It’s only fair that the 11-day Celebrate Canada! festival should kick off with National Aboriginal Day. After all, what better way to commemorate this crazy multicultural mosaic of a country than by launching its celebration in honour of the first people to make it awesome? We’ve compiled a list of things to see and do […] More »
Forget the old colonial powers. The country with surging interests in Africa is China. Photographer Paolo Woods has this fascinating photo essay on Chinese experts who work in Africa. That’s a nice looking golf course… just watch out for the mortars, and the suicide bombers and the friendly fire. The U.S. has big plans for […] More »
This edition of weekend links is an homage to everyone’s favourite decade: the 1960s (Blame the Boomers and their mythmaking machine) The Hayward Gallery in London (that’s UK sadly, not Ont.) is showing this great exhibit of posters from the 1968 student movement in France. Further proof that revolutions, failed or not, need good graphics. […] More »
A group of Vancouver’s literati is gunning to get that city the honour of UNESCO World City of Literature. Mmmm, nice try Vancouver. While we love you and your pretty mountains and plentiful trees, not to mention excellent sushi, we don’t really think you’re the most literary city in Canada. We’ll let Montreal and Toronto […] More »
We do love a good bookstore and Holland’s Selexyz Dominicanen is our kind of store. The store is housed in a 13th century Dominican monastery. It kind of reminds us a bit of that Umberto Eco novel The Name of the Rose. Foreign relations expert Mark Leonard raises an interesting point about rising power China. […] More »
Mexican emos are being targeted for attacks. We’re not talking about light-hearted jabs or mockery but full-on assault. There’s even a dark homophobic element underneath the whole thing. From the article: Most of all, however, the assailants target the emos for dressing effeminately, still a provocative act for many in a macho Mexico. “At the […] More »
The Guardian gives a list of the 50 most powerful blogs in the world. These blogs are SO powerful they can overthrow nations (probably not), change the economy (highly unlikely) and uhm, kill lots of your free time (yep). 40 years ago Robert Kennedy gave a speech which outlined flaws with the idea of the […] More »
Every year a gaggle of Chicagoans run the Chiditarod, a shopping cart race around downtown Chicago geared at raising money and collecting goods for the food bank. The ACLU reports that there are almost a million names on the U.S. terror watch list. That’s one terrorist for every 300 Americans. The group also points some […] More »
I’m extremely jealous at anyone who got to attend the TED conference in California this week. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a conference started in the 1980s that brings some heavy-hitting thinkers into the same building and lets them chat. Think the Nobel prize with fewer Swedes (not that there’s anything wrong with Swedes). This […] More »
Scientists have released this map of the world’s oceans and it doesn’t look good. Human activity has left a mark on nearly every square kilometer of sea, severely compromising ecosystems in more than 40% of waters. The Nation has got this great article on how a few alternative schools in the U.S. are working at […] More »
Before we start this week’s links, a little note. George Murray, editor of Bookninja, a blog I love and check frequently, just wrote to say that some jerk hacked into his blog and did some serious damage. Someone somehow got in to the site, created a new admin account and disabled all our anti-spam software, […] More »