows, never loses his own sense of irony or, equally British of him, his fair play. Both are at the forefront as he visits cookie makers (“Biscuits are nowadays a branch of psychology, not cooking,” an executive  sternly advises him), insurances offices, entrepreneurial inventors’ fairs and those engaged in the peculiar career of career counseling for others. De Botton examines office anomie and office flirting with equal sympathy and insight.

As for what he really makes of what he encountered, the answer may lie in his blackly comic account of one tuna’s fate. De Botton is with the poor fish from the moment it’s landed, in his presence, on the deck of an Indian Ocean trawler, through its processing in a local fish plant, its journey by air and truck to a Bristol supermarket—where de Botton pops up as soon as shopper Linda Drummond lays her hand on it, so he can explain Marx’s theory of worker alienation and ask if he can accompany her home to watch the fish’s final destination—the plate of Drummond’s eight-year-old son Sam, who “hates tuna, but not as much as he hates salmon.” A bleak portrait of human toil’s end result, perhaps, or maybe de Botton’s just passing the time.

Finance ministers meet at Meech Lake

By macleans.ca - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 1:04 PM - 2 Comments

Canada’s provincial finance ministers are meeting with their federal counterpart, Jim Flaherty, at a Meech Lake retreat today to discuss the economy. Ontario, B.C. and Alberta have said they will use the meeting to push for a national summit on pensions, while Ontario’s Dwight Duncan will also request that Ottawa change the eligibility rules for employment insurance. Before the meeting, at which Flaherty is expected to deliver an update on the economic crisis, the federal finance minister said, “There are some good signals in the economy, but I think we have to be cautious.”

CBC News

Top Tiger officially dead

By macleans.ca - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 1:03 PM - 0 Comments

The Tamil Tigers are finally admitting that their leader is no more. For the past week, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have denied that Vellupillai Prabhakaran was killed in the final battle of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war. Even when government forces displayed Prabhakaran’s corpse for the cameras, the Tigers insisted that their founder was alive and in hiding. But in a statement released today, the LTTE conceded the truth. “We announce today, with inexpressible sadness and heavy hearts, that our incomparable leader and supreme commander…attained martyrdom fighting the military oppression of the Sri Lankan government on May 17.”

The Washington Post

Secrets of a robocaller

By macleans.ca - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

After all the investigations, and long after the advent of “do not call” lists, those annoying recorded calls offering extended car warrantees live on. Why? A case before the U.S. federal trade commission gives us some idea, as a former employee of one of the boiler rooms has lifted the lid on their super-secretive world. Only those naïve or dim enough to press 1 would ever speak to an attendant, notes Mark Israel, who worked for a Florida-based company called Transcontinental Warranty Inc. After that, Rule No. 1 was to hang up on anyone who asked questions about the company doing the calling. Employees say they could actually be fired for mentioning the name of the company they worked for. As for the warrantees, you guessed it: many are total crap, according to other evidence before the commission. Israel said he would pretend to “pull up” information about a client’s existing car warranty—even when he had no idea what the client drove. The real quarry was the person’s credit-card number, he said. With that in hand, the call went to a “closer,” whose goal was to get off the line, a.s.a.p. Makes Glengarry Glen Ross look slow and honest by comparison.

Los Angeles Times