Saving Abbey Road studios

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 12:38 PM - 1 Comment

After days of worry that owner EMI Group was going to put the money-losing Abbey Road studios on the auction block came word that the place where the Beatles recorded most of their albums has been saved as a British national treasure.  Simon Thurley, the head of English Heritage, which recommended a strong Grade II status, said:  “Some of the most defining sounds of the 20th century were created within the walls of the Abbey Road studios. English Heritage has long recognized the cultural importance of Abbey Road—it contains, quite simply, the most famous recording studios in the world and acts as a modern day monument to the history of recorded sound and music.”  The listing was first proposed in the 1990s, and at that point English Heritage opposed the move because the building, the world’s first purpose-built recording studios in the world, had little architectural distinction. However its iconic status as the site of musical magic persuaded experts to change their minds in 2003.  Tourists queuing to recreate the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover by photographing one another on the pedestrian crossing regularly cause traffic jams. Now, regardless of EMI’s plans, altering the buildings will be all but impossible.

Guardian

Unelected senators, to save democracy

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 12:34 PM - 58 Comments

Senator Elaine McCoy makes the case for a reformed, but still appointed, Senate.

Consider what happens now when you elect someone to go to Ottawa. No sooner have they spent their first term in office than they’re emailing home to explain why they voted for something their constituents didn’t want. The reason, of course, is party discipline. They’re “whipped,” i.e., told to vote with their party or else leave caucus. Most stay and do what they’re told. Without the party, it’s very difficult to get re-elected.

It would be no different for senators if they were running for election. Most would run as party candidates. What we’d end up with is nothing more than 105 more backbenchers. Right back, in fact, where we started. So let’s start again. Let’s take the proposition that an independent, appointed Senate is, after all, Canada’s last best chance for democracy.

Rights and Democracy: the Board replies. "It's not about the Middle East"

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 12:15 PM - 177 Comments

The seven members of the Rights and Democracy board who support Chairman Aurel Braun are back in the pages of the National Post today, with a concerted effort to explain their side of the current dispute. This is the first time they have submitted such a piece of writing since Jan. 20, and anything from this majority faction of the board deserves the attention of readers who have been following this story closely. In part, the Braun faction’s op-ed stands as a sort of answer to the questions I put to Braun and Jacques Gauthier earlier this month. Since Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon’s actions yesterday amount to a wholehearted endorsement by the Government of Canada of everything Braun and the board have done in recent months, that’s all the more reason to consider carefully the board majority’s arguments.

So once again, here is a link to the full op-ed, which I encourage you to read. Here are a few key paragraphs:

First some facts, which seem to have eluded critics of the Rights & Democracy board. Every Canadian member of the board was appointed by the current government, including those who are vociferously supporting the late former president, Rémy M. Beauregard, and who are openly hostile to the rest of the board. The government appointed Mr. Beauregard as well. Most members of the board have no prior political affiliation; a recently appointed board member is a well-known Liberal. Clearly, the board wasn’t “stacked.” The only discernible pattern is that board members were appointed to bring governance to Rights & Democracy. There is no imposition of a right-wing agenda, no interference in autonomy.

Accountability and transparency are the true issues. A December 2007 report by the Department of Foreign Affairs’ Office of the Inspector‑General discovered “persistent … accountability … problems” with Rights & Democracy, which regrettably remain. Whether it was the finance and audit committee requesting timely and adequate information; members seeking proper clarification of the operations of the Geneva office; explanations about a $100,000 expenditure which raised questions; or information about how $300,000 a year in discretionary funds was spent, we on the board have been stymied.

…The former president’s death was a gateway to surreality. Conflict entrepreneurs in the Canadian and Middle East political trenches could not resist interfering. Instead of determining how to resolve a real battle between those supportive of accountability and those who opposed it, Canadians have ended up debating the imaginary impact of the government’s Middle East agenda on Rights & Democracy.

Those of us responsible for the governance of the organization do not have the luxury of fighting national or Middle Eastern fantasy battles. Ensuring accountability and transparency is far less exciting than debating Canadian and Middle East politics. Yet, that is our task….

I’ll respond to these arguments tomorrow.

Colbert v. Dosanjh

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 12:12 PM - 0 Comments

Stephen Colbert sits down with Ujjal Dosanjh in the first-part of the Colbert Report’s one-part series, Better Know A Riding.

It took two months of recalibrating and consulting to decide to do nothing?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 11:47 AM - 14 Comments

For a sneak preview of this year’s budget, please consult last year’s budget.

The upcoming federal budget will contain no new spending measures or tax cuts beyond what the Harper government has announced already in its plan to stimulate the economy, says a senior government official. The budget, to be tabled on March 4, will simply implement the second year of the “economic action plan,” the stimulus package unveiled in last year’s budget, the official told reporters in a briefing Monday.

The Star finds a government official who suggests there will indeed be spending cuts, but another government official—conceivably the same one cited by Canwest—speaks only to a reduction in the rate of growth of government spending. Economists, wordsmiths and fans of financial terminology can debate the difference, if any, between those two statements.

No word yet on whether the government, entering into an era of restraint, will cut down on the number of unnamed officials it employs.

Dear Mike Babcock

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 6 Comments

Coach: I had a late lunch yesterday at a bar on Robson and overheard a few guys analyzing the performance of Canada’s men’s hockey team. I thought you’d appreciate hearing their input since they seemed pretty confident they had it all figured out. That’s why I took notes. I guess what I’m saying is: Give this a read and it’s pretty much “Good night, Germany.”

P.S. The language they used was a little saucy so I took the liberty of replacing the “f-word” with the names of various Osmonds.

Cast of characters: Guy in Detroit Red Wings cap (DRW); guy in Shea Weber Team Canada T-shirt (SW); guy in Just a Foul Mood (JFM).

•••

DRW: Here’s one thing I don’t Donny get. This Merrill business about chemistry.

JFM: Marie right.

DRW: You’re making $40 million Jimmy dollars a year or whatever, you should be able to step on the Merrill ice and Continue…

Canada's ordinary octogenarians

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 10:53 AM - 0 Comments

The average baby born in Canada this year will celebrate a whopping 81 birthdays, according to a Statistics Canada report on life expectancy released Tuesday. That’s up from a paltry 78.4 birthdays in 1997. StatsCan says that most of the increase in national life expectancy from birth came from recent advances in the life expectancy of seniors. A 65-year-old man alive today, for instance, can expect to live an average of 18.1 more years. Within Canada, it’s British Colombians who live longest (to 81.2 years); the lowest life expectancy (75.8 years) is found in the three territories.

CBC News

A Buddhist take on an American ritual

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 10:46 AM - 2 Comments

The “public grovel” is as American as apple pie, but it normally operates with the Christian language that derives from its evangelical roots—the revival and the altar call. You confess you are a sinner. You repent of your sins. You turn to Christ to make yourself new. From President Grover Cleveland, who likely fathered a child out of wedlock, to Ted Haggard, who resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals after allegations that he had sex with a male prostitute, U.S. politicians and preachers have bowed and scraped in Christian idioms. Jimmy Carter spoke of “adultery in my heart.” Jimmy Swaggart spoke of “my sin” and “my Savior.” In January Brit Hume, channeling his inner evangelist on Fox News Sunday, urged Woods to “turn to the Christian faith.” “He’s said to be a Buddhist,” Hume said. “I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.” Woods in effect told Hume Friday thanks but no thanks. Part of Woods’ carefully prepared statement followed the time-honored formula. He apologized, not just to his wife and children but also to his family and friends, his business partners, his fans, and the staff and sponsors of his foundation. “I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated. What I did is not acceptable, and I am the only person to blame.” But this was not your garden-variety confession. Though Woods spoke of religion, he did not mention Jesus or the Bible, sin or redemption. He gave a Buddhist mea culpa instead, turning not to Christian theologies of sin but to Buddhist teachings about craving. Whereas Christianity seeks to solve the problem of sin, Buddhism seeks to solve the problem of suffering. Buddhists observe that suffering arises from a 12-fold chain of interlocking causes and effects. Among these causes is craving. We crave this woman or that car because we think that getting her or it will make us happy. But this craving only ties us into an unending cycle of misery, because even if we get what we want there is always something more to crave—another woman or another man, a faster car or a bigger house. Woods said, “Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security.” When Woods said he “stopped living by the core values” he was “taught to believe in,” he was referring not to Christian values but to the Thai Buddhist values instilled in him by his mother, who was in the room with her son in Florida in a show of support. When he vowed to change his life, it wasn’t to turn to Christianity but to return to Buddhism. He actively practiced Buddhism from childhood, he said, but “drifted away from it in recent years,” forgetting its crucial observation that craving is overcome not by self-indulgence but by self-control. Buddhism “teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint,” he said. “Obviously I lost track of what I was taught.”

USA Today

Canadian health care survives Danny Williams' surgery

By John Geddes - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 10:24 AM - 118 Comments

[UPDATED BELOW WITH SURGEONS' COMMENTS]

I haven’t heard anybody say that Danny Williams shouldn’t have been allowed to travel to the U.S. for heart surgery. As the Newfoundland premier has declared in interviews published yesterday and today, it’s his heart, his health.

But accepting the personal nature of the choice hardly ends the conversation. Williams’ decision to check into Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami to be operated on by a veteran surgeon has been seized upon by critics of public health insurance as proof of the Canadian system’s inherent weakness.

Continue…

Maclean’s Interview: Jeffrey Immelt

By Jason Kirby - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 5 Comments

Photographs by Simon Hayter

Jeffrey Immelt is the chairman and CEO of General Electric, one of the world’s largest corporations, and a member of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Since the financial crisis he’s been an outspoken critic of corporate excess and failed leadership. But he has also faced criticism of his own from GE investors who’ve seen shares fall 60 per cent since he took over in 2001. Immelt spoke to Maclean’s during a visit to Vancouver for the Winter Olympics.

Q: In a speech at the West Point military academy in December, you said we’ve come through an era when business went from tough-mindedness, which is a good trait, to meanness and greed. What did you mean by that?
A: Over a period of time, not enough effort has been put forward to investing in the capability and long-term growth of the productive middle class of the United States. Less money has been invested in research and development and manufacturing, with more of a transition to financial services. When a country from 1980 to 2010 goes from being an export powerhouse to an unbelievably consumption-driven net importer, that’s not a good trend.

Q: Can it be reversed?
A: It’s going to take lots of spending on R & D, and a real dedication to making our workforce more productive again. Seven per cent of U.S. GDP is exports. In Germany, it’s 35 per cent. Germany’s not a low-cost country. Germany is not Mexico. And there’s no reason why the U.S. can’t have some kind of destiny that’s like that.

Continue…

Canadian pair wins ice dance gold

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 1:06 AM - 13 Comments

Canadian ice dancers Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue made history Monday night by becoming the first North American pair to ever win an Olympic gold medal in the event. Scoring a personal best 110.42, Moir and Virtue beat out Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the United States, and Russia’s Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, who finished second and third, respectively. In doing so, the Canadians also became the youngest ice dance gold medalists in history.

CTV

Why we stink at ski jumping

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 12:56 AM - 6 Comments

If he weren’t so busy being a ski jumper, Eric Mitchell would make one fine Olympic volunteer. Like all those helpful folks wearing the light green uniforms in Vancouver and Whistler, the 17-year-old is polite, chipper and more than happy to answer any question—including this one: Why is your team so dreadful?

“We are a very, very committed group of ski jumpers,” Mitchell says, still smiling. “I know the results don’t look amazing on paper.”

That’s putting it mildly. Canada’s four-man squad came to the Vancouver Games with uninspiring expectations; Brent Morrice, the chairman of Ski Jumping Canada, said even one Top-20 finish would be reason to celebrate. Well, they didn’t come close to that. With a dead last showing in Monday’s team event, our ski jumpers actually performed worse in Whistler than they did four years ago in Turin. Only Stefan Read—the 22-year-old “veteran” of the team—managed anything better than a “Did Not Qualify.” He advanced to the second round of the large hill competition, ending up 46^th out of 50.

“No, I’m not happy,” says Morrice, whose son, Trevor, is one of the four Canadian jumpers. “We could have done better. I don’t know exactly what the key is, but I know it takes four years of preparation, not four weeks, and I don’t think that we had enough focus throughout the last four years to do what we had to do.”

Forgive us, ski-jumping experts, but the results seem baffling. If any country appears destined to dominate the ramp, it’s Canada. We have snow. We have skis. We even have people who like to ski on snow. So what gives? Why aren’t our jumpers landing on the podium? Trevor Morrice, Brent’s son, sums it up best. “Ski jumping died in Canada for ten years,” he says. “And we had to rebuild slowly.”

And it’s still very much a work in progress.

The death of Canadian ski jumping can be traced back to the days of Horst Bulau, the legendary leaper who was blessed not only with talent, but with the greatest name in the history of sports. The Ottawa native spent the 1980s winning World Cup titles and contending for Olympic medals. At the Calgary Games in 1988, he finished 9^th in the same event that Read just placed 46^th. “We took our eye off the grassroots program and we focused mainly on Horst and the national team,” Brent Morrice says now, recalling those glory days. “Eventually, one by one, they quit, and we found ourselves without a team.” The well was so dried up that between 1994 and 2002, Canada didn’t even bother sending ski jumpers to the Winter Olympics.

It wasn’t until the late-1990s that a small group of volunteers in Alberta embarked on a plan to rebuild the sport in Canada. As Eric Mitchell recalls, he was just seven years old when he first saw the advertisement for junior ski-jumping classes at the Olympic Park in Calgary. “I told my dad I wanted to do it,” he says. “He didn’t know what it was, either.” Today, Mitchell’s dad is president of the Altius Nordic Ski Club, the one and only place in Canada that offers an entry-level program for aspiring jumpers. It’s no secret why all four of our Olympians (Read, Mitchell, Morrice and Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes) are all Altius products. There simply isn’t another club to choose from.

Brent Morrice hopes to change all that. Speaking passionately after his team’s forgettable Olympic performance, he said he is working hard to open the old jumps in Thunder Bay, Ont., which were closed a decade ago in the face of provincial budget cuts. He is also in talks with officials in Squamish, B.C., not far from Whistler, to construct their own junior training facility that will be a link to the pair of championship ramps built for the 2010 Games. “Look at this sport,” Morrice says, pointing at the packed bleachers behind him. “It’s a fantastic Olympic event, it’s sold out every Olympics, and people are electrified around here. Even the Canadians are electrified, even though we don’t have a winner. Ski Jumping Canada is committed to getting them winners, and we’re going to do what it takes to make that happen.”

Some dollar bills would certainly help. This season, the team received $125,000 in public funding, a paltry sum compared to the millions doled out for other, much more popular sports. Some of that money came from “Own the Podium,” but because the federal program typically rewards athletes who show promise in other international competitions, the ski jumpers didn’t exactly measure up. “Out of that money we need to pay two coaches, buy equipment, and travel across the world,” Morrice says. “It’s very difficult.” In fact, it may have been impossible if not for the generosity of well-known Vancouver chef Lesley Stowe, creator of the very popular cracker-like snack, Raincoast Crisps. The team’s primary sponsor, she donated $75,000 this season alone.

Indeed, Canada’s ski jumpers are hardly a spoiled bunch. Simon Ammann, who took home two golds this week, is a god in his home country of Switzerland. Sponsors line up at his door, endorsements are endless, and he has one job: to ski jump. Contrast that with Eric Mitchell, who works part-time at a French Connection clothing store when he’s not studying for high school exams. Or Stefan Read, who still lives with his parents and in between training runs waits tables at a golf course banquet hall. “They’re my number one sponsor,” he says of his folks. “We always joke around and say: Put ‘Mom and Dad’ on the helmet. Other guys have Red Bull.”

Read can laugh about it now, but in the weeks to come he will have some serious decisions to make. With two Olympics under his skis, the 22-year-old has more than enough potential to one day compete with the Simon Ammanns of the world. But is it worth the sacrifice? “We have fantastic athletes right up until they are about 17 or 18, but then if there is no future and there is no money, they’ve got to get on with their lives,” Morrice says. “They won’t continue ski jumping if they have to pay to ski jump on the national team. It’s very difficult for a guy like Stefan Read to continue in his 20s.”

Eric Mitchell is already worried about that scenario. He’ll be 21 at the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia, and 25 in 2018—when he is certain he will be good enough to challenge for a medal. “I love the sport so much that I am going to commit everything I possibly can to this, but the thing is we don’t have enough of a support system,” he says. “I’m finishing high school this year, and it’s really hard for athletes like me to really carry on in our sport because the next level isn’t very well set up for us. If mom and dad have got me this far, imagine what a full sponsor will be able to do for us. We have the people. We have the motivation.”

All that’s missing are the results.

Taking pictures of people having their picture taken in front of the Olympic cauldron

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 11:37 PM - 24 Comments

It’s quite a shock to come to Vancouver from Whistler. Despite the Olympic presence, the mountain resort retains its small-town feeling. It’s crowded but there are few lines and fewer delays. Vancouver is a madhouse. The entire downtown is like the scene at the pier in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. Today, I counted 57 people in line… at a hot dog vendor.

Down the street, meanwhile, the queue for the Olympic Super Store at The Bay was at least two hours long. And what the people didn’t know – and I didn’t have the heart to tell them – was that another punishing lineup awaited: the one to pay. I walked slowly along the queue and, at the risk of feeding a stereotype, I can only tell you the truth: The women were, for the most part, cheery and chatty; as for the men – let’s just say I haven’t seen this many looks of distress and resignation on men since the invention of chastity.

I also spent some time at the Olympic cauldron. No one just comes to see the cauldron. People come to take photos of the cauldron – which, by the way, in person is even uglier than it appears on television. It looks like an industrial plumbing job gone horribly awry. With the fire shooting out the top, I think of it as the Devil’s Toilet.

As a photographic attraction, however, the cauldron is a blast to hang around, because it’s never a long wait to get an earful of Continue…

Olympic Caption Challenge: Vote Now!

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 11:15 PM - 6 Comments

UPDATE: Mike T. wins – again! Are none of you man or woman enough to stop the Mike T. caption juggernaut?!

•

Lindsey Vonn and I are very happy together, thanks for asking, but I suppose we should nevertheless get some closure on the Caption Challenge. I’ve selected five finalists. Vote for your favourite. Winner as of 6:30 a.m. Wednesday gets some official Olympic merchandise valued in the Continue…

Canadian women beat Finland 4-0

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 10:29 PM - 1 Comment

Just a day after the U.S. men’s hockey team stunned Canada in a qualification game, the Canadian women have set up a cross-border showdown of their own. The Canadian women’s hockey team defeated Finland 4-0 in the semi-finals Monday evening and will now face off against the U.S. in the gold medal game on Thursday. The result doesn’t come as a shock—the U.S. beat Sweden 9-1 earlier in the day—but the Americans will no doubt be anxious to avenge their loss to Canada at the 2002 Games in Turin.

CTV

The would-be mayor of Wessex

By Patricia Treble - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 9:03 PM - 1 Comment

How lucky is Fred Ewanuick? Every night during the Winter Games, the actor (Dan for Mayor, Corner Gas) hosts the victory ceremony concerts in Whistler. Best of all, he gets to introduce acts like Feist, Stars, and Our Lady Peace to 5,000 screaming fans while someone else is stuck with correctly pronouncing the athletes’ names.

When VANOC asked his agent if he would be interested, it didn’t take Ewanuick long to say yes, especially considering his half-hour-long daily gig comes with a two-bedroom condo complete with killer mountain views. The only thing missing was a uniform, so he improvises with a red maple leaf toque.

Unlike Canada’s Olympians, the 38-year-old Ewanuick is on a roll. His new CTV comedy, Dan for Mayor, has been heavily-promoted throughout the Olympics ahead of its March 1 premiere, so much so that Ewanuick worries “people are going to get sick of me before the show airs.” The series, Ewanuick explains, focuses on “an aging slacker who snaps into reality when his ex-girlfriend announces she’s getting married.” Stunned by the news, Dan, a bartender, announces big plans of his own: he’s running for mayor. Dan recruits his best friend to manage his “campaign”—Ewanuick describes it as “the blind leading the blind”—and sells his beloved Pac-Man arcade game to pay the electoral deposit.

Does Dan ever think he could be a good mayor? “I don’t think he really thinks he can win, but he’s convinced he can do better than people think he can,” Ewanuick says. “They are brushing him off as a joke candidate.” Soon, he’s challenging the incumbent for the keys to city hall in Wessex, Ont., a made-up town that’s “big enough to have its own bus system but small enough that a guy like Dan could actually conceivably run and maybe win.”

Though Ewanuick hit the big time as the lovable but dumb Hank in Corner Gas, this is his first leading role, one he was offered while finishing off the last season of the hit show. Still, he shrugs off the pressure of carrying a new series. “I don’t think this show will fly or flop because of me,” Ewanuick says. “I know my character’s name is in the title, but it isn’t necessarily my show. I do what I’m told, that’s my job. People write stuff for me and I speak it. At the end of the day, I’m kinda just a moving prop. I’m putting all the pressure on the creators, unless it does really well, then it’s all me.”

Olympic Photos: Monday February 22nd, 2010

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 8:30 PM - 0 Comments

Here's hoping Danny Williams got Canadian-style heart surgery

By John Geddes - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 8:28 PM - 80 Comments

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams has finally done an interview discussing his decision to go to the U.S. for heart surgery. You’ll recall that critics of public health insurance on both sides of the border pounced on this high-profile case of medical tourism as evidence that the Canadian system is hopelessly second-rate.

But wait a minute. I see that Williams says his problem was with his mitral valve. Now, I’m no expert, but I seem to remember reading something recently about that particular part of the old ticker.

Continue…

Canada's internet is slow, expensive

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 6:57 PM - 7 Comments

According to Harvard University, and contrary to what the CRTC states, Canada has some of the slowest and most expensive internet access in the developed world. Says Harvard: “Canada continues to see itself as a high performer in broadband, as it was early in the decade, but current benchmarks suggest that this is no longer a realistic picture of its comparative performance on several relevant measures.” The university reported that Canada ranked 19th overall out of 30 participating member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

CBC News

UPDATED: Rights and Democracy: The witness has rights

By Paul Wells - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 6:03 PM - 233 Comments

(UPDATE, Tuesday at noon: Jacques Gauthier replies to this post in the comments below. For readers’ convenience, I have reproduced Gauthier’s comment at the bottom of this post. — pw)

A letter arrived today at the Montreal office of Samson Bélair/ Deloitte et Touche, the financial-services firm hired by Rights and Democracy interim president Jacques Gauthier on Friday to conduct a forensic audit of the firm’s financial activities over the past five years. The letter is signed by several senior members of the Rights and Democracy staff. It is a blockbuster.

The letter’s authors — France-Isabelle Langlois, Michael Wodzicki, Dominic Tremblay, Nicholas Galetti — demand to know the details of Samson Bélair’s mandate as a condition of their cooperation in the audit.

And they level serious allegations of their own at Gauthier, arguing in effect that if Samson Bélair wants to investigate mismanagement at Rights and Democracy, they might as well start at the top. Continue…

Those dopes

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 5:47 PM - 5 Comments

Double gold winner in biathlon, Magdalena Neuner, has come out with heavy criticism of Olympics drug testing officials. “They treat us like pigs!” she exclaimed, referring to the team who take athletes through doping tests immediately after each event. “After the finish they treat us worse than pigs going to the slaughterhouse. You really get shoved around and force is used.” Neuner, who has just withdrawn from the competition to allow others a chance to medal, explained that sometimes up to five “screaming people are hounding you,” making it difficult to enjoy the moment in which an athlete has just won a medal.

Bild

Be careful what you text in China

By Katie Engelhart - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 2 Comments

Another virtual brick has been added to what has been dubbed “The Great Firewall of China.” According to the state-run China Daily, police will provide mobile phone companies with a set of “key words” deemed “unhealthy.” Text messages will then be searched by the cell companies for those phrases. People accused of transmitting unhealthy content will be investigated, and may have their texting capabilities suspended. China Daily suggests that the mobile companies are operating on orders from Beijing. “What if I send messages to my wife with sexual content?” asked one man, quoted in the paper. “Am I also going to be suspended?”

Continue…

You’re wearing that!?

By Jason Kirby - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 3 Comments

In the lead-up to the Vancouver Olympics, the question on everyone’s mind when it came to figure skating was: will there be another scandal? Yes, it turns out. Only this one is solely of the sequined, frilly, spandex variety. Forget about how the judges scored so-and-so’s triple Salchow. Who let him out of the house dressed like that?

When the Ukraine’s Tatiana Volosozhar and Stanislav Morozov, clad in skin-hugging shiny blue jumpsuits, took to the ice for the pairs figure skating short program Sunday night, one might have wondered whether a couple of metallic Smurfs had just skated across the TV screen. Either that, or some blue-skinned cat people had escaped from James Cameron’s Avatar and made their way to Vancouver. As CTV commentator and former gold medallist David Pelletier, of Salé and Pelletier fame, remarked: “There’s just one word for this—wrong. Or maybe two words—wrong and wrong.”

Outlandish costumes have long been a part of Olympic figure skating, but at these Games they seem to be getting even stranger. At the same time, we’re also seeing a new level of cattiness from the broadcast booths and online. “I’m sorry, but you just can’t show up at the Olympics dressed like that,” Pelletier also said of the blue outfits. “This is a sport, not a carnival.”

Continue…

Will the Canadian men's hockey team recover in time to win the gold medal?

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 22, 2010 at 4:39 PM - 14 Comments