Bestsellers – Week of July 18th 2011

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

The short, underwhelming history of pie-throwing

By Claire Ward - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 2:14 PM - 0 Comments

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The short, underwhelming history of pie-throwing

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Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter (but they missed her)

Assailants: Two University of Arizona students, allegedly of the group 'Al Pieda'

Weapon of choice: Cream pies

Outcome: The two students are reportedly arrested. Coulter continues to gives speeches and appear on television and radio shows across the U.S.

1 of 9 Photos

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Ottawa cracking down on citizen scofflaws

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 2:06 PM - 9 Comments

After a lengthy investigation involving police and the ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, the federal government now believes as many as 1,800 people in this country obtained their citizenship through fraudulent means. Letters have gone out to hundreds informing them the government now plans to revoke their status as Canadians. Individuals can challenge the rulings in federal court. If those efforts fail, cabinet will void their passports and strip them of their citizenship.

Postmedia

Saskatoon is one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 1:42 PM - 4 Comments

International migration has led to a population boom in Saskatchewan. According to data from Statistics Canada, Saskatoon is the fastest-growing city in Canada, with a population growth rate of 27.7 per 1,000 people between 2009 and 2010. Vancouver and Regina tied for the next spots, each with growth rates of 22.3 per 1,000 people. Nearly half of the population growth in Saskatchewan was fueled by new Canadians, Statistics Canada says. The data shows Saskatoon has overtaken the international appeal of larger cities such as Hamilton and Quebec City.

National Post

Top Serbian commander arrested

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 1:19 PM - 0 Comments

Serbia has arrested Goran Hadzic, a former rebel who was the last remaining fugitive sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. “The arrest of Goran Hadzic is a milestone for the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and an opportunity for justice,” Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. Hadzic faces 14 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and is accused of killing hundreds of Croats.

AFP

Canada’s “tough on crime” legislation doesn’t work for youth

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 1:10 PM - 4 Comments

Canada’s “tough on crime” bill is a mystery to other seemingly like-minded nations: judges and criminologists in the US, Britain, and Australia have rejected similar policies in favour of research showing that the jail-intensive approach does not decrease crime among youth. Foreign lawmakers say that Canadian legislation that is tough on young offenders is outdated and ineffective. Even Texas—once known for its strict policies regarding youth criminals—will have closed down six youth-incarceration institutions over the past 15 years by August 1.

The Globe and Mail

Taliban denies reports that its leader is dead

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 1:02 PM - 0 Comments

The Taliban is denying reports that leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is dead. The announcement of his death was posted earlier on a website and disseminated via text message. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told the Associated Press that the announcement was fake. He blamed U.S. intelligence agencies for hacking into the Taliban website and cell phones. Omar has led the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan since the U.S. and its allies invaded the country in October 2001. In recent months, there has been a spike of violence in the war-torn country, especially in areas where NATO troops are transferring security responsibilities to Afghan forces. The Taliban is reportedly targeting these areas to convince the local people that the Afghan forces are unable to protect them.

Fox News

UN calls attention to devastating famine in war-torn Somalia

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 12:50 PM - 0 Comments

The United Nations is calling immediate attention to a famine that is devastating war-torn Somalia, CTV News reports. The UN’s humanitarian coordinator in the region, Mark Bowden, says “Somalia is facing its worst food security crisis in the last 20 years”. Tens of thousands have died of hunger already, and the UN believes 6 people are dying every day. Severe draught and inflated food prices are responsible, sources say, as well as the region’s unstable political climate. Since the government collapsed 20 years ago, Islamist rebels have controlled the area, refusing to allow foreign aid into the country. The UN believes $300 million in aid is needed within the next two months to quell the crisis.

CTV News

British PM to apologize if ex-aide lied about phone hacking involvement

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 12:44 PM - 0 Comments

British Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking during an emergency session of parliament, said Wednesday that he will offer a “profound apology” if his former communications director Andy Coulson is found to have lied about his involvement in the phone hacking scandal. Coulson, who was once editor of the now-defunct News of the World tabloid at the centre of the controversy, has been arrested in connection with the scandal. Cameron said that if Coulson knew about the hacking of cell phones, he could expect to face severe criminal charges for perjury. Opposition leader Ed Miliband called for Cameron to apologize immediately for hiring Coulson as his communications director. The emergency parliamentary session is being held a day after a hearing in which News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch, his son James, and former executive Rebekah Brooks were grilled about the scandal.

CBC News

An end in sight for Sookie Stackhouse

By Patricia Treble - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 12:28 PM - 0 Comments

"True Blood" the series

Charlaine Harris has been writing mysteries for decades. For a long time it was a “heavily subsidized hobby.” Then came the Sookie Stackhouse series of adventures set in rural Louisiana involving vampires, shapeshifters and even fairy godmothers. Suddenly she was famous. Now, with the release of her 11th book, Dead Reckoning, comes news that the series will soon end. But not without a lot of super naturals going to their “true death.” The Southern matron,  59,  cackles gleefully at the thought of all the blood she’s about to spill.

Adaptations of her books can be seen on HBO, where Alan Ball (Six Feet Under) has turned them into the massively successful True Blood series starring Anna Paquin and Alexander Skarsgard.

Q: The Sookie books were successful before Alan Ball approached you. You’d even had a few offers to adapt them. Why did you say yes to him?

A: Because he got me. He understood the mixture of comedy, horror and blood and sex that the books comprise. And he convinced me that he understood what I was doing, whereas other people were more into the vampire aspect of it, the violence or the sex scenes—you know there’s not a sex scene in every book, but when I do have a sex scene I like to make it good—they were emphasizing more one thing or the other and I just didn’t think they could bring it to a good resolution, but I knew Alan could.

Q: He’s made quite a lot of changes to your books—for example Vampire Bill is now king of Louisiana. Does he run the changes by you?

A: Why would he? He’s the guy who does TV. He doesn’t call me and suggest future story lines for the books.

Q: When books are adapted for the screen, a lot of writers then say they write for the actors, not the original characters in their heads. Can you separate the two?

A: Umm, I’m so far ahead of Alan and the characters in my head don’t look like the actors, though I’ve noticed a couple of times lately I’ve seen them creeping into the action in the book and I go “Wait a minute, who are we talking about here?” and I change my mental image to my people.

Q: Did you always have the series all figured out?

A: Totally not! (laugh) I didn’t because it took two years to sell the first book; my agent couldn’t find anyone who wanted it. When I finally did sign a contract I didn’t know if I’d ever get to write another one. Well, the first one was successful right out of the gate, which was a surprise to everybody. Penguin wanted more books and I signed a contract and I thought “Well, maybe I’ll get to write three more.” I’d never written a series that ran that long.

Q: In the books, there are vampires, then shapeshifters, werewolves, fairies and elves—as Bill says “I haven’t seen an elf in 100 years.” After a while do you not run out of super naturals?

A: I’m always trying to find something I haven’t used before that will keep me entertained to write about. I seriously doubt I’ll be introducing any new species in the remaining two books because I’m in the wrapping up process, not the expansion process.

Q: The last few books have been novels or adventures. Is lessening the mystery aspect a key part of the series’ success?

A: If I knew why they are so successful I would have done it a long time ago! The first books were really mystery-based because I come from mystery and that was really all I knew how to do, so I was going to include a murder mystery with each book. And also I wanted to bring all 10 of my mystery readers with me to this new adventure. Then the books got so big and complicated it felt artificial to stick a mystery construction on them. They were obviously adventures. I thought it was probably right for me to return to my original roots for the last two books.

Q: When you realized you were going to end with book 13, did you then start mapping it out?

A: With the last book I wrote, Dead Reckoning, I thought “I think I’m going to call it quits” so that means I have to decide with Dead Reckoning that I’m going to tie it up because I have to start heading towards the goal line. I have to start tying up threads and planning how to bring the book to the conclusion I had planned.

Q: What can you say about the next book?

A: I’m deep at work on book 12 and of course there are going to be developments with Eric’s unfortunate situation, which is all I can think of to call it. [The 1,000-year-old vampire has been given to the queen of Arkansas] But a lot of the next book is a murder mystery going back to the roots of the books. And the terrible predicament the fairies are in.

Q: Does Sookie get to live happily ever after?

A: Won’t you be glad to find out? Everyone has a different idea of what happily ever after means. Sookie wants to be self sufficient, independent, she wants to have enough money to live on, she wants to be surrounded by the people she loves, she doesn’t want to get beaten up anymore and I think she’d be very happy to find someone to spend her life with because she’s a romantic girl.

Q: In May you became the fourth author to sell over a million e-books on Amazon’s Kindle. What’s the impact for you?

A: All my other works are back in print and being read more than when they were originally published. People say “oh these are so good” and I say “yeah, they were good 30 years ago too” (laughing). I didn’t make much money but I kept getting published. My husband referred to it as a “heavily subsidized hobby.”

Q: What does the e-book mean to other authors?

A: It gives writers who haven’t been successful in traditional publishing a chance to try their hand to try their hand in another format. I think that way you can find out if you really were put-upon all those years or if you’re a crappy writer.

Q: What format do you use to read books?

A: When I’m travelling I have an e-book reader. I got a Nook [from Barnes & Noble] and got my husband a Kindle so we could compare. I travel so much it seemed like a good idea. I can’t go somewhere without reading. At home I read real books, and that’s the nice thing—(in a whisper) people send me books all the time, it’s just like Christmas! I get them for free. Free books!

When I started making money the first thing I did was tell my husband “I’m going to buy any book I want.” I’m not going to wait for the library, I’m not going to wait until someone loans it to me. I’m going to buy any f—ing book I want to buy. And that has been the most fun.

Q: Going back to the end of the Sookie Stackhouse series, it’s often the case that wrap ups involve a lot of blood, isn’t it?

A: I do like wholesale slaughter. I love writing death scenes so it’s going to be happy days for me! Sometimes I kill people off and resurrect them just for the fun of writing the scene! That’s why I’m so cheerful. You’ve never met jollier people than horror writers. They are hysterical. I’m happy.

The U.S. debt-ceiling dance and Canadian Senate reform

By John Geddes - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 35 Comments

Much as I know it’s bad form to give away somebody else’s kicker, I can’t resist passing along the last paragraph of William Watson’s most recent (and typically excellent) column, which is about why Canadians (and Brits) shouldn’t feel all superior about their parliamentary system just because the U.S. way of government looks so dysfunctional during its current dance with debt default: Continue…

In conversation: Shawn Atleo

By Ken MacQueen - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 8 Comments

Photograph by Simon Hayter

AFTER TWO YEARS as national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Shawn Atleo is cautiously optimistic about the relationship he is forging with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. On Tuesday, at the assembly’s annual meeting in Moncton, N.B., he proposed replacing the federal Aboriginal Affairs Department with a system that allows bands more autonomy and lessens the heavy federal intervention required under the Indian Act. “The patterns of the past have to be essentially smashed,” he told Maclean’s. Atleo, a hereditary chief in the tiny B.C. island community of Ahousaht, reads vindication in the recent report by now-retired auditor general Sheila Fraser. It warns, as Atleo and successive national chiefs have said, that the quality of life on reserves is worsening and the existing system of financing and accountability must be overhauled.

Q: The last time we spoke, you called your home community of Ahousaht a microcosm of First Nations across the country. So, how is Ahousaht faring?

A: Oh, it has its struggles, to be frank. They’re working on them, and we’ve got a new generation of leadership coming on.

Continue…

The healing begins in Afghanistan

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 6 Comments

Mikhail Galustov/Redux

Massoud Khalili woke up five days after the 9/11 attacks after drifting in and out of consciousness and near death for a week.

Khalili, son of Khalilullah Khalili, one of Afghanistan’s greatest modern poets, was a close friend of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Afghan guerrilla commander known as the Lion of Panjshir. He was with him in northern Afghanistan on Sept. 9, 2001, when al-Qaeda agents posing as journalists detonated a bomb hidden in a video camera, killing Massoud and filling Khalili’s body with shrapnel.

The assassination was a gift from bin Laden to his host, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who had been fighting Massoud’s soldiers since 1996.

Khalili, then the anti-Taliban United Front’s ambassador to India, was partially blinded in the attack. Lying in his hospital bed, he opened his one good eye and saw his wife of more than 20 years. She watched him wake and recited a verse from the Quran: “From God we come, and to him we will return.”

Khalili thought he might die and wanted to do so with a clean conscience. He asked his wife to forgive him if he had ever raised his voice against her in all their years of marriage. Then he asked what happened to his friends and comrades who were in the room when the bomb went off.

Some are dead, some lived, she said. Massoud is gone.

Khalili asked about the al-Qaeda agents who tried to kill him.

They’re dead, she told him.

Today, 10 years later, Khalili strides with gusto around the garden of his summer home overlooking the Shomali Plain north of Kabul. The garden is full of fruit trees, flowers and birds. “I don’t allow my gardener to use guns here,” he says. “I’ve killed so many men. I don’t want to kill birds.”

Khalili is once again an envoy, but now of a government in Kabul rather than of a tiny and embattled rump state in the country’s north. He is Afghanistan’s ambassador to Spain. When he is home, he lives in a house built for his father by Mohammed Zahir Shah, the former king of Afghanistan. His wife’s paintings cover its walls. There are also many photos of Massoud, including what is likely the last one ever taken of him. Khalili had his camera with him when the bomb exploded. The film survived intact and when developed revealed an image of Massoud in a helicopter reading a biography of the prophets.

There is also a photo of Khalili himself with a bandolier of bullets draped across his shoulders. He sits on the ground, tilting his face toward sun with his eyes closed. It was taken in 1984, in the midst of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. He looks blissfully happy. “The only thing we had was hope,” he says. “The only weapon we had was hope. In the mountains it was a dream to have a parliament and a president and boys and girls going to school. The worst parliament in the world is still something. Because you have it.”

Back in his summer garden, Khalili weaves among fruit trees and points to a distant hilltop. There, he says, is where Alexander the Great made his camp. “Of all the conquerors that we have had, we loved Alexander the Great because he brought us this civilization and thinkers and philosophers and painters. He conquered with this, and we believe that if he wasn’t a prophet, he was one of the saints. My father never called him Alexander, always Sir Alexander.”

He shifts his gaze east, points to snow-covered mountain peaks, and traces a line between them. “That’s the route we would take to hike into the Panjshir Valley from Pakistan,” he says, referring to the days when he and his fellow mujahedeen received weapons from CIA operatives in Pakistan and hauled them back to Panjshir to use against the Soviets. “They couldn’t move on the ground,” he says of the Russians. “But their helicopters would just fly over our houses.” Then, in 1986, the mujahedeen got Stinger surface-to-air missiles from the United States. “They no longer controlled the skies,” he says.

The Afghan mujahedeen eventually forced the Soviets from their country. But the fighting didn’t end. There was civil war, and the war against the Taliban, and then the murder of Khalili’s friend and commander, Massoud. Khalili has returned to their old redoubt in the Panjshir Valley only once since then, to see his tomb. “It was the first time I was there alone. Before it was always with him. Before there was always someone there, someone tall, who I was walking with or following.”

Now, despite a parliament in Kabul and girls in school, war persists. “But there is hope,” says Khalili. “I have an army now, police now, though not very strong. And despite corruption, we have money. And people have not raised their white flags to the Taliban. Some, yes, but not all.” Khalili cautions Afghanistan’s Western allies against a rushed exit from Afghanistan. “We should never leave the snake half-wounded,” he says. “Never fulfill a promise halfway. We would love to see them go when they have finished their job, and when we have completed our job.”

In recent months, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has intensified efforts to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban. Khalili doesn’t think these will amount to much. “I don’t believe in moderate Taliban. You’re in Taliban or you’re not in Taliban,” he says. “They won’t talk. They fight. So what can you do? You defend. My father once wrote that war is the worst possible option. But sometimes it is an option. Because mercy to the wolf is cruelty to the lamb. Some things are so principled that you cannot make a deal on—human rights, rights of women, education. You bring peace to Afghanistan like that, with no freedom; it’s like peace in a graveyard. Stability in a graveyard is good for dead people.”

Yet Khalili doesn’t wish to prolong enmity among his fellow Afghans. Almost 100 years ago, Amanullah Khan, another Afghan king, hanged Khalili’s grandfather. Khalili once asked his father, the poet, why he never said anything bad about Khan in his poems. “He said to forgive is the most difficult thing. The easiest is to seek revenge,” says Khalili.

Khalili’s own son was with him when he woke from his coma following the al-Qaeda attack in 2001. Khalili called him to the bed. “I said, ‘Listen to me. I may be dead soon. Whatever I am about to ask of you, you tell me you’ll agree.’ ” His son initially refused, but Khalili’s wife yelled at him and he gave in.

“I said, ‘Son, I know you’re an Afghan and revenge is part of your culture. And if there is a war and you are recruited, go. Mercy to the wolf is cruelty to the lamb. But listen to me. I want to go from this life with no pain. Don’t fight on my behalf. I have already forgiven the boys who did this.’ ”

The reality of Greece’s crisis: grinding poverty

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 10:08 AM - 2 Comments

Any notion that the outcome of Greece’s fiscal mess will be a bit of belt-tightening in the country’s profligate public sector is nonsense. In fact, the brunt of the austerity push now being imposed by the country’s government, in a struggle to avoid defaulting on debt, will be felt by the newly poor. Last year, the number of Greeks without jobs soared to 14.8 percent, and is expected to climb over 18 per cent by the end of this year. Unemployment benefits are available for only a year at a paltry monthly rate of less than €500. After that, there’s almost no social assistance. Homelessness is rising steeply in Athens. Greece hasn’t experienced anything like it since 1961. The country’s economy rests largely on tourist attractions and agricultural products, so the chances of a quick bounce back are slim. And the fiscal problem can be traced back largely to widespread tax cheating by the rich—ordinary Greeks can’t dodge taxes easily since automatic deductions from their pay cheques are the norm. The small wealthy class, however, illegally avoids an estimated €40 billion in tax each year. They aren’t afraid of being caught. Panos Kazakos, an Athens-based professor of politics, says: “I have never seen a single person put in jail for tax evasion.”

Der Spiegel

Trouble in Bixiland

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 20 Comments

CHRISTINNE MUSCHI/REUTERS

It is as Montreal as a two-cheek kiss, a made-in-Quebec success story that has garnered both awards and lucrative contracts around the world. Yet the Bixi bike-sharing system, best known for its sleek two-wheelers of the same name, is plagued by lack of administrative oversight, questionable management and a business plan that has it teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, with a whopping $37-million debt after only two years of operation.

Such is the contention of a scathing report by the city’s auditor general’s office, published in mid-June, which takes both the city and Bixi administrators to task for “neglecting or avoiding several elementary management rules,” and the “illegal nature” of Bixi’s initiative to sell the system to cities including Toronto, Ottawa and London, England. And while administrators have hit back—Bixi spokesperson Michel Philibert recently called the report “old news” in an email exchange with Maclean’s—it seems clear now that the beloved Bixi system won’t likely be able to run without a regular injection of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Bixi began life as part of the city’s 2007 transportation plan entitled “Reinvent Montreal,” a wide-ranging plan that sought to coax Montrealers out of their cars, and make Montreal “a bicycling city par excellence,” according to an executive committee decree from that year. The idea of a bike-sharing program wasn’t new—Paris, notably, has had one since 2007—but it was the first in North America, and a pet project of Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay. The “pay and go” idea was developed by Montreal’s parking authority, while Montreal industrial designer Michel Dallaire crafted the bike.

Continue…

Germany gets fed up with the European Union

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 9:47 AM - 3 Comments

Alex Domanski/Reuters

Germans are angry. Some of them are outright enraged. And almost anyone with a basic awareness of current affairs feels deeply frustrated.

Back in 1999, when the euro was born, Germany’s number one concern was that it would somehow have to cover up for the excesses and crooked ways of southern European governments. Now it’s happening. The European Union is about to sign a second hefty cheque for Greece, something politicians obstinately call a loan, but many suspect is plainly a cash handout. That comes on top of $150 billion the EU and the International Monetary Fund already started injecting into the Greek economy in 2010. In both cases, Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, gets to do most of the financial heavy lifting. “The Greeks are going to bankrupt Germany,” the Bild, a German tabloid with a daily circulation of three million, wrote last year in anticipation of the first bailout. The paper even sent a reporter to Athens to hand out bundles of drachmas, the old Greek currency, a stunt meant to persuade the country to drop out of the euro. It was a rude joke many condemned as irresponsible populism, but one that captured the riotous mood of German public opinion.

Even highly respected and normally poised German newspapers, such as the venerable Frankfurter Allgemeine, have been lashing out at “the failure” of the Greek bailout. “I find it embarrassing that we are paying so much money for other countries who have not been able to deal correctly with their money,” says Joachim Jahn, an editor at the paper. Not everyone feels as chafed as Jahn, but many are starting to question whether Europe is really all that good for Germany. A recent poll showed that 63 per cent of Germans have low to no confidence in the EU.

Continue…

The Calgary Stampede: where meat and potatoes are dessert

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 9:25 AM - 0 Comments

The European Middle Ages had an institution called the “Feast of Fools,” a big outdoor party where peasants were given licence to mock socially important people and ideas. It was a planned stress-relief moment during which nothing was sacred. Today’s municipal fairs and exhibitions play the same role, with food moralism as the target. These are places where one is licensed to ignore “sensible eating”—zones where doctors fear to tread, and Canada’s Food Guide curls up and grows pale.

The Calgary Stampede is the West’s acknowledged mecca for excessive fairground cuisine. The ground rules are well-known: fry it, impale it on a stick, or, if practical, do both. The hot trend this year, however, was meat playfully disguised as a dessert or aperitif: the pulled-pork parfait, the “turkey-tini” (a micro turkey dinner in a martini glass), and even a beef-and-mashed-potato-based “cowboy sundae.” The other popular manoeuvre on the midway in 2011 was the use of maple as a condiment; even the doughnut burger, notorious at U.S. fairs and ballparks as “the Luther,” came Canadianized—served between halves of a maple dip. Let history note, though, that the masterminds behind the exhibition’s official new-food prize-winner, the Kubie Korn Balls from Maggie’s Kubasa, defied fashion by offering buyers only corn syrup.

Maclean’s best in show pick? Not the Kubie Korn Balls (corn fritters with Ukrainian sausage that don’t quite have enough of either). We liked the deep-fried Pop-Tart, garlanded with whipped cream and Fruity Pebbles cereal, from the Pennsylvania Dutch Funnel Cake stand near the Saddledome and the BMO Kids Zone. For anyone raised on Saturday cartoons and after-school junk food, it’s a sizzling, irresistibly nostalgic burst of artificial flavour.

Will colonizing meteorites and asteroids with bacteria one day save life as we know it?

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 8:55 AM - 15 Comments

iStock, Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

The world is doomed. Even if we avoid annihilation by climate change or nuclear holocaust, the inevitable expansion of the sun will surely do us in. Or will it?

Michael Mautner, professor of chemistry and astroecology at Virginia Commonwealth University, has a plan to save life as we know it. Called directed panspermia, it’s meant to maintain Earth’s evolutionary path, although it might be described as spraying bacteria into space.

Mautner became interested in the idea when he was studying at New York’s Rockefeller University in the early 1970s. It was there, in the midst of the Cold War’s nuclear standoff, that he felt “our survival really became a question.” He’s been advocating directed panspermia ever since. In 1995, he founded the Panspermia Society for Life in Space, and for most of his professional life, he has studied whether microbes can survive on asteroids and meteorites in space. This, he says, is necessary for directed panspermia to work.

Continue…

The downside of Stornoway and a dig at Ignatieff

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 8:35 AM - 16 Comments

Dusseault and his partner Boulet

MP’s girlfriend gets pinned

When he was elected on May 2, NDP MP Pierre-Luc Dusseault became the youngest MP in Canadian history. At the time he was just under 20. The Quebec MP’s plans for the summer include buying more suits. Before the election he owned only one. He bought a second suit for the campaign and after he won, he invested in four more. Dusseault is a fan of the Quebec department store Simons, and so will probably head there for his shopping. Dusseault has been in a relationship for 3½ years with Joanie Boulet, a second-year law student; they’ve been living together for two years. She wears his MP spouse pin, which gives her special access on Parliament Hill; because she’s so young, security guards sometimes do a double take.

XXL for Ambrose

Rona Ambrose, minister of public works and government services and minister for status of women, was recently in Afghanistan, where she held a town hall for female soldiers on the base in Kandahar. The event was packed—more Canadian troops than usual were on the base because they are all coming back to wrap up the mission. When Ambrose played hockey against some of the troops, she was given a jersey with her name on the back. It was so big, she says, it went down to her shins: “They only have one size and it’s always for guys.”

Continue…

Iceland considers relegating smokes to the pharmacy

By Nancy Macdonald - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 8:35 AM - 4 Comments

When it comes to draconian anti-smoking rules, no country has considered going as far as Iceland. This fall, the country’s parliament will debate a radical new proposal that would outlaw the sale of cigarettes outside of pharmacies, where they would only be available with a prescription. The bill, sponsored by former health minister Siv Fridleifsdottir, aims to “protect children and youngsters,” she says, and to stop them from ever taking up the habit.

Iceland, however, is not alone in throwing up new barriers to smokers. In Australia next year, cigarettes will be sold in plain, brown packaging, prohibiting the use of tobacco industry logos, colours or brand imagery. In Sweden, surgeons refuse to treat smokers; patients are given blood tests to ensure compliance. Finland, meanwhile, is hoping to ban smoking entirely by 2040.

The Icelandic proposal also suggests treating tobacco smoke as a carcinogen, restricting it the same way the country does other known cancer-causing agents. The bill, however, may never see the light of day. A spokesperson for the Icelandic Ministry of Welfare said the proposal, although “very serious” and backed by the Icelandic Medical Association, has little chance of passing.

China piles on the debt

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 8:12 AM - 0 Comments

Can China save the world? At the height of the global economic meltdown, many Americans and Europeans believed it might. China sailed through 2009 with an estimated annualized GDP growth of over nine per cent. In 2010, it posted 10.3 per cent growth, and early this year elbowed out Japan as the world’s second-largest economy. The People’s Republic seemed the economic engine that would pull the West out of its quagmire.

That once-firm belief, though, is starting to crumble. Traders and analysts are wondering whether Beijing isn’t heading for its own housing market bust and massive debt mess. Alarm bells are sounding about the real estate frenzy that’s been filling even smaller Chinese cities with luxury apartments that local income levels likely can’t sustain. In the mainland, bank credit is at 120 per cent of GDP, and in Hong Kong, where borrowing rules are laxer, it stands at 240 per cent, the Financial Times reported. Even more unsettling is the size of local government debt, which an official auditor’s report recently tagged at US$1.6 trillion, or 27 per cent of GDP. The true figure could be even higher, according to Moody’s Investors Service, which said it believes Chinese authorities have failed to account for another US$540 billion of debt.

Much of that red ink, say analysts, is the result of Beijing’s own generous lending policies and the US$586-billion stimulus package that was meant to spare China from the economic crisis. But public coffers have also been pillaged by the government’s own employees, according to a report last week by the Bank of China. It estimated that up to 18,000 corrupt officials and white-collar workers at state-owned enterprises have lifted as much as $123 billion of public money (roughly two per cent of last year’s GDP) since the mid-1990s.

Yet a global economic crisis 2.0, or at least one precipitated by China, seems unlikely. With an economy still growing strongly, Beijing can afford a high debt-to-GDP ratio, and it needn’t worry about owing money to foreigners (like the United States must), as much of its public borrowing is funded by domestic savers. There will undoubtedly be some bumps on the road, but likely not an engine breakdown.

Reddit co-founder charged with stealing documents

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 1:57 PM - 1 Comment

The co-founder of prominent social networking site Reddit was indicted Tuesday on charges that he stole over 4 million academic documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers. Aaron Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines if convicted. The charges against Swartz include wire fraud, computer fraud, obtaining information from a protected computer and criminal forfeiture.

New York Times

Second-hand smoking damages teens’ hearing

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 1:46 PM - 0 Comments

A study of more than 1,500 U.S. teens aged 12 to 19 suggests that second-hand tobacco smoke can greatly damage their ears, the BBC reports. While it isn’t clear exactly how much exposure incites damage, they say smoke can increase the risk of middle ear infections and could harm blood supply to the ear. The greater the exposure, the greater the damage, they say. In the study, about 40 per cent of 800 teens who were exposed to second-hand smoke had detectable hearing problems, while about 25 per cent of 750 teens did who weren’t exposed. Even so, less than a fifth of them knew they had a problem, because mild hearing loss is often not noticeable to the individual.

BBC News

African HIV patients can expect a near-normal lifespan

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 1:31 PM - 0 Comments

HIV patients on that continent who get regular treatment can expect a near-normal lifespan, Postmedia News reports. Scientists from the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, as well as a team from the Universities of British Columbia and Ottawa, made the discovery in the world’s first large-scale study looking at HIV patients’ life expectancy in Africa, with lead researcher Dr. Edward Mills calling it “astounding news.” In Uganda, life expectancy at birth for those who don’t contract HIV is 55 years; by determining an HIV patient’s life expectancy, he found for the overall study cohort that life expectancy at age 20 was another 26 years. Those who got early treatment lived longer. In Canada, life expectancy at birth is 81; HIV patients receiving treatment at age 20 could live another 49 years.

Postmedia