Econowatch

By Steve Maich - Friday, October 16, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 1 Comment

The Canadian economy has answered a lot of questions for us in the past few months. Our housing market stumbled, but didn’t go into free fall. Our mining, manufacturing and construction industries suffered, but did not collapse. Retail sales slowed, but you won’t see row upon row of boarded-up stores when you venture out holiday shopping next month. And, of course, it turns out our banks are a fair bit more solid than many gave them credit for.

All of that must qualify as welcome and somewhat surprising news, and the latest bit of encouragement came last week with the release of September jobs figures. As the kids headed back to school, the employment situation in the U.S. continued to worsen—another 263,000 jobs vapourized as the world’s largest economy searches for a way to staunch the bleeding. But in Canada, 31,000 jobs were created, a second straight month of improvement, far outpacing even the rosiest projections on Bay Street. Continue…

Silvio Berlusconi's tax troubles, Whistler angst, and Terry Fox's mom

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, October 16, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Foster daughter
Back before Michael Bublé sold any of his 22 million CDs, he was breaking into the Los Angeles recording business under the tutelage of Canadian-born producer David Foster. He was eager, earnest and perhaps a bit lost, so Foster asked a favour of his daughter Amy S. Foster. “Can you just sort of hang out with this guy?” The two became friends, and that evolved into a musical partnership. She has written two No. 1 hits with Bublé, Home and Everything. Their latest Vancouver-written collaboration, I Just Haven’t Met You Yet, is number eight and climbing on Billboard’s adult contemporary chart. This year, Foster returned to her Canadian roots, moving north from Nashville, and added “author” to her resumé. Her first novel, When Autumn Leaves, is set in the enchanted hamlet of Avening, which resides in her imagination somewhere on the Pacific Coast between her new home in North Vancouver and her Vancouver Island birthplace. At Avening’s heart is a sisterhood of women; not witches, perhaps, but possessing extraordinary powers. “Magical, yet believable,” says her proud pop. “Every word is measured, no words wasted, no more needed. Just like her songwriting.”

These little piggies
They are called micro pigs, not teacup pigs, says their British breeder Jane Croft, and they promise to be the biggest pet craze since, well, pot-bellied pigs. But where pot-bellied pigs live up to their name, these miracles of selective breeding look less like a food source and more like lapdogs. While they indeed fit into a teacup at birth, “no animal stays the same size as it was when it was born,” writes Croft on her website, littlepigfarm.co.uk. They reach a height of 12 to 16 inches, but have several advantages over dogs. They’re easily litter-box trained and are non-allergenic, since pigs have hair, not fur. They’re so intelligent Croft only sells them in pairs so they have companionship—pigs, she says, are the fourth most intelligent species after man, monkey and dolphin. This may put them within the intellectual range of some celebrities who accessorize with small dogs—though actor Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter moves, seems happy with the pair he bought. So far they aren’t available in the U.S. Sorry, Ms. Hilton. Continue…

'I have not seen those reports'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 11:47 PM - 56 Comments

The Defence Minister tells Canadian Press he never saw Richard Colvin’s reports on the treatment of detainees in Afghan prisons. CP points out that he was equally unaware of a Foreign Affairs annual report on human reports that also flagged torture.

MacKay, who was foreign minister at the time, insisted Thursday that he knew nothing of the documents. ”I have not seen those reports in either my capacity as minister of National Defence or previously as minister of Foreign Affairs,” he said in a telephone interview from Halifax. ”I can’t speak for other ministers.”

Richard Colvin, who is now an intelligence officer at the Canadian embassy in Washington, wrote in May 2006 that the allegations of torture regarding Afghan prisoners were “serious, imminent and alarming.” He followed it up with another warning in early June 2006, almost a full year before the federal government acknowledged the problem. Colvin said he spoke with prisoners who claimed to have been tortured by their jailers and that inmates showed physical signs of abuse.

… The Foreign Affairs Department produces annual reports on human rights in individual developing countries and the 2006 review on Afghanistan specific flagged that country’s prison system as rife with torture. The following year as MacKay was questioned about it in the House of Commons he denied having read that document as well, despite it having been widely circulated in his own department.

Gordon O’Connor tells Global he too was unaware of Colvin’s reports.

Chris Rock's Good Hair day

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 7:04 PM - 4 Comments

Comedian Chris Rock has ventured into Michael Moore territory with a comic documentary that exposes the strange and secret world of black women’s coiffure. As host and co-writer of ‘Good Hair,’ he conducts a funny, fascinating excursion into tricks and taboos surrounding the billion-dollar industry of African American perms, weaves and wigs. Above is a video of my interview with Rock, conducted when his movie premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival.

They wouldn't make this kind of fuss if he wasn't coming to visit

By Paul Wells - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 5:48 PM - 6 Comments

From the Inkless emailbox, news of…of news of Stephen Hawking, who has been ill:

Waterloo, Ontario – October 15, 2009 –

On Saturday, October 17, at 4pm EDT, Canada’s Perimeter Institute will make special announcements that involve Prof. Stephen Hawking. Media are invited to attend and obtain interviews.

What:    Announcements on Future Plans at Perimeter Institute with Significant News of Stephen Hawking

Who:     The Honourable David C. Onley, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario

The Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State, Science and Technology

The Honourable John Milloy, Minister of Research and Innovation and Minister of Training,

Colleges and Universities

Dr. Mike Lazaridis, PI Founder and Board Chair

Dr. Neil Turok, Director, Perimeter Institute

Prof. Stephen Hawking, PI Distinguished Research Chair and Emeritus Lucasian Professor,

Cambridge (appearing via multimedia)

Dr. Suzanne Fortier, President, NSERC

Woodward & Bernstein & Alghabra

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 4:27 PM - 47 Comments

Former Liberal MPs are the new investigative reporters. Apparently.

Ontario was allocated about $1.1 billion in Infrastructure Stimulus Fund money, translating to about $90 for each Ontarian (according to the 2006 census). Mississauga was assigned $46 million (to be matched by the province of Ontario and the city of Mississauga). According to the 2006 census, it means that Mississauga only received $69 per person. The city of Mississauga received 23% less than the provincial average.

It gets worse.  Looking at some cities that are represented by Conservative MPs, the numbers are even more disturbing.  For example, Barrie received $129 per person, Niagara Falls received $200 per person, Cambridge received $170 per person, and Oakville received $279 per person.

Bringing albino-killers to justice

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 4:20 PM - 19 Comments

In the past two years, 53 albinos have been killed in Tanzania. No one has been brought to justice for committing these murders. Until now.

Last Wednesday, a Tanzanian court sentenced three men to death for killing a 14-year-old albino boy, Matatizo Dunia from Shinyanga, in brutal fashion—they kidnapped him, then cut his body into pieces. An equally barbaric case is also garnering national attention: Mariam Emmanuel, a five-year-old girl, was butchered by a group of machete-wielding men in Mwanza. The culprits divided the girl’s body up among themselves and drank her blood while her siblings watched. Murdered albinos are usually sold at high prices to witch doctors, who grind up the body parts and brew them into potions that they believe carry magic powers. Continue…

Balloon boy’s family appeared on “Wife Swap”

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 4:10 PM - 1 Comment

The parents of Falcon Heene, the six-year-old boy who authorities in Colorado did not find trapped in a home-made helium balloon, are Richard and Mayumi Heene, science-obsessed folks who like to chase extreme weather and who once appeared on the ABC show “Wife Swap.” “If conditions are right, Mayumi wakes her family by shouting ‘Storm Approaching, Storm Approaching!’ into a bullhorn,” according to online ABC literature about the reality TV show. A profile in the L.A. Times further described the Heene family as being “anchored by father Richard, whose anger arrives in sudden bolts between his fringe science projects.”

The speed with which television viewers spellbound by little Falcon Heene’s adventures in ballooning are unearthing video snapshots of the family on YouTube is frightening (if not unprecedented). In the clips below, we see Falcon and his two brothers perform in a rap video demonstrating their fearlessness (“Not Pussified,” in which mum Mayumi takes a guitar solo), dad Richard delivering a lesson in salvaging damaged DVD games, and an ABC news clip following the Heenes, who are avid extreme weather-chasers, into the eye of Hurricane Gustav last year. The footage takes on an eerie undertone now that Falcon’s fate remains unknown.

Huffington Post
LA Times

A co-ed school in Saudi Arabia

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

Education in Saudi Arabia used to be strictly segregated along gender lines. That’s all changed with the opening last month of the kingdom’s first co-ed university—the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Not only will women be able to study and work alongside men, they won’t be required to wear veils and will be permitted to drive cars—both serious no-nos for all other Saudi women.

It’s a bold move in Saudi Arabia, where the status of women has often been described as akin to apartheid. KAUST exists outside the education ministry—it’s run by Aramco, the state oil company, which invested $10 billion in its construction. The university is part of King Abdullah’s plan to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil, and to create new opportunities for the large Saudi youth population (more than half of the population is under 25). To do this, KAUST could be considered a trial balloon to expand women’s education. Continue…

Is the sun setting on cheap vacations?

By Robert Kokonis, Takeoffeh.com - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 3:49 PM - 2 Comments

The temptation of a week away from Canada’s national coffee chain in exchange for some creamy coladas in Cayo Coco is too hard for a Canadian to resist. And Canada’s travel industry counts on it. Literally.

This past winter, vacation bound Canadians were packing their bags in substantial numbers. But not enough to fill the enormous supply of south-bound seats. So the prices dropped. And dropped. According to Statistics Canada, travellers to the Caribbean spent 17% less (excluding airfare) in 2007 than they did in 2002. Good news for us, bad news for the tour operator’s bottom line. Continue…

Helium balloon thought to contain 6-year-old boy was empty

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 3:48 PM - 1 Comment

Authorities are conducting an intense ground search for a Colorado boy who was initially thought to have been trapped in a helium balloon built by his father. After two hours in the air, the balloon eventually landed in a Colorado field but was found empty. Cathy Davis of the Larimer County Sheriff’s Department told reporters that the missing boy, Falcon Heene, was last seen getting into the compartment of the balloon by his older brother. Until the balloon’s crash landing, Heene was believed stuck in the large, mushroom-shaped aircraft, which floated away from the Heene home after it came loose from its tether. The balloon’s flight was closely tracked by television crews and sheriff’s vehicles.

UPDATE: Several hours after the runaway flight of his father’s helium balloon, Falcon Heene was found hiding safely at home. “Apparently the boy’s been there the whole time,” said Sheriff Jim Alderden. “He’s been hiding in a cardboard box in the attic above the garage.”

Seattle Times
AP
MSNBC

Harris Decima/CP: … Then again, maybe not.

By kadyomalley - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 3:07 PM - 36 Comments

Slightly less blue-rose-coloured numbers from Harris Decima, which polled from October 1 to 12 — and wouldn’t you like to see those day-by-day breakdowns? — with a 2.2 margin of error:

Conservatives: 35
Liberals: 28
NDP: 15
Greens: 10
Bloc Quebecois (in Quebec): 41

There’s not much in the way of detailed tables to pore over just yet, alas — the first CP writethru didn’t even give the percentage for the Bloc in Quebec, but left it as a fun little math problem for the readers, not that ITQ is sitting here simmering with resentment at such blatant datahoarding or anything. Oh, wait, yes she is.

Anyway, we know that the Conservatives are up in Ontario, but by just four percent, sitting at 40 percent, compared  to 36 percent  for the Liberals which is a far cry from the fifteen point lead that has emerged in both EKOS and Ipsos’ findings. The NDP, on the other hand, doesn’t even make it into the standings, but ITQ would guess that they’re somewhere between 12 and 15 percent.

The west is — oh, it’s the west. It never changes, except for those occasional flurries of excitement when the NDP creep past the Liberals in Saskatchewan or British Columbia.

Meanwhile, in the Harris-Decimaverse at least, the Liberals are still ahead in Atlantic Canada, although not by much — a mere three point advantage over the Conservatives, with the NDP nipping at the Tories’ heels, although we don’t know where those three points put either party, since apparently, that just isn’t important enough to include in the story. And why should it be, really? ITQ looks forward to a brave new world of poll reporting where we just come up with new ways to say “ahead” and “behind”, and omit all those ugly numbers.

So, there you have it — not sure how much scope for speculation this provides, but have at it, commenters!

Liberal Cheque Mates UPDATED

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 2:45 PM - 180 Comments

A propos of absolutely nothing, I swear, here are a few choice pictures of Liberals with giant cheques, from the recent past.

And before anyone accuses this corner of Conservative counter-hackery, let me say this: to hell with the two of them. A pox on both houses. I vote only for one party–at least they’re honest–and will only say this: this kind of holier-than-thou name-calling is the reason good people stop caring enough to vote. Get back to work, the two of you*.

Here’s Richmond Hill MP Bryon Wilfert with a big cheque. “There is no comparison with the Conservatives,” Wilfert told Maclean’s. “No one is trying to pass this off as Liberal money. End of discussion.” (Not quite. See * below.)

Here’s Malpeque, PEI MP Wayne “Stephen Harper has done everything that he once criticized” Easter, giving a real Government of Canada cheque to a local PEI businessman in 1998.

Here’s Scarborough Guildwood MP John Mckay with big cheque. Found on his own website.

York West MP Judy Sgro, handing over a surprisingly cheque-like piece of cardboard–without any Government of Canada markings at all. Her office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Last but never least, Scarborough-Agincourt MP Jim Karygiannis. “Cheques like that have been delivered since parliament was invented,” he told Maclean’s. Exactly!

*Oh, and to anyone who says, Well, yes, but at least the Liberals didn’t have the gall to put their names or party affiliation on these oversized cheques, I say this: most of the pictures of ‘Conservative partisan cheques’ wafting out of the Liberal fold are no different from the ones above, in that they are run of the mill political grip-and-grin photo ops. Also, remember this little ditty: Quebec Liberal MP Claude Droin once helped a local college obtain a $5,600 scholarship, and the college repaid him in kind by stamping his name on a plaque. Little more permanent than a novelty cheque, no?

And don’t get anyone started on Alphonso Gagliano. Surely the erstwhile Public Works Cabmin didn’t spend $6,800 of sponsorship money–earmarked, lest we forget, to promote the Federal Government in Quebec–on a “Piazza Canada” plaque… in San Martino, Italy?

He did? Oh.

UPDATE: This is exactly what I’m talking about. The Liberal whatever-room just put out a media release entitled “181 partisan cheques is not an isolated incident”. Among the purported Conservative partisan atrocities is the one below, with Jim Flaherty. Take note: there is no Conservative logo and no Jim Flahery signature, just a grinning Jim Flaherty holding a big piece of cardboard with three other stunned-looking people. Yes, there are some flagrant indulgences in there (You there, Larry Miller, take a bow), but overall the so-called ‘partisan cheques’ are just examples of plain, everyday politicking identical to the (Liberal) pictures above.

Truth in announcements

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 2:43 PM - 24 Comments

UPDATE: Colby Cosh has an even better idea — just ban the stupid cheques in the first place.

Hard to see anything wrong with these suggestions, from an NDP press release:

Today, the New Democrats called on Stephen Harper to introduce guidelines for government stimulus announcements, including:

A ban on all partisan logos, slogans, signatures or wordmarks on government promotional material; the only logo to appear on any promotional cheque should be the logo of the Government of Canada; only the signature of the Receiver General of Canada, not government Ministers or MPs should be placed on promotional materials.

When announcements take place in a riding held by an opposition MP, the MP should be invited to the funding announcement in recognition of their work on behalf of their constituents. No Conservative Party candidates should be invited to announcements in opposition held ridings as is currently the case.

Stoffer said such changes would take the partisanship out of announcements, including the Harper government’s routine practice of inviting Conservative Party candidates to funding announcements in opposition ridings. Meanwhile the incumbent opposition MP is often left off the invitation list and finds out about the announcement from the local media.

Thinking about the old Ignatieff

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 95 Comments

In Ottawa on Monday, I kept getting asked—including by three stray passersby on Wellington Street—what Beatles song Michael Ignatieff should sing. Oh, come on, you don’t really need a professional for this, do you? Help! Yesterday (All my troubles seemed so far away). The Fool On The Hill. Hello, Goodbye. Get Back (to Harvard and a little light BBC hosting) . . .

I wasn’t really in the mood to pile on Iggy, poor chap. I was in town to testify to the House of Commons Select Committee on Justice and Human Rights about the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission’s assault on individual liberty and freedom of expression. And, mainly because I’ve been yakking about this subject for a couple of years now and have pretty much exhausted my stock of free-speech quotations from Milton to Salman Rushdie, just for variety’s sake I decided to cite Michael Ignatieff to the committee. I was talking about the assertion by Chief Censor Jennifer Lynch that, Canada’s constitution notwithstanding, there is “no hierarchy of rights,” only a “matrix” in which “freedom of expression” has to be “balanced” by modish group rights and collective rights. And I responded with a blast of Professor Ignatieff: Continue…

A "real, deep dislike"

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 2:07 PM - 3 Comments

Ald. Diane Colley-Urquhart should have had it made: As a candidate in last month’s Calgary-Glenmore byelection, she had the might of the Tory machine at her back, the name recognition of being a long-time Calgary alderman, and she was up against a muddy pool of competitors that included the leader of the Social Credit Party. And yet, she lost, badly, coming third behind the victor Paul Hinman, interim leader of the Wildrose Alliance, and Avalon Roberts, the Liberal candidate. Why? Suddenly, Colley-Urquhart doesn’t mind saying: Premier Ed Stelmach, to whom voters in the riding harbour a “real deep dislike,” she says, adding: “I honestly must tell you, I’ve never felt such personal animosity towards an individual–the premier–as I did door-knocking.” The remarks come just as Albertans try to absorb Stelmach’s head-scratchingly banal televised address last night, in which he tried to explain his government’s approach to negotiating the recession but actually said… very little. Then, this morning, he decides he should take a middling 15 per cent pay cut, his ministers just 10 per cent. Colley-Urquhart’s comments may confirm the onset of the inevitable: It’s open season on the premier.

Calgary Herald

Michael Mariak Jok 1992-2009

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 10 Comments

Michael Mariak Jok was born Feb. 12, 1992, in Kapoeta, in southern Sudan. He was the third child of Elizabeth Mach and Jok Tuil, both rebel soldiers who met in Ethiopia, where they trained with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Mariak is the Dinka word for “disaster”; Michael, as he was later known, was born amidst the country’s recent civil war, which pitted the northern Muslim government against the mostly Christian south, and ultimately claimed two million lives, one of the last century’s most brutal wars.

Kapoeta, the crowded, de facto capital of the rebel-controlled south, was a shell of a town. The hospital, school and many buildings had been flattened by bombs. Food was scarce: most people survived on three kilograms of corn per week. Disease and malnourishment were rampant. Queuing for water could take six hours. Elizabeth and Jok, who stood seven feet tall, lived in a mud-walled hut (according to custom, Jok’s children took his first name as their surname). Continue…

Will we ever know what happened in Afghanistan? (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 1:29 PM - 3 Comments

Peter MacKay, October 8. “Mr. Speaker, despite the wild-eyed, woolly-headed allegations of the not-so-New Democratic Party, we are co-operating with this commission. We have provided evidence and witnesses. We have complied with the Federal Court’s ruling, which confirmed the mandate of the Military Police Complaints Commission. We have co-operated at every stage. We intend this commission to continue to do its important work. I wish the hon. member would stop trying to undermine and confuse Canadians with allegations that in fact impugn the work of the Canadian Forces.”

CTV, this morning. Freya Kristjanson told Canada AM on Thursday that while the government has said it’s cooperating with the commission, it has not turned in any documents since March, 2008. ”This commission has not received a single new document despite repeated assurances that the government would be producing the documents both in the House and by their lawyers directly to the commission,” she said in an interview from Ottawa. “The government has simply failed to deliver any documents. If the government cooperates with a body established by parliament within its mandate and gives the commission documents and access to witnesses then Canadians will know what happened,” she added.

University without high school

By Julia McKinnell - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 61 Comments

“Choosing to leave [high] school is an entrepreneurial move, not a cop-out” is the message of a new book aimed at teens, College Without High School. The author, Blake Boles, the co-founder of Unschool Adventures, writes, “Life is not a pyramid with doctors, lawyers and professors on the top, McDonald’s cashiers at the bottom and school the only ladder between.”

What does a high-schooler “who slaves away at meaningless disconnected problem sets every night become in later life?” he asks. “She becomes an adult who slaves away at a job she doesn’t enjoy, for less money than she deserves, for a one-week vacation through which she would prefer to sleep.” Boles’s book offers teens step-by-step advice on how to drop out of high school to tag tree frogs in Costa Rica or teach basic computer skills in Tanzania. It also shows how to condense schoolwork to meet admission requirements for university later on. Continue…

BNP to allow non-white members

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 1:17 PM - 0 Comments

The ultra-right-wing British National Party has agreed to amend its constitution to allow the very people it loathes—visible minorities—to join. The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission had launched court proceedings against BNP leader Nick Griffin and two of his deputies, arguing it had a statutory duty, under the Equality Act 2006, to prevent discrimination by political parties. In a plea deal, Griffin has agreed to present his all-white membership with a revised constitution at a general meeting next month. Then they will sing Kumbaya.

The Guardian

How to make perfect coffee at home

By Jacob Richler - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 20 Comments

Earlier this year in Montreal a new café opened on Crescent Street near Sherbrooke Street. This in itself is not especially exciting news, but then the Nespresso Boutique Bar is no ordinary café—as you will know if you’ve ever dropped in on the two-storey six-salon Nespresso Club alongside the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysées, or closer to home, the chic branch on Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

If you have not, this is what you need to know. In 1970, the Nestlé company’s R & D division did for espresso coffee exactly what they had done in 1938 for regular café filtre: they rendered it instant and effortless, and while they were at it, dispensed with the messy pot, too. The trick of it was to vacuum-seal individual portions of coffee in special capsules designed for a purpose-specific machine. The system was patented in 1976, went to market in Europe a decade later, and now—just 20-odd years on—accounts for over 17 per cent of the espresso machines sold worldwide, and counting. And for all that the local onslaught is still recent. In Canada, the machines first went on sale in 2005; and the Nespresso Bar in Montreal is only the third location to open in North America, after New York and Boston. Continue…

Our cynicism runneth over

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 12:53 PM - 31 Comments

The experts react to the Chronicle-Herald’s analysis of stimulus spending in Tory ridings.

A pattern of heavy spending in Conservative ridings uncovered in a Chronicle Herald analysis of federal stimulus spending is just business as usual, part of a long bipartisan pattern of using tax dollars for political gain, say political observers…

“Old style politics is all about bringing home the bacon,” said Kevin Gaudet of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. ”All they’ve done is paint the pig a different colour.”

Nothing new here, said Charles Cirtwill, of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. ”The Liberals did this for years and the Conservatives sat outside and pointed fingers and raged and pulled their hair,” he said. “And now the Liberals are doing the same thing. The only folks who are really consistent are the NDP, and that’s primarily because at the federal level they’ve never had a chance to pass out the dough.”

Face masks rank last in new H1N1 guidelines

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 12:23 PM - 0 Comments

New guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aimed at protecting hospital staff from swine flu are urging hospitals to vaccinate as many staff as possible and bar entry to visitors with flu-like symptoms. Specifically, the CDC recommended partitions in waiting rooms and special equipment for airway suction in patients with breathing tubes, as well as staff vaccination, hand-washing and keeping patients with flu-like illness separate from the general population. On the other hand, protective equipment like face masks, which are the best protection against the virus, ranked last. The masks, called N95 respirators, are in short supply, must fit properly, and can be uncomfortable to wear, Reuters reports, and therefore were not at the top of the CDC’s list. “We could actually put healthcare workers at greater risk by further reducing an already short supply of a device that is needed for high-risk procedures such as bronchoscopy by using it for routine care,” said Dr. Mark Rupp of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. “The best science available leaves no doubt that the best way to protect people is by vaccinating them.”

Reuters

So, a Quebecer walks into a bar…

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 4 Comments

For his first major show in front of a French-Canadian audience this past July, Montreal comedian Samir Khullar started off with a joke about how a not-insignificant portion of Québécois are the product of incest. Then he segued into a ditty about referendums—“There’s two sorts of Québécois for me. There’s those who are educated, cultivated and well brought up. Then there are those who voted yes”—and mused that in a separate Quebec he would be enslaved by people “poorer and less educated than me,” who would employ him to “check the mail once a month to see if the welfare cheque came.”

Then he asked: “Just out of interest, is there security in the building?”

He needn’t have worried. Khullar received a standing ovation for his caustic 10-minute Just for Laughs set. He became a near-overnight sensation in Quebec; just weeks later, he even garnered a long, gushing front-page profile in the nationalist Le Devoir. Continue…