Unexplained Sudden Acceleration, Explained

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:57 PM - 15 Comments

Quelle surprise : the NHTSA has found that the *other* case of a runaway Prius from last week (coming to the end of a driveway, the car suddenly shot across a busy street and smashed into a stone wall. The driver swore up and down she had hit the brake and the car just, like, accelerated) “appears to be a case of driver error.”  Data recorders show the brake was never touched, the throttle was wide open.

Ok, maybe it wasn’t driver error. Maybe the electronics in the car are so screwed up they even screwed up the car’s data recorders so much that they recorded the exact opposite of what was happening. Or maybe it’s all something far more sinister…

The Commons: Another 48 hours

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 6:11 PM - 22 Comments

The Scene. On Monday, a minister of state in Stephen Harper’s government addressed the House of Commons and stated for the record that a member of Parliament’s ability to send paper flyers into another member of Parliament’s riding was a matter of free speech. This, he said, was about the “rights of Canadians for a public discourse.” The Liberal party, he suggested, in wanting to ban these mailouts, was threatening to “censor” what Canadians were allowed to see. These mailouts, he asserted, did no less than “improve our democracy.” “The Conservative Party,” he concluded, “is the party that will ensure that Canada remains glorious and free.”

Two days later, Stephen Harper’s spokesman stated that the government would support a ban on these out-of-riding flyers. And so it was this afternoon that the Prime Minister stood in the House, pronounced his government “delighted” to do away with these mailings and then challenged the leader of the NDP, a party that had voted in favour of the Liberal-proposed ban, to follow the Conservative side and do likewise.

So much for our glorious freedom. Continue…

Afghanistan Update

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 5:57 PM - 3 Comments

Some new stuff on Afghanistan:

First, go read Brian Stewart’s latest piece on the cone of silence that the Canadian military insists upon when it comes to the tempo of the combat mission over there. As Brian points out,  there is an almost constant pace of mortar attacks, rocket attacks, firefights, and other forms of enemy contact, but the bizarre part is that the only time we hear about it, it is when a soldier has died. Everything else is considered offlimits to reporters, due to “OPSEC”.

As an example of how bizarre it gets, Brian mentions that during our first briefing at KAF we suddenly found ourselves “dropping to the floor when the sirens wailed to announce the approach of Taliban rockets.” Often, the old rockets never even go off. But at one point, we heard a massive WHOOMP behind us, the building shook, windows rattled, and even senior officers hit the dirt pronto. “Wow, that one actually went off,” someone said, voice a tad shaky. But at the end of the briefing, a PR flack came in to tell us that what we heard was not a rocket going off, but a “controlled detonation” on the base. We’d just missed the announcement, apparently. Only later did another soldier tell us that it was bullshit, that it was indeed a rocket and they just didn’t want us to report it.

Second:  As colleague Geddes alerts us, the government oh-so-quietly tabled its latest quarterly report on the Afghanistan mission yesterday. I just had a chance to go through it, and what struck me was how much more blandly bureaucratic it was from the last one. (The last one, you’ll recall, was refreshingly honest in places about the state of the mission, especially with respect to security as well as the disaster that was the presidential election).  It seems that the government has learned its lesson: there’s nothing to be gained by actually being honest about what is going on. So yes, you need to skip the banal prose of the report and turn to the benchmarks at the back.

Reading them over, I agree entirely with John’s assessment,viz., that the single most pressing issue is the state of the ANSF, and that the report manifestly does not inspire confidence. All of the Kandahar-based kandaks are below strength, the ANA forces that exist are being stretched too thin, and only 18% of police units are at the target capability. The predictable consequence is that Kandaharis do not see security as improving, nor do they have any great faith in the abilitiy of the ANA to be an effective security force.

The other benchmarks are similarly disheartening. While progress is being made in some areas, and 2011 targets have even been met for certain benchmarks, these tend to be in projects where the goal is simply to give money or provide training facilities. When it comes to actual security, and actual infrastructure, things are either getting worse, or getting better too slowly.

A few things worth adding to this:

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Birth control adopted in Tory health initiative

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 5:20 PM - 3 Comments

Stephen Harper’s government has reversed its stance after coming under fire for saying the maternal health initiative it plans to champion at the upcoming G8 summit this June will not deal with “family planning.” Opposition MPs rallied against the government when foreign affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the plan won’t include contraception earlier this week, arguing that family planning is needed to reduce unwanted pregnancies and prevent unsafe abortion and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Prime Minister Stephen Harper clarified his position in reaction to the criticism on Thursday, saying “we are not closing doors against any options, including contraception, but we do not want a debate here or elsewhere on abortion.” International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda also spoke out on the issue, saying the government had never planned to write off options with the potential of saving lives.

CBC News

TV's Davy Crockett Dies

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 5:16 PM - 0 Comments

Fess Parker, the actor who became one of TV’s biggest stars in the ’50s when he played Davy Crockett, has died of natural causes at the age of 85. In the title role of Walt Disney’s television series about the legendary frontiersman, Parker set off a worldwide Davy Crockett craze, immortalized in a series of 1955 Peanuts strips where Charlie Brown was obsessed with the character. The show was one of the biggest merchandising bonanzas in TV history up to that point, spinning off lunchboxes, ersatz Crockett rifles and coonskin caps, and a celebratory theme song, “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” recorded by Parker. He also starred for Disney in the famous tearjerking feature film Old Yeller, and in the ’60s, after leaving Disney, he starred in Daniel Boone, another long-running series about the “wild frontier.” He retired from acting in the ’70s and went into the real estate and wine businesses.

New York Times

Government is mocking parliament over Afghan docs: opposition

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 5:12 PM - 10 Comments

Opposition MPs are arguing that the Conservatives have flouted parliamentary rights and traditions by refusing to heed a House order to hand over documents relating to the Afghan detainee scandal. Liberal MP Derek Lee, NDP defence critic Jack Harris and Bloc Québécois MP Claude Bachand stood in the House Thursday morning and called upon the House Speaker to rule it a violation of parliamentary privilege. “If we don’t stand up, efforts to undermine our constitution will have succeeded,” Lee said. Furthermore, Harris made a point of privilege that called for Defence Minister Peter MacKay, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon to be found in contempt of the House unless all unredacted documents are turned over to the Afghanistan committee within 30 days of the request. The government has maintained that it won’t hand over the documents due to matters of national security.

CIDA's democracy promotion in Zimbabwe

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 4:55 PM - 9 Comments

Longtime visitors to this space have read me raging, like an increasingly maniacal King Lear on the heath, about the Canadian International Development Agency not answering an access-to-information request that I filed in 2007.  Last week, almost three years later, they did.

I had asked CIDA about a multi-million dollar democracy promotion program in Zimbabwe. At the time, back in 2007, I had recently returned to Canada from Europe, where I had reported from countries such as Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus, where pro-democracy movements had tried to overthrow autocratic governments. In Georgia and Ukraine, these movements were successful; not so in Belarus. A factor in all three cases – and also earlier in Serbia – was the involvement of Western governmental and non-governmental organizations, such as the Soros Foundation and the National Democratic Institute, that promote political parties, civil society, and democratic governance.

This got me thinking about CIDA’s work in illiberal societies. CIDA’s self-described mandate says nothing about promoting democracy and good governance abroad, instead referencing the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, which in turn focus on things like child mortality, disease, and education. But CIDA spent millions in Zimbabwe on a “Rights, Democracy and Governance Fund” with explicitly political goals: “This project supported civil society organizations in demanding and promoting democratic governance and respect for human rights in Zimbabwe.” Continue…

Two Signings and A Funeral

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 4:27 PM - 3 Comments

- ABC has confirmed that it has signed Christiane Amanpour to be the new host of This Week. Amanpour is known more for covering foreign policy than domestic policy, so that might shift the focus of This Week a bit from the very domestic-politics-inclined Stephanopoulous. The real question is whether she can or will shift the show in the direction of discussing issues, rather than process or horse-race stuff. Since Meet the Press has been totally obsessed with trivial horserace stuff for years, first under Russert and now under Gregory, there is an opening for a Sunday talk show where the discussion is about who’s factually correct, rather than who’s winning the media narrative. But I don’t really feel confident that this can happen, under any host. The shows just aren’t built that way.

- The National Arts Centre in Ottawa has signed Pinchas Zukerman for another four years as music director of their orchestra. Zukerman has never been a particularly inspiring conductor, at least to listeners (okay, let me rephrase that: by “listeners” I mean “me”). I always get the impression that he wanted to make the leap from instrumentalist to conductor like his old friend Daniel Barenboim, but never fully knew what he wanted to say about much of the music he conducts. (He knows what he doesn’t want to say and do, as evidenced by his tendency to inveigh against historically-informed performance. But unlike Barenboim, who also likes the old-school Romantic style of conducting, he rarely makes it sound like that’s actually what he’s doing.) But he’s hung on for more than a decade for a number of reasons, one of which is emphasized in the press release: he has a lot of connections and has been able to bring a number of big stars to Ottawa as guests of the orchestra.

- Finally, Fess Parker, TV’s Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, is dead at the age of 85. The Davy Crockett craze of the ’50s can’t be overstated; it was so huge that in 1955 Charlie Brown was going around wearing a coonskin cap and arguing with Schroeder over whether Davy Crockett was better than Beethoven. Of course, by the end of the year, the craze had faded, as fads usually do:

How news-savvy are you?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 4:11 PM - 5 Comments

Click here to take the Newsmakers Quiz

The Grand Inquest of the Nation

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 4:04 PM - 56 Comments

We’ll see how the speaker rules — and how the parties vote, if it comes to that — but this is a great day in the history of Parliament. Three members — Lee, Harris and Bachand — have stood up for Parliament’s ancient powers and privileges. Now it’s up to the rest of them to do the same.

When do you think Justice Frank Iacobucci will complete his review of Afghan detainee documents?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 3:57 PM - 35 Comments

PQ: still alive, surprisingly lifelike!

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 3:56 PM - 3 Comments

We would be remiss if we here at Deux Maudits Anglais didn’t diligently report on the traveling gong show that is Parti Québécois. Doing so is usually like shooting large, pissy, self-righteous fish who don’t really get along in a barrel; write an appropriately cynical blog entry, slap on a snide headline (see above)  and a picture of PQ leader Pauline Marois looking haughty and/or flummoxed and voila! Blog entry! Easy as quiche.

This time, though? Not so much. Over the weekend Marois took a few remarkable steps to consolidate her power over her party–no small feat–that have will dramatically increase the PQ’s electability in the coming years. More after the break.

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Mr. Cab Driver, any requests?

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 110 Comments

Photograph by Don Emmert/ AFP/ Getty Images

They’re famously yellow in New York, black in London and green in Mexico City—but what colour will Montreal’s taxis be? A new agreement between the city and its cabbies could see a standard livery adopted for thousands of taxis, which Helen Fotopulos, Montreal’s executive committee member for culture, heritage and design, calls “ambassadors of the city.”

Like in other major Canadian cities, Montreal’s cabs are a hodgepodge of colour. “Most people who drive taxis in Quebec also own [the vehicle],” says Mario Sabourin of the Travailleurs autonomes du Québec. Size restrictions determine which models can be used, but “cars can be any colour at all,” he says. That may now change—and a uniform shade isn’t the only possible change in store for Montreal’s taxi industry. There are efforts to make the vehicles more environmentally friendly (in-car heaters will be installed so cars stay warm in the winter without idling), and standardized, too (a new MTL logo will appear on taxis and at taxi stands). In return, cabbies will be able to advertise on roof-mounted panels, providing them with a new revenue stream.

A committee of officials and industry representatives will meet this spring to talk about adopting a standard look for Montreal’s taxis; because the cabs are privately owned, the city “can’t decree a colour,” Fotopulos says, so consensus must be reached. Matt Soar, a professor of communication studies at Concordia University, thinks it could be a great branding opportunity for Montreal. “They could become logos of the city,” he says. (Soar suggests painting standard cabs grey, and hybrid taxis “a vibrant green.”) And in a recent blog post, writer Christopher DeWolf suggested painting Montreal’s estimated 4,500 licensed taxis hot pink, which “would suit the city’s flamboyance and eccentricity and be an uplifting contrast to the sullen winters.”

And the winners are…

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 0 Comments

Nations twist the final medal tallies to suit their own results. That’s why Americans focused on total medals while Canadians boasted about winning the most gold (the most in Winter Olympic history, in fact). What’s easily lost in the nationalistic posturing are the outstanding individual performances. Four Canadians went home with double medals. Short track’s Marianne St-Gelais won two silvers while her boyfriend, Charles Hamelin, picked up two golds on the same ice, and teammate François-Louis Tremblay got gold and bronze. And speed skating’s Kristina Groves was awarded bronze and silver. But the most decorated athlete of all at these Games was Norway’s Marit Bjørgen. The skier dominated the Whistler cross-country course and went home from Vancouver with three golds, a silver and a bronze.

An economy under the weather

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 1 Comment

Photograph by Kevin Lamarque/ Reuters

During the first week of the 2010 Games, Vancouver’s winter weather—or more precisely, lack of it—was a hot topic. In the end, though, the spring-like conditions proved no match for a determined army of snow-shovelling workers. But while Olympic organizers were able to temporarily wrestle Mother Nature into submission, the bright minds charged with running the giant U.S. economy weren’t nearly so lucky.

In the United States, harsh winter storms pounded the densely populated eastern seaboard in February, and are blamed for taking the steam out of the country’s economic recovery. Washington, for example, was buried under more than half a metre of snow during a blizzard dubbed “Snowmageddon,” which disrupted the entire region and was followed by an encore performance less than a week later. The storms disrupted government and air travel and caused many Americans to stay home instead of going to work or to the mall, putting a dent in everything from consumer spending to employment. “This February marked the first time in recorded history that each of the 50 states had measurable snowfall in the same day,” according to UBS, a Swiss bank. “It is therefore likely that this unusual weather played at least some role in the recent string of weaker-than-expected [U.S.] economic data”

It has been a different story north of the border—and not just in Vancouver. In Toronto, the country’s financial centre, bankers and lawyers have gone nearly the entire winter with nothing but bare concrete under their leather-soled dress shoes. Meanwhile, GDP numbers shot through the roof in the fourth quarter and talk has suddenly turned to taming the recovery, instead of stoking it. Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney will likely hike interest rates to cool any overheating, but praying for a few more snowflakes couldn’t hurt.

Ronald Paquin (1944-2010)

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 6 Comments

Ronald Paquin was born on July 20, 1944, in Saint-Timothée, Que., just west of Montreal. His father, Armand Paquin, was a gardener for a wealthy couple on Montreal’s West Island; mother Jeanette Beaulieu stayed home. A gentle, sweet-natured child who loved the outdoors, “Ti-Ro,” as he was called, was the 10th of 11 children. “In such a big family, he was adored by everyone, but never really spoke up,” says brother Michel. “I’m 58 years old, and never had a fight with him.” Despite his shyness, Ronald was always helping out, watching over Michel, the youngest: “My mom would say, ‘If you’re going somewhere, bring your little brother.’ ”

After Ronald’s ninth year in school, he left to work, soon taking a job at a munitions factory in nearby Salaberry-de-Valleyfield (now called General Dynamics), where he would stay for over 40 years. On July 16, 1966, he married Claudette Brisebois, his first sweetheart. “Ronald had a lovely voice,” Michel recalls. “He sang a song at the reception, and he was trembling, he was so nervous.” Claudette was a calming presence in his life, and the two adored each other. “She called him mon bébé,” Michel recalls. “She’d put notes in his lunch box on the way to work, and the guys would make fun of him. But he’d just say, ‘Your wives don’t love you as much as mine.’ ”

After the birth of daughter Josée on Sept. 7, 1970, the young family moved to Nôtre-Dame-du-Sourire, not far from Valleyfield. An only child, Josée was close with her parents; her father, who was “always smiling,” would take her out for rides on his motorcycle, and sometimes the family would make trips down to Florida. While Ronald was always happy to help friends, family, and neighbours—for example, he recently helped Michel’s son, a university student, move apartments—he was meticulous about his possessions, Josée recalls. “He didn’t have much when he was young, so he liked to look after his things.”

Continue…

It’s a hold’em-up

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Olaf Wagner/ Bild-Zeitung

With their ski masks and dark clothing, the four men who burst into a televised poker tournament in Berlin last week looked only slightly more sinister than the hooded, sunglassed guys at the card tables. But the audacious heist at the 5.4-million-euro (about $7.5 million) European Poker Tour event was no act of idle melodrama: the robbers stormed into the Grand Hyatt hotel wielding machetes and pistols, fighting off security guards and sending participants diving under tables. Then the men dashed into the streets of the German capital with an estimated 242,000 euros in cash. As of Tuesday, they were still at large.

The stunning spectacle, which unfolded before TV cameras and a live Internet audience, sent a chill through an industry that had up to this point lived a charmed life. Televised poker tournaments like the European tour are part of a rapidly globalizing gambling sector, whose companies stage the events mostly to promote their online gaming. With cameras practically everywhere in the room, Ocean’s Eleven-style robberies seemed unlikely, if not downright foolhardy.

No longer. Clips circulated on German news sites show the robbers were unfazed by the knowledge they were being filmed, gathering around a registration desk where the money was kept to fill several handbags with cash. The men then become embroiled in a melee with a burly, balding security guard, who throws what appears to be his cellphone at them. He can then be seen wrapping one of the bandits in a headlock, letting the man go only after another threatened to bash the guard with a stand-up lamp.

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The ministerial oral podectomy as a tool (ahem) of development assistance

By Paul Wells - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 2:58 PM - 122 Comments

In the House of Commons just now, Bev Oda moved swiftly to remove Lawrence Cannon’s foot from his mouth. A quick transcript:

Bob Rae (L): Last year, the G-8 summit contained words: “Voluntary family planning and sexual and reproductive health.” I’d like to ask the minister of foreigaffairs how is it possible that Canadian foreign policy has been highjacked by the tea partiers on the other side? Taking us away from great traditions and taking us away from the policy that our —that our policy should be consistent with what that government agreed to last year?

The Speaker: The honourable minister of international corporation.

Hon. Bev Oda: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And as the member opposite knows, the G-8 leaders will discuss and chart the way forward to tackle child and maternal health at the upcoming summit. As we’ve been saying all along, we are not closing the door on any options that will save the lives of mothers and children. Including contraception. And as we have been saying all along, we are not opening the abortion debate. Thank you.

Bob Rae: (Voice of translator): Well, you see a total change in the party’s policy. They said yesterday — and today, to the same minister. The minister, in her budget, announced cuts of narly $200 million in funding to the poorest countries, and the most fragile countries. How are those cuts compatible with a policy to take care of women and children in Africa? It’s completely incomprehensible what we’ve just heard.

Hon. Bev Oda: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Speaker, this government knows how to manage its finances. We know that we are in — in Speaker, we know that we are in fact increasing the budget for CIDA for its international assistance, Mr. Speaker. And we’ve been doing that consistently. In fact, we will reach a level of international assistance never reached by any other government before in the history of canada.

Marcel Lussier (BQ) (Voice of translator): Mr. Speaker, less than a year ago the government supported voluntary family planning. Why does it want to block access for contraception to African women? Why are the Conservatives forcing George Bush style doctrines on the world? Speaker, does this government believe in the benefits of contraception?

Hon. Bev Oda: Mr. Speaker let me again be very clear and to reiterate that at the G-8 the leaders will discussing maternal and child health. And in fact, okay, I’ve articulated, there are no doors being closed, even contraception.

How U.S. TV Wound Up With Fewer Episodes

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 2:19 PM - 2 Comments

Someone asked me why the number of episodes in a season of U.S. television shrank so much — from 39 originally to the 22-4 that’s been standard since the ’70s. I found an article from the Los Angeles Times in 1968, written as this shrinkage was in process (the number had become 26, and would shrink once more before settling into the current standard). Basically, it’s a cost issue: as it became more expensive to make one episode of television, networks ordered fewer episodes. Also, fewer shows could count on one sponsor to under-write all the costs, so moving to a multiple-advertiser model also meant that it was a bigger financial risk to order a lot of episodes. But as the article notes, there’s a self-fulfilling prophecy here, since the fewer episodes you have, the more each one costs (since the fixed season-long costs are spread over fewer hours or half-hours).

One of the reasons that number hasn’t shrunk since, despite costs that continue to go up, and despite occasional wishful-thinking comments about going to a 13-episode cable-style model, is that there’s only so much you can shrink a season before the advertiser-based model no longer works. You’ve got to have enough new episodes to make a decent level of advertising revenue. And another reason, as the article notes, is that the U.S. network model involves making a TV show something near to a full-time job for the people who work on it. In the UK, starring in a TV show is usually a part-time job at best, and in Canada or U.S. cable TV, you frequently shoot the whole season, wrap it up, and then air it. (The entire first season of Dan For Mayor was filmed before it aired.) The U.S. model involves keeping people under contract for as long as possible, keeping them from doing two or more shows simultaneously, and being able to make changes in the direction of the show while the season is still airing; these are all hard enough with only 22-6 episodes — you can see that this article is partly a complaint about how hard it is to keep people employed on a show with smaller episode orders — and would not be possible if the season size shrank further.

Some networks occasionally try to increase, rather than decrease, the episode orders. Fox has always tried to do this where possible, frequently ordering between 25 and 30 episodes of its hit shows. Their latest plan is to increase the number of episodes in season 2 of Glee from 22 to 25. But this has its own problems; Glee is so expensive to produce that short of doing a couple of clip shows (which would actually work for this show, but which they probably wouldn’t try to get away with, especially after The Office got bashed for it) that the extra episodes could result in a lot of corner-cutting across the board. For the most part, it does seem like 22 is the best possible compromise between the number of episodes a show really needs (higher) and the number of episodes it can really afford (lower).

Anyway, here’s the article. You might note that the author doesn’t make the best case for his thesis by quoting the producer of the Batman show on the dangers of having too few episodes, since Batman was a textbook example of the dangers of having too many episodes: the necessity to produce 30 hours (split into 60 half-hours) for the second season resulted in a wildly uneven season that helped kill the show’s popularity.

Viewers Getting Less and Less

by Hal Humphrey

Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1968

Maybe viewers of TV series haven’t noticed, but the networks are gypping them more and more. Instead of the standard 39-episode cycle with 13 repeats the networks have gradually been working this down to 26 Continue…

It's a tax when they say it's a tax

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 1:21 PM - 16 Comments

As a follow-up to our previous discussion on the important, or merely semantic, difference between taxes and user fees (see here and here), we compare and contrast the following.

Globe and Mail, February 26. Ottawa is slapping higher security fees on airline travellers a week before the 2010 federal budget – yet insists Conservatives are staying true to their pledge not to raise taxes … The government describes the new charges as “user fees,” rather than taxes.

Canadian Press, March 17. Cabinet ministers and MPs are putting up a vigorous defence against the NDP’s move to have a levy applied to all new MP3 players, hard drives and laptops … ”This is a very serious hit to consumers that could impact them, and if the NDP are as committed to raising taxes this week as they always have been, then this is a real threat,” Heritage Minister James Moore said Wednesday.

All in (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 1:02 PM - 2 Comments

Overviews of this morning’s events from the Canadian Press, Sun, Canwest and CBC.

And here, from our Andrew Coyne, a review of the situation, a challenge for the opposition and a question for Justice Frank Iacobucci.

Killer Apps that save lives

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 6 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

Dr. Phillip Yoon loves—nay, needs—his iPhone. Yoon, district chief of emergency medicine for Halifax’s Capital District Health Authority, refers to his phone as his “peripheral brain.” “It’s part of my body now,” he trills. “If I lost it, that would be trouble.” Yoon’s love affair should be a familiar one to his colleagues. The smartphone—and in particular, the iPhone—has left the realm of electronic plaything, and become an almost required medical tool. According to Manhattan Research, a health care consulting firm, the percentage of U.S. physicians using smartphones stands around 64 per cent and is projected to hit 81 per cent by 2012. In Canada, the trend is the same. Smartphone use in hospitals “is almost ubiquitous,” says Dr. Dante Morra of Toronto’s University Health Network.

Today, doctors with a few dollars to spare and a smidgen of electronic know-how can download applications at the iTunes store that can transform their iPhones into drug-dose calculators, fetal monitors, or remote receivers for patient records. Yoon could purchase the Anatomical Diagrams app for 3-D illustrations of the human body. He could use Medical Spanish so he can advise Spanish-speaking patients—or check Medscape to review alternatives to the lab test he wants to order.

Rural docs are especially quick to jump on the iPhone bandwagon. In India, the iPhone is being used to mount a campaign against a retinal disease that afflicts premature babies. The effort takes place mostly at remote outposts, where lab assistants use iPhones to take pictures of preemies’ eyes. They then send the pictures to pediatric eye surgeons in Bangalore for diagnosis. Some press reports refer to India’s “EyePhone.”

Continue…

EU at risk of cyber attack

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

The European Union had better shore up its cyber defenses—and fast. According to a report from Britain’s House of Lords, when it comes to staving off cyber attack, European governments are falling down on the job. Despite being dependent on the Internet for everything from banking to information, cyber security varies wildly from one country to the next, leaving the EU open for attack. As Lord Jopling, who chairs the Lords EU committee told The Guardian, “The collapse of cybersystems in one country can overlap into others [...] “The threat can come anywhere—including to individual businesses, financial services such as the City, critical infrastructure or the mechanics of government … and you never know quite who is responsible, which is part of the problem.” The EU, the report found, has fallen behind NATO, which has prioritized cyber security.

The Guardian

Tax breaks aimed at fighting flab

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 13 Comments

Photograph by Waltraud Grubitzsch/ Zuma/ Keystone

Albertans, like most Canadians, keep getting fatter. So in an attempt to reverse rising obesity rates and encourage active lifestyles, the province’s Progressive Conservative government is considering a fitness tax reward.

The incentive is a tax break of up to $500 on fees for things like gym memberships, ski passes and hockey registration. “We saw it pretty clearly with the tax break on home renovations—people jump on the bandwagon,” says Colleen Parsons, director of health and fitness programs at the University of Calgary. “It’s an excellent opportunity for people to engage.” The bill, which was passed in the legislature but hasn’t yet been made into law, comes on the heels of a similar incentive implemented in Nova Scotia in 2009, and is meant to complement the federal government’s children’s fitness tax credit. It’s also supposed to update the province’s 12-year-old active-living policy, which the government and provincial sports organizations say needs retooling.

Today, one-third of adult Albertans are overweight and about 20 per cent are obese. Parsons says one of the main reasons Albertans avoid the gym and activities like skiing is the cost. The incentive has been endorsed by the Fitness Industry Council of Canada, which conducted a study that found the feds could save $2.5 billion in health care costs over 25 years and get up to one million more Canadians physically active with tax breaks. But, says Parsons, the idea is not a panacea for better health. “Will it change the health of Albertans? No. That’s a much larger problem.”

Cindy Ady, Alberta’s minister for tourism, parks and recreation, agrees. She says the tax incentive needs to be part of a larger program aimed at changing the minds of Albertans, and that the government still needs to go through consultations to figure out what works best. “I don’t want little quick fixes,” says Ady. “The tax credit piece is just one component.”