A house made entirely of Lego

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Steve Parsons/PA/ Big Pictures UK/Keystone Press

Opinions may differ on what it takes to think of constructing a full-sized Lego house. On a spectrum running from “genius” to “arrested childhood,” observers might reasonably locate the idea just about anywhere. But as British TV host James May—a man who inspires the same gamut of responses from viewers—demonstrates in his new book, James May’s Lego House, it takes real ingenuity to actually build one. For starters, no planning department in its right bureaucratic mind would give the go-ahead for a dwelling made entirely of the ubiquitous (300 billion worldwide and counting) Danish children’s building blocks. The insurance premiums were not, as might be expected, brutally high, but that’s only because no insurer was willing to take it on at any price. Then there’s the matter of the necessary components: 3.3 million pieces, mostly the standard eight-stud, 32-mm-long brick model, put a strain on the supply chain, not to mention the labour force. And don’t even start on the issue of fashioning a functioning Lego toilet. In short, there were miles to go and endless questions to answer before May could open his Lego door, climb his Lego stairs and go to sleep in his Lego bed, albeit without wearing Lego pyjamas.

The genesis of the project came from the fertile imagination of the 47-year-old May, co-host of the BBC automotive show Top Gear, victor over chef Gordon Ramsay in an infamous animal penis eating contest during a 2007 episode of the foul-mouthed Ramsay’s F-Word TV series, and all-round champion of toys-for-grown-boys. In 2009, May, a passionate evangelist for what he considers “real” toys—the ones from his childhood, as opposed to the virtual toys and games of the video era—created a six-part series called James May’s Toy Stories. After crafting a plastic model of a Second World War Spitfire fighter plane, a Plasticine garden, a Meccano footbridge and a plastic slot-car racing track—all constructed from traditional children’s play kits but made fully life-sized—it was on to the Lego project. (The final episode saw the construction of a 16-km railway from model train materials.)

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So much for 'Chindia'

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

GURINDER OSAN/AP

When Manmohan Singh warned of China’s “new assertiveness” last week, Asia watchers snapped to attention. The normally sage Indian prime minister accused Beijing of seeking to expand its reach in South Asia. With China muscling for resources and geopolitical clout, India, he warned, had better take heed. The timing of the rare public rebuke was especially provocative, as it came hot on the heels of a series of diplomatic flare-ups between the two giants. Temperatures on the continent are rising in step with the Asian rivals’ growth.

Last month, China denied a visa to an Indian general on the grounds he was based in disputed Jammu and Kashmir. That was retaliation, experts figure, for India’s earlier denial of a visa to a senior Chinese diplomat. China has, for more than a year, been angering India by refusing to issue normal visas to residents of Indian Kashmir. It is also stoking Indian fears of being encircled by a Chinese infrastructure build-up in northern Pakistan, and Indian Ocean port and rail developments in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Last month, India’s excitable media seized on reports that China has stationed as many as 11,000 troops in northern Pakistan, feeding growing fears of the “Chinese dragon.” For now, a planned defence exchange between the two has been halted at New Delhi’s behest.

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Can separatists be trusted?

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Reuters

For four decades, Basque separatists—known as the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or ETA—have waged a bloody campaign for an independent homeland in northern Spain and southwest France. But now, in a video released to the BBC early this September, they are declaring a ceasefire. The Spanish government remains unconvinced. The last time the ETA declared a ceasefire, in 2006, there was an attack nine months later when rebels killed two people in a car bomb at Madrid airport. Said Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba: “The idea of a truce as a way to open a process of dialogue is dead.”

However, Gerry Adams, an influential terrorist turned peace activist and leader of Ireland’s left-leaning Sinn Féin party, says the ETA’s call for a ceasefire should be taken seriously. Adams says his group has been involved in years of “debate, discussion and strategizing” among the Basque activists that led to the armistice. Writing in the Guardian, Adams said, “Many in the Basque country look to the Irish peace process for inspiration, and much of what has been attempted there in the last decade has been modelled on our experience.” The question is, will the violent-prone ETA ultimately heed Adams’s advice?

Quebec backs off health user fees, but the cost challenge remains

By John Geddes - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 9:07 AM - 0 Comments

News that Quebec has retreated from its daring proposal to impose a user fee for visits to the doctor is bound to be greeted by advocates of market-oriented health reforms as a dispiriting setback, and as a victory by defenders of universal insurance that doesn’t impose direct costs on patients.

The proposal last spring in Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand  budget struck us here at Maclean’s as big enough news that we used it as an entry point for a wider look at how mounting health costs, driven largely by an aging population, must inevitably force provincial governments to seek solutions.

But it was far from clear that user fees were the best option. Anne Doig, the Saskatoon family physician who was then president of the Canadian Medical Association, warned that fees would discourage visits to doctors—ultimately leading to higher costs for delayed treatment.

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'In the interest of accuracy and transparency'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

Previously considered a matter of operational security, the Canadian Forces has now disclosed the number of detainees taken in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2008—as well as how many were transferred and how many were released—and promises to release new numbers, with a 12-month delay, on an annual basis from here on.

As the Canadian Press notes, the percentage of detainees who were released without being transferred steadily increased over the last three years on record.

Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of September 20th, 2010)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

The secret shame of Maclean’s

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 5:52 AM - 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a copy of Emily Murphy’s The Black Candle (1922), the notorious, influential book that first defined drugs as a social problem in Canada, introduced the public to their varieties and effects, and led directly to the addition of marijuana to the Restricted List in 1923. I placed the order after reading the Sept. 3 Seattle Times op-ed by John McKay, the former U.S. attorney who (in connivance with our federal ministry) had Marc Emery extradited and jailed. McKay, forced out of his job because of political controversies and tergiversations you’d need a scorecard to comprehend, is now a professor of law. His editorial was a tub of ordure hurled backwards at his own career: in it, he characterized U.S. marijuana law as a parade of blind idiocies that enriches criminals and gets cops killed unnecessarily.

Having left law enforcement, McKay had the chutzpah to add that prohibition survives partly because “no one in law enforcement is talking about it.” Apparently they like to wait until they have tenure. I’d say his belated gesture of courage deserves something like the reward given to the naval gunner in Victor Hugo’s Quatrevingt-treize who leaves a cannon unsecured below decks and heroically brings it under control. In the book, the commander pins the Cross of St. Louis on the man’s breast—and immediately orders him shot.

One thing that struck me about McKay’s article, though, is how he admits that “our 1930s-era marijuana prohibition was overkill from the beginning”. How much more so was Canada’s? Few states outlawed cannabis as early as Canada did; the pretext was provided by Judge Murphy. It was in a fit of consciousness of original sin that I ordered the book, having written about it years ago. The judge would understand, for we come from the same fanatical Presbyterian stock and dwell upon the same unforgiving spot on the map; and now, as it happens, I have joined the staff of Maclean’s, the organ primarily responsible for promoting moral panic on her behalf back in the day.

The guilt ought to lie heavy upon us, for Murphy’s reflections on “Marijuana—A New Menace” are, as McKay’s remark suggests, nonsense—lurid, racist, sexually pathological, self-contradicting old-lady balderdash that openly pre-empts the whole notion of evidentiary support. “There are plenty of folk,” writes Murphy, “who pretend to themselves that they yield to narcotic enchantment in a desire for research and not for sensual gratification…but, however kindly in judgment, one finds these statements hard to credit, and even if credited, only demonstrates these persons as rascals-manifest.” (Gotta love that hyphen.)

We thus ought to trust other authorities, Murphy suggests: one such is the Chief of Police of Los Angeles, California, who tells her that “Persons using this narcotic smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, are immune to pain, and could be severely injured without having any realization of their condition. While in this condition they become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty…If this drug is indulged in to any great extent, it ends in the untimely death of its addict.” A medical informant adds that the drug is used to induce “hallucinations which are commonly sexual in character among Eastern races.” Murphy, having double-checked this information in the Encyclopedia Britannica, expresses skepticism but does attest that “It is…a peculiarity of hasheesh that its fantasia almost invariably takes Oriental form.”

In summary—says a magistrate who decided the fates of poor and miserable people in my city within the memory of persons still living—”there are three ways out from the regency of this addiction: 1st—Insanity. 2nd—Death. 3rd—Abandonment.” We must beware of judging Murphy by the standards of our own time, of course. She was almost totally unfamiliar with marijuana, so she formed a view of it using the cognitive tools available to her—a strong education, a wide correspondence, and a practical knowledge of the social effects of drugs in general.

But that view was substantially influenced, if not determined, by Murphy’s white-supremacist race-hygiene ideology. And she was not merely typical of her time in that regard: she was an unrelenting extremist, someone who could hardly write twenty consecutive words without expressing fear of Anglo-Celtic “degeneration” or remarking defensively upon “the superiority of the Northmen”. It may be timely to observe that new laws are normally midwived by terrors such as these, and that, in general, we have to live with those laws long after the terrors are dispersed and forgotten.

In time for the vote, as it happens

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 10:17 PM - 0 Comments

We learned via the Star’s Susan Delacourt that MP Scott Simms “has a raw, recent and personal reason for his decision to support the long-gun registry in the Commons today. Simms’ father, Reginald, took his own life with a long gun in June.”

After the revelation, delivered in Wednesday’s in camera caucus meeting, “many MPs were in tears and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was visibly emotional.” In a separate blog post, Delacourt elaborates:

Reportedly Ignatieff choked up when it was time to take the floor again and caucus members lined up to embrace Simms.

It makes all the games and the jeering and the attacks look pretty petty.

Indeed: politics can be such a cynical game. Thank goodness, with emotions running as high as they were, somebody found the strength, and the courage, to leak the story to the Star.

Jackie Burroughs, RIP

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 9:44 PM - 0 Comments

I don’t have time right now for as full a post as her career deserves, but actress Jackie Burroughs has died of cancer at the age of 71.

I will always think of her first as Hetty from Road To Avonlea, because I watched that show regularly for its first couple of seasons, and because she was unforgettably good — it’s not easy to play a character who is essentially good and sympathetic without being “nice,” and she always nailed it from the very first episode: in that episode she was supposed to come off as unlikable at first, and gradually melt, and she played it so that the viewer would dislike her just enough at the beginning, without disliking her so much that we could never like her by the end. And she was playing a character who, I believe, was created for the series (as sort of a Marilla clone) so she had to do it without all that much guidance from the books.

She was so good that she was even memorably creepy — genuinely scary, really — as the voice of the evil book from The Care Bears Movie.

The gun registry vote: a shaken MP, an unsatisfying debate

By John Geddes - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 7:06 PM - 0 Comments

Just before this evening’s vote on the gun registry I ran into Nova Scotia MP Peter Stoffer in the foyer of the House of Commons. He’s usually a jovial, stolid sort of guy—voted most collegial in this year’s Maclean’s survey of MPs. This evening, though, he didn’t look so good.

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Long-gun registry saved

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 6:54 PM - 0 Comments

As projected, the House of Commons has approved a motion of the public safety committee to defeat Bill C-391, by a margin of 153 to 151.

The Liberals and NDP have issued official responses. The Prime Minister said the following to reporters after the vote.

After 15 years, opposition to the long-gun registry is stronger in this country than it has ever been.  With the vote tonight, its abolition is closer than it has ever been.  The people of the regions of this country are never going to accept being treated like criminals and we will continue our efforts until this registry is finally abolished.

The Commons: Iggy’s sharp right hook

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 5:49 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. Michael Ignatieff stood first to express his concern for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador in the wake of hurricane Igor, second to lament for the Finance Minister’s speech the other day.

“Yesterday the Minister of Finance delivered a wild partisan rant,” Mr. Ignatieff. “I assume that the Prime Minister approved this speech because, after all, he makes the rules, but what I wanted to know is whether the Prime Minister understands that this was a classic example of the politics of fear, division, envy and resentment at a time when Canadians need to hear a message of hope and unity.”

There were several bursts of laughter from the government side.

Stephen Harper stood next, first to express his concern for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador in the wake of hurricane Igor, second to half-heartedly dismiss the Liberal leader’s lament.

“As for the government’s economic policy, we are, of course, providing hope and opportunity through the economic action plan,” he ventured, “and stand strongly against the tax and spend policies of the Liberal Party.”

Various Conservatives stood to applaud. Continue…

Commonwealth Games in crisis

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 5:27 PM - 0 Comments

World team officials have given the Commonwealth Games organizers in Delhi 48 hours to address the deplorable standards of their facilities, threatening to pull the athletes out of the event. The ultimatum comes after a section of the ceiling in the weightlifting arena fell down and the athlete’s village was described by Commonwealth Games officials as “filthy” and “unfit for human occupation.” Commonwealth Games president Mike Fennell is due to arrive in Delhi tomorrow to speak with the Indian prime minister about saving the games and sparing India from international embarrassment. On Tuesday, 27 people were injured after a bridge that connected the athletes car park to the main stadium collapsed. Some high profile athletes like Usain Bolt and Sir Chris Hoy have opted out of the Games completely.

Guardian

Lawsuit against Manitoba judge dropped

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 5:24 PM - 0 Comments

Alexander Chapman, the man who alleges he was pressured to have sex with Manitoba judgeLori Douglas has dropped his lawsuit against her. His lawyer, though, told court he’ll go forward with lawsuits against Douglas’s husband, Jack King, and the law firm where the two worked in 2003. Chapman has said that King approached him about having sex with Douglas and shared explicit photos of her. King, through his lawyer, has said he was suffering from depression during that period and that he was acting without his wife’s knowledge. Douglas was appointed to the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench in 2005 and has stepped down from judging duties.

Toronto Star

Jaffer-Gillani relationship exposed

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 4:38 PM - 0 Comments

Newly released documents show Rahim Jaffer and his business partners had been looking for government money for a “green” project, despite the former MP’s assertions during Parliamentary testimony. The documents also add further evidence that the business dealings between Jaffer and Nazim Gillani were far more extensive than Jaffer implied when he told MPs the two had no “synergy.” The documents came from the office of a Commons committee that has been investigating whether Jaffer attempted to use his contacts in the Harper government to get money for large-scale environmental projects. Jaffer, who is not a registered lobbyist, has denied wrongdoing and said he did not lobby his former colleagues, but instead that he was seeking information as director of his alternative energy technologies consulting firm, Green Power Generation Corp.

Toronto Star

With an hour and a fifteen minutes to go

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 4:30 PM - 0 Comments

Messrs Ignatieff and Layton are promising that all of their respective sides will be in attendance for the vote on C-391 that is now expected to take place at about 5:45pm. Independent MP Andre Arthur stood before QP and informed the House that he remained opposed to the long-gun registry. Liberal MP Scott Simms, who had been the subject of some speculation this morning, is expected to vote against C-391. Postmedia’s Janice Tibbetts has the NDP’s Niki Ashton still in favour of C-391.

If all that holds true, the committee report to be voted on tonight will be approved by a count of 153-151, thus defeating Bill C-391 and preserving the long-gun registry.

Why oppose registering guns but support licencing their owners?

By John Geddes - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 3:12 PM - 0 Comments

I’ve just been listening to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews responding to opposition MPs in Question Period on the gun registry. Toews repeatedly stressed that even though Conservatives want to scrap the long-gun registry, they continue to support licencing gun owners and registering restricted weapons, such as handguns. Why is registering rifles and shotguns unacceptable, but those other aspects of the firearms regulatory system are just fine? Toews objects to the long-gun registry on grounds that “criminals don’t register their guns.” But the bad guys don’t apply for licences or register handguns either. So why the inconsistent approach?

Large Hadron Collider may have replicated Big Bang

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 1:39 PM - 0 Comments

The Large Hadron Collider may have recreated the matter that existed in the earliest moments of the universe, on a miniature level, according to a new scientific paper published in the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Located on the Swiss-French border, unusual readings produced by the $10 billion machine’s high-energy proton collisions might replicate the “hot dense matter” that existed microseconds after the Big Bang, the Associated Press reports.

Toronto Star

The air was electric

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 1:33 PM - 0 Comments

Don Martin reports on the reaction of those in the Finance Minister’s immediate vicinity yesterday.

Wave after wave of pointless and misleading provocation gushed from his podium before a Canadian Club audience which, except for the Conservative cheerleaders among them, appeared unimpressed by his fear-and-loathing diatribe. Eyes were openly rolling, whispers were exchanged under furrowed brows, groans could be heard when Mr. Flaherty’s script soared over-the-top, which was often.

RIM to release tablet to rival iPad

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 1:11 PM - 0 Comments

According to the Wall Street Journal, RIM may be unveiling a new tablet computer and a new operating system at a developers’ conference in San Francisco next week. The tablet is set to take Apple’s iPad head on. Its name is rumoured to be BlackPad and the device will have a seven-inch touch screen, a camera, and bluetooth and broadband connections (though only through another BlackBerry smartphone). Instead of the recently revamped BlackBerry 6 platform, the BlackPad will use a completely new operating system. RIM has declined to comment on the rumours.

Wall Street Journal

TV Premiere Week: Wednesday

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

I’m going to use a different format for today’s rundown, because ABC’s Wednesday night block really needs to be discussed as a block. On the Canadian TV front, I was rightly chastised for failing to mention that Shaun Majumder is a regular on Detroit 187, and that tonight’s season premieres include Dragon’s Den and The Tudors. Also, Diane at TV-Eh.com has had some great pieces and links on the new TMN/HBO Canada show Call Me Fitz with Jason Priestly, a very enjoyable entry in the “dark comedy about a dysfunctional anti-hero” sweepstakes. As you might expect, Priestley is very happy to be playing the guy who, for once, isn’t preaching at all the other characters.

NBC
8:00 Undercovers (premiere)
9:00 Law & Order: Sports Utility Vehicle Special Victims Unit

Undercovers is one of NBC’s big hopes, being a J.J. Abrams series. The fact that it stars a black couple in parts that aren’t defined by race is also refreshing in this day and age. Because this is basically a light spy show, or seems that way from the pilot, there are two alternate worries about where it might go. James Poniewozik sums up one of the views, that this is a rather unambitious project for Abrams and that the stakes don’t seem Continue…

PM vetoes proposal to detain ‘mass arrival’ asylum seekers

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 12:29 PM - 0 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has vetoed a proposal to add a new category of “mass arrival” asylum seekers who could be held in detention for up to two weeks while authorities run background checks. Harper has ordered ministers and officials to instead seek out the ringleaders of human smuggling. Harper has put the issue in the hands of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, indicating that the problem is seen as a criminal matter, not an immigration matter.

Globe and Mail

A metaphorical cry for help

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 12:28 PM - 0 Comments

One flourish from the Finance Minister’s speech yesterday has since been the cause of particular consternation in the English-speaking world. To wit.

In the global recession, the ship of state has had a difficult voyage. But we can see the harbour lights. And that’s just when a would-be captain and his ragtag crew are trying to storm the bridge. If they seize the wheel, ladies and gentlemen, they’ll have us on the rocks. And that’s not how this voyage should end.

This has been interpreted as a reference to piracy; a suggestion that the opposition parties are like marauding outlaws on the high sea, preparing to board the S.S. Harper and steal all the gold doubloons. These metaphorical pirates would then, either intentionally or drunkenly, crash the ship into the nearest metaphorically rocky shore.

Alternatively, this could be read as a warning of potential mutiny. Continue…

Iranian-Canadian blogger faces execution in Iran

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 11:49 AM - 0 Comments

Iranian prosecutors have reported the death penalty against Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian blogger credited with launching the dissident Persian blogosphere, the Toronto Star reports. Derakhshan lived in Toronto for eight years, and was arrested after returning to Iran in 2008, where was jailed for almost two years before facing trial in June. Family and supporters recently learned he might be executed, which a spokesperson for the campaign to free him, called “Free Hoder,” deemed “horrific.” Hoder was Derakhshan’s online name. From Toronto, he started the website www.hoder.com, modifying blogging software to use Persian characters and inspiring a wave of Persian bloggers. He courted controversy, and in 2006, switched allegiances when he began writing newspaper op-eds defending Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. As a result, when he was jailed, there wasn’t much outcry, but that changed when supporters learned he may be executed.

Toronto Star