Behind that Prentice Wikileak

By Colby Cosh - Friday, December 24, 2010 at 8:06 AM - 90 Comments

Much like “Jurist”, I had to laugh at the headlines conjured up in the wake of the most interesting Wikileaks revelation so far concerning Canada. The Globe, summarizing the leaked minute of a private meeting between former Environment Minister Jim Prentice and U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson, says “[Prentice] threatened to impose new rules on oil sands”. Okayyy, but it’s not really a threat if you make it only in the presence of a third party, is it? We’ve all met fake tough guys who are full of stories about how they really told so-and-so off, but who are really just imagining what they would have said if their spine weren’t made of marmalade. Similarly, the CBC has it “Prentice was ready to curb oilsands”, mysteriously failing to add “…but he didn’t really get around to it, and then one day he just cleaned out his desk and left.”

The actual text of the cable suggests that Prentice’s underlying cynicism did not go unnoticed by its presumptive author—the Ambassador himself. Be honest, now: don’t you cringe a little at this part?

Minister Prentice was clearly making every effort to establish a connection with Ambassador Jacobson, outlining his respect for the Administration and his interest in President Obama’s “back story”, persona, and goals. …Prentice appeared keen to forge a personal relationship with Ambassador Jacobson—to the mutual benefit of both countries.

Obviously the whole point of such face-to-face meetings is to “establish personal connections”, but if your sister came back from a blind date with a report like this you’d say “Gawd, what a schmuck.” Minister Try-Too-Hard got careful about his language, however, when he and the ambassador came to grips with the actual tar-sands issue. At every turn in Jacobson’s account of the conversation, Prentice’s concern is with image, not environmental reality. Just imagine this paragraph without the bits in bold type:

During a discussion of the Ambassador’s travels, Prentice asked for his views on the oil sands. Prentice shared that he was concerned about the media focus on the sands and the possible impact on Canada‘s international reputation. He recalled that he was first concerned about oil sands coverage during a trip to Norway where the public was debating whether or not Norway should be investing public funds (Statoil) in ‘dirty oil’. As Prentice relayed it, the public sentiment in Norway shocked him and has heightened his awareness of the negative consequences to Canada‘s historically ‘green’ standing on the world stage. Calling himself “conservationist-minded”, Prentice said he would step in and regulate the sands if Canada’s image in the world gets further tarnished by negative coverage. …Prentice did say that he felt that Government of Canada’s reaction to the dirty oil label was “too slow” and failed to grasp the magnitude of the situation.

As an honest Albertan, I’ll call your attention to two other things about this paragraph:

(1) In an exchange of views on the oil sands, Prentice apparently doesn’t actually say a word about the oil sands—only the international reaction to them.

(2) “Conservationist” is a conscious alternative to “environmentalist”, not a synonym for it. Conservationists are what we had before we had environmentalists. After years of interviewing Alberta politicians and businessmen and hearing them take this line, I understand “conservationism” to denote an emphasis on the value to human beings of wilderness and biodiversity, as opposed to a worldview that says the grizzly’s needs and priorities (and the lichen’s) are indistinguishable from our own. Since this distinction is rarely discussed, it’s an easy means of equivocation: saying you’re “conservationist-minded” can easily mean you wouldn’t personally want a derrick to spoil the view at your A-frame in Kananaskis.

The punch line of the Wikileak arrives when Prentice disavows any actual intention to act on planned tar sands expansion: “In response to the Ambassador’s inquiry about a possible moratorium on further expansion in the oil sands, Prentice didn’t think it was necessary at this time and felt growth to [3-4 million barrels a day] was sustainable.” And there’s a little dénouement when Prentice again summarizes his goals—as the Environment Minister of the Dominion, mind you—solely in terms of image: “At the end of the day, Prentice wants Canada to be billed as the most environmentally-conscious energy superpower.” One wonders at the need for “billed as” to be present in that sentence.

I’m being unkind to Prentice; I don’t know that I would behave any differently in his place, and I’m certainly, as a matter of core philosophy, on the “conservationist” side of the conservationist/environmentalist divide. Moreover, he’s right that government was somewhat slow to react to the publicity crisis, though I don’t see why that should be blamed on the federal government rather than Alberta, since Alberta’s so belligerent about its responsibility for and ownership of its oil.

But Prentice has long been regarded, in the downtown-Toronto conventional wisdom, as a lone Nice Moderate who struggled to fit in with a pack of faith-crazed ideologues. Maybe people should consider the possibility that he really was, after all, a foam-jowled Calgary wolf—one who just happened to be particularly expert at wearing sheep’s clothing. The rap on this federal government, the common theme of the attacks on it, is that it doesn’t respect evidence in decision-making. Those who still see Prentice as a potential alternative leader will, I think, be precisely those who overlook his obsessive concern with “labels” and “standing” and “reputation”. Does he sound, in the cable, like a data-driven Environment Minister? Does it sound like he was much concerned with what the oil sands are doing—or not doing—to the watershed, the wildlife, the people downstream, and the climate?

I ask because if Canadian oil sands policy is going to be determined exclusively by the squealings of people who have seen ugly photographs of them but don’t otherwise know anything about them…well, the sands and the people who make a living from them are going to lose that fight. If your position is “Shut ‘em down”, then an emotional, esthetics-based debate is easy for you to win. There is a policy case, weak or strong, to be made on behalf of the tar sands; it would be a lot harder to argue that they make the world prettier or the landscape pleasanter or the animals happier.

Don Richard Grant | 1982-2010

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 5 Comments

Illustration by Juliana Neufeld

Don Richard Grant was born in Scarborough, Ont., on Nov. 30, 1982, during a family vacation. After his birth, his parents returned to their native Trinidad and Tobago, where Don’s father, Donald Phillips, was killed in a motorcycle crash. In 1986, Don’s mother Rosemarie married Leon Grant, whose name Don assumed, and later had three more children: Christon, Marika and Leah. The family travelled back and forth between Canada and the Caribbean, and music was the constant in Don’s life. Surrounded by all of this “negativity, the real-life experiences faced by [him],” his website would later read, he poured himself into writing—poetry and songs—at an early age, and performed at talent shows or for schoolmates during lunch.

At age 18, Don settled in Toronto to study business at York University. He continued writing music, and recorded his first track in 2002. Soon, he was known around the city by his rapper name “Don Kartel.” He did not finish his degree; his passion for music took over. “He was always in and out of the studio,” says Peter Makarewicz, a friend. “He never had his mind going the wrong way, always had it going down a straight path.”

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Flaherty: new direction for Canada's budget

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 4:28 PM - 128 Comments

Facing ongoing global financial woes, Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has been forced to rethink plans to use his next budget to put an end to stimulus spending. With the country’s record federal budget deficit ($100 billion-plus over two years), Flaherty had said for more than a year that he would shut off the stimulus spending tap as of March 31. But now, Flaherty says the restraint strategy conflicts with Canadians’ worries about the weakness of the recovery. “What I’m hearing really sounds a lot to me like cautious restraint,” he said. “Nothing draconian is being asked for. People
do want us to move toward a balanced budget, but they do not want us to do that at the expense of jobs and growth and the economy.” Flaherty is now describing the upcoming budget in February or March as a “pragmatic” set of policies that will balance the need for economic stimulus with the need to begin emphasizing government restraint in Ottawa. The government will also continue Ottawa’s main infrastructure program—the seven-year, $33 billion Building Canada fund.

Toronto Star

The Politics of Bipartisanship

By John Parisella - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 4:19 PM - 30 Comments

Voters in Canada and the United States now both have governments that must share the exercise of power with their opposition. Voters in both countries have increasingly demonstrated a volatility in elections. As party allegiances decrease in number, independent voters become more a factor in choosing governments. In Canada, we are entering our sixth year of minority government. The ruling Conservatives under Stephen Harper must obtain the support of at least one of the three opposition parties to survive in office on critical issues.

In the United States, we are back to the American version of power sharing-divided government. The American voter has chosen this course during the Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and both Bush Administrations. Outside of current dissatisfaction with incumbents, why do Americans seem to prefer divided government?

An acknowledged trait of American government throughout history has been the role played by political bipartisanship. The founding fathers were not proponents of party politics. Their belief was that politicians could come together for the greater good. Yet over the years, political parties have been successful in achieving progress through bipartisanship. Generally speaking, and there are multiple examples, foreign policy is one area where the political parties usually try to find common ground. Civil rights legislation, the defining issue of the last century, was achieved when politicians went beyond the political divide, and produced landmark progress for the civil society. America is so much better for it.

The first two years of the Obama Administration have witnessed a crescendo of polarized debate that has led many learned observers to conclude that the system is becoming dysfunctional. Democrats blame it on Republicans’ obstructionism, and Republicans attribute this to “socialistic” tendencies and rigid ideological positions taken of the Pelosi Democrats. The recent Obama-GOP tax deal may begin to change the politics that has become the “usual” in Washington to something more in line with what voters actually prefer. The deal may have upset the more left leaning Democrats and the incoming Tea Party types, but it conveyed a willingness to compromise on both sides.

On November 2, the American people chose to have a Republican House of Representatives and reduced the Democratic advantage in the Senate. It marked the return of “divided government”, but by calling it divided government, it does not mean the imperative of division. Quite the opposite, the founding fathers carefully designed a “government of the people, for the people and by the people”. The separation of powers, along with the exercise of check and balances, make US government unique and has provided the most stable democracy in the history of mankind. Granted, there can be periods where the politicians may consider local or partisan concerns more important than the overall public good. But history has shown that the system has generally worked more effectively when the bipartisanship and compromise occur.

The November 2 election results have consequences, to coin an Obama phrase. While the new Congress has yet to be sworn in, political realities and economic imperatives have converged in this lame duck session. Having to deal with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, and having to consider extending unemployment benefits to those who have just lost them in early December has created a context for choosing between bipartisanship or congressional gridlock. It seems the President and the current Republican leadership believe the former is a better course.

In the past few days, the spirit of bipartisanship has carried over to DADT, START treaty and 9-11 Responders bill. The American system of government functions best when there is an effort to achieve bipartisanship for the greater good of the electorate. At the end of the day, voters like it and see it as a more effective way to getting results that make the country advance.

The Year in Pictures Gallery: 2010

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

January 2010	Vancouver 2010	March 2010
Oscars 2010	April 2010	May and June 2010
July and August 2010	September and October 2010	November and December

The Year in Ideas

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 3:28 PM - 21 Comments

At some point I decided I could use this tiny corner of the Internet to create the sort of op-ed page I’d like to read—filled with people like Stephen Gordon, Eric Grenier, Alison Loat, Mike Moffatt, Alex Himelfarb, Rob Silver, David Eaves, Taylor Owen, Brian Topp, Bruce Anderson and all the other names that have turned up here these last few years. Smart people—far smarter than I—with smart things to say about serious matters.

These periodic nods to seriousness—as well as my own periodic turns toward the earnest—were probably in response to the realization of just how unseriously everyone else seems to regard the proceedings here (it’s less fun to poke fun when everything is already treated like a joke). And in the same spirit, with tongue at first placed in cheek, I began issuing periodic Idea Alerts. These were attempts to identify those fleeting outbreaks of thought that periodically interrupt the daily dance of jesters. These were, for the most part, legitimately intriguing notions, theories and passing fancies.

Herein, the Idea Alerts that were issued in 2010. No doubt if you could manage to implement them all, you would have a kind of utopia. Or at least fewer plastic bags and better television programming. My favourite remains the suggestion that we randomize seating in the House of Commons. Although an end to political hackery would perhaps result in the greatest benefit to society at large.

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Alberta health officials sound alarm over syphilis outbreak

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 3:26 PM - 29 Comments

Syphilis is spreading fast in Alberta, and the number of reported cases have risen exponentially over the last decade. According to a report by the Alberta Health and Wellness, reported cases of the sexually transmitted infection have risen from two in 1999 to 267 in 2009. “We have a problem,” reads the first headline of the document, titled The Syphilis Outbreak in Alberta. “Alberta continues to experience a sustained outbreak of syphilis which shows no signs of abating,” the report says. The bacterial infection is transmitted through intimate sexual contact, and can be easily treated if detected in its early stages. It frequently has no symptoms, though, and if left untreated, can spread to the brain, heart, blood vessels and bones, and can eventually be fatal. Dr. Martin Lavoie, Alberta’s deputy chief medical officer of health, believes the spread of the infection is partially caused by a growing complacency about safe sex, particularly as people have come to view HIV as a treatable condition rather than a deadly infection.

CBC News

Presidential election in Ivory Coast triggers violence

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 3:21 PM - 1 Comment

According to the United Nations, at least 173 people have died in violence over the disputed Ivory Coast presidential election, and some 90 have been tortured. This violence has stoked fears that the country will return to civil war, which split the country into a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south. Kyung-wha Kang, the UN deputy human rights commissioner, detailed hundreds of arrests and detentions, and cases of torture and mistreatment in the African nation. “Unfortunately it has been impossible to investigate all the allegations of serious human rights violations, including reports of mass graves, due to restrictions on movement by UN personnel,” said Kang. She also shared concerns about how the state media is being controlled by political allies of Laurent Gbagbo. Gbagbo, the incumbant, has refused to step-down from the presidency despite international calls for his ouster—Alassane Ouattara—after the Nov. 28 runoff vote. The international community sees Ouattara as the winner, since Gbagbo won only after his allies threw out half a million ballots from Ouattara strongholds in the north.

Globe and Mail

Handle with care

By Erica Alini - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 2:40 PM - 1 Comment

Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

Chinese buyers’ new-found love for fine wine is sending prices of red and white vintages skyrocketing. Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction, for example, sold $51.4 million worth of wine this year, a fourfold increase on 2009. Overall, higher demand pushed wine prices up five per cent this year—a steeper rise than either oil or gold prices. And French producers have been first in reaping that bonanza thanks to some savvy gambits.

Château Lafite Rothschild, for example, has boosted already strong Asian sales by adding the lucky Chinese character for the number eight on its vintage 2008 bottles. Most recently, though, wealthy Chinese and Taiwanese wine lovers have been snapping up wine bottles equipped with radio ID tags that can reveal whether the wine has been subjected to excessively hot or cold temperatures during storage and shipping. Behind the initiative, dubbed “Five-Star Provenance,” is Bordeaux Winebank CEO Henning Thoresen, who believes the tags explain why over 94 per cent of his wines sold well above pre-sale estimates (and for as much as $72,600 a case) at Sotheby’s latest New York auction. Asia’s deep pockets, it seems, like their fine wine with smart gadgets.

Nearly half of Canadians want an election: poll

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 2:32 PM - 47 Comments

Nearly half of Canadians would like a federal election in 2011, a new Angus Reid/Toronto Star poll has found. Of the 1,000 Canadians surveyed online, 49 per cent said they would not mind an election next year. A majority of them, 58 per cent, are either Liberal Party or New Democratic Party supporters, whereas 43 per cent had voted for the Conservative Party in 2008. Regardless of their political leanings, though, a majority of Canadians (57 per cent) thought an election was likely in the new year, while just over two in ten (2.4 per cent) thought this was unlikely. Nearly half (48 per cent) said they thought the Conservatives would maintain their hold on power.

Angus Reid

Putting the 'mam' in imam

By Erica Alini - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 2:20 PM - 1 Comment

Pierre Bessard/REA/Redux

Communism, which preaches the equality of men and women, has done nothing to redress China’s overweening cultural bias against baby girls, but it does seem to be helping women climb the social ladder in a rather unexpected place—the mosque. China, in fact, is the only country in the world with a tradition of female imams, a phenomenon that predates the advent of the People’s Republic, but which the country’s Communist government is helping to spread.

Women-only mosques and female preachers in China date back to the early 19th century, when they first appeared in the central provinces populated by the Hui, a Chinese Muslim group. Morocco also embraced the idea of female preachers in 2006, but the practice remains controversial in the Muslim world, and among many of China’s own 21 million Muslims. Chinese women’s mosques, though, found a helping hand in the government, which grants licences to practice Islam to both male and female imams through state-controlled bodies such as the Islamic Association of China. This kind of political backing is thought to be helping the spread of female-led mosques in areas of the country where women are still far from centre stage.

Shy, quiet and a born leader

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Take one look at Donald Trump, the bombastic chief executive officer of the Trump Organization—whose famous catchphrase, honed on his reality show The Apprentice, is “You’re fired!”—and a person might think that, in the field of business, only outgoing personality types can reach the top. Introverts (who tend to be a bit more quiet and observant) typically have a harder time rising through the ranks, but a new study shows that these strong, silent types can make great leaders, too. Introverts, it seems, are better at leading more extroverted workers.

In the study, to appear in the Academy of Management Journal, three U.S. professors looked at a national pizza delivery chain, surveying store managers and workers about their personality traits (descriptive terms like “bold,” “talkative,” “reserved,” and others were applied). Then they compared the results to each store’s profitability, finding that introverted store managers earned high profits when their team members were more proactive. Extroverted leaders did best with a more passive team. In a second study, they asked groups of college students to join in a T-shirt folding contest, observing whether leaders were receptive to a suggestion of how to fold faster. Those with a more introverted style were more likely to adopt the faster method.

“It’s good news for introverts,” says Francesca Gino, associate professor at Harvard Business School and one of the authors of the paper, since they “seem to do better than extroverted leaders when they’re dealing with followers that are more proactive.” Introverts, she says, are “more likely to listen to the ideas suggested, and more receptive to them.” It’s a lesson for all leaders, Gino adds, who can adjust management styles according to their team.

Jesus historians get an earful from Maurice Casey

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 57 Comments

The faithful may delight in Casey’s disdain for the revisionist theory that the virgin birth was cooked up to hide Jesus’s illegitimacy | Christian Heeb/laif/Redux; Sebastian Scheiner/AP

Maurice Casey is fed up. The emeritus professor of New Testament language and literature at Britain’s University of Nottingham—a scholar, that is, of the only sources we have for the life and times of Jesus Christ—knows that history is not done in his field like it is in any other. The stakes, and the passions, are simply too high, when those who study the central figure in Western history place him along a spectrum that ranges from God incarnate to mythic creation. What truly disturbs Casey, however, is the way the once vast middle ground in historical Jesus studies is being squeezed, just as it is in many aspects of the increasingly intense faceoff between religion and secularism in modern society.

A resurgence of conservative scholarship on one side, including historians (like Paul Johnson) who accept what Casey considers unbelievable miracles detailed in untrustworthy sources, and revisionism that stretches to outright denial of Jesus’s existence on the other, have led him to pen his own take, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching. It’s less a full-blown biography than a vigorous defence of historical methodology—of the moral necessity of applying the same historical standards to the study of Jesus as we apply to, say, Julius Caesar. Casey’s magnum opus offers, for those who accept his reasoning, an impressive array of facts about Jesus Christ, and a slashing attack on almost everyone to the left or right of him.

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Hot, fresh, and delivered straight to your door

By Sarah Elton - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

Seema Pabari, president of Toronto’s Tiffinday, delivers the hot lunches herself. Most of her clients are young, white males in the finance and IT industries. | Photography Sandy Nicholson

Tiffin arrived just before lunch time in a Honda Fit. The three containers, packed in a thermal bag, were still warm to the touch. There was hot aloo gobi (a potato and cauliflower curry sprinkled with fresh coriander), a flatbread called paratha, and two cardamom-coconut pancakes. All the dishes looked homemade, but the food came from Tiffinday, a business serving hot prepared lunches in those distinctive tiffin boxes to hungry people in Toronto’s downtown.

The tiffin carrier, a stainless-steel stackable lunch container that is used all over India, has made the trip around the globe and is now growing in popularity in this country—though with a Canadian twist. “It’s a vertical version of a horizontal meal,” said Krishnendu Ray, an assistant professor of food studies at New York University, who grew up in India. In high school, he recalls, he’d trade his egg salad sandwich for his friend’s tiffin. “You have the dahl, the rice and the curry all served simultaneously,” he said. These days in Vancouver, you can pick up a two-tier stainless-steel tiffin, full with curry, for $12 at the Granville Island food court take-away Curry 2U, and bring it back another day for a $5.99 refill. In Calgary, Tiffin Curry and Roti House offers a thermal insulated tiffin box (it can get cold in Calgary) that they fill with two curries and two rice pulaos. They will even deliver them to boardroom lunches. In addition to Tiffinday’s new venture in Toronto, there are plenty of home-based businesses in that city’s suburbs, such as Komal Shah’s home-cooked Gujarati-style food that her customer base of about 100 picks up in one of the stainless steel containers. “Some people have no time for cooking,” she said, explaining the popularity of her service.

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Absolutely everything under the sun

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 1 Comment

Billions of years from now, the sun will cool to ‘a dark cinder,’ but before that, it will get ‘hot enough to start melting our planet,’ writes Richard Cohen | EPA/Keystone Press

CHASING THE SUN: THE EPIC STORY OF THE STAR THAT GIVES US LIFE
Richard Cohen

When he set out to write about the sun, Richard Cohen had to learn nearly all the science from scratch, “as my high school was run by Benedictine monks who had little time for such disciplines.” In over seven years of exhaustive research, he did his homework—but Chasing the Sun goes way beyond solar science to explore the myths, the art, and the scientific discoveries that have helped us understand “the star that gives us life.”

Early societies personified the sun: in a fable from Aesop, the sun plans to marry, causing the animal kingdom to fret that “half a dozen little suns” could scorch the land. (This teaches us that “one can have too much of a good thing.”) By 1952, when the hydrogen bomb went off, “for a split second,” Cohen writes, “an energy that had existed only at the center of the Sun was unleashed by man on Earth.” Today, the brightest sustained light on our planet is the Sky Beam at the Luxor Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

As he discusses subjects like sunbathing, timekeeping, and the endless solar references in art, literature, music and politics, one begins to wonder when Cohen will run out of topics—so much is touched by the sun. Or not: some creatures, the so-called “dark biosphere,” manage to eke out a living deep under the ocean. For example, the angler fish, which hunts for food up to 5,000 feet below, makes its own “sunlight,” attracting prey with a bioluminescent glow.

One day, the sun will die—but not before getting “hot enough to start melting our planet,” Cohen writes. The sun will then cool to “a dark cinder of degenerate matter.” But that’s billions of years away. Maybe we will have some good spaceships by then.
- KATE LUNAU

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Mugabe's new tenant farmers

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 4 Comments

Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images

Renting land to prop up a dictatorship: that’s how some see the return of a new group of about 120 white farmers to Zimbabwe’s contested agricultural land, where they are leasing plots from supporters of President Robert Mugabe. “These farmers handed Mr. Mugabe victory,” former Zimbabwe Tobacco Association president Andy Ferreira told London’s Telegraph newspaper.

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Crash goes the Colosseum

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 2 Comments

Ciro De Luca/Reuters; Andrew Medichini/AP

Italy’s cultural heritage is under threat like never before. In November, two collapses at the archaeological site of Pompeii sent off alarm bells among experts, who see the endangered wonder, a UNESCO world heritage site, as a symbol for the decay eating away at virtually every historic piece of Italy. The 2,000-year-old frescoed House of Gladiators was the first to collapse, followed weeks later by a 12-m wall protecting the House of the Moralist.

While Culture Minister Sandro Bondi cautioned against “useless alarmism,” experts worry their worst fears are coming true. “Negligence and a lack of the most basic maintenance is causing irreversible damage to our architectural patrimony,” explains Tsao Cevoli, head of the National Archaeological Association. A culture ministry official confirmed there hasn’t been any systemic maintenance at Pompeii in the last half-century.

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Are women opting for C-sections more frequently?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 1:19 PM - 1 Comment

Argentinian researchers have conducted the first meta-analysis of women’s preferences when it comes to childbirth, Reuters reports. Analyzing data on nearly 20,000 women from around the world, they found that cesarean section rates are rising in the developed world—but not necessarily because women are asking them. A rise in C-sections in wealthier countries has been linked to women’s requests for it, but in fact, only 15.6 per cent of women in the analysis said they would rather have a C-section than a vaginal delivery. Among those who’d had one in the past, 29 per cent said they’d prefer to have their next delivery by C-section, versus 10 per cent who hadn’t. “Although cesarean section on demand has been suggested as a relevant factor for the increasing cesarean section rates, it seems unlikely that this explains the high cesarean section rates in some countries and regions,” they wrote in BJOG, the journal of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Reuters

The burning question

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 93 Comments

During the trial, Ottawa will have the 24-hour shift judged on objective merits, with specific performance targets, including response times and absenteeism | Frank Gunn/CP; Angela Deluce/CP

On Jan. 1, Ottawa firefighters will begin a trial of a new schedule that has them taking 24-hour shifts, working just seven days of every 28. If the change becomes permanent, as is expected, Ottawa will join other Eastern Canadian cities on the 24-hour system; it’s used in Toronto, Mississauga, Ont., Kingston, Ont., Windsor, Ont., London, Ont., Fredericton, and Halifax. Out west, however, the “10-14” schedule many of these fire departments have abandoned remains the norm: Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, and Winnipeg are all still on it.

The debate between the 24-hour and 10-14 systems isn’t just labour-relations minutiae. A firefighter’s shift schedule determines everything about the texture of his life; it defines where he can live, when he sees his family, and what kind of work he can do on the side to supplement his income. Under the 10-14 system, a typical 28-day period for a firefighter includes seven 10-hour daytime shifts and seven 14-hour night shifts. The 24-hour system breaks up the same amount of work into bigger chunks.

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North Korea says it's ready for "sacred war" with south

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 12:53 PM - 12 Comments

Tensions are escalating between North and South Korea, as the North has accused South Korea of preparing for war by holding live-fire exercises near the border of the two countries, using tanks, helicopters and fighter planes – one of the largest drills in South Korea’s history, the BBC reports. Last month, North Korea shelled a Southern island and killed four people, which prompted South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to promise immediate retaliation to any further attack. Observers worry one side might feel compelled to act on these threats. The North has called Seoul’s military drills “warmongering.” “The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK are getting fully prepared to launch a sacred war of justice of Korean style based on the nuclear deterrent at anytime necessary to cope with the enemies’ actions deliberately pushing the situation to the brink of a war,” North Korean armed forces minister Kim Yong-chun said.

BBC News

Recovery? You bet.

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 32 Comments

Over the Thanksgiving weekend in the United States, retailers experienced their best sales gains in four years, surprising many analysts | Adam Hunger/Reuters

With the flood of facts and figures that rush by every day, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when it comes to the American economic machine. For every batch of positive news confirming a recovery, it takes just one bad jobs report or trigger-happy dictator in North Korea to plunge us back into doom and gloom. But Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, and someone who studied recessions and recoveries for two decades, has a message for anyone with an interest in seeing the U.S. economy get back on its feet. “The revival is right in front of us,” he says. “Overall economic growth is about to accelerate.”

Signs of America’s resurgence abound. Shoppers surprised analysts during the Thanksgiving weekend—they helped drive retailers to their best sales gains in four years. They’ve also begun to indulge again, driving strong revenues at companies like Starbucks and cosmetics giant Estée Lauder. At the same time, manufacturers have enjoyed a resurgence of late. Sales and exports are both up. It’s all helped boost America’s top line. In November, third-quarter GDP was revised up to 2.5 per cent from two per cent—the fastest growth rate the U.S. has seen since the end of 2006.

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Year in pictures – July & August

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Year in pictures – April

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Year in pictures – November & December

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments