It’s Vancouver’s answer to ‘The Wire’

By Nancy Macdonald - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 10:46 AM - 0 Comments

CP Images/ Illustration by Lauren Cattermole

Three times a week, the country’s only police judo club meets at a no-frills police gym above the Vancouver Police Department’s Main Street branch at the heart of the city’s troubled Downtown Eastside. At one recent gathering, police sergeant and judo black belt Toby Hinton muscled his much larger opponent onto his back. The 22-year police veteran and head of the Downtown Eastside Beat Enforcement Team 5 (BET)—all bulging vein and muscle—pinned the helpless, writhing man to the mat. For club members, foot sweeps and throws have become instinctive. Good training in the sport of mental smarts and physical skill can circumvent the need to pull out a baton or a gun. (“If the Mounties had this, [Robert] Dziekanski would never have happened,” head judo coach Brian Shipper says of the infamous taser-related death of the Polish immigrant.)

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Does your spouse suffer from ADHD?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 10:42 AM - 0 Comments

Attention problems can cause a marriage to suffer, mental health experts told the New York Times, as common symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—distraction, disorganization, and forgetfulness—can look like laziness or selfishness, and a lack of concern for the partner. At least 4 per cent of adults have ADHD, often learning coping skills to stay focused at work but struggling at home. These adults are twice as likely to be divorced, some research suggests. In one study, high levels of distress were reported in 60 per cent of marriages where one spouse had the disorder.

New York Times

Vaginal gel cuts HIV infections in half

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 10:25 AM - 0 Comments

A vaginal gel containing the AIDS drug tenofovir reduced infection rates by 50 per cent after one year of use, in a study of 889 women, and by 39 per cent after two and a half years, researchers say. The results, which have yet to be confirmed, would mark the first time a microbicidal gel has been demonstrated as effective, the BBC reports. In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 60 per cent of those infected with the HIV virus are women, which makes such a method seem especially promising. Using a condom is not always an option for women around the world who have difficulty forcing men to take such precautions, making women vulnerable. What’s more, women are biologically at higher risk of infection than men. A gel would give women the way to protect themselves, giving them some control over their own sexual health. In this case, the gel was safe when used once in the 12 hours before sex, and once in 12 hours after, by women aged 18 to 40.

BBC News

Former MI5 chief blasts Iraq invasion

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 10:21 AM - 0 Comments

Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of the MI5 between 2002 and 2007, gave a damning testimony in the UK Chilcot Inquiry (also known as the Iraq Inquiry, an ongoing public inquiry into the UK’s role in the 2003 Iraq invasion). The former spy chief said that the attack increased the terrorist threat to Britain by radicalizing a generation of Muslims. Manningham-Buller also said the focus on Iraq detracted from efforts in Afghanistan to quell al-Queda and that resources became stretched too thin. “Arguably we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad, so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before,” she said.

NPR

Guardian

Early breast cancer is commonly misdiagnosed

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 10:06 AM - 0 Comments

Monica Long, a U.S. registered nurse, was diagnosed with the earliest stage of breast cancer from a biopsy in 2007, receiving extensive surgery that left Long’s right breast missing a chunk the size of a golf ball. But a year later, she was told the pathologist made a mistake and she’d never had cancer, the New York Times reports. Diagnosing early breast cancer can be surprisingly difficult, the newspaper found, due to error and disagreement over whether cells are malignant or benign. Improvements in imaging technology means smaller potential breast lesions are evident, some the size of a few grains of salt. The U.S. government is funding a nationwide study of variations in breast pathology due to concerns that 17 per cent of cases of ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, done by a commonly used needle biopsy, might be misdiagnosed. There are no requirements now that say pathologists doing the work need specialized expertise.

New York Times

Karzai calls for Afghan security to take full control by 2014

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 10:01 AM - 0 Comments

In a landmark conference held in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that by 2014, security operations will be under Afghan control. “Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) should lead and conduct military operations in all provinces by the end of 2014,” Reuters quoted the communique as saying. At the beginning of the conference, Karzai said that a board will review the 34 provinces to see which ones were ready for Afghan forces to take control from 2011 onwards. To make up for the loss of 150,000 NATO-led troops from Afghanistan, Karzai plans to build up the national army to 170,000 soldiers, and the police by 134,000 officers by October 2011. Critics say that Afghanistan won’t have a sufficient number of acceptable troops and that 2014 timeline is too soon. However, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who co-hosted the conference, was optimistic saying that the tangible plans are a good sign.

BBC News

It's not over till the Stabbin' Robot beeps

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 9:53 AM - 0 Comments

Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Got a big assignment due? Dreading an upcoming social engagement? You’re off the hook. Don’t thank me—thank the imminent robotic uprising that will slaughter us all.

I’ve been silent on the killer-robot issue for quite some time. There have even been whispers that I’ve gone rogue and betrayed my species. To these outrageous rumours I say: “10011010.” (Yes, I’ve become fluent in binary. Total coincidence. Now step aside while your blender and I talk.)

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Who knows what Harper is really thinking? Ray Novak.

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 9:48 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Blair Gable

The class was Political Science 230, an overview of Canadian politics for second-year honours students at the University of Western Ontario, and the professor had just misstated the results of the 1997 federal election, accidentally transposing the seat counts of the Progressive Conservatives (20) and New Democrats (21). One student in the class of 125 interjected to note the mistake. “It’s gutsy to correct a prof,” the professor recalls now, “and I appreciated being called out.” Within a decade, both the professor, Ian Brodie, and the student, Ray Novak, would be members of the Prime Minister’s Office as senior aides to the new prime minister, Stephen Harper.

From that fateful interjection does a minor legend follow. More than a decade after, Novak is one of the most intriguing players in Ottawa, as widely praised by those around the Harper government as he is little known to the public. “If you were building a perfect political aide, you would end up with Ray Novak,” says Jim Armour, a former Harper aide himself. “He’s perhaps a perfect combination of trusted loyalist, strategist, interpreter, and maybe even horse whisperer.” What’s more is how integral he has become to the life and business of Stephen Harper.

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Is There a GLEE-style Split In MODERN FAMILY?

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 8:46 PM - 0 Comments

When I read Josef Adalian’s news that the creators of Modern Family have dissolved their partnership of convenience, it made me wonder whether the show has — or will have — a split between two or more different approaches, the way Glee does.

As you’ll see in the article, the “breakup” of Steve Levitan and Chris “The Other Christopher” Lloyd won’t actually change anything about the show or the way it’s produced. They were two non-partners who decided to form a joint production company because they could no longer get big juicy studio deals as solo writers; now that they have a hit show, they can go off and start developing new projects on their own.

Modern Family has been, and will continue to be, a show produced by two separate writer-producers rather than a producing team. Levitan and Lloyd write episodes separately and, it is said, take turns running episodes (though this is  not an unprecedented arrangement even for actual teams).  Which sounds a bit like the way things are on Glee, mentioned in the article as the Fox studio’s other big new hit from last season. Many people, including Jane Lynch, have pointed out that Glee has three creators and each one of them sees the show a bit differently, so that the show’s tone and approach change depending on who wrote this week’s episode.

So now I feel I should take a closer look at Modern Family to figure out if there is a difference between “Lloyd” episodes and “Levitan” episodes. I’m sure a difference could be found, though it should probably be done by a big fan of the show — and only then with some knowledge of who takes the lead in producing which episode. Here’s how Levitan described the arrangement:

We’ve also devised a system, at least for Season 1, where we alternated showrunning, essentially. I had the final say on the odd episodes; he had the final say on the even episodes. So he would be on the set for his episodes and I’d be on the set for mine.

I don’t know if the tension between Lloyd and Levitan accounts for the problems I find (personally) in the show, the sense that it’s polished to a fault and doesn’t feel very spontaneous. Back To You had the same issues, with Lloyd’s dry theatricality battling it out with Levitan’s nastier humour and ending up on unsatisfyingly mushy middle ground. And it may be that Out of Practice worked better for me because Lloyd created it with a more temperamentally congenial partner (Joe Keenan).

But it may also be — and in fact I’d say this is more likely — that I’m taking my view of the shows and then looking retroactively for some piece of behind-the-scenes information to justify it. That’s the danger of trying to use “industry info” as an explanation of what it’s like to watch a show.

May the initiation of legitimate, lawful force be with you

By Colby Cosh - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 7:38 PM - 0 Comments

The Western Standard, intending to satirize the supposed sobriety and untouchable Euclidean perfection of the controversial census long form, creates a parody site for the “Jedi Church of Canada”. The parody is only slightly weakened by the necessity to acknowledge, in the fine print, the existence of a genuine, apparently earnest, federally registered Order of the Jedi Inc.

One entirely optional question about the census

By Paul Wells - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 7:03 PM - 0 Comments

Now that Maxime Bernier has spent a week as the Harper government’s point man on the hotly-contested census changes, does anyone still believe he’s a maverick speaking his mind in defiance of the PMO’s wishes?

A Network Is Willing to Pay [For] DAMAGES

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 6:41 PM - 0 Comments

Last bit of TV news for the day: I can think of about half-a-dozen canceled series that I would rather have seen saved than Damages, but it’s Damages that has been rescued from the scrap heap of cable by DirecTV (which already performed a more valuable service by rescuing Friday Night Lights). At the moment the deal is for the episodes to air “only on DirecTV,” but that doesn’t seem likely to last; someone will presumably pick up the rights to air the new episodes later. Unless everybody else also got tired of the show after the first season.

Damages, which was an entertainingly absurd melodrama in that first season, staggered through a critically-panned second season and a third season that, while better, didn’t really suggest that the show had much more left to say. It was also easy to dislike because it eventually came to embody some of the worst traits of “quality” cable television: cliche’d plots and characters given a prestigious veneer through the use of big-name actors (many of whom — not Close, though — seem to have been cast for name value rather than their appropriateness for the part or whether they can disappear into the character). And more than any show since Heroes it seemed to embody the problems a heavily serialized show can face after its first season: having put all its eggs into coming up with one season-long story, it spends the rest of its run trying to live up to that one year when it had it all together, and finding excuses to keep certain characters appearing on the show for no good reason.

But, having said all that, I know the show has fans, and I can never really feel bad about a show getting un-canceled. (It’s not like Damages took away a spot that would have gone to some other show — at least I don’t think so.) So DirecTV it is, and we can assume that more shows will be trying to get in on this method of survival, where it’s possible.

The question now is how much the show — which was very expensive, another reason why FX was unwise to guarantee it two seasons after its first season under-performed in the ratings — will have to reduce its budget under the new arrangement, and how that will affect it. I could actually see it helping: if they can’t afford big-name actors to support Close and Byrne, they might have to dial down the stunt casting, which has not helped the show get better ratings or do better creatively.

Jeremy Mongeau, who really dislikes Damages, has dedicated much of his Twitter feed to everything that’s bad about its return. My favourite: “The hilarious part about a reduced Damages budget is that they already over-use already shot scenes to pad out flash-forwards, so now at least 40% of the show each week will be the same flash-forward of Glenn Close dramatically yelling at Tate Donovan in her office.”

Conrad Black granted bail

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 5:19 PM - 0 Comments

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled Monday that Conrad Black could be released on bail while he appeals his convictions for fraud. Black, who has been serving a six-and-a-half year prison sentence at a facility in Florida since 2007, won a significant legal victory last month when the U.S. Supreme Court sent his conviction on three counts of fraud back to a lower court for review. Chicago judge Amy St. Eve, who presided over Black’s trial, is responsible for setting the terms of his release.

The Globe and Mail

Maclean’s

More notes on a brouhaha

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 5:16 PM - 0 Comments

Maxime Bernier blogs a defense. Conservative MP James Rajotte writes to Industry Minister Tony Clement seeking explanation. The chief statistician calls StatsCan employees to a town hall meeting. Tony Clement and Stephen Gordon exchange more tweets.

The importance of Jon Stewart

By John Parisella - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 5:07 PM - 0 Comments

When you ask the twentysomething crowd where they get their news, few will mention the daily newspaper or the mainstream nightly news anchors. Most get their information from a laptop or a phone, and many will admit The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart accounts for much of their take on what’s up and what’s down in U.S. politics these days.

Given my new vantage point in New York City, I decided to see for myself what the fuss is all about. To be perfectly honest, I am a little behind the curve here—Stewart’s popularity steadily rising over the past decade and Colbert’s success alone as a spinoff from The Daily Show says a lot about the latter’s strength in the marketplace. So about a week ago, courtesy of a friend who is a writer on the show, I attended a taping of Jon Stewart’s show.

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Music: Things that aren't entirely surprising

By Paul Wells - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 5:05 PM - 0 Comments

The New Yorker‘s Alex Ross offers a rare look at music inside North Korea. Turns out it’s horrible and sparsely-attended.

We Get Netflix. Well, Some of It

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 4:32 PM - 0 Comments

Many people (okay, three) have asked me when Netflix is going to come to Canada. The answer appears to be “later this year.” But with a catch.

Netflix, Inc., the leading Internet movie subscription service, today announced it will expand into Canada this fall offering unlimited movies and TV episodes streamed instantly to TVs and computers for one low monthly fee. The Canadian launch will mark the first availability of Netflix outside the United States…

Canadians interested in Netflix can go to www.netflix.ca and sign up to receive an email from the company when the service launches in Canada this fall.

The press release says that this “will mark the first streaming-only service promoted by Netflix,” which is a very upbeat way of saying that we won’t be getting the DVD rental service, just the streaming service. Still, this is the first chance we’ll have to get one of the U.S. streaming behemoths — as you know, most of them have been blocked here due to licensing/rights issues. I guess we’ll have to find out just how much of the streamed content we have access to, or if some of it will be blocked based on those same issues.

What killed Larry King?

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Rush Limbaugh helped drive Larry King off the radio; his successors may have ended King’s career in TV. When the CNN host announced that Larry King Live would end this fall, after 25 years as the cable network’s flagship, it wasn’t a huge surprise. His ratings have dropped by 40 per cent in the last year, and comedians constantly made fun of his lack of knowledge; Jerry Seinfeld mocked him to his face for not knowing Seinfeld was still popular when it went off the air. Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, says he watches Larry King “the way I used to watch American Idol for Paula Abdul.” Still, when King’s bad suspenders go off the air, so will what Thompson calls “middle of the road” pundit shows. From now on, TV news may be all opinion, all the time.

Before he became CNN’s guy, the gruff-voiced King was a huge success on radio, with a similar format of long-form interviews. But by the time he ended his radio show in 1994, he couldn’t compete with hosts like Limbaugh, who offered high-energy segments perfect for car listening. After King, talk radio adopted a faster pace: “Even NPR doesn’t do interviews of the length that Larry King does,” Thompson says. Now fast-paced, punchy shows have taken over TV, where King is losing to Fox News’s Hannity, where a conservative talk-radio host rails against left-wing conspiracies and The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC’s liberal answer to Hannity.

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Man arrested in connection with missing Alberta couple

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 2:44 PM - 0 Comments

Police have arrested 38-year-old Travis Vader in Edson, Alta. in connection with the disappearance of Lyle McCann, 78, and his wife Marie Ann McCann, aged 77. The couple was last seen getting gas on July 3 near their hometown of St. Albert, Alta. and their motor home was found burned to a shell two days later. Eleven days after that, their Hyundai Tuscon SUV was spotted west of Edmonton. Vader has a criminal record for a 1995 car theft and had other outstanding warrants when he became a “person of interest” in the McCann case. Police say he may know the couple’s whereabouts.

CBC News

17 killed in Mexico birthday party massacre

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 2:37 PM - 0 Comments

At least 17 people were killed and 18 injured when gunmen opened fire at a birthday party in the Mexican city of Torreón on Sunday. Witnesses told local media the gunmen were traveling in a convoy of eight cars and fired indiscriminately into the crowd when the attack started at 1:30 a.m. before escaping. The government said the attack appeared to be the work of a drug gang, but officials had not determined the official motive for the attack as of late Sunday. Among the dead was the birthday honoree, a man whose name was only given as Mota by the local media. Mota is the Mexican slang word for marijuana. Torreón, in the state of Coahuila, which borders Texas, has become a battleground in Mexican president Felipe Calderón’s drug war as a transit point to the United States. Nearly 25,000 people have been killed since Calderón began his war on drug gangs in December 2006.

New York Times

Obama the parent

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 2:32 PM - 0 Comments

I just came back from two days at the beach with two small kids.

Recreational activities: preventing Big Brother from drowning and Little Brother from eating sand.

Exercise: pushing all-terrain stroller through sand.

Restaurant options: somewhat constrained by width of all-terrain stroller and availability of plain cheese pizza.

Evening entertainment: Monopoly with a 4.5 year old.

Leisure: being allowed to sleep in on Sunday… until 7:30am…

So I loved this twitter post, weighing in on the Obama vacation controversy:

‘Not guilty’

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 2:23 PM - 0 Comments

A military jury has found Capt. Robert Semrau not guilty of murdering a wounded Taliban fighter on the battlefields of Afghanistan. He has, however, been convicted of one count of disgraceful conduct. Numerous eyewitnesses testified that Semrau, a married father of two young daughters, fired a pair of bullets into the chest of a severely injured enemy fighter in Afghanistan in October 2008, telling his comrades later that it was a “mercy kill.” But with no dead body and no forensic evidence proving exactly how the man died, a military jury did not believe beyond a reasonable doubt that prosecutors proved their case. The court is expected to reconvene at 3:00 pm EST to discuss sentencing on the disgraceful conduct charge.

Source: macleans.ca

Syria bans full-face Islamic veils at universities

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 2:11 PM - 0 Comments

Syria’s education minister has banned female students from wearing the full-face veil at universities, saying the practice conflicts with academic values and traditions. Islamic head coverings have become increasingly popular in Syria in recent years, according to the BBC. In 2009, Egypt’s foremost cleric courted controversy when he banned students from wearing the full-face veil at a university. France’s lower house of parliament recently voted to ban the full-face veil in all public places.

BBC News

RIM denies antenna problems after Apple accusations

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

The maker of BlackBerry is telling Apple CEO Steve Jobs to back off after Jobs implicated Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Bold 9700 in Apple’s ongoing “Antennagate” scandal. When Jobs promised refunds for iPhone 4 customers dealing with dropped calls because of the phone’s antenna design, he specifically mentioned the BlackBerry Bold 9700 as having a similar problem and showed a video of it having trouble finding a signal. A statement from RIM executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie called Jobs’ claims “unacceptable” and a deliberate attempt to “deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation.” Shortly after iPhone 4’s June 24 release in the U.S., the U.K., Japan and France, customers started to report dropped signals. Apple told them to buy a case or avoid gripping it in the lower-left corner, something now known as the “death grip.” At a rare Apple press conference on July 16, Jobs offered iPhone 4 customers free cases to address reception complaints. Lazaridis and Balsillie’s statement noted that RIM customers “don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity.”

Toronto Star