Look out below!

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 1 Comment

In 1908, the skies over Siberia lit up in a sudden and massive explosion: an asteroid, 40 m wide, had entered earth’s atmosphere and was breaking up in a multi-megaton burst. Although the asteroid itself didn’t make it to the ground, the shock wave and massive fireball that resulted destroyed 2,000 sq. km of forest, laying waste to the ground below. The Tunguska Event, as it’s called, took place in a remote area, so no human lives were lost. If the blast happened over Toronto, London or Shanghai, it would be another story.

Thousands of asteroids, most of them untracked, swarm around our planet; some are over 10 km wide. “Right now, the most probable amount of warning we’ll have for an asteroid impact is zero, because we don’t know where most of them are,” says Robert Jedicke, 46, a University of Hawaii astronomer originally from Niagara Falls, Ont. Jedicke is part of a team at UH’s Institute for Astronomy that’s working to change that. A new program, called Pan-STARRS, will combine the world’s most powerful asteroid-tracking telescope with the largest digital camera ever built. The first of four planned telescopes is set to begin its full scientific mission any day now. “In the past 200 years, we’ve discovered half a million asteroids,” he says. The first telescope alone “should find a comparable number in a single year.”

Continue…

They’re furious he chose Veronica

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 3 Comments

Archie does more gimmick stories than just about any comic today. The biggest gimmick of them all comes this August, in the 600th issue of the main Archie title, when the world’s oldest teenager proposes to his wealthy sweetheart Veronica (part of a six-issue arc that takes place after they graduate from college). When the story was announced, it created what its writer, Michael Uslan, calls “a firestorm of media attention.” It’s the latest in a recent string of Archie media events: the publisher has already done “New Look” stories with the characters redesigned in an unrecognizably realistic style, and another comic, Archie: the Freshman Year, was billed as the first-ever look at the characters when they started at Riverdale High. For a comic that’s been telling the same stories for 67 years, Archie sure is making a lot of changes—even if everything will probably go back to the status quo eventually.

Why does Archie feel the need to shake things up? Partly because an unusual story can get heavy promotion in the press. Uslan, a Batman movie producer who conceived and wrote the marriage arc (drawn by longtime Archie artist Stan Goldberg), told Maclean’s that he was astonished by all the publicity from people who would ordinarily not have much to say about comics. “Jay Leno talked about it on his last Tonight Show,” he says. “Katie Couric used it as her sign-off. Major magazines and newspapers are running editorials on it. Weirdest thing of all, we’ve gotten coverage on al-Jazeera.” This would never happen for a six-page story that sticks to the formula. That’s why Victor Gorelick, Archie’s long-time editor, says that these longer, change-of-pace stories are necessary to “remind people we are out there.”

Continue…

Politicians and prison outfits

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 9:25 PM - 53 Comments

AIDS activists dressed in black-and-white striped prison uniforms took to the Hill to protest the criminalization of HIV transmission, noting it is the only potentially fatal pathogen being treated this way.

The AIDS activists were supported by NDP MPs Libby Davies and Bill Siksay.

Continue…

North Korea threatens to annihilate U.S.

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 6:18 PM - 18 Comments

North Korean officials are ramping up the rhetoric in advance of military exercises off the country’s eastern coast. The country’s reclusive regime has already said it plans to fire a long-range missile in response to the international community’s criticism of its rocket launch in April, and it may also be looking to test the sanctions imposed on it after it conducted a nuclear test last month by shipping weapons to the similarly secretive regime in Myanmar. On Wednesday, North Korean authorities warned that it would consider any attempt to intercept the shipment a declaration of war. They specifically said the U.S. would be starting a second Korean War and that North Korea would “wipe out” the aggressors. U.S. authorities say they haven’t decided whether or not to request an inspection of a ship while, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell dismissed North Korea’s threat to “wipe out” the U.S. as “silliness.”

AP

New York Post

Adjusting to more Americans in Kandahar

By John Geddes - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 5:29 PM - 0 Comments

Colleague Wells draws our attention here to a fascinating window into the state of Canada’s engagement in Afghanistan.

In a government video of a briefing in the Kandahar village of Deh-e-Begh, we hear the top Canadian officer in the field, Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance, talking about how the arrival of more U.S. soldiers to do much of the fighting in the region is allowing Canada’s focus to shift.

“This is a logical turning point in Canadian operations,” Vance says. “The mission can transition to where we can focus more effort on reconstruction, development, and governance.”

This transition has been coming for several months. I would trace it, at least in part, to comments made by the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chief of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, back in February, when he came to Ottawa for meetings as part of the advance work for President Barack Obama’s visit later that month.

Pressed by reporters on what Canada’s roll should be—given the government’s plan to pull Canadian troops out of combat in 2011—Mullen stressed the need to “surge civilian capacity” to “get the governance piece right.”

To have to put so much weight on the importance of the American presence in Kandahar, and on the Pentagon’s view of what Canada might usefully contribute, irks my nationalist soul.

Yet it’s only realistic to assume that the dominant U.S. position in the Western coalition in Afghanistan means that nothing Canada does will make much of a difference, or even much sense, if it isn’t designed to fit with U.S. actions and planning. And, right now, it appears Canada’s stance in Kandahar fits.

In fact, I’ve noted before on this blog that Brig-Gen Vance himself wrote insightfully about the obvious limitations of independent Canadian strategy in exactly this sort of coalition operation, in his 2005 essay provocatively titled “Tactics without Strategy, or Why the Canadian Forces Do Not Campaign.”

Hey, remember Elizabeth May?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 4:40 PM - 25 Comments

The Green leader talks to Steve Paikin about the state of our democracy.

From Roe v. Wade to Vietnam

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 4:30 PM - 0 Comments

Newly released Oval Office tapes from the Nixon era show that the former president was worried about more than the Watergate scandal. Notably, the more than 150 hours of tapes made public on Tuesday by the Nixon Presidential Library reveal than President Richard M. Nixon was ambivalent about emerging issues surrounding abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade in January 1973. At that time, Nixon made no public statement. But these private tapes reveal his concern that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness.” That said, Nixon did acknowledge some cases where an abortion was required: “There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape,” he explained to an aid.

The tapes were recorded by secret microphones in the Oval Office between January and February 1973. Improvements in audio technology have made the previously indiscernible recordings available for release. The recordings also provide new material about the United States’ military involvement in Vietnam, with one tape revealing that Nixon believed he would eventually be vindicated for continuing to bomb North Vietnam.

The New York Times

Have we hit bottom yet?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 4:29 PM - 0 Comments

Not that there haven’t always been libraries full of junk available from the most genteel of publishers, but Kelly Osbourne penning a teen help book, Jennifer Love Hewitt crafting a dating guide, which will “include everything from tips on text-flirting and how to start over after a breakup,” and—especially—Alec Baldwin set to write a book on parenting? Surely, this time, the Apocalypse is nigh.

The Guardian

The Maya 300

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 4:28 PM - 0 Comments

The Maya 300′s top speed is just under 60 km/h and will travel almost 200 km on one charge, perfect for city driving. Its zero emissions rely on the same kind of lithium ion battery that likely powers your laptop. This week, Exxon and and Mississauga-based Electrovaya, which developed the Maya using Exxon technology, announced they were teaming up to provide visitors to the Maryland Science Center test-driving opportunities with the vehicles. Later this summer, 10 Maya 300s will be made available for an all-electric car-sharing and rental program called AltCar.

The Wall Street Journal

An ironic title

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 4:27 PM - 0 Comments

The Virginia Quarterly Review journal found about a dozen passages in the bestselling writer’s new book about the upcoming free economy that were reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources. Most, but not all, were from Wikipedia. Anderson replied that, “All those are my screw-ups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources. I think what we’ll do is publish those notes after all, online as they should have been to begin with. That way the links are live and we don’t have to wrestle with how to freeze them in time, which is what threw me in the first place.”

Virginia Quarterly Review

Why Barack Obama is bad for Canada

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 4:25 PM - 102 Comments

When Barack Obama met with Stephen Harper in Ottawa on Feb. 19, his message on the oil sands sounded like it could have been written in Calgary. He talked about the need for government investment in new technologies to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and he wanted to work together to achieve it. “I love this country and think that we could not have a better friend and ally,” Obama said. “And so I’m going to do everything that I can to make sure that our relationship is strengthened.” He added: “We are very grateful for the relationship that we have with Canada, Canada being our largest energy supplier.” Tom Corcoran, a former Republican congressman from Illinois and head of a Washington lobbying outfit for the oil sands and other “unconventional” fuels, remembers the day: “It was encouraging and made us feel good.”

But it turns out that Obama has a knack for making people feel good when perhaps they ought to be watching their back. “Then the realities begin to take root when you look at what is taking place here in Washington,” says Corcoran. The reality is that Obama is leading an aggressive effort to remake American energy policy with potentially severe consequences for the oil sands, and by extension, the Canadian economy.

Continue…

Romeo LeBlanc passes away at 81

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 3:18 PM - 0 Comments

Romeo LeBlanc, the former governor general and Liberal cabinet minister, has died after a battle with Alzheimer’s. LeBlanc, who was a journalist and teacher before entering politics, was fisheries minister under Pierre Trudeau and later became Canada’s first Acadian governor general. He was celebrated for putting a compassionate face on the vice-regal’s position, opening the grounds of Rideau Hall to the public, created an award for volunteerism and reaching out to the francophone community. “Many people consider their time there under Roméo as the highlight of their career,” recalls a former speechwriter. “He was a gentleman, very down to earth, and had a kind of wisdom about him. And in the case of the fisheries, I would call him a visionary, the most standout minister since Confederation.”

Ottawa Citizen

Iranian security forces crack down on protesters in Tehran

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 2:39 PM - 0 Comments

Protesters gathered in a public square in Tehran on Wednesday were quickly met by security forces who charged into the crowd and reportedly beat people like “animals.” According to a source who spoke to CNN, some “500 thugs” emerged from a mosque to confront the protesters and were “”beating women madly” and “killing people like hell.” Another source told the news channel that “I see many people with broken arms, legs, heads—blood everywhere—pepper gas like war.” Even as Iranian authorities come under increasing pressure to temper their heavy-handed crackdown on protesters, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced on Wednesday his regime won’t loosen its grip on power. “Neither the establishment nor the nation will yield to pressure at any cost,” he told the country’s legislators. In dispatches to BBC News, Iranians are reporting that “police are almost everywhere in the streets” and that Tehran “is back to the way it was” before the protests.

CNN

The New York Times

BBC News

‘We have finally learned to fight’

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 2:25 PM - 4 Comments

The students at Tehran University were trapped between the men with clubs and thin air.

Late Sunday night and early Monday morning, some 300 police and members of the paramilitary Basij militia stormed the university’s dormitory, where students had protested against what millions of Iranians, along with most independent analysts, believe was a stolen election. Hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the runaway winner, with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describing his victory as a “divine assessment.”

But the outcome was announced before many of the votes could have been counted. And the declared results bore little resemblance to the reality on the ground, with Ahmadinejad supposedly winning in the regional and ethnic strongholds of his opponents. While one poll taken three weeks before the election suggested Ahmadinejad was leading, polls closer to the election date indicated that reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi had surged ahead.

Continue…

A case study in Ottawa's level of discourse

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 1:54 PM - 29 Comments

Adam Radwanski watches CTV’s interview with Michael Ignatieff.

Oliver is one of the country’s most experienced and respected television journalists; he should be more than able to draw the Liberal Leader out on issues Canadians care about. Instead, he spends about three-quarters of the 10-minute interview asking and re-asking (a) whether Ignatieff showed weakness in not bringing down the government and (b) whether he’ll bring it down in the fall. Before wrapping up, he eventually gets to a more interesting – if somewhat broad – question about how Ignatieff defines himself. But not once does he ask about a policy issue that goes beyond the EI dispute, let alone attempt to figure out what it is that the Liberals want to do differently from the Conservatives on matters of substance.

This is not exactly the phenomenon Susan Delacourt addressed in the Toronto Star today. But it nevertheless helps prove her point about the role of the media in turning Ottawa into what it’s become.

10 Best Picture Oscar Nominees? What the Heck?

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 1:39 PM - 7 Comments

It was just announced that starting next year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will expand the Best Picture Oscar nominees from 5 to 10.

There will be 10 best picture nominees starting with the 82nd Oscar ceremony, skedded for March 7, at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood.

The announcement was made Wednesday morning at AMPAS headquarters in BevHills by Acad prez Sid Ganis.

Oscar noms will be unveiled Feb. 2.

Now, a bit of history: The Oscars used to have 10 Best Picture nominees. From about 1932 through 1943, there were 10 nominees in that category, sometimes even as many as 12. But even with the excellent crop of films in some of those years (most famously 1939), there were lots of mediocre nominees and lots of superior films that didn’t make the cut; it wasn’t a good system, because it reduced the value of a Best Picture nomination and made it all the more egregious when a particularly good film was left out (because it’s one thing not to make a cut of 5 films, quite another not to make the cut when there are 10).

Now, consider that this wasn’t a good system even when the nominees list read like this:

1939 Gone with the Wind – Selznick, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – David O. Selznick

• Dark Victory – Warner Bros. – David Lewis
• Goodbye, Mr. Chips – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – Victor Saville
• Love Affair – RKO – Leo McCarey
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – Columbia – Frank Capra
• Ninotchka – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – Sidney Franklin
• Of Mice and Men – Roach, United Artists – Lewis Milestone
• Stagecoach – United Artists – Walter Wanger
• The Wizard of Oz – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – Mervyn LeRoy
• Wuthering Heights – Goldwyn, United Artists – Samuel Goldwyn

And consider further that, even if you think the crop of 1939 films is a little overrated (I do), the 10 nominees for 2008 probably won’t look quite that impressive. And you have to wonder what — except for making the current movie era look even worse than it is — the Academy is thinking.

If they’re going to do this, they should at least eliminate the best Animated Feature category and give one of those 10 slots to Up.

This Is a Close-Up?

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 3 Comments

Howard Bernstein, a news and documentary producer for CTV, CBC and Global, has a new media criticism blog, Medium Close Up, drawing on his experience (as both a producer and a media critic) to tell us what’s up with TV news in this country. As you might expect from that description, it’s not a blog with a lot of happy stories, but it has lots of interesting information and opinions about the current situation:

About two weeks ago all of the current affairs staff at The National were given their new marching orders. Some are going to “health”, some to “arts” and some to the “investigative” unit, and still others to who knows where. None will be left to produce the longer segments that made CBC News different from CTV News or the U.S. networks. We’re talking about Gemini, Michener, and RTNDA (Radio and Television News Directors Association) award winners. The most experienced and perhaps the best long form news producers in Canada. Why? Because “the powers that want to be” at CBC have decided there is no place on the news for a longer story. Why they think that is anyone’s guess.

(Via Denis McGrath)

Disappearing South Carolina Governor admits affair

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 1:06 PM - 1 Comment

We already found out where Governor Mark Sanford went; now we know why he went there. At a press conference, the conservative South Carolina governor admitted that his mysterious trip to Buenos Aires was connected to an extra-marital affair with a “dear dear friend from Argentina”—an affair he had been carrying on for a year. He said that his wife, who denied knowledge of his whereabouts, had known about the affair for five months. Sanford, who says he went to Buenos Aires last week to break off the affair, will resign his position as head of the Republican Governor’s association. The governor, who became famous for his opposition to President Obama’s stimulus package, had been widely viewed as a possible presidential candidate for 2012. Instead it looks like he’ll go commiserate with John Edwards, John Ensign, and Eliot Spitzer.

New York Times

How do celebrities stay famous?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 1:05 PM - 0 Comments

How do celebrities like Victoria Beckham, whose band broke up long ago, manage to stay in the spotlight? According to a new study, the human desire to find shared conversational ground drives us to discuss already popular people, New Scientist reports. The study, which looked at professional American baseball players, and whether conversation could drive fame, independent of quality. A team led by Nathanael Fast of Stanford University gave a list of eight baseball players with statistics on the previous season’s performance to 33 male, and 56 female, volunteers. They then wrote a short email to another participant about the player. More often than not, subjects talked about popular but under-performing players like Ken Griffey Jr, rather than more obscure players who performed well. Looking at Internet message boards and media covers, including fan balloting for the annual “All-Star” game, the researchers found players who got the most All-Star votes also got the most attention. Fame is self-perpetuating, they argue: prominent people stay popular past their expiry date because they drive conversation, which then drives media coverage.

New Scientist

Volcanic eruption caught on camera

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 1:04 PM - 0 Comments

Volcanologists are going gaga over stunning images of a volcanic eruption, captured by chance as the International Space Station orbited the earth. The rare photos, which show Sarychev Peak, located in the Kuril Island chain near Japan, erupting on June 12, and sending a massive ash mass ripping through the clouds. Those who study volcanoes say the images offer unique insight into the eruption process.

The Daily Mail

Romeo LeBlanc, 1927-2009

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 12:39 PM - 4 Comments

The former governor general and cabinet minister, and father of Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc, has passed away at the age of 81. The Ottawa Citizen, Globe and Canadian Press have lengthy obituaries. CBC goes into the archives for video of a 1995 profile.

Statements from the Prime Minister, the leader of the opposition and the Governor General after the jump. Continue…

Did the swine flu come from Asia?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 12:38 PM - 1 Comment

Media reports have suggested that swine flu originated on Mexican factory farms, but U.S. agriculture officials now believe it probably first emerged in pigs in Asia, and travelled to North America after infecting a human, the New York Times reports. However, the theory has so far been impossible to prove. “The most likely scenario is that it came over in the mammalian species that moves most freely around the world,” said Dr. Amy L. Vincent, a swine flu specialist at the Agriculture Department’s laboratory in Ames, Iowa. However, that person will probably never be found, as people stop carrying the virus when their health improves. But a sample from a Hong Kong pig, taken in 2004, was recently found to have a virus nearly identical to the new flu. Scientists say there’s been far too little surveillance of swine flu around the world. “Something could have been going on there for a long time and we wouldn’t know,” said Dr. Michael W. Shaw, a scientist in the flu division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The New York Times

Confused by today’s Iran?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 12:37 PM - 0 Comments

There’s no use pretending Iranian politics can be boiled down to simplicities. It’s not just the bad, old conservatives vs. the good, new reformers (although it’s that to a fair degree). This review of three key recent books on Iran provides some urgently needed background. It digs into the centuries-old roots of Iran’s Shiite religious establishment, then moves briskly to the present. Among the intriguing nuggets: Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons in his war against Iran underpins Tehran’s stubborn nuclear policy; Iran’s impressively high literacy rates for both sexes, with women a majority among college students, suggests why women are so key to the current pro-democracy push; George W. Bush blew a chance to improve U.S.-Iran relations during a brief rise of relative moderates opposed by the clerical elite.

The New York Review of Books

Talk into the “right” ear

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 12:36 PM - 1 Comment

If there’s a task that needs doing, you might try asking people in their right ear. Researchers from University of Chieti in central Italy have found that people prefer to be addressed in the right ear, as information received there is processed by the left, more logical, side of the brain. The scientists observed the so-called “right ear advantage” by asking 176 people in crowded nightclubs for a cigarette, and found that those they addressed in the right ear were significantly more likely to hand over a smoke than those addressed in the left.

The Telegraph