Canadians charged in U.S. flag desecration

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 11:48 AM - 20 Comments

Two Canadian ex-pats living in California have been charged with vandalizing an American flag shortly after Sidney Crosby scored the gold-medal winning goal in the Olympic men’s hockey final. Ryan Smith and Matt Siefert are accused of replacing an American flag flying atop a mountain with a Canadian one. The stars-and-stripes had been planted atop Point Happy mountain by Mayte Sterling shortly after 9/11to honour the attack’s victims as well as soldiers fighting overseas. According to Sterling’s son, the flag that was taken down was found torn and buried under nearby rocks. Smith and Siefert are facing misdemeanor charges of vandalism and flag desecration and could be punished by up to a year in jail.

Palm Springs Desert Sun

Volcanic ash doesn’t pose health risk: WHO

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 11:27 AM - 1 Comment

The World Health Organization has toned down its original warning that the ash cloud grounding flights is “very dangerous” for those with asthma and respiratory problems. It’s now saying there’s no cause for public health alarm. “There are no effects on health at the moment, except in the vicinity of the volcano in Iceland,” Carlos Dora of the public health and environment division told a news briefing. Even so, Icelanders who live near the volcano should stay indoors or wear face masks or goggles for protection against particles that can irritate lungs and eyes, but the most dangerous ash particles are the smallest one, which can move deep into the lungs, and have moved further from the volcano site in an ash plume spreading over Europe. Those fine particles are “very high up” and might disperse without causing health problems, he said. For the time being, there’s no need for people in Europe to take extra precautions, he said.

Reuters

Overcooked meat ups bladder cancer risk

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 11:26 AM - 4 Comments

In a new study, researchers found that people who ate well-done meat were twice as likely to develop bladder cancer than those who preferred it rare. Based on over 1,700 people, the findings were presented at a US cancer research conference. The risk was highest for those who ate well-done red meat like steaks, pork chops and bacon, the University of Texas team found, but even fried chicken and fish upped the risk. Three major types of cancer-causing chemicals, called heterocyclic amines, raised the risk by more than two and a half. In the 12-year study, researchers looked at how people metabolized meat, and found that having certain genes made people almost five times as likely to develop bladder cancer if they ate a lot of red meat. “These results strongly support what we suspected – people who eat a lot of red meat, particularly well-done red meat, such as fried or barbecued, seem to have a higher likelihood of bladder cancer,” lead researcher Xifeng Wu told the American Association for Cancer Research.

BBC News

Harper draws on spectre of Homolka

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 11:19 AM - 55 Comments

Stephen Harper dropped the name to make a point: “Karla Homolka.” In recent weeks, the PM has used Homolka’s legacy to take a stand against Canada’s “soft-on-crime attitudes.” Homolka is eligible this year to apply for a pardon for her crimes. “That, my friends, is how the laws have been written over the past few decades,” Harper explained, “when soft-on-crime attitudes were fashionable and concern for criminals took priority over compassion for victims.” The Tories are expected to turn out a piece of legislation before summer break that would toughen up the pardon process. This effort follows the revelation sex offender Graham James, who molested teenage hockey players in the 1980s and 90s, has already been granted a pardon.

The Globe and Mail

Advance warning

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 11:01 AM - 65 Comments

The National Post reported on June 9, 2005 that Karla Homolka, due at the time to be paroled, hoped to one day receive a pardon—Ms. Homolka apparently said so to a Corrections Service psychologist in 2001, that psychologist’s report was then filed in a Quebec court in 2005. The Canadian Press followed with its own report on June 28, 2005. Ms. Homolka was released on July 4, 2005.

Seven months after that, Stephen Harper became prime minister.

And four years and two months after that, Mr. Harper decided that Ms. Homolka’s potential pardon was a cause for great concern.

Ms. Homolka will be eligible to apply for a pardon in July. Mr. Harper’s Public Safety Minister says his staff is working “very quickly” and reportedly hopes, at the latest, to have new legislation ready by the fall.

Mailbag: Barack Obama, Panicky Ash Sex, Monkey Butlers

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 10:21 AM - 8 Comments

Welcome to the Mailbag, where until further notice I think we’ll do two of these a week – Tuesdays and Thursdays. Why? Because I care. Although to be fair, about 90% of that caring is related to the fact that Mailbags allow me to update this blog without independently having to come up with any ideas of my own. I say unto you: SWISH!

The following queries were actually submitted by actual readers. And remember: there are no stupid questions, unless you’re asking whether you should maybe update that Rahim Jaffer reference on your résumé.

•••

Dear Scott:

Are we in a new era of recognizing the importance of golf for world leaders? The reason I ask is that yesterday, Poland buried its president. Obama was unable to attend due to this ash, but instead of going to the Polish embassy in the US, went….golfing.

I’d love to give the presidential Ferris Bueller the benefit of the doubt, but it seems he’s now gone golfing 32 times, only a year into his presidency. You’ll recall Bush was attacked for his golfing while the US burned, doing so a paltry 24 times in 8 years in office. Put another way, for every single golf game the evil Bush leisurely enjoyed, our “hope and change” president golfed eight times. Yet nary a mention by our intrepid media. A new revolution in golf appreciation? Or the same old continuous water carrying by a media that leaves its accountability sleuthing behind in favour of pom poms when it comes to left leaning darlings? – chet

chet –

You sound like you’d be a fun guy to golf with, chet. I mean, sure, some of us prefer to spend our 18 holes engaging in casual wagers, drinking beer and mocking each other’s putting – but five hours of you hectoring us to get the hell back to work would be a real blast, too.

You want to know what I think? I think we should all aspire to have a leader who plays golf a lot. I want the president or prime minister who’s Continue…

Vancouver housing market: no logic

By Ken MacQueen - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 9:05 AM - 70 Comments

Petr Pospisil, a frustrated Vancouver teacher, and his girlfriend Ola Rugula have scored a viral Internet hit with their homemade game Crack Shack or Mansion? The object of the exercise is to click through a series of house photos and decide if they are North American drug dens that police have seized and shut down, or if they’re Vancouver “mansions,” which is to say a house listed this April at over $1 million. Good luck spotting the difference.

“It’s scary. I couldn’t believe what I was finding,” Pospisil, who has resigned himself to renting, told Vancouver’s Province newspaper. “I have no hope of owning anything for now.” Vancouver’s housing market has roared back. Prices are at, or above, pre-recession levels. There are any number of reasons for this: a mini post-Olympic boom, fears that low mortgage rates will soon disappear and the desire to escape cost increases July 1, when the 12-per-cent HST, the combined federal-provincial sales tax, adds to the price of new homes and real estate fees.

Has the Vancouver market peaked? Good question—one that bores many a Vancouver dinner party, and one that preoccupies such Internet sites. One has brought the roller coaster metaphor to life, showing why Vancouver’s housing market isn’t for the faint of heart or weak of wallet. Back on the ground there are some real life lamentations at the Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive. Not to get too technical, but if you look at the index of the Vancouver housing market, it looks an awful lot like the profile of the North Shore mountains.  There is a steady, rising slope, say from the years 2002 to 2005, which, if it were an elevation map, would correspond to the geographic mountainside location of West Vancouver and North Vancouver, two of the three most expensive areas to live in the Lower Mainland. The other is Vancouver’s west side. The index starts an insanely steep climb, starting in 2006 to the present. Again, if this were a map instead of a chart, you’d be clinging to the peaks of Cypress or Grouse mountains. One miscalculation, and you’ve a long way to fall.

And so it is with Greater Vancouver’s real estate market. People are indeed clinging by their fingernails as they try to meet their mortgage payments. The anecdote archive tells an all-too-typical story of a couple who bought a $1.2 million house with a $700,000 mortgage. The husband was laid off last month and the wife isn’t sure if her job is secure. Others like Pospisil despair of ever getting into the market. Certainly if you have to fall $700,000 into debt, why would you want to?

But in some parts of the Lower Mainland those sorts of mortgages are the price of admission. North Vancouver, the poor cousin of the three highest cost areas, had a benchmark price in March for a typical detached home of $927,122. A similar benchmark or typical house in neighbouring West Vancouver sold for $1,440,747. And in Vancouver’s west side it went for $1,656,986, according to the latest figures from the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board. True, there was a dip in housing prices in late 2008 and much of 2009, but it was temporary, and relatively minor in nature. It was certainly not the burst housing bubble that many predicted, and still predict, will hit. By rights the housing prices should have peaked, but logic has long since left the market place.

The affordability index for Greater Vancouver looks particularly grim. Family incomes are static but housing costs aren’t. By one measure, the Demographic International Housing Affordability Survey, Vancouver is the most unaffordable city in Canada, and the 15th worst among 100 cities worldwide. Survey co-author, Hugh Pavletich of New Zealand, says ideally housing costs should not exceed three-times the family’s income, meaning an affordability index of three. Anything above 5.1 is ranked in the survey as “severely unaffordable.” Vancouver has an index of 6.6, which Pavletich called “bloody absurd.”

Canadian banks are also concerned, if a little more circumspect. Says RBC in a recent report on the Vancouver market: “Such poor affordability levels represents an element of risk that could weigh heavily on markets when interest rates start rising.”

Certainly Vancouverites have the least wiggle room. Already 68 per cent of their average disposable income is spent on housing costs. That compares to 44 per cent in Toronto, 35 per cent in Calgary and 36 per cent in Montreal. It’s a sure bet, in the wake of the epic housing meltdown in the U.S, that Canadian lenders today are taking a harder look at the finances of wannabe homeowners. But is that enough to prevent a burst bubble if inflation rises and interest rates jump?

The fact that the floor didn’t fall out of house values during the worst of the recession gives some hope that the market isn’t as over hyped as some fear. Most smart buyers are also relying on mortgage helpers. It’s a rare new home that isn’t built without a self-contained rental suite to provide some income. The occasional mom and pop marijuana grow-op isn’t unheard of either. Not quite a crack shack, but still a risky way to pay the bills. Real estate: Vancouver’s gateway drug.

The Double Down: your move, America

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 8:43 AM - 70 Comments

The KFC Double Down makes me despair. Not because of the “sandwich” itself but because of the predictable reaction; in general, if you didn’t know that the thing was made of chicken, bacon, and processed cheese, you would get the impression that it was lovingly constructed from scorpions and poison. KFC is a division of Yum! Brands, Inc., and I’ll call your attention to the fact that even the tormented punctuation of this corporate name sounds as though it was devised by a sketch-comedy writer. Yum Exclamation-Mark Brands Comma Inc. used to be known by the less-friendly, more Vader-esque appellation of Tricon Global Restaurants; I am reasonably sure that this transition must have been scripted by Robert Smigel.

But which side in the war between soulless conglomerates and food puritans has irony on its side? KFC has literally rearranged the same ingredients that go into most every other grab-and-go entrée it serves, and gotten rid of the bread, which, guess what, might not be that good for you anyway. The sinister Elders of Tricon, who were surely lit unflatteringly from above in an austere modernist boardroom when they made the decision to create the Double Down, knew perfectly well that it would create panic and horror for no other reason than its configuration. The Double Down is, explicitly and unapologetically, a piece of food comedy.

And all the horrible people—for it seems virtually impossible to talk about food without being horrible—are reacting exactly as planned. The unapologetically paternalistic healthitarians, the grease-sweating Warcraft-playing fast-food reverse-snobs, the one-idea-in-their-whole-head theorists of food salvation, the paleos and the Pollanites, the narcissistic Nietzscheans who look at cheese as though it was about to go critical any second but will buy whatever’s new on the shelves at the GNC without so much as looking at the label…all the people, in short, who routinely insist on adulterating the pleasure of eating, and that includes, most of all, the types who’ve imbibed too much M.F.K. Fisher and who write pornographically about the “pleasure of eating” as if they were zooming a powerful camera in on an open mouth furiously masticating a mouthful of gnocchi.

The frustrating thing is that this multisided, Darwinian foodkampf is utterly necessary; nobody has the option of resigning his or her commission. We have no choice but to try and figure out how to reckon, as individuals, with the superabundance of nutrition. It is not a coincidence that the Double Down has been given a game-theoretic name. For the executives and accountants at Yum! Brands, Inc. that is probably the most exquisite part of the joke.

Tonight in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 11:43 PM - 30 Comments

The ethics commissioner decides, for the second time, that she won’t investigate. An attempt by Pat Martin to change the schedule of the government operations committee so that Mr. Jaffer wouldn’t have to testify on Wednesday appears to have failed, at least for the moment, either because Mr. Martin was filibustered by Liberal committee members or because Mr. Martin’s motion violates House rules. Mr. Jaffer’s business partner says he and Mr. Jaffer want to testify, while Mr. Jaffer’s lawyer says “nothing will happen” on Wednesday and Mr. Martin pleads for decency and substance in our politics. Oh, and for the record, Ms. Guergis was not technically a cabinet minister. (Unless she was.)

MUSIC: Symphonic Smorgasbord

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 7:57 PM - 0 Comments

Last year’s Haydn centenary, which I wrote about at the time, produced the inevitable round of concerts devoted to the music of my favourite instrumental composer, and some of those concerts are turning up on record this year. Recently I got to listen to two newish recordings of Haydn’s last 12 symphonies, the “London” set (because they were all written for concerts in that city), one by Marc Minkowski and the Musiciens du Louvre on the French label Naive, the other by Roger Norrington and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, on the German label Hanssler. The links there are to the digital versions, but they’re also available on CD; the Minkowski hasn’t been released on CD in Canada yet, but I got my copy from Amazon.fr. (Yes, I like owning stuff in physical formats. No, I don’t know why.) Both sets were recorded in live concerts last year, though the Norrington set includes applause at the end and the Minkowski does not. Both are in “HIP,” Historically Informed Performance, style, but Minkowski uses actual period instruments, while Norrington has a modern orchestra playing in period style (the strings use no vibrato whatsoever most of the time).

Long story short, both of these sets are good and I’m glad to have them both, particularly since Haydn’s late symphonies haven’t been all that lucky on record. This is because six of the twelve symphonies were given nicknames after Haydn’s death, but six others were not; the six un-named symphonies aren’t performed or recorded all that often, even though they’re just as good as the other six. (In particular, 98 and 102 may be the two best symphonies in the cycle, and neither one has been recorded nearly enough.) Long story even shorter, Minkowski’s set is the more recommendable one — more consistent performances, and cheaper — but Norrington’s has some interesting things to say, and may have more appropriate sound quality.

No set of 12 symphonies is going to hit the bulls-eye with every one, and some performances are better than others in each of these sets. Minkowski is very extroverted and energetic, which works best in movements that are fast and wild (first and last movements) or movements with violent contrasts (Haydn liked to spring sudden surprises on his audience, suddenly going dark in the middle of lighthearted movements, or vice-versa). Sometimes his fleet and fast approach makes the music a little too light, especially in the only minor-key symphony, # 95. And the live sound is sometimes a little distant, blunting the impact of the brass and drums. (Which is still better than conductors who just try to pretend that the brass and drums aren’t there.) But the playing of the orchestra is outstanding, and the performances get better and better as the set goes along; by the time he gets to my favourite of the cycle, 102, he turns in one of my favourite performances since Otto Klemperer’s classic ’60s version, with the beauty of the slow movement and the wild, weird, gruff humour of the other three movements perfectly conveyed. And unlike an older generation of period-instrument conductors, Minkowski has enough flexibility in phrasing and tempo that you don’t feel the conductor has set one fast speed and is sticking to it metronomically; that’s especially important in Haydn, who depends on surprising phrasing and sudden pauses for a lot of his effects. One unusual choice Minkowski makes is to change the score a bit in the famous “Surprise” symphony, inserting an unmarked repeat and an extra “surprise” that… well, let’s just say you shouldn’t have the volume turned up too high at that point. It certainly is surprising, that’s for sure.

Two video performances have been uploaded to YouTube (different performances from the ones on the discs, but from the same tour). Here’s the start of symphony # 103, the “drum roll” symphony. The opening drum roll (which, in a surprise, Haydn repeats just before the ending) isn’t strictly notated, which allows the drummer to do what he wants; here he improvises a whole flourish of his own. And by “improvise” I mean “read off a score that he prepared.” They aren’t jazz musicians, you know.

Norrington’s version is more a supplementary version. He takes a lot of movements slower or faster than we’re used to: the first movements can be slowish, the dance movements kind of clunky (which you wouldn’t expect from an “authentic” type, since Haydn actually didn’t intend these dances to be taken slowly), but the “slow” movements are faster than I’ve ever heard them. Sometimes this doesn’t work; some of the allegros leave me wishing they’d hurry up and end. Other times, it works great: the not-slow slow movements, taken this way, sound like Beethoven’s later experiments with nervous, fidgety, disturbing not-slow movments (like in the seventh symphony). The march from the “Military” symphony, where a cute-sounding military theme turns into scary battle music, is very effective this way, more so than Minkowski’s slower version. And here’s Norrington’s take on the famous movement from the so-called “Clock” symphony, which is taken extremely fast but, dang it, gets that tick-tock effect very well and also brings out Haydn’s stranger moments, like the raucous fanfares that ring out and then subside as the “clock” theme comes back.

So, in sum: these 12 Haydn symphonies are for my money as important a part of a musical collection as Beethoven’s nine. Actually, almost all 104 of Haydn’s symphonies are wonderful in their own way, but this cycle was the culmination of his life’s work. The Minkowski is an excellent way to get to know them, and the Norrington is a good supplement to any “basic” version.

My crazy Afghan wedding panel

By Andrew Potter - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 7:44 PM - 6 Comments

Sorry for the ongoing lack of blogging. I’m becoming one of those people, as Rex Sorgatz tweeted the other day, who wonders how anyone has time to blog.

Anyway, as I noted the last time I posted here, I was asked  to moderate a panel on Canada’s presence in Afghanistan post-2011. It was a good lineup, including former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan Chris Alexander, Bob Rae, Terry Glavin,  Jawed Ludin (the Afghan ambassador) and Najia Haneefi.

Turns out Afghans don’t distinguish between a political panel and a 300-person wedding, so the thing was held in the Taj Banquet Hall on Steeles Avenue in North Toronto,  which was basically an extension of the Kia dealership next door. I think every Afghan Canadian within a thousand kilometers was there, including about 30 kids running around.

Anyway, it was pretty interesting in about ninety different ways. You’ll get my take on the event in the magazine this week. The only non-Afghan media I saw there was the Tory blogger Dr. Roy, who has a writeup and pics.

Finally, if you are interested, the discussion was pegged to this paper by Chris Alexander, which is well worth your time.

TV and History: A Brief Musing

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 6:37 PM - 2 Comments

In re (whereas and to wit) my previous post, I wanted to add one thing to Tom Fontana’s comment that “people talk as if The Wire sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus.” I think that comment points up something I’ve noticed about the difference between artistically-ambitious television and artistically-ambitious film.

In film, most moviemakers who want their work to be taken seriously (and even those who don’t) will openly talk about the earlier films and filmmakers that influenced them. At the extreme, you get a Quentin Tarantino who fills every frame with movie references and will tell you what every single one of those references are; but most important film directors are conscious of the past and draw on it for inspiration, the way P.T. Anderson watched Treasure of Sierra Madre while writing There Will Be Blood.

But ambitious TV of the last decade — the HBO decade — is different. Much of it tries to present itself as being divorced from TV history. The Sopranos, produced by a TV veteran, might have seemed to have its roots in a lot of earlier shows, but not only didn’t David Chase hype those connections, he went out of his way to deny them: when The New York Times said that the show was influenced by Wiseguy, Chase wrote a letter to the editor claiming he had never seen Wiseguy. I don’t believe him, but the point is that he did not want it to be thought that he was influenced by an earlier show; you couldn’t imagine Martin Scorsese trying to deny Goodfellas was influenced by earlier mob movies.

Many of the most respected shows of the last two decades were made by people who claimed, rightly or wrongly, not to be very much influenced by the shows that came before them. So you get Larry David and his staff of people who claimed not to much care for sitcoms, or David Simon, who will tell you for hours why his shows are totally different from every other cop show. You did not find David Milch talking about Deadwood and its roots in earlier TV Westerns, and why is everybody named “David” anyway?

Not that these creators will never talk about the influences on their shows. But the influences they point to are usually non-TV influences: novels and, especially, movies. (David Milch liked to go one further and talk about Deadwood as being totally different from every Western ever made in TV or movies.) HBO is the network that aspires to make television more like movies — in part because its production strategy revolves around attracting movie people, particularly directors — and its producers are frequently discussing their shows in those terms: we’re not like these earlier cop shows or comedies, even in the sense that we’re building on them to do something different; we’re like the upper-class product known as the feature film.

We know where this comes from: TV is a younger medium, a medium with an inferiority complex (even now) and HBO has based its whole marketing strategy on putting down all television that isn’t their own. Still, it’s an odd thing. This will change as more shows come along that see themselves as rooted in the last decade of “advanced” TV — but even then, I think the creators will be more comfortable talking about their antecedents in other forms.

The Commons: The meaning of courage

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 5:41 PM - 30 Comments

The Scene. Michael Ignatieff had barely so much as said the words “Mr. Jaffer” aloud then a great moan rose from the government side.

This first intervention was fairly perfunctory. And, in response, John Baird stood and said as little as possible. Not until his second query, stumbling a bit with whatever he had prepared, did Mr. Ignatieff arrive at a point—something that might be taken away from not just these past few weeks, but perhaps these past few years.

“When the Prime Minister gets information he likes, he calls it credible. When he gets information he does not like, he attacks the witness. When he gets information from a private detective, he listens. When he gets credible information from Richard Colvin, a reputable diplomat, he attacks the witness,” the Liberal leader stammered. “How can we trust the Prime Minister’s judgment when he puts his political interests ahead of the public interests in every case?”

Mr. Baird stood here and jabbed his finger and punched the air and spoke emphatically about unrelated matters. Mr. Ignatieff tried again, this time en francais. For a third time Mr. Baird rose, this time to quite helpfully make the point the Liberal leader had been trying to make. Continue…

Who's behind the violence in the Caucasus?

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 5:36 PM - 1 Comment

Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia have seen a dramatic increase in the number of attacks against security forces and government officials. So far this year, separatists fundamentalists have carried out 23 attacks in the Caucasus, killing at least 34 people. Over the same period last year, there eight attacks that killed 17 people. The latest subway bombing in Moscow shows the attacks have also spread outside the borders of the five republics. A shadowy group callling itself the Caucasus Emirate may be responsible for part of the increase in political violence. Led by Doku Umarov, a veteran of the Russia-Chechnya conflicts, the CE has claimed responsibility for three different attacks involving five suicide bombers between March 29 and April 9. According to STRATFOR, “this is a substantial feat indicating that the Caucasus Emirate can manage several different teams of attackers and influence when they strike their targets.” But while the CE has managed to unite the region’s jihadists under one umbrella, its leadership is “operating in a very hostile environment and can name many of their predecessors who met their ends fighting the Russians,” leading STRATFOR to predict that, “having prodded Moscow so provocatively, they are likely living on borrowed time.”

STRATFOR

Afghanistan: Fruits of the U.S. journalist surge

By Paul Wells - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 4:55 PM - 9 Comments

At times a couple of weeks ago, a visitor might have been forgiven for confusing Kandahar with New Hampshire during primary season. Everywhere I went — well, okay, on two consecutive stops — I ran into a bigfoot reporter working for a big U.S. publication. In Arghandab I met a guy in a polo shirt who turned out to be James Traub of the New York Times Magazine. A few kilometres down the road at Senjaray, I ran into Joe Klein, the Primary Colors author and columnist at Time.

Where I spent an hour, Klein was spending a week, so Capt. Jeremiah Ellis appears for two paragraphs in my piece but is the central character in Klein’s fascinating, sometimes heartbreaking cover story for Time. It’s well worth your attention, as is photographer Adam Ferguson’s photo essay to accompany the same story.

One of the most consequential news management calls of 2008-9 was the New York Times’ decision to reassign the paper’s best war correspondents, including C.J. Chivers and Dexter Filkins, from Iraq to the south of Afghanistan. Today  the Times website features harrowing video footage shot by Chivers earlier this spring during the battle for Marjah. Marines there meet stiff resistance from insurgents, including a rarity: a skilled marksman, probably using a 70-year-old Lee Enfield bolt-action rifle.

Earth Day will be 40 years old come April 22. Is it still relevant?

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 4:31 PM - 15 Comments

The ‘miracle cure’

By Anne Kingston and Cathy Gulli - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 4:21 PM - 100 Comments

Photographs by Andrew Tolson

Last week, in a traditionally appointed Vancouver living room, Dr. Mark Godley made an announcement that could change the face of Canadian medicine. Addressing a multiple sclerosis support group that had formed on Facebook, the anesthesiologist and medical director of False Creek Healthcare Centre shared “very, very good news”: “A patient in B.C. had the procedure done here in B.C. today,” he said as the dozen people gathered erupted in claps, cheers and enthusiastic calls for details. The group here knows the lingo: “the procedure” is the radical and game-changing “liberation treatment” pioneered and named by Italian vascular surgeon Paolo Zamboni that has dominated MS chat rooms and academic research since it was first reported by media last November. The MS patient in B.C. showed results consistent with Zamboni’s, Godley reports: “He has warmth in his hands, the numbness has gone from his fingers, and for the first time [in years] he’s able to lie flat on his back.”

What’s stunning about Godley’s announcement is that, until now, the “liberation” treatment—a simple surgery that sends a tiny balloon to clear a clogged jugular vein—has been almost entirely unavailable in Canada, where it’s considered “experimental” by health officials. Provincial health care plans won’t fund it; doctors won’t perform it. Instead, Canadians have been flying to private clinics in Poland, Kuwait and India, paying upward of $10,000 for the surgery. In fact, the procedure that Godley describes was performed under the radar in an unnamed B.C. hospital, billed as a routine angioplasty. It was done “very quietly without the hospital knowing what he was really there for,” he says. Soon, though, such stealth will be unnecessary: in May, Godley said, his private clinic will be the first in Canada to openly offer the day surgery. “Wow!” cried out one member of the support group. “What’s the cost?” asked someone else, to which another replied, laughing, “Who cares?”

Such excitement has greeted Zamboni’s research among MS patients, who a year ago couldn’t have imagined a possible cure for the degenerative disease that affects 2.5 million people worldwide. Most are diagnosed at a young age—between age 15 and 40—more of them women than men, and most of Northern European descent. Canada has among the highest incidence of the disease—between 55,000 and 75,000 people, with 1,000 new cases every year. Not only is there no cure, researchers have not found a cause. All that’s known for certain is that the symptoms, which include numbness, loss of mobility, bladder malfunction and paralysis, are devastating.

Continue…

Stephen Harper laments Stephen Harper's soft-on-crime attitude

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 4:15 PM - 25 Comments

The Prime Minister marks national crime victims week with reference to Graham James.

The government is planning to introduce new legislation this year to toughen the pardon system, in reaction to revelations earlier this month that sex offender Graham James, the disgraced former hockey coach, received a pardon three years ago.

“Even though he ruined the lives of boys that just wanted to play hockey, he can travel without having to admit his criminal record,” Mr. Harper said. “That, my friends, is how the laws have been written over the past few decades, written when soft-on-crime attitudes were fashionable and concern for criminals took priority over compassion for victims.”

Mr. Harper did not mention that his government reviewed the system for sex-offender pardons in 2006 and opted for minor administrative tinkering rather than changing legislation to make it harder or even impossible for people like James to be pardoned.

More, previously, here.

This afternoon in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 4:02 PM - 8 Comments

Mr. Jaffer’s business partner says he and Mr. Jaffer are ready to appear before a parliamentary committee and they’re thinking of taking legal action against Michael Ignatieff. Though having recently sought those committee proceedings, the NDP decides it would rather not proceed.

Like a wake, but louder

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 3:31 PM - 0 Comments

Malcolm McLaren, whose pop culture career included stints as a clothing boutique owner and as manager of the Sex Pistols—to whom he played the role of occasional ego, occasional id—died earlier this month. According to his son, his funeral will be conducted in such a way as to reflect the way McLaren lived. “In celebration of Malcolm’s life we are asking people to observe a MINUTE OF MAYHEM at midday on 22nd April. Put on your favorite records and let it RIP!”

ArtsBeat (New York Times)

Czech Out Some Fine Food; A Canadian Hotel Review Site

By Takeoffeh.com - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 3:29 PM - 1 Comment

The Many Flavours of the Czech Republic
At one time, destinations would go out of their way to provide visitors with food that was familiar to them. But exposure to new flavours has broadened people’s tastes and now more destinations recognize the potential for gastronomic tourism.

The Czech Republic is promoting its delicious native food and drink through a number of initiatives, including festivals, cooking courses and a program which recognizes restaurants that serve national specialties. Taste the Czech Republic is a joint venture between tourism officials, restaurants and chefs. When you visit the Czech Specials website, you’ll find a list of restaurants authorized to use the Czech Specials logo. This certifies that you will find on the menu at least one national specialty, such as svíčková (sirloin) in cream sauce or pork, dumplings and cabbage, and at least one regional dish. For example, you could enjoy liver and cranberry pâté in Prague, Krkonoše sour soup in the Giant Mountains, or “Moravian sparrow” (roast pork, sauerkraut and potato dumplings) in South Moravia. The site also features recipes you can try at home – in anticipation of your trip or in memory of it after you return home.

The Prague Food Festival is a three-day celebration of food set this year for May 28-30. The organizers always seek a unique location, and this year they have chosen the Southern Garden of Prague Castle. Visitors can taste dishes from top restaurants while enjoying breathtaking views of Prague.

As the home of Pilsner beer and other fine brews, the Czech Republic is a paradise for beer lovers, and you can sample local varieties everywhere. What is less known is that the Czechs make some terrific wine too. The permanent wine-tasting exposition “Wine Salon” in Valtice offers 100 of the best wines from around the Czech Republic for the current season all in one place. Visitors can choose from a diverse selection of wine-tasting programs and purchase their favourites. You can find out more information on Czech wines here.

A Hotel Review Site Written By Canadians, For Canadians
It’s no secret that TripAdvisor.com is the 800-pound gorilla of the online review world. The site has changed travel by enabling consumers to view the opinions of others who have gone before them. But some complain that people abuse the system by posting phony reviews.

Monarc.ca is a Canadian hotel review site with a difference. Canadians who have bought their trip from a Canadian online travel travel agency will receive an e-mail shortly after their return inviting them to review their holiday. Because the data about their trip comes directly from their booking record, there’s no opportunity for a false posting. Readers have the certainty of knowing the reviews are genuine.

To date there are more than 1,000 hotels reviewed in the most popular Canadian sun destinations. And Monarc.ca is attracting over 100 new reviews each day. Many popular properties have 20 or more reviews, which really helps you decide whether the resort is suited to your individual taste. Currently, reviews have come from over 700 Canadian towns and cities, with 70% of content in English, 30% in French. In operation just since October of last year, Monarc.ca is gaining some real critical mass, and promises to be a valuable tool for Canadians seeking their place in the sun.

Photo Credits: prague.cz, monarc.ca

Fed Up With the Web

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 3:27 PM - 1 Comment

Consumers are increasingly fed up with buying travel using online search engines. According to one research group, “travellers are angry with the web” and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

The trend is reflected in a number of articles and studies, the most recent with the provocative headline “Why Travel Search Engines Suck.” In that story, Computerworld columnist Robert Mitchell recounts the two hours he spent “slashing through a jungle of search results” until finally turning to a travel agent who got the job done and saved him $150, even after a service fee. Mitchell isn’t the only one — research indicates a growing number of travellers are choosing the traditional travel agent route after becoming frustrated with online booking.

According to Forrester Research, in 2009 15% fewer travellers reported enjoying using the web to book travel than in a 2007 survey. Only a third of survey respondents said they believed travel websites do a good job of presenting travel choices, down from 39% in 2008.

The Forrester report stated: “Travel sites aren’t good enough for many users, thanks to a combination of poor design, inflexible options, and unclear security. To reverse travellers’ dissatisfaction and avoid having them abandon the web in favour of other, more expensive offline channels, travel eBusiness professionals must rethink their approach.”

It’s not that people don’t find the Internet useful in travel planning. Forrester says there is a growing number of what it calls “leisure lookers”: people who use the Web to research and price their travel plans but make their final bookings and payments offline. By 2013, Forrester says one in five online travellers will fall into this category.

Another study, this one by travel industry research specialist YPartnership, says some consumers are turning to (or returning to) travel professionals because it simply takes too long to wade through the voluminous online travel choices. People are placing a value on their time and deciding it makes more sense to pay an agent a fee to do the work for them.

Basic flight, hotel and car rental bookings are fairly simple to do online, but even these functions are getting trickier. With airlines ‘unbundling’ fares into a menu of options, it can be difficult to comparison shop without spending a lot of time at it. Hotels and car rental companies are also getting into unbundling, meaning the price you pay online isn’t always the final price.

The biggest problems arise when consumers attempt to book several interlocking travel components or a complex flight itinerary. Travel search engines can be clunky to navigate, with each relying on different search options, results displays, and pricing standards.

All this is welcome news to traditional travel agents who have always maintained they can outperform online any day of the week. In fact, the Computerworld ‘Why Travel Search Engines Suck” article generated a flurry of comments from both agents and online adherents who scoffed at ‘old-fashioned’ methods.

One reader wrote: “I’m under 40 and have never talked to or seen a travel agent in my life. I only know how to book online!”

Not surprisingly, a travel agent had a different take in her response to the story: “We’re not “in it” to sell you just anything, we’re in it to develop a relationship based on integrity, service and finding the best price, not always the cheapest price (even though research has shown we do that 70% of the time). In a nutshell, the internet will sell you any air ticket, any hotel, any cruise, any tour package…we want to make sure it’s the right one for you because you can’t return a trip like you can a sweater. This may sound “corny” in our fast paced, impersonal world, but we care about our clients or we wouldn’t be here.”

Another travel agent says booking online or offline is simply a personal choice: “There are times that the Internet has lower fares than travel agents. There are good travel agents and good travel sites. It comes down to what you think your time is worth. (If) you have time to spend three hours in the middle of the night then I do hope you find the lowest fare – but how would you know that?”

By: Bruce Parkinson
Bruce Parkinson is a travel industry journalist and regular contributor to Takeoffeh.com as well as sister company, OpenJaw.com

Photo Credit: clintspencer

Tom Fontana, Always Too Early

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 2:20 PM - 2 Comments

I’m very much liking Treme but can’t add much more (yet) about the show, let alone David Simon. But I thought I would link to this article that appeared last month, about the first David Simon show, Homicide, and its showrunner, Tom Fontana. As I said in an earlier post, I don’t think it’s possible to say that Homicide was “better” than The Wire, if only because the shows were trying to do somewhat different things in spite of their obvious similarities. They are complementary, not competitive. But because a lot of TV criticism isn’t very historically grounded (I don’t mean that as a major criticism; it’s just that most non-recent TV shows are not as easily available as non-recent movies, meaning that TV shows aren’t as routinely compared to what has come before) The Wire‘s similarities to Homicide were not discussed as often as one might have expected. When a new movie is obviously influenced by or connected to a movie from a decade earlier, it leads to a lot of discussion of the older movie, maybe a new special edition DVD, and many more viewings. When a new TV show is connected to an earlier TV show, it winds up stealing that show’s thunder or even burying it completely. So while, as I say, Homicide isn’t in competition with its younger cousin, it does seem like it gets less attention now than it did pre-Wire. Or as Fonana says, “people talk as if it [Wire] sprand fully formed from the head of Zeus.”

This isn’t a new thing for Fontana, because the shows he works on often seem to get their thunder stolen by shows that come later. The most obvious example — more so than Homicide — is Oz. When I talk about the show that turned HBO into a drama powerhouse, I (like most people) instinctively mention The Sopranos. But in fact, Fontana’s Oz premiered two years earlier. It was a breakthrough show for HBO in several ways: their first major success in the field of one-hour drama after years of doing mostly comedies and movies-of-the-week; a show they owned outright (most of their previous hits, like Larry Sanders, were produced by outside studios); a show that made its mark by using the forms and genres of network television and adding in more graphic content than any network would allow. Yet if you asked me “what show put HBO drama on the map?” and I hadn’t had time to think about it, I’d still probably answer “Sopranos,” just instinctively. That’s Tom Fontana; not unsuccessful, not uninfluential, but there often seems to be another show that takes his ball and runs farther with it, or at least gets more acclaim for the run in question.

Parity was here for a good time, not a long time

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 2:01 PM - 5 Comments

The value of the Canadian dollar has fallen for a third day in a row after reaching parity with the U.S dollar last week. Mid-morning Monday, the loonie was trading at 98.47 cents U.S. Experts blame the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into fraud at Goldman Sachs Group for the drop. “The market seems to be running to the safety of the U.S. dollar today,” wrote Scotia Capital currency strategist Camilla Sutton. “The impact of the SEC’s charge against Goldman Sachs has been sharp.” The fall is also linked to China’s recent efforts to cool its real-estate market, which has lowered the price of raw materials and hurt commodity-linked currencies. Said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co: “The China story and weak commodities are weighing on the Canadian dollar.” The Bank of Canada is expected to discuss interest rates at a meeting tomorrow.

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