Compare and contrast: The aggressive, bloodthirsty rush to depose the Liberals exhibited by Stephen Harper, with the slow-motion 10-year coup that Paul Martin carried out against Jean Chretien. Discuss in light of Machiavelli’s The Prince, especially with respect to the following passage from Chapter 8 (emphasis added by the instructor): Some may wonder how it […] More »

Bring out your dead! Wolfgang Puck introduced a new line of lattes this month. That the Los Angeles chef has stamped his name on yet another product isn’t surprising. But the container is. It heats itself. It took a California company named OnTech seven years and $24 million to create the self-heating cans, which are […] More »

Stephen Harper, with apparently no regard for his reputation as a warm-blooded sentient being, gets all robotic and snakey on Canada’s ass. From the Globe story on today’s pathetic, I mean political, maneuvering: Two Tory MPs who have cancer are being flown in for the vote, and all 54 Bloc MPs are in Ottawa today. […] More »

I’m being a delinquent Web Editor by posting to the blog when I need to get the current issue up, but here’s an important development for those of you in Toronto: on Wednesday city council will be voting on whether to implement video screens throughout the subway system (in stations and on train cars) as […] More »

Joe Heath and I are going to Spain next week to promote the Spanish edition of the thing we wrote. I’ll blog if anything interesting happens, but otherwise I’m going to spend this week reading a couple of histories of Spain. I can’t wait to visit a country with an even weaker central government and […] More »

Kansas is at it again. According to a report in the NYTimes, the State Board of Ed in Kansas, backed by a conservative majority is holding hearings designed to introduce new science standards — standards that would leave the door open for teachers to disregard the ‘theory’ of evolution in favour of the ‘biblical fact’ […] More »

To Tony Blair, who was born on May 6, 1953. I have spent the better part of the last two days at a conference, co-hosted by McGill and UdeM, addressing the question: “What remains of Cool Britannia?” There are panels on the third way and the economy, devolution, culture, europe, etc., a solid look at […] More »

While we’re on the unfortunate topic of the passing of fine humans. I took a couple of hours yesterday and read — then re-read — Bill Cameron’s piece on living, then dying, with Cancer. It’s in the new Walrus, and it is one of the best pieces I’ve read anywhere this year. My early impressions […] More »

Sad about the news of Bob Hunter’s passing on May 2nd. I work in a complex of small not-for-profits here in ‘the big insensitive’ (Toronto), and there are a number of enviro-groups in residence. Mr. Hunter was a bit of a legend in these parts, as I’m sure he was elsewhere… and not just because […] More »

It’s a sad week for the environmental movement, having lost one of its icons, Bob Hunter, to cancer, on Monday. I for one really enjoyed Hunter’s “paper cuts” segment daily on Breakfast Television, I think in many ways anticipating what would become media blogging like you see here, or on Maisonneuve’s media scout. But to […] More »

The lineup for this year’s Waynefest will be announced tomorrow night (May 5, 8:00 pm) at the kickoff party at the Sidetrack Cafe in Edmonton. WTF is Waynefest??? Well it’s just about the coolest little three-day music event organized by non-industry people EVER. And it’s named for lovely Wayne Alberta, deep in the Badlands. This […] More »