Tributes pour in for Patrick Swayze

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 11:55 AM - 0 Comments

Tributes are pouring in for Patrick Swayze following the performer’s death at age 57 after an odds-defying battle with pancreatic cancer. Demi Moore, who played Swayze’s fiancée in Ghost, led the tributes on Twitter, tweeting: “Patrick you are loved by so many and your light will forever shine in all of our lives.” Whoopi Goldberg, who credits the actor with assisting her win for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film, said: “Patrick was a really good man, a funny man and one to whom I owe much that I can’t ever repay. I believe in Ghost‘s message, so he’ll always be near.” Jennifer Grey, who played Swayze’s romantic partner Frances “Baby” Houseman in Dirty Dancing, described her co-star as “a rare and beautiful combination of raw masculinity and amazing grace.” Even after his diagnosis in January 2008, Swayze refused to allow his illness to force him from the limelight, filming a memoir with his wife, Lisa Niemi, and shooting The Beast, a television drama series in which he played an undercover FBI agent.

The Telegraph

Kids These Days III

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 11:50 AM - 26 Comments

Don and Vinod have replied to my reply to their reply to my column about today’s yoot.  Their latest is in The Mark, published here.

I’ve gone through their piece a few times, and the only thing I’m sure about is they’ve substantially shifted the terrain of debate. As they argue, what’s really at stake here is not a generation gap per se, but a fundamental shift in social identies, on a par with the transition from tribal or ethnic identities to the rise of nation-state identities in the 18th and 19th century. Now, it’s the demise of the nation-state —  thanks to globalization, technology, population mobility, and so on — that has triggered what they describe as a “seismic shift” in our identities, with Gen Y feeling the full brunt of it.

And so:

In our view, identifying the skills and supports young people need to cope with this kind of change should be one of our highest priorities as a society. We cannot simply assume that a whole generation will have the internal resources to figure it out for themselves. This new world has caused an identity shift; with it comes a new challenge that demands that we rethink many of the structures, attitudes, and relationships of the old world. There is no turning back the clock.

I have thoughts on this, but I’m not sure they are good thoughts. Anyone here want to chime in first?

In the race for most surreal national politics…

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 11:49 AM - 37 Comments

…Canada’s going to have to settle for the silver yet again.

I don’t know about you, but now I’m always going to wonder what Teenage Republican Camp was like in South Carolina in 1966.

Bush: McCain campaign was a "five-spiral crash"

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 11:45 AM - 3 Comments

A new book by Matt Latimer, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, claims the former president was dumbfounded by John McCain’s inability to fill a reception hall. According to excerpts obtained by RAW STORY, Bush, whom the author suspects preferred Mitt Romney to McCain, had been asked to join the Republican candidate at a rally in Phoenix. However, organizers shut the press out of the event because it wasn’t going to draw much of a crowd, prompting Bush to question McCain’s chances in the presidential election. “He can’t get 500 people to show up for an event in his hometown? [...] This is a five-spiral crash, boys.” Bush was no more impressed with McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as a running mate, suggesting Palin was “being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for. She hasn’t spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let’s wait and see how she looks five days out.”

The Raw Story

Fighting Big Oil

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 11:44 AM - 0 Comments

Major oil companies are no strangers to operating in dangerous environments. But the Niger Delta takes security concerns to a new level. One main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, has been responsible for dozens of kidnappings and attacks on oil rigs that have dramatically slowed oil production, which has been as low as 800,000 barrels a day (a far cry from the 2010 target of 4 million barrels). The group has been so effective in the past that its tactics have helped push up world oil prices. Financial Times reporter Michael Peel travelled the river in search of the heavily-armed militants and found a trigger-happy group, but also a people eager to talk pollution, poverty and their willingness to fight big oil to protect their land.

Financial Times

The link between Jack Layton and your bladder

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 11:14 AM - 9 Comments

Have you heard of Runpee.com? It’s a website that tells you the ideal, won’t-miss-much juncture at which to slip out of a movie to relieve yourself. It also fills you in on what you’ll have missed up on the screen.

We need one of those for Canadian politics.

Sept. 15, 7:32 a.m. OK, this is the part where Jack Layton notices his poll numbers tanking so he climbs into bed with Stephen Harper, a man that for years he has routinely pilloried, condemned and otherwise not liked very much. Striving to create an aura of principled crisis, Jack hogs the political limelight under the pretense of advancing public policy and societal justice, though pretty much everyone attributes his abrupt aboutface to saving his own political bacon. Jack also talks about kitchen tables. Ultimately, Jack Continue…

Car vs. Bike

By Jonathon Gatehouse and Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 11:08 AM - 30 Comments

Toronto’s “Mink Mile” was designed for gawking. A two-block stretch of Bloor Street West populated with the kind of high-end retailers—Cartier, Prada, Chanel, Tiffany—whose imposing prices strictly limit the hoi polloi to window shopping. Close to several luxury hotels and fine restaurants, it’s a favoured hunting ground for paparazzi when the film festival rolls into town. But since the night of Aug. 31, a new and far grimier attraction has emerged—a grey Canada Post mail collection box. Bouquets of cheap flowers surround its battered legs. Scrawled courier slips and handwritten Post-it notes cover the sides and top. Expressions of sympathy and anger at the violent death of Darcy Allan Sheppard, a 33-year-old bike courier. “R.I.P. A helluva way to die,” reads one. “Heaven’s got lots of bike lanes,” says another.

The incident, an all-too-common big-city dispute between a cyclist and a motorist that somehow escalated into a confrontation that saw Sheppard clinging to the car as it bashed him against trees, lampposts and finally the mailbox, before he fell into the road and was run over, was shocking enough. But the fact that the driver was Ontario’s former attorney general, Michael Bryant, makes it all the harder to comprehend. The 43-year-old, touted as a rising political star and perhaps future premier, has been charged with criminal negligence and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death, and faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. And the question of whether the pillar of the community is guilty of an unconscionable act of road rage, or himself a victim of violent attack at the hands of the cyclist, is the debate consuming the city, sparking angry, traffic-blocking protests by bike advocates, incredulous cocktail party chatter, and an all-out media frenzy.

Only fate—or a fertile literary imagination—could have brought such a disparate pair together. A troubled young man who lived on society’s margins crossing paths with a striving power broker on a patch of Canada’s richest real estate. Two very different stories, one tragic result, and an ending that has yet to be written.

“He came out of nowhere.”

Continue…

Quebec needs money

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 10:43 AM - 3 Comments

In a bid to stave off another deficit budget, the Quebec government will raise its Provincial Sales Tax one percent next year. The move, which is expected to raise $1 billion in revenue, will no doubt be unpopular. Still, give credit for straightforwardness to Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand: “We need money,” he told the Canadian Press.

Montreal Gazette

The unSenator

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 10:32 AM - 24 Comments

Jacques Demers seems somewhat uneasy with his new profession.

Demers said he would work hard and is convinced that he can succeed in defending vulnerable Canadians when it comes to issues he struggled with in his youth, such as poverty, child abuse and literacy. But he said he has “no idea” whether his new political party is the best vehicle to help him fight for those causes and that he would be reluctant to campaign for the Conservatives in an election.

“I’m not ready for that,” he said. “I’m not a politician who knocks on doors, shakes hands, goes into halls, (telling people to) vote for me, making a bunch of promises and is not able to keep them. I don’t want to play that role. I want to be a loyal man. I will work hard, and at a certain point, there will be a sign I give myself to express myself more.”

Is showering bad for you?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 10:14 AM - 2 Comments

Long a staple of our morning routine, showering might actually be bad for your health, according to U.S. researchers who found that nearly one-third of shower heads contain high levels of Mycobacterium avium, a germ that causes lung disease. “If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy,” lead researcher Norman Pace, a microbiologist, told the BBC. According to Pace, shower water contains bacteria suspended in droplets that are easily absorbed deep into the lungs. Healthy people should be fine, but those with weakened immune systems (like the elderly or pregnant) could be at risk of developing a lung infection. In fact, showers have also been shown to spread other infectious diseases, including Legionnaires’ disease (a type of pneumonia) and chest infections. Plastic shower heads seem to be worse than metal ones, noted Pace, whose team swabbed and tested 50 shower heads in nine U.S. cities and found that 30 per cent of them posed a potential risk.

BBC News

Not good enough

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 10:13 AM - 8 Comments

The NDP may consider the government’s latest attempt at employment insurance reform a “very serious proposition,” but the Windsor Star reports that labour leaders in the hard-hit region don’t see much reason to celebrate. The Conservative proposal would temporarily extend benefits for longtime workers by up to 20 weeks, but local labour lawyer Marion Overhold told the Star that, since “many Windsor plants have been shut down for brief periods fairly regularly, it’s likely that very few area unemployed will qualify for these changes.” Sanja Maric, coordinator of the Canadian Auto Workers Local 200 workers adjustment centre, agrees. “They may work for a small number of older workers but what about the rest of the unemployed population? I don’t think the changes cover enough people,” she told the Star.

The Windsor Star

Iraqi shoe hurler is free

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 10:12 AM - 2 Comments

Muntather Zaidi, the Iraqi television reporter who famously heaved a shoe at former U.S. president George W. Bush, is out of prison. He celebrated his release by holding a news conference, in which he said he was beaten, whipped and shocked in the first days of his incarceration. He also railed against what he described as “the occupation” of his country, saying his shoe attack was an act of vengeance on behalf of innocent Iraqis who have suffered due to the U.S. invasion.

Los Angeles Times

Iran's abuse of its online journalists

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 9:59 AM - 1 Comment

The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center has released a detailed report. Incidentally, one of the centre’s founders, McGill international law professor Payam Ahavan, is featured in an article I wrote in this week’s Maclean’s. I’ll link to it when it’s posted on our website later this week.

Nanos/Ipsos: The Unloved One

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 232 Comments

Nik Nanos has the latest leadership numbers, which are just a big spiky mace full of bad for the Liberals — that is, if you’re not one of those dangerous subversives who don’t think leadership numbers matter much outside of the writ period: Stephen Harper is viewed as twice as trustworthy as Michael Ignatieff (31 to 14) and a third more competent (36 to 20) and more future-Canada-visionary (32 to 20), which gives him a final Nanodex score of 99 to just 54 for Ignatieff, and 40 for Jack Layton.

The PDF gives a little more context, including not just the regionals — which are remarkably consistent across the country — but breakdowns by vote profile, which is how we learn that just 35% of Liberal voters picked Ignatieff as “most trustworthy,” with 15% choosing Harper and 13% who like the cut of that Layton jib. Compare that to the 71% of Conservatives, 64% of Bloc supporters and 45% of New Democrats who back their respective party leaders on the trust question. It’s a pattern that repeats with the “competent” and “vision for Canada” question, although at least Ignatieff can comfort himself that he’s pretty much tied with Duceppe — and Layton — on the latter question amongst Bloc supporters.

If that isn’t enough to thoroughly dash the post-Sudbury high, there’s also a new poll from Ipsos, which inspired the following bit of bruise-purple prose from whoever wrote the press release: “Harper Tories hold hammer over Ignatieff’s Grits.” Le ouch.

That hammer, by the way, is the same 39% lead that made us all go ‘huh?’ when it showed up last week; it hasn’t moved, although the Liberals have actually gone up by 2%, and are now a mere nine points behind at 30%, while the apparently- headed-for-single-digit-support New Democrats are at 12%.

In what is becoming an almost obligatory secondary line of questions for pollsters, Ipsos also questioned respondents about the need for an election to “clear the air”, and – not surprisingly — found that 71% of those surveyed think that Parliament is working just fine, compared with 25% who don’t, and 4% who just don’t know.

Continue…

The Calgary earthquake

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 7:04 AM - 44 Comments

Wild Rose Alliance wins Calgary-Glenmore provincial by-election; Ed Stelmach’s Conservative candidate comes third. What’s a Wild Rose? We thought you might ask.

Are you ready for some character assassination?

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 5:46 AM - 13 Comments

First, I’d like to thank the Conservative Party of Canada for running their newest attack ad approximately 2.96 million times during Monday Night Football. Weeks from now, when we reflect on the first weekend of the 2009 NFL season, the memories will surely blur together and we’ll all recount New England quarterback Tom Brady completing a thrilling game-winning pass to Michael Ignatieff’s mercenary recklessness. Final score: Patriots 25, Canada’s Awesome Economic Recovery That Ignatieff is Totally Ruining With His Ambition and Effete Hand Gestures 24.

Second, here’s my favourite passage from this morning’s Globe (though, full disclosure, it doesn’t quite top the recent passage about the horse being sexy):

Amid the drama yesterday, Mr. Ignatieff delivered what was being billed by the Liberals as a major speech about Canada on the international stage. However, his message about Canada’s place in the world was lost in the all the breathless speculation about an election.

This is an all-time classic media move: when reporters write about how Continue…

'We have lost an extraordinary Canadian'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 11:47 PM - 4 Comments

The Governor General marks each casualty in Afghanistan with a statement of mourning, a few paragraphs to commemorate the sacrifice. Here, for instance, is one from last week. Here is another from August.

Michaelle Jean’s statement today though, to mark the passing of Private Patrick Lormand, runs some 500 words, the Governor General taking a moment to reflect on her recent visit to Afghanistan. Continue…

Here's . . . The Jay Leno Show

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 9:58 PM - 11 Comments

I would never have known this, because the network gave it so little publicity, but apparently there is some new show starting tonight at 10 p.m., starring a large-chinned comedian of some sort. I will watch it now and jot down anything that comes to mind. Headlines may be involved.

- I don’t think I’m qualified to explain the differences between the new set and Leno’s old Tonight Show set. I know, physically, that they’re not the same, but there’s not a whole lot of difference. I feel like the new one looks a bit like Bob Saget’s old America’s Funniest Home Videos set, but it may be that the shows themselves are similar.

- Except for the brief joke about the endless promos for the show, Leno makes no attempt to explain the format of the new show or to talk about the controversies behind it. Instead he says that “we’ve been off the air for 3 months,” implying that this is the same show as The Tonight Show, and launches almost immediately into his standard monologue, which should continue for approximately the next 379 minutes. (Someday I’m going to time Leno’s monologues and a past-his-prime Bob Hope monologue to see which one is longer and which one has fewer good jokes. He came very close to saying “I wanna tell ya” just now; he didn’t quite say it, but his transformation into Bob Hope is almost complete). Honestly, I think this is the right move for Leno — I mean, just going into his monologue and not trying to justify the show or the format. Conan O’Brien really did try to address the issue of whether he should be hosting The Tonight Show, whether he belongs in L.A., and it just made him look weak. Leno is dull, but strong and confident. His audience doesn’t like to see neurosis.

- The problem with Twitter is that it’s faster than live-blogging, so everyone on that site — well, specifically, Memles and Poniewozik has already pointed out the obvious: the Cheaters segment would have been funnier if Kevin had been “cheating” with Conan O’Brien. But it makes sense that it would be a Leno impersonator instead. Leno isn’t about to acknowledge O’Brien’s existence, at least not right up front. The whole show so far has been dedicated to the proposition that nothing has changed, he just went on a three-month vacation and then came back with the same show at a different time, and that he is still the only real NBC talk-show host.

- And he’s back from the commercial. Brief reference to the new set, but apart from that he’s still acting like nothing has changed. That is the theme of the whole night.

- Out comes Dan Finnerty, Kathy Najimy’s husband, to introduce his “field piece.” Immediately we know the difference between these field segments (which are going to be the part of the show that is slightly different from the old one) and the ones on The Daily Show or the ones where Conan sends himself out into the field. Those segments are intended to make the comedian look like an idiot. Sometimes on TDS, they may make someone else (politicians, authority figures) look like an idiot, but in these segments, the comedian is supposed to be a cool guy, acting idiotic to make other people uncomfortable. The supposed friendliness of Leno masks the fact that his show is, in its humour, probably the nastiest of all talk shows. And it looks like we’re in for many more segments where ordinary people are humiliated or made to squirm. — I’m writing all this analysis because I have nothing else to do during this segment. Certainly not laugh. My God, it’s still going on, and I’ve already written this whole paragraph.

- So that’s going to be his new thing: sitting in a chair instead of a desk. It looks weird, but I have to give it to him: it’s the first thing I’ve seen on the show that looks vaguely unexpected.

- Jerry Seinfeld (probably with Leno’s tacit approval) finally brings up the fact that Leno “left” and then didn’t leave, though in such a way that it makes Leno sound good (like the world’s greatest workaholic or something).

- I thought the interview was going to an interesting, somewhat awkward place when they started talking about the fact that Seinfeld is no longer all that big a star. But it turned out to just be a segue into a pre-recorded, pre-rehearsed Oprah bit.

- One of the themes of the night, underlying themes I mean, is that Leno is incapable of self-deprecating humour. (Even the oldest self-deprecation joke in the book, the one about how nobody knows when the show is on, is given not to Leno but to Oprah and Seinfeld. Leno just can’t put himself down, at least not on his first episode.) But again, that may be a good strategy, given how Conan O’Brien’s relentless self-deprecation has not played that well with the broad audience.

- Also in Twitter-land, I was reminded by David Loehr that the no-desk format was also used on Later With Bob Costas:

- The take an interview with a politician and splice in new questions” bit is pretty reliable, and this version isn’t too bad by the standards of the rest of the evening, though I think Leno is straining so hard to keep the political jokes non-controversial. I know that’s his style, but in this era, trying to make political jokes without touching on any specific issues is… not impossible, but it’s hard to imagine that anybody really enjoys it any more. (Even Leno’s audience likes it better when he can get specific about a politician, usually by talking about some sex scandal or something else that doesn’t leave him open to charges of partisanship.)

- I’m surprised that the musical acts are being pushed to the end of the show, just like on late night. I had thought that they were going to avoid this, for the sake of the 11 p.m. news. Maybe people will stick around because it’s Kanye, but if they’re going to leave the music this late, then people who don’t like the music will tune out, the way they do on the 11:30 shows. And while nobody cares if people stick around for Fallon or Ferguson, affiliates need the 11 p.m. news to do well. If the show does well tonight, it may still be considered a failure if the scheduling hurts the ratings of the local news.

-  Leno is trying hard to manufacture a Moment here, and I hope it doesn’t work, because the manipulativeness of it is offensive. If West had truly done something terrible and was apologizing for it, then it might be a real Moment. But he acted like an idiot on an awards show, and NBC/Leno are trying to play this as if this was a life-and-death thing, and used West’s late mother as a prop. It made me feel sorry for West, which I suppose is an achievement on Leno’s part, but it certainly didn’t make me like Jay.

- Further to the thing about the scheduling: the idea seems to be that by leaving “Headlines” until the very end, they will keep people from tuning out. That depends, I suppose, on whether people like “Headlines” more than they hate the music. My suspicion, not based on anything empirical, is that people who usually leave when the music starts will not change that pattern just because “Headlines” is coming on. But we’ll see. I still think they need to do a better job of placing the musical act and the guest.

- And now here’s “Headlines.” Amazing how they expect people to hang around for this thing, but in its combination of fake common-man-itude (see, I chuckle at the same things you do in the morning, like headline typos!) and mean-spiritedness (let’s laugh at the people who make mistakes! also, his contempt for people who live in small towns is really palpable; any “elitist” comedian is far nicer about that) it is the definitive Leno routine, along with “Jaywalking,” which we will presumably see sometime this week when I’m not watching. (Hey: “We’ll see it when I’m not watching!” That’s a malapropism! Make fun of me, Leno!)

Patrick Swayze is dead

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 8:34 PM - 1 Comment

Patrick Swayze, the star of Dirty Dancing and Ghost, has succumbed to pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed in January 2008 but continued to work on an A&E drama series, The Beast, which aired last year. He’s survived by Lisa Niemi, his wife of 34 years.

AP

The Commons: Fall comes early to Ottawa

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 6:53 PM - 67 Comments

The Scene. A week short of its official start, fall has arrived in Ottawa. The leaves on Parliament Hill are turning yellow. The faces inside the House of Commons are red. The voices are shouty. The Prime Minister’s pointy finger is once more unfurled, steady and strong and accusatory. Summer is gone. The air will soon grow cold and punishing.

The easy comparison, sure, is to the return each September of young children to school. Indeed, there is something to that—the anxiousness, the chaos, the new haircuts. Lawrence Cannon sported a particularly close shave. Lisa Raitt is back to blonde. Jack Layton, not blessed of much hair to begin with, trimmed his down nearly to the scalp. When you’re trying to Make Parliament Work it perhaps helps to be as aerodynamic as possible.

Here, too, those returning rise to report on their summers. Only here the stories have less to do with amusement parks, video games and family trips to major American landmarks. Continue…

Making history with Oprah and Atom

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 6:11 PM - 0 Comments

What a wild and crazy Sunday we had yesterday. It started at 9:30 a.m. with a royal visit from Oprah Winfrey, holding court at a press conference for Precious with a remarkable phalanx of African-American talent—including Mariah Carrey, Tyler Perry, the novelist Sapphire, singer Mary J. Blige, directror Lee Daniels, and super-sized ingenue Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe, who’s living out a Star is Born fantasy making her film debut in the title role. Cameron Bailey, TIFF’s dashing African-Canadian co-director—who looked as much like a movie star as anyone on the podium—called it a historic event. And he was right. Black stars and black directors have made their individual marks in Hollywood. But I can’t recall another film that has united such an inspired, and inspiring, powerhouse of black talent. At the press conference, Oprah set the tone for an outpouring of emotion that turned the session into a media love-in. The movie, she said, “is so raw that it will suck the air out of the room. When I finished watching this film the first thing I did was call Tyler so I could get Lee’s number and tell him how I was gasping for air.” Precious—the story of an abused woman pregnant with a second child by own father—premiered at Sundance last winter, but could have languished in indie obscurity without the support of Oprah. It’s not an easy film to watch or sell. But she hopped on board as executive producer and at TIFF she’s launching a juggernaut campaign that seems destined to end in Oscar glory. One voice after another made the case that for such a sad and harrowing story, Precious is not a downer. And some did it by drawing on their own experience of childhood abuse, including Blige and Perry. “For anyone who has endured that kind of situation,” said Perry, “me being one of those people, it left me with hope. I don’t think it’s dark. I think it leaves you with hope. . . No matter what your situation, you can walk away from it feeling hope.” Continue…

Why Does Everyone Love Vampires?

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 5:15 PM - 9 Comments

This is a question that’s been going around for a while, what with the smash success of some vampire-related franchises that aren’t all that good: Twilight and TV’s True Blood, whose season finale last night was yet another sign that Alan Ball will never live up to the early promise of Oh, Grow Up. When you factor in guys like Joss Whedon whose only mainstream successes have been with shows that starred vampires or featured the word “vampire” in the title, you have to wonder: why is it that anything with vampires in it is a hit? (Update: Yes, that’s hyperbole. But hyperbole is no excuse for inaccuracy; there are lots of non-hits with vampires.)

Everyone has their answer to that question, so here’s my attempt: vampires have the kind of cross-gender appeal that is valuable to producers and especially valuable in television. Monster stories are considered to be primarily a boy thing. Brooding romance stories, or sex-drenched soap operas (True Blood fits into the latter category) are considered to be primarily a girl thing. A vampire story offers a soapy or romantic tale, but with monsters and violence. That brings in men and women. (Okay, I don’t know how many men went to see the Twilight movies, but I’m going to guess that it wasn’t fewer than would have gone to see a similar story without vampires.) It also appeals to writer/creators because it allows them to use the organizing principle of science fiction — tell fantasy stories that are clearly about our own world and our own time — but reach a broader audience than metaphor-heavy science fiction usually appeals to. True Blood is trying to do metaphorical social commentary, just like Battlestar Galactica did, but because it’s about vampires rather than space travelers, it doesn’t have to be pigeonholed as a “geek” show.

And of course vampires are appealing because of the wish-fulfilment aspect. That’s familiar enough, the idea that there’s something cool about being a vampire: you get eternal youth and beauty, and you get to keep most of the outward trappings of humanity. (Werewolves may have a certain wish-fulfilment element, based on our longing to be tough and primal, but werewolves don’t get to be pretty and they don’t get girls. Not usually, anyway.) Even the vampires who don’t live in cool castles like Dracula are kind of like the idle rich, people who live by different rules, have exotic appetites, and can do unusual things. And yet, unlike witches, they don’t have so many powers that writing for them becomes impossible. They’re magical enough to be cool, not magical enough to make plotting difficult.

*No, I’m not kidding.

Afghan opium farmers in the UN’s crosshairs

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 4:14 PM - 1 Comment

Poppy planting season in Afghanistan is still a few weeks away, but the UN is already considering plans to make next year’s crop dramatically weaker than this year’s. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime is looking into over-sowing fields with low-yield poppies that generate one per cent as much morphine as regular poppies in order to undercut the country’s lucrative opium trade. However, while sabotaging the fields of farmers who refuse to switch to legitimate crops would cut into the Taliban’s reported $100 million a year income from the drug trade, there are worries it might also drive poor farmers straight into the insurgents’ arms. Critics say Afghan farmers have too few viable options that are as profitable as opium cultivation. “Alternative livelihood is a dream,” says Dirk Reinecke, a German economist who is consulting with the UN, “if every farmer is able to sow illicit crops and get more than five to 10 times more benefit than they do with the licit crop.” So far, “no position has been taken on [the proposal],” says Ugi Zvekic, an official with the drug agency.

Toronto Star

The Palin Republicans

By John Parisella - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 4:08 PM - 203 Comments

No one can deny that the GOP, celebrating 155 years of existence this year, has been a significant factor in the American polity. The Republicans have won 22 presidential elections to the Democrats’ 16, and can lay claim to the one president that transcended partisan politics–Abraham Lincoln. No Democratic president in history comes close, not even FDR. Lincoln’s leadership in the civil war and his abolition of slavery are often portrayed as American achievements as opposed to Republican successes. The GOP has also had at least three dominant periods in which they fashioned social, economic, and international policy: 1893 to 1912, 1921 to 1933 and 1980 to 2008. There were excesses along the way but, generally speaking, the party’s history revolves around a legitimate conception of America and how it should be governed. That has been true until this year.

Ever since Obama’s inauguration, the Republicans have struggled to gain any traction as a viable alternative. Since then, Obama’s approval numbers have gone down sharply, but the Republicans have not benefited in any noticeable way. Last week’s silly outburst by Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, may have made him a hero to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the rest of the lunatic right. But it did little to make his party seem like legitimate counterweight to the Democrats. Similarly, this Saturday’s Tea Party protests seem grassroots enough, but the rhetoric emerging from its spokespersons leaves the impression that the Republican party is now just a party of protest. It is no longer playing the role of the guardian of conservatism. Consider, for instance, how Sarah Palin’s false charges of death panels did little other than derail a legitimate debate on health care reform. As a result, the battle over health care is now an intra-party contest within the Democratic party.

Continue…