Superbug: meet your maker

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters/ Jacquelyn Martin/AP

In his lab at United Arab Emirates University in Al-Ain, John Michael Conlon collects the secretions that ooze out of frog skins. Over the past 12 years, he’s collected hundreds of samples from frogs all around the world (the one Canadian frog in his collection is the wood frog). Conlon’s hoping to find an antibiotic that could fight off powerful “superbugs,” bacteria that our current drugs can’t beat. Frogs have spent millions of years evolving to fight off microbes, he explains: they live in a moist, warm environment, “an ideal place for the growth of bacteria and fungi.” After analyzing just 200 secretions, Conlon’s team has found over 100 antimicrobial substances.

With drug-resistant bacteria on the rise, they can’t work fast enough. Last month, The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal published a study showing that NDM-1, a gene that makes bacteria impervious to some of our strongest antibiotics and can jump from one bacterial strain to another, has the potential to become a global health problem. Thought to have originated in India, NDM-1 positive bacteria has already turned up in several countries, including Canada. Other superbugs, like MRSA (a staph bacteria that resists the methicillin antibiotic), are also a growing concern. “I’m English, and English people tend to deal in understatements, not exaggerations,” Conlon says dryly. “This situation really is serious.”

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Is public data the future of governance?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON HAYTER

Garbage day in Vancouver is complicated. Because the schedule shifts each time a holiday occurs, your assigned day for pickup regularly changes. And because your assigned day regularly changes, it is easy to forget when you’re to put your refuse at the curb.

A little more than a year ago, David Eaves, a fresh-faced and effusive public policy activist, speculated on his blog that there had to be a way, perhaps something like an iPhone app, to make it easier to keep track.

He speculated one could, using public data from the city, establish a service that would eliminate forgetfulness and help make the city cleaner, healthier and more efficient. Two Vancouver computer programmers—Luke Closs and Kevin Jones—took up the project and within a few months, VanTrash was launched. A year later, 3,000 people use the free service to either update calendars on their computers or BlackBerries, or receive email reminders of approaching garbage days.

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U of T tops Canadian universities in global ranking

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:57 PM - 0 Comments

An overhaul of The Times Higher Education rankings, a global universities ranking system, has placed the University of Toronto as the top Canadian school. Nine Canadian universities are in the top 200: U of T is at 17, the University of British Columbia at 30, McGill University at 35, McMaster University at 93, the University of Alberta at 127, University of Victoria at 130, University of Montreal at 138, Dalhousie at 193 and Simon Fraser University at 199. Compared to other countries in the world, Canada has the fifth-best showing of post-secondary institutions.

Toronto Star

Routine prostate screening shows no benefit: study

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:49 PM - 0 Comments

According to a new study, routine prostate cancer screening doesn’t help people live longer, Reuters reports. The analysis, published in the journal BMJ, looked at the best available data on a topic that has been controversial, as several medical associations discourage screening in men 75 or older, but say there isn’t enough evidence to make widespread recommendations for younger men. Many doctors continue to test for the disease. According to this study, screening will pick up 20 cases for every 1,000 men screened, but the practice doesn’t change overall death rates or the odds that men would die from prostate cancers.

Reuters

The Iowa car crop

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:48 PM - 0 Comments

I’m borrowing this from Mike Moffatt, who got it from Stephen Gordon, who cut-and-pasted it from Stephen Landsburg, who was quoting David Friedman, but it’s precisely relevant to the current discussion about jobs and jets and whether we should build things here or overseas:

There are two technologies for producing automobiles in America. One is to manufacture them in Detroit, and the other is to grow them in Iowa. Everybody knows about the first technology; let me tell you about the second. First, you plant seeds, which are the raw material from which automobiles are constructed. You wait a few months until wheat appears. Then you harvest the wheat, load it onto ships, and sail the ships eastward into the Pacific Ocean. After a few months, the ships reappear with Toyotas on them.

International trade is nothing but a form of technology. The fact that there is a place called Japan, with people and factories, is quite irrelevant to Americans’ well-being. To analyze trade policies, we might as well assume that Japan is a giant machine with mysterious inner workings that convert wheat into cars.

Any policy designed to favor the first American technology over the second is a policy designed to favor American auto producers in Detroit over American auto producers in Iowa. A tax or a ban on “imported” automobiles is a tax or a ban on Iowa-grown automobiles. If you protect Detroit carmakers from competition, then you must damage Iowa farmers, because Iowa farmers are the competition.

…It is sheer superstition to think that an Iowa-grown Camry is any less “American” than a Detroit-built Taurus. Policies rooted in superstition do not frequently bear efficient fruit.

Sometimes economics makes me weep it’s so beautiful.

BONUS MORAL: Moffatt sums up,

“either way, the F-35s will be obtained with Canadian labour. The question is, will it be done directly or indirectly through trade?

And obviously we’d like to do as little work as possible to obtain them, right? Because with the time we save, we can be doing other things. So the notion that we should structure the contract in such a way as to “create” as many jobs as possible has it exactly backward.

Mel Gibson's failed disguise

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:41 PM - 0 Comments

On a recent outing, Mel Gibson attempted to hide behind a disguise—baseball cap, glasses, and fake moustache and nose—but he couldn’t fool the paparazzi. Instead, the actor (who is currently embroiled in a custody battle with ex Oksana Grigorieva) drew attention for his poor costume, and after a tantrum, removed his cover and fled.

Daily Mail

The joy of napping

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

ISTOCK

Sleeping on the job? At some companies, it’s not such a sin anymore. Increasingly, firms are finding that it can be productive—even beneficial to the bottom line—to let their employees catch a brief midday nap. Corporate nap rooms, once associated with laid-back Silicon Valley firms, are popping up in unexpected places. MetroNaps, a company that makes chairs designed for napping, counts Google, Procter & Gamble and Cisco Systems as clients, reports Bloom­berg Businessweek. (The chairs, called the Energy­Pod, can also be rented for US$795 per month.) Napping spas in New York are also luring big-name corporate clients.

Scientists have long understood the benefits of rest, like alertness and reduced stress. So it shouldn’t be dismissed as something reserved for the lazy, say advocates, who note that most companies have no qualms about paying for gyms offering the same kind of health benefits to employees. Ultimately, stealing a few minutes of rest can really pay off.

Mitchel Raphael on back-to-school shopping at 24 Sussex Drive

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Minister says Spider-Man is out
MPs are not back in the House until Sept. 20, but many have been busy getting their kids ready to go back to school. Labour Minister Lisa Raitt says this year her two sons, J.C. Raitt, 9, and Billy Raitt, 6, wanted backpacks with wheels because their books are getting heavier and heavier. But those kinds of backpacks are plainer. No more Spider-Man or Transformers logos if the kids insist on wheels, notes the minister. On the first day of school, Raitt’s tradition is to have a picture taken with her kids on the front steps of their house. She jokes that the photos mostly show how, over the years, “my weight has fluctuated and my hair colour has changed.”
Vancouver NDP MP Don Davies says when it comes to his youngest daughter, 15, and school supplies, “We have to have a lot of pink.” Davies has been officially relieved of his duties for back-to-school clothing purchases—his wife is in charge. But he is inevitably called to the mall because, he quips, “My daughter knows I will get more expensive things.”
Meanwhile, at 24 Sussex, back-to-school preparations are pretty lacklustre for Ben Harper and Rachel Harper. “We go to Staples and fight the crowds like everyone else,” notes Laureen Harper.

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Exploding stars on ice

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

What’s remarkable about the IceCube Telescope isn’t just that it will be taller than the Empire State building, the Chicago Sears Tower and Shanghai’s World Financial Center combined; rather it’s that it is being built to shed light on dark matter more than a kilometre below the surface of the South Pole. The IceCube, developed by the University of Wisconsin, will search for neutrinos, tiny subatomic particles created by exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts, and other phenomena like black holes. Though their size lets them stream through the universe largely undetected, neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the universe, says principal investigator Francis Halzen. “The universe is filled with radiation, and most of it is light, and the second thing close behind is neutrinos.”

With a volume of one cubic kilometre, the IceCube will use an array of detectors embedded as deep as 1,400 m below the South Pole’s surface to spot the blue light emitted by the nuclear reaction of a single neutrino crashing into an ice atom. Studying the number and energy of these neutrinos will help scientists understand the sources of dark matter.

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Hello Americans!

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:39 PM - 0 Comments

With great packaging by the very excellent @RachelSklar, Mediaite has posted my roundup of the Teneycke affair. The comments under the piece are already hilarious.

And in today’s New York Times, Penelope Green graciously nods to my book in her latest piece on “Butch Craft,” the latest fad in manly furniture making:

In an era defined by an appetite for “conspicuous authenticity,” to borrow a phrase from Andrew Potter, author of “The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves,” out this year from HarperCollins, it’s easy to be cynical. Butch Craft could be an arts collective in Bushwick, or maybe a Viking metal band, the phrase peppered with umlauts, or a reclaimed-wood furniture collection produced by bearded hipsters.

Feh, Mr. Moss swatted the idea away. “This isn’t an inelegant going back to the rough gesture,” he said. “It’s not a guy going out and making a bed of antlers. It’s a progression toward a very elegant gesture. It’s just that the materials have this toughness and are an alternative means of giving an art content form and expression in a functional object.”

The present and future of the census

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:30 PM - 0 Comments

Stephen Gordon points to four essays on the census from the current issue of Canadian Public Policy. Separately, he himself takes on the idea that a voluntary census will provide more truthful responses.

It is possible that individual files will have fewer errors if the census is voluntary, but these gains look to be small and – in the absence of empirical evidence – mainly hypothetical. In contrast, the losses associated with self-selection bias are large and well-documented. If the government wishes to pursue this idea, then it should be field-tested before making it a basis for policy.

But the main reason why I am skeptical of claims that a voluntary survey will yield more ‘honest’ results is the way the government has handled the file. After a summer of mockery and dismissiveness, the government and its supporters have created a significant constituency that now believes that the census is a tool of its political opponents. We’re going to get the worst of both worlds: a census with a biased sample and a higher rate of inaccurate responses.

Gossipers and porn stars

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:29 PM - 0 Comments

The most coveted parties at TIFF are known only to the closest industry insiders, so it was great for me to have the ear of professional gossiper Lainey of eTalk fame for a few minutes yesterday. After 15 minutes with the celeb-obsessed host, she tipped me off to one of the coolest parties I’ve been to yet. If only I’d met her five days ago.

Lainey also told me that during TIFF she sleeps “an average of two hours a night.” I didn’t even know people could do that. She said she had more than enough training after covering the festival for five years, and also after reporting the Olympics. “That was fourteen days,” she explained, “this is only ten.” As for her seemingly unfailing desire to report on the life of stars, she told me she sees it as more of a sociological endeavor. “Without sounding pretentious,” she said, “celebrity gossip speaks to a larger social consciousness.” For example, the Angelina-Brad-Aniston triangle keeps selling tabloids because it speaks to a woman’s deepest fear: that their man will be stolen by a vixen.

When asked about whether she sees herself as a fly-on-the-wall or an active participant in the lifestyles of the rich and famous, Lainey paused. She likes to go with her friends and observe, she said, but feels she’s not like “them” and is one of “us.” Before she left, I asked her where she was headed, and she rang off a list of interviews, red carpets and parties. It was one of those events, at the SoHo, that I decided to check out that evening.

As it was described to me, the SoHo has functioned as a sort of celebrity getaway. Getting in was a clandestine affair. I wasn’t allowed to bring guests. I entered under another name. And the venue was in an alleyway. Was this for real? I was told that previously, the space had been a bridal boutique, but when I walked in, I was met by an intimate party space with plenty of comfortable seating areas, sofas and chairs, large wood tables, low lighting and hardcover books lining the walls. This event was by far the best I’d been to for actually meeting people. I introduced myself to a handsome couple dressed all in black. As it turned out, they both worked in fashion, though they were quick to add that it was “only Canadian box store fashion.” Our favourite beverage of the night was ‘The Torontonian’—vodka, organic cucumber juice and ginger beer. I enjoyed watching the bartender make it—the preparation resembled a dance routine as he clapped the mint leaves together before dropping them into my drink. One of my new friends dryly remarked that while the drink was delicious, he wished they had come up with a “less lame name.”

We eventually left our bartenders to check out an intriguing Star Wars pinball machine in the corner of the room. In between turns, waiters presented me with a near-constant array of delicious morsels—hamburger sliders, concord grapes with condensed goats milk, crab claws and macaroons. On the main table were an assortment of cold cuts and cheeses, grapes, dried fruits and fresh hot foccacia bread. One upside of TIFF is that my grocery bill is next to nothing.

Around midnight there was a performance by some young bright things from L.A., a band called The Airborne Toxic Event. Some notables made fashionably late entrances, including Avatar’s Sam Worthington and the queenly Helen Mirren. John Madden, director of The Debt, also passed through, as well as Miramax president, Daniel Battsek. As I was leaving, Ryan Philippe, star of the Bang Bang Club, was just walking in and hanging out in the back corner. If only I had known about this place earlier, it would have been so much easier to fill my star quota.

But I’d heard word from a friend that Sasha Grey was djing at the Drake Hotel and had to check it out. For those who don’t know, Sasha Grey is a pornstar-cum-actress. What I didn’t know was that she’s also a DJ. But I shouldn’t be surprised. Now, everyone’s a DJ. The room was packed and excited for Grey to begin. It didn’t matter that when she finally got to the booth, she wasn’t really doing much. In fact, she looked like the girl next door, wearing an innocuous black tank top. Her first song, ‘Boomin’ Granny’ by the Beastie Boys, left the top-40 crowd confused. But for the rest, I’m pretty sure that the majority of them couldn’t care less. They were there for the novelty of the act. “This is weird,” I heard someone say. “I’ve seen her in so many raunchy positions.” Porn star or not, the novelty couldn’t carry me until closing, and after fifteen minutes I went home to tuck into bed early at a modest 3:30 am.

The kids are not all right

By Joanne Latimer - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:26 PM - 0 Comments

Jonathan Hobin - Courtesy of the Dale Smith Gallery

“My son calls it the House of Horrors,” laughs Jane Steinberg, 57, an Ottawa trademark lawyer who has four photos from artist Jonathan Hobin’s Mother Goose series displayed up her staircase, where everyone can see them. “Some people stop climbing the stairs to scrutinize every detail, while others go upstairs and don’t say a single word. It surprises me they can pass by without comment.” Maybe they’re stunned by the blood splatter. Hobin’s Mother Goose is a macabre interpretation: Jumping Joan in a straightjacket; Jeremiah Obadiah leaning against a bloody sink; Polly Flinders with whip marks across her back. The photographer’s models in those photos, children of family friends, have deadpan expressions that range from defiance to apathy.

The children who appear in his new series, In The Playroom, are a combination of professional child models who worked for free (to gain experience) or again, they’re children of family friends. “People accused me of putting those kids through hell and asked if they could sleep at night,” recalled Hobin, 30, who is now preparing to show In The Playroom at Ottawa’s Dale Smith Gallery (Sept. 17- Oct. 10). “But the kids loved it. They had a blast!” Hobin’s new work leaves behind childhood fables and moves into the headlines. His topics are historic moments—mostly tragedies—immortalized and saturated by media coverage. Goodbye Mother Goose.

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No screen test available

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Tara Walton/Toronto Star

When Michael Douglas announced in August that doctors had found a walnut-sized tumour at the base of his tongue, he explained that the cancer was caused by years of carousing: “I smoked cigarettes and I drank,” he said matter-of-factly, “and this particular type of cancer is caused by alcohol.”

That smoking leads to cancer of the oropharynx—the tonsils, soft palate, side and back walls of the throat, and base of the tongue—is well-known. But less familiar to many is the link between heavy alcohol consumption and cancer. As a recent study in the journal Head & Neck showed, 60 per cent of patients diagnosed with oral cancer identified smoking as a cause, while 20 per cent said alcohol. The medical community, however, has long known about the correlation, and now Douglas—who was treated for alcohol and substance abuse in 1992—is proving to be the de facto spokesperson for the disease.

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Insurers strike back

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Heath Korvola

There are few sights more spectacular than a lightning strike—unless you happen to be an insurance company. With some 40,000 lightning-related claims filed each year in Canada, totalling between $500 million and $1 billion, adjusters often find themselves trying to recreate events that literally happened in the blink of an eye.

Now help has finally arrived. A new database maintained by the Weather Network includes strike data collected since 2007 by a network of 71 sensors located across Canada and the northern United States. While firefighters and utility companies already rely on the real-time data for monitoring purposes, Bruce Caven, the Weather Network’s vice-president, says there was a need for an archival service so past strikes could be verified by insurance companies and other businesses. “They want to go back and reaffirm where the strike was struck, so to speak,” he says.

It’s not a perfect system. Information about strike locations is only considered accurate to within 250 m 18 times out of 20. But that is likely enough to help adjusters determine whether a claim is truly an act of God, or the work of an unscrupulous property owner trying to cash in on his policy.

MS liberation latest: Aglukkaq under fire

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:11 PM - 0 Comments

I see that Colleague Kingston is unsure why the federal Minister of Health is frustrated at media coverage of her ministry’s approach to the vein-centered Zamboni hypothesis about multiple sclerosis. One possible reason, I think, is that statements like those of Liberal health critic Kirsty Duncan are being repeated rather uncritically. Duncan told Kingston “They say we need evidence-based medicine but they are doing nothing to gather evidence.” Nothing? I wonder how else, but as “evidence-gathering”, one could possibly characterize the seven MS Society-funded preliminary studies Aglukkaq mentioned in her burst of finger-wagging at the media. These studies are designed to establish precisely what needs to be confirmed before the dream of a pan-Canadian trial of vein therapy for MS can appropriately be fulfilled: namely, whether there is any such thing at all as “chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency”, and whether it is really correlated with MS.

The religious conviction of some MS patients that they have a venous disorder is hard to account for, given the state of the evidence. It seems to be a by-product of natural frustration with slow progress on MS treatment, and, often, of conspiracy theories about sadistic drug companies and greedy, arrogant “neuros”. Some of these patients now reject the idea that they have multiple sclerosis at all—and, indeed, one must admit that there is something refreshingly categorical about such views. MS is not diagnosed by direct observation of demyelination, after all, but largely by means of functional criteria. The idea that CCSVI is not MS at all sidesteps the multiple logical problems with attributing MS to CCSVI. (One obvious example: why doesn’t anybody develop MS beyond middle age, even as the vascular system in most humans continues to fall into ever-worse disrepair?) I suspect it is almost easier to believe that there are some non-MS patients whose real problem might be a chronic vein blockage than it is to believe that MS, which is known to be a demyelinating disease, is caused or worsened by such blockages.

The problem with making grandiose statements about this wholly novel ontological entity, CCSVI, seems similar to the one that plagued the field of back surgery until fairly recently: patients presenting with chronic lower-back pain would be given MRIs, and a surgeon would go “Ahhh, here’s your problem”, point to some apparent lesion—a “slipped disc” or the like—and recommend an expensive, disabling operation. We now know, because people got around to checking by means of controlled investigations, that many of these lesions are indistinguishable from ones commonly found in asymptomatic individuals. Put in plain English, everybody’s back kind of looks like hell in an MRI, because we are imperfectly evolved to walk upright. Stronger criteria have thus been established for surgical interventions into chronic lower back pain, and even for mere medical imaging of bad backs. Something similar is likely to happen with tonsillectomies for children, which are increasingly thought to have been performed much too commonly in the past (although the rates at which they are done seem to be about as high as ever).

Like it or not, medicine no longer cuts first and asks questions later. We can’t presume CCSVI into existence; we have to ascertain the natural background rate of vein blockages, even ones that look dramatic in a venogram. You can see for yourself that this is the basic aim of the studies Aglukkaq points to; all seven involve vascular comparisons of MS patients with healthy controls.

For the record, I would like to politely distance myself from any suggestion that the strongly evidence-based treatments developed for vein-obstruction problems in the legs should be used, on the premise of a “right to blood flow”, to justify vaguely analogous and non-evidence-based treatments in the region of the head and neck. I would also like to observe that surgery for varicose veins does not normally involve surgical widening of the affected vessels with balloons or stents: instead, the veins are simply removed, perforated, or destroyed, precisely because a sufficient volume of blood can be counted on to return to the heart from the leg through other tissues.

‘True Blood’ won’t admit it’s a soap?

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:01 PM - 0 Comments

At last, a post with no mention of Daniel Hugh Kelly (except that one). True Blood‘s season finale didn’t seem to please a lot of people — well, online, anyway; it got lots of viewers, though not nearly as many as The Closer or Rizzoli & Isles, and some of them must have been happy with it. This post by Erika at Seriality sums up a lot of the problems that fans have been having with the show, particularly the fact that it’s splintered into so many different storylines that none of them seem to be satisfying.

Now, as I said, I suspect many True Blood viewers don’t have a problem with this, and again, this comes back to the soap-opera format. True Blood didn’t start out intending to be a prime-time soap opera, but that’s what it is. Like many soap operas, it started with a relatively narrow focus — in this case, the focus provided by the books’ first-person narration — and grew from there, giving more characters their own storylines, and having more stories that aren’t clearly connected to the nominal main story. (It’s a key feature of many soap operas that by the time it’s been on for a few years, you can’t even remember who the main characters were originally supposed to be.) And the stories play out in little blocks, one after the other.

As I said earlier, this has a lot in common with the storytelling on regular serialized shows, particularly on HBO. But there are differences too, and True Blood may not have completely figured out how to deal with them. With a serial drama, the season finale is usually expected to wrap stuff up to a certain extent. Not that everything is resolved, but just that you can watch the season and see that there has been a story that played out from beginning to end over the course of those 13-24 episodes. (24 is the ultimate example, of course.) Soaps aren’t like that. Hardly anything ever gets resolved, and when something does get resolved, it’s almost thrown away in the rush to introduce a new unresolved plot point. As this point, True Blood has no real central character and no real endgame except to keep us in suspense, which means it’s going to look bad if evaluated the way we evaluate, say, a season of The Sopranos.

But also, Jeremy Mongeau said something to the effect that True Blood hasn’t fully embraced its identity as a soap opera, and that the finale didn’t work even by prime-time soap standards. And there’s something to that as well. It’s possible to do a soap finale that satisfies the audience. Dallas practically invented the concept of the season finale as a big deal (the last episode of the season was no big deal at all for much of TV history), and when that show was at its best, it would leave every plot line hanging while still making the audience feel as if the finale wasn’t just a random episode. They, and other prime-time soaps, did it by sending everything to the next level in the season finale; the most famous example is “Who Shot J.R.?” where many of the plot points become so heightened that everybody is given a reason not just to hate J.R. but to shoot him. True Blood does not have that ability, at least this season, to raise the stakes that high in the season finale, perhaps because the show is always operating at fever pitch, trying to create maximum levels of campy melodrama at every possible moment. It’s like they really couldn’t make the season finale’s mayhem seem any more mayhem-ish than the rest of the season.

Also, shooting somebody works better as a cliffhanger than anything involving fairies.

Living room wars

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has added the television and movie business to his list of industries to upend, but it’s not yet clear whether Apple TV will be the product to do it. Last week, Jobs unveiled a new version of the Apple TV device that is smaller, cheaper and allows users the ability to rent and stream some shows from iTunes and Netflix to their TVs. It’s Apple’s third attempt at cracking the iron grip that cable and broadcasters have on the living room, although Jobs has referred to slow-selling earlier Apple TV models as a mere “hobby” for the iPod and iPhone maker. That’s no longer the case now that rivals are entering the fray. Online retailer Amazon also said last week that it would cut its prices for streamed TV shows to 99 cents. Google, meanwhile, has a TV service scheduled to roll out this fall. It’s still early days, but consumers would be wise to stay tuned.

Boeing will fly passengers into space

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 12:42 PM - 0 Comments

Boeing, the aerospace company, has announced plans to offer passengers a trip into space, developing a craft that can travel into low-Earth orbit, Reuters reports. After reaching an agreement with Space Adventures to market passenger seats on commercial flights aboard a space vehicle being developed for NASA, the company has said it could take seven people into low-Earth orbit as soon as 2015. Pricing hasn’t been announced, but is expected to be competitive.

Reuters

A tale of two supermarkets

By Jacob Richler - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RACHEL GRANOFSKY

Three weeks ago I found myself shopping at the sprawling Metro Plus supermarket in the lakeside town of Magog, Que. As at so many other supermarkets these days, banners fluttered overhead affirming the store’s commitment to local producers. What was odd was that the shelves and racks below made good on the promise.

The produce section was flooded with local seasonal finest, from beefsteak tomatoes to sweet corn, shallots and ground cherries. An entire wall at the centre of the store flaunted Quebec products from mustard and honey to vinegar and chocolate. Breakfast alone involved a choice of no fewer than three local artisanal bacons, and for eggs, a selection that ran to an intriguing new variety called les matinaux (early birds), which according to the box have been hatched not by the usual tired old hens, but by fresh, barely legal ones, on the job for not a day over five months—guaranteed.

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Canada should take no solace from America's woes

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

Shana Wittenwyler/Redux

America is heading “back to the Stone Age.” In some places, quite literally.

As “Third World America” by Luiza Ch. Savage details, “stone age” refers specifically to the practice of breaking up stretches of paved road and replacing them with gravel as a cost-saving measure, as some American towns have recently done. And yet the phrase also seems broadly symbolic of a larger process at work in the U.S. as it attempts to unwind a massive level of household and public debt. Throughout it all, Canadians should resist any urge to gloat. This is equally bad news for us.

The disappearance of government revenues in the U.S., primarily at the municipal level and driven largely by the collapse in the housing market, is having a significant impact on life in middle America. Savage, Maclean’s U.S. correspondent, provides numerous shocking examples of counties without police cars, parks without maintenance and classrooms without supplies.

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Who was ready for the hot summer

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Atlantic Canada: Maritimers and Newfoundlanders go to work prepared to get the most out of sunny days: 18 per cent say they keep summer clothes or flip-flops at the office so they can take advantage of good weather at lunch or after work. Just 13 per cent of Canadians overall say they head to work prepared.

Quebec: Many Canadians (38 per cent) donated to Haitian relief efforts, but Quebecers are the most skeptical about how much money will trickle down to those in need. Just 30 per cent agree that “all” or “most” of the money will reach the people, compared to 64 per cent of Atlantic Canadians.

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An Arctic accident

By Kathleen Winter - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

REUTERS; PABLO S./ DANNY CATT

To distract my fears when the Clipper Adventurer ran aground on Aug. 27 on an uncharted rock in Nunavut’s Coronation Gulf, I asked on-board geologist Marc St-Onge if he knew what kind of rock it was. As an instructor with the Canadian tour company Adventure Canada, St-Onge had told passengers the history of every rock we had encountered in our expedition through the fabled Northwest Passage. This was a gabbro sill, a submerged version of formations that rose around us onshore. “I think,” he said, “this one will be well charted after this little incident.”

As it turned out, the Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen, deployed to rescue us from 500 miles west on the Beaufort Sea, was full of geologists mapping the ocean floor to assess the environmental impact of proposed deepwater drilling. They had barely begun when they got our distress call and found themselves drafted to rescue duty. While they shared their couches and chowder with us, they conducted soundings and began mapping the rock that had until now evaded every Arctic chart leading back to Lord Franklin and beyond. Research team member Steve Blasco told Clipper Adventurer passengers, “You’re part of the charting.”

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Every hoser's nightmare

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Morry Gash/AP/CP

Canadians may not be quite the beer connoisseurs we make ourselves out to be. The most popular place to sample some of the tastiest new ales? America (former land of the watery beer). The craft beer market has been growing steadily in Canada and the U.S., but south of the border is where it’s really booming. According to the Brewers Association, 1,595 craft breweries were in operation last year in the U.S., the highest total since before Prohibition.

“In terms of flavour, Canadian beer is not as avant-garde as the States,” says Ian Coutts, author of Brew North, a new book chronicling Canada’s beer history. Coutts says that Americans are more daring with the flavours they use and their production processes. However, he says the adoption of American craft beer isn’t just about the taste. Population density is another factor that favours U.S. microbrewers. “If you have a micro in a place like California, you have 35 million people within a day’s truck ride of your brewery,” says Coutts.

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