Facebook threatens British newspaper with lawsuit

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 11:08 AM - 0 Comments

The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, published a story on Wednesday that erroneously claimed teenage girls on Facebook could be approached “within seconds” by men wanting to “perform a sex act,” in front of them. The story’s author says the information was introduced by editors even though they knew it was incorrect, and the newspaper has since apologized online and in print. However, although part of the online headline was quickly changed from “I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you,” to “I posed as a girl of 14 online,” the page’s title and URL remained the same for several hours. Facebook says the story may have done permanent damage to its brand in the UK, and the two companies are meeting to discuss legal action.

The Guardian

Abu Ghraib and everything after

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 11:06 AM - 39 Comments

A government official tells CBC that three options for detainees were considered as Canadian forces moved into Kandahar, but that the failures and controversies of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay discouraged Canada from holding those it captured.

Nice work if you can get it

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 10:44 AM - 15 Comments

Hey, denizens of Quebec City: how about you pay some flouncy-haired, self-styled “marketing guru” $300 grand to tell you that you are depressed, masochistic, reptilian brained carriers of water?

Ah, you already did! Lordy, you really are masochistic.

Threatened B.C. forest dubbed the "Avatar Grove"

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 10:44 AM - 0 Comments

Its storytelling may have left the critics—and the Academy—cold. But there’s no denying James Cameron’s digital extravaganza Avatar has inspired tree-huggers the world round, rooted as it is on themes of conserving ancient ecosystems in all their majesty. In a stroke of marketing brilliance, the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance has re-christened a majestic expanse of old-growth on southern Vancouver Island in honour of the $300-million Hollywood blockbuster. Gone is the prosaic sounding Tree Farm Licence 46. In is the “Avatar Grove,” a “spectacular and accessible stand of newly discovered old growth red cedars and Douglas firs near Port Renfrew.” The alliance, which is a splinter group of the old Western Canada Wilderness Committee, is up against a Surrey, B.C.-based logging show and the provincial government. But if their cause captures the imaginations of dewy-eyed movie-goers, it would be unwise to count them out.

The Tyee

Ancient Forest Alliance

The Internet!

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 10:38 AM - 13 Comments

While we await the long overdue day when “politician engages with magic computer thingy” isn’t a particularly novel idea, there is news this morning that the Prime Minister will stream his reply to the Throne Speech—due in about 10 minutes—on YouTube, then invite you to send along your questions. All of which will apparently play out here.

Behold, the future.

Animal suicides tell us about human behaviour

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 10:19 AM - 7 Comments

Animals behave suicidally as humans do, according to new research that suggests they could be models for our own behaviour, whether it’s a depressed horse or a whale beaching itself inexplicably. “You begin to challenge the definition of suicide. The body and mind are so damaged by stress and so it leads to self destruction. It’s not necessarily even a choice,” Edmund Ramsden, one of the authors of the study published in the journal Endeavour, told Discovery News. In fact, it leads others to see suicides not as willful acts, but as responses to conditions. In one case, dating back to 1845, a Newfoundland dog was reported to be acting less lively, then threw himself in the water, keeping his limbs still and his head under until he eventually drowned. And pea aphids, when threatened by a lady bud, can explode themselves, protecting their families and sometimes killing the lady bug. Several organisms self-destruct, usually to protect their relatives or save their genes, but in modern humans, it can go wrong: millions of suicides around the world benefit no one, they say. This tells us that suicide is “a fatal consequence of biologically-based and extremely serious illness,” says psychologist Thomas Joiner of Florida State University.

Discovery

Gene maps help spot disease

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 10:12 AM - 0 Comments

When the Human Genome Project mapped the genetic code, it promised to transform medical science, and two new studies mark the first real delivery of that: they show it’s possible to sequence the entire genes of families with inherited diseases and find faulty bits of DNA, which would not have been possible even a year or two ago. In one study, genetic researcher Dr. James Lupski of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston experimented on himself and his family (he has a recessive genetic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome, which affects the nerves). With this methodology, which he calls “the first time whole genome sequencing has applied to actually find the cause of a disease,” he was able to find out which mutation was important. The sequencing revealed a gene called SH3TC2; other groups are now working on a drug that could affect that gene. Experts credited stimulus money, part of the $5 billion U.S. President Barack Obama marked for the National Institutes of Health in September. The second study saw the entire genomes of a family of four affected by Miller syndrome, which can cause facial disfigurement, and primary ciliary dyskinesia, a lung disorder.

Reuters

Off-key in the NHL headshot chorus

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 6:08 AM - 24 Comments

A memo to those who are concerned with (hitherto) legal checks to the head in the NHL: I sure hope you’re not just fighting physics. Because you’ll lose.

I see nothing wrong with the proposed new rule against blind-side hits to the head. I’d be willing to take it even further, and adopt an easy-to-apply strict-liability standard; if you hit somebody in a way that induces unconsciousness, or causes a concussion, you sit out the next n games. This would spare us from adopting hard-to-apply rules whose enforcement might ebb and crest, vary between personalities, and differ between leagues and regions. (It would occasionally lead, like all strict-liability rules, to unfair-seeming results and punishments for actions that didn’t look unjust or vicious aside from the outcome. But almost anything is better, at least to my mind, than a rule defined by excessively complex language, taught by means of intuitive references to a mass of individual cases, and left to evolve so that everybody thinks he knows the offence when he sees it.)

Ultimately, we are going to have collisions, and concussions, in the game of hockey, and the general quality of thinking about them is pathetically weak. Almost every columnist is quick to assail the disciplinary and managerial guardians of the game for lacking his own up-to-the-minute moral sensitivities; none stops to consider how unintended changes to the game, fundamental physical factors, may have increased the incidence and severity of closed head injuries. We routinely speak and act as if the rules are the only thing in hockey that humans have control over.

It’s sometimes observed, for example, that the players are bigger and the game faster than 20 or 30 years ago. But nobody ever sorts out the relative importance of these effects; a player whose mass is 5% bigger has 5% more kinetic energy in open ice, but if his velocity is increased 5%, the energy varies according to the square, and thus increases by more than 10%. If you watch early ’80s hockey, what immediately strikes you, once you get past the sheer horribleness of the goaltending, is the relative slowness of the game. There’s no one reason for this: plenty of things have changed just a little bit, from the quality of icemaking to skate technology to the way skaters are trained. And the change isn’t that extreme, or else Chris Chelios, who actually played early ’80s hockey in the early ’80s, would be unable to draw a paycheque in his weak-bladder years. Still, it’s a factor with exponential weight.

No one wants to consider deliberately slowing down the game, but we should at least consider that its speed is part of the problem, and a part we can’t ignore if we want to address collisions at the fundamental level of imparted energy. Otherwise, as the game continues to get faster, we’ll constantly be playing catch-up with rule changes. The speed is there in the game for pure entertainment purposes, just as much as the bodychecking is. It is, without any possible question, part of the game’s danger; more speed means more and worse injuries, all other things being equal. If you won’t consider steps to slow things down, you are in exactly, EXACTLY the same ethical position as somebody who refuses to consider changes to bodychecking doctrine. Hope I didn’t just put a bullet in the head of your high horse.

Another immediately noticeable thing about early ’80s hockey, of course, is the less ridiculous padding. Armour initially introduced to prevent injuries has pretty clearly become weaponized. And the role of helmets in preventing some hypothetical background rate of concussions is poorly understood. The concussions have, by the best measurements we can make, increased as helmets became common and then mandatory.

We can’t do without helmets, since they demonstrably prevent catastrophic and immediately life-threatening head trauma from pucks, falls, and checks. But if players feel more comfortable throwing Cooke-style shoulders to the head now, it’s probably, in part, because everyone wears a helmet. We know that no change to helmet design has ever been shown to reduce concussions. We know that the forces that cause most concussions are rotational, as helmet expert Pat Bishop recently pointed out; and it’s conceivable that, on the whole, helmets worsen the specific problem of concussion by adding more angular momentum to rotational blows [UPDATE: but see commenter Gaunilon's objection to this bit]. The increase in concussions may be part of the price we are paying for the absolute elimination of skull fractures from the pro game.

If so, it’s almost certainly a price worth paying. And, please, spare me the citations of brain-injury data from American football. NFL players are taught to use their helmeted heads as weapons, and linemen are subjected to brain injuries on nearly every snap of a game; that was a major point of the admittedly compelling Malcolm Gladwell article you’re all so impressed with yourselves for having read. (I’ll leave aside the possibility that Gladwell is overselling the findings of some scientists he got all excited about hanging out with, and since it’s Gladwell, by “possibility” I mean “extreme likelihood you could happily bet your house on”.) There’s no analogue to this brutal, repetitive activity in hockey, and no research to justify comparison with the NFL’s problem. Hockey has to solve hockey’s problems, and only hockey’s. Full stop.

If 24 Ends…

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 11:49 PM - 3 Comments

You might have already heard that, as expected, it looks like Fox probably won’t pick up 24 for another season. The Fox studio (as opposed to the Fox network) is going to shop it around. NBC executives have already said that they won’t rule out the possibility of a pickup, but of course that would depend on how successful or unsuccessful they are in developing new dramas to re-populate the 10 o’clock slot. (24 is a 9 o’clock show on Fox because that network stops broadcasting after 9:59. On any other network, its level of violence and intensity would make it a 10 o’clocker.) Its future is certainly looking doubtful, and its cultural moment has passed.

Though I doubt if the political readings of 24, or its popularity with conservative Supreme Court justices who appear unaware that Jack Bauer is not real, have contributed much to its downfall. The brilliance of 24 was that although it was a political show, it was set up in such a way as to confirm the political beliefs of almost anyone who was watching. It’s sort of a mash-up of a “conservative” genre, the rugged-he-man-who-gets-results genre (think Dirty Harry) with the “liberal” conspiracy thriller genre, where the higher-ups are always lying about war and national security issues. It was identified a bit with its “conservative” side in recent years because of the the debates about torture, and about co-creator Joel Surnow’s politics. But I think its real problem is simply that it’s been on since 2001 and it’s done virtually every season-long story it can do.

(One thing I’d like to see them try, which they sort of made a stab at last year but abandoned, is to put Jack into a Mission: Impossible scenario where he spends the entire season causing mischief in some other country. But given that they will have to cut the budget, not increase it, if they want to stay on the air in some form, this probably isn’t feasible. If there’s another season, he’ll probably be in L.A. all year.)

24 also was a big advance in the well-known art of washed-up movie stars re-inventing themselves for TV. This is as old as TV itself; Lucille Ball went into radio and then TV because her movie career didn’t go as well as expected. But Sutherland is one of the best examples of how someone can hang around the movie business for years, making lots of movies (many of them in the lead) without ever becoming particularly famous or impressive, and then turn into a superstar by landing the right TV role.

Finally, don’t forget the unaired 1994 pilot.

He told you so

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 6:51 PM - 35 Comments

Taste the chin, Montreal

Lucien Bouchard recently referred to the Parti Québécois, a party he once led, as a “radicalist niche” bent on exploiting Quebecers’ collective language fears for electoral gain. The PQ reaction was to a) largely ignore these specific sentiments and instead concentrate on Lucien’s bit about how sovereignty ain’t gonna happen, allowing the party to label him a sellout, as it has done before with this guy and, to a certain extent, this guy; and b) largely shrug off Lucien’s bon mots as the babblings of a bitter old man who can’t keep his anger in check. After all, they breed ‘em big and angry up in the Saguenay.

But, as usual, Lu-lu’s sense was canny. A week later, this: the PQ, leader Pauline Marois says, will focus her party’s attention on “defense of the French language” and “affirmation of national identity” (it actually sounds creepier in English) in the upcoming parliamentary session.Translation: she’s doing exactly as Lu-lu said she would. And for one very good (and terribly cynical) reason: demographics.

Continue…

The Commons: Comedy, tragedy, but no inquiry

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 6:02 PM - 78 Comments

The Scene. “Why don’t you ask a question about the economy?” pleaded one voice from the distant recesses of the Conservative side.

“What about jobs?” begged another voice from the furthest reaches of the government benches.

Sadly, though reputed to do a fine a cappella version of Free Bird, the leader of the opposition does not take requests. And paying no mind to his partisan audience across the way, he insisted on asking the government, once more, to explain precisely what it is it wants Justice Frank Iacobucci to do. “When will we see Justice Iacobucci’s written mandate? What will the mandate be, and when will he report to us about his findings?” he wondered aloud.

The Prime Minister stood and responded in kind, singing from his songbook in shrugging one-part harmony. “Mr. Speaker, I think we have been very clear,” he sang. “We are asking Justice Iacobucci to look at all of the documents that have been previously reviewed by public servants in terms of access to information. Justice Iacobucci will conduct a thorough inquiry on those documents and he will report according to his terms of reference.”

Ralph Goodale loudly wondered where precisely those terms of reference were. Bob Rae, it would seem, took quiet note. Continue…

That thing where the government didn't want embarrassing information about its handling of Haiti to get out? Yeah, that just ended.

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 4:48 PM - 56 Comments

Everyone go read Mike Petrou.

Apropos of whatever

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 4:13 PM - 10 Comments

Charlie Brooker considers politicians.

The exciting conclusion is here.

CIDA's Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund: millions raised, nothing spent

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 3:56 PM - 119 Comments

Has anyone seen the new Alice in Wonderland movie? I haven’t, but every month or so I try to get straight answers from the Canadian International Development Agency, so I figure I’ve saved myself 11 bucks.

I called the agency yesterday with questions about the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. You probably remember this. It’s where the Canadian government promises to match funds Canadians donate to Haiti to help with, among other things, “early recovery” and reconstruction. I had heard from a contact who does relief work in Haiti that no one who has applied for money from this fund had heard back from CIDA. Seemed a little strange. It’s been two months since the quake and one month since the donation window closed on February 12. So I called CIDA to find out how much money has been raised, how much has been disbursed, where it’s been disbursed, and, if nothing has been disbursed, as my contact told me, when it will be.

The first thing you need to know about CIDA is no one who answers the media inquiries phone line is capable of answering questions. They can write questions down, though, which is all the job requires. Then someone else gets back to you – not by phone, mind. That would involve social interaction and thinking for one’s self. Dangerous. Continue…

Those Bloomin' Dutch; An Island Of Your Own

By Takeoffeh.com - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 3:18 PM - 0 Comments

Banish The Blahs With A Dutch Flower Show
For some avid gardeners, the Canadian spring flower shows just aren’t enough to tide them over until their own gardens spring back to life. If that sounds like you, perhaps it’s time to join thousands of visitors from all over the world in welcoming spring at Holland’s Keukenhof Gardens. The gates will open on these renowned spring gardens on March 18th. The 80-acre park with 15 kilometres of footpaths is located an hour from Amsterdam and will once again be resplendent with millions of tulips, narcissus, hyacinths and other bulb flowers.

For 2010, the Keukenhof and Russia have joined forces to create the garden theme “From Russia with Love.” The centrepiece of the exhibit is an enormous mosaic of Moscow’s famous Saint Basil’s Cathedral, created from 65,000 flower bulbs. Other Russian content will include an exhibition of landscape paintings, a Russian-inspired garden and Russian wildlife in the children’s play area.

As well, the Juliana pavilion at the gardens will feature an exhibition titled Gone WithThe Wind, focusing on the highlights of Dutch fashion.

Keukenhof is open this year from March 18th through May 16th. Tickets are about $20 for adults, $10 for children. You can purchase them online.

Your Private Bahamian Island Awaits
Most people have dreamed of spending time on a private, sun-kissed island surrounded by warm waters and bordered by white sands. It’s not an impossible dream, but for most it’s not an affordable one. But if you can get 11 other friends and family together, a private island holiday in the Bahamas just might be possible this spring.

Little Whale Cay is a 93-acre island described as a ‘family paradise.’ An easy flight from Nassau, Ft. Lauderdale or Miami, the island offers accommodations for up to 12 guests in three luxury villas, amenities including an expansive main beach, marina, spa facilities, gym, sea-view infinity pool, tennis court and a selection of boats for skiing, sailing, fishing or cruising to small neighbouring islands. There’s even a chapel on the island.

Little Whale was developed in the 1930’s by an early pioneer in the Bahamas. The three houses are air conditioned and feature 21^st century amenities including WiFi broadband satellite internet, telephone facilities, satellite television and Bose iPod docking systems. All meals are prepared by a private chef.

The island is owned by a family, and family activities are part of the fun, including a scavenger hunt for the kids. Young people are also thrilled by Little Whale’s population of flamingos and peacocks. Parents can enjoy down-time on boat and fishing excursions, taking spa treatments and having meals served poolside. The proprietors promise no hotel rules or unforeseen extras.

With spring discounts, the island is on sale for $9,025 per day for up to 12 with a minimum 5-night stay in March and April. That works out to $3760 per person for a five-night vacation on a private island including accommodations, food, drinks and the use of all island facilities, boats, telephone calls and Internet connection. Reservation information can be found here.

Photo Credits: keukenhof.nl, littlewhalecay.com

Penalty kicks as retributive justice

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 2:58 PM - 11 Comments

In a former life I was a soccer goalkeeper. I was pretty good – strong shotstopping skills and good distribution, bit weak on positioning – but one thing I was never any good at was penalty kicks. I think I saved two pks in gameplay in my entire career. It wasn’t a big deal though, since you’re not really expected to.

The bulk of my activity took place before the rule change in 1997 that allowed keepers to move back and forth across the goal line before the shot is taken. That changed the equation a bit and allowed smart keepers to play a bit of head-games with the kicker (a tactic Craig Forrest used brilliantly in his career highlight, the 2000 Gold Cup). But things have evolved (as they always do in sport), and the heavy overbalance in favour of kickers never really went away. In international soccer, around 85% of penalty shots result in a goal. That contrasts with the success rate of the penalty shot in the NHL, which is much lower (the consensus stat seems to be around 30% success).

Which raises the question of what the point is of a penalty shot: Is it to attempt to restore something like the game’s status quo ante, i.e. put the fouled player back in the position he or she was in before being fouled? Or is to go further, and actually punish the offending team for breaking a fundamental rule of the game? The answer appears to depend on the sport in question. And it also reveals some interesting contrasts in the way different professional sports address the question of intramural justice. Continue…

TB 185 times more prevalent in Inuit

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 2:05 PM - 0 Comments

The first national study on the incidence of TB in the north has found the disease is 185 times more prevalent among Innu than the general population. The rate of TB in Canada’s four main Inuit regions is 157.5 out of 100,000, verses only 0.8 per 100,000 in the rest of the country. First nations in the South were also found to have a TB prevalence rate 31 times higher than the rest of the country. The disease is often linked with poverty, so it should come as no surprise that it’s flourishing in communities where access to healthcare is poor, overcrowding is common and up to 70 per cent of preschoolers live in houses where there isn’t enough food. “TB will never be eliminated until housing is improved, food security is improved, and the access to health care for Inuit is closer to what other Canadians take for granted,” said Gail Turner, the head of Inuit Tapirisat’s national health committee. Her group, as well as others, are calling for a new federal health strategy to eliminate tuberculosis in the north.

CBC News

How much did he know?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 2:03 PM - 0 Comments

Catholic officials in Germany have launched two major abuse investigations. One will look into claims of sexual and physical abuse in Germany’s prestigious Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir—a choir once run by Pope Benedict XVI’s older brother. As of now, the sexual abuse allegations have come from men who sung in the choir before the Pope’s brother took the reigns in 1964. But the investigation will consider what, if anything, the Pope knew about the claims at the time. We will be “certainly investigating these questions,” said Munich Archbishop Reinhard Marx. The Pope’s brother, Rev. Georg Ratzinger, 86, already apologized on Tuesday for not putting a stop to the physical beating of elementary students at a German school decades ago—after first denying that he knew of any abuse at the school.

CBC News

A terrible perfect beauty

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 1:53 PM - 20 Comments

The Jaffer referendum

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 1:28 PM - 22 Comments

Tim Powers says Rahim Jaffer owes us all an explanation. Adam Radwanski says Jaffer owes us nothing of the kind. And now Vic Toews is quoting William Randolph Hearst. Make what you will of their submissions.

Personally, I’m not terribly interested in any of it, unless, I suppose, you want to get into a discussion of what should and shouldn’t be worth discussing in the House—at which point I would probably argue that yesterday’s hullabaloo didn’t cross the line because the line was long ago spat upon, mocked and ultimately erased by group effort. So there.

Aung San Suu Kyi: shut out, again

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 1:02 PM - 1 Comment

Officials in Myanmar have announced that Aung San Suu Kyi—the opposition leader, and Nobel laureate, who has been detained for 14 of the last 20 years—will not be permitted to run in the upcoming national elections. According to the new Political Parties Registration Law, anyone who has been convicted in a court of law is excluded from running for office. Suu Kyi was convicted of violating the terms of her house arrest last August, after briefly sheltering an American man who swam across the lake to her home. The exact date of the election has not been announced.

CBC News

Our cleverness runneth over

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 12:47 PM - 34 Comments

Conservative backbencher Stephen Woodworth will accept your apologies now.

now that war crimes accusations remain unabated will those who misleadingly said prorogation was to avoid that will admit their error

Canadian man in wheelchair attacked in Australia

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 12:37 PM - 6 Comments

A wheelchair-bound Canadian living in Australia is in hospital after being badly beaten by two teenagers. The 35-year-old, whose name has not been released, was boarding an elevator at a Sydney train station Tuesday night when the attack began. The teens, now under arrest, knocked him out of his chair, punched and kicked him repeatedly, and hit him with metal bars. The shocking beating was caught on tape by surveillance cameras. “He is a wonderful, kind, generous individual,” said the man’s girlfriend, Kristin Sharrock. “He’s been through a lot in his life and he doesn’t deserve what’s happened.” Reached in Winnipeg, the man’s mother said her son broke his back in a snowmobile accident—just one month before his father was killed in an identical accident.

ABC News Australia

At math, women in their 40s are top of the class

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 12:36 PM - 0 Comments

Women in their 40s are not known for their number-crunching skills, but according to a recent study, they should be. According to a study released this week titled the College Math Project, which looked at 31,000 freshman math students across the Ontario’s 24 community colleges, women in their 40s are better at math than their peers of either sex, at any age. The study, co-authored by Graham Orpwood, professor emeritus of education at York University, attributes the math prowess of women at this age to their well-developed multi-tasking skills. “Women in their 30s and 40s who go back to school have had to juggle so many roles that they can organize their time and study independently—life skills many young students haven’t mastered,” says Orpwood.

Toronto Star