October 19, 2009

Girls Gone Wild. So? Sometimes being brave means being bad

With Amy Winehouse, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears splashed across tabloid covers, racing toward early graves, it’s easy to think they’re stupid or sick. But there’s something irresistably subversive about women who won’t behave The website “When Will Amy Winehouse Die?” reads like a macabre count-the-jellybeans contest. How many days does a junkie have left to live?... [More >>]

August 20, 2009

“Socialism” and “Big Government” as Orwellian doublespeak

It’s not the size of your bureaucracy. It’s how you use it. Onward, Stephen Harper: lead us to the socialist utopia! If you follow the right-wing punditry you’d think comrades Harper, Obama, Brown, and the like are leading us along that slippery slope to—gasp—socialism. Not that any of these leaders has a nice word to say about socialism; they don’t. But the more alarmist fringes... [More >>]

August 18, 2009

Graphic: Where are all of Canada’s stimulus dollars going to?

When Finance Minister Jim Flaherty first revealed his stimulus spending package back in January, he announced that Canada’s Economic Action Plan would “protect Canadians during the global recession” and “put more money in the hands of Canadian families, to help them weather the current storm.” Although Flaherty claims to have introduced a budget that is “Canada’s... [More >>]

August 17, 2009

Postcard from Lusaka: No smoking. Really no smoking.

When Lusaka went smoke free, they really went smoke-free. Photo by Michael Musenga. As the wheels hit the hot asphalt of the runway, I look up to see the frenetic expressions on the faces of my fellow passengers—a look that falls somewhere between anxious and anaphylactic, and it’s clear they’re desperate to get off the plane. It’s been a short and relatively painless flight from Nairobi, Kenya,... [More >>]