Calgary’s water could soon be fluoride-free

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 11:42 AM - 9 Comments

After a few dozen Calgary residents protested against fluoride in the water, a council committee voted to end the city’s use of the additive in the water, which helps prevent cavities. A 10.5 hour public hearing was held Wednesday about fluoride, with the University of Calgary’s faculty of medicine offering to strike an advisory panel to review studies about it, the Calgary Herald reports. The committee rejected the offer but some say it may be reconsidered. A plebiscite brought in fluoridation in Calgary in 1991, and it’s now added to city water at 0.7 parts per million. Calgarians offered arguments, scientific research and opinions on each side of the divisive issue.

Calgary Herald

Fish stick empire

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 1 Comment

Terry G. Conrad

On the surface, it would seem like a bad time for Nova Scotia’s High Liner Foods Inc., which makes frozen fish sticks and other prepared seafoods, to go fishing for an acquisition in Iceland. In recent months, local pop star Björk has mustered a remarkably successful campaign aimed at overturning another Canadian-led takeover effort: Magma Energy Corp.’s recently completed purchase of geothermal power producer HS Orka. Just last week, Björk held a three-day karaoke marathon that helped to boost signatories of a local petition against the Magma deal to more than 46,000, or about 15 per cent of Iceland’s population, causing Iceland’s prime minister to hint that a public referendum on the deal could yet be forthcoming.

But that hasn’t stopped High Liner, headquartered in picturesque Lunenburg, N.S., and known for its salty, grey-bearded fisherman logo, from steaming ahead with its plans to buy Icelandic Group, which controls a network of independent seafood processing companies in Europe, North America and Asia. If successful, High Liner, already a leader in Canada, would become a major force in the huge U.S. market supplying seafood to supermarkets and restaurants. There’s just one problem: Icelandic’s owners, a consortium of public pension funds called Framtakssjóður Íslands, aren’t interested in selling—at least not to High Liner.

Kelly Nelson, High Liner’s chief financial officer, says the company has been eyeing Icelandic for years and was assured that if the company’s foreign processing businesses ever went on the block, High Liner would have an opportunity to bid in an open auction (producers located in Iceland itself aren’t believed to be for sale). “We found out that they have entered into exclusive discussions with a German private equity firm called Triton,” Nelson says, noting that Icelandic has been in a difficult financial position for a few years, having been previously owned by a state-run bank set up after the 2008 financial crisis. “We also found out through different sources in Iceland that maybe this was an inside deal being cooked up, and we didn’t think this was fair to the Icelandic pension plans that own these assets, or other bidders.”

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Death Slots: No Longer Deadly?

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 2 Comments

There are a couple of things worth looking out for when it comes to U.S. TV ratings this week. Last week two shows did pretty well in “death” slots that were widely expected to endanger them, and if they can keep it up this week, and for a little while longer, it might mean that the networks have stumbled on a new-ish scheduling technique.

The two shows I’m talking about are 30 Rock, which was moved to 10 p.m. on Thursdays, and Fringe, which got moved to Fridays. NBC was worried enough about the 30 Rock move that it was given a guaranteed pickup for next season, just to make sure the experimental time slot wouldn’t kill it. Fringe had no such guarantee, and it looked like it was being placed on Friday to die.

But both shows did all right last week. In essence, they did what they usually do, maybe a little better thanks to the extra promotion, and those ratings, which were not good elsewhere, are more than acceptable in these new time slots. Fringe‘s numbers are not good, particularly if you don’t count the famous bump it gets from heavy DVR viewing. (And I have no idea if advertisers really care: if they don’t care about viewers over 49, why should they care about viewers who are free to skip the commercials?) But its slightly under 5 million viewers, poor for any other night, is actually pretty decent for Fridays as long as its audience remains young. A rating of 2 in the Coveted Demographic is something Fox can improve on during the week; they’ve done much worse on Friday night. If Fringe continues at this level, a fourth season — also on Friday — seems likely.

Same with 30 Rock. Its ratings have never been what a more successful network would consider a success on Thursdays at 8:30 or 9:30. But it’s not the kind of show whose ratings fluctuate a lot: it rarely does better than its usual level, but it rarely does worse. And while that level is not good early in the night, it’s pretty good at 10:00. That hour has been decimated on all networks due to DVR viewing and heavy competition from cable (since that’s the hour when cable counter-programming really kicks in). The viewership has gotten smaller and older. Which means that if 30 Rock gets what it usually gets in the Coveted Demographic, that’s good enough for a second-place finish at 10 — whereas at 8:30 it wasn’t even good enough to beat Shat My Dad Says.

The “code” both these networks may have cracked is that some shows go up and down in viewership, but there are some that are low-rated but reliable. Meanwhile, the hope of finding a real hit on Friday, or at 10, is declining fast; Friday may be going the way of Saturday (there used to be huge hit shows on Saturday nights), and young people increasingly don’t watch TV at 10. So those may be the right places for the shows that get a reasonable, acceptable number of young viewers. They won’t have a hit, but they’ll do much better than they would with almost any new show at those times.

This probably won’t work for a new show, though we’ll see what happens when ABC plugs in a new comedy at 10 o’clock on Wednesdays later this season. The danger can be glimpsed from what happened to Outsourced last week: having done well after The Office, it collapsed at 10:30, making me wonder if angry affiliates are once again calling up NBC about the effect on the 11 o’clock news. But Outsourced is a new show Continue…

Kicking television

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 11:21 AM - 7 Comments

Conor Friedersdorf laments for television news.

There’s an important caveat that Benen left out: Olbermann offered something that couldn’t be found elsewhere on television. For liberals who like that medium, I’m sure the show proved cathartic. But wouldn’t they be better informed, more meaningfully entertained, and psychicly happier if just read Washington Monthly instead? Yes, I know, television is a very popular medium (mostly because it demands so little from its audience). But it is the worst way to engage politics in America. Compared to reading it is a wildly inefficient time suck. The format itself often strips the issue at hand of all nuance. It rewards demagoguery, and the host’s words disappear into the ether so fast that inaccuracies slip easily past and are seldom corrected for the people misled by them. Often as not, its producers and writers just take insights from the written medium and dumb them down.

Invasion of the Filipino robots

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Korea has a shortage of affordable English teachers, but the Philippines have plenty, so the South Korean government instituted a $1.3-million pilot program to bring instructors to the classroom through robotic avatars called Engkeys (a portmanteau of English and jockey). The robots, at just over three feet tall, are being used in 29 classrooms across the southeastern city of Daegu. They’re preprogrammed to dance and play games, and are remotely controlled by the Philippines-based teachers. “The kids seemed to love it,” Kim Mi-Young, an official at Daegu’s city education office, told news agency AFP. The robots also feature a flip-up LED screen that bears the image of a Caucasian woman that, through motion-detection technology, mimics the facial expressions of instructors a country away. The government is still planning to send a $9,000 Engkey to every one of the country’s kindergartens over the next two years.

Worst… Road Runner DVD… Ever.

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 10:42 AM - 2 Comments

I’ve sort of given up on Warner Bros. DVD releases of its cartoons: I accept that we’re not going to get much of value until a) Blu-Ray becomes popular enough to spawn some Looney Tunes collections in that format, or b) That elusive, often-promised set of the “Censored 11″ shorts finally becomes a reality. (There’s also online streaming, but frankly, while I want to see more older material in that format, I want to own good-quality copies, and always will. But that’s another post.) But I had to say something about This Road Runner/Coyote DVD they’re releasing, where the selection is so bad that it seems like a joke. But it has been confirmed as real.

Anyway, the list that TV Shows On DVD has consists entirely of Road Runner cartoons from after the original studio shut down, meaning that it’s mostly terrible limited-animation cartoons directed by Rudy Larriva; along with the Daffy Duck/Speedy Gonzales cartoons, these limited-animation, poorly-timed Road Runners were the main output of Warner Brothers cartoons in the late ’60s.

The rest of the disc is bad made-for-the-web cartoons (the “New 2010 Roadrunner” ones), Chuck Jones’ two so-so TV cartoons, the Road Runner cartoon that’s the least-intolerable of the Larry Doyle series, and finally the two that I can actually enjoy watching again, “Chariots of Fur” and “Little Go Beep.”

The conspiracy theorist in me wants to think that this is a way of making the upcoming “Looney Tunes Show” look good by comparison — if kids are watching these cartoons, the CGI Road Runners Cartoon Network is Continue…

Drama for 3-D TVs

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 2 Comments

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Flat panel 3-D television sets first came out early last year. But few people own one, or know anyone who does. The slower-than-expected sales are believed to be the result of a dearth of available 3-D content to watch, which is why television makers like Sony and Panasonic are joining forces with broadcasters to fix the situation.

Sony recently teamed up with two TV stations in Japan to offer the country’s first 3-D television series, a drama called Tokyo Control, according to the Wall Street Journal. The show is about the workers at the Tokyo Air Traffic Control Center and was made with input from production staff who worked on James Cameron’s 3-D Hollywood blockbuster Avatar. Panasonic, meanwhile, has produced a 3-D music program for satellite TV. Sony predicts that 3-D models will account for 10 per cent of the market by early next year, and that it will have sold 25 million of the sets by March 2011.

The Tunisia effect

By Alasdair Soussi - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 5 Comments

Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters

The radical political change sweeping Tunisia has led to speculation that it could spread to other countries in North Africa. And certainly, leaders in the region should be worried, if the massive street demonstrations that shook Egypt earlier this week are any indication. There, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets on what was the country’s Police Day, in an unprecedented show of anger against the 30-year reign of President Hosni Mubarak, battling government forces and shouting: “Mubarak, your plane is waiting for you.”

A cursory look at Egypt does reveal a nation with many problems similar to Tunisia’s. Rising food prices, official corruption and an autocratic political system, which has facilitated the rule of the now ailing Mubarak, 82, have all sown the seeds of discontent in this country of 80 million. And for many Egyptians, the fall of Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was a welcome sight. “Ben Ali was not a good man,” said Adel Shalaby, a Cairo taxi driver. “All Arab and Muslim people are happy that he’s gone.”

Shalaby, interviewed before Tuesday’s protests, was a little more circumspect on domestic matters. “I don’t think I want the same thing to happen in Egypt. We want a change in president—but not like in Tunisia.” And indeed, beaten down by years of autocratic rule, and lacking the visionary leadership that was so readily projected by the likes of former president Gamal Abdel Nasser, many Egyptians have been disillusioned, dispirited and bereft of real revolutionary zeal. Perhaps for that reason, the virulence of this week’s demonstrations caught many—even among those who took part—by surprise. “We have never seen anything like this before,” one protester told the Guardian.” “It is the first day of the Egyptian revolution.”

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Coyne v. Wells on five years of Harper

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 10:04 AM - 39 Comments

ON NEWSSTANDS NOW: Paul Wells and John Geddes’ special report ‘What you don’t know about Stephen Harper’ and Andrew Coyne’s column ‘The damage done by doing so little’

Download | Feed | iTunes

Archie in bits and bytes

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

You don’t often hear “cutting edge” and “Archie comics” together, but the adventures of the teen with the tic-tac-toe pattern on his head were the first comics to create an “app” for digital downloading. The reward in 2010 was over two million downloads via iPads and iPhones. Sales of physical comics were also up, thanks to the new publisher, Jon Goldwater: he spent the year unveiling one gimmick issue after another, from an alternate-universe magazine about Archie’s future to an issue featuring Sarah Palin and President Barack Obama. But it’s in the digital world where Goldwater sees real potential: starting April 1, Archie will undercut its competitors, like Marvel and DC, by offering comics in that format at a lower price than print editions. Of course, as Goldwater told Newsarama.com, digital is still a “small” revenue stream, but he expects it “to grow tremendously in the next 12 to 24 to 36 months.”

The more you know

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 9:38 AM - 125 Comments

Abacus asks Canadians how they feel about the corporate tax rate.

Once respondents were made aware of Canada’s tax position relative to the United States, Germany, Japan, and Britain, two statements were presented – the federal government’s argument and the opposition parties’ argument. “This finding suggests that as Canadians become aware of how low Canada’s tax rates are compared to other countries, it becomes more difficult to convince them to support them.”

“Right now, public opinion is firmly aligned with the opposition parties,” said Coletto.  “Only 21% of respondents buy the job creation argument when given the alternative to spend more on health care or to reduce the deficit.” The survey then asked Canadians if they support or oppose the government’s plan to continue with the corporate tax cuts.  In total, 52% strongly or somewhat oppose the government’s plan, while 26% support or strongly support it.

Lululemon love affair

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Benjamin Norman/Bloomberg/Getty Images

In the world of yoga, nothing seems to levitate like Lululemon Athletica, the Canadian sports clothing retailer. The company saw its shares shoot up by eight per cent early last week after projecting higher than expected fourth quarter returns. It was “the second coming of Coach,” said Credit Suisse in a note to clients, referring to the popular accessories retailer, adding that Lululemon had found “the elusive formula to unlock the mystery of what women want to wear and how they want to buy it.”

A little over a decade after first setting up shop in Vancouver in 1998, the retailer now counts 130 stores across North America, Europe and Asia, and a market capitalization of $5 billion. The company sailed unscathed through the recession, and shows no sign of slowing down its expansion. But is the karma going to last?

Some naysayers are predicting trouble ahead. The Gap’s Athleta brand of women’s activewear could be “the first credible threat to Lululemon’s yoga apparel market dominance,” Wall Street Strategies, a stock market research company, warned last week. Athleta just opened a 5,000-sq.-foot store in San Francisco and, some say, could soon threaten Lululemon with its cheaper versions of tank tops and, of course, yoga pants.

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Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of January 24th, 2011)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

A sad goodbye
Thousands of mourners, including a sea of uniformed officers from across North America, paid their final respects to Sgt. Ryan Russell, a Toronto cop killed in the line of duty. Packed into a downtown convention centre, the huge crowd stood in silence as the sergeant’s widow, Christine, and their two-year-old son, Nolan, were escorted into the funeral. David Onley, Ontario’s lieutenant-governor, echoed Barack Obama’s words after the Tucson massacre: “There is evil in the world and terrible things happen that defy human understanding.” In a nearby jail cell, Richard Kachkar—a homeless man who allegedly ran Russell over with a stolen snowplow—is charged with first-degree murder.

There goes the neighbour
At what point do cultural “beliefs” cross the line into superstition? Or worse, plain old bigotry? Janet Fan and about 60 of her mostly Asian neighbours in a condo building may be about to find out, as they are loudly opposing the construction of a 15-bed hospice next door to their posh, 18-floor highrise at the University of British Columbia. Their grounds? “It’s a cultural taboo to us and we cannot be close to so many dying people,” says Fan, who organized a rally against the facility this week. “It’s like you open your door and step into a graveyard.” Fan went on to voice concern about the other key issue: the $1 million or so each owner had sunk into his unit, telling the Province newspaper: “We put our life savings into this.” And really, what’s the importance of a life next to that?

A real bitch, that
A French bulldog named Francesca fulfilled a secret fantasy of the design-challenged last week by giving her mistress, Martha Stewart, a fat lip. But all credit to the lifestyle queen for wryly documenting the experience on her blog with words and photos. She said she’d bent down to whisper goodbye to her prize pooch when the animal jumped in fright, smacking Stewart in the mug with the force of a “boxing glove.” The 69-year-old Stewart needed stitches, but was lucid enough to slag the decor at the Westchester, N.Y., hospital where she went for treatment. “The ceiling border in the little patient room could use some updating,” she blogged.

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What you need is a beautiful bento lunch

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 3 Comments

“People always ask me why Japanese people are so skinny,” says Tokyo-born food writer Makiko Itoh, over the phone from France. Part of the answer, she discovered, may lie in bento, the Japanese word for those aesthetically arranged meals-in-a-box, which are often eaten at lunch in Japan—and have become increasingly popular in the West.

After a globe-trotting early life (her businessman father moved the family back and forth between Japan, the U.S., and England), the former Web designer and developer settled in Zurich with her husband. While there, she needed to lose 30 lb. and decided to return to the lunch box of her girlhood: “I had to relearn portion control and bento was one way to make sure I was eating healthy lunches and not just picking up another hamburger and fries.”

In 2007, she began to document her bento adventures on a blog called Just Bento, which now has over 375,000 subscribers. Since then, writing about food has become a full-time job, most recently with the newly released The Just Bento Cookbook, in which she outlines her bento philosophy, along with 150 recipes for meals in boxes.

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'FIVE BILLION DOLLARS'

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 5:37 PM - 98 Comments

Those three words—in ALL CAPS to boot—comprised Andrew Coyne’s Twittered reaction to the Bloc Québécois’s demands ahead of the budget. It’s certainly a staggering request, especially considering the state of Ottawa’s finances and the fact more than half the money is earmarked to rectify historical grievances.

Before we go any further, here’s how the $5,058,000,000 the Bloc wants sprinkled around Quebec breaks down:

(1) Reversal of changes to the equalization formula implemented in 2009*: $1.25 billion
(2) Compensation for changes to the equalization formula implemented in 2009 : $250 million
(3) New spending on education and social programs: $800 million
(4) Compensation for harmonization of sales taxes in 1991: $2.2 billion ($1.5 billion in 2011-12)
(5) Compensation for a general decline in revenues: $137 million
(6) Compensation for the ice storm in Montreal in 1998: $421 million
(7) Gilles Duceppe’s pledge to vote for the budget: priceless

Thing is, even if I find it laughable to include a request for money for the ice storm, I have to confess I find the clarity here somewhat refreshing. That’s largely because the Bloc’s demands (PDF here) aren’t just that. What the party released today was more like an economic platform than a simple ransom note. The Bloc’s proposals include a whole host of changes, like additional financial aid to the manufacturing sector, money for an NHL arena in Quebec City, a hike in culture spending, the list goes on. There are also revenue generators like a new tax on income over $150,000, cuts to military spending, and the elimination of subsidies to the oil and gas sector.

So while the scope of Duceppe’s expectations for Quebec may be ludicrous—in itself, the fact the Bloc is asking for money can’t possibly come as a shock to anyone with a pulse—I’m finding it hard to get all that worked up about them. In fact, isn’t this exactly what opposition parties should be doing—you know, telling voters how they’d do things differently if it were up to them? Moreover, don’t we want political parties that make it clear which demands are negotiable and which are not—and to then stand by those principles?

On civility

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 4:47 PM - 24 Comments

From a speech delivered by Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie in 1877.

I know it is the tactics of those by whom we are opposed  –  I know it was their tactics twenty years ago, and thirty-five years ago-to drive their opponents out of public life by the grossest slanders, in order that they may have the field left clear for themselves. I say to them, “Gentlemen, you can’t do it. (hear, hear, and cheers) Your slanders shall fall harmlessly against us, your tactics shall prove a failure, because you have not the people with you.” Sir John Macdonald never did have the people of Ontario with him; he never commanded a majority of the people of this Province, and he never will (cheers) He represented a retrograde policy from first to last.

Egyptian markets take a dive in wake of protests

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 4:04 PM - 2 Comments

Fears over political upheaval in Egypt following Tuesday’s “day of wrath” protests against President Hosni Mubarak’s regime have been felt in the country’s stock market. Egypt’s stock index dropped 6.1 per cent on Wednesday, the biggest drop since November 30, 2009. Meanwhile the Egyptian pound dropped to its lowest since January 2005, at 5.83 to the dollar. The concern facing investors revolves around whether or not protests will continue in the coming days and how the government will respond. If the unrest continues, investors could liquidate their positions in Egyptian equities. Foreign purchases of Egyptian equities have helped the government finance the deficit. Economist Raza Agha said, “if [the government] responds too aggressively, in a fashion similar to Tunisia, then it’s likely it will become a broader thing and people will seek to exit very quickly.” The unrest in Cairo and other Egyptian cities has seen three protestors and one policeman killed, with police arresting over 700 protestors. The Mubarak government has since banned demonstrations.

Reuters

That Oscar nod for 'Barney's Version' was no accident

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 3:40 PM - 6 Comments

Paul Giamatti in 'Barney's Version'

Nice to know Robert Lantos reads right to the bottom of BDJ Unscreened. In Wednesday’s post about the Oscar nominations, I signed off by taking an admittedly cheap shot at the Canadian producer of Barney’s Version. In citing the fact that the movie’s star, Paul Giamatti had been overlooked, while the film scored a single nomination in the Makeup category (for Montreal’s Adrien Morot), I wrote: “I don’t think anyone, even the film’s producer, Robert Lantos, expected [Giamatti]  to get an Oscar nod. But this Makeup citation at least allows Lantos to brand his labour of love ‘Oscar-nominated,’ while giving him an excuse to attend the awards.

Well, today Lantos fired off this response to me in an email:

“Nothing at the Oscars happens by accident. Adrien Morot’s much deserved nomination was fought for. He was flown to LA in December for a special screening and q&a with ‘below the line’ Academy members. And then again a couple of weeks ago for a presentation to the make up branch. Ads were taken in the trades in support of his work and our LA publicist arranged interviews with him in the craft publications.

This lobbying has been ongoing since November.”

And I don’t need an excuse to go to the Oscars. As an Academy member, I have been invited for the past 25 years. But I won’t be going, I prefer to watch the show on TV.”

Which is all worth knowing. So I asked Lantos if I could post his response. His reply: “Go ahead and post, IF you also acknowledge the cheap shot.”

My pleasure.

Ben Ali’s brother-in-law in Montreal

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 3:02 PM - 2 Comments

The Tunisian provisional government is seeking the arrest of Belhassen Trabelsi, the “notorious” brother-in-law of ousted President Ben Ali and a senior member of his inner circle, who arrived in Montreal last week. Trabelsi is accused of a number of financial crimes, including illegally obtaining property and illegal possession of transfer of foreign currency. Trabelsi, who arrived with his family in Canada last week after fleeing the mass uprisings in Tunisia, has permanent residency in Canada which makes it difficult for Canadian authorities to hand him over to Tunisian authorities. While he could lose the right to stay in Canada if he has not spent at least two of the last five years in the country, he could claim refugee status. The Canadian government may freeze his assets if requested by the Tunisian government.

The Globe and Mail

Yet another recall for Toyota

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 3:00 PM - 7 Comments

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is facing yet another widespread recall. A fuel-pressure sensor in many 2006 to 2009 Lexus GS300, GS350, IS250 and IS350 models is prone to loosening over time, which could cause a fuel leak. Most of the vehicles recalled were sold in Japan, but at least 12,000 are in Canada. This recall comes after more than 13 million cars required repair since Nov. 2008 when it recalled millions of vehicles over a gas pedal defects that caused “unintended acceleration.” As many as 89 deaths resulted from the fault, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Toyota was fined more than $48 million for its failure to warn the public after it learned of the potential problem.

Montreal Gazette

'Technologies don't stand still'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 2:55 PM - 11 Comments

Bob Rae considers Tunisia and Egypt.

Enter the cell phone, the internet, the i-phone and the blackberry.  These are “personal devices” which empower the individual to learn, to communicate, to connect.  Governments try to repress them from time to time but it can’t be done. A generation of young people with no work, plenty of time on their hands, and living in countries where the politics is truly stuck and the economies apart from oil are having trouble growing – it’s the perfect storm.  Add to this mix on the fringes political ideologies and extremism and the storm takes on added strength.

Will this produce instant democracy ? Absolutely not.  Armies and state structures will have their day and their say.  But the social change underway can’t be stopped, and governments are going to need to show a capacity for change, openness, transparency, accountability, and, yes, democracy and human rights.

Did Obama take on Tiger Mom?

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 2:05 PM - 3 Comments

Oh snap. Josh Gerstein suggests he did.

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 1:52 PM - 36 Comments

Jack Layton pitches Senate reforms.

“Unfortunately, today’s Senate is too often just partisans working for their parties while being paid with public money. No ‘sober second thought’ can come from unelected appointees with such an obvious conflict of interest,” said Layton. “Let’s take two small – but important – steps towards a more accountable Senate. First, remove all failed candidates and party insiders from the Senate. Secondly, let’s make sure all Senators stop fundraising for political parties.”