Canadians get a Kindle surprise

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 14 Comments

As a software developer, Shane McCallum keeps himself abreast of the latest tech trends. As such, he was willing to jump through a few hoops last summer to get his hands on Amazon’s popular Kindle book reader before it was officially made available to Canadians in November. Though he lives in Revelstoke, B.C., McCallum tricked Amazon’s U.S. website into selling him one of the devices by masking his computer’s ISP address and setting up a fake American account. He then had his Kindle shipped to a post office box located a short drive across the border from his parents’ home in Rossland, B.C.

Such are the travails of the early adopter, but McCallum says it was worth it. The “DX” model McCallum bought, with its 9.7-inch screen (the original Kindle has a six-inch screen) and more than double the capacity of the previous generation Kindle, still isn’t available in Canada. An Amazon spokesperson says the earliest it would be available in Canada would be “some time next year.” McCallum bemoans, “After a few years working in the tech industry, you realize that Canada gets these things pretty slowly, if it gets them at all.”

It doesn’t end there. The version of the Kindle available to Canadians comes with a key feature—an “experimental” Web browser—turned off for all websites except Wikipedia.

Continue…

The secret to Susan Boyle’s success

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 10:50 AM - 313 Comments

Is Susan Boyle about to cross over from reality star to singing star? The 48-year-old Scottish woman, who surprised Simon Cowell earlier this year with her powerful singing voice on Britain’s Got Talent (and then lost the competition), is one of many reality-show contestants to release an album. But I Dreamed a Dream, her debut CD, is performing at a level that goes beyond the usual TV tie-in. According to Billboard, the recording sold 701,000 copies in its first week in the U.S. alone, “the best opening week for a female artist’s debut album” since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking album sales in 1991. She’s just as popular in Canada, though she doesn’t exactly love us back, having twice cancelled plans to visit here. No matter where she goes or doesn’t go, she’s the most popular recording star produced by Cowell’s Talent and Idol TV franchises. And not just because of her famously dumpy appearance, or the publicity she got for a recent bout of exhaustion. She’s the first reality contestant whose CDs have unlimited appeal to reality TV viewers.

Not that Boyle is the first reality star with a hit album; Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, among others, came before her. She isn’t even the first successful loser: Adam Lambert is famous for finishing second, while Jennifer Hudson recently got the ultimate mark of star status, her own Christmas special. But none of them have achieved the success of I Dreamed a Dream. Lambert’s debut album hit Billboard’s chart with 198,000 copies—a good figure but not in Boyle’s league; the man who beat him, Kris Allen, couldn’t crack the top 10. Critic Ryan White pointed out in the Oregonian that Cowell’s shows are a launching pad for older songwriters “looking to get their music back out to a broader audience,” and no one cares about most of the people who sing those songs. But the wide audience that watched Boyle’s Talent debut on YouTube is actually buying her CD; they wouldn’t buy Lambert’s or Allen’s.

Continue…

NFL Picks Week 16: Grandma Got Run Over By a Freeney

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 10:25 AM - 6 Comments

Scott Feschuk Last week: 7-6-3 Season 113-105-6

Scott Reid Last week: 3-10-3 Season 114-104-6

It’s Christmas Eve and we still haven’t wrapped Bill Cowher for the people of Washington, so let’s keep things brief…

San Diego (minus 3) at Tennessee, Christmas night

Feschuk: Nothing says “Christmas spirit” quite like gathering around the TV as a family and counting the number of times that Norv Turner looks as though he’s trying to remember if he turned his car lights off (Spoiler alert: 73). Pick: Tennessee.

Reid: This game means nothing and will still be fun to watch – which makes it Continue…

How much did he know?

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 4 Comments

By most measures, Tony Blair had a successful political career. As British prime minister, he was respected, if not loved. He won three majority governments and never lost an election. He secured parliamentary approval for an unpopular invasion of Iraq in March 2003. And two years later, when that invasion had resulted in a chaotic and increasingly bloody occupation of the country, he still won his third majority, even as British opposition to the war mounted and factions within his own Labour Party tried to force his resignation. “He has a reputation as a man who made decisions based on what he believed to be right at the time,” Tony Travers, a political analyst at the London School of Economics, told Maclean’s.

Today, retired from British politics but still active as a Middle East envoy for the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, Blair is watching that reputation come under threat because of an ongoing inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war. Chaired by former civil servant Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry covers the period from 2001 to 2009. Its broad scope includes Britain’s reasons for going to war, how the war was fought, and its legality. Prime Minister Gordon Brown bowed to intense pressure and agreed to hold the inquiry last summer. Hearings began in November. Immediately, Blair’s integrity came under attack.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations, told the inquiry he believes the invasion was “legal but of questionable legitimacy.” Sir Christopher Meyer, ambassador to Washington at the time, suggested Blair and then-U.S. president George W. Bush might have “signed in blood” a deal to depose Saddam Hussein as early as April 2002 at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Meyer, however, wasn’t present at the meeting and could only speculate that this is what took place, based on Blair’s language in a speech the next day.

Continue…

Mitchel Raphael on NDP hijinks at the xmas party and why some tories boycotted theirs

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 13 Comments

Jack gets worried
The NDP Christmas party featured a moustache showdown between MP Nathan Cullen of B.C. and MP Glenn Thibeault of Sudbury, Ont. The one voted to have the best moustache was supposed to shave off half the loser’s moustache. Thibeault seemed the clear winner (he noted that Cullen had more of a goatee than a moustache), but the equality-minded NDPers suddenly demanded both shave half their moustaches. NDP Leader Jack Layton helped with the proceedings but then quickly withdrew when the clippers approached his ’stache. Other entertainment for the evening included a spoof of CBC’s The National “At Issue” panel. Manitoba MP Niki Ashton dressed up like panellist Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s. She said the key to doing Coyne is to not move your hands. (Coyne actually does move his hands.) Vancouver MP Don Davies played panellist Chantal Hébert of the Toronto Star, but with his wig he looked more like his fellow MP Libby Davies. “I thought he was going to do me,” confessed Libby Davies, who is not related to Don. Meanwhile, on the Conservative Christmas front, several MPs boycotted their own party ($50 for no dinner, overpriced drinks, and a Prime Minister out of town wasn’t worth it, they said). At the Liberal Christmas party, there was some griping about Justin Trudeau working the room. One staffer said it was just a long walk to the washroom. If all those camera flashes were any indication, the reality was that most in the room wanted to see Trudeau. This year he sent out 7,000 Christmas cards. Two thousand were personalized.

Continue…

A trial in error?

By Philip Slayton - Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 26 Comments

Terri-Jean Bedford is a professional dominatrix. According to a newspaper report, her happiest hours have been spent tying up male clients and spanking them at her north Toronto “bondage bungalow.” Now, Bedford is playing in a different, and more serious, arena. She’s in court with two other sex workers, trying to change Canadian laws governing prostitution. Prostitution itself is legal in Canada, but Bedford and her colleagues are challenging provisions of the Criminal Code that make it illegal to operate a bawdy house or live off the avails of prostitution.

These laws, they say, drive prostitutes onto the streets and deny them the protection that could be given by a manager, bodyguard or chauffeur. The result, they argue, is to make their trade much more dangerous, exposing them to people like Robert Pickton, the convicted serial killer of Vancouver streetwalkers. They claim that the laws infringe their constitutional right to security, found in Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and should therefore be struck down.

The Bedford hearing took place in October, in Toronto, over seven days. A verdict is expected in a few months. The judge, Susan Himel, spent much of her time listening to a debate about the relationship between law and morality, and hearing about social policy that might be considered desirable.

Continue…

Looking back and moving forward

By John Parisella - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 5:28 PM - 10 Comments

As I approach my first holiday season in New York City, I have been reading and listening to countless accounts of the first decade of the 21st century and how America has fared. The general view is that this past decade was the most trying since the 1940s. It started off with a presidential election that was ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Then, of course, came the horrific events of 9-11. The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq followed, while Hurricane Katrina only added to the heavy burden of the American people. Finally, the financial meltdown and the deepest economic recession since the Great Depression closed out the decade, leaving most Americans in a state of uncertainty and vulnerability.

The rest of the word did not fare much better. The economic woes of the United States were felt globally and natural disasters, like the tsunami of 2004 that left over 200,000 people dead, devastated entire regions. Terrorism continued on its ugly course and was not just relegated to U.S. soil. We need only think of London, Madrid, Mumbai, and Bali to remind us that terrorism has no boundaries. Tensions in the Middle East intensified with two armed conflicts involving Israel. Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea continued their nuclear sabre rattling. Political divisions also surfaced in Iran and parts of China. And finally, an anti-climactic outcome in Copenhagen rounded out a less-than-stellar decade on the international stage.

Continue…

Riot police turn on memorial service in Iran

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 5:09 PM - 2 Comments

Iranian security forces stormed the area surrounding a mosque in Isfahan on Wednesday, arresting more than 50 and beating dozens who had gathered to mourn the death of a pro-opposition cleric. The death of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri on Sunday has kicked off a series of anti-government protests, with thousands gathering to dispute the results of the June presidential elections that extended Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s term in office. The protest on Wednesday was planned as a more subtle show of opposition to the president. But the subtlety was lost when Basij militiamen surrounded the neighbourhood, unleashing tear gas and pepper spray on the crowd, which included women.

CBC News

Climate Change and Canadian Federalism

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 4:13 PM - 46 Comments

1. Confederation of Dunces

2. We are all Albertans

3. Le Québec doit cultiver son jardin

4. It’s China’s fault, not ours

5. The best plan for the planet is also the best for the country

"Why do you want to be prime minister?"

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 4:09 PM - 29 Comments

In his year-end sit-down with Radio-Canada reporter Emmanuelle Latraverse, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was asked point-blank, “Why do you want to be prime minister?” After hesitating for a moment, Ignatieff began by saying his vision is “moderate, centrist, [and] practical.” Based on the rest of his answer, it’s arguably ill-defined as well. After briefly musing about the “jobs of tomorrow,” Canada’s competitiveness, and the country’s economic relationship with China and India, Ignatieff finally settled on insisting the Liberals “are the party of the future.” Conservatives are already circulating the clip (posted below) and eagerly comparing it to Ted Kennedy’s non-answer to the question, “Why do you want to be president?” which interviewer Roger Mudd devastatingly described as “stilted” and “elliptical.”

▶

Radio-Canada

YouTube

Balloon boy parents sent to jail

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 2:39 PM - 0 Comments

Richard and Mayumi Heene, the parents behind the balloon boy hoax last October, were sentenced to jail terms on Wednesday and forbidden from making any money off their stunt for the next four years. Richard was slapped with a 90-day jail sentence, including 60 days of work release, while Mayumi was sentenced to 20 days behind bars. Prosecutor Andrew Lewis claims the hoax was motivated by the Heenes’s desperation to get their own reality TV show and the financial hole they’d dug for themselves in pursuit of it. Richard Heene’s attorney pleaded for leniency, telling the court the couple has “learned a lesson they will never forget for the rest of their lives.”

MSNBC

How the devil does business

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 2:34 PM - 11 Comments

As the content of the Supreme Court’s “responsible communication” ruling propagates, I am seeing and hearing a lot of despairing wails of “Oh, TMZ will just love this!” Well, I’m sure the folks at TMZ love it when someone complains about them—usually, one guesses, in between visits to the site. In a mere matter of months TMZ has managed to replace the poor old Enquirer as the go-to synecdoche for the irresistible evils of celebrity-stalking.

But as popular as gossipy media content is, people don’t pay much attention to how it is generated. If they did, they would never imagine that the new “responsible communication” defence, which is designed to protect careful investigative reporting in the public interest from being nitpicked to death, has much to do with the kind of machine-gun journalism that TMZ practices.

Go on, visit the TMZ home page right now. Where is most of this stuff coming from? About two-thirds of it, at a guess, is founded on police tips and privileged court documents of one sort or another—flat, libel-conscious, factual summaries of the details of arrests, real-estate sales, family-law filings, police investigations, accident reports, and the like. It’s all produced by guys hanging around courthouses and police stations, much of it is in the public domain, and very little of it would be jeopardized by any version of defamation law, or at least any version in which truth and qualified privilege were defences. (It is also rather convenient to TMZ that the deceased have no right of action in libel.)

Really, there is not even much actual copy: TMZ depends very little on stylishly salacious tittering, and very heavily on the unique streaming effect that is created by a long sequence of barebones 75-word stories about celebrity transactions and troubles. You wish your staid local broadsheet was this information-dense. And what’s the mortar that fills in these bricks, which are costly to assemble but don’t involve much defamation risk? Occasionally, it consists of spoonfed stories from PR people trying to promote their clients’ own interests. Who was TMZ’s source for the details of Dr. Conrad Murray’s TV deal? Dr. Conrad Murray. Who broke the big news about Steve Tyler going into rehab? Why, it was Steve Tyler.

Throw in the occasional paparazzi photo, TV or radio clip, and stupid contest, and you’ve built yourself a media giant without having to spend much money on lawyers (though I’m sure they have some pretty good ones on the payroll). We read TMZ, leap to the wildest and most cynical conclusions about the celebrity gods and their sordid Elysium, and blame the messenger for our own mythomania. TMZ isn’t the problem, buddy.

The pivotal paperwork (IV)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 1:55 PM - 13 Comments

After a week without explanation as to why a reference to abuse was redacted from that 2006 field report when it was originally released in 2007, three specific questions were registered last Friday with the offices of Defence Minister Peter MacKay and General Walter Natynczyk.

In regards to the redaction noted below, who oversaw, ordered or made that redaction? On what grounds was that reference to abuse redacted? Did those grounds no longer apply when Gen. Natynczyk disclosed the reference to abuse last week?

Minister MacKay’s office forwarded those questions to the Justice Department, the department responsible for overseeing redactions. No response has yet been received, but it will be posted here when it is.

Tom and Jerry recipe

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 1:48 PM - 2 Comments

In the bottom of a cup, stir 1 1/2 ounces of mix into 2 teaspoons of batter. Fill with hot milk, stir, sprinkle with nutmeg.

Mix:

• 1/3 Brandy
• 1/3 Light rum – e.g. Barbados
• 1/3 Dark rum – e.g. Demarara

Batter:

Separate 6 eggs. Whip whites firm (it helps to add a sprinkle of Cream of Tartar) and set aside.

Beat yolks thoroughly. Add to them

• 1/4 teaspoon powdered cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Blend.

Add as much powdered sugar as possible until too stiff to beat. (ca. 3/4 lb.) Then stir in beaten egg whites.

Stir before using.

Will keep up to a week if refrigerated.

"Some programs should end"

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 1:30 PM - 41 Comments

The man behind 2006′s $1 billion in budget cuts is wielding his axe again. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is once again looking for programs to cut—anything that will keep Ottawa afloat as the country battles the largest federal deficit in Canadian history. “Some programs should end,” Flaherty told the Toronto Star, adding, “it’s necessary for restraint to happen.” Flaherty says plans to target the “hundreds and hundreds of programs that just trundle along” because of the “assumption in government that every time a program is created, the program should go on indefinitely.” With cumulative budget shortfalls expected to hit $164 billion by 2014, Flaherty says he has no choice but start pinching pennies early. Still, the financial big wig, whose 2006 cuts brought the axe down on museums, youth employment initiatives, and women’s issues groups, admits this kind of work “doesn’t make one popular.”

Toronto Star

The cheque's (not) in the mail

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 1:25 PM - 2 Comments

Earlier this year, executives at AIG’s Financial Products division, which was widely blamed for putting the company in such a sorry state it needed a bailout worth $180 billion in capital and loans, hoped to stamp out the furor over their bonuses by promising to pay a good chunk of the money back. Of $165 million that was spread around in “retention bonuses,” the employees had pledged to hand back $45 million. And yet, as 2009 comes to a close, most of the money is nowhere to be found. So far, only $19 million of the $45 million has been recovered; the rest remains with employees who’ve since left the company and taken the money with them, and others who are simply refusing to give it back. AIG no doubt hopes to get the matter resolved as quickly as possible to avoid the spate of bad press and ill will the bonuses sparked last spring—especially considering it’s due to hand out another $198 million this coming March.

Washington Post

The Speakers and a huge quilt

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 1:24 PM - 3 Comments

Senate Speaker Noël Kinsella and House Speaker Peter Milliken hosted a reception at The Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat for the Quilt of Belonging, a 36-metre by 3.5-metre tapestry that portrays all the First Peoples of Canada and every nation of the world.

Speaker Peter Milliken.

.

Speaker Noël Kinsella.

.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

.

Continue…

Maclean's Interview: Efraim Halevy

By Yoni Goldstein - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 59 Comments

Efraim Halevy is the former head of the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, where he worked closely with five Israeli prime ministers—Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. He is the author of Man in the Shadows: Inside the Middle East Crisis With a Man Who Led the Mossad.

Q: What are the real chances of peace between Israel and the Palestinians?
A: I think peace between Israel and the Palestinians hinges on the Palestinians proving the capability of nationhood. I don’t think that nationhood can be thrust upon the Palestinians from without. A nation has to be built from within—and it has to be purely Palestinians who create and build their own nation. The way things are at the moment, the Palestinians are not creating their own nation. The nation is being created from without. The United States is training their military forces; Tony Blair is chaperoning them and helping them build their economic and political institutions; the European Union is helping in other fields. In other words, what is being done is the Palestinian nation is being built with outside help. This, I think, cannot succeed. Whether the Palestinians have it within their capacity to transform what they have into a nation that has an in-built hierarchy, that has an in-built structure of discipline and orderly conduct—this is something that we don’t know yet.

Q: Do you have a sense whether they’ll be able to do it?
A: I don’t know. I think that if it is not the case, then they’re in for a lot of trouble. I think it is in Israel’s interest that there should be a Palestinian state—I think it is in Israel’s interest that there should be a Palestinian people that is capable of sustaining a Palestinian state. But what has been going on in recent years is not very encouraging.

Continue…

Guantanamo prison unlikely to close anytime soon

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 12:59 PM - 4 Comments

Barack Obama’s plan to move Guantanamo detainees out of the controversial prison and into a nearly vacant maximum-security prison in Illinois prison has hit a snag. As it stands, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not currently have the $150 million they need to take over the Thomson Correctional Center and a White House bid to add an extra $200 million to its budget was recently derailed by Democrats wary of endorsing the politically-sensitive measure. Problem is, the next available opportunity to do so may not come until late 2010. Even then, significant challenges would remain. Retrofitting the prison to hold the Guantanamo detainees could add another eight to 10 months, meaning the prisoner transfers aren’t likely to happen until 2011 at the earliest—if they are to happen at all. Further complicating matters, both Democrat and Republican lawmakers remain skeptical and could campaign against housing the detainees on U.S. soil come the 2010 mid-term elections.

New York Times

Plane with 3 Canadians onboard crashes in Jamaica

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 12:36 PM - 0 Comments

A plane carrying 154 passengers from Miami to Kingston hit a rainstorm Tuesday night and overshot the runway. The Boeing 737-800 skidded across the road and almost landed in the Caribbean Sea. Passengers reported that the plane broke in half and they could smell fuel. At least 44 people were sent to the hospital. Three Canadians were on board, although it is unclear whether they were injured.

CBC

Go Anywhere With a Click of a Mouse

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 12:22 PM - 1 Comment

Via Lee Goldberg, this video gives us a look at the way today’s TV shows use green-screen to turn the studio and the backlot into any place in the world, or add realistic details to scenes that would otherwise look fake and studio-bound. The way these effects are used is a bit similar to the way matte paintings were used in old movies (like Mary Poppins: nobody ever went to London for the film, so much of what you see in the exterior shots was painted in by Peter Ellenshaw), and it will be interesting to see what happens when some of these shows are revisited 20 or so years from now — some of the effects will hold up, and others will look fake. But for now, green-screen is a big part of what’s made TV shows look so much bigger in scope and more expensive than they used to be. The other part of it, of course, is that today’s shows really are bigger in scope and more expensive than they used to be.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.4273436&w=560&h=340&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]

Branding Refined

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 12:17 PM - 18 Comments

My old Ad Missions colleague Andris Pone has posted a poll asking readers for their opinions on the brand of the decade. Among the candidates are Apple, Starbucks, Volvo, and Porter. Unsurprisingly, Apple and Porter are in a dead heat at 27% of votes apiece.

I’m going to have to go with Porter. While I recognize the design genius of Apple and its rock-solid positioning, I just can’t stand the company’s products. Porter on the other hand… holy hanna. The trick for Porter is going to be following through on the “Flying Refined” brand promise as it adds routes and customers. Part of what made it so appealing in the early years was not just the convenience, but the fact that the planes were mostly empty. It was like flying an executive jet for the price of a Via rail ticket.

The company is still doing a fine job of pushing the brand clearly consistently through every vector, but I’ve flown it a couple of times recently, and the inevitable delivery flaws are creeping in. A delay at the gate here, a messy lounge area there — when elite service meets mass appeal, something has to give, doesn’t it? I hope not.

Here’s Andrew Coyne, again from the early days.

Great sentences

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 10:18 AM - 61 Comments

The history of the future is the rise and fall of groups claiming to advocate for the future, with advice that just happens to also raise the social status of their affiliate groups.

That’s Robin Hanson, indifferent to Transhumanism.

Stephen Harper recently promised to eliminate the federal deficit without raising taxes. Is he being realistic?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 10:01 AM - 41 Comments