Good fat cuts heart risk by one-fifth

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 11:49 AM - 0 Comments

According to a new report from Harvard Medical School, replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated (found in fish and some vegetable oils) can cut the risk of heart disease by one-fifth. Analyzing the findings of eight previous studies covering over 13,000 people, they found that cutting saturated fats from butter and meat was important for heart health, adding that adults should get no more than 11 per cent of energy from saturated fats because they raise the levels of bad cholesterol, blocking arteries to the heart. Meanwhile, polyunsaturated fats increase the levels of good cholesterol. For every five per cent increase in polyunsaturated fat consumption, the team reported, there was a 10 per cent drop in heart disease. Trans-fats, found in processed foods like biscuits and cakes, are not a good replacement.

BBC News

Is nothing sacred?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 11:43 AM - 1 Comment

Food portions depicted in paintings of the Last Supper have gotten larger just as our own meal portions have, Cornell University obesity researchers have reported. Studying 52 of the most famous paintings of this Biblical scene, they found main courses, bread, and plates in front of Jesus and his disciples have grown by up to two-thirds. Published in the International Journal of Obesity, researchers said “the last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food. We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history’s most famous dinner.” Their analysis of works by El Greco, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Rubens shows main meals grew by 69 per cent and plate size 66 per cent between the oldest works (from 1000 AD) and most recent (1700)s. Bread size grew by about 23 per cent.

BBC News

'I can assure you nobody is getting their moat paid for'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 10:18 AM - 15 Comments

Stephen Maher asks and both Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe say they’re open to allowing Sheila Fraser to audit MP expenses. Peter Stoffer says he’ll release details of his expenses, but then says he can’t.

Last week, Stoffer, the NDP MP for Sackville-Eastern Shore, said he believes Fraser should be allowed to examine Parliament’s books and promised to check to see if he could reveal at least the details of his own expenses. On Monday, he said he checked with Davies and was forbidden from doing so, since the board of internal economy handles all such questions.

Whatever the authority of the Board, it hasn’t prevented Liberal backbencher Michelle Simson from publishing a breakdown of her expenses.

Monster hospital

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 8:30 AM - 57 Comments

Some thoughts now on Mark Kingwell’s recent essay, not necessarily in response, but at least inspired by. Andrew Potter has posted some of his thoughts here. Both Andrew and Mark are exceptionally smart and have offered valuable perspective and insight. I apologize for the complete lack of references to Aristotle in what follows. Continue…

On (Mark's essay on) Civility

By Andrew Potter - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 8:45 PM - 46 Comments

1. Cripes, Mark is a beautiful writer. This is the best-written and best-argued essay of his that I’ve read in ages.

2. As it happens, I was at the table, sitting beside Joanne Chianello, as he was giving his talk on civility and political discourse on Parliament Hill. I can attest that Mark (and Joanne) are not exaggerating, that the behaviour of the two Liberals (one of whom is a former cabinet minister and now big shot Senator) was fantastically rude. People were actually shushing them, not that they cared, or even noticed.

3. Here is Mark’s argument as I understand it:

P1. Civility is a necessary condition for healthy liberal politics in a  a pluralistic society, like Canada, where the citizens have deep disagreement about the good life. (Or, as Mark puts it, civility is “the political air we must breathe to negotiate our differences.”)

P2. Civility is in decline in Canada.

C. Healthy liberal politics is becoming increasingly impossible in Canada

Does the conclusion seem obvious to you? Our politics certainly isn’t in the best of shape, you’ll get no argument from me there.  But I’m more interested in the stronger set of claims: that it is in bad shape, is getting worse all the time, and that we are on the verge of ceasing to become a self-governing people. About these claims, I’m a bit more skeptical.

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UPDATED: Wrong again

By Paul Wells - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 7:49 PM - 29 Comments

Colleague Coyne explains where I went astray.

UPDATE, Tuesday: I won’t be responding to Andrew at length. I put some time and effort into describing what the Harper government is doing. Andrew put considerable ingenuity into thinking of all the things it isn’t doing but, in his view, could or should. The second thing is not like the first and I don’t see how I could improve the world by adding a third thing.

Hard right? Hardly

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 7:28 PM - 115 Comments

Just so we’re clear: I don’t really care whether the Harper government conforms to one definition of conservatism or another. Neither do I carry any brief for conservatism, as such, though I might hold conservative views on specific issues. When I say that conservatism is dead in Canada, I am not mourning or despairing. I am merely stating a fact.

The reason that’s worth stating is that there is a party that continues to carry on as if it were conservative, though it conforms to no known definition of the word. And all right, yes, I’d prefer that people should be who they say they are and do what they say they will do, and that things should be called what they are and not what they are not.

So I suppose in that sense I should be delighted to find, via my friend Paul Wells, that I’ve got it all wrong: that the Conservatives are in fact robustly, unabashedly conservative, that indeed conservatism is “on the march across Canada.” Why, it’s the biggest swing to the right in “half a century.” It’s Harper’s hard right turn.

This is contrarian analysis at its finest. Under the Conservatives, spending, which conservatives once promised to cut, has been growing at a rate of 8 per cent a year. The budget, which conservatives once aimed to balance, is now in deficit to the tune of $54-billion, with literally no end in sight. Corporate subsidies, which conservatives once vowed to eliminate, continue to be doled out by the billions every year; much of the auto industry has been nationalized; the number of regional development agencies has increased by one. Conservative MPs now run around the country boasting of the pork they are bringing home to their ridings, complete with novelty-cheque signing ceremonies.

The top marginal rate of income tax remains where it was a generation ago, while the tax system has been further complicated with the addition of a slew of special credits for children’s sports, transit passes and other good causes. Employment Insurance has been larded up with supplementary payments that make a return to insurance principles more remote than ever. The Canada Pension Plan has been allowed to swell to Caisse de Depot-like dimensions. The great statist vehicles of the 20th century — Canada Post, Via Rail, the CBC — likewise continue to stalk the land, subsidies and privileges intact, while private oligopolies in air travel, finance and telecommunications remain largely protected from foreign competition. All were once the objects of conservative reform efforts. No longer.

The political reforms that were the bedrock of democratic conservatism in the age of the Reform party, aimed at giving more power to ordinary MPs and, via referendums, to the citizens at large, are now but a memory, replaced by a PMO whose all-controlling zeal exceeds even previous records. The philosophy that distinguished the conservative approach to constitutional matters — decentralizing power to the provinces, commitment to the equality of provinces and citizens — has been replaced by massive increases in transfers to the provinces generally and a raft of special concessions — powers, money, an ill-defined “national” status — to Quebec.

But that is to look at the matter through the narrow lens of fiscal, economic, democratic and constitutional conservatism. Rather than obsessing on such arcane matters — you know, the whole size and role of government thing — friend Wells encourages us to see the glass as socially full. Because even as it was giving ground on every one of all those other fronts, the government has been delivering for social conservatism. Why, “look at the victories” social conservatives have won, Wells suggests, “in just the past few months.” Yes, let’s.

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CRTC News

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 6:22 PM - 0 Comments

Here’s a very quick round-up of reports on the CRTC’s ruling today on the issue of signal fees — though the ruling is not final, since the CRTC is leaving it up to the courts to determine the limits of its authority on this issue:

- The Toronto Star’s summary of the ruling: “The federal regulatory agency released an important decision Monday supporting the principle of private broadcasters being able to obtain compensation for their on-air signals, which cable and satellite providers are currently able to get for free… [but] stayed away from imposing what had come to be called ‘fee for carriage’ – where cable companies pay networks a certain amount of money in exchange for the right to include their channels in their packages – by leaving it up to the market to decide what each signal is worth.”

- The Hollywood Reporter gives a U.S.-centric perspective (“the country’s TV watchdog on Monday opened the way for Canadians to be forced to pay to watch U.S. series-rich local TV signals”). Also, The Wall Street Journal has its own summary: “Instead of the regulator imposing a fee for carriage, broadcasters and cable and satellite operators are being left to determine the value of those signals.”

- Bill Brioux blogs his thoughts on the matter at TV Feeds My Family.

- On a related note, according to a new poll, apparently we’re now spending more time online than in front of regular TV sets, but just barely.

The Commons: Weirder still

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 5:50 PM - 33 Comments

The Scene. Five days ahead of another of those moments that may determine the ultimate success or failure of Michael Ignatieff’s political career, and on his first appearance in the House after a week spent touring the country to participate in town hall discussions, the Liberal leader stood and asked the government to account for its handling of an organization mandated by Parliament to pursue rather unimpeachable, if perhaps somewhat abstract, goals. An organization, for that matter, that was, up until recently, going about pursuing its rather unimpeachable, if perhaps somewhat abstract, goals with neither fame nor infamy.

The government, he said, had made a scandal of this organization, Rights & Democracy. It had moved last week, he recounted, to block the widow of the former president of Rights & Democracy from testifying at a Parliamentary committee. Would it now, he wondered, allow Mr. Beauregard’s widow, as well as several other interested individuals, from testifying.

That he stood and did all this with his first opportunity speaks to perhaps a number of things, but perhaps none more so than the particular weirdness that continues to define this particular controversy—a weirdness that perhaps demands attention, no matter how innocuous, unimpeachable or abstract whatever else is going on here. Continue…

A glimmer of hope—just—for the bluefin tuna

By John Geddes - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 5:47 PM - 2 Comments

It’s impossible to be very optimistic about the future of the mighty bluefin tuna, but it’s too soon to give up on the species.

Rapacious over-fishing, mostly to satisfy Japan’s appetite for sushi, has reduced bluefin stocks in the Atlantic and Mediterranean by perhaps 70 per cent since the 1970s. Despite that population collapse, 72 out of the 129 member nations of CITES—the UN’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora—voted last week against a proposed ban on bluefin exports.

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Sandwich Nation

By Chris Sorensen - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 16 Comments

Photographs by Andrew Tolson

Eric Heinrich decided several years ago to abandon the bright lights of Toronto, where he was employed by a national hotel chain, and go into business for himself—ideally in a smaller community where he felt more comfortable and the cost of living was cheaper. He bought his first Subway franchise in 1994 in Hanover, Ont., a community of about 7,000. He has since added a dozen or so more of the popular submarine sandwich restaurants around the province, focusing on similarly small towns where there is little competition from rival fast-food chains. That now includes locations in Wiarton (with 2,300 residents, not including a famous winter-predicting groundhog named Willie), Kincardine, Wingham, Arthur, Port Elgin, Walkerton, Clinton, Exeter, Palmerston and three stores in his hometown of Owen Sound, a relative metropolis with a population of 22,000.

These days, he is in the midst of building his 15th Subway restaurant about halfway between the small towns of Orangeville and Shelburne, northwest of Toronto, in a location that doesn’t really have any permanent residents at all. “It’s basically a busy intersection that’s a good stopping area for travellers,” Heinrich says. “The only other options are greasy burger joints, so we thought it would be a good opportunity.”

His business credo—“in order for a store to be successful, you need either a high school or a highway”—has proven remarkably successful, even in a down economy. But he has also benefited immensely from Subway’s unique low-cost operating model, which stems from its straightforward menu of “foot-long” or “six-inch” sandwiches that don’t require much in the way of expensive kitchen equipment or staff to produce.

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PepsiCo trims the fat

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 4:25 PM - 3 Comments

PepsiCo is cutting the sugar, fat and salt—but, one hopes, not the fun. According to chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi, the world’s second largest purveyor of empty calories will cut the average salt content by 25 percent within five years, as well as its fat and sugar by 15 and 25 percent respectively in the next decade. “We believe that a healthier future for all people and our planet means a more successful future for PepsiCo,” said Nooyi, who also outlined a company initiative to eliminate full sugar beverages in elementary and secondary high schools by 2012.

Montreal Gazette

Rights and Democracy: Let 100 schools of thought contend

By Paul Wells - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 4:16 PM - 100 Comments

The current print edition of Maclean’s contains a guest column from Sen. Linda Frum, a friend of this magazine who pauses to say some nice things about me while attempting a general rebuttal of my coverage of the Rights and Democracy controversy.

Frankly I hope readers commenting under Sen. Frum’s column will start to tone down the vitriol a bit. For what it’s worth, I’m happy Maclean’s remains a place for opposing views on important issues. I wish only that the Senator had shown up with a fresher arsenal of arguments. I see no point in wasting much time on her column because every single point she makes comes pre-rebutted in my earlier writing on this issue, except perhaps for her assertion that the R&D staff were “aided” in their conflict with the board “by the disappearance of managerial laptops and computer records.” The laptops disappeared in a burglary. What, precisely, is the Senator alleging?

Anyway. Elsewhere in today’s news, the Braun Seven majority on the board of Rights and Democracy has published another in their series of occasional op-eds wondering why the world is so mean to them. “We call upon Parliament to hold public hearings so that facts can replace fantasies, and we can move ahead,” they write.

Here’s a fact: after first confirming he would appear tomorrow before the foreign-affairs committee of Parliament, Braun has now sent word that he’s too busy to show up.

Here’s another fact: that’s how the guy rolls. Continue…

Karzai meets militants

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 4:12 PM - 2 Comments

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has started peace talks with his country’s second largest militant group. The meeting comes as Hezb-e-Islam, which was once united with the Taliban against the central government, has begun to clash with its former allies over territory in northern Afghanistan. A tentative peace deal was tabled by the militant delegation, which is headed by former Afghan Prime Minister Qutbuddin Helal, that includes demands for new elections, a new constitution, and a pull-out of all foreign troops by summertime. Karzai has yet to respond to the offer, and it’s believed that any resolution is far off. However, the government and the UN have also been
quietly conducting peace talks with the Taliban over the past year and experts say negotiating with militant groups is an essential step toward achieving peace in the war-torn nation.

BBC News

Texas Rep. shouted "baby killer!" during health care debate

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 3:55 PM - 8 Comments

During the debate over the U.S. health-care bill, an unidentified person was heard yelling “baby killer!” at Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat who made a last-minute deal to vote for the bill. The shouter has now been identified as Randy Neugebauer, a Texas Republican. In a statement, Neugebauer said that he was not referring to Stupak as a baby killer but rather saying that the bill itself is a baby killer due to the “tragic consequences it will have for the unborn.” However, Neugebauer has apologized to Stupak for his “inappropriate” remark. Neugebauer is also a sponsor of a bill that would require President Obama to release his birth certificate.

Talking Points Memo

One toke over the line

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 2:07 PM - 6 Comments

András Király, a spokesperson for Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, resigned from his post last week after pictures showing him smoking pot and partying at Toronto’s gay pride parade surfaced online. A writer for the Képviselő
Funky blog, which posted the pictures, contacted Király, who admitted attending the event, but insisted he’s not gay. As for the pot smoking, Király fessed up to enjoying a toke or two.

Politics.hu

Képviselő Funky

Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 1:58 PM - 17 Comments

Turning 80 years old today is Stephen Sondheim, possibly the most famous living writer of songs for musical theatre. (The only person of comparable fame is Andrew Lloyd Webber, who also celebrates his birthday today, though he’s only 62.) Sondheim is certainly the greatest cult figure in musical theatre, someone whose fan following has transformed the perception of his career. From a purely commercial point of view, his career has been a great start followed by a lot of disappointments. But his fans, imitators and followers have made him into a key figure in modern theatrical history.

Few writers have ever had as successful a start in theatre as Sondheim did. After a stint writing for the sitcom Topper, and writing music and lyrics for the unproduced Saturday Night, he was hired (at the age of only 27) to write lyrics to Leonard Bernstein’s music for West Side Story. Originally, Bernstein and Sondheim were going to collaborate on the lyrics, and early posters had them sharing credit, but Sondheim rewrote nearly all the lyrics, to the point where Bernstein took his name off the lyrics credit: “The only line of mine left is ‘Gee Officer Krupke, Krup You!’,” he told Sondheim. West Side Story, despite the challenging subject matter and approach, was a huge hit (the cast recording alone sold over a million copies). Sondheim was then going to write both music and lyrics for Gypsy, a show that WSS director Jerome Robbins was creating for Ethel Merman, but Merman wanted a more experienced composer, so Sondheim wrote the lyrics to Jule Styne’s music. (Sondheim also did some incidental musical work, stitching together reprises of Styne’s tunes into the famous second act musical monologue, “Rose’s Turn.”) The result was another big hit. When Sondheim finally got to write music and lyrics, for Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove’s musical comedy A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum, the result was… yes, another big hit. That’s three Broadway shows, three hits.

Though Forum‘s success was attributed more to the book than the score, Sondheim’s songs demonstrated one of his great gifts as a theatre writer: the ability to shape his songs to what the show needs as a theatrical whole, not just their own individual impact. And also, his willingness to test and revise ideas of what songs should do in a musical. The traditional idea is that the songs are the high points of a musical. But Forum was such a wild fast-paced farce in the book scenes that the songs have the opposite function: they’re the spots where the show slows down a little and takes a breather. So Sondheim provided a light, charming score for a crazy, loud musical. (My own favourite song in the show, which is usually cut and shouldn’t be, is the adorable “Pretty Little Picture.”) However, Sondheim also showed that he could go too far with a concept absent a strong director to put the brakes on: his original opening number, “Love Is In the Air,” followed through on this idea by providing a sweet, light, cute opening that left the audience confused about what kind of show this would be. Jerome Robbins came in to re-stage the opening and made Sondheim write a new song that would tell the audience directly what to expect:

Then, as often happens when someone starts big, Sondheim floundered a bit. His next show, Anyone Can Whistle, an absurdist satire written by WSS and Gypsy writer Arthur Laurents, closed in only a week. (How much you like the Anyone Can Whistle score may define how big a Sondheim fan you are. It’s a deliberately grinding, weird-sounding score Continue…

The peace of this kingdom

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:51 PM - 64 Comments

Brian Topp makes the case for the import of last week’s House vote on prorogation.

This is how Parliamentary and democratic conventions are made in our parliamentary system. A clear statement by the House, after a clear abuse. The House has spoken, and the Crown and its counsellors must now so govern themselves, except at their peril.

In future, a Prime Minister who advises the Governor-General to padlock our Parliament in order to avoid accountability on a great public issue (as opposed to a routine proceeding) is in violation of a direct order from Canada’s only legitimate and elected democratic body — the House of Commons.

In future, a Governor-General who accepts such advice is therefore inviting a wide debate about the future utility of her office — which would also raise fundamental issues about the future of the Crown in Canada.

We cannot be trusted with this information

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:39 PM - 35 Comments

Conservative Gerald Keddy explains why details of MP expenses shouldn’t be made public.

South Shore-St. Margarets MP Gerald Keddy, a Conservative, points out that federal MPs need to follow much tougher rules than MLAs did, with strict oversight by officials who review their spending, so he sees no reason to make it public. ”No,” he said. “No way. No way. All we’re doing is opening it up, giving the media an opportunity to find fault. What we have is an overall budget. We are absolutely 100 per cent responsible for that budget. If we go over that budget, we pay out of our own pocket, and we have very, very good scrutiny.”

On the one hand, he’s absolutely correct. The full publication of MP expenses would inevitably result in various outlets and individuals placing unreasonable significance on the expensing of, say, a pack of gum, or some cabinet minister’s decision to dine at some establishment more rarefied than Kelsey’s.

On the other hand, the potential for embarrassment and the frequent tawdriness of the Parliamentary press gallery are likely not legally recognized excuses for public officials to avoid accountability and transparency.

Iraq: another election, more fraud allegations

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:25 PM - 2 Comments

So much for a clean election: you know, one that would prove to the world that post-invasion Iraq is finally ready to stand on its own two feet. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is calling for a recount, following his country’s March 7 parliamentary elections. He’s not alone. The four leading political coalitions are all either demanding a recount, or alleging that widespread fraud took place on election day. Still, Iraq’s electoral commission is not buying it. On Sunday, the commission rejected calls for a recount. It also announced that, with 95 per cent of the vote counted, Maliki’s primary opponent Ayad Allawi stands in the lead. Final results are expected on Friday. But Maliki has warned that the electoral commission must answer the calls of Iraq’s political leaders—to “protect political stability and to prevent a deterioration of the security situation that could lead to a return of violence.”

New York Times

Photo gallery: The 2010 Winter Paralympic Games

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:17 PM - 2 Comments

Elastic iron to be used for surgeries, buildings

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:16 PM - 0 Comments

Japanese researchers have created an elastic iron alloy that could be used in heart and brain surgeries, and maybe even to reinforce buildings in earthquake zones, Reuters reports. According to the team, the metal’s super-elasticity lets it return to original form, and has additional properties like ductility. With a stress level about twice that of nickel titanium, the iron allow can be used to deliver stents—tubes placed in blood vessels to keep them from collapsing. “Currently, heart stents are delivered into the body using nickel titanium but the diameter of the wire is too thick to go into the brain, so iron alloy will be the answer,” researcher T. Omori of Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Engineering told Reuters. “This material can be used for buildings in earthquake zones. The buildings are deformed by earthquake, but super elastic alloy can return the building to its original structure.”

Reuters

Medicinal maple syrup

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:14 PM - 0 Comments

Sweet-toothed eaters everywhere can celebrate now that a new study has proven the health benefits of consuming pure maple syrup. More than 20 compounds in the saccharine nectar have been associated with good health by a University of Rhode Island researcher, whose study was funded partly by Quebecoise and other Canadian agriculture stakeholders. These positive compounds are anti-oxidants, which help fight cancer, bacteria and diabetes. Experts encourage consumers to use pure maple syrup for the best effects. They say “people view sap as the life blood of the tree.” Turns out it helps humans too.

Eurekalert

Feeding yourself on a dollar a day

By Julia McKinnell - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:12 PM - 30 Comments

Photographs by Jessica Darmanin

Looking for ways to save on groceries? There are plenty of tips in a new book written by a pair of California schoolteachers who detail their month-long experiment to live on just a dollar a day. For 30 days, Kerri Leonard and her boyfriend Christopher Greenslate lived on oatmeal porridge for six cents a serving and lunches of homemade bread filled with five cents’ worth of peanut butter, and a favourite dinner dish, chana masala, a kind of chickpea curry that came in at 25 cents a serving.

In their book, On a Dollar a Day: One Couple’s Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America, Leonard writes that “car payments, mortgage payments, and credit card payments” drove them to attempt the project. Her proposed solutions to economizing, she writes, “ran along the lines of more reasonable grocery lists and better planning. That was when Christopher volunteered the information that a portion of the world eats on a dollar a day or less. ‘Why don’t we try it?’ he asked.”

The couple embarked on the project after purchasing an out-of-date copy of a book called Eat Well on a Dollar a Day. The book is older than the couple, who are both in their thirties, yet it outlines “key strategies for making every penny count,” writes Leonard. “Buy in bulk, shop around, eat smaller portions and forage.”

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