Talking sanity, books and acid with Zach Galifianakis

By Tom Henheffer - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 5:19 PM - 0 Comments

Zach Galifianakis sat down with Maclean’s to discuss his latest film, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, in which he plays Bobby, a mental institution patient who becomes the mentor of an overburdened teenager who has checked himself into a psychiatric ward. Bobby doesn’t have much back story, but you know he’s a father and that his family isn’t happy with his decision to go to an institution. Galifianakis plays it with his trademark oddity, but is more lovable and wise than in other roles.

He spoke about the North American addiction to perscription drugs, why a mental home could make a good vacation spot, and at the beginning of the video, he’s talking about Aldous Huxley’s dystopian sci-fi opus, Brave New World—and acid.

In the event of a tie

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 4:56 PM - 0 Comments

As we may be headed toward just such a scenario in the case of C-391, it is perhaps worth reviewing the precedent and procedure for tie votes in the House. So here goes.

Should a vote in the House result in a tie, it is the Speaker who holds what is known as the casting vote. The conventions covering this are well explained in House of Commons Procedure and Practice. Continue…

Greetings, sir or madam! Here is your new hockey arena! You're welcome!

By Paul Wells - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 4:26 PM - 0 Comments

Here at Maclean’s Prime Ministerial Semiotics Control (“Eighty-Seven Days on the Job Without a Workplace Parsing Accident”), we’ve taken out the calipers and the slide rules to attempt a proper de-codification of the Prime Minister’s latest pronouncements on the matter of a Quebec City hockey arena. The comments, and any account I can find, appear to have been made in French. But that’s not a challenge to the crack team of analysts here at MPMSC™. Let’s break it down. Continue…

One brave man steps forward to challenge the Internet

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 4:17 PM - 0 Comments

Liberal MP Shawn Murphy expresses concerns about anonymous online comments, is immediately scorned by anonymous online commenters.

“I found that the comments are getting nastier and nastier,” Murphy said in an interview with The Guardian.

“I believe there is a feeling of anonymity out there when people make the comments but as there have been many court cases in the last year from all across Canada that it is very easy for one to get the ISP numbers of the computer that those comments came from through a court order.”

“An Outraged Canadian” responds. Continue…

Here, then, a loophole

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 3:45 PM - 0 Comments

Keeping in mind that the Transport Minister’s spokesman has said the government is “very interested” in the possibility of a hockey arena being built in Quebec City and another cabinet minister has said the government “cannot ignore the wishes of the population” and a half-dozen Conservative MPs have donned Nordiques jerseys for the cameras and the Prime Minister’s spokesman has talked of the larger benefits of sports venues and the Prime Minister himself has both spoken hopefully of a professional hockey team for Quebec City and mused openly of funding sports venues across the country, here today the Prime Minister raises the small matter of a certain adjective in discussing the proposed hockey arena for Quebec City.

“If there is to be any role for the federal government, first of all, that role would have to be equitable across the country, treat everybody the same, and it also has to be affordable, recognizing that this country is going to be moving into a period of fiscal restraint,” Harper said.

Planet Mad Men

By Andrew Potter - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 3:28 PM - 0 Comments

Mad Men has now officially replaced The Wire as the most footnoted and overanalyzed television show going. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

As usual, The Awl’s Natasha Vargas-Cooper leads the charge with her Footnotes of Mad Men. I don’t think this is her best effort though — the Cheever references were bouncing around the Twitterverse last night, and her report doesn’t add much to that, while neglecting some of the more important themes in the show. Gawker’s usually solid replay of the previous night’s episode hasn’t been posted yet is here, and Slate’s trio of Julia Turner, Michael Agger and John Swansburg have  weighed in starting here. I think Agger’s is the best of the three.

Meanwhile, our own Jamie Weinman argues that the show has become a show about television writing, while over at my other blog, I advance the thesis that last night’s episode marked the turning point in the series, from a show about the alien fifties to one about the all-too-familiar sixties.

Naughty, dirty CBC!

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 3:11 PM - 0 Comments

You’d hope an organization of lawyers would hold a more sophisticated world view than this, but alas, the Manitoba Bar Association claims the CBC had no business publishing sensational details of a complaint against a Court of Queen’s Bench judge because—well, because. In a piece published in the current issue of Lawyer’s Weekly, association president Ken Mandzuik does some righteous harumphing about the CBC’s “salacious” coverage of a complaint against Justice Lori Douglas, naked photographs of whom allegedly appeared on a website dedicated to bondage and sado-masochistic sex. “They are going after the sex angle, plain and simple,” he says of the CBC, not really known as a purveyor of smut. Fine, fair enough. Bad CBC. But Mandzuik goes on to suggest the Corp had no business publishing any of the lurid details in the complaint “really, before an official body decides that something that Justice Douglas did was wrong.” Huh? Did counsel miss his law-school class on the Charter, and role of press freedom in a democratic society? In Mandzuik’s ideal universe, it seems, the media would dutifully sit on damaging information involving important people like judges until rightfully empowered panels like the Canadian Judicial Council have a chance to weigh it and pass judgment first. After all, we wouldn’t want Canadians to start judging the behaviour of judges—or for that matter, the judicial council—would we?

Lawyer’s Weekly

'Toronto 18' terror cell member up for release

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 2:20 PM - 0 Comments

Ali Dirie, one of those convicted in connection with the ‘Toronto 18′ terrorist cell, appeared at a parole hearing in Montreal on Monday saying he was a changed man. “I still oppose it,” Dirie said of the war in Afghanistan, “but I don’t intend to bring about change by damaging Canada to make them change their ways.” Dirie, who was sentenced to seven years behind bars last October, has been in jail since 2005, or before the police arrested the other members of the terrorist cell in 2006. The judge in his case ordered he serve at least one of the two years left on his sentence after time served before he could apply for parole. Dirie isn’t hopeful the National Parole Board will give him his freedom and he may be right: the team charged with monitoring him believes he still poses a threat.

Toronto Star

"Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s"

By Paul Wells - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 2:16 PM - 0 Comments

In an article that is making some waves in the U.S., Dinesh D’Souza explains that Barack Obama’s policy choices result from the anticolonialist philosophy of his Kenyan father.

From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America’s military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father’s position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America’s power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe’s resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.

This makes perfect sense to Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich says that D’Souza has made a “stunning insight” into Obama’s behavior — the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.” Continue…

Newfoundland to fund “observational study” of controversial MS therapy

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 2:12 PM - 0 Comments

The government of Newfoundland and Labrador has announced it will fund research investigating the efficacy of the “liberation” therapy, a procedure that restores blood flow in the neck and chest veins of multiple sclerosis patients—though it will not fund the treatment which remains unavailable in Canada. Provincial Health Minister Jerome Kennedy pledged up to $320,000—more if required—for local neurologists to examine patients in province before and after they travel undergo the treatment (at their own expense). The province joins Saskatchewan in allocating research money to the controversial treatment pioneered by Italian doctor Paolo Zamboni. The government made the announcement while hosting the country’s provincial and territorial health ministers for their annual meeting. Earlier this month, the federal government announced it would not fund pan-Canadian clinical trials into the procedure.

Vancouver Sun

151-151

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 2:07 PM - 0 Comments

Malcolm Allen has apparently decided to vote against C-391, which puts our unofficial count back to a tie.

The last NDP MP yet to comment is Niki Ashton. Carol Hughes has said she will not vote in favour of a Liberal motion to scrap C-391, but has not committed to voting one way or another should C-391 come to a vote on third reading.

'Hollywood Reporter' to become weekly magazine

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 1:58 PM - 0 Comments

The Hollywood Reporter, one of the two oldest and best-known trade publications in the entertainment industry, has announced its intention to switch from a daily newspaper to a weekly magazine. Starting next month, the Reporter will drop the five-times-a-week format it has used since its inception in 1930, and instead bring out a “glossy, large-format weekly magazine.” Subscribers will get a daily edition in PDF form to replace the print version. The Reporter, like its’ competitor Variety, has been hurt by the decline in entertainment-business advertising in the past year, and needs to find a new business model: with the magazine, they’re hoping to attract advertising from companies unrelated to the entertainment business.

New York Times

For the record

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 1:54 PM - 0 Comments

There is apparently some confusion over Bob Rae’s position on federal funding for a hockey arena in Quebec City, so here apparently is his position.

I urged caution. I never spoke to Sun media. I said Harper needed to understand that this is not a “one off” decision. You can’t just dole out money to a commercial arena in Quebec without understanding the implications for the rest of the country.

Liberal MPs Keith Martin and Joyce Murray apparently oppose funding. Marc Garneau has reportedly said the Liberals support the funding.

Wedding bells for Prince William by 2012?

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 1:53 PM - 0 Comments

Kate Middleton and Prince William are reportedly planning a 2012 wedding, so that William is wed before his 30th birthday in June of that year. According to News of the World, the couple want their wedding day when the world’s spotlight is on London—for the Queen’s diamond jubilee in June and the Olympic Games in late July. The 28-year-old William met Ms. Middleton, also 28, at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and have dated for eight years including two brief splits. A senior insider said: “William and Kate are aware a royal wedding followed by the jubilee celebrations and the Olympics will really put Britain on the map again.”

Calgary Herald

Woman on trial after shooting husband, mistaking him for bear

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 1:48 PM - 0 Comments

A woman is on trial for killing her husband because she mistook him for a bear. Mary Beth Harshbarger of Pennsylvania says she thought she was firing a black bear in the woods during a hunting trip but instead hit her husband. When a local guide, Lambert Greene, found Mark Harshbarger laying face down on the ground covered in blood with no signs of life, he told Mary Beth that her husband was dead, and she became “hysterical.” She currently faces one count of criminal negligence causing death in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador and a penalty of four years to life in prison.

Toronto Star

Mortgage rates could threaten recovery: OECD

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 12:26 PM - 0 Comments

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says Canadians who rushed to take advantage of low interest rates during the recession to purchase homes and other big ticket items could find themselves squeezed by “any future adverse shocks” now that the country’s economic growth is expected to slow. In its annual economic report, the agency warned that household debt levels need to come down and that the country’s hot housing market should be cooled. The Bank of Canada is already moving to make borrowing more expensive by hiking interest rates—an outcome that could make life more difficult for those who over-extended themselves by taking on hefty mortgages. “Housing looks overpriced on the basis of price-to-rent and price-to-income measures,” the report said.

CBC News

Canadian military casts doubt over heroin smuggling reports

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 12:17 PM - 0 Comments

The Canadian military doesn’t plan to investigate allegations Canadian soldiers smuggled heroin out of Afghanistan. The smuggling reports appeared over the weekend in Britain’s Sunday Times and the BBC, claiming British and Canadian soldiers were shipping heroin out of Afghanistan aboard military aircraft. Canadian military sources say a thorough check with officials on the ground at Kandahar Air Field and through the chain of command showed no evidence of smuggling and that the allegations wouldn’t be further examined. For their part, British officials called the reports “unsubstantiated,” but added they had “already tightened our existing procedures both in Afghanistan and in the U.K., including through increasing the use of trained sniffer dogs.”

CBC News

BBC News

Message control

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 11:44 AM - 0 Comments

On the same day it’s reported that government scientists can’t talk about ancient floods without first submitting an application and receiving written approval, Steve Blaney claims he and his fellow Quebec Conservative MPs donned Nordiques’ jerseys unbeknownst to the Prime Minister’s Office.

“It was a little surprise,” he said.

How to get adult kids out of the house

By Julia McKinnell - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 11:16 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images/ iStock/ Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

If your adult child is still hanging around the house jobless after graduating, you’re not alone in feeling frustrated. But here’s a tale of hope from psychologist Brad Sachs, taken from his new book Emptying the Nest: Launching Your Young Adult Child Toward Success. Years ago, Sachs treated a young man he calls Richie, who performed abysmally at school. “How he ultimately graduated, I will never know.” Richie’s only interests were video games and electric guitar. After high school, he lived with his parents, unemployed. “He started a rock band but couldn’t get it off the ground, possibly because the band members were smoking too much pot,” writes Sachs.

Richie was 20 when his parents contacted Sachs, who “helped Richie understand how his behaviour was actually eliciting the parental nagging he so detested, and helped the parents to see that many of their efforts to motivate him, despite being well-intentioned, were backfiring.” A few years back, Sachs heard from Richie, who emailed: “I wanted to happily let you know I am now a millionaire.” Turns out Richie found a way to harness his passion for video games and guitar. He went on to be one of the designers of the video game Guitar Hero.

Continue…

Brad Pitt as Barney? It was Mordecai Richler's pipe dream

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 11:03 AM - 0 Comments

Norman Jewison wanted Dustin Hoffman (right) as Barney. The role finally went to Paul Giamatti, and Hoffman plays his dad

Ran into Norman Jewison at Hotel le Germain, at a swish champagne reception for Saturday night’s TIFF premiere of L‘Amour Fou, the Yves St. Laurent documentary. I happened to mention I’d seen Barney’s Version, telling him that after all these years, producer Robert Lantos has finally got it right. Then I remembered that Jewison was one of the original directors Lantos had tapped to make the movie. And Norman, the master raconteur, began to regale me with stories of what happened to his version of the Mordecai Richler novel when he had a run at it about a decade ago.

“Mordecai wanted Brad Pitt to play Barney,” he told me.

“You’ve got to be joking.”

“No, he was serious. Mordecai wanted Brad Pitt!”

The veteran Canadian filmmaker went on to explain that Richler had envisioned a movie that would focus on the young Barney Panofsky, the bohemian libertine in Paris. Jewison says he was more interested in the older Barney, and his final romance with his third wife, Miriam. He says he wanted to cast Dustin Hoffman as Barney—Hoffman ended up playing Barney’s dad in the movie that finally got made years later.

“I always thought Dustin Hoffman was the only actor who could play Barney,” says Jewison, adding that he tried to talk Hoffman into the role but the actor didn’t find the story compelling enough.  (At this point, Jewison goes into a lovely imitation of Dustin Hoffman hemming and hawing).

Back then, the director explained, there wasn’t a script. Before his death, in 2001, Richler was working on a script for Lantos. But Jewison says he tried to persuade him to give it up, telling him he was a novelist, not a screenwriter, and that he should step down and “get a really good technician to write the movie and give it some structure.” But Lantos stood by Richler, says Jewison, who eventually moved on to another project.

Anyway, that’s Norman’s version; I’m sure Lantos has his own. After Richler’s death, the producer burned through a string of screenwriters, including an Oscar winner. Lantos chased the riddle of filming the novel with the persistence of a  detective trying to solve a cold case, and the passion of Barney pursuing the love of his life. In the end, two relatively unknown Canadian talents—Montreal writer Michael Konyves and Toronto-born director Richard J. Lewis—cracked the adaptation and brought it to the screen, with splendid results.

The irony in all of this is that when Lantos met Dustin Hoffman to coax him into playing Barney’s dad, Hoffman’s initial reaction was that he loved the script but he should play Barney, although he knew he was kidding himself, and that by then he was too old. (He’s 73.)

Barney’s Version, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, had a gala North American premiere at TIFF last night. For more on the making of the film, read my story in Maclean’s: Barney, unbound. And I’ll get to hear Lantos’s side of the story first hand, when I interview him onstage at an event staged by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television on the 40th floor of the Royal Bank tower on Thurs. Sept. 16.

UPDATE: For Robert Lantos’ version of these events go here.

In Europe, downturn may boost cancer rates

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 10:51 AM - 0 Comments

The financial crisis will probably hamper cancer prevention efforts in Europe, according to a new study in the European Journal of Cancer, since it will increase exposure to risk factors due to changes in work and lifestyle. As budgets are cut, lifestyles change and employees take safety shortcuts, Reuters reports, cancer rates are expected to rise. “Private companies and governments tend to take shortcuts in occupational safety controls during periods of economic hardship,” Jose Martin-Moreno, a public health and preventative medicine specialist at Spain’s Valencia University, told the news agency. He found that recessions can impact a range of factors, like smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, exercise, drug research and occupational risk.

Reuters

Liberation therapy for MS patients still locked away

By Anne Kingston - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 10:44 AM - 0 Comments

Beatrice de Gea/The New York Times

UPDATE: On September 13, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador kicked off its role hosting the annual meeting of the country’s provincial and territorial health ministers by announcing it will fund “observational studies” to investigate the efficacy of the “liberation” treatment that restores blood flow in the neck and chest veins of multiple sclerosis patients. Newfoundland and Labrador Health Minister Jerome Kennedy pledged $320,000—and more if required—for in-province neurologists to examine MS patients before and after they travel outside the country at their own expense for CCSVI treatment. The announcement offers a defiant response to Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq’s Sept. 1 announcement, based on the recommendations of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, that the federal government will not fund pan-Canadian clinical trials into the treatment. It also portends a looming federal-provincial showdown on the controversial issue. In July, Saskatchewan, the province with the the highest per capita incidence of MS, announced it will fund clinical trials into the treatment.

–

On Aug. 26, a panel of 23 “medical specialists” and three “observers” gathered in the Ottawa offices of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the federal agency that distributes some $1 billion annually for health research. The eight-hour meeting yielded the unanimous decision that it would be “premature” for the federal government to fund clinical trials for a controversial multiple sclerosis treatment pioneered by Italian doctor Paolo Zamboni, formerly a vascular surgeon. Six days later, federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced that her government would accept the CIHR’s recommendation, calling it “the most prudent course of action at this time,” citing concern for patients’ safety.

Exactly what happened in the CIHR’s offices at 160 Elgin Street appears destined to stay in 160 Elgin Street. No written minutes or audio recording of the meeting are available. A spokesperson for Dan Florizone, Saskatchewan’s deputy minister of health, who was an “observer,” said Florizone is “not allowed” to speak about the meeting. (Maclean’s contacted several panel members, all of whom declined comment.)

Continue…

Michael Ignatieff plots his revenge

By Peter C. Newman - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 10:44 AM - 0 Comments

Andy Clark/Reuters

Canada’s summer culture cannot be defined by trying to guess how many angels dance on Margaret Atwood’s head. It is best caught at bake sales, corn roasts, strawberry festivals, and the hootenannies where country singers search for their humanity—while their listeners catch its echoes deep inside themselves.

That was the captivating subtext the cross-country marathon Michael Ignatieff undertook this summer, hunkered down in a bus that took him and his cavalcade to more than 100 waypoints (and 140 events)—the places that the members of his brain trust (both of them) categorized as winnable seats in the general election expected this fall.

It was a gamble: would the candidate find his groove—or stumble into irrelevancy? When I briefly joined the tour I found the Liberal leader in the best frame of mind since he left his Harvard sinecure to assay the black arts of Canadian politics. He’s still not a natural in that quagmire of dashed expectations. But he has lost his amateur status and was at ease with himself and with the growing crowds that greeted him.

Continue…

Stress hormone linked to heart disease

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

In a six-year study, Dutch researchers found that people with high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, had a five-fold risk of death from cardiovascular disease, the BBC reports. The body produces cortisol to help itself recover from stress and regain stability, but at high levels it’s been linked to the risk factors for cardiovascular disease, like metabolic syndrome (symptoms include obesity and high blood pressure) and atherosclerosis (when fatty deposits build up in the arteries). In this study, researchers studied 860 people over age 65 and measured cortisol levels in their urine. The third of the subjects with highest cortisol had a five-fold increased risk of dying of cardiovascular disease, they found.

Reuters