October 5, 2009
Progressive Detective: What’s the greenest diaper choice?
Dear Progressive Detective: I want to raise an environmentally friendly child right from the start. What’s the best diaper choice for my baby? The diaper issue is a messy one, especially since your baby will demand 5,000 to 7,000 changes before his second birthday. Currently, 85 percent of Canadian parents use disposable diapers, making them the third-largest landfill item (after newspapers and... [More >>]
June 2, 2009
Postcard from Tokyo: Rise of the (vending) machines
Japanese vending machines, at your service any time. Creative Commons photo by David Ooms. In North America, we barely notice vending machines. They dispense soft drinks, water, sometimes coffee (or laundry soap in laundromats). In Japan, however, vending machines have been elevated to a fine art. To an outsider, these machines, called jidoohanbaiki, are ubiquitous — incredibly, there is one vending... [More >>]
May 22, 2009
Fiction: Five Pounds Short and Apologies to Nelson Algren
Creative Commons photo by Jason Scragz No one ever tells you not to fuck the monkey. Fuck with the monkey. Get fucked by the monkey. The monkey is filled with a selfish wrath, a vengeful will, a self-loathing so encompassing it eats at the fabric of others. And the preaching and questionable advice. The late nights and empty rooms. Bent over some bar, your face in a warm puddle of bile and ochre elixirs,... [More >>]
May 1, 2009
The Message is the Medium
Are emerging cut-and-paste art forms ruining narrative storytelling? Before my son Louis could walk, he could surf. He took to the internet like an aquatic creature, swimming easily and confidently. It was cute to see him perched at the computer, his big baby head topped off by a pair of giant headphones. But his avidity made me uneasy, a disquiet that lingers still, when I hover over his shoulder... [More >>]
May 1, 2009
Found in translation
The web allows immigrants to straddle two worlds like never before As in so many immigrant families, weekend mornings in my house always meant one thing: “our shows” on TV. We are of Indian descent, and the sounds of the latest Bollywood hits were a staple of our Saturdays and Sundays, as much a part of our weekends as omelettes and the newspaper. But for all the nostalgia, we had little... [More >>]
May 1, 2009
Let’s Get It On
Canadian fiction prefers the joinery of farmhouses — not farmhands The preference among Canadian literary awards for historical fiction has created a national literature devoted to burlap sacking instead of life in the sack. The repeat shortlisting of historical fiction, in which a rural or foreign yesterday is somehow more important than today, contributes to our excessively chaste literature. England... [More >>]
May 1, 2009
Woodpigeon: Please Feed the Birds
Calgary band is big in Europe, but home is where their hearts are Woodpigeon may very well be the biggest Canadian band you’ve never heard of — literally and figuratively. The eight-member Calgary collective’s wistful, lyrical alt-folk has been drawing capacity crowds and garnering deafening buzz in the U.K. and Europe over the past year, though homegrown listeners have been slower to... [More >>]
May 1, 2009
Worth a Thousand Words?
Jillian Tamaki found that literary juries are still learning how to read graphic novels Jillian Tamaki Last year, on October 21, Jillian Tamaki got a phone call from her cousin, the Toronto-based writer-performer Mariko Tamaki. Their muchloved co-creation Skim had made history by becoming the first graphic novel nominated for a Governor General’s Award, in the Children’s Literature (Text)... [More >>]
May 1, 2009
Baffled at the Ballot Box
In 1864, Thomas Hare argued at the Association Internationale pour le Progrès des Sciences Sociales meeting in Amsterdam that proportional representation — in which parliamentary seats are awarded based on political parties’ share of the popular vote — was a much fairer system than the “single member plurality” system being used in his home country of England. Within 60 years,... [More >>]
May 1, 2009
Employment Insurance: Help Wanted
Consumer confidence and stock values might be dropping, but there’s one number that’s on the rise: Canada’s unemployment rate. As more Canadians start turning to Employment Insurance, we got to wondering about the specifics. EI schemes vary widely across the country, it turns out. Just how extreme are the differences? Well, here’s what we found: * December 2008 StatsCan figures.... [More >>]
