Quebec to shut down Jewish school

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 2:14 PM - 14 Comments

A private Jewish school in Montreal could be on the verge of losing its long-simmering battle with Quebec authorities who say teachings at the Académie Yeshiva Toras Moshe don’t meet with provincial standards. The ministry of education had been pressing the school to offer a curiculum less focused on religion but, with talks at an impasse, it has now obtained an injunction to shut down Yeshiva Toras Moshe. The case is set to go to court in October and school official say they plan to fight the order.

CBC News

Sarah Palin builds a giant fence

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 2:11 PM - 16 Comments

Best-selling author Joe McGinnis is working on a new book about Republican sweetheart Sarah Palin—so he rented the house next to hers in Wasilla, Alaska. Palin is none too thrilled. McGinnis has already written a pretty nasty magazine piece about the failed vice-presidential candidate, and when she noticed him on his back porch the other day, she vented her anger on Facebook. “Knowing of his many other scathing pieces of ‘journalism’… we’re sure to have a doozey to look forward to with this treasure he’s penning,” she wrote. “Wonder what kind of material he’ll gather while overlooking Piper’s bedroom, my little garden, and the family’s swimming hole?” A 14-foot-high fence now separates the two properties.

Toronto Star

And now, the rest of the story

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 2:09 PM - 53 Comments

In this week’s print edition there is a short profile under this byline of Senator Nancy Ruth, the last paragraph of which contains a surprise twist.

Four weeks ago, as is well-documented, Ms. Ruth advised a gathering of aid groups to “shut the f— up” about Canada’s funding of access to safe abortion overseas (in this week’s Maclean’s, you’ll see she admits saying so was a mistake, even if she stands by the concern she was intending to convey). Those comments drew an official rebuke from the Liberal side. But, in a subsequent letter to Liberal critic Anita Neville, the panel that participated in that day’s discussion actually defended Ms. Ruth, as follows. Continue…

This Week's Travel News: News you need to know

By Takeoffeh.com, Bruce Parkinson - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 2:07 PM - 1 Comment

Class Action Lawsuit Aims To Tackle ‘Hidden’ Airline Fees
A Vancouver lawyer is in the process of filing more than a dozen class action suits against airlines over what he sees as their practice of charging hidden extra fees and describing them as “taxes.” Jim Poyner has already filed suit in B.C. Supreme Court against British Airways and is in the process of initiating litigation against Air Canada and 11 other airlines. The practice of separating taxes, security fees and fuel surcharges outside the base price is a pet peeve of Canadian travellers, because it makes it more difficult to find the final price. For example, TakeOffeh.com recently noticed an Air Transat return flight from Toronto to London Gatwick advertised at $249 in large print, while much smaller print below read: “Add taxes $405.” When ‘taxes’ are 160% of the base, people tend to get suspicious. Poyner told the North Shore News that most of the “taxes” aren’t being charged by governments at all — but fuel surcharges or other fees added by the airlines. According to Poyner’s suit, one woman who flew from Vancouver to Turkey paid British Airways almost $970 for her ticket fare, plus $450 in taxes. But $326 of that tax were additional airline charges, said Poyner. If the lawsuit gets certified as a class action suit and he is successful, Poyner says airlines could be forced to pay back their customers a significant chunk of money. Poyner said his law firm was first tipped off to the practice by a travel agent who didn’t feel the practice was fair.

You Have The Right To Be Denied Entry
While Europeans can travel from country to country without so much as flashing a passport, ‘the world’s longest undefended border’ between Canada and the U.S. is a much less friendly place. Recent incidents at U.S. border crossings are a reminder to Canadians to take the process seriously… because border officials sure do. As the Windsor Star reports, five women from that Southern Ontario city were fingerprinted, photographed and denied entry into the U.S. while en route to a yoga course. U.S. border regulations require foreign visitors to obtain a student visa for vocational training, which is how the yoga course is classified. One of the women first told border officials that she was just going shopping before admitting she was also visiting for a course. As a result, she has been barred from entering the U.S. for five years. Chief Ron Smith of U.S. Customs and Border Protection told the Star that while some Canadians may not know the rules, they are clear and not new. However, stricter enforcement appears to be the result of heightened anxiety about terrorist attacks. It goes both ways too – U.S. media have featured several reports of Canadian border officials turning back visitors for minor offences committed decades ago. Even those heading south to volunteer labour for organizations like Habitat for Humanity are warned to have an invitation letter with them or risk being declared persona non grata. And even if you’re having a very bad day, it’s a very bad idea to respond brusquely or rudely to border officials. If you want to hear what happens when you bring a little ‘tude to your U.S. border crossing, check out this audio recording which purports to be a confrontation between a Canadian couple heading for outlet shopping in Niagara Falls, New York and a series of U.S. border officials. A helpful site covering requirements for Canadians travelling to the United States is www.voyage.gc.ca.

Recycled Hotel Soap Is Saving Lives
Where’s does all that hotel soap go? (Other than in your toiletry bag!) At TakeOffeh we assumed those barely-used little bars of soap and shampoo bottles ended up in landfill – and sadly, most of them do. However, we were pleased to find out from National Geographic Traveler that a non-profit group is working to change that. Florida-based Clean the World collects, sterilizes and recycles old hotel soaps, shampoos and conditioners into clean products, then distributes them to impoverished countries and U.S. homeless shelters. The goal is to help developing countries combat diarrheal diseases that cause nearly 1.8 million childhood deaths per year. Regular hand-washing can help avoid these unnecessary deaths. Clean the World is the creation of Shawn Seipler and Paul Till, who, like many hotel guests, asked themselves what happened to all that abandoned soap, found out, and then did something about it. The list of donors runs the gamut from a five-star Ritz-Carlton to a mid-market Quality Inn, a boutique hotel in Times Square to a business-oriented Embassy Suites hotel. The effort seems to be gaining momentum, with Walt Disney World Resort hotels pledging their support in February. Let’s hope this is one idea that ‘goes viral’ – there’s absolutely no reason why barely-used product should be bubbling up in landfill sites.

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

Photo Credits: 7nuit, hockeymom4, velvelvel

Tears for Jamaica

By Takeoffeh.com, Bruce Parkinson - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 1:44 PM - 5 Comments

No tourists have been harmed in the violent clashes between Jamaican security forces and gunmen protecting an alleged drug lord sought for extradition to the U.S. But that doesn’t mean Jamaican tourism hasn’t taken a body blow.

The events are taking place almost exclusively in slum areas in and around the island’s capital of Kingston, far from north coast tourist resorts. Many of these areas are referred to as political ‘garrisons’ – places where 90% or more of the electorate votes for a single political party – a process reinforced since the early 70s through coercion, intimidation and bribery. Many of the country’s leading political figures have played roles in arming the ghettos and fomenting violence among poor citizens, through sins of both commission and omission. Violent death is at home in these places, which account for the majority of the astounding 1,700 murders recorded on the island in 2009.

As with many tourist destinations, the reality of life in the slums is in stark contrast to Jamaica’s image of sun, fun, rum and reggae. Jamaica was a pioneer of the all-inclusive vacation, and they do it extremely well: while other Caribbean islands have suffered double-digit declines in tourist arrivals during the recession, Jamaica has more than held its own, and Canadian visitors have risen substantially in recent years, with nearly 300,000 making the trip in 2009.

But tourists are easily scared off, and images of running gun battles are the stuff of nightmares for tourism promoters – just ask Mexico or Thailand. And even those countries aren’t as dependent on tourism as Jamaica, where spending by visitors accounts for a lofty 25% of GDP.

In the wake of this week’s violence, the island is now burdened with travel advisories issued by its three largest source markets: Canada, the U.S. and the UK. Canada is warning visitors to “exercise a high degree of caution,” while the U.S. State Department raises the spectre of spreading violence, saying “the possibility exists that unrest could spread beyond the general Kingston area.” Not exactly the stuff of tourist brochures.

Jamaica is not just another island for me. I fell in love on my first visit in December 1988, weeks after Hurricane Gilbert devastated parts of the country — seduced by the rich smells, the verdant scenery, the pulsing beat of reggae and the warmth of the people. Since that first visit I’ve been back more than a dozen times, sometimes on press trips, others on my own dime.

Last year I visited Jamaica twice and spent a wonderful day at a Montego Bay school with my wife and two young sons through the Jamaica Tourist Board’s Meet the People program. I would highly recommend engaging with that program for anyone who wants to see a slice of Jamaican life outside the gated resort compounds.

Would I still visit Jamaica under current circumstances? Absolutely, I’d leave tomorrow without fear. It is safe for tourists – not so safe for citizens. But I’ve long worried that a day of reckoning would come for the island’s tourism. The extent of the violence in the country was bound to eventually spill over into public consciousness.

Clearly Jamaica has greater concerns than tourism receipts. They need to deal with the horrendous problems created in large part by power-hungry politicians whose actions, as the Jamaica Observer editorialized, have resulted in “a society in which it is considered good to be bad and bad to be good.” That needs to change if One Love is ever to be more than a pipe dream.

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

Photo Credits:peeterv, aassemany

Did the flu originate in the U.S.?

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 12:50 PM - 0 Comments

Researchers have long assumed that most flu strains originated in China and Southeast Asia, but according to a team of U.S. researchers, not all strains of flu that circulate through North America die off at the end of influenza season, suggesting the U.S. could incubate some strains. They appear to then migrate to warmer climates, Reuters reports, moving on to South America or beyond, which may have happened with the H1N1 flu pandemic. “We found that although China and Southeast Asia play the largest role in the influenza A migration network, temperate regions—particularly the USA—also make important contributions,” said the University of Michigan’s Trevor Bedford, whose study is published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens. This could help change strategies to fight flu: for instance, using antiviral drugs too aggressively could promote drug resistance if strains don’t die out in the U.S.

Reuters

Heroin clinics help addicts stay off street drugs: study

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 12:43 PM - 5 Comments

So-called “heroin clinics,” where the drug is prescribed to addicts who can’t wean themselves from the drug, can actually help them stay off street drugs, according to British researchers. As of now, doctors have had little success treating the 10 per cent of heroin users who don’t respond to methadone, which is an anti-addiction medication. Heroin addiction can then drive them to crime and disease, affecting society as a whole. “They are like oil tankers heading for disaster,” said study author Dr. John Strang of King’s College London. “The question we were asking was, ‘Can we change the trajectory of these tankers?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes we can.’” The team invited 127 addicts into supervised injecting clinics, randomly choosing who would get heroin, injected methadone or swallowed methadone. After six months, 101 addicts stuck with the treatment; more than two-thirds of those on heroin had no street heroin in their urine at least half the time they were tested. Before the study, they’d been using street drugs almost every day. These people physically improved and were able to slowly reintegrate into society, they said.

Reuters

'If the heart of our democracy is Parliament, then the heart of Parliament is question period'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 12:42 PM - 11 Comments

Michael Chong’s motion recommending various reforms to Question Period and calling for a formal pursuit of those reforms received its first hour of debate last night.

The motion provides for some specific and viable suggestions for reform. The motion is simple and reasonable. If we cannot collectively, as members of the House, come together to achieve something as simple and reasonable and demanded by Canadians as the reform of question period, then what hope do we have of restoring Canadians’ trust in their institutions and regaining their respect? What hope do we have of recapturing the legitimacy and authority of this place as central to the Canadian debate? What hope do we have to meet the challenges of our era and continue the nation-building efforts begun by our forebears?

More than four out of ten Canadians refused to vote in the last election. In doing so, they decreased the legitimacy of this institution and the authority of Parliament. As I mentioned before, Canadians may not know exactly what processes, procedures or rules need to be fixed, but they know something is wrong and they know something needs to change.

Various members spoke in response, raising various suggestions and quibbles, but it seems both the Liberals and NDP are prepared to support the motion.

Brushing teeth helps fight heart disease

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

According to a Scottish study of more than 11,000 adults, people who don’t brush their teeth twice a day are at higher risk for heart disease, backing up previous research linking gum disease and heart problems. More work is needed to confirm whether poor oral health causes heart disease, or is a marker of risk, the BBC reports, although it’s known that body inflammation, including mouth and gums, plays a role in the build-up of clogged arteries that leads to a heart attack. This is the first study to look at whether the frequency of brushing teeth plays a role in developing heart disease. In the study, participants were asked about smoking, physical activity and health routines, as well as how often they visited the dentist and how often they brushed their teeth. Family medical histories were also taken. Taking other factors into account, researchers found that those with the worst oral hygiene had a 70 per cent increased chance of developing the condition than those who brushed twice a day.

BBC News

The Movies That Wrecked a Show's Reputation

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 11:53 AM - 4 Comments

The near-universal critical hatred of Sex and the City 2: The Facts of Life Goes to the Middle East has produced some fun, vitriolic reviews. There are many reasons the movie brought it on itself, but the biggest reason is its absurd length: 150 minutes. No comedy should be 150 minutes unless it’s called The Great Race, and even that had cool intermission music. The over-length of movies has become a blight on the industry; it’s like in the ’60s when movies were under pressure to be 150+ minutes so they could be marketed as expensive road-show attractions. Except now there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for the bloated lengths; it’s just that studios won’t say no to directors who fall in love with every moment of their footage. There’s no doubt that SATC would make people less angry if it were 90-100 minutes, which is all it can sustain, if that. And since TV episodes are too short, while movies are too long, it’s like both media are in a race to see which is worse, over-length or under-length. Probably the former. TV storytelling is more disciplined and tight these days because, unlike movies, the creators know they have to cut a lot of stuff.

The interesting thing about the SATC movies is that they’ve dragged down the reputation of the series, to the point that we can almost forget the show was a critically-acclaimed, Emmy-winning show that was frequently cited as an example of why HBO was better than Common-People TV (along with The Sopranos, whose reputation has also dipped, but much less deservedly) Alan Sepinwall says that the SATC movies have caused him to literally re-evaluate his opinion of the TV series: He liked the show, but the movies — by presenting slow, overlong, bad versions of the same things the show did — have made it hard to like the characters. Our own Brian Johnson made a similar point, though he doesn’t rule out the possibility that he can still enjoy the show (as long as we pretend the movies don’t exist).

It may not actually be the movies alone that have caused the decline in SATC’s critical fortunes; as the Sopranos example demonstrates, sometimes a show just experiences a backlash after it goes off the air. And while Sopranos at least can point with pride to being a major influence on many (if not most) great dramas of the past ten years, most SATC imitators have been awful. The most successful SATC clone is Entourage, and that show couldn’t even wait until it was off the air to make everybody hate it. So it could be that SATC’s characters would have become less popular and beloved even if it hadn’t been for the films.

Still, the films didn’t help. Even a good movie spin-off doesn’t do a lot to help a show’s cultural currency, and may actually hurt it: the Simpsons movie was a hit, but it re-enforced the idea that the show was more of an institution re-visiting its past glories — since the movie was just a larger-budget version of everything we’d seen before. One of the few movies that actually helped the show’s reputation was South Park, and that’s because the movie changed people’s perceptions of the franchise, showing that it was smarter and more satirical than we had realized. SATC, on the other hand, takes the stuff the show did before, grossly inflates it both in terms of length and budget, and makes a lot of people wonder why they liked the show in the first place.

Obviously, it’s still possible to enjoy the original show, and I think its reputation might well go up again once the movies have stopped. But now that these four women are bad movie characters, it’s harder to think of them as good TV characters

BP update: “Top kill” started, stopped, restarted

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 11:10 AM - 10 Comments

Yesterday, BP gave itself a big pat on the back. Its “top kill” technique—which involved pumping drilling liquids into the leaking Gulf of Mexico well to lower the pressure of gushing oil—seemed to be working. Things are “moving the way we want it to,” Robert Dudlley, BP’s managing director announced Thursday morning on NBC. “The top kill procedure… is moving along as everyone had hoped,” Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen told CNN—also on Thursday morning. But it turns out that on Wednesday night, around 11 p.m, BP halted the “top kill” operation because it had stopped working. But the company only acknowledged this publicly late Thursday afternoon, after touting its success all day. No explanation has been provided.
BP is now saying that it restarted the “top kill” effort on Thursday night. In the meantime, government experts have revised earlier estimates of how much oil is leaking; they now say this current spill is the worst in U.S history.

New York Times

From the editors: Maclean’s redesign

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 10:15 AM - 15 Comments

Times change, and we change with them. That ancient Latin proverb is still relevant today and we are extremely proud of the newly redesigned Maclean’s on the newsstands now.

The first thing you will have noticed is the cover. We’ve pared down our use of headlines on the front to create a more authoritative and elegant face to the magazine. The result is a single and immediately arresting image. Our cover promises to grab your attention like never before.

Continue…

Let he who is without fallibility

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 9:27 AM - 54 Comments

Some enterprising filmographer has spliced together a video of Jason Kenney both lamenting that anyone would call a member of a minister’s staff to testify at a Parliamentary committee and, years earlier, listing all the aides and staff members he hopes to hear from at an upcoming Parliamentary committee.

For the record, the minister was asked about the video after QP yesterday and said he had not seen it yet. After having it described to him, he acknowledged that he “was probably wrong.” He then admitted he was “infallible,” before correcting himself to say he was in fact  ”fallible”—a mistake, he said, proved his fallibility.

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 1 Comment

Case closed
Prosecutors withdrew criminal charges Tuesday against former Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant in the very public death in downtown Toronto last Aug. 31 of bicycle courier Darcy Allan Sheppard. There was no prospect of conviction on the charges, which included criminal negligence causing death, said independent prosecutor Richard Peck, who was brought in from Vancouver because of the sensitivity of the case. Experts determined Sheppard, who was intoxicated, was trying to attack Bryant, when he tried to grab the steering wheel of Bryant’s convertible. Bryant sped off and Sheppard, clinging to the car, was slammed into a mailbox and a tree, before falling under the car. Bryant now works for a Toronto law firm.

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Hey look: Because it had been a few weeks since one of these Harper's-brain pieces

By Paul Wells - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 7 Comments

From the print edition (which looks marvelous; really, darling, have you had work done?), this week’s column, in which assorted Conservatives predict Conservative triumph. So if you don’t like it, you’ll have an easy time picking it apart! You’re welcome.

What Harper’s thinking

By Paul Wells - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 6:00 AM - 258 Comments

Chris Wattie / Reuters

For two guys who never got along, Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper seem to be learning to enjoy each other’s company. They posed for photos at Whistler during the Olympics, dressed for warmth and grinning from ear to ear. They were back together this week when Prime Minister Harper spoke at the unveiling of Chrétien’s official portrait in Parliament’s Centre Block.

At such moments the impression they give is not one of opposites attracting. Harper may be working hard to undo as much of Chrétien’s legacy as he can, but it is obvious that each man recognizes elements of himself when he looks at the other. At the unveiling of Chrétien’s portrait, Harper joked that “the hanging of Jean Chrétien is long overdue,” but he also called Chrétien “a great parliamentarian” who “knew instinctively what it took to win.”

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What if it wasn’t really suicide?

By Cathy Gulli - Friday, May 28, 2010 at 6:00 AM - 20 Comments

On Dec. 9, 2001, the day Dr. John Connelly and his wife, Gloria, learned their son had died, they were immediately suspicious about what had happened. Police told the Ottawa couple the 22-year-old—a popular, athletic and high-achieving pharmacy student at the University of Toronto with everything to live for—had jumped to his death. Over the phone, an officer read out what he said was a suicide note: “Best of luck in the future,” was scrawled in ink at the top of a piece of white paper. The initials of their son, named after his father, were scribbled underneath. After that, all it said was, “To my family my love will always be with you!”

Connelly couldn’t believe it. “Best of luck?” he recalls saying to the officer. “That’s just a greeting. That’s a rough copy of something John’s writing.” His son often drafted messages on scraps of paper before transcribing them to cards for special occasions; the Connellys gathered examples for investigators. Another thing bothered the family about the note: its formality. “We all said that John would never write that,” explains Connelly, a dental surgeon. “He would never address us that way. He had a few nicknames for me.” The Connellys hired two document examiners to compare the note to messages indisputably authored by their son. Both of them questioned whether the word ‘to’ matched John’s handwriting. “So the question is,” says Connelly, “whose is the ‘to’?”

Continue…

Opening Weekend: ‘Micmacs’ and ‘Sex and the City 2′

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 8:25 PM - 0 Comments

(from left) Dany Boon, Marie-Julie Baup and Omar Sy in 'Micmacs'

Fresh from the art-house bubble of  Cannes, it was a rude awakening to get back to the Hollywood grind with the mindless excess of Sex and the City 2, which opened Wednesday. (Sorry, sisters, but this is not a gender bias against chick-flick porn; it’s a just a bad movie. To read more, go to my online review posted earlier.) For me, this epic adventure of Girls Gone Wild in Abu Dhabi was quite enough ersatz Arabian nights for one week. So I’m afraid you’re on your own if you want to take a chance with Jake Gyllenhaal in the weekend’s other flying-carpet blockbuster, The Prince of Persia. Maybe I was just pining for another dose of subtitled French dialogue, but I did take the time to watch Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, and although I’m not a huge fan of the director—who is best known for Amélie—I found it delightful.

The serendipitous chain of events that led Jeunet to make this French farce is as whimsical as one of his scripts. Jeunet had been asked to shoot the fifth Harry Potter movie but says he turned it down because its prefab world of witches and warlocks struck him as just too humdrum. He was also asked to direct the screen version of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, and that did appeal to him. But after he’d immersed himself in pre-production and location scouting, Jeunet decided it was impossible to make the movie under the restrictions of 20th Century Fox’s US$60 million budget cap. So, turning his back on two Hollywood blockbusters, off he went to make another of his intricate and idiosyncratic French comedies. And voilà, we have Micmacs—a picaresque caper movie about a ragtag cirque of junk dealers who plot some very complicated vengeance against a couple of nefarious arms merchants. Continue…

The Commons: What price freedom?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 6:08 PM - 107 Comments

The Scene. “What’s this about?” Michael Ignatieff begged, verging on the profound.

The subject, for a second day, was the apparent cost of securing this summer’s meetings of world leaders in cottage country Ontario and downtown Toronto respectively. The sum is now said to be a few nickels short of a billion dollars. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is apparently thinking about checking the government’s math, and the Liberals and NDP have asked the auditor general to investigate.

In the meantime, and in the absence of such accountings, there are only laments—”It borders on indecency,” the NDP’s Olivia Chow cried this afternoon—and accusatory questions, most wondering if somehow government mismanagement might perchance explain the tab. Continue…

Mission [temporarily] accomplished

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 5:54 PM - 1 Comment

Engineers say they have temporarily stopped oil and natural gas from flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. On Wednesday afternoon, oil industry and government experts pumped drilling fluid into the leaking BP well. The “top kill” process is not yet complete, but when it is, the pressure in the well will be reduced to zero—at which point engineers can begin pumping cement and debris into the hole. The cement will, they hope, seal off the well. “We’ll get this thing under control,” vowed U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, on Thursday morning.

LA Times

Rumours of Conan

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 5:24 PM - 3 Comments

Ever since the Gordon Lightfoot Incident, I know better than to link uncritically to articles without official sources. So instead, I’ll link to this one while emphasizing that it’s not official at this point: According to that article, CTV is expected to announce that it will air Conan O’Brien’s TBS talk show in Canada.

Myles McNutt indicated that the hour-long show will probably get the time slot that CTV currently uses for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. If so, that will make me a bit sad, because it’s often very convenient to wait until midnight to watch Jon Stewart (I’m surely not going to wait up until 2 a.m. to see it again, and waiting until the next day when it goes online is just too normal).

But since we don’t get TBS here, instead getting “Peachtree TV,” it’s good to know that we’ll be getting O’Brien’s show in some form.

BC-03-M-02 | 2001-2010

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 5 Comments

The male lynx known to researchers as BC-03-M-02 was born in his mother’s den somewhere in British Columbia or western Alberta in the year 2001. It’s not known whether he had brothers or sisters, but litters can be anywhere from one to five kittens, says Gabriela Yates, a lynx researcher at the University of Alberta. BC-03-M-02 likely spent his early days romping with his siblings, climbing trees, and burying his scat to hide its scent from predatory pine martens and weasels (older lynx, who are less vulnerable, aren’t so considerate). While his father wasn’t around—typical for lynx—his mother taught him to hunt grouse, voles, squirrel, and especially the snowshoe hares that are their preferred prey, taking him on hunting trips with her.

Lynx are solitary animals, and fiercely territorial: each has its own home range. When BC-03-M-02 was about eight months old, it was time to find a new home. He might have left with his siblings, but eventually broke off alone, making his way to the outskirts of Kamloops, B.C., as his fur changed from a spotty kitten’s coat to the more subdued, mottled pattern of an adult.

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The Doobie Brothers are a jazz act?

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 4:40 PM - 8 Comments

By Robert Etchevery

Several questions come to mind during a recent listen to Nights In White Satin, 1967’s ode to alabaster bedware by English band the Moody Blues. How many Britons were conceived during the quivering seven minutes of the song? Who, exactly, invented the classic rock flute solo, and why haven’t they been punished? And how in the name of Sonny Rollins can this schmaltz possibly be considered jazz?

Of course, no sane person would dare equate the Moody Blues with the likes of Rollins, Miles Davis or Wynton Marsalis. Yet when Festival International de Jazz de Montréal organizers announced this year’s headline acts, the Moody Blues were front and centre. So were the Steve Miller Band, the Doobie Brothers and Boz Scaggs, along with a host of distinctly un-jazzy boomer favourites like Cyndi Lauper and Lionel Ritchie—“the king of slow dance classics,” according to the festival press release.

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Is Galilee running out of fish?

By Jen Cutts - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 3:40 PM - 0 Comments

AP Photo / Khalil Hamra

Fishermen on the Sea of Galilee in Israel have been hauling in nets brimming with fish since Biblical times—the disciple Peter filled his nets to the point of breaking after Jesus showed him where to cast. But now, the Israeli government says overfishing has put an end to the bounty, and a two-year ban on fishing is the only answer (short of another miracle, one assumes).

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