First commercial spaceship unveiled

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 2:34 PM - 0 Comments

A commercial space tourism industry could be on the horizon, as Virgin Atlantic has unveiled the first commercial passenger spaceship, a sleek, minivan-sized black and white vessel with wings, Reuters reports. At the launch in California’s Mojave Desert, Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson said the ship, called SpaceShipTwo, could bring tourists into zero gravity within the next two years; “you become an astronaut,” he said. With a $450 million budget, the project will see six commercial spaceships built that can take passengers on a two-and-a-half hour trip, high enough to achieve about five minutes of weightlessness, about 65 miles above Earth. About 300 people have already put down deposits for a trip, which costs $200,000 and includes three days of training. The ship could also bring scientists and experiments into space. On display at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, SpaceShipOne, which served as a prototype, made three suborbital flights. A 10-month atmospheric test flight program begins today, followed by extensive test flights before passenger travel can begin in 2011 or 2012.

Reuters

Whodunnit?

By Shanda Deziel - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 2:32 PM - 6 Comments

The so-called “Climategate” emails somehow liberated from the digital vaults of the University of East Anglia not long ago have predictably—by design, you say?—turned ideological football, one that threatens to to hinder international climate change talks now going on in Copenhagen. We know all that. What we don’t know is who unleashed the emails in the first place—and how. “Speculation over just how the 3,500-odd documents came to be publicly released is growing anew,” writes Keith Johnson on the Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog. “A top IPCC official recently blamed ‘malicious hackers’ and pointed toward Russia. The idea of Russian ‘hackers for hire’ is gaining traction in some parts of the British press.” But Johnson goes on to note that, while the documents were placed on a Russian server sometime mid last month, they also appeared on a Turkish server. Nobody’s business but the Turks, maybe, but no smoking gun there. Or anywhere. In fact, the simplest explanation, Johnson suggests, quoting the blogger Watts Up With That, is a leak from inside the university—”not because of some hacker but because of a leak from UEA by a person with scruples.”

Wall Street Journal

Questioned v. Detained

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 13 Comments

The Chief of Defence Staff attempts to split the difference.

The affidavit of Col. Steve Noonan is here. The relevant portion would seem to be paragraph 56. There was one incident in which the CF took custody of detainee who had been turned over to the local ANP by the CF. In this case, the CF learned that the detainee had been beaten by the local ANP. When they learned of this, they approached the local ANP and requested that the detainee be given to them. The ANP complied and the CF subsequently transferred the detainee to the Provincial ANP.

The field notes of a soldier reporting the incident, as discovered by the Globe, apparently read as follows. Local ANP elements were in possession of a PUC detained by CDA troops and subsequently transferred to ANP custody.

The incident is also referenced during the cross-examination of General Joseph Deschamps during Federal Court proceedings.

Compensation for detained Italian Canadians: "Current debates on internment … are woefully uninformed by history"

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 1:55 PM - 4 Comments

MPs discussing a private member’s bill proposing an apology and compensation for Italian Canadians (about 700) who were interned during the Second World War might want to read this book, introduced and summarized here.

Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro’s assertion that those detained were “just everyday people going about their lives” when they were “pulled off the streets” doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of historians who have studied the issue.

Newsmakers '09: Wheels of fortune

By Colin Campbell - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 1:45 PM - 0 Comments

	American muscle Forget the hybrid. This year, the American auto industry went back to doing what it does best: making affordable sports cars with big, throaty engines. The Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro (above) and Dodge Challenger were all surprise hits for the Detroit Three. While overall car sales saw double-digit declines, muscle car sales jumped over seven per cent. Perfect for the driver who wants to get where he’s going fast—and preferably in a straight line.
	Detour ahead A Swedish couple travelling in Italy planned to visit the idyllic Isle of Capri. Instead, they drove 650 km off course to the industrial city of Carpi. They had mistyped the destination into their car’s GPS device. “Capri is an island,” noted a local official in Carpi, in northern Italy. “They did not even wonder why they didn’t cross any bridge or take any boat.”
	Roadside assistance For the auto industry, the month of August stood out like a gleaming new Ferrari in a junkyard. That was when the U.S. government’s US$3-billion cash for clunkers program kicked into high gear and Americans were offered as much as US$4,500 to trade in their old cars for new ones. Car sales spiked and the entire North American economy was given a brief boost.
	Dream machines Toyota, perhaps best known for making reliable, if bland, family sedans, launched a US$375,000 supercar, the 552-hp Lexus LFA. Not to be outdone, Porsche introduced its first four-door sedan, the Panamera, which costs US$133,000 for the turbo version. Audi has a new version of its R8 supercar (above), the V10—a US$146,000 car that auto critic Jeremy Clarkson called “spectacularly good. It’s like Scarlett  Johansson’s lips.”
	Liftoff Car doors have been an overlooked design element. But the doors of the new Mercedes SLS, which swing straight up, are a thing of beauty. This latest take on an old idea gives the car its moniker, the Gullwing. Swedish manufacturer Koenigsegg is also taking door design to a new level with what it calls the dihedral synchro-helix actuation system. The doors on its cars slide forward and away from the car, then pivot up. Somewhere, an engineer earned his keep.
	Got a boost? Chrysler disbanded the group of engineers working on its electric-car program. The world’s most hyped electric car, GM’s Volt (above), is still a prototype. Canada’s Zenn Motor Company said it was getting out of the electric-car-making business to focus on battery technology. The only real electric carmaker in North America is Tesla, with its $100,000 Roadster. Are electric cars the future? We’re still waiting.
	Exit ramp The meltdown that industry watchers have taken to calling the Carpocalypse saw the demise of some much-loved brands. Saturn was dropped by GM, as was the storied Pontiac nameplate, despite its loyal following and a critically acclaimed new model, the G8 GXP. Rick Wagoner, GM’s long-time chief executive officer, also didn’t last (he was forced aside by the Obama administration). Car dealers felt the sting, too—GM is shuttering 42 per cent of its Canadian dealerships.
	Autopilot The new BMW 760 Li (below) is a fortress on wheels. It is big, comes with a V12 engine, and features a host of high-tech features: night-vision technology, radar sensors to detect cars in its blind spot, and cameras on the front fenders to help drivers see what’s coming at intersections. Mercedes has a comparable monster, the S63 AMG. One advantage it has over the Bimmer: front and rear massaging seats. Both sell for about US$135,000 (chauffeurs not included).
	Formula Won It was a tough year for Formula One racing. Toyota announced that it would pull out of the circuit. Renault was found guilty of race-fixing. The good news: Jenson Button. The British driver came out of nowhere to win the world championship while driving for a brand-new team, Brawn GP. Asked to describe in three words what it’s like to be an F1 driver, he told the BBC, “Wow, wow, and wow.”
	Roadside Distraction A driver crashed his $2-million Bugatti Veyron into a saltwater marsh near Galveston, Texas, after he said he became distracted by a low-flying pelican. In Peterborough, England, the driver of a $125,000 Lamborghini Gallardo (above) noticed smoke billowing from his car. He stopped to search for a fire extinguisher, but the vehicle burned to a blackened crisp. Both incidents ended up on YouTube. Lovers of fine sports cars quietly wept.
	Cruise control Ford’s new sonar-based parallel parking system can guide your big SUV into the tightest spots. It automatically steers; you simply work the gas and brake. Not to be outdone, Volvo has a system on its new XC60 in which the vehicle will automatically brake if you’re about to hit the car in front of you. Future young drivers rejoice—with cars like these, driver’s licence tests will be a snap.

Fixing the system

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 1:29 PM - 59 Comments

Starting with the premise that last December’s proroguing of Parliament was “entirely inappropriate, democratically illegitimate and improper,” Brian Topp uses the last installment of his coalition series to suggest two changes.

First, the House of Commons could and should legislate to direct the prime minister to never provide advice to the Governor-General that interferes with the functioning of the House when a confidence motion is before it. This would hopefully make it more difficult for a prime minister to avoid democratic accountability to the House of Commons through a politically illegitimate and improper use of the Royal prerogative.

Second, the House of Commons could (and I think should) legislate that confidence votes must come in one of two forms. Option A: the government is defeated and an election is called. Or option B: the government is defeated and immediately replaced, at that moment, by a new one, specified by the House of Commons in its confidence vote. Subject of course to final approval by Her Majesty, as represented by our Governor-General, who in these circumstances will hopefully be more attentive to the views of the House of Commons.

'The buck stops with MacKay'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 12:14 PM - 42 Comments

The NDP has just now asked that the Defence Minister tender his resignation tout suite.

Full press release after the jump. Continue…

Keep print alive

By Rachel Mendleson - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 11:22 AM - 1 Comment

To say it has been a difficult year for written media is an understatement. For publications already teetering perilously close to the edge, the global economic recession was the nudge that sent them tumbling off the cliff. In the U.S., as newspapers and magazines from Seattle to Philadelphia cut corners and closed up shop, some 90,000 print jobs were lost. Meanwhile, in Canada, the future is not looking much brighter. According to a new report released by the Cultural Human Resources Council, the recession has not been kind to creative industries, but print media, it seems, has been hit the hardest. Thanks to a sharp decline in business advertising, written media is expected to see a 6.1 per cent drop in real revenues by the end of 2009. At the same time, it is the creative sector that benefits from the least amount of public funding—which raises the question: should government be doing more to save print?

Currently, Ottawa’s investment in written media is minimal. According to the Conference Board of Canada, which put together the report, “The Effect of the Global Economic Recession on Canada’s Creative Economy in 2009,” in 2006-07 the “literary arts” received a mere 3.6 per cent of the total $3.71 billion the federal government contributed to culture. While the broadness of the category—literary arts includes everything from books to newspapers—makes it difficult to determine precisely what each sub-category receives, according to Magazines Canada CEO Mark Jamison, government is responsible for a fraction of industry revenues. Of the more than $2.2 billion in total operating revenues Canadian periodicals earned in 2007, Jamison says only $80 million came from government in the form of postal subsidies and grants. Aside from small community papers, which also get a postal subsidy, newspapers are entirely free of government intervention.

Historically, the impetus for any government money that written media receives has had more to do with the promotion of Canadian content than propping up industry. Says Jamison, “A lot of our support for content creation in Canada is a way to try and balance the overwhelming impact of American culture in Canada.” (The same is true for broadcast media: while independent producers of Canadian TV shows and films receives hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and tax credits annually, aside from the CBC, which gets $1.1 billion in taxpayer funds per year, according to Tara Rajan, vice-president of research and policy at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, broadcasters don’t get any direct government support.)

Despite the challenges facing print, Jamison says more government funding is not the desired path to financial security. Since pre-confederation, periodicals have operated “quite independently,” he says. “We’re not as quick to pick up the phone and find out where the government money is.” John Hinds, executive director of the Canadian Newspaper Association, echoes the desire to retain a sense of autonomy. “We pride ourselves on being a free press,” he says. ‘If you start to go too much to government, that does come with strings.”

But as the recession continues to hammer print media outlets the world over, other countries are finding creative ways to negotiate this very quandary. In India, for instance, government introduced a short-term stimulus package in February involving, among other things, a rate hike for government advertisements. (The package was extended another six months in July.) In France, meanwhile, the government is spending some US$22.5 million over three years to offer 18-to 24-year-olds a free newspaper subscription of their choice in a bid to increase abysmal youth readership levels. And in Germany, the new governing coalition is promising to shore up online journalism with more stringent copyright legislation.

It’s still too early to tell the extent to which any of these tactics can help to keep print media afloat. But in Hinds’s view, the most important contribution government can make is to keep from making policy decisions that contribute to the sinking of the industry. “We want to make sure that government isn’t doing things that will make life difficult for newspapers,” he says, applauding the Ontario government’s recent decision not to impose an additional tax hike on newspaper subscriptions with the introduction of the HST. As Jamison sees it, the government’s role “is about ensuring that Canadian voices can be heard and acquired through a variety of means,” he says. “It isn’t just about saving print.”

The wildest BLT

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 11:09 AM - 0 Comments

The picture says it all: a lion peacefully walking past a recumbent bear while a tiger quietly strolls in the opposite direction. The lords of the wild so comfortable with each other because they have been together since babes. After being rescued eight years ago from a drug lord in Atlanta, Ga., the three were raised together at Noah’s Ark animal rescue centre. Now that Baloo (a 1,000-pound bear), Shere Khan ( a 350-pound tiger) and Leo (a 350-pound lion) have moved into a new, purpose-built habitat, their antics can be witnessed by the general public.  Diane Smith, the zoo’s assistant director, believes they don’t realize how different they really are: “It is wonderful and magical to see a giant American Black Bear put his arm around a Bengal tiger and then to see the tiger nuzzle up to the bear like a domestic cat. When Leo wakes up the three of them mess around for most of the day before they settle down to some food.”

Telegraph

Tragic ending for missing autistic boy

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 11:05 AM - 6 Comments

A young autistic boy who wandered away from his Nova Scotia home—and was found alive yesterday afternoon—has died in hospital. James Delorey, 7, disappeared on Saturday afternoon with his dog, Chance. Wearing light clothing and no jacket, he spent the next two days and two nights lost in a snowy forest more than a kilometre away from his house. Chance returned to the home yesterday morning, but by the time search-and-rescue crews retraced the dog’s tracks and discovered the boy, he was barely conscious and suffering from severe hypothermia. Delorey was airlifted to Halifax in critical condition, and this morning, hospital officials announced that he did not survive. His family has asked for privacy.

Canada.com

'The issues raised by the Richard Colvin affair are profound'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 32 Comments

Twenty-three former ambassadors write in support of Richard Colvin.

The ex-heads of Canadian diplomatic missions say in a letter released to the media that they’re worried the treatment of Mr. Colvin will discourage diplomats from reporting frankly to Ottawa from their foreign postings…

“The Colvin affair risks creating a climate in which officers may be more inclined to report what they believe headquarters wants to hear, rather than facts and perceptions deemed unpalatable,” the ex-ambassadors say…

“A fundamental requirement of a foreign service officer is that he or she report on a given situation as observed or understood,” the former heads of mission said. “It is only in this way that any government can draw conclusions knowledgeably and make its considered decisions, even if at variance with the reports received.”

Bank of Canada maintains interest rate

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 10:52 AM - 0 Comments

In the face of a weaker than anticipated third quarter, the Bank of Canada did what onlookers expected it to do Tuesday, maintaining its key interest rate at 0.25 per cent and holding steady on economic recovery predictions. In a statement, the central bank pledged to keep rates near zero until the end of June 2010, and repeated its concern about the impact of a strong Canadian dollar, which it said could “act as a significant further drag on growth and put additional downward pressure on inflation.” Economic expansion, the bank says, will continue to grow across the private sector. Inflation is expected to return to two per cent by the second half of 2011.

Reuters

At least 118 dead in Baghdad

By Shanda Deziel - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 10:51 AM - 2 Comments

Three explosions were detonated next to government buildings in a coordinated attack on central Baghdad today. At least 118 people were killed with another 261  wounded, and a smaller, possibly accidental blast near a school has killed seven children. The attacks, which targeted a courthouse and the labour and finance ministry buildings, are the worst since bombs killed at least 155 people on October 25, and come as the Iraqi government is poised to announce the date for next year’s parliamentary elections. Officials say the blasts are meant to discredit Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, which the insurgency considers to be too pro-West.

MSNBC

Tiger Woods' mother-in-law in stable condition

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 10:50 AM - 1 Comment

Tiger Woods’ mother-in-law is in stable condition after being rushed to hospital with stomach pains early Tuesday morning, the Associated Press reports. Barbro Holmberg, the mother of the pro golfer’s wife, Elin Nordegren, was rushed from Woods’ multimillion dollar mansion after a 911 call. A hospital spokesperson said her condition was not serious, and that she’s staying in a private room with additional security to keep media away. Holmberg arrived in the U.S. a few days ago from her home in Sweden. According to FOX News, reports said the woman, who was not initially identified, was “on advanced life support” after firefighters got a call at 2:36 a.m. Footage showed a blonde woman on a stretcher being taken into the hospital, while witnesses reported a black SUV, much like the one Woods crashed after Thanksgiving, came to the hospital directly after. One witness told Fox the woman driving the SUV looked similar to Tiger’s wife, Elin Nordegren. RadarOnline.com reported Nordegren had moved out of the house, and is now living nearby, following reports of several women who claimed extramarital affairs with the golf superstar.

Fox News

Yahoo

One more try

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 10:48 AM - 3 Comments

Conrad Black is back in court. Well, at least his lawyers are. Today, Black’s lawyers will take his last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. There, they will attack a controversial law that prosecutors used to put Black behind bars. “Honest services” is a legal concept that was developed to help convict politicians engaged in fraud. Since then, it has been used to target white-collar criminals, including Black. But Black’s lawyers argue that the U.S government should not have extended the law to apply to private conduct. They believe that if Black wins an appeal on the honest services issue, he could be released on bail from the federal prison in Florida where he has been serving a 6 1/2 year term. Black himself will not appear at the hearing in Washington.

The Chronicle Herald

Where to draw the line on child poverty

By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 10:12 AM - 46 Comments

Introducing his famous motion in Parliament committing the government of Canada to abolish child poverty by the year 2000, NDP leader Ed Broadbent conjured a Dickensian vision of Canada. “Being a poor kid means box lunches from food banks and soup from soup kitchens. Mr. Speaker, to be a poor kid means trying to read or write or think on an empty stomach . . . One quarter of our children are wasting away.” The motion passed, unanimously.

That was on Nov. 24, 1989. Twenty years later, writing in the Globe and Mail, Broadbent found little improvement. “Canada’s level of poverty is virtually unchanged . . . After two decades, the child-poverty rate has dropped a mere two percentage points, to 9.5 per cent. Why do more than 600,000 Canadian kids wake up hungry and go to school trying to read, write and think on an empty stomach?”

The answer is: they don’t. More than 600,000 Canadian kids are not waking up hungry today, any more than one quarter of Canadian children were “wasting away” 20 years ago. What Broadbent means by poverty is clear from his rhetoric: a state of absolute privation—hunger, an empty stomach, wasting away. But the numbers he cites are all based on relative measures: that is, how many children were less well-off than other children. Continue…

Curbing drunk drivers is harder than you think

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 10:10 AM - 32 Comments

Their actions are indefensible: Roger Walsh, the 57-year-old Quebecer sentenced to life in prison this September for running over and killing wheelchair-bound Anee Khudaverdian in 2008—his 19th impaired-driving conviction. Andrew Anthony Charles, a 25-year-old from Vancouver Island, recently handed three years for an alcohol-soaked April 2005 crash that took the lives of his girlfriend, Doreen Joseph, 20, and cousin, Glen Charles Jr., 23. Wladyslaw Bilski, a 49-year-old drunk from Chatham, Ont., who, earlier this fall, got four years, one for each of the elderly women he killed—Marion Dawson, Jean Ripley, Verna Neaves and Bernice Phillips—when he plowed his minivan head-on into their car as they returned home from a November 2007 church supper. Bilski’s blood alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit.

The list of offenders, and their innocent victims, goes on. Anyone with doubts that drunk driving is still a problem in Canada need only scan the headlines. In an era where the rates of all types of crime have dropped to 30-year lows, and our roads are safer than ever, the sometimes lethal combination of alcohol and automobile remains a stubborn phenomenon. In 2006 (the most recent statistics available), 907 Canadians were killed in crashes involving a drinking driver. Thousands more were injured.

Little wonder that federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson last month announced his intention to yet again toughen the country’s impaired-driving laws. Endorsing the June report of the all-party House of Commons justice committee, Nicholson said he wants to give police broad new powers to conduct random roadside breath tests. (As the law currently stands, officers must have a reasonable suspicion—an admission of drinking, or possible indications of impairment like the odour of alcohol, or erratic driving—to use the Breathalyzer.) RBT, as the random checks are known, is now in place in several European nations, and has been a long-standing practice in Australia, where millions are waved to the side of the road, asked to board “Booze Buses,” and blow every year. It’s a change that would put Canada, already home to some of the world’s most stringent sanctions for impaired driving, at the forefront of a global war. Continue…

Coyne v. Wells on China and last year's coalition madness

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 9:45 AM - 17 Comments

Producer note:
Please excuse the video problems near the end, internet troubles led to some video degradation.
And a big thanks to our very own commenter Sean Stokholm for sending in some music!

Download | Feed | iTunes

The Walrus: Politics 101 and Culture 2.0

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 9:16 AM - 29 Comments

I picked up my first copy of the Walrus in ages yesterday, keen to read Ron Graham’ cover story on why Michael Ignatieff hasn’t “knocked our socks off.” Huge disappointment. The piece is positioned as a view-from-30 000-feet look at the broad sweep of the Liberal party from Pearson through to the present, trying to use that as a larger frame to show why Michael Ignatieff was probably doomed to fail in his ambition to be the new Pierre Trudeau.

Don’t bother. It’s an annoyingly written piece that repeats the long-familiar story of the three Toronto boys who drove down to Harvard and sold Ignatieff a bill of goods,  and presents nothing in the way of original analysis. It’s the sort of article that, after asserting that  Bay Street powerbrokers tend to identify their own interests with those of the nation, feels obliged to punctuate the point  by saying, ”As Madame du Deffand is said to have remarked when told of the political philosopher Helvetius’s theory that every action, including generosity and kindness, is based on self-interest, ‘Helvetius has revealed everybody’s secret.’” It’s like John Ralston Saul was stealing in during the night and rewriting Graham’s copy.

Graham also claims that Ignatieff’s memoir/campaign pamphlet True Patriot Love was cut a lot of slack by “most commentators” because “they were his friends, had the same agent, loved the idea of one of their own in power, hated Stephen Harper, or never bothered to read it.” Maybe it’s because I love Stephen Harper, but my recollection is that the book was panned by “most commentators” as an intellectual embarrassment.

So why pick up the new Walrus? For Adam Sternbergh’s  piece about the return of the Kids in the Hall, which doubles as an elegy for the Toronto scene of the mid-1990s, and triples as  a smart comment on how the wonders of Web 2.0 have rendered old cultural forms obsolete.

I’m a sucker for Adam’s writing. I loved The Kids in the Hall, hung out on the edges of the crowd Adam is writing about for a few years (and even saw his sketch troupe, Joke Boy, a couple of times at the Rivoli), and am increasingly interested in the way the elimination of friction points in the transmission of information changes the incentive structure of cultural production.

On this last point: The most interesting thing I’ve read on this is still Lawrence Lessig’s decade-old book Code, which argues that many of the everyday freedoms we take for granted in a liberal society are not due to legal or constitutional protections, but simply because they’re too difficult to enforce. I’ve argued, here and elsewhere, that cool ceased to be a credible political stance when MTV made it impossible for subcultures to hide and flourish for any length of time.

Sternbergh argues that sketch comedy (which he calls “that most Canadian of comic forms”) was killed off by YouTube. Where once you had groups coming together in rec rooms and hashing out sketches, then gathering in teams at clubs and theatres across the city to try to out-funny one another, that energy is now “dispersed online in a thousand digital shorts.”

It’s a smart argument, one I find highly persuasive. Can you think of similar examples — aside from newspapers — of cultural formats that seemed natural but which have been fundamentally altered or made obsolete by the apps and tools and gizmos and tempos of Culture 2.0?

Hey techies

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 7:43 AM - 26 Comments

I’ve been using Chrome as my default browser since it came out. I like the tabbing system and find it nice and lean compared to Firefox. But a few weeks ago it suddenly got really slow, and started crashing with only a few open tabs. Weirder, when I launch the program to the google home page, the Google app tabs across the top left — the ones for searching Web Books Maps News GMail More… take three or four seconds to appear, and then they fade in like the opening credits on an art film.

Is this some new Google feature? It’s not my computer — Firefox and every other program is working fine. Anyone else having this problem?

'Strategic (Macro) Level Engagement'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 11:32 PM - 9 Comments

Canadian Press gains access to internal documents and finds talking points, expressed concerns and wrangling over contingencies.

As the winter of 2006-07 settled in, Canadian officials began to hear abuse concerns from more than just the Red Cross. British and Dutch forces, who followed the Canadians into southern Afghanistan, were “deeply frustrated” even though their agreements with Kabul allowed them more access to prisoners.

“UK/Dutch pol/mil colleagues lament that they are unable to track their detainees,” said a Dec. 4, 2006, memo viewed by The Canadian Press. ”It is unclear whether they are tortured, held beyond legal limits, or (all too frequently) released back to battlefield.”

The Allies were worried “the detainee issue could explode at any moment into a political firestorm.”

Busting through Iran's censorship wall

By Michael Petrou - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 9:17 PM - 1 Comment

There’s an effective ban on foreign media in Iran, and domestic media there isn’t free, which makes getting accurate information about what is happening in the country extremely difficult.

Those of us who want to know should keep close tabs on this site. Run by Iranian expats – many in Toronto – its members collect news from contributors inside Iran, translate these reports, and post them.

Their dispatches show that popular democratic dissent in Iran remains widespread.

Vietnam, Afghanistan; LBJ, Obama: not exactly, but still…

By John Geddes - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 7:36 PM - 13 Comments

There’s nothing less helpful in a political debate than a fatuous historical analogy. Whenever somebody levels a charge of “appeasement,” for instance, it’s a safe bet whatever negotiating stance they’re attacking bares not the slightest resemblance to what happened at Munich.

Yet, ever since Barack Obama delivered his impressive speech at West Point last week on sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, the fear that this war might be in danger of turning Vietnam-like has been hard to dispel.

Continue…

How Many Of These Do You Remember?

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 7:21 PM - 4 Comments

I found this video, by the Angry Video Game Nerd, a few days ago: “The Top 20 Urkel Moments.” I’m surprised and not a little relieved at how few of these moments I remember. I recall the Urkel Dance, and Stefan, but “Super Urkel vs. Abe Lincoln” is entirely new to me. That means I did have a life in the ’90s and just didn’t realize it.

BILL: …So then Urkel decided to send the Urkelbot to the job interview instead of going himself.
FRED: Why?
BILL: I don’t know why. I guess because it would allow a mix-up to occur that we, the viewer, would find amusing.
FRED: Was it amusing?
BILL: Not really.
FRED: Then I must ask you again. Why did he send the Urkelbot?
BILL: Because he didn’t think he was good enough to get the job. But when the Urkelbot broke down and Urkel had to explain himself, the man was so impressed by his honesty that he got the job. The end.
FRED: That was beautiful, Mike.  — Newsradio