The End of Variety Speak

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 7:30 PM - 3 Comments

The news broke today that Variety will be going behind a pay wall, This will not affect me (and isn’t that the important thing?) since I haven’t been linking to them for a while. It will, however, deal another blow to the tradition of “Variety Speak,” and future generations are unlikely to know what “skein” means.

In a way, the fact that they were unwilling to give up on that lingo was a sign of Variety’s inability to adjust to the changing times. The stylized parody of “insider” language made sense in a time when there was actually such a thing as a trade paper — news for people involved in making and selling entertainment. Now “insider” entertainment news is accessible to people who are not insiders. (For example, box-office returns used to be mostly of interest to insiders. Now it’s something every movie fan knows about.) There are many words that used to be insider slang and are now common knowledge (like “showrunner”). So Variety-Speak, invented in a world where show business really did have its own secret language, doesn’t make a lot of sense any more, even as a joke.

Still, everyone kind of loved the idea that a publication used weird, outdated words and abbreviations for everything. Many songs and comedy routines were built around it. The best song about Variety was written and performed by the team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green in the ’30s. I can’t find a recording (they did record it as part of a ’50s nightclub show), but here are some sample lyrics:

You open a picture out of town
The reviews come in, all thumbs down
You open five more but none of them clicks
Variety says: “Hix Nix Six Pix.”

Now you open a show in Buffalo
You give out passes but business is slow
You give out more passes til it’s full enough
Variety says: “Buff On Cuff.”

You open an opera at a popular price
But popular price does not suffice
The opera decides to close up shop
Variety says: “Pop Op Flop.”

In the absence of a recording of that song, here’s the most famous made-for-TV song on the subject:

As it happened in the past?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 7:28 PM - 5 Comments

The CBC posts the field notes that apparently led to Walter Natynczyk’s statement this morning. The Globe posts a transcript of the General’s press conference, including his reading of the section commander’s report, which includes this sentence.

We then photographed the individual prior to handing him over to ensure that if the Afghan national police did assault him as it happened in the past, that we would have a visual record of his condition.

Segue of the Day

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 6:28 PM - 4 Comments

Jack Layton’s second and third questions today.

Hon. Jack Layton (Toronto—Danforth, NDP): Mr. Speaker, will they stop already. The Prime Minister and defence minister cannot spin their way out of this one. The Chief of Defence Staff just contradicted everything that they have been saying in this House time and time again. The minister claimed there was no proof of abuse. He was wrong, and he should take responsibility and resign, and if not, the Prime Minister should demand it today.

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Hon. Jack Layton (Toronto—Danforth, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is clearly skating on this one. Let me talk about what our Canadian winter Olympic athletes are saying about climate change … Mr. Speaker, the fact is that the pressure is increasing on the government to take action on climate change. It is global. Here is what our own athletes in the winter Olympics have to say: Many of us are already seeing the impact of climate change on our beloved winter sport. We can’t sit on the sidelines when solutions exist.” Does the government even realize that our winter sports are at risk because of climate change?

'Clarify some of the inaccuracies'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 6:23 PM - 1 Comment

Richard Colvin’s lawyer tells the CBC that his client will be providing a written response to some of the subsequent testimony offered to the special committee on Afghanistan.

The ministers

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 6:19 PM - 1 Comment

Coverage of today’s special committee on Afghanistan hearings from the Globe, CTV, Canwest, the Star and the CBC.

Remember Iraq? (Advice followed)

By John Geddes - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 3 Comments

My colleague Michael Petrou reminds us to remember Iraq. Good idea. Let’s survey the latest grim tidings.
Continue…

Where did all the Tiger Woods ads go?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 4:37 PM - 1 Comment

None of the corporations that use Tiger Woods as their pitchman have dumped the disgraced golfer since his extramarital dalliances made headlines— at least publicly. But new data from Nielsen Co. reveals that ads featuring Woods vanished from prime-time broadcast television  and cable channels following reports of his extramarital affairs. The  last prime-time ad featuring the 33-year-old golfer was a 30-second  Gillette Co. spot on Nov. 29, two days after he crashed his car outside his house. One of the commercials pulled from the schedule was one for  Pac-10, a college athletic conference, due to be shown on ESPN on Thursday. The promotional spot hailed him as an “inspiration” and “an influential figure both on and off the golf course.” A Pac-10 spokesman said: “I don’t know when, or if, it will be used again.” Yesterday, Gatorade, which signed a $100 million, five-year deal with Woods in 2007  became  the first brand to drop a Woods product when it announced its Tiger Focus drink, launched in March 2008, will be discontinued.

The Telegraph

Alcohol and caffeine don’t mix

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 4:35 PM - 3 Comments

Drinking coffee while drunk may make you feel like you’re coming to your senses, but it’s only an illusion, according to a new study out of Philadelphia’s Temple University. In fact, mixing caffeine and alcohol could make matters worse, says lead researcher Dr Thomas Gould: “The myth about coffee’s sobering powers is particularly important to debunk because the co-use of caffeine and alcohol could actually lead to poor decisions with disastrous outcomes.” People who feel tired and intoxicated after consuming alcohol may be more likely to acknowledge that they are, he says.  “Conversely, people who have consumed both alcohol and caffeine may feel awake and competent enough to handle potentially harmful situations, such as driving while intoxicated or placing themselves in dangerous social situations.”

BBC

Blame the Olympics

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 3:22 PM - 3 Comments

The RCMP has just been handed the perfect out for everything it does wrong—at least until March 2. Safeguarding the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, says Wes Wark, a security expert with the University of Toronto, has drawn down police resources across the country, leaving gaps in the force’s day-to-day operations. Case in point, Greenpeace’s recent stunt of climbing on the roof of the Parliament Buildings and hanging banners denouncing government inaction on climate change. The incident is “a huge cream pie in the face of the RCMP,” says another security specialist, given costly security measures the Mounties adopted on Parliament Hill after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Ottawa Citizen

Why antidepressants only work on half the patients they're prescribed to

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 3:18 PM - 1 Comment

Scientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto have figured out why antidepressant medications don’t help half the people to whom they’re prescribed to deal with clinical depression. Today’s antidepressants, they say, don’t affect a protein in the brain that reaches high levels when patients are depressed. It’s called monoamine oxidase A or MAO-A. At very high levels, it actually breaks down feel-good chemicals such as serotonin in the brain. Rather than reversing MAO-A’s damaging habit of removing these all-important chemicals from the brain, current antidepressant drugs just raise serotonin levels. High levels of MAO-A also make people more susceptible to future depression. The researchers say understanding the biochemical processes that contribute to depression are vital to finding an effective, long-lasting remedy—and they predict that future antidepressants will tell the brain to produce less MAO-A.

Science Daily

Sarkozy’s mixed message

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 3:12 PM - 4 Comments

The French president’s call, in a statement published by Le Monde newspaper, reflected concern that a government-sponsored debate on France’s “national identity,” seemed to be contributing to expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment and generating resentment among Muslim citizens and immigrants. “I will combat any form of discrimination,” Sarkozy said, but added he also wanted to tell Muslims “that in our country, where Christian civilization has left such a deep trace, where republican values are an integral part of our national identity, everything that could be taken as a challenge to this heritage and its values would condemn to failure the necessary inauguration of a French Islam.” Sarkozy said he understood the fears of many native French at the growing visibility of Muslims. France has Europe’s largest Muslim population, estimated at well over five million. That, he said, is what led him to propose the national-identity debate managed by Eric Besson, the minister of immigration, integration and national identity. “This muffled threat felt by so many people in our old European nations, rightly or wrongly, weighs on their identity,” Sarkozy added. “We must all speak about this together, out of fear that, if it is kept hidden, this sentiment could end up nourishing a terrible rancor.” Some political commentators see Sarkozy’s entry into the controversy against the background of regional assembly elections in March, in which the governing coalition is seeking to make inroads into provincial Socialist Party strongholds. The extreme-right National Front, which could drain votes from Sarkozy’s party, is openly calling for a Swiss-style decision to ban minarets, towers beside mosques from which Muslims are called to prayer.

Washington Post

Dan Brown and the Trail of Clues

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 3:09 PM - 0 Comments

Much as he did between The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol, the American writer is already speculating about Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon’s next case. In Milan for the opening of the opera season, Brown said La Scala, the Italian city’s world-famous theatre—and a hotbed of emotion, smoldering passion and professional intrigue—would make a perfect setting for a murder scene. Looking up at La Scala’s six rows of gilded, tiered balconies, the author said, “Somebody clearly needs to fall. I definitely need to go up there.” He said he would give serious thought to incorporating the opera houses into his next thriller. “It is quite possible. I’m mesmerized by this,” Brown said during the visit on Monday night. “The architecture, the art, and of course you have an endless cast of characters that can be built on.” The multi-millionaire author has always drawn heavily on Italian culture and history for his best-selling books.

The Telegraph

RCMP watchdog tears a strip off Mounties

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 3:07 PM - 1 Comment

Judging by Paul Kennedy’s findings, it’s hard to see how the RCMP officers who Tasered Robert Dziekanski could have reacted any worse. In his report on the death of Dziekanski, Kennedy notes the officers failed to make any efforts to de-escalate the volatile situation; their use of a stun gun was “premature and inappropriate”; they failed to properly monitor Dziekanski’s condition after he was subdued; and their accounts of the incident were not credible. The chairman of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, whose 208-page report was released Tuesday, also suggested the police force had botched a subsequent investigation into the matter. RCMP Commissioner William Elliott won’t comment on the report until the results of the Braidwood inquiry are in, but he insists the force has already put in place measures to address “a number of issues, concerns and shortcomings,” such as changing policies and training related to the Taser.

Vancouver Sun

Fall Finale Festival

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 2:05 PM - 4 Comments

From comments:

What’s the deal with “fall finales” this year? I don’t really recall this ever being an event before this year. Do you think it’s because of the general 13 upfront episodes which may or may not be followed by the back 9? Perhaps it’s more because they’re worried that when they take a break, they’ll lose some viewers, so they’re writing to have more of a cliffhanger/finale right before the break.

I think a lot of it is just that “fall finale” is a nice euphemism for “going on hiatus.” Network scheduling has become more erratic, with more mid-season debuts and shows that get bumped for months at a time (particularly, but not only, on the two networks that don’t have a 10 o’clock time slot: Fox and NBC). Glee, whose “fall finale” is tonight, is going to get yanked from the schedule because Fox has no place to put it for a while. Also, they probably think it will help the show more in the long run if they can put it after American Idol (something I’m not sure about, but we’ll see), and they can’t schedule it there until April. Calling the thirteenth episode a “fall finale” sounds much better than “ladies and gentlemen, the clown singing show has been put on hiatus for retooling,” and brings a barrage of publicity to the show that it would not get otherwise. The plan in both cases is simply to show all the episodes they’ve got, let it disappear for a while, and hope that viewers will return when it comes back. But the “fall finale” buildup theoretically increases the chance that it will stick in people’s minds and that they’ll remember it through the long Glee-free months. Same goes for the related tactic of putting the early episodes out on DVD before the entire season is over.

Also, like many things on the broadcast networks, this may show the influence of cable. Split seasons are far more common on cable. Sometimes you have two seasons being billed as one, like The Sopranos season 6: it was long enough for two full cable seasons, was split into two parts that aired a year apart, and was released on DVD in two separate volumes, but was nevertheless considered one extra-length season. Other times you have a regular-length season split in two: South Park does 14 episodes a season, but it’s split into two seven-episode runs at different times of the year, and for all intents and purposes viewers see these runs as separate seasons. Networks have embraced the idea that you can order batches of episodes, schedule them months or a full year apart, and still bill them as a single season.

Whatever the reasons, it’s hard to believe that not very long ago, the concept of even a season finale didn’t really exist for most shows, and the last episode of the average show’s season would occur with little buildup or fanfare (and it would often be an episode that wasn’t good enough to run during sweeps).

Remember Iraq?

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 1:54 PM - 8 Comments

It’s startling how quickly Iraq has fallen off of our collective radar. There are good reasons for this, I suppose. Notwithstanding carnage such as the bombings suffered by Baghdad this week, the level of violence continues to trend sharply downward. He wont get it, but former president George W. Bush deserves credit for reversing Iraq’s slide into anarchy with his troop surge gamble, which he approved in the face of opposition from just about everyone. President Barack Obama derided the strategy and is now mimicking it – albeit with less resolve – in Afghanistan.

This morning I was reminded of how far Iraq has come, how far it still has to go, and why we can’t yet afford to look away. I met with members of La’Onf, a network of Iraqi civil society groups committed to human rights, democracy, and, above all else, non-violence.

This year, Rights and Democracy, a Canadian institution created by Parliament in 1988 to promote and defend democracy and human rights abroad, awarded La’Onf its ‘John Humphrey Award,’ which comes with at $30,000 grant. Ibrahim Ismael and Saba Al Nadawi were in town to accept it. Continue…

Gen. Natynczyk corrects the record

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 1:30 PM - 0 Comments

Less than 24 hours after telling a Parliamentary committee otherwise, General Walter Natyncyzk, Chief of Defence Staff, appeared at a news conference to announce that a detainee abused by Afghan officials in summer of 2006 was, in fact, first held by Canadians. The general says he became aware of new information this morning. He says he will be launching an investigation to understand why it took this for that information to reach him.

Canadian Press

Do MacKay and Natynczyk not talk?

By John Geddes - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 1:24 PM - 81 Comments

Given how much information there is to digest from Gen. Walter Natynczyk’s extraordinary news conference this morning, an answer he gave that suggests a weirdly distant relationship between the Chief of Defence Staff and the Minister of National Defence might easily go unremarked. That would be too bad.
Continue…

Fowler and the coin of the realm

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 12:59 PM - 28 Comments

I see the Oxford University Press has finally concluded that the educated public will never be browbeaten into accepting the New Coke version of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, and has decided to give us back Fowler Classic. Can it really be 13 years since Burchfield’s namby-pamby descriptivist Fowler came out? I still remember the day a friend phoned me on a slow day at work, and when she asked what I was up to, I mentioned that I had just read John Simon’s New Criterion review of the Burchfield—the harshest of many reviews I’d already read, but not the most troubling. (In matters such as these, it’s the positive reviews that give the game away.) I must have raged for 20 more minutes about the inherent illogic of putting a soggy, slack, no-rules, whatever-works-even-if-it-doesn’t type in charge of a usage guide, especially Fowler’s. I later found out that she had already bought me the “new Fowler” in hardcover for Christmas and had to race back to the store to return it. Life imitates O Henry.

When I finally laid eyes on the Burchfield, Simon’s verdict was confirmed: the abuse of the Fowler brand was as inexcusable as he had made it seem, and in the long term probably offended even those who would have quite liked and depended on a separately marketed Burchfield’s Usage. (Alas, too late for that now.) The new edition of Fowler smells like an unstated apology, or perhaps a mulligan. If you didn’t like the third edition, folks, here’s Fowler 3.5, with all the updates and modernizing caveats hygienically cordoned off.

The descriptivist-prescriptivist debate in usage is, to be sure, one of those controversies in which no one really represents either extreme. The “prescriptivist”, who believes there are objective rights and wrongs in usage, still does need descriptive data about how language is used. Prescriptivists like Fowler who achieve enduring influence are always very careful data-gatherers. But while the “descriptivist” professes relativism (filthy hippie that he is), he can always be caught incorporating value-judgments, or the material for them, into his data-collecting. (“Educated users tend to favour…”) Language, like money, has social and objective elements. It is, at once, master and servant.

My philosophy, for what it’s worth, is that the main strength of English as a medium of expression comes from its Latin-Saxon “double register” and its imperial voraciousness about borrowings. Changes in language that tend to impoverish our treasury should be resisted. It is useful that “infer” and “imply” should be understood to denote two distinct concepts; to have them be fuzzified synonyms is uneconomic. When changes in language enrich the treasury, they can be safely, even eagerly embraced: William Strunk’s anachronistic insistence that “nauseous” means “nauseating” would leave us with two words doing the same conceptual work, and without a single term for “being in a state of nausea.”

Descriptivists often don’t seem to recognize such an economy of words at all. Henry Watson Fowler, for all his twerpishness, navigated it better than any other usage maven yet has. He was to the English language what Bagehot was to English finance or Dicey to the English constitution.

Year of the Inuit

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 12:37 PM - 9 Comments

National Inuit Leader Mary Simon, below, and her organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) kicked off their “2010: Year of the Inuit” initiative with a special reception in Peter Milliken’s dining room.

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Simon with senators from The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples.

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Senator Carolyn Stewart-Olsen.

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Continue…

Thinking through Canada's climate change position

By John Geddes - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 12:32 PM - 112 Comments

Yesterday I posted remarks from Environment Minister Jim Prentice at a news conference, in which I thought he framed the Canadian government’s position on climate change with admirable clarity. Prentice made three key points:

1)    Canada’s population and economy have grown too much since 1990, the benchmark year for the Kyoto climate change treaty, to expect steep emissions reductions in this country from that starting point;
2)    Compared to the European countries that are leading the push for tough emissions-reduction targets this week in Copenhagen, Canada is bigger, colder, and faster-growing—and therefore EU aims don’t make sense here;
3)     Canada’s government is not willing to sign on to any target that could only be achieved with “inordinate economic costs.”

Having let Prentice’s explanation, which sounded reasonable enough, stand for a day or so, here are some observations about his argument.
Continue…

Testosterone makes women play fair

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 12:21 PM - 1 Comment

Just a single dose of testosterone, the male hormone, can make women behave more fairly to their peers, the BBC reports. But according to European research, this effect only occurs if women are unaware they’re getting the supplement. If the female test subject realized she’d received the hormone, and not a placebo, she displayed greed and selfishness instead. The study, published in the journal Nature, suggests the mind can trump hormones: testosterone induces anti-social behaviour in humans, but only due to our preconceived notions of its effect, the authors conclude. In the study, over 120 women paired up and played a bargaining game, betting real money. The so-called “proposer” was tasked with suggesting to another player, the “responder,” how to split the money between them, an offer the responder could then accept or reject. If rejected, neither would get any money. The proposers were given either testosterone or a dummy, but were unaware of which they received; those who got testosterone behaved more fairly and were better at interacting with their partners. But women who thought they’d received testosterone, whether or not they really had, acted more unfairly.

BBC

Natyncyzk corrects himself

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 12:05 PM - 49 Comments

In a press conference just now, the Chief of Defence Staff has said he learned this morning that the detainee tortured by Afghan officials in the summer of 2006 was originally in the custody of Canadian Forces.

Reports from Canadian Press, Canwest, CBC, the Globe and Mail, CTV, the Star, the Sun and Bloomberg.

Background here , here and here.

The fully updated Colvin Encyclopedia is here.

The hottest decade ever—in a bad way

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 15 Comments

The decade just ending was the warmest one on record, says the World Meteorological Organization: warmer than the 1990s, which was warmer than the 1980s. Moreover, 2009 was the fifth hottest year. Now, some hope that this news— Tuesday— will quell new anxiety about the scientific evidence behind global warming. Still, it’s unlikely that this will make things any easier for the politicians who have gathered in Copenhagen.

New York Times

"Who we are as learners"

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 11:56 AM - 2 Comments

A new report dispels stereotypes about how Canadian natives learn. The report, by the Canadian Council on Learning, suggests that First Nations, Inuit and Métis have higher rates of informal learning. “By moving beyond the all-too-familiar storyline of poor academic performance, it has given us a fresh, more balanced take on who we are as learners,” said Métis National Council president Clément Chartier. One key finding of the report was that 70 per cent of First Nations adults volunteered in their communities, versus 46 per cent for non-aboriginals. Another is that 31 per cent of aboriginal children who live off-reserves participate in out-of-school social clubs or groups, compared with 21 percent of non-aboriginal children. The report, The State of Aboriginal
Learning in Canada: A Holistic Approach to Measuring Success, claims to have used a “ground-breaking” new method to measure native success.

CBC