Why happiness suddenly matters

By Andrew Potter - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 10:08 AM - 6 Comments

Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

Politics is the art of taking credit, and politicians have been known to insert themselves into the receiving line for kudos for everything from Olympic gold medals to sunshine in July. But what they really like to take credit for is economic growth, which is why an election-starved Michael Ignatieff has been going around lately asking Canadians whether they are any better off today than they were four years ago. The recession bit hard, recovery has been slow, and Canadians and their governments find themselves mired in debt.

What Ignatieff should really be asking, though, is whether we’re any better off today than we were 40 years ago. The economist Tyler Cowen recently released a short e-book called The Great Stagnation, in which he points out that between 1947 and 1973, inflation-adjusted median income in the United States more than doubled. But from 1973 to 2004, it rose only 22 per cent, and over the past decade median income has actually declined. He notes that if pre-1973 growth rates had continued for the next three decades, “median family income in the United States would now be more than $90,000, as opposed to its current range of around $50,000.”

So, what happened?

Cowen’s argument is that the West spent most of the 20th century living off the easy proceeds of the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to machinery powered by cheap fossil fuels, industry grabbed almost all of the low-hanging fruit available for increasing productivity, and that got widely shared out in the form of steadily growing wages for all workers. But now we’ve reached a technological plateau, and while Cowen thinks things will get better, eventually, it will be a while before we see a true dividend from biotech, or clean and cheap alternative energies. In the meantime, income growth will continue to flatline.

Continue…

The scientific case for questionable accuracy

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 10:07 AM - 40 Comments

Stephen Gordon responds to the new Chief Statistician’s claim there’s “no scientific basis” for claiming the National Household Survey will be flawed.

This is wrong, and badly so. So wrong that when his political masters suggested in public that the analysts at Statistics Canada were of this opinion, Munir Sheikh – Mr Smith’s predecessor as Chief Statistician – felt obliged to resign in order to speak freely and correct the record … In point of fact, Statistics Canada has done quite a bit of research documenting the fundamental flaws associated with voluntary surveys; see Kevin Milligan’s guest post as well as this. Insisting that “critics cannot be sure” is a remarkable thing for a Chief Statistician to say; statistics is not in the business of providing absolute certainty.

Arcade Fire, on fame and putting it to good use

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 9:51 AM - 6 Comments

Rune Hellestad/Corbis

People in tuxedos fighting over hot dogs. That’s the indelible image Win Butler and Régine Chassagne took home from their first trip to the Grammy Awards back in 2006. Their group, Arcade Fire, had received two nominations. One was for Best Alternative Album for their debut disc Funeral—a big-deal award handed out during the televised, evening portion of the ceremony. The other was a nod for a song that had shown up on HBO’s Six Feet Under, in the decidedly less-prestigious Best Song Written for Motion Picture, Television, or Other Visual Media category, parcelled out hours before the real show begins. Not knowing any better, all seven members of the Montreal band dutifully took their seats inside an L.A. convention hall at 11 a.m., and spent the day politely applauding the winners of the best Hawaiian, polka and metal recordings. It was hot. It was boring. They didn’t win. And there was no alcohol, food, or even water available.

Late in the afternoon, the famished crowd was finally herded across the street to the Staples Center, site of the evening festivities. Inside the rink, a huge lineup formed at the one open concession stand. Soon things turned ugly. “People were screaming,” says Butler. “Women in prom dresses were crying,” Chassagne chimes in. Organizers told them they had to take their seats, and that no food would be allowed inside. Total chaos. “By the end there were people offering $50 for a hot dog,” Butler says with a grin.

Continue…

Bright idea: Billboard's top-tweeted bands

By Michael Barclay - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

The recorded music industry continues to tank. Last month, Soundscan reported sales were down nine per cent in 2010—bringing the industry’s collapse to 50 per cent of its 1999 levels. But even if people aren’t buying music in the numbers they used to, we’re all still listening to it—and talking about it. Which is why Billboard magazine, the bible for music industry insiders, launched a new chart in December: the Social 50. The rankings are based on a variety of online factors: YouTube views, number of tracks streamed from MySpace, Facebook fans, and even Twitter mentions. (None of which, it should be noted, will pay the bills for musicians.)

So far, the Social 50 closely mirrors the actual Top 50 singles, with Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Lady Gaga topping the chart since its inception. And no matter how notorious Kanye West’s tweets might be, he has yet to crack the Social 50’s Top 10.

Rumsfeld lashes out at John McCain, Condoleezza Rice, and others

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 6 Comments

Photograph by Yuri Gripas/Reuters

Donald Rumsfeld is still at war. In his new memoir, Known and Unknown, George W. Bush’s former defence secretary takes aim at fellow Republicans. And one is blasting him back. Rumsfeld writes that Republican Sen. John McCain, who criticized him for sending too few troops to Iraq, had a “hair-trigger temper and a propensity to fashion and shift his positions to appeal to the media.” McCain, who had argued for a “surge” in the number of troops, went on Good Morning America this week to respond: “I respect secretary Rumsfeld. He and I had a very, very strong difference of opinion about the strategy that he was employing in Iraq, which I predicted was doomed to failure.” And, he added, “Thank God he was relieved of his duties and we put the surge in; otherwise we would have had a disastrous defeat in Iraq.”

Others may be weighing in as well. Rumsfeld also takes on the image of Colin Powell, who served as secretary of state, as a voice of dissent in the Bush cabinet. “The media image of Powell battling the forces of unilateralism and conservatism may have been beneficial to Powell in some circles, but it did not jibe with reality. The reality was that Powell tended not to speak out at National Security Council or principals meetings in strong opposition to the views of the president or of his colleagues.”

Continue…

Everything you know is of questionable accuracy

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 27 Comments

In a pair of stories, Joan Bryden effectively questions the basis for 85% of political discussion in popular media.

There’s broad consensus among pollsters that proliferating political polls suffer from a combination of methodological problems, commercial pressures and an unhealthy relationship with the media … ”The dirty little secret of the polling business . . . is that our ability to yield results accurately from samples that reflect the total population has probably never been worse in the 30 to 35 years that the discipline has been active in Canada,” says veteran pollster Allan Gregg, chairman of Harris-Decima which provides political polling for The Canadian Press.

Further thoughts from Alice Funke and David Coletto.

Smells like team spirit

By Colby Cosh - Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 9:49 PM - 24 Comments

I kind of admire John Allemang’s Thursday think piece for the Globe about public funding for professional sports facilities. It’s very direct. Pleas for subsidies to billionaires usually aren’t. But Allemang lays the merchandise right out there on the street corner:

It may be hard, days after the Super Bowl’s cheesy excesses, to think of professional sports franchises as needy, noble cultural institutions. But that’s a key part of the pitch campaigners for new sports venues across the country use to get at government funds—money originally earmarked for broad-based community projects, not facilities used by for-profit professional teams. [emphasis mine]

The piece starts by asking why pro sports shouldn’t be subsidized with working people’s tax dollars when museums and concert halls are. The most obvious answer, and stop me if you’ve heard this, is that professional sport at the uppermost level is played for profit by people who are already millionaires. Allemang wouldn’t want you to think he doesn’t know this. He throws it right in your teeth, and goes on to make his argument for giving your money to the ultra-rich. It’s kind of funny, really: Allemang’s argument kind of has the “trickle-down” structure often imputed to supply-side economics—sure, we’ll provide a big cash benefit to the wealthy, and when they’re done devouring their share, they’ll puff a cloud of hedonic externalities into the atmosphere of the community.

The real news in this piece is that culture producers feel so defensive and frightened about their own public subsidies that they’re willing to enter into a coalition with pro athletes and team owners. In 2011, it seems, artists are unable to make the strictly moral case for any distinction between high culture and sports, and they sense that the taxpayer has grown insensitive to pleas of poverty from people who were damnfool enough to spend decades mastering the bassoon. Under these circumstances, their brightest hope is to join hands with Jason Spezza and Daryl Katz and say that all must have prizes.

This requires us to ignore the obvious in several respects, but, again, Allemang is very fearless about this.

Take the plans for the new $400-million Quebec amphitheatre, which will be announced Thursday. The building may look and sound like a hockey arena designed to lure back an NHL team to the home of the long-gone Nordiques, but for fundraising purposes, according to Quebec Mayor Régis Labeaume, it’s actually a “multifunctional” entertainment facility…

The building “looks and sounds like a hockey arena” designed to lure the NHL back to Quebec because that is exactly what it is, and what everybody knows it to be. Allemang doesn’t dispute this. He simply goes on to treat the pretended purpose as the real one and write the whole article in a weird sort of oratio obliqua, taking as his axiom what he is supposed to have been demonstrating.

Now, me, I wouldn’t give a nickel in tax to any public entertainment if I had a say in the matter. As Tyler Cowen recently observed, arts funding is, in practice, a regressive subsidy of the hobbies of the affluent, so it fails the socialist’s redistributive-justice test as badly as it does the libertarian’s “laissez faire, laissez passer” one. The usual case in its favour amounts to a caveman’s grunt of “Arts good”. That leaves the door open for those who can grunt “Sports good” with equal conviction and justice.

But I’ll say this for arts subsidies: they do have the potential, for better or worse, to give us more arts. There is no limit to the number of bright youngsters we could turn into bassoonists or abstract expressionist painters or short-documentary-subject directors. But our major professional sports leagues are run as closed cartels, and most of them (though not the CFL!) have reached a common natural size limit of 30-32 teams. Practically speaking, subsidies to the NHL will not increase the total supplied quantity of NHL hockey; if Quebec City is to have a team, someone else will have to lose one. Nor is there any realistic reason to expect these subsidies to flow through to the consumer in the absence of any conceivable shift in supply.

This week: Good news, bad news

By macleans.ca - Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 9:47 AM - 2 Comments

GOOD NEWS

Eleven abandoned puppies were rescued from an Ottawa dumpster (Ottawa Humane Society)

Undefending the border

Prime Minister Stephen Harper emerged from a meeting with Barack Obama last week with an agreement in principle on a common security perimeter. The pair are turning bureaucrats loose on a bilateral search for ways to protect the world’s largest international trading relationship from 10 years’ worth of accumulated border obstacles. Ideas range from shared cargo inspections to a second Detroit-Windsor bridge, but the mere will to restore the Canada-U.S. friendship to its old, friendly terms may be more valuable than any particular tech or law measure.

Yes, it is ethical oil

Meanwhile, a U.S. Department of Energy report issued on the eve of the Harper-Obama announcement provided hope for Transcanada Pipelines in its quest to nab U.S. regulatory clearance for the Keystone XL project connecting Alberta oil markets with the Gulf of Mexico. The report confirms the pipeline would be unlikely to affect net global carbon emissions, but would relieve the dependency of U.S. refiners and end-users on Middle Eastern and other oil—shifting profits to Canada without significant greenhouse consequences.

One last ride

Mark Kelly, astronaut husband of wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, displayed an impressive, old-school devotion to duty in resuming preparations to command April’s final mission of the space shuttle Endeavour. With Giffords stable and undergoing rehab, Kelly passed a special round of tests of his ability to concentrate on critical tasks. A NASA spokesman said that the three-time space traveller’s presence would “reduce the overall mission risk.”

Continue…

That's a no, sort of

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 6:16 PM - 33 Comments

Transport Minister Chuck Strahl dismisses any use of gas tax revenues to fund an arena in Quebec City.

“We have no plans to change that criteria,” Infrastructure Minister Chuck Strahl told reporters in Montreal. ”(The program is) quite flexible. It’s not infinitely flexible,” he added.

And yet, “a PMO spokesman explained that Strahl’s comments on Friday applied only to the gas tax—not to the possibility of funding an arena.”

CIDA castigated over "doctored" document

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 5:37 PM - 73 Comments

International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda and senior members of her staff deliberately “doctored” a document to make it look like department officials recommended de-funding KAIROS when they had in fact recommended doing just the opposite. House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken called the incident “very troubling,” though he conceded his position allowed him to do little in response. The crudely modified document features the hand-scrawled word “NOT” inserted into a recommendation that originally suggested Oda and her staff “sign below to indicate you approve a contribution” of just over $7 million to KAIROS. The group subsequently lost its federal funding, which amounted to about 40 per cent of its total budget.

CBC News

Obama's remarks on Egypt

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 4:47 PM - 14 Comments

REMARKS BY THE PRESDIENT

ON EGYPT

Grand Foyer

3:06 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Good afternoon, everybody.  There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place.  This is one of those moments.  This is one of those times.  The people of Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard, and Egypt will never be the same.

By stepping down, President Mubarak responded to the Egyptian people’s hunger for change.  But this is not the end of Egypt’s transition.  It’s a beginning.  I’m sure there will be difficult days ahead, and many questions remain unanswered.  But I am confident that the people of Egypt can find the answers, and do so peacefully, constructively, and in the spirit of unity that has defined these last few weeks.  For Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.

The military has served patriotically and responsibly as a caretaker to the state, and will now have to ensure a transition that is credible in the eyes of the Egyptian people.  That means protecting the rights of Egypt’s citizens, lifting the emergency law, revising the constitution and other laws to make this change irreversible, and laying out a clear path to elections that are fair and free.  Above all, this transition must bring all of Egypt’s voices to the table.  For the spirit of peaceful protest and perseverance that the Egyptian people have shown can serve as a powerful wind at the back of this change.

The United States will continue to be a friend and partner to Egypt.  We stand ready to provide whatever assistance is necessary — and asked for — to pursue a credible transition to a democracy.  I’m also confident that the same ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that the young people of Egypt have shown in recent days can be harnessed to create new opportunity — jobs and businesses that allow the extraordinary potential of this generation to take flight.  And I know that a democratic Egypt can advance its role of responsible leadership not only in the region but around the world.

Egypt has played a pivotal role in human history for over 6,000 years.  But over the last few weeks, the wheel of history turned at a blinding pace as the Egyptian people demanded their universal rights.

We saw mothers and fathers carrying their children on their shoulders to show them what true freedom might look like.

We saw a young Egyptian say, “For the first time in my life, I really count.  My voice is heard.  Even though I’m only one person, this is the way real democracy works.”

We saw protesters chant “Selmiyya, selmiyya” — “We are peaceful” — again and again.

We saw a military that would not fire bullets at the people they were sworn to protect.

And we saw doctors and nurses rushing into the streets to care for those who were wounded, volunteers checking protesters to ensure that they were unarmed.

We saw people of faith praying together and chanting – “Muslims, Christians, We are one.”  And though we know that the strains between faiths still divide too many in this world and no single event will close that chasm immediately, these scenes remind us that we need not be defined by our differences.  We can be defined by the common humanity that we share.

And above all, we saw a new generation emerge — a generation that uses their own creativity and talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears; a government that is responsive to their boundless aspirations.  One Egyptian put it simply:  Most people have discovered in the last few days…that they are worth something, and this cannot be taken away from them anymore, ever.

This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied.  Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence.  For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.

And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history — echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice.

As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.”  Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.

Today belongs to the people of Egypt, and the American people are moved by these scenes in Cairo and across Egypt because of who we are as a people and the kind of world that we want our children to grow up in.

The word Tahrir means liberation.  It is a word that speaks to that something in our souls that cries out for freedom.  And forevermore it will remind us of the Egyptian people — of what they did, of the things that they stood for, and how they changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.

Thank you.

END            3:13 P.M. EST

Just Go With It: the best (and only) way to enjoy Adam Sandler's latest flick

By Claire Ward - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 4:38 PM - 5 Comments

Shot and edited by Tom Henheffer
Produced by Claire Ward

Go to Brian’s blog: Brian D. Johnson Unscreened

Betraying the Profound Artistic Vision of Charlie's Angels?

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 4:35 PM - 4 Comments

Well, no, not really, but I can’t help but wince at the fact that the new Charlie’s Angels pilot will have a young, good-looking Bosley who is described in the script’s stage directions as “a perfect specimen of 21st-century American manhood.” Why? Because for many of us — okay, me — Charlie’s Angels made the most sense if you looked at it as the tragedy of John Bosley, a schlubby-looking, scratchy-voiced man who clearly can’t get a girl under most circumstances. He’s surrounded by beautiful women whom he cannot have, and who treat him like their ugly sister. And he’s working for a guy who can apparently have any woman he wants and never has to do any actual work. Think what goes on in that man’s mind. Clearly, if Charlie’s Angels had run another season they would have revealed the big twist: Bosley has been in hell all this time, and this is his eternal torture — created by an unseen, all-powerful god who prefers to be called “Charlie.”

I actually think the script of the pilot is not bad, if you remember that “not bad” for this kind of show means it can — nay, must — include a heaping helping of cheese. It also includes a cute idea of paying homage to the original title sequence (and the interstitial sequences leading into commercial breaks) by calling for a split-screen technique that seems like 24, except with the screen cut into different shapes. Then again, I thought the script of the Rockford Files remake wasn’t bad, and that pilot went nowhere thanks to casting and execution problems. If this one winds up the same way, the producers can always blame the director too.

The big news about the remake script, which has already been announced, is that the Angels are not ex-cops but ex-criminals recruited by the mysterious Charlie. That makes it sound less like Charlie’s Angels and more like The Mod Squad (making this my second Mod Squad reference of the week), but as long as Aaron Spelling gets his posthumous royalty cheques I’m sure his ghost will be fine with it either way.

Speaking of Charlie’s Angels and Spelling, one of the most revealing anecdotes about the producer — and by extension, much of commercial U.S. TV — comes from Barney Rosenzweig (Cagney & Lacey), one of several producers Angels had in its famous first season. Rosenzweig, who tried to add a slightly more feminist touch to the show in the episodes he produced (it didn’t really work out), told this story in the book Inside Prime Time by Todd Gitlin, describing Spelling’s style:

Rosenzweig calls it “Show and tell.” On a Spelling show any plot point important enough to signal once is signalled twice. “He shows the scene, and then in the next scene everybody talks about what was just seen. ‘You’ll never believe what just happened! This just did this and this just did that.’

“You know, when you do television episodes, especially action-adventure shows, you have a tendency to remake all the old great movies. Well, one of the episodes I was doing was sort of a mild ripoff of Foreign Correspondent. It took place at a resort… [a diplomat played by Theodore Bikel has disappeared and] nobody believes [Kate Jackson's character]. She goes back to the apartment, pissed off that her friends don’t believe her, and she sees on the dining room table the cigarette lighter. Very distinctive cigarette lighter. Picks it up. Aha! Evidence that he was here.

‘”Now, we’re running the rough cut, and I say to Aaron, ‘I’m going to get a close shot of the cigarette lighter, and Kate’s hand will come in and pick it up and light it, so it will be one shot, instead of just an insert. So we’ll have that tie-in.’ Aaron says ‘Good idea, good idea.’ Then he says, ‘Listen, when you do it, get the insert earlier with Theo’s hand, showing him putting the lighter down on the table.’ He had a few other notes. I said, ‘I like your notes. We’ll accomplish them, but one I have to really disagree with violently.’ He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘I really don’t want to put in that insert of Theo Bikel putting the lighter down on the table in the previous scene. It’s a real red flag. I mean, it just says to everybody, Uh-oh, look out!’ And he says, ‘Well, of course, but you must do that.’

“I said, ‘I don’t understand. Look, to me, everything I’ve learned about picture making is to go for revelation, to learn about something through the eyes of a principal. Don’t intrude the camera to have the audience see something that our cast doesn’t. It’s much better to learn about it through Kate.’ Big argument. Finally he said, ‘Look, just do it.’ Aaron was the boss, right? He owned the store.”

That night at a party, a friend reminded Rosenzweig, who was complaining bitterly, of the conventions of children’s theater: “The villain walks out onstage and says, ‘Heh-heh-heh, I have the secret matchbook, and I am going to hide it. I am going to put it behind this basket, and the heroine will never find it. Heh-heh-heh!’ And he walks off. Now the heroine comes out and says, ‘Where oh where is the secret matchbook?’ And all the kids in the audience say, ‘It’s behind the basket, it’s behind the basket!’ That’s what Aaron does. He believes that’s what the American audience is, you see.”

Sure, Rosenzweig sounds bitter, and anyone trying to bring the remotest amount of sophistication to a Spelling product must have been driven out of his mind. But that technique — show and tell, always recap things for the audience, let them know that something’s important right away so they can look out for it later — is absolutely a part of commercial mass-market TV. Spelling was a little more open about it and a little less concerned with disguising it (every mystery show has to recap stuff for us; the sophisticated ones try to disguise the fact that that’s what they’re doing). And of course he had an instinct for what the public needed spoon-fed to it; he didn’t seem to do it for cynical reasons, but because this was genuinely the kind of thing he liked. But cynically or sincerely, we’ll never completely see the end of TV producers thinking we are basically children.

The precise nature of the problem

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 3:03 PM - 7 Comments

Glen Pearson notes the misdirection inherent in fretting about decorum.

I’m all for more decorum – been fighting for it for four years – but it’s useless if the Parliament of Canada can’t discover compromise and move ahead progressively with legislation. My friend had only taken a placebo and was imagining the rest. The true test of professional political behaviour is whether representatives can find accommodations on the vital issues of the country. That is not happening in Ottawa.

Berlin squashes the squatters at 'Liebig 14'

By Jen Cutts - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 3:01 PM - 0 Comments

Thomas Peter/Reuters

A rundown five-storey building that was home to 25 squatters became the flashpoint for violent protests in Berlin last week. Up to 2,500 police were called in to handle the crowds surrounding Liebigstrasse 14 on Feb. 2, as police moved to enforce an eviction notice dating back to November 2009. “Liebig 14,” one of the city’s last remaining squats, stood as a symbol of left-leaning residents’ resentment over gentrification—and the resulting rent increases—in the east Berlin district of Friedrichshain.

Using sledgehammers and axes to break through barricades, police took five hours to remove the nine remaining residents holed up in the building. More than 1,000 protesters gathered in solidarity; some turned to violence, breaking windows, paintballing buildings and scuffling with police. In the end, dozens were arrested and more than 60 officers were injured. Liebig 14 was one of many abandoned buildings in the former Communist East Berlin that were occupied by squatters after the Berlin Wall came down in 1990.

Google wants to help you plan your wedding

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments

Could this be the end of expensive wedding planners? Google has launched its latest bid to organize your life: Google for Weddings. The Internet search giant has designed a site with customized software aimed at users who are planning weddings. The site includes tools to help users plan a wedding budget or guest list, design a wedding website, and even edit and share wedding photos. Wedding expert Michelle Rago was employed to add her personal touch by designing the templates.

Newser

30 members of Congress have just endorsed the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 2:30 PM - 15 Comments

Thirty members of the House of Representatives have written a letter urging Hillary Clinton and the State Dept. to approve the oil sands pipeline that Harper was advocating for in his meeting with Obama last week. The group is mostly Republicans, but includes several Democrats and members of influential committees.

They write:

“…In recent months, members of Congress have presented strong and convincing arguments in favor of the Keystone XL Project, including: the creation of jobs for thousands of Americans, millions in tax revenue for local and state governments, strict environmental regulation in Canada, and billions in indirect economic stimulus connected to the pipeline project. The benefits fo this project far outweigh any argument made by the opposition. But the Keystone XL Project is not only a matter of national interest; it is a matter of national security…”

***

You can follow me on Twitter at luizachsavage

He’ll be back

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 2:23 PM - 5 Comments

Former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger is planning a comeback—in Hollywood, that is. “Exciting news,” the 63-year-old wrote on Twitter. “My friends at CAA (Creative Artists Agency, his talent firm) have been asking me for 7 years when they can take offers seriously. Gave them the green light today.” The actor-turned-politician finished his second term as governor last month, leading to speculation as to whether he’d continue in politics or resume his acting career in Hollywood.

Reuters

U.S. hospitals ban smokers instead of smoking

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 1:46 PM - 39 Comments

In the U.S., hospitals and medical businesses are increasingly turning away job applicants based on whether or not they smoke as a move to boost worker productivity, cut healthcare costs and promote healthy living, the New York Times reports. These rules treat cigarettes like an illegal narcotic, warning applicants of “tobacco –free hiring.” They are asked to submit to a urine test for nicotine, and anyone caught smoking might be fired. Even anti-tobacco groups are debating these policies, wondering if they set a precedent of employers placing limits on employees’ private lives. More than half the states have laws against bans on smokers, but even so, businesses are adopting them anyway. For example, hospitals in states including Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Texas stopped hiring smokers, even though about one in five Americans smoke.

New York Times

'Profoundly disturbing questions that evidently remain unanswered'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 1:35 PM - 72 Comments

Last December, Liberal John McKay rose on a point of privilege to assert that International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda had misled the House on the matter of KAIROS. Yesterday, the Speaker told the House he could not formally rule on the matter under the present circumstance. That did not though restrain him from commenting.

As noted earlier, the Chair reviewed all the documents available. In doing so, to fully grasp the allegations being made, particular attention was paid to the committee testimony of the minister and senior CIDA officials and to the internal CIDA document obtained through an access to information request made available to me by the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood. The full body of material gives rise to very troubling questions. Any reasonable person confronted with what appears to have transpired would necessarily be extremely concerned, if not shocked, and might well begin to doubt the integrity of certain decision-making processes. In particular, the senior CIDA officials concerned must be deeply disturbed by the doctored document they have been made to appear to have signed.

Canada takes EU seal ban to WTO

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 1:18 PM - 38 Comments

The Canadian government will take its case against the EU’s seal ban to the World Trade Organization. Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea says negotiations with EU officials are at an impasse and accuses them of siding with animal rights activists. Canada and the EU have spent a year in a “consultation stage” on the issue for over a year and no progress has been made. In 2009, Europe’s 27 member states voted to band seal products from Canada, after lobbying from celebrities like Brigitte Bardot and Paul McCartney. Canada wants the ban revoked on account of it violating EU trade obligations.

CBC News

Even Microsoft uses Google

By Erica Alini - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 1:14 PM - 0 Comments

When Microsoft launched Bing in 2009, geeks across the Internet joked that the name must stand for “Because It’s Not Google.” But that very connotation came under question last week when Google accused its search engine archival of copying its result listings.

The claim came after the California-based Web behemoth ran a test that, it says, demonstrates that some of Bing’s search results came directly from Google. The company temporarily altered some of its algorithms so that, for example, a search for “mbzrxpgjys,” which would normally produce zero or a few irrelevant results, turned up a link to the website of Research in Motion. After a while, Google said, an identical search on Bing started producing the same result.

Microsoft did not deny the claim, but said that Google’s results are one of the more than 1,000 signals it uses to compile its own search listings. While Microsoft’s conduct is not illegal, according to Danny Sullivan, editor of the tech blog Search Engine Land, it means Bing increasingly looks like Google, depriving Internet users of the benefits of being able to choose among search engines, each with their own unique “search engine voice.”

Rising prices and revolution

By Chris Sorensen - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 1:08 PM - 5 Comments

Inflation isn’t normally associated with serious social upheaval, at least not in Canada, but recent events have shown that spiralling prices can have profound effects on emerging economies. The chaos in Egypt, much like the uprising in Tunisia earlier this year, can be blamed in part on inflation—namely rising food and energy prices that have left jobless Egyptians feeling desperate.

It’s an especially sharp problem in developing countries where a substantial portion of income is spent on food. But even big global players are growing concerned lately. China, for instance, is worried that rising prices are making the cellphones, dishwashers and clothing churned out by its manufacturing sector less attractive to foreign buyers. And no country, it seems, is more sensitive about inflation than Argentina. Independent firms have pegged inflation there as high as 25 per cent, more than double the official figures, and are reportedly being threatened with government reviews of their methodology and potential fines of $125,000.

What’s behind all this inflation trouble? According to a recent Scotiabank report, the run-up in prices is fuelled mainly by soaring commodities, thanks to a combination of reduced global supplies of everything from grains to vegetable oils (many producers cut capacity during the recession while bad weather has ruined crops) just as demand in many parts of the world is beginning to rise with the recovery. But some have also singled out a weak U.S. dollar as a key culprit. Four months ago, the U.S. Federal Reserve launched a second round of quantitative easing—essentially printing money to juice the economy—by buying US$600 billion in U.S. government bonds. China and other developing nations say the move is causing money to flood into their economies, further pushing up prices of food, energy and other commodities, while also forcing their currencies higher.

Not surprisingly, U.S. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has dismissed the criticism by blaming developing countries for failing to properly manage their own monetary policies—a fair point, although one that is likely to fall on deaf ears once the citizenry has taken to the streets in protest.

WHO report urges governments to do more to prevent alcohol abuse

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 1:07 PM - 6 Comments

A new report by the World Health Organization says governments aren’t doing enough to prevent alcohol abuse, which the agency estimates is killing 2.5 million people each year. While Canadians’ booze consumption was categorized as “stable,” marked increases in alcohol consumption were recorded in Africa and South-East Asia between 2001-2005. Men in Eastern European countries continue to be particularly hard-hit by alcohol abuse: one in five men in the Russian Federation and neighbouring countries die due to alcohol-related causes each year, according to the study.

Associated Press

World Health Organization