Objectionable reality

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 7:48 PM - 41 Comments

Having said the same thing this time last year, the Justice Minister restates his thesis on crime.

“We don’t govern on the latest statistics,” the minister told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview. ”What level it’s at right now, it’s unacceptable, and we are committed to disrupting … criminal activity.”

It was a year and a half ago, having heard the Prime Minister say something similar, that Dan Gardner was inspired to pen the phrase “an epistemological claim of staggering primitiveness.”

Hey look: a summer movie, with swearing

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 5:52 PM - 13 Comments

From the print edition, my article about the new British movie In The Loop. With lots and lots and lots of warning about salty language, here’s a clip from the movie in question. And while we’re at it, here’s perhaps the classic scene from The Thick of It, the BBC series it’s based on. Salty language warning still applies.

And now . . . a loopy Iraq war movie

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 5:15 PM - 0 Comments

In The Loop enters theatres with so many strikes against it, it is hard to imagine the film finding any audience at all. It’s a British comedy, with all the thick accents and obscure references that entails. It’s an Iraq war movie, three words that are interchangeable with “box office poison.” It’s a cinematic sequel to a TV series you probably missed.

Yet In The Loop has one asset that should recommend it to everyone: it’s really funny. As a bonus, it’s a whip-smart satire on the way government works, or doesn’t, both in London and in Washington. Continue…

Why Young Actors SHOUT Their LINES

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 4:52 PM - 2 Comments

Todd VanDerWerff (who links back to me, and I link back to him; it’s all a game of blog-tag), in his enjoyably luke-warm review of ABC Family’s Hannah Montana wanna-be Ruby and the Rockits, notes that it has at least one advantage over the show it’s imitating. Alexa Vega, unlike Miley Cyrus, doesn’t feel the need to scream every single line she’s given:

Cyrus’ Hannah performance is one of the strangest things to ever make it on mainstream television, as though she stepped through a time portal out of the cast of a popular ‘20s stage musical and into a sitcom and didn’t bother modulating her performance at all. She SHOUTS EVERY LINE, and the rest of the cast HAS TO MATCH HER or GET LEFT BEHIND.

The bizarreness (is that a word?) of Miley Cyrus’s acting is indeed something to behold. It’s not like she doesn’t have talent, or a certain charm, but she never really modulates her performance. It’s not just the volume; it’s that her solution to a quieter scene is simply to be broad and shrill at a lower volume. And when the line actually calls for her to shout, God help us; she sounds like she’s the “hey you guys!” lady at the start of The Electric Company.

To be fair to Cyrus, some of this appears to be an aesthetic preference on the part of the directors and producers of these shows. Many of them have their roots in the old TGIF empire, Continue…

The politics of healthcare in America

By John Parisella - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 4:46 PM - 19 Comments

President Obama will be conducting another prime-time television news conference to address healthcare reform. His strategy of letting Congress initiate policy in this sector has encountered some serious snags. As a result, some Democrats, the so-called Blue Dog Democrats, are opposed to the project. We can also expect the Republicans to stay the course and oppose any attempts at reform, though a few moderates might endorse a proposal that includes some GOP initiatives. But it is the Democrats’ support that is crucial to the success of Obama’s healthcare plan. If Obama cannot keep the Democrats onside, then he too will go the way of President Bill Clinton and lose the centerpiece of his potential presidential legacy.

Continue…

MUSIC: Strangest Combination Of Conductor and Music

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 3:25 PM - 0 Comments

This may not be actually be the strangest choice of repertoire that a famous conductor has made, but it’s up there. A few days ago, the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, one of the fathers of the early-music movement who also built a successful parallel career conducting 19th century European music (his recordings of Beethoven, Schumann and Dvořák are mostly very fine) decided to conduct his first work of 20th-century American music… Porgy and Bess. At the Styriarte Festival in Graz, he led concert performances of Gershwin’s jazz opera; Canada’s Measha Brueggergosman was originally supposed to be Bess, but unfortunately had to pull out due to illness.

Harnoncourt has made some strange repertoire choices before, including a legendarily bad recording of Verdi’s Aida, but the sight of one of the most ultra-European musical figures (he rarely works outside Europe) trying to lead a jazz/musical-comedy opera with an all-black cast — but with his regular chorus, the Viennese Arnold Schoenberg Choir – was about as bizarre as it gets. Particularly since visual evidence suggests that, even in a concert without costumes, the staging managed to be kind of Euro-trashy. It’s not quite the equivalent of Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carreras singing West Side Story, but it’s close. There will be no recording, of course, but there audio excerpt available online; it features the opening of Act 2 scene 2, with a chorus followed by “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” and while the song is pretty standard (it’s an unkillable song), the chorus sounds like nobody has any idea what they’re singing about or what these  rhythms are supposed to signify, and the conducting is slow, strange and square. (Though to be fair, it’s really no worse than parts of Simon Rattle’s famous Porgy performances/recording.)

For all that, I like Harnoncourt a lot; he’s actually one of my favourite living conductors, because while he is often bizarre, he’s rarely completely uninteresting. (Even his recording of Aida has a certain perverse fascination as long as you don’t expect it to be, you know, good.) He’s one of those guys who approaches every work with a “concept,” often based on weird readings of character motivations or what the composer was thinking, and then he interprets the music in light of whatever he happens to think it’s about. When the concept makes sense, it can lead to interesting performances, and while he’s not a technically brilliant conductor, he’s very good at getting a distinctive, biting sound out of any orchestra he works with (and the ability to execute a concept and create his own sound are more important, for a conductor, than having the clearest time-beating skills).

Is the web’s ‘free’ ride over?

By Colin Campbell - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 3:20 PM - 13 Comments

The release of Chris Anderson’s latest book Free will likely go down in the annals of publishing as a book launch from hell. It began when Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine and author of the bestseller The Long Tail, was accused of plagiarizing passages from Wikipedia in his much-anticipated book. Anderson apologized, explaining it was a mix-up that would be corrected. But that was only a minor hiccup compared to when the actual reviews started rolling in.

In Free, Anderson argues that in the digital age, the cost of distributing goods and services is being pushed ever closer to zero, and therefore most things will, in some form, eventually be offered for nothing. Already, he notes, the proliferation of free services online has created what Anderson estimates to be a $300-billion “country-sized economy.” It’s a provocative theory—and it was immediately and ruthlessly attacked by a horde of respected thinkers and writers. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, wrote the harshest review so far in The New Yorker, suggesting that Anderson is thinking like a classic “technological utopian,” and his theory has little grounding in reality. Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, also railed against the idea, writing in his blog that the creed of “Free” will ruin companies that fail to focus on making money. “The problem with companies who have built their business around Free is that it is far from free to remain successful.” Continue…

In which direction shall we move?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 3:02 PM - 7 Comments

Randomly selected excerpts from Gerry Ritz’s press conference this afternoon.

Question: Last night we learned that two inspectors who were investigating a herd of pigs hit with swine flu in Central Alberta in April fell ill themselves and they became sick because they didn’t follow proper procedures in carrying out that investigation and they say they weren’t even instructed on what the proper procedures were.  So I’m wondering as Minister responsible, what you think about that, what it says about CFIA management and what you’re doing about it?

The Hon. Gerry Ritz:    Well we’ve, we’ve begun to move forward on those types of things, making sure that the front line inspectors have the tools they require, whether it’s gear or computer technology, whatever it is, we’re starting to address those. Continue…

Look out for that fastball curve thing

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 7 Comments

Ujjal Dosanjh has twittered that he will be on again with Rick Sanchez this afternoon. Hopefully this will become a recurring bit.

Iran's Press TV's useful Western idiots

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 2:19 PM - 14 Comments

Dominic Lawson at The Times of London has a good piece about Press TV, Iran’s government-backed international English-language news network, and the Western reporters, or stooges, as he – I believe accurately – describes them, who work for it.

For those unfamiliar with Press TV, it’s essentially a propaganda arm of the Iranian foreign ministry. Reports rarely stray from the official government line. When it finally got around to reporting on the unrest following Iran’s rigged election, and the murder – almost certainly by Iranian security forces – of Neda Aqa Soltan, whose death, when captured on film, became a symbol of Iran’s reform movement, Press TV quoted Iranian police who described her killing as a premeditated stunt designed to make the Iranian government look bad. Another report suggested the CIA might have been responsible. Continue…

… And another party heard from: Liveblogging Agriculture Union president Bob Kingston

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 1:27 PM - 1 Comment

The show will go on shortly. Check back soon.

1:47:36 PM
Greetings, followers of the ITQ Listeriosis Report Roadshow! Did I mention that I haven’t had lunch yet? And that I am *wildly* craving a delicious turkey sandwich? Anyway, I’ve now taken up residence at the *third* venue of the day — really, it’s like Bluesfest with all the different stages: the Charles Lynch Press Theatre, otherwise known as 130-S, which is right downstairs from the legendary Hot Room. We’ve got ten minutes to go before Bob Kingston shows up, and expectations are high that he’ll have a little bit more to say than the preceding speakers; specifically, he’s unlikely to want to put the most positive possible spin on the report.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, the NDP’s health critic is taking calls as of, well, now, but is in Welland — hence, no live presser. I’m not sure what the Liberals are doing, if anything. Presumably they’ll put out a release, at least, at some point.

1:59:16 PM
Oops. I forgot to add a MORE tag — again! Journalism without a net — so this post may now be taking over the entirety of Blog Central. Sorry about that, y’all. I’ll try to fix it if possible.
2:04:09 PM
Yay! Thanks, Colleague Phil, for forwarding the correct bit of code.
And with that – let’s get started, since Bob Kingston is here.
Continue…

'Your personal experiences and impressions are wrong'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 1:18 PM - 98 Comments

Stephen Harper, June 6, 2008. Ladies and gentlemen, I try to get off of Parliament Hill as often as possible to attend functions like this. It helps me to keep in touch with the issues that really matter to Canadians, and one issue I hear about time and time again, whether it’s among Canadians old or young, whether it’s in the East or West, in English or in French, is unacceptably high levels of crime. Everywhere I go I hear the same refrain: “Prime Minister, please crack down on criminals, get guns, gangs and drugs off our streets, stop behaviour that threatens our property and our persons, make our communities safer.” It’s a reasonable thing to ask of government. It’s one of the most fundamental reasons, maybe the most fundamental reason, the government exists, especially in Canada, a country that was founded on the principle of peace, order and good government … It’s one thing that they, the criminals do not get it, but if you don’t mind me saying, another part of the problem for the past generation has been those, also a small part of our society, who are not criminals themselves, but who are always making excuses for them, and when they aren’t making excuses, they are denying that crime is even a problem: the ivory tower experts, the tut-tutting commentators, the out-of-touch politicians. “Your personal experiences and impressions are wrong,” they say. “Crime is not really a problem.” I don’t know how you say that. I don’t know how you tell that to the families of the victims we saw on the screen today. These men, women and children are not statistics. They had families, friends, hopes and dreams, until their lives were taken from them … Obviously we cannot undo these travesties, nor can we erase the pain and suffering that they cause. But there is something we can do and that we must do, and that is to get serious about tackling crime in this country … What we’re doing, ladies and gentlemen, is starting to overhaul a system that’s been in place. In fact, we’re starting to overhaul a system that has been moving in the wrong direction for 30 years.

Statistics Canada, today. Police-reported crime in Canada continued to decline in 2008. Both the traditional crime rate and the new Crime Severity Index fell 5%, meaning that both the volume of police-reported crime and its severity decreased. Violent crime also dropped, but to a lesser extent. This was the fifth consecutive annual decline in police-reported crime.

Plant of the Ape

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:57 PM - 1 Comment

Caught on video: A monkey robbing a nursery in Texas. Might have co-opted a human as an accomplice.

(Also: Monkeys know grammar)

And now, an important — and likely relieved — word from Gerry Ritz

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:34 PM - 6 Comments

Now that we’ve all gotten our hands on the official report, it’s time for the obligatory ministerial response, which is why ITQ is off to the National Press Theatre for the determinedly non-comedic stylings of Gerry Ritz, who is still the minister responsible. I have to think that it’s probably preferable for most politicians and staffers when this sort of report comes out after you’ve been shuffled off to a new portfolio, but such is life, right? (Which reminds ITQ — when does the summertime cabinet shuffle speculation officially get underway?)

Continue…

Red (Maple) Menace: Health Care Edition

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:16 PM - 44 Comments

As the fight over Obamacare heats up, the bill’s opponents are pulling no punches. A reader in New Jersey points me to an anti-Canadian health care attack ad that is running down there. It features a Canadian woman who got a brain tumour; her “government health care system” told her to wait six months for a specialist, and she survived only because she was able to get to the US for treatment.

The message of the spot is that patients should never let “government” get between them and their health care, because that leads to wait times, rationing, and arbitrary decisions about what treatments you are entitled to. As a Canadian, she ends by imploring Americans, “don’t give up your rights.”

Is this accurate? Hardly. Wait times we can argue over. But my sense is that an HMO gets “between a patient and their care” in a far more intrusive way than a provincial plan like OHIP does; though as a bit of northern red-baiting, it’s pretty effective.

Here’s the video – it’s called “Survivor”.  Dissect away.

Berlusconi's approval rating falls below 50 per cent for the first time in 15 years

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:10 PM - 0 Comments

In a poll, published in La Repubblica, 49 per cent indicated that they still support the scandal-plagued Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi’s lowest approval rating since 1994. It was a four-point drop from a poll in May. And half of those surveyed said they had little or no confidence in him. A series of scandals have dogged Berlusconi. Most recently, tapes in which he is allegedly talking to a female escort were posted on the Internet. Overall, confidence in the government is holding steady at 44 per cent.

The Telegraph

Should the NHL go back to Quebec City?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:47 AM - 3 Comments

Having lost out on his bid to buy the Montreal Canadiens, Quebecor CEO Pierre-Karl Péladeau appears to be turning his attention to reviving the Quebec Nordiques. In his best impersonation of Jim Balsillie, Péladeau said Quebec City is a much more committed hockey city “than certain American cities with NHL teams,” adding that the Quebec capital would need to build a new arena to replace the outmoded former home of the Nordiques, the Colisée. “But it won’t [happen] tomorrow,” Péladeau said. “[We'll] have to be patient.” Former Nordiques coach Michel Bergeron and former Canadiens coach Jean Perron have both endorsed the idea, though Perron suggested Péladeau would likely need to come up with “$300 million at the very least” if he hopes to have a new NHL-quality rink built.

London Free Press

The latest defense against swine flu

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:41 AM - 1 Comment

Researchers at National Taiwan University have created NTU-VirusBom, a compound designed to destroy both swine and avian flu before infections begin. It can be incorporated into hand soaps, detergents, air filters, and facemasks, and is meant to be a new defense against swine flu—which has already killed 700 people worldwide and is developing resistance to Tamiflu, the primary drug used to treat the disease. VirusBom should hit the market just as outbreaks are expected to intensify at the beginning of fall.

AFP

Yann Martel is returning to bookstores

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:29 AM - 0 Comments

It’s not unknown for Booker Prize winners to have a hard time writing the next book. Neither Arundhati Roy and Keri Hulme have managed it yet, and it was beginning to look like Canadian Yann Martel would be permanently among their number. But the author of The Life of Pi, which has sold over 10 million copies—the bestselling Booker winner ever—since Martel took the award in 2002, has announced a new book to be published worldwide next year. And like Pi, Martel’s new book will have animals as key central characters—a howling monkey called Virgil and a donkey called Beatrice—in its tale of how Henry, a writer, strikes up a friendship with a taxidermist who is writing a play about the animals. The novel, which may be titled Beatrice and Virgil, is an allegorical story about the Holocaust in which comparisons are made with Dante’s Inferno. (The animals’ names reflect Dante’s Comedy—Virgil as his guide through Hell and Beatrice through Heaven.) “I’ve noticed over years of reading books on the Holocaust that it’s nearly always represented the same way—historical or social realism,” said Martel. “I think writers have been fearful of letting the imagination loose on the Holocaust. My novel is an attempt to see if there is a way of talking about the Holocaust without talking about it literally.” The news comes as plans are advanced for the film director Ang Lee, best known for Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to shoot The Life of Pi.

London Times

Babies understand Fido

By John Intini - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:24 AM - 0 Comments

Six-month-old babies can understand the difference in dog barks even if they’ve never been exposed to dogs before. A new study from Brigham Young University shows infants are able to match the sounds of an angry dog with the appropriate picture of a dog with an aggressive posture, and a friendly yap with a friendly posture. “They only had one trial because we didn’t want them to learn it on the fly and figure it out,” said Ross Flom, lead author of the study. The study shows that babies are capable of recognizing feelings around them and will help researchers understand how babies learn so quickly. (Babies can also pick up on shifts in moods in the music of Beethoven.) “Emotion is one of the first things babies pick up on in their social world,” says Flom.

Science Daily

We're Not the Only Ones Who Are U.S.-Centric

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:23 AM - 3 Comments

You may have seen this poll where British viewers choose the “10 most addictive TV series of all time” (which, in a poll like this, really means “10 most addictive TV series that are either still making new episodes or still running somewhere) and 9 of the 10 are U.S. shows. We Canadians are not alone in being lured away from home-grown product by the seemingly endless supply of American TV episodes.

Michael Deacon of the Telegraph thinks that this is because U.S. shows, labouring under ruthless commercial pressures, are “more exciting” than British shows. But while U.S. networks may be more ruthless about purging bad shows than British networks are, that doesn’t really have a lot to do with the good, successful shows, which is what we’re mostly talking about in a list like this. (Also, some of the shows on this list aren’t on broadcast TV and don’t have commercial breaks, meaning that their production model is closer to a BBC series.) Some of it may have to do with the fact that most U.S. shows, even the HBO ones, produce more episodes than a UK show. The more episodes there are, the longer you stay hooked, whereas a 6-episode series is hard to classify as “addictive,” simply because it’s over so quickly. Plus, there’s a grass-is-greener thing. This is purely anecdotal, but I remember some UK viewers telling me, at the time, how inferior Coupling was to Friends, and how baffled they were that US critics were into it.

Oppal pours cold water on coffee date theory

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:15 AM - 0 Comments

Despite a report, citing a source close to Wally Oppal, that the former attorney general of British Columbia had been offered the job of justice minister were the federal Liberals to form government, Oppal says he and Michael Ignatieff met only to discuss legal policy. “He’s contacted me a number of times for my input on where the law should go,” Oppal says of his recent coffee with the Liberal leader. The two apparently talked about wiretapping laws and sentencing guidelines. As for entering federal politics, Oppal is non-committal. “It would be interesting,” he says. “The schedule would be a killer—a major downside. But I’m still deciding what I want to do with my life.”

The Province

Brits addicted to U.S. TV

By John Intini - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:11 AM - 0 Comments

According to a poll of British TV viewers by LOVEFILM.COM, the most addictive television series of recent years is 24. Of the top 10 most watchable shows chosen by the sample of 3,000 UK television viewers, only one UK show made the list: Dr. Who. Otherwise, the list is all American shows, mostly serialized dramas like Lost and Prison Break, but also comedies like Friends and Sex and the City, where there are few cliffhangers. It just goes to show that Canadians aren’t the only ones who prefer U.S. shows to our own; we’re in good company with our cousins overseas, who would rather get addicted to Heroes than Coronation Street.

The Telegraph

American's most famous black scholar breaks into own home, charged by cops

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:07 AM - 1 Comment

Sometimes life imitates art, sometimes it imitates a Tom Wolfe novel. Last Thursday, Henry Louis Gates jr. — one of the foremost black scholars and historians in America — was spied forcing his way into his own home. A neighbour, called police, who found Gates (who’d apparently just locked himself out) sitting inside. The cops demanded ID, Gates allegedly declined. Words were exchanged, tempers rose, and Gates ended up in jail. Al Sharpton is now involved, of course. “I’ve heard of driving while black and … shopping while black. I’ve never heard of living in a home while black,” says Sharpton

Boston Herald