August 31, 2009
Coming up in the September-October 2009 issue of This Magazine
Nova Scotia NDP Premier Darrell Dexter has a lot of reading to do, including This Magazine. Illustration by David Anderson. The September-October 2009 issue of This Magazine should now be in subscribers’ mailboxes (subscribers always get the magazine early, and you can too), and will be for sale on your local newsstand coast-to-coast this week. All the articles in the issue will be made available... [More >>]
August 28, 2009
Friday FTW: In turning down Giller nom, Alice Munro is a class act
Alice Munro's new book, Too Much Happiness Alice Munro, one of the giants of Canada’s literary scene, has always been a tremendously sensitive and humane writer; in turning down yet another nomination for the prestigious Giller Prize, she’s proven to be an equally sensitive and humane cultivator of Canadian writing talent. Having already won the Giller twice—for The Love of a Good... [More >>]
August 27, 2009
In “Forgotten Kenya,” mobile classrooms follow in nomads’ footsteps
A nomadic Somali woman leads her camels in the drought-afflicted north of Kenya. Photo by Siena Anstis. The drought in Northern Kenya this year is severe. Farah Olad, the Deputy Chief of Party of Education for Marginalized Children of Kenya (EMACK), an organization which works with Somali pastoral communities, tells me grey is the “color of death” in this rural region. And the whole landscape... [More >>]
August 26, 2009
Watch “Citizen Media Rendezvous 2009″ live online now
Above we’ve embedded the live stream of today’s Citizen Media Rendezvous taking place in Montreal, sponsored by the National Film Board of Canada’s Citizenshift initiative. The segment above features four speakers: Véronique Marino (INIS) Geraldine Cahill (The Real News Network) David Beers (The Tyee) Laurent Mauriac (Rue 89) The second panel of speakers, above, featured three... [More >>]
August 26, 2009
Wednesday WTF: Time to inoculate against election fever
If we ran a “WTF” blog post every time another ridiculous, inconclusive political poll came out, you’d never read anything else here. But since this particular batch of ridiculous, inconclusive polls came out as all the Canadian political parties were gearing up for the fall session, we’ll make an exception this time. Harris-Decima says the Tories and the Liberals are in a... [More >>]
August 25, 2009
ThisAbility #34: Rolling
Clinical Psychologist, Galen Buckwalter, chronicles life in a wheelchair on Rolling--Thirteen/WNET New York Generally if I find myself awake at four in the morning, the best thing on TV is Vince Shlomi pitching the SlapChop or Billy Mays yelling at me from beyond the grave. But this morning, I caught an unapologetic and often uncomfortably unflinching documentary on what day-to-day life in a wheelchair... [More >>]
August 24, 2009
Event: This arts editor Jordan Himelfarb on “The New World of Journalism”
Jordan Himelfarb Jordan Himelfarb—who among many other talents is the Arts & Ideas editor for This Magazine and senior editor of The Mark, above—is giving a talk this Wednesday in Toronto called “The New World of Journalism: Audiences, Editorial and Momentum,” and if you’re interested in the future of our troubled news media, this will be worth your time. This talk is the... [More >>]
August 24, 2009
Queerly Canadian #18: Apologizing to Alan Turing, forgotten gay icon
Alan Mathison Turing, computing pioneer and forgotten gay icon. The other day I stumbled across a petition asking that the British government apologize to Alan Turing for “the tragic consequences of prejudice that ended [his] life and career,” and formally acknowledge the significance of his work. Here’s some background. Alan Turing is most readily associated with the Turing Test, which sought... [More >>]
August 21, 2009
Friday FTW: Fox “F%#kos” and GOP loons consume themselves, Jon Stewart watches
If you missed the Daily Show this week, on Wednesday it offered a kind of condensed, sweetened version of the current political moment in the U.S., a methodical and droll demolition of the out-and-out insanity that has gripped the American right. In the segment—which, by the way, earns every ounce of smugness it exudes—the archives of Fox News are deployed against itself, showing clips that completely... [More >>]
August 21, 2009
A Kenyan orphanage that embraces slum “culture”—minus the poverty
Brenda, one of the orphaned children at the CYCA Center for Orphaned Children. Photo credit: TMS Ruge (tmsruge.com). International development and foreign aid is a complicated and contentious field. A thousand different components—such as water, sanitation, food security, child care, education, infrastructure—need to be addressed simultaneously. The targeted community must be the leader of all... [More >>]
