Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 10 Comments

Justice of sorts
In a move that must have brought some satisfaction to victims’ families, Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person ever convicted in the Air India bombing, was slapped with Canada’s longest-ever perjury sentence. Reyat, charged in 2001 with murder for his role in the bombing, had struck a plea on a promise to testify truthfully at the trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri. Under oath, however, everything changed. After Reyat’s claims to not know or remember anything about the plot, the trial ended in a double acquittal. Gary Bass, B.C.’s top Mountie, called Reyat’s perjury the “most despicable kind.” Reyat, in a weaselly apology ahead of sentencing, took no responsibility for his role in the explosions: “No words in any language can ever bring closure to those who have lost loved ones in the tragedy,” he said. The apparent ploy for a lighter punishment brought a scoff from the judge, who sentenced him to nine years: “While he refuses to speak or tell the truth about what he knows, his expressions of remorse ring hollow indeed,” said B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan.

Sarah Ferguson (Kira Curtis/NNSL)

One kind of wilderness to another
Yellowknife coffeshop Javaroma played host to an unlikely guest last week. Sarah, duchess of York, Prince Andrew‘s perpetually embarrassing ex-wife, visited Canada’s North to film Finding Sarah, her forthcoming reality series for Oprah Winfrey‘s new network. While in the N.W.T., she spent a night in a tent on Great Slave Lake for adventure, she told the Northern News Service, and to experience the cold as northerners do. Fergie was caught last year accepting a US$40,000 advance (on an $800,000 payment) in exchange for access to her ex. Heavy hitters like Dr. Phil McGraw and Suze Orman will try to set her on the straight and narrow—no small task.

Jay-Z, look out
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, in an effort to show how down he is with the youth, is rapping his way to another term in office. In a music video gone viral, Museveni, who was first elected in 1986, stiffly drops beats from the presidential podium, barely moving, as he raps about trading cows for wives and harvesting maize. Ugandans—90 per cent of whom are under 40—love it. Museveni’s rap, now a popular ring tone, is a hit in bars, parties and events.

Two weddings and a funeral
Cheatin’ presidential candidate John Edwards, who buried ex-wife Elizabeth less than a month ago, has—hold your stomachs—proposed to Rielle Hunter, if you believe the National Enquirer, which broke the story of their affair and love child. Thankfully, a less tawdry proposal is also making news. Groupon regular Dana Burck, it seems, found the deal of a lifetime on the money-saving site. After clicking on “a surprise for a Dana from a Greg,” the 24-year-old Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader found a coupon for a marriage proposal. She turned around to find her boyfriend, Ohio engineer Greg Hill, on one knee, ring in hand. Groupon issued the following warning in fine print: “Non-transferable. Either party may develop a snoring problem. One or both participants will not always look like a 20-year-old. Good luck, you kids.”

Jeff Mcintosh/CP

She’s golden
Canada: meet the next Cindy Klassen. By winning gold in all four finals she raced at the Canadian speed-skating championships last weekend, Christine Nesbitt clinched a spot at both the World Sprint and World Allround Championships. The quadruple gold—in everything from the 500-m to the 3,000-m—also sets the stage for what may become a flawless 2011 season for the Vancouver gold medallist, who dominated the World Cup circuit last fall. On her final race of the weekend, with 2½ laps to go on the gruelling 3,000-m, Nesbitt admitted she “started to count the corners I had left—I couldn’t wait for it to be over!”

Reuters

The friends of my enemy are…
After rejecting Larry Palmer, the U.S. nominee for ambassador to Venezuela for linking Caracas to Colombian drug-trafficking rebels, Hugo Chávez helpfully issued a backup list: “I hope they name Oliver Stone,” the Venezuelan president said, suggesting he’d be equally happy with Sean Penn, Noam Chomsky or Bill Clinton. The U.S. State Department was unmoved. “We appreciate President Chávez’s suggestions,” said spokesman Philip Crowley, “but the fact is we are not looking for another candidate.”

Out of Africa, with any luck
A Vancouver mom is fighting to keep her three daughters in Canada, to protect them from being circumcised in their native Nigeria. Former Nigerian TV host Naomi Koin told Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board her harrowing story of being circumcised herself, unanaesthetized, at 12, and how she’s now doing everything in her power to prevent her daughters—aged 16, 14 and eight—from suffering the same fate. Her husband, a pastor in Houston, is unable to bring his family to the U.S., so they remain in Canada—for now. The IRB ruled last spring that there was insufficient evidence the girls faced danger back home—despite their father’s relatives repeatedly “harassing, threatening” and attempting to force the horrific procedure on the girls, according to Koin’s testimony. Koin appealed, and a federal court ruled that the IRB’s decision was “seriously flawed,” turning the case back to the board.

Leap from faith
“When you don’t agree with an organization that you never chose to join in the first place, the healthiest thing to do is to leave,” Damien Spleeters told Agence France-Presse. He joined a growing number of Belgian Catholics, appalled by rampant sex-abuse scandals and the Church’s conservative stance on birth control and homosexuality, who are demanding to be “de-baptized.” The Church is downplaying the trend, but almost 2,000 in the traditionally Catholic country demanded to be “de-baptized” last year, up from 380 the previous year. Meanwhile, the Church took another hit in a new, tell-all book by famed former Catholic priest Alberto Cutié, who left the faith after his affair with a Miami woman was exposed. Cutié calls the celibacy rule unrealistic. The Church, says the priest once known as Father Oprah, is “misogynistic” and “disconnected.”

MONICA ALMEIDA/The New York Times/REDUX

It’s dirty, but not it that way
No, the Playboy Mansion is not a squalid, urine-soaked prison, says Hugh Hefner, denying allegations in Bunny Tales, a new book by former “playmate” Izabella St. James. The newly minted author, who describes the mansion as a dump with stained mattresses and ratty furniture, all thick with the stench of urine, says nightly curfews are only lifted when playmates accompany Hefner to a club. There, the octogenarian constantly checks his watch to time his Viagra so he can later enjoy sex parties where, she adds, he “lays there like a dead fish.” The 84-year-old Hefner, who she claims plies his “girlfriends” with Quaaludes, recently became engaged to 24-year-old Crystal Harris, a woman young enough to be his great-grand-daughter.

Now a thinking man’s snooki
Speaking of literary debuts, Snooki, Jersey Shore‘s pint-sized “guidette” has delivered a thinly veiled roman à clef about life in Seaside Heights. Although some doubt her intellectual heft (she claims to have read her first book, Dear John, less than a year ago, and routinely gets black-out drunk—”you’re like, ‘What did I do? Why did I wake up in a garbage can?’ “), A Shore Thing helps readers navigate the subtle, unexpected distinctions that separate sluts from whores and fake breasts from real ones, and sets out the mark of a good man: you can “pour a shot of tequila down his belly and slurp it out of his navel without getting splashed in the face.”

Too good to play
Talk of Lionel Messi‘s award for FIFA male player of the year dominated sports pages this week. So what about FIFA’s five-time female player of the year? Marta Vieira da Silva was again awarded the title, as she has every year since since she was 19. The Brazilian phenom, the New York Times reports, though, can’t find a club and can’t earn a living, even though she may be good enough to play men’s pro. Da Silva, who dedicated her award to the struggle for women’s soccer, is vowing to play on.

FAME Pictures/KEYSTONE PRESS

Putting the twit in twitter
Always on the cutting edge, singer Courtney Love is laying claim to the first Twitter lawsuit: she’s being sued by a fashion designer she deemed a “drug-addled prostitute,” and a “nasty, lying, hosebag thief,” on Twitter, during a dispute over payment for clothes. Dawn Simorangkir filed libel charges after Love’s tirade instantly landed in the feeds of her 40,000 or so followers (and countless others). Love’s attorneys are claiming that even if her statements were untrue, her mental state was not “subjectively malicious” enough to justify the defamation lawsuit, according to The Hollywood Reporter—a claim, the Tinseltown paper says, akin to an insanity defence.

This week: Good news/Bad news

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Peter Kramer/AP

GOOD NEWS

Opening books
Liberal senator and accused fraudster Raymond Lavigne claimed more than $30,000 in work-related expenses during a three-month span last year—despite the fact that he is banned from sitting in the upper chamber while his criminal trial unfolds. Sadly, his hefty tab is hardly shocking. (This is the same senator, after all, who famously sent a staffer to chop down trees at his cottage.) The good news? Finally, after years of pushback, every senator’s spending habits are now posted online. Though long overdue, such transparency is the only way to ensure the next Raymond Lavigne does his own gardening.

An injection of truth
In 1998, a British researcher published a bogus study that remains one of the biggest myths of modern medicine: that autism is somehow linked to childhood vaccines. Andrew Wakefield’s work has been repeatedly discredited, but countless parents—fearful of a side effect that doesn’t exist—still choose not to immunize their kids against measles, mumps and rubella. This week, the British Medical Journal published yet another scathing rebuke, describing the doctor’s original study as “an elaborate fraud.” Case closed.

Up in smoke
Suddenly, the air seems fresher. According to a new report released this week by Citigroup, smoking is in such rapid decline around the world that cigarettes will “virtually disappear” by 2050. The end could come even quicker in Cambridge, Mass., where city council is pondering an outdoor smoking ban in parks and other public places. And here at home, graphic new warning labels—including the photo of a dying lung cancer victim—already seem to be working. A new poll says one-third of smokers believe the packages will help them quit.

Drill chill
Fluoride levels in the U.S. water supply will be reduced after a new study that found kids are getting too much of the cavity-fighting mineral due, in part, to improved brushing habits. Better still is the news that British scientists have developed a way to eliminate the skin-crawling whine of a dentist’s drill—and replace it with relaxing music. Now if they could only do something about the sound of fingers on a blackboard.

Reuters

BAD NEWS

Bloody streets
Mexico’s violent drug war shows no signs of abating. In sunny Acapulco, the two-day death toll was 31, including the grisly discovery of the decapitated corpses of 15 young men. Authorities are telling tourists not to worry because the violence is “targeted.” Hardly. At least the news is better in another drug hot spot, Brazil, where police have cleared out three gang strongholds in Rio de Janeiro. The military-style operations are part of a plan to take back no-go areas of the city in advance of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. Maybe somebody should award Mexico a major international event.

Fait accompli
Memo to Environment Minister Peter Kent: don’t bother trying to promote the Alberta tar sands as “ethical oil.” We’re all doomed anyway. A new study predicts that climate change will cause a global disaster within the next 1,000 years—even if the world immediately cuts all greenhouse gas emissions. Vanishing ice floes, massive flooding and global food shortages are all inevitable, the report warns. “Even if we change behaviour and totally change society, we’re still in store for a lot of bad scenarios,” says one researcher. “I feel a bit defeatist.” A bit?

Unsafe skies
The federal government is about to slash the budget of the RCMP’s air marshal program, a post-9/11 initiative that places plainclothes Mounties on commercial flights. The undercover officers are considered the last line of defence against hijackers and terrorists, but a looming 25 per cent funding cut will mean fewer marshals in the sky come April. If the feds were really serious about airline safety, they would cut something else: the amount of coffee served in the cockpit. A United Airlines pilot was forced to make an emergency landing in Toronto this week after spilling his java all over the controls.

Second rate
It’s hard to decide which was more stomach-churning: Team Canada’s epic collapse at the World Junior Hockey Championship, or a Buffalo News column that slammed visiting Canadian fans as “arrogant,” “obnoxious” and “lousy tippers.” Clearly, the writer has never ventured to the end zone seats at a Bills game.

Fill it up, and fast

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Andersen Ross/GETTY IMAGES

As the price of oil hovers around $90 a barrel and gasoline prices jump, thieves around the world are stealing licence plates, attaching them to their own cars and then driving off without paying after filling up at the pump. In Denmark, stolen plates are used not only for gas theft but in robberies and other crimes as well. There, the increase in stolen plates rose 20 per cent in 2010, costing Danish gas stations $3.4 million. In central England, the rate of plate theft went up 50 per cent.

Police and gas companies are working to combat the problem. In Adelaide, Australia, police are selling one-way screw sets for $2; a police sergeant told the Adelaide Leader-Messenger that “they can still be removed, but they very much slow a person down and require them to carry a couple of implements to remove the plates.” In New Zealand, BP stations installed software that photographs licence plates at the pump and instantly cross-references the number with a list of plates reported stolen or that had been used in previous thefts. In most of the U.S. and parts of Canada, of course, you simply have to pay before you pump.

Man enough to laugh at cancer

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Ben Birchall/PA Photos/Keystone Press

A couple of months ago, men were sprouting moustaches for “Movember,” a month-long campaign that raised over $21 million—nearly triple last year’s total—for Prostate Cancer Canada. (Liberal Mark Holland, who tried but failed to grow a handlebar, was one of more than 80 MPs who donated the space above their upper lip through November.) Partly inspired by Movember’s success, the Canadian Testicular Cancer Association (TCTCA) has claimed a month of its own. During January, or rather MANuary, the TCTCA aims to teach men “how to have the balls” to talk about testicular cancer.

The first-ever MANuary doesn’t encourage anyone to grow more hair—quite the opposite, in fact. In one MANuary fundraising event ripped straight from The 40-Year-Old Virgin, “volunteers will get their backs waxed on stage,” says actor-comedian Peter Laneas, a testicular cancer survivor and spokesperson for the TCTCA. “Nothing brings people together better than public humiliation,” he jokes.

Cheeky marketing has more commonly been used by breast cancer groups: foundations like Feel Your Boobies and Save the ta-tas grab attention—and fundraising dollars—with fun, sexy messaging. Now humour is doing the same for cancers that typically affect men. Prostate cancer is as prevalent as breast cancer, says Adam Garone, CEO and co-founder of the Movember Foundation, “but guys don’t like talking about their health, especially below the waist.” The first Movember campaign was held in Australia in 2004; in 2010, close to half a million people took part globally. “When we survey the guys on why they participate,” says Garone, “the number one reason is because it’s fun.”

Continue…

Could Apple buy Canada?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 6 Comments

Apple Inc., the maker of iPhones, iPads and other must-have gadgets, crossed the US$300-billion market capitalization threshold earlier this month, making it the second most valuable publicly traded company in the world behind oil giant Exxon Mobil. The milestone has caused some industry watchers to murmur about the possibility that Apple could be The One—not as in a Matrix-type saviour, but the first corporation to crack the trillion-dollar mark, possibly as early as 2013.

With its shares trading around US$334 each, the current valuation of the California company, headed by CEO Steve Jobs, is already bigger than the GDP of several developed countries, including Denmark and Israel. A valuation of US$1 trillion would put it near par with Canada’s GDP of US$1.34 trillion, a measure of the value of all the goods and services produced in the country annually.

James Altucher, a hedge fund manager and financial columnist for CNBC, recently suggested that growth projections for Apple “easily make a rationale” for Apple to reach the trillion-dollar mark. While he throws out a lot of numbers to make his case—growing iPhone and App Store sales coupled with enviable 30 per cent margins—his argument boils down to the often irrational love affair people have with Apple’s products. “I have a 30-year relationship with Apple,” he confesses. “I love it. I don’t think I have a real relationship with any other company on the planet. That’s why it’s going to be a trillion-dollar market cap.”

But it’s worth recalling that there have been previous contenders for the title. Back in 2000, analysts were saying the same thing about Cisco Systems, which designs computer networking equipment and software. After all, what could be more important in a Web-connected world than a company that makes all those connections possible? At one point, Cisco’s market valuation hit US$480 billion.

Then the tech bubble burst. Today, Cisco is still the world’s largest maker of computer networking equipment, but its market cap is only about US$116 billion. Then again, it wasn’t as though people were lining up around the block every time Cisco took the wraps off a new edge router.

What was Stephen Harper thinking in 2004?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 9:01 AM - 59 Comments

On September 9, 2004—two and a half months after that year’s federal election—Stephen Harper appeared at a news conference alongside Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe and NDP leader Jack Layton to announce what Mr. Harper would describe as a “co-opposition” agreement. The three presented a series of reforms intended to give the opposition parties more power in Parliament as Paul Martin prepared to lead Canada’s first minority government in more than two decades.

Mr. Harper, Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton had also sent a letter to the Governor General—Adrienne Clarkson at the time—to suggest that, should Mr. Martin seek to dissolve Parliament, she should “consult” with the three opposition leaders and consider her “options” before exercising her authority.

Below you will find an audio recording of that September 2004 news conference in its entirety.

At the 11:20 mark, the three opposition leaders are first asked to explain their request that the Governor General consult with them—specifically whether they are prepared to form a government. Continue…

The view from the north

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments

Ashraf Shazly/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Millions in southern Sudan lined up this week to cast their ballot in a referendum to decide whether the south should split from the north of the country. After a civil war spanning more than four decades, and half a century of economic neglect and violent persecution at the hands of the government in the north, most people are expected to opt for secession.

Meanwhile, in Khartoum, which will likely be the capital of a unified Sudan for just a few more months, President Omar al-Bashir is “in survival mode,” says Richard Downie, deputy director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. Faced with losing a chunk of the country the size of Texas, the Sudanese leader, who led a bloodless coup in 1989 and is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, is left to ponder which course of action will keep him in power. Downie says that a slew of conciliatory public statements plus a recent visit to south Sudan shows that al-Bashir is resigned to the idea of separation, and is trying to make nice with the international community. But “he is going to be under a lot of pressure from the hard-liners,” those who don’t accept the referendum, says Stephen Rockel, a professor of history at the University of Toronto. To appease them, al-Bashir is going to need to look tough during negotiations with the south, says Downie. After the results of the referendum are made public later this month, the north and the south have about five months to work out thorny issues like where the new border will be located and, most importantly, how to share oil revenues before actual secession takes place on July 9. It’s over this period, experts warn, that al-Bashir could decide to flex his muscle.

A master in the art of divide and rule, the seasoned dictator may rely on friendly militias in the south to foment disorder and extract more leverage at the table, says Downie. And linking him to the troublemakers would be difficult, he adds, since armed scuffles could plausibly flare up on their own in the ethnically diverse south.

Continue…

Whatever happened to tenure?

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 8 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

In 2000, 36-year-old Leslie Jermyn went to teach her first course as a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto. For $4,550, she taught 100 students a two-month first-year anthropology course. Though Jermyn would go on to teach courses every summer for the next 11 years, the job was never guaranteed, and every year she experienced “gut-wrenching tension” waiting to find out whether she’d won a new contract. “Often I was hired within two weeks of the start time of the course,” she says. For years she had no benefits and worked out of a shared office, furnished with one desk and one telephone. In 2007, after she had been teaching upwards of 800 students a year for three years straight, she argued to the dean that the department needed a regular teaching position. That didn’t work, and Jermyn says she knows why: “I’m cheaper without benefits.”

Jermyn’s lot is similar to that of many North American university undergraduate teachers today. A November 2010 report titled “Employees in Postsecondary Institutions” released by the U.S. Department of Education concludes that the proportion of university instructors who have tenure or are on the tenure track fell below 30 per cent in 2009—a big drop from 1971, when 57 per cent were on the tenure track or had tenure already.

In Canada, the numbers tell a similar story. A 2010 Statistics Canada survey of full-time teaching staff in universities shows that there were 20,685 tenured professors in 2009, down from 26,487 in 1999. Meanwhile, over the same period the number of sessional staff rose from 2,865 to 3,135. Estimates from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), a 65,000-strong academic staff union, say that between 40 and 60 per cent of undergraduate teaching is done by sessional lecturers who often cobble together a living earning between $5,000 and $7,000 for a four-month course, sometimes travelling between two or three universities in one term. The joke in academic circles is they’re “roads scholars.”

Continue…

No-name logos

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 8:20 AM - 1 Comment

Starbucks

Starbucks’s decision to drop its name from its two-decade-old logo led to a swarm of negative reaction online, in the news and in under-caffeinated lineups everywhere. It was pretty predictable—numerous studies have shown that customers loathe label-fiddling, as the likes of Wal-Mart, Pepsi and the Gap (which was forced to revert back to its old logo due to negative reaction over its redesign) have all discovered in recent years.

But marketing experts say there is an upside. If successful, the move could lead Starbucks to the same level of über-brand recognition as the wordless Apple and Nike logos. This would come at the perfect time, as Starbucks is currently planning to increase its expansion into international, non-English speaking markets, with its number of stores set to more than triple (from about 400 to 1,500) in China alone. Now it just has to hope that “the logo formerly known as Starbucks” actually catches on.

China hits the hardwood

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 1 Comment

Ron Turenne/NBA/Getty Images

In early January, as the Phoenix Suns basketball team struggled to turn around a disappointing season, two questions surrounded point guard Steve Nash—would the team trade him to another city, and what’s with those Chinese sneakers anyway?

After a 15-year tie-up with Nike, the B.C. native announced he had signed a sponsorship deal with Chinese shoemaker Luyou. It wasn’t a complete switch. Nash will still wear his old Nikes on U.S. courts, while he’ll lace up in his Luyous on trips to the Middle Kingdom. But as Chinese shoemakers stomp into the U.S. market, they’ve determined the two keys to success are a lookalike Nike-style swoosh logo, and an endorsement deal with a major NBA athlete.

Over the past couple of years, some two dozen NBAers have stepped into Chinese brand shoes. The Boston Celtics’ Shaquille O’Neal sports Li Ning sneakers. His teammate Kevin Garnett wears shoes from a company called Anta. Meanwhile a number of rookies, including Patrick Patterson of the Houston Rockets, have signed with Peak Sports. Unlike Nash, most of the players wear their Chinese sneakers during games. And while the overwhelming majority of fans will have never heard of any of those brands, the companies are banking that will eventually change. “A brand doesn’t exist anywhere but inside the minds of the customers,” says Joe Benson, a brand strategist with Brand Blueprint in Boston. “What the Chinese want Steve Nash to do is bring in some positive associations with the sneakers.”

The moves are part of a push by Chinese companies to establish identifiable global brands. On the surface, the sneaker business seems perfectly suited to the task. Western consumers already know American-brand sneakers are all made in China, quite possibly in the same factories and by the same workers as those of the new Chinese brands. The deals with pro athletes are the first step to getting the shoes onto store shelves in the U.S. Last year, Li Ning—a company launched by a former Olympic gold gymnast of the same name—opened its first U.S. retail store 20 minutes down the road from Nike’s headquarters in Portland. In 2009, Li Ning reported sales of $1.3 billion and has more than 7,000 stores in China.

Continue…

The NDP memo: speaking truth(ish) to power (loosely defined)

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 5:36 AM - 21 Comments

Postmedia has “obtained exclusively” a copy of a memo prepared by NDP strategist Brad Lavigne for the eyes of party leader Jack Layton. That sounds like trouble because internal political memos tend to convey an honest and frank assessment of the lay of the land and a party’s strengths and vulnerabilities. Get ready to see some dirty NDP laundry (mostly polyester shirts and Grandma undies, I assume).

Here’s what Lavigne tells Layton, according to the Postmedia report:

• Your party is ready to go for an election.

• The NDP is prepared to wage an “aggressive” campaign on a budget that’s Continue…

Exit Steve Jobs, pursued by his double

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 9:01 PM - 2 Comments

So why is Dan Lyons, a tech journalist who earned an international reputation with brilliant and sometimes savage satires of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, now being so snotty and unbearable in BeastWeek about the disclosability of Steve Jobs’ health problems? I think the world officially has a new “Least Appropriate High Horse Ever” titleist. Surely Lyons must sense how the “Now that his cancer’s probably back, Igottatellya I really loved the guy all along” schtick looks?

Well, OK, Dan, I’m speaking out of love, too: I think Fake Steve Jobs is your ticket to the American pantheon of ironists, but it’s been pretty obvious all along that you had weird misgivings about this fact, judging by your intermittent, distracted care and feeding of your creation. So forgive us for concluding that your pre-emptive, nonspecific attack on journalists who might eventually ask difficult questions about Jobs’ health is not some outburst of great ethical insight, but rather the chittering of a bad conscience. I figure that when a newsman announces that he has moral difficulties doing news reporting, he shouldn’t say “I’m sorry” snarkily; he should say it sincerely.

Jobs has a right to take measures to keep his health private—as long as investors aren’t actively misled by him or by Apple, which, as the normally cynical Lyons is careful not to mention, might already have happened. Either way, everyone else has the same right to ask questions and speculate, or even to gather and report information. One assumes Lyons would be forced to agree if it were put to him that bluntly, but comments like this make one wonder:

I’m sure there will…be stories where a reporter talks to cancer specialists and tries to get them to speculate on what might be wrong with Jobs this time. They’ll talk about life expectancies for people, like Jobs, who have had liver transplants after suffering pancreatic cancer. They will try to make this all seem respectable.

Just imagine a world where financial journalists sought objective information that affects the future of the second-largest publicly-traded American company! Fortunately, we don’t live inside that particular nightmare.

The cash value of much of what journalists do is pretty hard to specify. What’s interesting about this case is that it seems like the one instance in maybe a thousand (even within business journalism) where that’s just not so. The economic value of better, more accurate information about Steve Jobs’ prognosis is unquestionably enormous. If you alone knew that Jobs was really just taking six weeks off to cure a nasty case of psoriasis by immersing himself in an Anatolian mud bath, how much could you auction that information for?

A lot, I’d say, given that twenty billion US dollars in market value disappeared when Jobs sent the e-mail announcing his health leave. And while the figure might represent mistaken beliefs—indeed, capital has since corrected its collective estimate to more like ten billion—it is certainly not irrational. Lyons knows this: his handwaving about how “there is no real news value to any of this stuff” (even accurate and relevant stuff garnered by wholly conventional news techniques) is inconsistent with his description of Jobs as a visionary genius superman. It is certainly inconsistent with having had an entire sub-career pretending to be Steve Jobs.

What it sounded like

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 5:37 PM - 32 Comments

The recently launched Canadiana Discovery Portal—a searchable collection of various historical archives—is a treasure trove of old photographs, speeches and documents from prime ministers and governments past. The gem of my searching so far though is an audio recording of Lester B. Pearson addressing an audience at the University of British Columbia in 1965, two years after he became prime minister.

It’s a remarkable listen on a number of fronts. Continue…

Bastarache clears Charest government

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 5:11 PM - 8 Comments

A commission of inquiry charged with looking into allegations of corruption surrounding Quebec’s judicial nomination process has cleared Jean Charest’s government of accusations of influence-peddling. In his long-awaited report, former Supreme Court justice Michel Bastarache concludes there is nothing to support allegations by Charest’s former justice minister Marc Bellemare that he was pressured to appoint judges by Liberal party fundraisers. That’s not to say the nomination process came up smelling like roses: Bastarache found it riddled with “deficiencies,” and “vulnerable to all manner of interventions and influences.” But he also concludes Bellemare was “pursuing his own objectives”—and not those of Liberal bagmen—”with respect to judicial appointments.”

Montreal Gazette

Canadian tourist caught in gang crossfire in Mexico

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 4:54 PM - 4 Comments

A 69-year-old Penticton, B.C. man was caught in crossfire in the tourist-town of Mazatlan, Mexico on Tuesday. He’s recovering in hospital after a metal plate was put in his shattered leg. This came just a day after a 41-year-old Canadian woman alleged she was raped by police officers who arrested her on New Year’s Eve in Playa Del Carmen, a beach-town near Cancun. Canada’s Foreign Affairs Ministry warns that the northern border region of Mexico should be avoided, and reminds Canadians that “high levels of criminal activity… remain a concern throughout the country.” Mazatlan, on the west coast, and Playa Del Carmen, in the southern state Quintana Roo are both far away from the most deadly regions, but these recent incidents are causing Canadians to question whether to visit the country at all. One travel agent in Vancouver told CBC News that she warns clients to avoid western Mexico, including Mazatlan. Travel booker iTravel2000 says the tourist destinations are safe. Mexico’s drug war intensified last year: 15,273 died in gang-related violence in the country in 2010, up from 6,500 the year before. Over a million Canadians visited Mexico last year.

Wall Street Journal

CBC News

Who wants to have a religious freedom debate?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 3:45 PM - 85 Comments

In light of this, the Bloc Quebecois apparently wonders if Parliament should ban the kirpan.

“The National Assembly’s decision to prevent access to people carrying the kirpan is completely legitimate,” said Claude DeBellefeuille, the Bloc whip, in a statement. “It’s a justified decision, and it’s maybe time for Parliament to adopt similar rules.”

Via Twitter, Liberal MP Navdeep Bains notes that he wears his kirpan in the House of Commons.

Sick of waiting

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 3:15 PM - 1 Comment

John Kenney/THE GAZETTE

Late last March, Quebec Premier Jean Charest went to the site where the Université de Montréal’s new teaching and research hospital will eventually be built. Mugging for the cameras, he dug a shovel into a pile of dirt. Finally, a groundbreaking to kick off construction of what has become the province’s most elusive medical facility? Of course not. That ceremony simply marked the start of the research-centre portion of the CHUM, as the project is known to Quebecers. And although officials boasted that it represented “a turning point” in the planned hospital’s tortured history—and while it may have been a relief for the provincial Liberals to see something resembling construction get under way—it’s unlikely many in the province will soon forget the countless delays and cost overruns that have marred the project over the years.

The Charest government promised in 2004 that 2010 would mark the end of the CHUM’s construction, not its beginning. Since then, nearly $1 billion has been tacked onto the original $1.1-billion price tag. And yet, more than 15 years after it was first proposed by Jacques Parizeau’s PQ government, the hospital is nowhere in sight. Revised estimates now put the end of construction at 2019, though the CHUM’s Annie-Carole Martel says the bulk of the work will be done by 2015, when 486 of the hospital’s 772 beds will be operational.

Robert Lacroix, the rector of the Université de Montréal from 1998 to 2005, blames the protracted debate over the hospital’s location for the delays that have turned it into a provincial laughingstock. “It’s inconceivable,” says Lacroix, the co-author of Le CHUM : une tragédie québécoise, published last fall, “that it would take 25 years to build a 700-bed hospital.” Until the Liberals came to power in 2003, the CHUM was destined for a lot in the Rosemont neighbourhood of Montreal, northeast of downtown, and was expected to be completed by 2007. The decision to put it there was made by the Parti Québécois government in 2000. According to Lacroix, there was pressure inside the new Liberal government to put the hospital elsewhere.

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Canada’s youth are dangerously lazy

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 3:07 PM - 13 Comments

A study released by StatsCan shows that Canadians simply aren’t moving enough to be healthy. According to the Canadian Health Measures Survey, which looked at physical activity habits of 2,800 adults and 1,600 children, showed that only 15 per cent of adults moved enough to benefit from being healthy. Only seven per cent of 5 to 17-year olds were active enough to be healthy. On average, the amount of time spent inactive was 9.5 hours a day for adults and 8.6 hours a day for children and youth. However, the average amount of time increased among youth aged 15 to 19 to nine hours a day, or about 65 per cent of their waking hours. The Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology recommends at least 60 minutes of daily activity for youth aged five to 17, and 150 minutes weekly for adults.

CBC News

David Brent Meets Michael Scott, and the Universe Ends

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 2:56 PM - 1 Comment

When David Brent has his upcoming cameo on next week’s episode of U.S. version of The Office, meeting Michael Scott outside the actual office set, it’ll be the first time the original has crossed over with the remake. (And since Brent’s documentary has actually been released, it may fuel further fan speculation about whether the U.S. documentary-within-a-show actually exists and if the characters will ever see it). But it can’t be the first time a show has crossed over with its remake — as opposed to shows that are continuations of the original, rather than out-and-out remakes.

I can’t think of examples offhand, though, and the crossovers/spinoff master page focuses almost entirely on U.S. shows, making it not much help finding this kind of thing. Any examples of remake shows where the original character showed up to meet the guy who was based on him, the equivalent of (though this never happened) Archie Bunker meeting Alf Garnett or Chrissy from Man About the House wondering why Chrissy from Three’s Company was based on the other girl?

Anyway, I expect David to wish Michael good luck on re-locating, and tell him that “I can’t wait to hear about all the exciting, sexy adventures you’re sure to have against this colorful backdrop.”

I just hope they don’t have David report on how ridiculous Americans are. Gervais already did that this week, and besides, it’s been done. Somewhat poorly.

Heritage Minister orders agency to screen documentary on Iran

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 2:30 PM - 44 Comments

Iranium, a controversial documentary film about Iran, has become the centre of controversy after Heritage Minister James Moore instructed Library and Archives Canada to show the film, despite “threats of violence” which caused a screening of the film to initially be cancelled. Both Moore and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney had earlier criticized Library and Archives, a federal Crown agency, for cancelling the screening. “The principle of free speech is one of the cornerstones of our democracy,” read a statement from Moore’s office. This came after Pauline Portelance, a spokeswoman for Library and Archives Canada, said the Iranian embassy had asked that the film be cancelled. After the request was denied, people—whom Portelance described as “members of the public”—started phoning Library and Archives complaining about the planned screening and threatening to protest. After the “threats were getting too serious,” Portelance said, a decision was then made to cancel the screening. Now, politicians are calling on the cancellation as a threat to a free and open society. “The Iranian Embassy will not dictate to the Government of Canada which films will or will not be shown in Canada,” added Moore.

Canada.com

King of the Hill Revisited: "Peggy the Boggle Champ" and "Keeping Up With Our Joneses"

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 2:25 PM - 1 Comment

The retrospective continues now with the ninth and tenth episodes of the first season, starting with the second “road trip” episode (maybe more than you’d expect for the early episodes of a comedy, but why not — an animated show can, theoretically, go anywhere).

“Peggy the Boggle Champ”

Why do we continue to be interested in characters whose lives can’t change? That’s the question that has always interested me, especially now that both fandom and TV writing are far more oriented toward change. The question most of us have about TV series now is what’s going to happen in the future: how will the characters’ lives change, what crises will they face, and above all who will get together with whom. Writers are interested in this too, and fill many shows (such as Parks & Recreation, to stay within the King of the Hill family for a second) with ongoing romances and shifting circumstances, like a reality show.

But many shows don’t actually lend themselves to those kinds of questions. King of the Hill will have more continuing story threads and character development than any other animated sitcom, but that’s still not very much. Hank and Peggy are never going to leave that house in that neighborhood. They will never cheat on each other. Hank will never get another job, and it will take Peggy a full eight seasons to find something other than substitute teaching. Now that Kahn and Minh have been introduced, they will rarely meet anyone new who they continue to know after that one episode. In other words, not much is going to happen to them. So what accounts for our continued interest in them, and for any characters from a non-serialized show?

Well, it’s that we can learn new things about them. That’s what happens in this episode, where we are introduced to previously-unknown interests or character histories for both Hank and Peggy Hill. The basis for the story is that Peggy is Arlen’s best player at the game of Boggle (aka slightly more high-tech Scrabble) and goes to Dallas to participate in the statewide tournament. The choice of Boggle as Peggy’s favourite pastime is Continue…

The kitchen at the end of the universe

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 2:15 PM - 12 Comments

Good news, everyone: the age of the “connected home” is nearly upon us! Soon we’ll be able to spend thousands of dollars on an Internet-linked washing machine, a Wi-Fi-enabled oven and maybe a sentient, wisecracking toaster of some kind. Think of the benefits of making our household contraptions more advanced and connected: I for one can’t wait to go online and read the Facebook status updates of celebrity-owned appliances (“Kirstie Alley’s refrigerator . . . is being ravaged”).

No longer shall humans be forced to open the fridge door to see if there’s milk left. This taxing ordeal will be replaced by the simplicity of logging the milk’s arrival on a touchscreen keypad, typing in its expiry date, routinely taking note of its level, providing our mobile phone number and reading a text message sent by the fridge indicating it’s time to buy more milk. What could be easier?

The dawn of connected appliances has been predicted, touted and hyped for years now. Perhaps some figured that appliance manufacturers had given up on the idea—but no. GE, Sub-Zero and others have never wavered in their quest to answer the vexing question that has long plagued us as a species: why can’t I use my dishwasher to tweet?

These new gizmos are a marvel to behold. Take Samsung’s Internet-enabled refrigerator, which is expected to go on sale this spring for Continue…

'Money for Nothing' marathons generate no complaints

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 2:13 PM - 2 Comments

The Canadian broadcast watchdog that ruled the Dire Straits hit “Money for Nothing” could no longer be broadcast in its unedited form didn’t get single complaint in response to radio stations intentionally defying the ban. Incensed at the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council’s decision to uphold a complaint over a gay slur in the song, classic rock radio stations in Halifax and Edmonton opted to air the tune over and over again. Had listeners complained about the move, the stations could’ve been reprimanded. But surprisingly enough, no one registered any objections.

Winnipeg Free Press

Coyne v. Wells: Border dispute

By Paul Wells and Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 2:01 PM - 29 Comments

On Jan. 20, Maclean’s presents “Canada-U.S.: Best Friends or Perfect Strangers?” a round­table discussion at the Newseum in Washington. Panellists will include Gary Doer, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, Sen. Pamela Wallin, David Frum, a former speech writer for George W. Bush and editor of frumforum.com, Maryscott Greenwood, senior managing director at McKenna, Long & Aldridge, and Christopher Sands, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. Maclean’s Andrew Coyne and Paul Wells will also join the panel. CPAC’s Peter Van Dusen will host the event, with opening remarks by Maclean’s Luiza Ch. Savage. This week, Coyne and Wells kick off the debate.

PAUL WELLS: Andrew, remember George W. Bush’s speech to Congress after 9/11, when Tony Blair sat next to Laura Bush in the gallery? Remember the weird national crisis of confidence over Bush’s failure to list Canada among the allies of the United States?

I sometimes wonder what would happen in similar circumstances today. I hope we’ll never know. But I can’t imagine Stephen Harper—or for that matter, a post-election Michael Ignatieff—sitting next to Michelle Obama for any major speech by the current President. I can easily imagine Obama or some other U.S. president rattling off a list of friendly countries and forgetting Canada again. The only difference is, if it happened again I think there’d be less national hand-wringing than in 2001.

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