The eternal question

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 1:08 PM - 21 Comments

A few interesting reads from the weekend: Susan Delacourt looks at new research into the electability of women in Canada, Alice Funke adds her own analysis, and Linda Silver Dranoff reviews Canada’s Unfinished Democracy. From the latter.

She points out that this “women+power=discomfort” equation makes people focus on the contests that women lose and extrapolate from that, that women are losers. Many do run in ridings they have no chance of winning, or for parties that have no chance of governing.

The examples she provides are persuasive, including Agnes MacPhail, Thérèse Casgrain, Kim Campbell and Belinda Stronach, but the one that resonated with me was Flora MacDonald. In 1976, she was considered a shoo-in for the Progressive Conservative leadership; members of her party had promised her enough votes to assure a win. But when they went into the voting booths, they didn’t vote for her. Has Bashevkin provided the explanation about 30 years later? Were MacDonald’s supporters just plain uncomfortable with a woman in power? It would seem so.

One other way of looking at this: what precisely is the model for female political leadership in Canada? Who would you tell a 25-year-old women thinking of getting into politics to model herself after? Continue…

LSD therapy makes a comeback

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 1:01 PM - 3 Comments

There are no bad trips in Switzerland—or at least in psychiatrist Peter Gasser’s laboratory. Over the last year and a half, Gasser has been experimenting with the use of LSD in the treatment of fear in severely ill patients. The highly controversial study is part of a growing body of research into the efficacy of hallucinogens in psychotherapy. The study group is small (concern about the dangers of LSD means Gasser is only permitted to treat 12 patients) but the preliminary results show promise. “What we hope to demonstrate in the end is that no serious incidents occurred, and that the results suggest that this is an effective treatment method,” he says.

Spiegel Online

Foreign Affairs flies into action on the Zahra Kazemi case: “We are concerned that a very negative story might be published on the basis of the above allegations.”

By Michael Petrou - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 12:32 PM - 11 Comments

Last November, I published a story about an Iranian exile by the name of Behnam Vafaseresht who claimed to have been jailed at the Evin Prison in Tehran at the same time that Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was held and eventually murdered there. Vafaseresht said he had information implicating Saeed Mortazavi, the prosecutor general of Tehran, in Kazemi’s death.

This is significant because in 2006, then foreign affairs minister Peter Mackay said of Mortazavi: “Mark my words. This individual is on notice. If there is any way Canada can bring this person to justice, we’ll do it.” Prime Minister Stephen Harper also claimed he had asked Germany to detain Mortazavi should he set foot in the country so that he could be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.”

Vafaseresht told Maclean’s that he met with Canadian embassy officials in Ankara in 2006 and 2007 and offered to testify any court case that Canada might launch against Mortazavi. He said Canadian officials, though they interviewed him in detail, were not interested in his help. He sought refuge in Germany and hasn’t heard from Canada since.

At the time, Foreign Affairs would neither confirm nor deny that any meetings with Vafaseresht took place. I therefore filed an access-to-information request about the alleged meetings and received a partial response last week, eight months after filing it – which makes Foreign Affairs’ response time lightning fast compared to the transparency-phobic folks at the Canadian International Development Agency. Continue…

Ants more rational than humans

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 12:32 PM - 0 Comments

Researchers at Arizona State and Princeton universities have shown that ants perform tasks more rationally than humans. After examining ant colonies living in cavities the size of an acorn, the scientists observed the ability of ants to find new places to roost. The collective decision-making of ants, and their limited individual choice, resulted in more accurate outcomes. This is being dubbed the “wisdom of crowds.” The researchers say that having fewer individual options reduces the frequency of making irrational errors. Their finding suggests that strategically limiting individual knowledge could improve a group’s ability to achieve a goal.

Science Daily

Mark Steyn on why Henry Louis Gates was "plain stupid"

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 12:28 PM - 12 Comments

Last week’s encounter between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and a Cambridge police officer called to Gates’s home over reports of a break-in remind Mark Steyn of his own run-in with a surly Vermont police officer. After being called a “liar” by the officer, Steyn considered his options: he could either “get hot under the collar” and end up in a violent confrontation, or he could write a letter to the cop’s boss complaining about the treatment he received. “I chose the latter course, and received a letter back offering partial satisfaction,” he writes. But Gates went with the former, which according to Steyn “is just plain stupid” if one puts any sort of premium on one’s personal safety. And yet, Steyn fumes, in spite of the poor choices Gates made, several high-profile politicians have publicly sided with the professor. “A black president, a black governor and a black mayor all agree with a black Harvard professor that he was racially profiled by a white-Latino-black police team, headed by a cop who teaches courses in how to avoid racial profiling. The boundless elasticity of such endemic racism suggests that the ‘post-racial America’ will be living with blowhard grievance-mongers like professor Gates unto the end of time.”

Orange County Register

Live mice grown from skin cells

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 12:27 PM - 0 Comments

Chinese researchers have managed to create live mice from their own skin cells, Reuters reports. This was accomplished using induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells for short): skin cells that have been reprogrammed to act like embryonic stem cells, which can give rise to all types of tissue in the body. The experiment means it’s theoretically possible to clone someone using skin cells, although the experts emphasize such use would not be ethical. “We are confident that tremendous good can come from demonstrating the versatility of reprogrammed cells in mice, and this research will be used to … understand the root causes of disease and lead to viable treatments and cures of human afflictions,” said Fanyi Zeng of the Shanghai Institute of Medical Genetics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In the study, Chinese scientists created 37 stem cell lines, and of them, generated three live births. The longest-living one lived to be nine months old, and the mice went on to create more than 100 second-generation, and more than 100 third-generation mice.

Reuters

Is fizzy milk the real thing?

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 12:26 PM - 0 Comments

Is the next big thing fizzy milk? Coca Cola is test-marketing a new dairy-based carbonated beverage in three American cities. The drink, called Vio, is being sold in upscale health food stores and comes in flavours like peach mango. The best part? The claims that it tastes like “a birthday party for a polar bear.”

The Times

Charles Manson wants Phil Spector's help

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 12:24 PM - 1 Comment

Now that record producer Phil Spector is in prison, he can make many new friends, including one he probably didn’t want: Charles Manson. Spector, sentenced to 19 years behind bars for killing actress Lana Clarkson, has been moved to the same prison where Manson will be spending the rest of his life. Manson, who wanted to be a rock star before he got into the murder business, was so thrilled at being in the same building with Spector that he sent the producer a note, saying that he wanted “the greatest producer who ever lived” to come over to his cell and talk about music. Spector’s wife, Rachelle, told the New York Post that Spector thought the note was “creepy” and didn’t reply. He later sighed to his publicist: “I used to pick up the phone and it was John Lennon of Celine Dion or Tina Turner, and now Charles Manson is trying to get a hold of me.”

Contactmusic.com

Playing the poor card

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 12:22 PM - 1 Comment

A crackdown on anti-social behaviour—urinating, jaywalking, loitering—on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side has unleashed a debate over whether the poor should be spared the fines they were handed. The blitz by city police in the depressed neighbourhood was roundly criticized as unfairly targeting the indigent: most won’t be able to pay the $200-$300 fines for their alleged misdeeds. But does that mean, as at least three councillors have argued, the city should tear up the tickets? Miro Cernetig, a columnist with the Vancouver Sun, says no. Stupid as the crackdown may have been, he writes, tearing up the tickets undermines a fundamental priniciple of citizenship, namely, that we are all equal under the the law.

The Vancouver Sun

In Britain it pays (literally) to spy on your neighbour

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 12:21 PM - 0 Comments

Waltham Forest Council in North London has announced it will pay residents up to £500 to spy on and rat out fellow residents who commit “environmental crimes,” reports the Daily Mail. The scheme, in which cash is awarded for information about those who let their dogs foul pavements, drop litter, or paint graffiti, is the latest example of neighbourhood councils paying residents to play spy: some even pay children for information about people who leave recycling bags and rubbish bins out on the pavement. The TaxPayers Alliance has voiced its protest: “This initiative is going to cost us dear – in terms of financially and damaging community spirit,” a spokesman said.

The Daily Mail

Silvio Berlusconi’s seduction techniques revealed

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

A prostitute who allegedly recorded having sex with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi claims the politician offered her a seat in European Parliament, reports the Times of London. In an interview published in a French newspaper, Patrizia D’Addario says she met the PM at a party with 20 other female escorts at his house last October during which asked he the women if they’d like to work in television, go into politics or to take part in Big Brother, a show aired by one of his television channels. (The PM was criticized earlier this year for proposing that a string of attractive female candidates with no political experience, including a soap opera actress, run in the June European Parliament elections.) D’Addario said she was paid by a Berlusconi pal for the first sexual encounter she had with the politician; after a second, she says, she wasn’t paid but the PM promised to help her to resolve a problem with a building permit. He failed to follow through.

The Times

150 killed in Nigeria

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 12:19 PM - 0 Comments

Some 150 people are dead in Nigeria after Islamists carried out three attacks in the north of the country, torching a police station and causing hundreds of civilians to flee. Some of the militants follow a preacher who says that Western education is against Islamic teaching. They call themselves Boko Haram, meaning “education is prohibited.” Nigeria’s population of 150 million is split evenly between Muslims and Christians.

BBC News

UPDATED: Seriously sad news: RIP Jerry Yanover, parliamentary legend

By kadyomalley - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 11:05 AM - 9 Comments

The Globe and Mail’s Jane Taber has the details:

Jerry Yanover, parliamentary strategist to a legion of Liberal leaders, has died suddenly. He was 62.

He was found by neighbours in his downtown Ottawa apartment yesterday, not far from his other home, Parliament Hill.

Mr. Yanover, who served every Liberal whip and House leader since Donald Macdonald in 1969, had been strategizing with Paul Zed, Michael Ignatieff’s chief of staff, just hours before he was found. His beloved dog, Opie, a one-year-old Norwich terrier, was with him.

“He in many ways was the institution of Parliament,” Mr. Zed said today. “Because whether it was the strategy of the opposition or the challenges of government, he knew every move and every rule.”

His death will be a big loss to the Liberal leadership in the House of Commons. In addition to losing Mr. Yanover’s expertise, his colleague, Richard Wackid, another procedural mastermind, has been sidelined by a serious illness.

Last week, Mr. Yanover had gone into the hospital to have a procedure done on his heart. He spent several days in hospital before being released. He was to return in September for surgery. Liberal House leader and good friend Ralph Goodale had visited him in hospital. [...]

More from Susan Delacourt here.

UPDATED: The full text of the Liberal news release after the jump:
Continue…

All Taste is Distaste

By Andrew Potter - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 10:28 AM - 2 Comments

The New Yorker explains branding:

It's beginning to look a lot like … a fall election?

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 9:50 AM - 27 Comments

Hey, remember that bullet that we thought we dodged in June, when Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff cut a deal with the Conservatives to join forces and save the employment insurance system, thus sparing the country from having to trudge to the polls this year? Turns out the celebrations may have been premature. The Hill Times reports that the Conservative Party has plunged ahead with plans to hold a two-day candidate training conference this week in Ottawa, which will school political hopefuls in “social media, voter contact methods, fundraising and dealing with the media,” among other things. Meanwhile, the Liberal Party has laid down the law in a letter to local riding associations, who have been instructed to hold at least one fundraiser this summer, and ensure that all currently vacant nomination slots are filled by fall.

The Hill Times

Ben Silverman Leaving NBC To Spend More Time With Fred Silverman

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 9:47 AM - 0 Comments

And there was much… not rejoicing, just slapping of foreheads and cries of “what was NBC thinking in the first place?”

Ben Silverman, the co-chairman of NBC Universal Entertainment, is leaving the company to start up a new venture in partnership with Barry Diller’s media and Internet company, IAC.

The news was announced by IAC and Mr. Silverman Monday morning. At the same time, NBC announced that Jeff Gaspin, who has headed NBCU’s cable operations, will also assume Mr. Silverman’s role.

How 21st-Century TV Is Explained By 19th Century Theatre

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 9:21 AM - 1 Comment

My favourite still-living music critic, Conrad L. Osborne, wrote these words in 1968 when talking about the famously confusing plot of the opera La Gioconda (most famous for the  ”Dance of the Hours”). But the words also apply to many other forms of dramatic writing, particularly television. He’s writing about the way a dramatic piece incorporates convention and formula. Every writer has to include certain things that are demanded by convention, whether it’s to keep the audience’s attention at a particular point, or create suspense leading up to an break (whether it’s an intermission in the theatre or a commercial break on TV), or simply to make sure that each major performer gets some showy moments. But the best writing manages to disguise those conventions, or at least make them seem like they’re happening naturally. In writing that falls short of that standard, we can see the formula showing. Here’s what Osborne wrote; emphasis mine:

There is most certainly an aesthetic principle at work in the selection of characters and incidents [in La Gioconda] — though an aesthetic principle which we have come to regard as foreign to serious art. It is, approximately, that the course of a work should be determined by whatever adds up to the most effective sequence of events, rather than by what is organic and necessary to the donees of character and situation. There is a great deal of this in nineteenth-century Italian opera; people show up at the most improbable places and times simply because the theatrically effective thing is to have them show up… Among the things judged essential in this sort of opera is the presence of set numbers and arias — in this case, a major aria for each of six principal singers, plus an extended ballet and several big choral episodes. This means that the elements will again be manipulated in such a way as to provide these things in appropriate proportions and spacings.

This is, it is probably needless to say, also true of works that quite seriously pretend to greatness, the difference being that in such works, the author is at great pains to disguise his “pacing” and “structure,” to make it one with the logical motives and actions of the characters.

In Gioconda, as in many earlier Italian operas, there is hardly any such pretense: now comes a mezzo aria (the tenor leaving the stage for no good purpose other than that of letting her sing it), now comes a Confrontation Duet, etc., etc.

The idea that great works cover their tracks, making it harder to know whether the conventions are at the service of the story or vice-versa, is something that is very applicable to series television, because it’s so formulaic (it has to be, because if there wasn’t a formula it would be impossible to produce 13-22 episodes a season). The great television shows don’t do without formula and sure-fire, tried-and-true devices; they can’t. What they can do is take pains to construct the story in such a way that we get the impression that the events are happening “naturally,” that this scene is here because it absolutely couldn’t be any other way, and not because convention demands it (even though convention often does, in fact, demand it). The writers make it look like the characters are driving the story beats.

Whereas on a lesser show, even a good lesser show, we understand that things are happening just because they always happen; we know that Perry Mason will make the killer break Continue…

The end of Toronto's civic strike in sight

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 9:01 AM - 2 Comments

A mutual settlement has been reached between CUPE locals and the city of Toronto, said CUPE Local 79 spokesperson Ann Dembinski. The resolution will put an end to the city’s 36-day civic worker strike affecting garbage collection, ferry services, and city-run daycares. Details will be released once the agreement is ratified by union members and City Council. Information regarding the continuation of city services will be released in the upcoming days. “The agreements mean our employees can return to work and resume delivering the excellent public services Torontonians expect and deserve,” said Toronto Mayor David Miller. “The strike has been a difficult period for our city.”

CityTV

No cheers for minority gov

By Andrew Potter - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 8:03 AM - 38 Comments

I have a column in the other place today, in which I take issue with a couple of recent polls suggesting that Canadians are tired of minority government. I argue that the polls suggest no such thing: The number of people saying they want a majority has not changed since before the last election, and that number actually tracks quite closely the number of people willing to vote for a party that actually has a chance of forming a majority government.

The last graph is courtesy of colleague Kady O’Malley, whose blunt assessment of the latest EKOS poll stands as the definitive rebuttal.  Kady gets a month’s supply of Red Bull as payment.

word bleg

By Andrew Potter - Sunday, July 26, 2009 at 3:43 PM - 65 Comments

I’m looking for examples of words that are only ever used in their positive sense. I’m thinking of terms like “community”, “natural” and — in politics, “change.” Despite the fact that there are lots of downsides to communities, that the natural can kill you, and that lots of changes are for the worse, their rhetorical use is almost always as terms of approbation.

Can you think of other examples? Just the words is fine, though I’m happy to see your thoughts on why some words get used in this way and not others; what cultural or political assumptions are at work.

Sunday linkage

By Andrew Potter - Sunday, July 26, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 1 Comment

1. It’s amazing how much time you can kill on tumblr. Here’s my new favourite.

2. Academics are conformists.

3. Monkey reform school

4. Everything you want to know about jealousy, destroyer of love

5. Federal workers miss work more than anyone else in the country

Layoffs at Via Rail due to strike

By John Intini - Saturday, July 25, 2009 at 11:48 PM - 0 Comments

After Via Rail’s 340 train engineers walked off the job on Friday, the company laid off 2,000 employees in the service end of its business. If the strike drags on, another 400 workers could temporarily lose their jobs.”If there are no people to serve, trains to fix, we have a lot of people sitting around with nothing to do and we can’t afford to do that,” said Via spokesman Malcolm Andrews. “The second that we resume service they will all be recalled to work.”

CTV

Canadian Press

The future is tiny

By Colin Campbell - Saturday, July 25, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 3 Comments

If you think everyone in the auto sector is feeling grim these days, then you haven’t talked to John Vernile. The vice-president of sales at Hyundai Auto Canada says the recent turmoil has been nothing but good news. Sales for the South Korean automaker are up “in every segment,” he says—amounting to an overall surge in sales of 20 per cent during the first half of this year. “When this downturn hit, it just dialled things up for us,” he says. Thanks in part to the demand for Hyundai’s smaller cars, the company has suddenly emerged as one of the dominant players, not just in North America but globally. It’s now the fifth-largest carmaker in the world. In quality surveys, it ranks ahead of Toyota and Honda. Market share is up, sales are up, and opportunity abounds. Despite the tough economic times, “we quietly celebrate here,” says Vernile.

That kind of talk should have struggling industry heavyweights such as General Motors, which just emerged from bankruptcy protection, in panic mode. It is, after all, a revolutionary shift from 20 years ago when Hyundai was best known for the Pony, a small, cheap and just plain ugly car. Today, Hyundai has one of the hottest cars on the road with the Genesis, a sleek and expensive sedan that won the North American and Canadian car of the year awards. “Who would have ever thought we’d be selling a car over $40,000?” quips Vernile. “We can’t keep them in stock.” Continue…

Ericsson wins Nortel auction

By macleans.ca - Saturday, July 25, 2009 at 9:17 AM - 1 Comment

With a US1.13 billion bid, Swedish telecom Ericsson came away the winner of yesterday’s auction for Nortel’s wireless division, beating Nokia Siemens Networks and MatlinPatterson Global Advisers LLC. Based on the deal, Ericsson will hire a minimum of 2,500 employees from Nortel, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January. Ericsson’s bid is still subject to government and bankruptcy court approvals.

Bloomberg