This Week: Good news/Bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 24, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Face of the week
Cyclist Lance Armstrong was in second place overall as he crossed the finish line of stage 15 of the Tour de France last week

A week in the life of Jerry Springer
Having taken a sabbatical from his role on tabloid TV, the 65-year-old talk host wound up a run in London as Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago. On Friday, the New York Times reported he is in talks to play the role on Broadway, following in the footsteps of established singers like Huey Lewis and Usher. A contract has been signed, the paper said, while Springer confirmed that he hopes to play the role for a few weeks, then take the show on tour. Continue…

Econowatch

By Steve Maich - Friday, July 24, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 7 Comments

Deflation is the word that strikes fear into the hearts of economists more than any other, and this week it was the one on everybody’s lips. Both Canada and the United States reported that consumer prices slipped into reverse in June. The 0.3 per cent decline in Canada’s consumer prices was the biggest since the 1950s, and the first time the cost of living has dropped from a year earlier since 1994.

The news sent many observers into an anxiety attack. But there are two critically important things you need to know about this. Continue…

Innovation isn’t in Canada’s DNA

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 24, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 38 Comments

I caught up with John Manley by telephone at his eastern Ontario cottage, where his summer vacation was already drawing to a close. The former Liberal minister, who served as deputy prime minister in Jean Chrétien’s last years as PM, will have a busy autumn.

Manley has had five years of relative calm as a corporate lawyer and member of assorted blue-chip boards—Canadian Pacific, CIBC, Nortel. Well, the Nortel chip used to be blue, anyway. He did agree to run that Afghanistan panel for Stephen Harper, a decision that earned Manley a lot of detractors in the Liberal party. But then, he never was much good at passing tests of ideological purity. Continue…

Metaphors Hot and Cool

By Andrew Potter - Friday, July 24, 2009 at 8:22 AM - 9 Comments

I’m about 2/5 of the way into Create Your Own Economy, the new book by Tyler Cowen. It’s an odd book in many ways (it opens with a 40 page argument for why the autistic brain is poised to thrive in the new economy) so I’ll hold off on a proper review till I’m done. But I’m a huge fan of Cowen; I think he’s one of the best bloggers in world, and his early book In Praise of Commerical Culture was one of the bigger influences on RS.

Part of Cowen’s schtick (or is it his brand?) is that he is gives the impression of having read just about everything worth reading, and of understanding what the author is trying to do better than the author does. He’s what a friend of mine in medicine calls “unpimpable” — apparently “pimping” is a med school term for the practice of trying to stump residents with hard cases.

Anyway, all of which is a reason why I was a bit surprised by this passage in the book, from the opening to Chapter 4:

McLuhan and his followers were fond of pointing out that television was a “hot” medium because of its personality and immediacy, while print was a “cool” medium because of its objectivity and distance. What’s happened is that print — in the broad sense of the term — has become a hot medium too. Today… you can create more content and make your messages more personal, emotionly richer, and more evocative in subtle ways.

What’s wrong with this?

Continue…

'More than simply not being Stephen Harper'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 24, 2009 at 2:08 AM - 24 Comments

In the first of a two-part meditation, Bruce Anderson considers our hyper-simplified times and Michael Ignatieff’s situation.

I’m not one of those who think Mr. Ignatieff has had a terrible couple of months, but the next few could stand to be better. His personality is starting to develop some definition, not all of his doing. He’ll be seen as smart, but smart must be paired with equal measures of humility and purpose, or it can be more drawback than advantage.

In my mind, Mr. Ignatieff needs to evince passion, hope, determination, as well as brainpower. His deepest personal values need to be more on display. The best way to do that is to push a handful of big ideas onto the table. He can then demonstrate those qualities in the pursuit of something other than power itself. Looking passionate about power for its own sake is the fatal flaw of many political figures, the easiest weakness for voters to spot.

Readier than thou

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 9:42 PM - 7 Comments

More from Michael Ignatieff’s incredibly anticipated appearance in public this afternoon.

Bipartisan negotiations on employment insurance reform got off to a rocky start Thursday, with the Liberal leader slamming what he called the Conservative government’s indifference to the plight of Canada’s jobless. Michael Ignatieff issued the criticism just as three Liberals and three Conservatives – members of an EI reform panel struck last month in an 11th-hour deal to avert a summer election – were sitting down for their first meeting.

“We note that the government has taken five weeks to get its act together on this. We were ready to go at the end of June with this committee,” Ignatieff said. ”It’s a sign I’m not sure that they give any real importance to employment insurance reform but we certainly do.”

Plus comment on Nortel and Abdelrazik.

Tale of the tape

By Tony Keller - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 5:40 PM - 11 Comments

Each November, for more than a decade and a half, Maclean’s has published its special issue ranking Canadian universities, comparing them on attributes such as resources, research, reputation and student and faculty quality. This exercise is, however, a purely made-in-Canada affair. We look at how McGill stacks up against the University of British Columbia and where Waterloo sits relative to Simon Fraser; we don’t ask how they compare with Stanford, Oxford or the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. But what if we did? What if we asked that favourite Canadian question: how are we doing? How do our universities compare to those in the rest of the world?

• Access: Canadians are arguably the most educated people on earth. Or at least the most schooled. Forty-seven per cent of working-age Canadians have a post-secondary credential, meaning university or college. That’s higher than any other developed country: the U.S. figure is just 39 per cent. What’s more, the number of Canadians with higher education is steadily rising. Fifty-five per cent of Canadians aged 25 to 34 attended university or college, compared to fewer than four out of 10 Canadians aged 55 to 64. Score one for Canadian higher ed. Continue…

Middleman!

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 5:36 PM - 0 Comments

I liked ABC Family’s Middleman, and the DVD set of it (due next week) is a typically fine Shout! Factory production, but I don’t think I realized how much of a following it had until the San Diego Comic-Con, where a lot of the web and Twitter talk revolved around the Middleman panel, and specifically the live table read of the unproduced 13th and final episode. The DVD set includes the script of the episode, but not, obviously, the table read. Something in the show just really clicked with the online community. It’s like with the absence of light, silly sci-fi shows from TV (most of the ones that are on the networks and basic-cable channels are pretty heavy and dark), Middleman became a short-lived refuge for viewers looking for an escapist but geek-friendly show.

It’s not surprising that the show didn’t really work on ABC Family, though; that network has actually shown a tendency to gravitate towards somewhat soapier, heavier fare — Greek and Secret Life of the American Teenager are not deep, but they are not particularly light — toward naturalistic subjects, and away from science fiction and fantasy. Their longer-running sci-fi show, Kyle XY, was canceled soon after Middleman, as the network basically adopted a no-geeks-allowed policy.

Malaysia halts English experiment

By Julien Russell Brunet - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 1 Comment

For the past six years, Malaysian state schools have taught math and science in English, the international language of science and business. But that experiment has recently come to an abrupt halt: in 2012, teachers will return to using the national Malay language, Bahasa Malaysia, in the classroom.

The announcement comes after months of demonstrations by the ethnic Malay majority, who were demanding a return to Malaysia’s traditional language. They say the use of English in schools undermines their struggle to modernize Bahasa Malaysia and develop a domestic scientific lexicon. Continue…

Kid Coderre

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 4:47 PM - 5 Comments

Denis Coderre embraces his parody.

The “mini-consecration,” as Mr. Coderre called his coming appearances on the Quebec equivalent of Spitting Image , is remarkable given that most characters on the show are current or former party leaders. “I think that it’s an honour to be a part of a show like that,” said Mr. Coderre, who is the first backbencher to get his computerized double on Et Dieu créa … Laflaque…

Getting a spot on Laflaque is only natural for Mr. Coderre, according to the program’s creator, who describes him as a prototypical “old-style politician.” “He is a human caricature,” award-winning cartoonist Serge Chapleau said while introducing the animated version of the glad-handling Mr. Coderre recently.

At last check, Mr. Coderre was using the cartoon as his Facebook photo.

Brides forced to take tests for virginity

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 4:20 PM - 2 Comments

When 151 women gathered in Madhya Pradesh state in central India last month, they were preparing for a celebration; all were to be married in a state-run mass wedding in the city of Shahdol. But they weren’t expecting what came next: being shepherded into a line, and then subjected to an official “virginity test.”

The mass wedding was part of a new state-wide scheme to provide free marriages to the poor. Traditionally, women in India’s tribal regions have difficulty finding spouses, since they can’t afford costly weddings and lavish dowries. The new program not only lets them tie the knot for free, it provides them with gifts worth about 6,500 rupees ($153). Continue…

Our short national panic is over

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 4:02 PM - 42 Comments

Michael Ignatieff appears in public. Says things.

“The thing that struck me is why isn’t someone in this government getting up and saying ‘don’t trash the Canadian health care system in the United States.’ Who’s standing up for Canada here?”

“Don’t drag Canada’s good  name into the mud in the United States. We’ve got enough problems with the United States right now with the buy-American stuff, with the thickening of the border.   But every Canadian is proud of this thing and we don’t like seeing it dragged into the mind and I can’t understand why the Harper government is completely silent on the issue. I won’t be silent.”

Where Do You Prefer The Main Titles To Be?

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 4:01 PM - 3 Comments

This isn’t the most pressing of TV-related issues, but: isn’t it a little surprising that there are so few network shows that have the opening titles at the beginning? I always assumed that the habit of putting the opening titles at the end of an act (or sometimes, today, in the middle: a cold open followed by the main titles followed by a few more scenes) developed because networks were afraid we’d switch the channel if they started with the titles. But most pay-cable shows, plus basic cable shows like Mad Men, begin with the main title and don’t seem to lose many viewers because of it. It just seems like no matter how short the titles are for a network show, they’ll put them after the first scene; How I Met Your Mother and The Office both started out with the theme song at the beginning, only to move it to after the first scene. In the case of HIMYM, the theme song worked much, much better at the beginning; that’s the only respect in which the first season is superior to the second. Family Guy and The Simpsons and other animated shows still (usually) have the titles first, and that’s almost it.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.3022047&w=425&h=350&fv=]

I have to admit I don’t quite understand the advantage of putting a 10-second main title five minutes into the episode, where it can seem like a jarring interruption, instead of at the beginning, the way Frasier and other shows without full-scale opening theme songs used to. Maybe it’s the influence of movies; there are more and more films like The Dark Knight that don’t give us the title until the end, and this has rubbed off on network TV a bit (IIRC, Pushing Daisies did that in some episodes, doing without any title card at all until the very end). But while I know the days of the one-minute title sequence followed by a commercial break are pretty much done, what would be so wrong with putting a short title sequence at the beginning and going directly into the first scene? In structural terms, that technique helps a show like Mad Men because the writers don’t have to come up with a stand-alone scene that can be interrupted by the title. And it also helps the show by setting the tone instantly, rather than requiring the opening scene to do all the work. There must be logistical reasons why this isn’t done on the networks, but I don’t know what they are exactly. Even screenwriting software assumes that every network sitcom script has to have a cold opening, as if unaware that most successful sitcoms had nothing of the sort.

Giving the guys a lesson in true grit

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 3:57 PM - 0 Comments

The Hurt Locker

Forget the blockbusters. The most exciting movie of the summer is not Public Enemies or Terminator Salvation or The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. It’s a tough little film called The Hurt Locker, Kathyrn Bigelow’s nail-biting thriller about an American bomb disposal squad in Baghdad. Strangely, there are still very few female directors making mainstream movies, and the number of women directing films about war and terrorism is even more scarce. And yet, along comes another one—Fifty Dead Men Walking, which opens July 31.

Like The Hurt Locker, Fifty Dead Men Walking is a gritty suspense drama about a group of men who become walking targets in the chaos of urban guerrilla warfare, where battles are fought in residential neighbourhoods and no one can be trusted. It too is directed by a middle-aged woman, Ottawa-born filmmaker Kari Skogland. Her previous movie was The Stone Angel, an earnest adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s CanLit classic. But in watching the taut, visceral drama—starring Jim Sturgess as an IRA informant and Ben Kingsley as the British cop who recruits him—you’d never guess that this U.K. co-production is a Canadian movie, or that its director is a woman. Continue…

One flap of a Butterfly’s wings . . .

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 88 Comments

It’s not entirely clear what the naked Russian lady was referring to when she asked, in heavily accented English, “Would you like it?” But I doubt James Hudson was expecting “it” to include the highly graphic filming of the encounter and its subsequent posting on the Internet under the title “The Adventures Of Mr. Hudson In Russia.” Mr. Hudson was in Russia to serve as Britain’s deputy consul-general in Ekaterinburg, but his starring role opposite and under two local hookers brought an end to his tour of booty . . . er, duty: one portly bespectacled chap from Whitehall with his dressing gown hanging open quaffing champagne with a pair of Urals slappers going through the motions with all the flair of the mechanical hare at an East End greyhound track.

You’d think in a hypersexual age even the FSB (successors to the KGB) who are alleged to have set him up would have no use for anything as quaint as a Cold War “honey trap.” At a time when men can be women and parade down Main Street subsidized by municipal taxpayers (at least in Canada), surely life is all honey, no trap. But out there on the diplomatic circuit it’s a different world, and for an enterprising intelligence agency, the lonely wallflower at the embassy ball is still a reliable way to access your enemy’s secrets. As it happens, Mr. Hudson’s career self-detonated only a few days after the death of one of the most famous honey traps of the postwar era, the Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu. Continue…

What’s going on at Schwartz’s?

By Jacob Richler - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 3:20 PM - 12 Comments

On Wednesday, June 10, very near to five on an otherwise glorious Montreal afternoon, the unthinkable happened: I took a bite of a freshly unwrapped medium-fat smoked meat sandwich from Schwartz’s, then chewed, chewed some more—chewed far too much—and then, racked with sadness, tossed the rest of it into the nearest rubbish bin. This was a profoundly poignant moment for someone who has been a regular at the iconic delicatessen on the Main since long before he could even see over the counter—way back when the sign outside actually just said Schwartz’s instead of Charcuterie Hébraïque de Montréal. So a few days later, I rang up and broke the news to Schwartz’s manager Frank Silva, who works days.

“Was this at night?” he asked.

I conceded that it was. Continue…

Will that be cash or charge backs?

By Nina Slawek and Suzanne Christie, Takeoffeh.com - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 3:20 PM - 2 Comments

While you routinely surf the web for travel deals, does it ever cross your mind that credit card you whipped out to pay for the trip is slowly bringing the travel industry to its knees? Probably not — it isn’t your problem. Yet.

The fact is, credit card payments are becoming a luxury the industry can no longer afford. The companies that process the transactions are putting the squeeze on travel suppliers – which in turn means you may well feel the pinch. Continue…

Statistics if necessary, but not necessarily statistics

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 3:17 PM - 12 Comments

Rob Moore considers the slightly rising crime rate in New Brunswick.

“The data shows we still have a lot of room for improvement and, even more importantly, our justice system can do better.”

Authenticity Watch: The Hamptons

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 3:03 PM - 10 Comments

Obviously, I’m a sucker for stories that explore the subtle (and not-so) mechanisms of status display, especially when that display masquerades as a quest not for status but for the authentic. That kind of story is the meat-and-two-veg of the New York Times style section, and today’s is great.

It’s summer, so the piece is about the Hamptons of course. How do the long-time locals secretly signal to one another, behind the backs of the tourists and the arrivistes? By their t-shirts, naturally. Anyone from Jersey can pick up a MONTAUK t-shirt along main street, but there’s only one place you can find a Ditch Witch shirt — out of the back of a car beside an obscure food truck:

It signals localism, but a “friendly localism,” said Ms. Adams, who cooked for years at restaurants in East Hampton and Montauk before parking her truck in the sand. It suggests that the wearer is in on something, has the key to what Tracy Feith, the surfer and designer who operates a shop at the Surf Lodge in Montauk, called “the authenticity everyone’s trying to find in the marketplace.”

But now the Times has gone and ruined it. I wonder if the uproar from the Hamptonites will lead the Times to “unpublish” this, just like they unpublished their story about the secret climbing gym in Brooklyn?

Lonesome George may soon have offspring

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 2:56 PM - 0 Comments

Lonesome George is the last of his kind. He is a Geochelone abigdoni tortoise from the island of Pinta in the Galapagos. He is currently living at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the central Galapagos island of Santa Cruz. For years scientists have been trying to have him father offspring, but to no avail. But good news: one of the two female tortoises living in George’s compound has laid five eggs. Now, we have to wait until November to see if the eggs will hatch.

BBC News [with video]

The Great Beyond

Angela Rachelle Louise Gail Holm 1993-2009

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 7 Comments

Angela Rachelle Louise Gail Holm was born in Winnipeg on Feb. 24, 1993, the second of two children born to Sigga Lynn Holm and Roddy Rieck. She came into the world two years almost to the day after her brother Randall, whom she adored. Their bond was uncommonly deep. Shortly after birth, “Baby Ang,” as her parents called her, was diagnosed with the rare immune deficiency hypogammaglobulinemia; doctors had detected it in Randall when he was five months old. Neither could produce the antibodies needed to fight off routine colds and flus. Even a cut or an ear infection could land them in hospital. To boost their immunity they received monthly injections of gamma globulin. “Angie,” as she grew to be known, was prone to pneumonia, and she spent a lot of time at Children’s Hospital in downtown Winnipeg. On good days, nurses would sneak her to their station to “help” with paperwork. At night, Lynn would often crawl into her hospital bed.

By the time she was nine, Angie’s hospitalizations had mostly stopped. But Randall suddenly took a turn for the worse. It was as though they’d traded places, says Lynn; he’d never been that sick. In spite of the health challenges, though, they were normal kids. Angie had an all-pink bedroom and a bed full of stuffed animals. A “girly-girl,” she loved to style her hair and dance around the house, “shakin’ her booty”—iPod blaring hip hop, country or Rihanna. “Wish you could do this, mom?” she’d tease. On weekend mornings, she’d dive into her parents’ bed for a snuggle. She was tiny, and grew even skinnier when she got sick. Randall—“Little man” to his parents—was even smaller. He was very protective of Angie, and made sure she never wandered off or was teased. Continue…

A cash gift for families with kids

By Julien Russell Brunet - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 7 Comments

After almost a year of singing the economic blues, Canadian families are about to get a little financial relief. Starting this month, parents will get as much as $400 in additional benefits each year—tax-free—thanks to recent changes in the National Child Benefit system.

The changes mean parents can earn an extra $1,894 before the National Child Benefit supplement for low-income families is cut off, or the base benefit under the Canada Child Tax Benefit begins to get phased out. The effect of the change is significant: 2.4 million low- and middle-income Canadian families will be eligible for increased child tax benefits, and low-income families with two children will receive additional funds of up to $436 a year. Parents who have registered their children for the programs will automatically get the increase if they’re eligible. Continue…

Arsonist terrorizes tiny town

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 2 Comments

Creelman, Sask.—population 81, according to the last census—has a hockey rink, post office, coffee shop, general store, United Church, and not much else. But by the time its serial arsonist is done, residents fear there may be a good deal less. Until a month ago, the village, situated 115 km southeast of Regina, had gone 30 years without a house fire. Now, in just a few weeks, four homes have been set ablaze, and its citizens want answers. “Everyone’s afraid,” says Mayor Don Anslow. “You just don’t feel at ease when you go to bed.”

The first two fires came on the night of May 28. A vacant house on Main Street was already fully engulfed in flames by the time the volunteer firefighters arrived from the nearest fire station in Filmore, 11 km away (firefighters also came in from Stoughton, which is 24 km in the other direction). The hoses had barely been unrolled when someone detected a second blaze, inside an empty vacation property across the back alley on Stanley Street. Set on mattresses and paper placed across stove burners, that fire was quickly extinguished, but it caused extensive smoke damage. Continue…

Odds that he'll demand a full public inquiry 3/2 and rising – NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar responds to Abdelrazik's story

By kadyomalley - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 8 Comments

Not that ITQ would quibble with him if he did, mind you — not after what we heard this morning, at least. Check back at 2:30 pm for full liveblogging coverage.

(In the meantime, check out Paul Koring’s latest here.)

2:17:24 PM
And we’re back — and that was a royal we, not an indication that a throng of reporters is filling the room in anticipation of Paul Dewar’s reaction; ITQ is, thus far, the only non-technician in the room. That’s what happens when you don’t give us sufficient warning of a non-urgent press conference, I guess — unless it’s likely to blow up the current news cycle real good, we’re just not going to drop everything and head to 130-S on little more than an hour’s notice.

Continue…