This bizarre case is getting so little coverage in North America—shame. Morally-suspect Polish/French director Roman Polanski (The Pianist—great film), is getting a little Albert Camus action these days, as a British libel case focuses on whether or not he was duly upset by the murder of his wife Sharon Tate, almost 40 years ago. So […] More »
The National Post today reprints a memo, distributed to CBC staff, outlining the Corpse’s policy on the use of the word “terrorist” or “terrorism”. The gist of it is that staff should “Exercise extreme caution when using either word” with the guiding principle being that “we don’t judge specific acts as ‘terrorism’ or people as […] More »
Over at THIS Magazine, we like to boast that nobody owns us, meaning we are beholden to no-one’s worldview, not our advertisers’ (chief among them Canada’s labour unions), not any political party’s (despite being sometimes known as the media wing of the NDP—not true; we write better than the NDP). We like our writers, and […] More »
Here’s an interesting article about some recent polling data debunking the notion that today’s youth (18-24) are a bunch of anti-branding anti-capitalists. In fact, it would appear that this crew is actually less likely than the general population to be willing to spend more on ethically produced goods or environmentally-friendly products. The upshot: Manufacturers and […] More »
Just finished Colossus, by Niall Ferguson. A good, but not great, book, about the unspoken American empire. Like Michael Ignatieff, he allows his liberal interventionism to cloud the fact that the war in Iraq was backed by a pack of lies. Still, I’m broadly sympathetic to his normative position (liberals should not be afraid to […] More »
Could Thomas L. Freidman’s editorial in today’s New York Times have been inspired by a recent THIS Magazine blog discussion? It sure reads like it was. More likely of course is that American journalists are taking the lead, way ahead of their government certainly, in finally trying to answer that second question on every American’s […] More »
Climb down off those tenterhooks kids, put away the pins and needles. The BBC’s race to determine the Greatest Philosopher has been won by… Karl Marx. Hooo boy. I can’t say I’m pleased. My man Hobbes didn’t even make it into the top 10, though my next two choices, Hume and Wittgenstein, did finish two […] More »
Okay, it’s an American petition, so signing it from Canada will probably not help, but it’s worth noting. He did say he’d fire whoever did this. He just didn’t expect it would be his daddy. Oh, what does a poor, feckless President do? More »