Bestsellers

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 4:19 PM - 2 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of April 19th, 2010)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

You Say Muhammed, I Say Mohammed, South Park Says "Bleep"

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 3:45 PM - 89 Comments

You’ve probably heard about the weirdness involving part 2 of South Park‘s anniversary episode, but here’s the quick recap:

Their 200th episode, last week, was a fan-friendly tip of the hat to many celebrity parodies and storylines from earlier in the season, including season 10′s controversy over showing Mohammed. (They showed him in the episode “Super Best Friends,” which Comedy Central still shows, but the network refused to allow his depiction in new episodes.) As Kyle said, “Dude, I can’t believe we’re dealing with this Mohammed thing again,” but they did, and the episode ended with Mohammed dressed in a bear suit that covered him from head to toe, so he would never be seen. After the episode aired, the U.S.-based Islamic fundamentalist website Revolutionmuslim.com warned that Trey Parker and Matt Stone might wind up like Theo Van Gogh, something that the writer argued was a “prediction” rather than a “threat” (i.e. something you can get arrested for). Last night’s episode continued the story from part 1, and like part 1, Mohammed had a huge “censored” bar in front of him every time he appeared without the bear costume. But this time every mention of Mohammed’s name was bleeped, rendering the episode completely incomprehensible if you hadn’t seen part 1.

Because the bleeping was so unexpected and unprecedented, and especially because the entire “I learned something today” speech was also bleeped (something that seemed clearly deliberate on Parker and Stone’s part), a lot of people, including me, assumed that the bleeping was an intentional meta-joke about censorship. But then Parker and Stone announced that Comedy Central wouldn’t allow the episode to be streamed online yet, and Comedy Central said that they had in fact added extra bleeps to the episode. So exactly what the “uncensored” version of the episode was supposed to look like is still unknown.

The possibility that this is all a stunt on the part of Parker and Stone, or Comedy Central, has been brought up a few times. It certainly is getting them much more attention than the original intent — to do a follow-up episode where Mohammed’s name is mentioned but his image is censored — would have done. And I thought last week that Parker and Stone might be going back to the Mohammed thing because nothing else they’ve done this season has gotten many headlines for them. (The two-parter, while funny, is another indication that they no longer have any frame of reference outside of their own show.) But it’s also possible that Comedy Central got some serious threats and decided to try and obscure what the episode was about. We’ll have to wait to find out exactly what happened.

As to how this applies to Canada, that also remains to be seen. The Comedy Network shows new South Park episodes “uncensored” on Sundays, but since no uncensored version has been streamed online, I don’t know what version the Comedy Network has been given, if any.

Update: The linked story has been updated with a statement from Parker and Stone, clarifying that the bleeps — including the bleeping of Kyle’s speech — were all Comedy Central’s:

In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.

That’s very, very weird. I assume a statement from Comedy Central will eventually be issued, but even then, it will never explain what the hell happened if the network decided to censor an already heavily self-censored episode.

Gold medalist caught with drugs

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 2:47 PM - 2 Comments

Jim Armstrong, skip of the Canadian wheelchair curling team that won gold in Vancouver, has been arrested for allegedly picking up fake Viagra and Cialis tablets from a post office in Washington. The package was noticed by customs officers in L.A., who notified police and allowed it to go through to the P.O. box of Armstrong’s late wife. Officers were waiting for Armstrong as he left the post office. Their report says the 59-year-old retired dentist told them he was picking up the package for his son, who was planning to sell the pills at clubs in Vancouver. Armstrong has been charged with trafficking in counterfeit drugs and released on a $20,000 bond. His next court date is April 30.

CBC News

Former Taliban returning to insurgency

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 2:43 PM - 3 Comments

Broken promises from government and a lack of rewards is leading nearly 25 per cent of Taliban defectors to rejoin the fight against western forces, according to Golden Surrender, a report by a Kabul-based think tank named the Afghanistan Analysts Network. It says NATO’s Peace and Reconciliation Scheme (PTS) is ineffective because of bad leadership and a lack of financial and political resources. Its release comes as western nations and the Afghan government launch a new, $1 billion two-pronged plan to negotiate with the insurgency’s leaders and entice fighters to drop their weapons. The new plan can’t come soon enough—so far the PTS has only reformed 646 of an estimated 36,000 Taliban soldiers over the last five years, and several of the 33 commanders who defected are believed to have returned to their former positions. Threats of retribution against villages, which NATO has tried to fight by establishing community defence initiatives (commonly called militias by critics), have also led fighters to switch sides a second time, while a report by Safety Office, an Afghan NGO, says the PTS has done little aside from creating additional tensions between rival tribes.

Times of London

Could Palm end up in RIM’s hands?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 3 Comments

Canadian Press

Around this time last year Palm was rolling out its new Pre smartphone—a glossy black orb that was supposed to resurrect the handheld computer pioneer from the dead. But while the Pre and its innovative touchscreen operating system won over tech followers, including some who suggested it was superior to the iPhone, it failed to catch on with consumers. Palm was about two years too late to the market with the Pre (the iPhone came out in 2007). It didn’t help that the Pre’s surreal TV ad campaign brought to mind powerful antidepressants, not a sleek mobile device.

As a result, it is increasingly looking like Palm will end up on the sales block. Executives are reportedly shopping the company around for US$1.1 billion, and interested buyers are said to range from laptop makers like Lenovo to European cellphone giant Nokia. But maybe the best match, say some observers, would be Research In Motion, the Waterloo, Ont.-based company that makes the popular BlackBerry. “It makes lots of sense,” says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner Research. “I have been a big fan of this connection for years. RIM has not come up with a compelling touch user interface and Palm has that.”

Continue…

Gaming it out

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 1:47 PM - 79 Comments

Susan Delacourt wonders if the detainee document question currently being contemplated by the Speaker won’t ultimately end up with the Supreme Court.

[REDACTED] I wonder—without, mind you, having yet consulted anyone who knows about such things—whether the Supreme Court, in a scenario like the one I referred to a couple of weeks ago, might then pass it on to the Governor General. And then I wonder who the Governor General will be by then. And then I wonder whether we’d all be comfortable with Wayne Gretzky making that decision. [REDACTED]

After thinking about what I wrote here for a bit—Parliament refers the matter to the Supreme Court, Supreme Court refers it to the Governor General, that Governor General is Wayne Gretzky, the whole matter is settled in a shootout—I’m less convinced of my own fanciful theorizing. Apologies. I’ve referred the matter to a more learned mind.

In the meantime, you can review the Supreme Court’s decision in New Brunswick Broadcasting Co. v. Nova Scotia. Neil Morrison has already noted the irony as it applies to this particular predicament.

The day after all that

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 1:16 PM - 39 Comments

The Star reports that atop one of the proposals submitted by Green Power Corporation were the words “From Rahim.” Two businessmen who met with Mr. Jaffer say he was presented to them and presented himself as someone with access to government (and they provide the CBC with the MP business card they say Mr. Jaffer gave them). Nazim Gillani’s spokesman says Mr. Gillani thought Mr. Jaffer worked in “government relations.”

And Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi, chair of the government operations committee, passes on a letter, reprinted below, that she has directed to Transport Minister John Baird, after Mr. Baird sent an unsolicited package to her last evening. Continue…

Jaffer associate sought $100 million of federal funds

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 1:09 PM - 5 Comments

Things just got messier in the inquiry into the conduct of former cabinet minister Helena Guergis and her husband, former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer. New evidence shows Jaffer’s business partner sought $100-million in federal financing from a Conservative MP. At the same time, Guergis was promoting that same company to a fellow politician in her riding, who happens to be her cousin. (The project did not receive federal funding.) On Wednesday, Jaffer denied trying to meet with government officials about his company’s business plans. But one such business plan, which was submitted to Conservative MP Brian Jean’s office, has a note attached to it that was written by a receptionist: “From Rahim.”

National Post

U.S. to keep "all options" open if Hezbollah has Scuds

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 1:06 PM - 2 Comments

As rumours circulate Syria may have transferred Scud missiles to the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah, an official with the U.S. State Department has issued a warning the consequences could be grim if it’s true. Though he declined to say whether the U.S. could confirm the rumours, Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman says “all options are going to be on the table looking at this.” Lebanon has dismissed the accusations, saying Israel is trying to turn Lebanon into a target for military attacks. “Threats that Lebanon now has huge missiles are similar to what they used to say about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” says Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

BBC News

French is out of fashion in Rwanda

By Kaj Hasselriis - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 12:10 PM - 13 Comments

Reuters/ Getty

When Governor General Michaëlle Jean visits Rwanda next week she might have to bite her tongue about the country’s new language policy. After a century of close ties to France and Belgium, the East African nation is phasing out français and embracing English. “English is becoming more and more dominant in the world,” says Arnaud Nkusi, anchor of Rwanda’s state-owned TV news. “It’s all about business. You have to move with the rest of the world.”

Jean’s trip will mark the first state visit to Rwanda from a Commonwealth country since it joined that 54-state organization late last year. But cozying up to Britain and its former colonies is only the latest chapter in Rwanda’s move to English. Many say it all started with the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when members of the country’s Hutu ethnic group killed up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The country blames France for helping arm the instigators, and then not doing enough to stop the carnage.

In the wake of the genocide, Rwanda’s main donor became the United States. Meanwhile, thousands of exiles returned to their homeland from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda—neighbouring English-speaking countries where many Rwandans picked up the language. Then, in 2006, a French judge dropped a bombshell. He accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, of helping start the genocide because of his alleged complicity in the rocket attack of April 6, 1994, that killed Rwanda’s Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana—the spark for the massacre. Furious, Kagame shut down the French Embassy, kicked out the ambassador, ordered Radio France Internationale off the air in Rwanda, and closed the local French cultural centre.
Two years later, in 2008, Kagame announced that English—which became one of Rwanda’s official languages in 1994—would replace French as the official language of instruction in the country’s schools. In the wake of that momentous step, thousands of Rwandan schoolteachers were fired because they couldn’t teach the new language.

According to Nkusi, there has been very little public resistance to the government’s pro-English campaign. Kagame has a firm grip on power and Rwandans are not known as protesters. In fact, most citizens are reluctant to give their opinions even in private. But during an interview with a group of Rwandan teacher-trainers, some of them open up. “French flows in my veins,” says Ladislas Nkundabanyanga. “My father taught me French and my friends all speak French.” Nowadays, though, he knows kindergarten students who don’t understand the word “bonjour.” As a result, he’s convinced the French language in Rwanda is doomed. Nkundabanyanga’s colleague, Beatrice Namango, agrees. The new policy, she says, is “like telling me to keep quiet. It’s stopping me from talking.”

The teacher-trainers’ boss is a Canadian named Mark Thiessen, from Williams Lake, B.C. He likens the slow demise of French in Rwanda to the death of Aboriginal languages in Canada. “Slowly, French in Rwanda will disappear,” Thiessen says. “It might take one or two generations, but it will.”

Nkusi says he’s partial to French, too, but he sees the language change as an economic necessity. “French is the language of the heart,” he says, “but English is the language of work.” And Rwandans are working hard to show they’re competitive in an emerging African market. Every building in the country looks like it just got a fresh coat of paint, and the GDP is growing by an average of five per cent a year. “The country’s wealth is not in the soil, it’s in the minds of its citizens,” says Nkusi. “The leadership is smart enough to know that and develop an information technology sector like India’s.”

Nkusi also parrots a popular line of Kagame’s. “Rwanda isn’t becoming unilingual,” he says, “it’s simply making room for new languages.” Rwanda’s capital only has one private French school left, but a Chinese school just opened up, too. Besides, Nkusi adds, Rwanda is now a member of both the Commonwealth and la Francophonie, the organization of French states—like Canada. Michaëlle Jean might like to highlight that, too.

Climatologist takes National Post to court

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 12:03 PM - 16 Comments

A Canadian climate scientist is suing the National Post for defamation. Andrew Weaver, a professor at University of Victoria and former member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says articles published in the newspaper between 2009-2010 portray him as corrupt. “These articles put him in a false light,” Weaver’s lawyer explains. “Attributing to [Weaver] views that he says he never held and accusing him of conduct that he says never occurred.” Weaver’s statement of claim, filed to the B.C. Supreme Court, demands that the contentious articles be taken down from the Post‘s website. The National Post has not yet filed a statement of defense.

CBC News

Obama’s mentor?

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:54 AM - 9 Comments

Time & Life Pictures/ Getty

Though Saul Alinsky died when President Barack Obama was 11 years old, conservative media figures want us to know he’s the most important person in Obama’s life. Alinsky, author of the book Rules For Radicals, was a pioneer in community organizing, forming poor people into union-style lobbying groups; most community organizers, including Obama, have cited him as an influence. But now Glenn Beck tells his audience that “there are a couple of rules from Rules For Radicals that are being used against” people who oppose the Obama health care plan, while Newt Gingrich wrote that the passage of the health care bill displayed “the radicalism of Alinsky.” Rush Limbaugh even told his listeners that the recession wasn’t caused by banks: “what caused the collapse was Saul Alinsky.” Sanford D. Horwitt, author of the Alinsky biography Let Them Call Me Rebel, says they “almost think that he, in some spiritual way, is masterminding Obama from the grave.”

Though Alinsky was a self-proclaimed “professional radical,” using sit-ins and other attention-getting tactics on poverty and race issues, he wasn’t always one of the most-hated figures among conservatives. William F. Buckley even praised his “organizational genius.” Then came 2008, pitting Chicago community organizer Obama (Alinsky’s son compared Obama’s campaign to his father’s organizational style), against Hillary Clinton, who, Horwitt says, “wrote her senior thesis on Alinsky.” With two Alinsky fans in high places, Rules For Radicals started to be seen as what David Horowitz, a ’60s left-wing leader turned conservative pundit, called “the field manual for their struggle” to destroy America.

Now that Obama is in charge of the U.S., Alinskyism is seen as what the National Review’s Jim Geraghty has called “the Rosetta Stone for Obama’s decision-making.” When Obama criticizes an opponent, Beck claims that he’s following Alinsky’s rule No. 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” And when the Democrats announced their intention to use the so-called reconciliation process to pass health care, National Review writer and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote, “What does ‘reconciliation’ mean? Let’s ask Saul Alinsky,” quoting an old mention of the word by “Obama’s mentor.”

Continue…

Don't take your child to work: schools

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:46 AM - 6 Comments

Is taking your child to work a valuable learning experience or a waste of time? In the U.S., school administrators are speaking out against the annual Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, which they say disrupts student achievement. With results increasingly linked to state and federal funding, they say the event, which is held on the third Friday in April, should be moved to a day in the summer so as not to interfere with standardized testing and exams. But the Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Foundation is holding its ground, arguing that the event must be held during the school year so students can share their experiences with their classmates.

Associated Press

'A person's right to choose is what is at the heart of this bill'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:44 AM - 21 Comments

Francine Lalonde’s private member’s bill on assisted suicide—previously discussed here—received its final hour of debate Tuesday evening and was then defeated last night by a count of 230-57. Lalonde was basically asking, at this point, for her bill to be sent to committee for further study and amendment.

Steven Fletcher, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, who has written about his feelings on this issue and Lalonde’s bill, abstained. She did though draw the support of two cabinet ministers—Lawrence Cannon and Josee Verner—and several Liberal and NDP members.

Cigarettes are out, gays are in

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:35 AM - 3 Comments

The U.S. Navy recently announced some major changes to life aboard its submarines. As of the end of 2011, sailors, who often spend months below the surface, will no longer be able to smoke. Women, who already serve throughout the rest of the navy, will be eligible to join “bubblehead” crews. And so will those who are openly gay or lesbian. But the scale of the proposed changes has elicited a backlash from many of the 13,000 men currently serving in the Silent Service, and their retired confrères. Among their fears: that many submarine “traditions” like man hugs, rear-end patting, and having crew who cross the equator for the first time strip to their underwear, might be lost. “Serving on board a submarine is not a place to be if you are self-conscious or have any doubts about your sexuality,” one wrote on his blog. “Silliness, male-bonding, and what might be considered inappropriate or ‘politically incorrect’ behavior in a civilian environment are all useful techniques that allow a sailor to endure the difficult living conditions and time away from their families and mainstream life.”

Washington Post

What have voters wrought with Obama?

By Barbara Amiel - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 13 Comments

Canadian Press

Anything can be found on the Internet, so it should come as no surprise that there’s a brisk business in sites proclaiming President Barack Obama as the Antichrist and Satan incarnate. More surprising are the regular folk who see Obama as Mephistopheles. American businessmen, including some who raised money for him, arrive here in Florida for a weekend of golf and spend their time exchanging tales of the Obama Shoah.

Never mind the proposed new financial regulatory agencies, Obama’s kiss of life to American unions is sending shivers around. On March 27, Obama made recess appointments—beloved of virtually all presidents—and put Craig Becker on the National Labor Relations Board after bipartisan rejection in the Senate. Unsurprisingly, Becker was not seen as even-handed. At the time of his appointment, he was lawyer for both the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Service Employees International Union. Unions have been unsuccessful in getting rid of the secret ballot in organizing employees, but only just. Now those U.S. industries which have chugged along without unions, like some of the largest coal-mining companies, see different times ahead.

Pissing off businessmen has always been easy for Democratic presidents, but this seems to be an equal opportunity piss-off. There were cheers among America’s prison population when Obama was elected. Given that about one in every 31 American adults is ensnared in the justice system—whether probation, prison, jail or on parole—and three out of four prison admissions are either African-American or Hispanic, they thought the day of liberation was at hand. Barack Obama, a community organizer and one of their own, would speed sentence reform and reinstatement of parole (federal prisons don’t have parole, just a possible 15 per cent good time allowance). Instead, Obama’s okayed the building of more prisons, which pleases the powerful correctional officers lobby. Currently, the U.S. Department of Labor lists the job of correctional officer as a growth occupation stemming from “rising rates of incarceration.”

Continue…

Religious groups fight changes to Ontario sex ed curriculum

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:25 AM - 155 Comments

Ontario’s new sex education curriculum is drawing fire from Christian and Muslim groups, who are planning to pull their kids out of school on May 10 to protest the changes. The school boycott is an attempt to pressure Premier Dalton McGuinty into heeding their concerns about the new curriculum, which would have Grade 3 kids learning about homosexuality, and Grade 6 students learning about anal sex and vaginal lubrication. According to Murielle Boudreau, of the Greater Toronto Catholic Parent Network, such information will “traumatize these children—they’re going to be doing everything out in the schoolyard.” At the same time, the Tories are positioning themselves to use the new curriculum, which is the first revision of sex education since 1998, as an opportunity to trumpet family values.

UPDATE: Amidst mounting pressure from religious groups, Ontario has backed down on its plan to introduce new sex education curriculum in the fall. According to Premier Dalton McGuinty, “It’s become pretty obvious to us we should give this a serious rethink.”

The Globe and Mail

Toronto Star

Seven Days: A week in a life of Stephen Harper

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 2 Comments

Adrian Wyld/ CP

A week in the life of Stephen Harper
Within four heady days the Prime Minister had accepted embattled junior minister Helena Guergis’s resignation; welcomed Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger to 24 Sussex Dr.; caught the band’s Ottawa concert with son Ben; then jetted down to Washington for a nuclear summit with Obama. Such is politics—being, to quote Nickelback, a Leader of Men. By week’s end, will the PM be a political Rockstar, or will he have Something unsavoury—a foot, an apology?—in [his] Mouth?

Good news

A new chapter
The online book juggernaut Amazon was granted approval this week to open a distribution centre in Canada. Canadian booksellers decried the move, arguing that allowing the foreign-owned retailer threatens to undercut Canada’s cultural industry. But Amazon says it will invest $20 million in Canada, including $1.5 million on cultural events and awards, and promote more Canadian books internationally. More importantly, the move stands to benefit both Canadian publishers and Canadian consumers with better prices and more options. A little competition is nothing to fear.

Northern tiger
In the Bank of Canada’s latest quarterly business survey there was plenty of cause for optimism. Canadian executives say they plan to hire more workers, boost investment and raise prices to meet growing demand for their goods in the next year. Meanwhile, the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcies reports that bankruptcies fell in January for the fourth straight month, while the country’s trade surplus widened in February to its highest level since the beginning of the recession. This all comes on top of solid GDP growth. No doubt about it—Canada’s roaring recovery is here to stay.

Bottoms up
Workers at a Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen went back to work this week after a five-day strike over company plans to cut back their free beer rations from three bottles a day to one, which must be consumed at lunch in the company cafeteria. Workers agreed to sit down with management and come up with a temporary solution to the dispute. No matter how this brouhaha is resolved, the new drinking policy  may not be such a bad idea. A recent study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that having one or two drinks a day can reduce the risk of heart disease in young adults.

The family guy
What started as a golf tournament—all but consumed by the prodigal return of the adulterous Tiger Woods—ended with the triumph of devoted family man Phil Mickelson, who won his third green jacket at the Masters. While Woods had been away from golf dealing with a sex scandal fallout, Mickelson faced his share of distractions too. Both his wife and mother were diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, and he dedicated his victory to them and his family. Mickelson’s win provided a welcome narrative shift and a nice break from talk about Tiger, who was back to his old habits on the course, yelling and flipping clubs in anger, even pouting over his fourth place finish. Sometimes, nice guys do finish first.

The Bad news

Alberta grit?
Dave Taylor, the former Alberta Liberal leadership contender, has quit the party to sit as an independent, saying he’s “lost confidence” in his one-time rival David Swann’s “abilities as a leader” and calling the party “invisible” and “irrelevant.” If the Alberta Liberals ever had a chance to grow the party, now would be it: Danielle Smith’s Wildrose Alliance seems poised to cut the Progressive Conservative vote under Ed Stelmach’s moribund premiership, leaving an in for the Grits. Well, don’t count on it. Long encumbered by backbiting, this is yet another instance of bad Alberta Liberal party politics. That’s bad for democracy in a province that, with 40 years of Tory rule, has become a one-party state.

All news fit to bleep
Since the New York Times began broadcasting video of its morning news meeting across the Internet, some of its highest-ranking editors have been seen to utter inaccuracies. On just the feed’s second day, executive editor Bill Keller said that Britain had thrown “the head of Mossad,” Israel’s intelligence service, out of the country “in retribution for the Israelis having assassinated a Hamas militant in Dubai.” But the Brits hadn’t accused Israel of the hit, and the Times hadn’t confirmed whether the diplomat they’d ejected was the Israeli London spy chief. “This is why I went into print rather than TV,” Keller wrote to his paper’s ombudsman, explaining today’s accelerated news delivery: “The deadline is always.”

Simmering down
Protests against Thailand’s coalition government turned violent last weekend, killing 21 and threatening to send the country spiralling into crisis. In Kyrgyzstan, meanwhile, 83 people were killed during an anti-government uprising that saw the president flee the capital. The incidents leave dark stains on two countries with histories of political instability. But there are signs the worst may be over. In Thailand, the head of the army ruled out using further force to stop protesters. Kyrgyzstan’s president said he would resign if his safety and his family’s safety could be guaranteed. Cooler heads must prevail.

Fat food
This week, KFC introduced the Double Down sandwich, a savoury creation consisting of two deep-fried chicken fillets rather than a bun, and with bacon, cheese and sauce as filling. All told, it contains an alarming 1,380 mg of salt (more than half the recommended daily allowance). Then again, if you’re the type who’d eat this beast, you probably don’t care too much about your health anyway.

Notes of artichoke with a hint of GG

By Pamela Cuthbert - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

John Ralston Saul

Pssst, this just in: Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul are farmers. Yes, famous for their support of small-scale, artisan food producers, the couple have joined their ranks by bringing their own product to market. Sublime Olive Oil, a grassy, cold-pressed, single-estate oil that sparkles in the light, is produced on their property in Provence. And the regal pair has not farmed out the work, as the Prince of Wales Duchy brand of organic foods does, but instead taken a hands-on, slow process over a decade, to rehabilitate two neglected olive groves with the aid of friends, neighbours and family. “We wanted to produce an olive oil that is as natural as possible,” says Saul. “I’m a great believer that food is about agriculture.”

While the former governor general works the groves too, especially at harvest time, Sublime is primarily Saul’s project. The award-winning essayist and long-time environmentalist practises in the field what he preaches at the podium. “We don’t irrigate. I’m totally against it,” he says. They don’t spray, except for minimal use of a copper mixture, traditionally considered organic.

They add only one other thing: certified organic fertilizer. Saul reports that the fertilizer will be replaced this year with horse manure, which is more natural. “And local!” he adds with a laugh.
Mostly, the 325 trees have been brought back into production by pruning. “If you just prune you can deal with disease. It works, and I think the trees are happier,” he says. The olives are picked by hand—and quickly, so as to retain the full flavour of the fruit. The harvest is a communal activity, a ritual where pickers are given one litre of oil in exchange for their labours. “It takes you back to the idea that gathering fruit is a cultural event,” comments Saul. The pressing is done traditionally with a stone press.

Continue…

Drunk sports stars don’t influence young

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:06 AM - 0 Comments

The drunken antics of sports stars don’t influence drinking habits among the young, according to researchers at Manchester and Western Sydney University in Australia, who found most of the 1,028 students they polled thought sports stars drink less than they do. Drinking habits were most strongly related to overestimating how much friends drank, they said, warning of a link between alcohol marketing within sport, and hazardous drinking by young people. Questionnaires were filled out by 1,028 students at two Australian universities, and showed participants thought that professional sports players drank 12 per cent less than they did, on average.

BBC News

Eldon Ralph Perry 1953-2010

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 8 Comments

Eldon Ralph Perry was born on Aug. 28, 1953, to Samuel and Winnie Perry in Twillingate, Nfld., near Samson Island, the tiny fishing and logging community where they lived until the mid-’50s, when residents were relocated to Little Burnt Bay, on the mainland, to give them better access to services. The youngest of 17 children (seven were from his parents’ previous marriages), Eldon was a “cute little boy” whose quiet warmth and humour made him well-liked, says sister Joan. A tight-knit family that ate dinner together at one long table, the Perrys were shaken when, in 1963, cancer claimed Winnie’s life. With Samuel often away logging, Joan, just 16 at the time, took over raising Eldon and his brother Bruce.

The boys, who were two years apart, adapted well. They were huge hockey fans and dug out a makeshift rink, buried under mounds of snow, almost daily. Thanks to Bobby Hull, Eldon and Bruce became lifelong Chicago Blackhawks supporters. Since Montreal and Toronto were more popular in the Perry residence, this made for lively Saturday nights. In fact, when family and friends gathered to watch Hockey Night in Canada, says Bruce, the TV room was “like a sports bar.”

After high school, Eldon took a drafting course at a college in nearby Lewisporte. Faced with limited job prospects, he set his sights on Labrador City, where the Iron Ore Company (IOC) was hiring. For his 18th birthday—the minimum age to work in the mine—his dad bought him a plane ticket. “It was a big thing for a young fella,” says Joan. On Sept. 3, 1971, days after his arrival, Eldon started at IOC as a general labourer in the open-pit mine.

Continue…

Ontario vs. the pharmacists

By Sarah Scott - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 151 Comments

Andrew Tolson

On April 7, six months to the day after she took over as Ontario’s health minister, Deb Matthews kicked off what she must have known would be an epic battle over the price of generic drugs. She was taking on a powerful group—Ontario’s 3,306 drugstores and its pharmacists. The Ontario government is one of the world’s biggest buyers of prescription drugs­—it pays for drugs for seniors, low-income people and many others­—and it spends one-quarter of its money on generic drugs, which are supposed to be a lot cheaper than the brand-name ones. But instead, she says, Ontario is paying some of the highest prices for generic drugs in the world. “We are not getting the deal we deserve,” Matthews told a packed room of reporters.

With that, she announced Ontario was chopping the price it will pay for generic pills in half, to a maximum of 25 per cent of the brand-name price, one of several moves that will save the government $535 million per year. But that was only the start. The government will also regulate generic prices for the private sector—people who pay cash or are insured by their employers. Right now, they pay whatever the market will bear, but by 2014, they’ll pay the same price for generic drugs as Ontario will later this spring.

No other government in Canada has gone this far to cut generic drug costs and, if it is implemented as planned, the big financial losers will be Ontario’s pharmacies, and the drugstore chains. Shares of Shoppers Drug Mart Inc. fell with the news. An industry coalition warned that Matthews’ “reckless” health care reform will cost them the equivalent of three pharmacists from every store. It will hit independent pharmacists like Donnie Edwards, who co-owns a couple of pharmacies in the Niagara area. “We’re front-line health care providers doing the best for our patients,” he said. “Who’s hurt when there’s a gap? It’s the patient who gets hurt, the patient.”

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The reading list

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 10:43 AM - 1 Comment

• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (May 29)
There is no more anticipated book in sight than the final volume in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, especially now that the film version of volume one, The Girl With the Dragoon Tattoo, has opened in North America. Heroine Lisbeth Salander was to have been the Watson to investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist’s Holmes in the late Swedish writer Larsson’s thrillers. But, as strong secondary characters often do, Lisbeth—a tattooed, pierced, brilliant, angry, Aspergerian and utterly ruthless computer hacker—has taken over. As Hornet’s Nest opens, she’s under guard in a hospital intensive care ward, waiting to recover sufficiently to go on trial for a triple murder. And plotting her revenge, which, as Larsson’s fans know, will be very nasty indeed.

• The Four Fingers of Death (July 28)
Rick Moody, whose 1994 novel The Ice Storm became an Ang Lee film, has been a critic’s favourite for years for his deadly serious brand of comedy. His new novel features a hard-luck writer in 2025, whose novelization of a remake of the 1963 horror cult classic, The Crawling Hand, spins a satirical tale of a returning Mars expedition. Only a single arm, missing its middle finger, comes back to crawl through an American dystopia.

• Hitch 22 (June 6)
As only to be expected, Christopher Hitchens’ memoir is frank (much ado about sleeping with future Margaret Thatcher cabinet ministers—male cabinet ministers—while at Oxford), caustic (fair warning given on the dedication page to those “who are such appalling public shits that they have forfeited their right to bitch”), and highly entertaining.

• Ilustrado (May 8)
Filipino Montrealer Miguel Syjuco won the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize with his inventive family saga of his native country. A young student attempts to unravel the story behind a once-great writer’s death—and the disappearance of an unfinished manuscript—through poetry, novels, interviews and memoirs, and ends up tracing 150 years of Philippines history.

• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (June 29)
David Mitchell is a virtuoso of the novel, a writer whose technical brilliance has seen him twice short-listed for the Booker prize. His first novel in four years is set in 1799, in Dejima, the man-made island in Nagasaki harbour that is the both the sole Japanese window on the outside world and the Dutch East India Company’s farthest outpost. As the world back home is turned upside down by the French Revolution, clerk Jacob de Zoet has a fateful encounter with midwife Orito Aibagawa.

• Absence of Mind (May 25)
Marilynne Robinson is far from being among the more prolific U.S. writers—24 years elapsed between her first and second novels—but she is one of the best thinkers in American letters. Her new (nonfiction) work is a slashing attack on scientific fundamentalism, not on behalf of religion but of human consciousness and our traditional concept of mind.

• Innocent (May 4)
Over 20 years ago Scott Turow virtually invented the legal thriller with Presumed Innocent, which went on to sell more than six million copies; now that novel’s two protagonists return in another epic courtroom battle.

• Johannes Cabal the Detective (July 13)
In the first volume of this genre-bending series, the dreadful, but somehow likeable, Cabal—a necromancer who has been aptly described as having “the moral conscience of anthrax”—managed to recover his soul from the Devil. Now Jonathan Howard’s anti-hero is playing Holmesian detective among mass destruction and the resurrected dead.

• Tell All (May 4)
An assault on celebrity via a re-writing of All About Eve (plus a fictionalized version of Lillian Hellman’s life) seems almost too obvious for Chuck Palahniuk. But subtlety is not why readers love the author of Fight Club, and his rude send-up of name-dropping and the culture of celebrity worship sounds like vintage Palahniuk.

• Empires of Food (June 15)
It not just armies that march on their stomachs, according to this intriguing study of 12,000 years of farming humanity, but entire civilizations. According to authors Evan Fraser (a geography professor at the University of Guelph) and Boston writer Andrew Rimas, all cultures eventually overwork their productive land and the centres of power shift. We are now experiencing the first lurches of another shift.

These ain’t yer grandad’s bagpipes

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 1 Comment

TF Eliz/ Chad Sengstock

When it came time for John Walsh—a two-time world bagpipe champion—to pick out his first competition tune, he simply leaned on tradition. Almost half a century ago, the then-13-year-old from Yorkshire settled for a “dyed in the wool” military number: the kind of crusty, no-nonsense ballad sure to tickle the judges’ fancy. Then, clad in regulation kilt, hose and ghillie brogues, he did his best on competition day to play it with nary a bad note. This spring, the 2010 bagpipe competition circuit will kick off; but by the (ear-splitting) sounds of it, things will be different this year.

The House of Edgar Shotts & Dykehead Pipe Band, a 15-time world champion, has been writing its own songs for competition. Finlay Macdonald, instructor at Scotland’s stately National Piping Centre, has drawn crowds with his jazz-funk rendition of Bulgarian Red. “It’s not the old standards that I grew up with,” affirms Walsh, who handcrafts bagpipes in Antigonish, N.S, where he now lives. “Bagpipes are finding their way into all sorts of places they’ve never been before.”

Yes, bagpipes are back, albeit somewhat changed. The revival started in Scotland, where traditional bands began spicing things up—abandoning what one British writer recently described as a culture whose “only index of musical value is absolute fidelity to a pre-existing canon of traditional tunes, memorialized and ossified over the centuries.” Bagpipes have since appeared on some unlikely and far-flung stages. In the past few years, bands like the White Stripes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have used them in performance. Aspiring pipers have wooed audiences on YouTube with a cutting-edge canon of carols, including AC/DC’s Thunderstruck. And once-little-known pipers have drawn international acclaim—like Pittsburgh’s Nick Hudson who, in 2009, was touted as the U.S.’s “only graduating bagpipe major” when he graduated from Carnegie Mellon.

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