Former military commander admits having an affair in Afghanistan

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 2:50 PM - 3 Comments

A former commander of the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan has admitted having a sexual affair while serving in Afghanistan. Retired Brig.-Gen. Daniel Ménard pleaded guilty in a Montreal military court on Thursday to improper relations with a corporal under his command and attempting to impede an investigation. The Canadian Forces bars soldiers from engaging in sexual relations while on deployment. Ménard, who is married with two children and was one of the top commanders in Afghanistan, returned to Canada in disgrace after his affair with Master Cpl. Bianka Langlois was revealed by a U.S. military affairs blogger. The two met in 2008 while still in Canada before they were both deployed to Kandahar. Ménard faces up to two years in prison, a reduction of rank, or dismissal with disgrace from Her Majesty’s service.

CTV News

The Indisputable Leader of the Gang

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 2:19 PM - 0 Comments

Via Jerry Beck, while some classic cartoon characters are still struggling to get people to notice them again, Top Cat appears to have his own all-animated feature film. It’s a Flash-animated 3D film from Mexico, where the Top Cat show has always been much more popular than in English-speaking North America.

Oddly, the U.S. show Hanna-Barbera ripped off to make Top Cat is also more popular outside the U.S.: syndication of The Phil Silvers Show was huge in the UK, not so much in the U.S. or Canada. Maybe there’s something about these lovable-loser con men that make them more beloved outside their own country? You’re better off in the U.S. if you’re just a loser (Ralph Kramden/Fred Flintstone) with no con man abilities.

King of the Hill Revisited: “How To Fire a Rifle Without Really Trying” and “Texas City Twister”

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 2:06 PM - 4 Comments

I’m trying to re-start my King of the Hill recaps with the first two episodes of the second season. The one slight difference from the season 1 recaps is that I’m going to try and use more variable lengths depending on how much there is to say about an episode: so for this one, I had a lot to say about the season premiere and not a lot about the second, so I’ll just say what there is to say.

“How To Fire a Rifle Without Really Trying”

The second season was the most popular of King of the Hill‘s run. In its post-Simpsons time slot, it actually got higher ratings than The Simpsons for the season (1997-8). The success of that season, ironically, may have wound up hurting it in the long run, as Fox wound up deciding that it was Continue…

Jason Richard Chenier: 1975 – 2011

By Jen Cutts - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 1:45 PM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Marc Ngui

Jason Richard Chenier was born in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., on Aug. 17, 1975, to Richard, a miner, and Barbara. With “poker-straight” blond hair and big blue eyes, he was an outgoing kid, says his uncle, George Staszak. While younger sister Jennifer was the artistic one (once winning the family a trip to Ottawa with a drawing she entered in a Maclean’s contest, says George), Jason was the sporty one; often, the entire family would travel to cheer him on at out-of-town hockey games. When summer came, it was baseball, or fishing with George. If Jason didn’t like what Barbara was serving for dinner, says George, he’d “run two streets over to Granny’s house, and get fed whatever he liked there.”

In high school, Jason took summer jobs at the mine where Richard worked. He also inherited his dad’s habit of teasing people he liked, says Tracy Racine, who didn’t mind the attention. Though she was just 13 and three years behind Jason in the small English high school they attended, she couldn’t help developing a crush on the “loud” boy who was friends with her older brother, and prayed that she would one day marry him. But too soon, Jason left Quebec for Sudbury, Ont., to live with his grandmother (who’d moved) and attend Grade 13.

In 1994, Jay, as his friends had begun calling him, enrolled in Cambrian College’s mining engineering technician program. He shared an apartment with Rob Des Rivieres, who had the pleasure of being subjected to Jay’s practical jokes. One night, after drinking more than he’d planned at a keg party, Rob decided to sleep it off in his car. He awoke to find Jay had stuffed it to the roof with things from the neighbours’ yards: “Firewood, recycle boxes, garden gnomes. It was never just a low-end prank with Jay.” After they’d been in school for two years, nickel prices were surging and local mine Inco was paying for students to take the “common core” course that would certify them to work underground, says Bill Bennett, who also got to know Jay at Cambrian. Though Bill and others moved right from the course to jobs at Inco, Jay stuck with school and finished the last year of his program. By the time he graduated, the nickel market had turned down, and Jay wasn’t able to get on with Inco. He returned to Rouyn-Noranda, and worked a few short-term contracts at different mines in the area.

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German town removes Hess’s body

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 12:45 PM - 1 Comment

The German town of Wunsiedel has removed the remains of Adolph Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, from the town cemetery in order to deter Neo-Nazis from paying homage to his grave. His remains will be cremated and his headstone, which has the epitaph “I have dared” engraved upon it in German, was also destroyed. Hess’s descendants have reluctantly agreed to the decision, after his granddaughter and the church’s pastor struck up the agreement. Hess was captured in 1941, after parachuting into Scotland with the intent of negotiating a peace agreement with Nazi Germany. He was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg, and spent the rest of his life in prison until committing suicide on August 17, 1987. Far-right groups in Germany consider him a “martyr to the Fatherland” and began rallying at the Wunsiedel cemetery the following year.

The Guardian

Who’s suing whom?

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 12:30 PM - 4 Comments

British Columbia: The owner of the Blenz Coffee chain is suing 150 hockey rioters—John Does 1 to 75 and Jane Does 1 to 75, some of whom Blenz owner George Moen says can be identified from videos—for damages done in the Stanley Cup riots to three downtown franchises, including one where the franchisee barricaded herself, two employees and a customer in a bathroom to protect them all while the store was extensively trashed. Blenz is the first Vancouver business to file a lawsuit against the rioters.

Manitoba: A German family is suing their immigration consultant, who they say urged them to lie to immigration officials about a previous criminal charge—a traffic conviction. The conviction was eventually discovered and the family now faces deportation.

Ontario: A security guard with the Greater Toronto Airports Authority is being sued by her ex-husband, who alleges that she used airport security cameras to spy on his travels through Pearson Airport with their children. The lawsuit also named another GTAA employee who allegedly helped the ex-wife, as well as the GTAA itself, which is also facing an investigation by the federal privacy commissioner over the incident.

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Crime hits 38-year low

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 12:26 PM - 37 Comments

Canada’s crime rate is at its lowest level since 1973, with the homicide rate dropping to a 45-year low, according to a new report by Statistics Canada. Sexual assaults, gun offences, criminal harassment, child pornography and drug offences, however, all increased in 2010. In all, police reported 77,000 fewer Criminal Code violations in 2010 than the previous year, including drops in attempted murders, serious assaults and robberies.

The Globe and Mail

The Web’s best friend?

By Emma Teitel - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 12:15 PM - 0 Comments

Photography by Liz Sullivan

A ghost of Internet past is back in the form of Wag.com—a new Amazon venture set on recreating Pets.com, the pet supply store whose failure in 2000 became an enduring symbol of that era’s dot-com bubble. Wag.com is the creation of Quidsi, the company responsible for Diapers.com and Soap.com. Amazon acquired Quidsi for $540 million in April, and hopes to dodge the bad luck linked to Pets.com, which couldn’t break even on shipping costs despite massive marketing success and a Super Bowl spot. The new site sells 10,000 pet supplies including food, clothing and litter. While Amazon hasn’t had much luck with its prior pet ventures (it backed Pets.com), Quidsi co-founder Marc Lore told the New York Times that today’s health food craze may give Wag.com an edge that its predecessor never had. “People buy more organic pet food now,” he says, “so shipping costs as a per cent of revenue are lower.”

Next stop, groceries

By Cigdem Iltan - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Photography by Liz Sullivan

Subway platforms are normally just places for people to avoid eye contact while blasting 80 decibels into their eardrums. But during a recent experiment in Seoul, commuters could also buy groceries without having to lug heavy bags or stand in line.

The grocery giant Tesco plastered the walls of a subway station in the South Korean capital with life-sized photos of meat, dairy and produce displays, with each product bearing a unique barcode to be scanned with a smartphone. After people filled their virtual shopping carts and paid the bill using an app, their purchases were delivered to their front door when they returned home at the end of the workday. During the three-month trial, Tesco says 10,287 customers used the service, while online sales rose 130 per cent. The company is now looking for other high-traffic venues to host a shopping experience, free from the chill of the ice cream aisle.

Central bank battle

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Cheap money pumped out by central banks has sparked a speculative frenzy in the commodity sector that has driven up prices for everything from gasoline to Corn Flakes.

Or it hasn’t, depending on who you ask.

It’s become one of the most critical economic debates facing the world, and it’s pitted the Bank of Canada against Japan’s own central bank. Last week, a BoC study concluded “financial speculation seems to have played a modest role” in rising commodity prices,” and that “the available evidence points to global demand and supply conditions” as the real cause. That’s in contrast to a report published three months ago by the Bank of Japan. While demand from emerging economies has driven prices, the BoJ admitted, “speculative investment flows…have amplified the intensity of the price surge.” And the jump in speculative money can be tied directly to lax monetary policies, it said.

Maybe the faceoff simply comes down to perspective. Resource-rich Canada will benefit enormously if the rise of commodities is in fact due to a permanent shift in demand. With almost no resources of its own, Japan can only hope that as central banks tighten the reins, speculators abandon their bets on commodities, and prices finally fall back to Earth.

What to do when the goldfish dies

By Rebecca Eckler - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Jenna Marie Wakani

“I honestly had no idea that flushing a dead fish would create so much drama,” wrote Julie Cole, mother of six and co-founder of Mabel’s Labels, on her Facebook page recently. “RIP Thomas the Blue Fish.” It was instantly apparent she’d struck a nerve: her loyal Facebook followers soon posted dozens of recollections of their own fish-flushing travails.

“Sniff. Sniff. Memories,” one woman posted. “Maddy insisted on a full-out funeral, including chairs, flowers and even neighbours. We were even asked to present a speech. I have to admit, I cried. Poor ‘Goldie.’ We buried him, and the next day dogs had dug him up. Never told Maddy. Sorry for your loss.”

Some posters suggested other ways to dispose of dead fish while preserving their kids’ innocence of death. One explained, “We had to take our fish down to Lake Ontario ‘to let it find its family before he died.’ Worked like a charm. No tears!”
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The skull in the backyard

By Cigdem Iltan - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:45 AM - 0 Comments

Robert Kirkham/The Buffalo News/AP

David Attenborough has travelled the world to uncover nature’s greatest mysteries. Little did the BBC star know that for 132 years, a different kind of mystery was waiting to be revealed right in his backyard. A human skull unearthed behind Attenborough’s home in a posh London neighbourhood has been confirmed as belonging to murder victim Julia Martha Thomas, who died in 1879. The widow’s maid, Katherine Webster, had strangled her, chopped her up, boiled her remains and fed her lard to children in the street before disposing of her flesh in the nearby Thames River. The case, which became known as the Barnes Mystery, fascinated Victorian England. Webster faced a trial and was executed, but Thomas’s head was never found—that is, until a group of workmen discovered it last October while building an extension on Attenborough’s property, the former site of the killer’s favourite watering hole. After months of investigation, the West London coroner ruled the cause of death as asphyxiation and head trauma, and formally recognized that the recovered skull belonged to Thomas.

Radio is sinkin’ man and I don’t want to swim

By Peter Nowak - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:35 AM - 28 Comments

Photo by GS1311/Flickr

Last month, I broke down and bought a car stereo to replace the factory model that came with my 2003 Toyota Corolla. Given that the car is eight years old, the stereo didn’t yet have the necessary inputs to properly connect an iPod. I’d therefore been relying on one of those crappy FM transmitters that plug into the iPod, which not only results in crackly sound, but requires that you continually adjust the reception because of shifting FM stations in different towns and cities.

I shelled out for the new stereo, a simple $99 model from Pioneer, because I can’t take Canadian radio anymore. For one thing, there are all the ads. Since the CRTC allows radio stations to air as many as they want, the amount has been climbing and climbing. That’s good news for radio revenues, which are also climbing and climbing, but bad news for your sanity while driving. Continue…

Ottawa considers privatizing search and rescue

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:35 AM - 8 Comments

The federal government is considering privatizing the military’s search and rescue operations as part of a much-delayed plan to replace the Air Force’s aging fleet of rescue planes. According to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, the government recently told manufacturers that “Alternative Service Delivery”—government jargon for contracting out services—is on the table in the search and rescue field. Ottawa has been trying to replace its gaggle of 40-year-old fixed-wing Buffalos since 2003. An earlier bid was scuppered, according to a source, after the Air Force rigged the bidding to favour a single firm. The Buffalos, which have been plagued by mechanical problems, are still used on missions in the Rockies and the west coast.

Ottawa Citizen

Somalian militias recruiting famine-struck children

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Islamist militias are recruiting Somalian children to their ranks, according to Amnesty International. Tens of thousands of people have died from malnutrition in famine-stricken Somalia, while fighting has intensified in its capital, Mogadishu. Civil war has raged for two decades in the country, which hasn’t had a working central government since 1991. The “systematic recruitment of children” is increasing amidst dire living conditions, the human rights organization says. Many of the children are under the age of 15. The U.S. was once Somalia’s largest contributor of humanitarian aid, but has reduced funding by 88 percent, according to the UN. The drop in aid is attributed to fears of diversion of aid by Islamist militants.

Sydney Morning Herald

REVIEW: The Long Journey Home: A Memoir

By Dafna Izenberg - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

When the author, an American poet, first tried to leave her abusive husband, he yelled, “The cars are mine! The house is mine! The land is mine!” Robison’s close friend (and eventual lover) Suzanne replied: “What’s Margaret’s, John?” Robison, meanwhile, wondered, “Is the story of my life mine?”

The first person to tell that story—or a version of it—was Robison’s son Augusten Burroughs, in his 2002 memoir, Running with Scissors. Burroughs depicts his mother as eccentric, narcissistic and often psychotic, writing how she signed custody of him over to her less-than-professional (and possibly also psychotic) psychiatrist, William Turcotte. In her own account, Robison confirms much of her son’s story (not always on purpose), while also providing some context and revealing many more dimensions of her character.

Her tale begins with her own mother, Louisa, whose affection and approval always evaded her, and about whom Robison was deeply ambivalent. At 14, she overheard her mother agonize over the possibility that Robison was gay. At 21, when Robison confessed to being frightened of her future husband, Louisa suggested that she “just tell him.” Instead, Robison married him, convinced that’s what her mother truly wanted.

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How to pretend you’re an amazing cook

By Rebecca Eckler - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:27 AM - 1 Comment

Photographs by Cole Garside; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute.

He’s hidden under beds. He’s had to sneak out back doors. He even provides cheat sheets so your secret won’t get out. Forget Iron Chef and Top Chef. Meet the Ghost Chef. That’s what chef Matt Kantor now calls himself, the result of cooking for numerous dinner parties across North America but leaving all the credit to the host. “It started by accident,” Kantor explains. “One of my guy friends wanted to impress his girlfriend, so I helped him out.” Word spread, and now the Ghost Chef has cooked for some of the most famous and wealthiest people in Canada, without, of course, any credit.

Most recently, he was the Ghost Chef at a Toronto party for 18. “These people had a rotating supper club and whoever hosted had to come up with the meal and the theme. This woman picked New Zealand as her theme. She wanted to put together a four-course meal and called me in a panic the day before. One of the rules of their club is they’re not supposed to get any outside help, including buying prepared foods,” explains Kantor.

He headed to her house at noon the next day—the day of the dinner. “I had written down recipes on scrap pieces of paper to make it look like she had written it down. Then I just cranked out the food. While I was doing it, I explained to her why I picked the dishes and how to braise the meat. I needed her to look credible, so I didn’t make the fanciest dishes, because her friends know she’s not the best cook.” He also showed her techniques she could demonstrate.“I told her not to do it until her guests arrived, so they could see that it was her doing it.” Then he scattered dishes and pots and cookbooks around the kitchen to make it look as if she had been slaving away all day. At five o’clock, he left her with instructions and his phone number “so she could text me with an emergency question.”

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REVIEW: Bad Dog (A Love Story)

By Patricia Dawn Robertson - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:25 AM - 0 Comments

Frustrated dog owners who like to tipple will find solace and instruction in this memoir. Martin Kihn is too busy sneaking a “voddy” to devote much time to his long-suffering wife, Gloria. Meanwhile, their incorrigible Bernese mountain dog, Hola, has run amok. Kihn must reclaim his derailed life when Gloria decamps for their cottage after Hola crosses the line and attacks her. “What I know now is that settling for a dog who is housebroken and doesn’t draw blood is like settling for a child who can talk,” writes Kihn. He realizes his marriage is in peril so he joins AA and enrols Hola in the demanding Canine Good Citizen program. What follows is Marley & Me meets Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story. The narrative’s coy appeal is that it provides much-needed levity to an otherwise pretty grim scenario. As Kihn struggles with his eccentric sponsor, learns the ropes at obedience school and forgoes his personal dignity, the reader starts to root for him and Hola.

Also keeping the narrative aloft is Kihn’s kindling-dry wit. Here’s a description of the austere rural obedience camp he and Hola attend: “Big dog events tend to be held in places humans abandoned in the 1950s—out-of-the-way, downscale locations with no heat, no cellular reception, no TVs in the room, no Internet, no tiki bar or hot tubs or robes or room service.” I like to imagine Will Ferrell playing Kihn in the film adaptation in which Hola sniffs crotches, refuses to stay and sleeps on the family sofa. Read Bad Dog. It’s entertaining, authentic and self-effacing. Kihn is occasionally upstaged by Hola’s antics in this authentic love story, but her loyal presence will surely help keep him sober.

REVIEW: The End of Everything

By Dafna Izenberg - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Thirteen-year-olds Evie Verver and Lizzie Hood have been next-door neighbours and best friends their whole lives. As little girls in matching checked swimsuits and muddy-coloured bobs, people couldn’t tell them apart. Sometimes Lizzie gets confused, too, and will catch herself looking for the scar on her leg, then remember that the scar is Evie’s. Lizzie is also steeped in the lore and culture of Evie’s family, privy, for example, to the tantalizing secret that Evie’s glamorous and unfathomable older sister Dusty is named for the artist whose album her parents listened to 16 times on the night she was conceived. Evie and Lizzie spend many a night eavesdropping on Dusty and Mr. Verver as they sit on the back patio and mock the amorous overtures of Dusty’s admirers. “I bet it popped out,” Mr. Verver teases Dusty one evening, when she describes how she ejected an earring from her date’s trachea by hitting him on the back. Listening to father and daughter howl in subversive delight, “All I could think was how wondrous it was—oh, the two of them,” Lizzie remembers later.

That was five days before Evie disappeared, and a rare moment in which Lizzie found that she couldn’t read Evie’s thoughts. In fact, Evie had become increasingly opaque in the weeks before she went missing. But she did let it drop that a man had been watching her—her, not Dusty—through her bedroom window at night. Lizzie reports this critical clue and unearths several more, winning Mr. Verver’s shining gratitude and attention.

A child disappears, a family drama bubbles up—it is a narrative device common to literary mystery fiction, but few authors employ it as skilfully as Abbott has in her sixth novel. Beneath a story tight with suspense, she pokes at even spookier questions: what if a girl who was kidnapped wanted to be taken? What if a father makes his daughter feel so special that she never wants to grow up? And, when it comes to sex, how does a young woman decide what to give and what to take, what to sacrifice and what to save?

REVIEW: Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned

By Peter Shawn Taylor - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 0 Comments

Clarence Darrow was, putting it narrowly, the greatest criminal lawyer of all time. But he was much more than that. He described himself as a socialist, populist and philosophical anarchist. Supporters called him a friend to labour, blacks and women. His enemies called him the devil’s disciple. Darrow earned his reputation as the lawyer for hopeless causes during the United States’ era of industrial violence at the turn of the 20th century. With his gift for courtroom theatrics and a liberal world view, he found common cause with unions and the underclass. Despite overwhelming evidence tying his clients to bombings or murders, he found success, more often than not, by shifting juries’ focus away from facts and toward motives and emotions. He once earned a not guilty verdict for a boy who shot a sheriff point-blank serving eviction papers on his destitute mother. “There are things to consider… besides bloodshed,” he once told a federal commission on industrial relations.

A genius in front of juries, Darrow was also an extremely complicated man, as Farrell makes plain in this detailed account of his life and politics. He never followed the crowd: tirelessly crusading against the death penalty and racism while supporting free love, anarchy and atheism. He also had an insatiable need for money and, despite his reputation as a friend to the poor and disenfranchised, would often take cases for the retainer rather than the cause; he defended numerous Chicago gangsters, a corrupt municipal gas deal, and engineered a U.S. naval officer’s escape from justice in a racially motivated murder case. Even his supporters found frequent reason to criticize him.

The capstone to his career was the famous Monkey Trial of 1925 in which he defended Tennessee teacher John Scopes against a state law that forbade teaching Darwinism: at age 68, Darrow returned from retirement to once more tackle the mob. “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the U.S.,” he thundered in court. He lost the case. Won on appeal. And remains to this day a towering figure in law.

Who owns your Facebook friends?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:08 AM - 13 Comments

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Investors eagerly awaiting a chance to get a piece of Facebook, valued as high as US$100 billion, might want to pay attention to the skirmish going on between the company and Google over who actually owns the “friends” of social networking users. Facebook’s lofty valuation is rooted in the idea that users will never abandon the site (as they once did with Friendster and later MySpace) because they don’t want to leave their friends behind. But what if someone makes it easy for them to take their friends with them?

Facebook, with some 700 million users, recently blocked a tool created by a third-party developer for Google’s Chrome browser that was designed to easily export a Facebook user’s friend list (including their all-important email addresses) to a rival social network. The developer assumed that Facebook users’ friends belong to them, not to Facebook. Facebook disagreed. With Google now trying to edge its way into the social networking space with Google+, Facebook explained that “each person owns her friends list, but not her friends’ information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums.”

What Facebook failed to mention is that it unsuccessfully tried to convince Google to allow its Gmail users to export their contact lists to Facebook last year. Getting other people’s email addresses is a key way Facebook helps to integrate new users into its site, allowing its software to suggest potential friends. Influential tech blogger Michael Arrington pointed out another irony: “Facebook already allows mass exporting of friends’ private email addresses via deals with Microsoft, Yahoo and possibly other partners.” In other words, it’s okay if Facebook does it to make money, but not if you want to switch to a rival network. And, as Arrington notes, that could be perceived as anti-competitive by the U.S. government. Suddenly, Facebook’s reign as social networking’s king looks a lot more vulnerable—as does that $100-billion valuation.

Atlantis space shuttle makes final landing

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:07 AM - 0 Comments

NASA’s last surviving shuttle—the Atlantis—made its final landing Thursday morning, completing a 13-day re-supply mission and a 30-year U.S. space program. The shuttle landed in Florida, at Kennedy Space Center, 5:57 am ET. 2,000 people gathered to welcome the shuttle, as commander Christopher Ferguson addressed the crowd by radio: “After serving the world for over 30 years,” he said, “the space shuttle’s earned its place in history.” Atlantis’ final mission was to deliver enough spare parts and provisions to keep the International Space Station stocked for one year.

CBC News

The best university lectures to go

By Peter Shawn Taylor - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:05 AM - 3 Comments

Getty Images, iStock; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

You’ve grasped the intricacies of quantum mechanics, toured the great museums of Europe, understood the significance of the Peloponnesian War and come to terms with why evil exists. So what’s next? Perhaps wine appreciation, the mysteries of brain science or Hitler’s rise to power.

Welcome to The Great Courses, a company that’s been selling erudite audio and video lectures delivered by top-notch professors to well-heeled and inquisitive American customers for over 20 years. Now it’s planning a big Canadian presence too. Minds: prepared to be expanded.

The course selection at The Great Courses reads like an educational playground for the intellectually curious. It’s as broad and detailed as any university course calendar, although much more convenient. Courses typically consist of 12 to 36 half-hour lectures on CD, DVD or audio file. Packed with undergraduate-level information, each lecture is short enough to enjoy while commuting, after dinner, or while killing time during your kid’s dance lesson.

Continue…

This Swedish thriller has Larsson beat (ALL REVIEW)

By Dafna Izenberg - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:04 AM - 0 Comments

THE HYPNOTIST

Lars Kepler

It didn’t take long for the enormous popularity of this thriller in its native Sweden to out the literary couple—novelists Alexandra and Alexander Ahndoril—behind a pseudonym adopted, in part, as a tribute to Girl With the Dragon Tattoo author Stieg Larsson. (Three weeks, in fact, once the media pressure went into overdrive when it was announced the movie version would be helmed by Oscar-nominated director Lasse Hallström.) The nod to Larsson is ironic, given that there is more real dread and sorrow, and far better writing, in The Hypnotist than in all three volumes of Larsson’s Millennium trilogy combined. Not only does evil beget evil over generations—the sins of the fathers (and mothers) graphically laid upon the children—no good deed goes unpunished either. It’s very Swedish, somehow evoking both loneliness and claustrophobia at the same time, disturbing to read, and very, very good.

Shortly before Christmas, almost an entire family is slaughtered in a Stockholm suburb, two parents and a two-year-old girl literally sliced to ribbons. A 15-year-old son, Josef, though cut by as many knife wounds as the others, is still alive; so, too, is an older daughter no longer living at home. Detective Joona Linna is certain that the killer is searching for the absent sister, and that he must penetrate Josef’s coma for the information the police need to reach her first. Linna turns to a doctor who gave up hypnotism for good reason 10 years before. Convinced of the emergency, though, Erik Bark acquiesces. That decision, made for the best of motives, sets in motion a new and equally gruesome series of events.

For all the gore, the novel is primarily a psychological tale, full of twists and turns, and profoundly realistic. Even the happy ending betrays subtle hints that this kind of violence to body and soul can never be considered over and done with: everyone in The Hypnotist is changed by what happens, and not always for the better. BRIAN BETHUNE

THE GAP YEAR

Sarah Bird

Cam Livesey wakes up one day to discover that her teenage daughter Aubrey is missing. Or rather, the daughter Cam once knew is missing. In her place is a beautiful yet eye-rolling, lippy, constantly grumpy, deceitful young gal. What happened to the helpful, fun-loving kid who used to snuggle with her and read The Secret Garden? Sarah Bird executes a marvellous rendering of what is surely the Bermuda Triangle of parenting: that cringing stage between a child’s last years of high school and first year of university when a switch goes off in your teen’s head and they transform into cunning, monosyllabic aliens with attitude.

Parents turn into super-valets—so eager to please and be needed as they suffer their offspring’s dismissiveness. When something goes awry even a conscientious parent like Cam is left flailing: “What do I do now? I have no idea on earth where my daughter is. I no longer know any of her friends. And even if I could track her down, then what do I do? Stand outside a locked door and scream at her? Call the police to drag her home? At which point they ask how old she is and hang up when I say 18.” Sound familiar?

Single parent Cam is trying to hold it together for one more day, long enough to get her daughter to the bank to cash out her trust fund to finance her first year at university. Thing is, Aubrey has other plans that involve a life she hasn’t told her mom about, and an enigmatic badass boyfriend with secrets of his own. But this is not a bleak novel; it’s funny and smart. Alternating diary entries penned by both Cam and Aubrey during a particularly icky year bristle with bull’s-eye wit and honesty. Cam’s job as a lactation consultant (she’s known in the neighbourhood as “the boob whisperer”) becomes more ironic as the story progresses: she has a knack for getting infants to latch on to their mothers, and an oblivious inability to detach herself from her young-adult daughter. The story is as much about connecting as about letting go. Think you know your kids? Think again. JANE CHRISTMAS

CLARENCE DARROW:

ATTORNEY FOR THE DAMNED

John A. Farrell

Clarence Darrow was, putting it narrowly, the greatest criminal lawyer of all time. But he was much more than that. He described himself as a socialist, populist and philosophical anarchist. Supporters called him a friend to labour, blacks and women. His enemies called him the devil’s disciple. Darrow earned his reputation as the lawyer for hopeless causes during the United States’ era of industrial violence at the turn of the 20th century. With his gift for courtroom theatrics and a liberal world view, he found common cause with unions and the underclass. Despite overwhelming evidence tying his clients to bombings or murders, he found success, more often than not, by shifting juries’ focus away from facts and toward motives and emotions. He once earned a not guilty verdict for a boy who shot a sheriff point-blank serving eviction papers on his destitute mother. “There are things to consider . . . besides bloodshed,” he once told a federal commission on industrial relations.

A genius in front of juries, Darrow was also an extremely complicated man, as Farrell makes plain in this detailed account of his life and politics. He never followed the crowd: tirelessly crusading against the death penalty and racism while supporting free love, anarchy and atheism. He also had an insatiable need for money and, despite his reputation as a friend to the poor and disenfranchised, would often take cases for the retainer rather than the cause; he defended numerous Chicago gangsters, a corrupt municipal gas deal, and engineered a U.S. naval officer’s escape from justice in a racially motivated murder case. Even his supporters found frequent reason to criticize him.

The capstone to his career was the famous Monkey Trial of 1925 in which he defended Tennessee teacher John Scopes against a state law that forbade teaching Darwinism: at age 68, Darrow returned from retirement to once more tackle the mob. “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the U.S.,” he thundered in court. He lost the case. Won on appeal. And remains to this day a towering figure in law. PETER SHAWN TAYLOR

THE END OF EVERYTHING

Megan Abbott

Thirteen-year-olds Evie Verver and Lizzie Hood have been next-door neighbours and best friends their whole lives. As little girls in matching checked swimsuits and muddy-coloured bobs, people couldn’t tell them apart. Sometimes Lizzie gets confused, too, and will catch herself looking for the scar on her leg, then remember that the scar is Evie’s. Lizzie is also steeped in the lore and culture of Evie’s family, privy, for example, to the tantalizing secret that Evie’s glamorous and unfathomable older sister Dusty is named for the artist whose album her parents listened to 16 times on the night she was conceived. Evie and Lizzie spend many a night eavesdropping on Dusty and Mr. Verver as they sit on the back patio and mock the amorous overtures of Dusty’s admirers. “I bet it popped out,” Mr. Verver teases Dusty one evening, when she describes how she ejected an earring from her date’s trachea by hitting him on the back. Listening to father and daughter howl in subversive delight, “All I could think was how wondrous it was—oh, the two of them,” Lizzie remembers later.

That was five days before Evie disappeared, and a rare moment in which Lizzie found that she couldn’t read Evie’s thoughts. In fact, Evie had become increasingly opaque in the weeks before she went missing. But she did let it drop that a man had been watching her—her, not Dusty—through her bedroom window at night. Lizzie reports this critical clue and unearths several more, winning Mr. Verver’s shining gratitude and attention.

A child disappears, a family drama bubbles up—it is a narrative device common to literary mystery fiction, but few authors employ it as skilfully as Abbott has in her sixth novel. Beneath a story tight with suspense, she pokes at even spookier questions: what if a girl who was kidnapped wanted to be taken? What if a father makes his daughter feel so special that she never wants to grow up? And, when it comes to sex, how does a young woman decide what to give and what to take, what to sacrifice and what to save? DAFNA IZENBERG

BAD DOG (A LOVE STORY)

Martin Kihn

Frustrated dog owners who like to tipple will find solace and instruction in this memoir. Martin Kihn is too busy sneaking a “voddy” to devote much time to his long-suffering wife, Gloria. Meanwhile, their incorrigible Bernese mountain dog, Hola, has run amok. Kihn must reclaim his derailed life when Gloria decamps for their cottage after Hola crosses the line and attacks her. “What I know now is that settling for a dog who is housebroken and doesn’t draw blood is like settling for a child who can talk,” writes Kihn. He realizes his marriage is in peril so he joins AA and enrols Hola in the demanding Canine Good Citizen program. What follows is Marley & Me meets Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story. The narrative’s coy appeal is that it provides much-needed levity to an otherwise pretty grim scenario. As Kihn struggles with his eccentric sponsor, learns the ropes at obedience school and forgoes his personal dignity, the reader starts to root for him and Hola.

Also keeping the narrative aloft is Kihn’s kindling-dry wit. Here’s a description of the austere rural obedience camp he and Hola attend: “Big dog events tend to be held in places humans abandoned in the 1950s—out-of-the-way, downscale locations with no heat, no cellular reception, no TVs in the room, no Internet, no tiki bar or hot tubs or robes or room service.” I like to imagine Will Ferrell playing Kihn in the film adaptation in which Hola sniffs crotches, refuses to stay and sleeps on the family sofa. Read Bad Dog. It’s entertaining, authentic and self-effacing. Kihn is occasionally upstaged by Hola’s antics in this authentic love story, but her loyal presence will surely help keep him sober. PATRICIA DAWN ROBERTSON

THE LONG JOURNEY HOME:

A MEMOIR

Margaret Robison

When the author, an American poet, first tried to leave her abusive husband, he yelled, “The cars are mine! The house is mine! The land is mine!” Robison’s close friend (and eventual lover) Suzanne replied: “What’s Margaret’s, John?” Robison, meanwhile, wondered, “Is the story of my life mine?”

The first person to tell that story—or a version of it—was Robison’s son Augusten Burroughs, in his 2002 memoir, Running with Scissors. Burroughs depicts his mother as eccentric, narcissistic and often psychotic, writing how she signed custody of him over to her less-than-professional (and possibly also psychotic) psychiatrist, William Turcotte. In her own account, Robison confirms much of her son’s story (not always on purpose), while also providing some context and revealing many more dimensions of her character.

Her tale begins with her own mother, Louisa, whose affection and approval always evaded her, and about whom Robison was deeply ambivalent. At 14, she overheard her mother agonize over the possibility that Robison was gay. At 21, when Robison confessed to being frightened of her future husband, Louisa suggested that she “just tell him.” Instead, Robison married him, convinced that’s what her mother truly wanted.

Fifteen years later, John’s suicidal threats led Robison to Turcotte, and the beginning of a long and destructive relationship. It is hard to say who drove her craziest: mother, husband or shrink. But Robison sees her psychosis as a creative force, ultimately helping her become a published poet (years before her son was a published memoirist). Burroughs derides her talent (Robison claims he despaired having to write in her “shadow”), but his mother has an undeniable gift for lyrical description (particularly of madness). She has more trouble conjuring how her illness affected her children, and claims her abandonment of Burroughs to Turcotte was a technicality so he could attend a certain school. Still, Robison’s ability to recover from misfortunes that might have broken her—including a debilitating stroke in her mid 50s, as well as Burroughs’s book—suggests that, in the end, she can clearly claim her life story as her own.