Territorial marking

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 2:50 PM - 2 Comments

While Paul Dewar picks up key support in Manitoba, Brian Topp has won more endorsements in British Columbia.

Robin Sears rightly notes that caucus endorsements may not matter much in a one-member-one-vote system. It was pointed out to me today that it makes more sense to focus on who has endorsed which leader, rather than which leader has how many endorsements: in other words, that endorsements from those with organizational skills and assets could be most notable.

Alice Funke has a thorough review of the leadership race’s early days.

Israel names 447 prisoners to be freed in Shalit deal

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 1:19 PM - 2 Comments

Israel on Sunday published the names of 477 Palestinian prisoners it is willing to exchange for an Israeli soldier in a landmark prisoner swap that’s boosting the popularity of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian group Hamas. The 477 prisoners are set to walk free on Tuesday, while a further 550 will be let go after captured Israeli sergeant Gilad Shalit returns home. Shalit, who’s been held in captivity since 2006, quickly turned into an emotional symbol for many Israeli families, whose sons and daughters must serve in the army at the age 18. His impending release seems to have improved the domestic popularity of Israel’s right-wing government, which has been struggling to quell widespread discontent about the rising cost of living. As well, the diplomatic deal appears to have boosted appreciation for Netanyahu among Western officials, who took note of his willingness to negotiate with Hamas, a group Israel considers a terrorist organization. The swap also bolstered Hamas’ standing against rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

New York Times

Financial Times

Ottawa mom broadcasts home birth over the web

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 12:58 PM - 4 Comments

An Ottawa mother had an audience of thousands as she gave birth to a baby boy Sunday night. Nancy Salgueiro had announced last month she planned to live-stream the birth of her son, and 2,500 people from all over the world tuned in to watch it happen. Salgueiro said the live-stream was intended to show “that birth is normal and not a crisis.” Salgueiro’s labour began at about 5 p.m. Saturday afternoon and ended with Oziah’s birth at 3:18 a.m. on Sunday morning.

Ottawa Citizen

Is Siri artificially intelligent or just a robot?

By Peter Nowak - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 12:26 PM - 5 Comments

Having just returned from a trip to New York on Sunday evening, I haven’t had much time to play with the week’s hottest new gadget —the iPhone 4S—but I have been able to formulate some initial impressions, especially in regards to its main new feature: the Siri personal assistant.

First, the basics. Yup, the iPhone 4S works as advertised. It’s faster, slicker and generally better than its predecessor, the iPhone 4. Some nifty additions to the operating system make things easier, like you can fire the thing up initially without having to connect it to your computer and you can share iTunes purchases between devices by turning on the iCloud storage option. Both options do a lot for eliminating cables and computers from the iPhone equation.

I particularly like the camera as well. The iPhone 4 had the best camera on any phone I’d tried so far and the 4S is yet another step up. Apple is continuing to strengthen the case for leaving the full camera behind and simply relying on a phone to take photos, at least in casual situations.

Much of the brouhaha over the new device, however, lies with Siri, the voice-recognition feature that can tell the user about everything from the weather to sports scores to scheduled meetings. Continue…

Germany warns there’s no end in sight to euro crisis

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 12:24 PM - 2 Comments

Germany dampened investors’ hopes on Monday that an upcoming meeting of EU leaders would bring a comprehensive solution to the euro zone’s sovereign debt woes. “We won’t have a definitive solution this weekend,” German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in Duesseldorf today, in reference to the October 23 EU summit. The remark softened a rally in the financial markets that had pushed the euro to a new one-month high against the dollar and European stocks to a 10-week peak. A plan that will address not only Greece’s crisis but the full scope of the euro zone’s woes is what private European banks are demanding from policymakers in exchange for accepting steep losses tied to a planned restructuring of Athens’ debt. Meanwhile, Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty warned in a speech on Monday that “time is running out” on dithering European leaders. “What will it take for Europe to take decisive action and put an end to this crisis, once and for all?” Flaherty said. “Too much time has been wasted, too many opportunities have been missed.”

Reuters

Bloomberg Businessweek

The end of film, for real this time

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 12:02 PM - 2 Comments

You may have seen this article last week about the decision of several companies to suspend production of film cameras, further signaling that high-definition video rather than film is the format of the future. This has been going on for a while (companies have been slowly phasing out film of various types for several years), but was accelerated by a sudden and mostly un-heralded shakeup within the TV industry a couple of years ago. As the article notes, the TV producers were in a dispute with the Screen Actors’ Guild, but made a congenial deal with another union, AFTRA, which had jurisdiction over taped shows—including shows shot on high-def video. And so within a year, most of the producers switched production of their pilots from film to digital video, so that their shows would be covered by AFTRA contracts. And that was that:

Whereas, in previous seasons, 90 percent of the TV pilots were filmed, and under SAG jurisdiction, in one fell swoop the 2009 pilot season went digital video, capturing 90 percent of the pilots. In a single season, the use of film in primetime TV nearly completely vanished, never to return.

There are still some existing shows shot on film, including some very good-looking ones (I think Fringe and The Mentalist are or were shot on 35 mm film). But eventually, all TV shows will be shot on HD unless the creators have some very specific aim in mind; part of the point of shooting on film is to look like a feature, but since features will increasingly abandon film, there’s not much point in using it for TV.

It’s actually amazing that film lasted in television for so long, since producers have been trying to phase it out of TV ever since the invention of video tape. (The Twilight Zone famously experimented with switching to tape for a few episodes in its second season, giving up when it became clear that it didn’t look as good as film. In the UK, for many years, tape was used for anything shot in the studio, with 16 mm film used for outdoor sequences only because tape cameras weren’t mobile enough.) But the prestige of film, as well as the visual beauty it could provide at its best, kept film going in TV for many decades; in fact, there were times when film would become more popular rather than less – as in the ’90s, when most U.S. producers dropped taped sitcoms and switched to film instead. It proved remarkably resilient.

As to whether we should mourn the death of film, I don’t think there is much point in that, and it’s by no means the biggest change to hit motion pictures in Continue…

If you’ve got nothing to hide

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 10 Comments

Stephen Maher connects various dots in the G8 Legacy Fund affair and lays down a challenge for the Conservatives.

“Rules were broken,” says interim Auditor General John Wiersema. “Lawyers could have an interesting debate as to whether any laws were broken.” He said there was no point in further audits. ”I’m not convinced that more audit work is what’s called for here. I believe this is now a matter for Parliament to deal with.”

If the government takes the auditor general’s advice and lets a committee look into this mess, we may find out where the money went and Clement may be cleared. If, on the other hand, the government shuts it down, there will be no reason to have any faith in Clement’s competence or judgment.

Harper nominates pair of Ontario judges to Supreme Court

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 10:56 AM - 0 Comments

Stephen Harper moved to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court Monday monring, announcing his nominations of Justice Michael Moldaver and Justice Andromake Karakatsanis. Moldaver’s appointment is expected to rejoice the law-enforcement community, as the Ontario appellate judge has shown a reluctance to strike down legislation and expressed concern over the growth of litigation cases under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Meanwhile, Karakatsanis is a more unknown quantity; she is a long-time civil servant with a short history on the bench, but has close connections to senior Conservatives inside the federal government, most notably Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, with whom she worked when Flaherty was Ontario’s attorney-general. Both nominees will appear before a parliamentary committee on Wednesday to answer questions, though the committee has no power to reject them.

The Globe and Mail

Talk about living colour: ‘I Send You This Cadmium Red’

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 10:39 AM - 1 Comment

Julian Richings as John Berger in 'I Send You This Cadmium Red'

I thought I was going to see a play, something I always brace myself for, like a potentially tedious hike in uncertain weather. I was wrong. I Send You This Cadmium Red is a film, a painting, an essay, a concert—and, yes, a play—all at once. Therefore none of the above. It’s something else entirely. And it’s extraordinary. It’s a contemplation of colour via words, music, words and  projected animation. Colour is explored as a substance, a medium, a mood—an opaque fact and a window into infinity—but also as something tangible, almost human. And I can’t remember the last time I saw a play or a film in which the inevitable apartheid between form and content, style and substance, was so elegantly obliterated by a piece that is so utterly what it’s about.

Directed by Daniel Brooks, and produced by Andrew Burashko’s Art of Time Ensemble in association with Canadian Stage, I Send You Cadmium Red was originally commissioned as a radio work by the BBC and scored by British composer Gavin Bryars. It’s based on a book of correspondence about the nature of colour between two Johns, the visionary writer and painter John Berger and his painter/filmmaker friend John Christie. The original music was recorded in studio, and the Art of Time production is the first instance of it being performed live onstage. Continue…

The voice of the new

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Adrienne Clarkson profiles NDP MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan.

Rathika says that many in the Tamil community are very politicized because they were forced to leave a country that for two generations suffered from civil war and unrest, but that others want to disengage when they come to Canada; they’ve already had too much politics. She wants to show them that politics is differ-ent in Canada: constructive and inclusive. Rathika identifies with other women who come from the Subcontinent – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Sri Lanka – and she is keen about getting other women from the communities she knows – Filipinas, for example – to run for elected office, because that’s how we’ll be properly represented in our parliaments and legislatures. She is the voice of the newest of Canada, and that voice is strong, loud and clear.

Raise taxes to reduce inequality

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 9:32 AM - 19 Comments

Mike Moffatt argues we aren’t prepared to do what’s necessary to reduce inequality.

The obvious place to start would be to borrow solutions from countries where after-tax income inequality is relatively low. Three countries that consistently score well on income inequality measures are Denmark, Finland and Sweden. These three Nordic countries share very similar tax structures, featuring moderate-to-low marginal corporate tax rates, moderate-to-high income tax rates and very high value added sales tax rates (VATs, similar to Ontario’s HST). The average VAT in these three countries is 25 per cent, a rate nearly twice that of the average Canadian federal GST plus provincial sales tax or HST. A one percentage point increase in the HST alone would raise $5 billion to $6 billion per year for the federal government, so increases by a few percentage points could adequately fund programs designed to reduce inequality. No country on Earth has been able to find a way to fund the kind of social programs and redistribution needed for “reasonable” levels of inequality without VAT rates significantly higher than Ontario’s HST.

Greg Fingas objects.

The computer as modern art

By Anne Kingston - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:50 AM - 2 Comments

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPod in 2001, he did something that would have been counterintuitive for any other consumer-product company CEO: he showed the back of it first. “I’m in love with it,” he said of the elegant, shiny surface reflecting the Apple logo in matte relief. “It’s stainless steel; it’s really, really durable. It’s beautiful.” By then Apple devotees expected such attention to detail from the man in the black mock turtleneck who took computers from geek to chic—the imperative was embedded in his company’s very DNA.

In his 2009 TED lecture talk about inspirational leadership, Simon Sinek observed that Apple challenged the status quo and expressed its ability to think differently precisely by making products that are consistently “beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly.” And certainly the public’s appetite for innovative, human products is reflected in consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for Apple products. But Jobs’s greatest design legacy was reframing its parameters in the mass market. As he told the New York Times in 2003, Apple didn’t see design as product veneer: “That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.”

The iPod, coveted to the point of theft, exemplified Apple’s fusion of function and form: the technology was revolutionary (“You can put your entire playlist in your pocket,” Jobs boasted), yet every user touch point was carefully considered to be familiar and seem pleasing—its gift-like packaging, playing-card proportions, intuitive scroll wheel, even the tiny clip that prevented its distinctive white earbuds cord from tangling when it was packed up. The Museum of Modern Art put an iPod in its collection and extols the device for raising expectations for all consumer products—and also “stimulating manufacturers to recognize the importance of good design and to incorporate design considerations at the highest levels of their corporate structures.”

Continue…

Why Ontario is poised to become Canada’s Greece

By the editors - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:50 AM - 99 Comments

Frank Gunn/CP

October has been an unusually busy month for provincial politics.

Prince Edward Island, the Northwest Territories, Manitoba, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Yukon have all had elections in the past two weeks. Alberta’s ruling Progressive Conservatives recently picked a new premier in Alison Redford. And next month Saskatchewan will head to the polls. While every election is important, one in particular should give all Canadians pause for thought.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s re-election last week, albeit with a minority, was an impressive display of campaigning. And yet what makes McGuinty’s return significant is not his politicking skill but his responsibility for Ontario’s ever-expanding debt. Traditionally known as the engine that drives Canada, Ontario is in danger of becoming the Greece of Confederation—if Greece happened to account for more than a third of Europe’s economy.

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Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 11 Comments

David Berlin proposes a new kind of parliamentary government.

Provincial and federal systems are more complex. But consider a no-party system in which the public votes directly for MPs and provincial members, and then the members themselves elect the cabinet ministers, who would then elect the prime minister or premier in the same way. Each would-be minister would specify proposals and what portion of a projected four-year budget (estimated by the national bank) it would take to accomplish them. Each MP’s or provincial member’s ballot would have to name a set of candidates whose estimates added up to no more than 100 per cent of that budget.

Berlin’s primary complaint is the party system itself. But the problem isn’t political parties, so much as its the power those parties have to control individual MPs. And while the proposal here might make things somehow better—though I suspect parties would still take shape—it’s also difficult to imagine how so drastic a change would ever come to pass.

A smaller—and thus more plausible—reform might be pursued first. From my February piece about the House of Commons. Continue…

It’s tough being Tony Blair

By Jane Switzer - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Emmanuel Dunand/Afp/Getty Images

Tony Blair can’t catch a break. Days after the former British prime minister defended his jet-set lifestyle and denied allegations that he used his role as a Middle East peace envoy to secure private business contracts, senior Palestinian officials declared that his “bias” toward Israel casts doubt on his impartiality and called for his removal.

Mohammed Ishtayeh, a senior official and confidant of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told Voice of Palestine radio on Oct. 5 that Blair was no longer trusted as an envoy for the Middle East Quartet, for which he mediates on behalf of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. “He has developed a large bias in favour of the Israeli side and he has lost a lot of his credibility,” Ishtayeh said. “We hope the Quartet will reconsider the appointment of this person.”

On Sept. 29, London’s Daily Telegraph disclosed that senior Palestinian officials had privately stated their intention to declare Blair “persona non grata” in Palestinian government offices over his role in renewing peace talks between Israel and Palestine. And senior official Nabil Shaath told the Guardian that Blair, who was appointed to the Quartet post soon after he resigned as prime minister in 2007, effectively acted as a “defence attorney” for Israel during a debate within the Quartet in July. The group had proposed in June that peace talks should resume within a month and that both sides should complete a deal by the end of 2012, but its partners were unable to agree on the terms necessary to end the year-long deadlock.

Continue…

Turned on and tuned in: Steve Jobs as a child of the sixties

By Jay Teitel - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Apple/dpa/Corbis

In 1969, the year of Woodstock and the first moon walk, Steve Jobs was 14. A yearbook photograph from Homestead High School in Cupertino, Calif., shows him with the rest of the electronics club, looking as geeky as his buddies. Three years later, the 1972 yearbook includes a grad photo that shows Jobs, virtually unrecognizable, with long hair, in a tux and bow tie. Something about the Summer of Love had gotten to him.

For the past week or so, in the instantly mythic aftermath of his death, Steve Jobs has often been characterized as a nerd who made good, but he was never a nerd: he was the coolest tech guy who ever lived, a little foppish, a little ascetic, like a combination of Oscar Wilde and St. Augustine. What Jobs was—in an American do-it-yourself, perfection-unto-arrogance tradition that few admirers today are aware of—was a hippie.

Some of the counterculture trappings of Jobs’s life were sixties stock. After dropping out of college in his freshman year, he worked at the pioneering video-game firm Atari to raise money for a trip to an ashram in India. He returned a Buddhist, complete with Indian garb and a shaved head. He took LSD, later describing it as one of the defining experiences of his life. And of course there was his legendary Jobsian observation that Bill Gates would have been “a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

Continue…

Tim Cook: Apple’s most humble servant

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

Paul Sakuma/AP

Tim Cook took the stage, but not the spotlight. In his public debut as Apple chief at the unveiling of the updated iPhone on Oct. 4–the day before Steve Jobs died—the 50-year-old seemed comfortable enough, dressed in jeans, a button-down shirt and his trademark Nike runners (he also sits on the sportswear giant’s board). He even cracked a couple of jokes in his measured Alabama drawl. “This is my first product launch since being named CEO,” he said, the threat of a smile crossing his face. “I’m sure you didn’t know that.”

But it was the things that Cook didn’t do that garnered the most notice. There were no stirring Jobs-ian speeches about future-altering technology. The “ta-dah” introductions of the new phone, a social network, and a greeting card application were all left to other Apple executives. And the CEO’s sales pitch—such as it was—was all about the brand, rather than the vision. “I’m so incredibly proud of this company,” Cook told the assembled journalists. “I consider it the privilege of a lifetime to have worked here for 14 years and I am very excited about this new role.” The message was clear. Apple’s cult of personality begins and ends with its founder.

And all indications suggest that is just the way the new boss likes it. A lifelong number two—he even finished second in his class at high school—Cook has always preferred to stay in the background. He almost never gives interviews, or speaks in public settings. (The exception being his beloved alma mater Auburn University, where he gave the commencement address in 2010.) He was raised in Robertsdale, a small farming town near Alabama’s Gulf Coast, whose only other “celebrity” son appears to be Obie Trotter, a college basketball star now playing in Szolnok, Hungary. The middle of three boys born to a shipyard worker and a homemaker, Cook played in the marching band and was voted “most studious” by his peers. He went on to take engineering at Auburn, where professors remember him as “very quiet, very reserved.” After graduating in 1982, he took a job at IBM in North Carolina, distinguishing himself as the guy who volunteered to work over the Christmas holidays so that the company could fill its orders by year-end. In 1994, he joined the computer-reselling division of an electronics wholesaler, rising to COO before jumping to Compaq in 1997. Six months later, an executive recruiting firm came knocking on Apple’s behalf.

Continue…

Are voters finally fed up with Jean Charest’s flip-flops?

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

Jacques Boissinot/CP

Jean Charest stays in power because of his political smarts, his eye for the jugular and his ability to, time and again, defy expectations. At least, this is the accepted wisdom when describing how Charest, who has never exactly warmed Quebec’s collective heart, has managed to become one of the country’s longest-serving premiers. He is a constant in a fractured political landscape: the 53-year-old has faced no less than five Parti Québécois leaders over three elections. And he has strongly hinted he’s hungry for more.

Yet if Charest has a weakness, it’s his own tendency to make and hold to highly contentious decisions, only to reverse himself once the decision has incurred the maximum political damage on his own government. Exhibit A: the premier recently said he’d be open to holding some form of public inquiry into the province’s demonstrably corrupt construction industry—something the opposition, the voting public and several municipal officials have pleaded for throughout the last two years. And as lukewarm as Charest’s endorsement may sound, it constitutes nothing short of a huge climbdown for the premier, who has spent much of this time refusing to even consider the possibility.

There are many such grand reversals throughout Charest’s eight years in office. The building of the CHUM, Montreal’s French superhospital, was delayed by Charest’s insistence that it be located in the municipality of Outremont, even though the public overwhelmingly favoured a downtown site. Only after the ensuing squabble—which delayed the project by upwards of four years, according to former Université de Montréal rector Robert Lacroix—did the premier reverse himself.

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Kevin O’Leary on Steve Jobs

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:10 AM - 11 Comments

Jessica Darmanin/Maclean's

In the mid-’80s, if you’ll recall, there was a massive rivalry between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Gates decided early on that he would license his operating system to every manufacturer who wanted it. In a matter of years he got 97 per cent of the PC market. On the other hand, Jobs said, “I’m never going to license the Mac operating system to anybody. I am going to control the hardware and the software and package it to consumers.” He lost huge. He ended up with two per cent of the market.

At the time, The Learning Company was the largest provider of educational software. I’m the guy that’s providing 80 per cent of the market for reading and math software in schools and for consumers, with brands like Reader Rabbit, Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail. It cost about $500,000 a title to develop software for Windows and $500,000 for Mac. It was very easy for me to find my Windows user—97 per cent of people who have a computer can use the software. But my cost of acquiring the Mac customer keeps going up the more share Jobs loses in the market. I’m losing about $50 million a year doing that and my board is squeezing my head saying, “What the hell are we supporting Mac for?”

We were working closely with teams at Apple and I finally said, “I’ve got to go see the big guy. We can’t go on like this.” I planned to ask him for $50 million, but was willing to accept $12 million [to continue making software for Mac]. I got there and sat down at a boardroom table; there were five or six of us on each side. It started with the pleasantries of the product management teams and then probably half an hour into it, Jobs walked in and the whole room shut down. It went silent. Nobody would say anything when Steve was in the room. He was the king.

Continue…

Harper’s facial hair and new gig writing books

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:05 AM - 4 Comments

Photography by Mitchel Raphael

Harper’s final chapter

For several years Stephen Harper has been working on a book about hockey. The PM can finally use one of the Conservatives’ favourite catchphrases: “Getting the job done.” Word is the book is written. A publication date has yet to be announced.

A cake for Clement

During question period, NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus has been counting the days that Treasury Board President Tony Clement has refused to answer questions about what Angus calls the G8 “slush fund.” The MP says that on the 150th day, in the first week of November, he will present the cabinet minister with a cake and, he jokes, “maybe it will have a file in it.” Senior Tory cabinet ministers have expressed embarrassment to Capital Diary that Clement has not risen to explain himself (or apologize, if necessary). Foreign Minister John Baird gets up to answer questions on his behalf, although Clement is sitting right next to him. Perhaps there’s a double standard regarding which ministers can answer questions in the House: Defence Minister Peter MacKay recently rose to answer queries about his use of aircrafts. Liberal MP Judy Sgro says that under Jean Chrétien, ministers had to answer their own questions. There was only one exception: if the opposition called for a minister to resign, Chrétien took the question.

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The life and times of Steve Jobs

By Chris Sorensen, Jason Kirby, and Michael Friscolanti - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 4 Comments

John G. Mabanglo/AFP/Getty Images

Theo Gray was at the wheel of his car when he learned his friend Steve Jobs was dead. The call from his assistant came as a shock, not because Gray didn’t know of Jobs’s failing health—“I had some information about how bad he was”—but because it was difficult to comprehend a world without the legendary Apple co-founder. Jobs not only built one of the world’s most successful companies, with a market value of more than US$350 billion, but he elevated technology into the realm of the magical and gave us our first true glimpse of its potential. “I don’t know, maybe I was repressing the knowledge,” says Gray, who has known Jobs since 1988 and whose software company, Wolfram Research, has worked closely with Jobs and Apple for the past two decades. “I hoped maybe he would have another year or something.”

One more year. It boggles the mind to imagine what a digital dreamer like Jobs could do with 365 more days on this planet; the wonders he might conceive, or even the little annoyances of the mobile age he would inevitably solve. Jobs reshaped the world and how it communicates more in his 56 years than almost any other person of the last century.

It was why, moments after Apple Inc. confirmed Jobs’s death on Oct. 5, tributes began to pour in on sites like Facebook and Twitter, by the tens of millions. A few hours later, makeshift shrines popped up outside Apple stores throughout North America, Europe and Asia. President Barack Obama was moved to write: “Steve was among the greatest of American innovators—brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.” Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple Computers with Jobs in the 1970s, put it even more simply: “It’s like the world lost a John Lennon.”

Continue…

Why I miss the minority government

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 2 Comments

CP; Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Maybe I’m a weirdo but I miss minority government. I miss the tension, the brinkmanship, the Liberals being even remotely relevant. I miss the thrill that comes with John Baird going hyper-partisan, his face turning the kind of purple that under different circumstances would prompt a good Samaritan to apply the Heimlich manoeuvre. I caught a bit of question period not long ago and heard Baird use something that sounded an awful lot like an inside voice. It was as jarring as listening to Back in Black performed by a harpist.

It’s been a tough transition for the political enthusiast. Without the ever-present threat of an election, the Conservatives have no reason even to pretend to feign fake-caring about opposition queries. And the opposition seems similarly disinterested. This is pretty much every exchange in the House these days:

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The doctor who had time for people

By Barbara Amiel - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 19 Comments

Michael Stuparyk/Toronto Star

At university in the early sixties, films told who you were. There were guy films like The Guns of Navarone and high-class chick flicks starring Audrey Hepburn, doing Breakfast at Tiffany’s. On date nights I went to see Hollywood movies, on going-out-with-friends nights it was anything nouvelle vague and absolutely everything by Ingmar Bergman. His masterpiece, The Seventh Seal, gave me my notion of death.

Your age colours how you see death, and during university years it was black and white, melodramatic and terribly romantic. Death was La Dame aux Camélias, or Mimì coughing her lungs out in La Bohème. Death was heroic and sacrificial. We were Anna Kareninas dying over wrong choices and lost loves. Death was racing in fast cars like our pin-ups for fatal auto crashes—heartthrob James Dean or Nobel winner and French Resistance hero, author Albert Camus. Death was never chemotherapy and bedpans or a descent into senility. Death was a state to flirt with and reject, preferably in Givenchy like Audrey Hepburn. If death was to be drawn out it required intellectual style, like Max Von Sydow’s knight in Bergman’s film who plays a game of chess with death for 96 minutes. He loses, as we all must, and the film closes with a memorable scene in which fool and knight dance behind the Grim Reaper in a stark silhouette.

Death toyed with Steve Jobs and arrived last week, ending his life prematurely. Coincidentally, this past weekend death struck nearer to home when on Thanksgiving my cousin, Dr. Robert Buckman, died unexpectedly on the plane home after a trip to London. He died in his seat, fast asleep we hope. He was 63 years old.

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This is the week that was

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, October 15, 2011 at 6:31 PM - 2 Comments

Brian Topp won another endorsement. Romeo Saganash called for change. Thomas Mulcair launched his campaign. Rob Silver and Greg Fingas considered Mr. Mulcair’s chances.

The United Nations found evidence of torture in Afghanistan. The Prime Minister demurred in regards to the Ontario election. Lisa Raitt mused vaguely of amending the Labour Code and blocked a strike at Air Canada. Tony Clement promised open government. Newfoundland and the Yukon stuck with their incumbents. Bruce Carson left behind some bills. And Canadian conservatives fell just short of a symbolic majority. Continue…