QuickLinx 01.11.09

IT'S GOD'S FAULT

Bad driver? Blame your genes. (Reuters)

House or workplace are cluttered? Blame your genes. (Reuters)

Ransom note's in here somewhere.
 

BOOM TO BUST

Bereaving Las Vegas, arguably N.A. hardest hit by housing-boom implosion. (Der Spiegel)

In slumping Dubai these days, one of four cheques bounces in real-estate collapse. (Times of London)

In glittering Dubai, $166 billion (U.S.) in planned real-estate development has been scrapped as property values plunged 41% in 1Q alone. Boom was built on debt and nosebleed oil prices. Global financial crisis and slumping wellhead prices put the brakes to that.

UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Why it makes no sense to lay off older workers. (Newsweek) 

It's not fun being king. Being boss is hard on your health. (Reuters)

Why helicopters are so crash-prone. Hint: they do things we don't ask of planes. (Slate)

Why websites are so confusing. Notes on navigating cyberspace. (Harvard Business Review)

Fox News isn't just bad. It's un-American. (Jacob Weisberg, Slate/Newsweek)

Why Canada's falling behind in clean-tech R&D. (Financial Post)

How MSM get sucked into believing political rumours that spread like wildfire on the Web. (New Yorker)

Newspapers just look dead. (Canadian Journalism Report)

Why it's sane for Kim Jong-il to be crazy. (Reuters)

Write your own caption. Remember that Gordon Brown, whom I'd also rather not see in the buff, has nukes too.
 

DEBATES

A Catholic balks at a thoroughly anti-woman Church of Rome. (Maureen Dowd, New York Times)

Charles Lewis responds to Maureen Dowd's "Nazi slur" on Pope Benedict, et al. (National Post)

Will California become America's first "failed state"? (U.K. Guardian)

California is thriving, despite setbacks. (Time)

California: Failed state. (John Judis, New Republic, Sept. 5, 2005)

End state: Is California finished? (John Judis, New Republic, Oct. 26, 2009)

BETTER LIVING CENTRE

Are you getting enough dopamine? An update on the motivator molecule. (New York Times)

Smile, already. You're depressing the economy. (Slate)

Seven tips if you're chronically late. (Slate)

Best-buy vehicles of latest model year, in 13 categories, starting at $21,000. (Toronto Star)

Review of the latest wave of smartphones, including BlackBerry Storm 2.0. (New York Times)

In defense of fast food: One man's unapologetic love affair with Burger King, Taco Bell, et al. (Newsweek)

In defense of candy: Meet a man who lives almost entirely on sweets. (New York Times)

Paul Rudner of New York's West Village: no veggies allowed.

PROGRESS

USDA push to get farmers markets' fresh groceries closer to you. (National Public Radio)

How new high-speed trains are making China smaller. (Newsweek)

Climate-change progress: Toshiba's new mini-nuclear reactors. (Reuters)

Electric cars are a step closer. (Euronews)

Put your dog on a diet, save the planet. (Toronto Star)

Deal with it: Biotech foods might be a cure world hunger. (New York Times)

The recession killed off grandiose "celebrity architecture." Good. (New York Times)

Centennial of Burnham's "Chicago Plan" - every city should all have been so lucky. (New Yorker)

The Magnificent Mile, the "front lawn" on Lake Michigan, these things don't happen by accident. It's called urban planning and Chicago's Daniel Burnham was one of history's best.
 

GETAWAYS, NEAR AND FAR

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, New York, Nov. 10 only. (Carnegie Hall)

Montreal's Oliver Jones, consummate jazz pianist, at Glenn Gould Studio, Nov. 14 only. (GGS)

Gordon Lightfoot, Massey Hall, Toronto, Nov. 18, 19, 20.

"The Magic Flute," Opera de Montreal, Place des Arts de Montreal, Nov. 19 only.

Marvellous "Paul Gaugin, Paris 1889" show at Cleveland Museum of Art, Oct. 4-Jan. 18. (CMA)

Paul Gaugin, "Breton Girls Dancing, Pont Aven," 1888. On loan from National Gallery of Art, Washington.

 

MADE YOU LAUGH

Who knew the oboes have it in for the violas? (Shouts & Murmurs, New Yorker)

The man with but a surname takes a mate with no name at all. (Shouts & Murmers, New Yorker) 

TV critic Matthew Gilbert's 14 most-annoying TV characters of all time. (Boston Globe)

She tops one reviewers' list of most annoying TV characters of all time.

 

Department of Unconventional TV Spots. (cont.)

Already almost November, and only two candidates for the Palm d'Or.

This new Levi's spot brings together two American icons, the other being Walt Whitman. That's his voice you hear, on a primitive recording device, in the first part of the ad, then it switches to an a very good voice actor. This is a celebration of American values, but an honest one - shot in black and white, gritty scenes, streets and districts that have seen better days. An unconventional message from a traditionally conservative firm, so high marks for that. The second spot is a reprise of an ad launched earlier this year, introducing the Palm Pre. Both ads are accused of "cultural appropriation." But I think Walt would have approved, be delighted that his work was finding contemporary expression. The other, starring an ethereal Canadian actress Tamara Hope, honours the spiritual ritual of the dancers. The M83 soundtrack is "Lower Your Eyelids To Die With The Sun."

See for yourself.

Enjoy your weekend.

Robin Upton poses with pumpkins and squashes in his garden at Slindon, Sussex in southern England, Oct. 28. Photo: Toby Melville, Reuters.
 

A bad apple.

Now making the rounds of newsrooms:

"Let me just say that I'm always suspicious when I see articles about the motivations of journalists. I think they often reflect a misunderstanding of what journalism is all about. Journalists are supposed to be assholes. The system does not work, in fact, if society's journalists are all nice, kind, friendly, rational people. 

"You want a good percentage of them to be inconsolably crazy. You want them to be jealous of everything and everyone and to have heaps of personal hangups and flaws. That way they will always be motivated to punch holes in things."

--Matt Taibbi, journalist and blogger, Rolling Stone, 2009.

I know this guy.

Not personally, of course. But I've seen him at work in many newsrooms. He always files past deadline, because Hemingway would. He has spent the afternoon interrupting colleagues with gossip. He's a stylist, not a reporter; one interview and an unnamed source will do to hang the story on. He seduces your wife or girlfriend, who never again hears from him, because Sartre and de Beauvoir had an open marriage and that's a key to profound writing. Accuracy isn't a priority; we have deskers for that. He'll rage occasionally at sources, because Hunter Thompson did, and too bad those sources now won't talk to me. Of readers he is contemptuous. They're morons who lack the passion or wit to punch a hole in something from time to time. He thinks journalists should be assholes because he is one, and feels vindicated in this, believing he is Saving the World.

Folks like this are the reason journalists rank dead last or second to it in polls on vocations the public most respects - have done since I was a kid. Glad to say I've never met anyone remotely like him in our newsroom. Google "Taibbi Goldman Sachs" and see the high regard in which this specimen is held. He is what inspired A.J. Leibling to write: "Newspapering, despite urgent prodding from schools of journalism, has always lagged behind the learned professions on the march to seemliness."

Enjoy your day.

Snack time at the Brookfield (Ill.) Zoo. Above, Hudson, a 2-year-old polar bear. (Photo: M. Spencer Green, AP.) Below, Nadaya, a male western lowland gorilla. (John Gress, Reuters.)

 

QuickNews, Friday, Oct. 30.

THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE

BREAKTHROUGH | Europe on brink of superpower status. EU leaders agreed yesterday to holdout Czech Republic's remaining demands, opening way for ratification of sweeping reform Lisbon Treaty that would create post of EU presidency and more integrated foreign policy. Implications are enormous as a still more unified Europe - the ultimate realization of Jean Monnet's vision - will vie more effectively with U.S., China, India, Russia as a global powerhouse. As first pan-Europe president, Reuters analyst puts his money on Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende, "a centre-right Harry Potter look-alike devoid of charisma." Mr. B.'s advantage over fading frontrunner Tony Blair is that he has no enemies, while Blair is unfondly remembered as Bush's lap dog in an Iraq invasion deeply unpopular in Europe, especially with leading powers France and Germany.

U.S. RECESSION OFFICIALLY OVER | Reports 3.5% GDP growth in 3Q. Ends longest U.S. recession in 70 years. But end of downturn that began December 2007 is no relief for 15 million unemployed Americans, meaning a brace of new U.S. stimulus measures are in the offing ahead of next year's "off-year" elections. NA. recovery remains fragile: Canada today will post expected anemic GDP growth of just 0.3%.

CANADIAN MEDICAL ADVANCE | Docs pioneer gene therapy for lung transplants. Therapy developed by team at Toronto's University Health Network repairs lungs available for transplant, making more donor lungs available, and improves outcome prospects for transplant patients. Currently more than 80% of donor lungs are discarded because they aren't healthy enough for transplant use. (Photo: Dr. Marcelo Cypel, a surgical lung transplant fellow (left) and Dr. Shef Keshavjee, senior scientist in the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University Health Network. -CP.)

H1N1 PANDEMIC | U.S. says as many as 5.7 million Americans infected with swine flu virus. Number based on computer modelling. Officially, 1,000 U.S. deaths attributed to virus since outbreak began in April, but computer estimates put number of virus-related deaths closer to 1,600. About 6% of those hospitalized with the virus have died. Canadian officials warn Thursday of vaccine shortages. Ontario officials plea for patience.

AFGHAN QUAGMIRE | Obama to reject McChrystal 40,000-troop request, opt for "McChrystal Light." This either is stalling for time or a disaster. A viable counter-insurgency, a la Petraeus' handbook, requires 600,000 troops for a country the size of Afghanistan, compared with only about 100,000 ISAF troops there now. McChrystal's ask was already pitifully small by that standard, doomed to fail. (Not M's fault; he knows that's as much as could hope for, given unpopularity of war in U.S., plus additional troops Obama has already deployed early this year.) My guess is Obama wants out, will give McChrystal a fraction of the 40,000 to retreat to and protect major cities, surrendering rest of country to Taliban. Obama will try in short term to protect cities - although, good luck, as we've seen from killings of U.N. officials in Kabul this week - while establishing contacts with Taliban to strike a negotiated settlement.

WHO KNEW? | In "painful" memoir, Anne Murray deals with drugs, divorce and retirement. As with Lucy Maud Montgomery, the private-life Murray has not been the charmed existence of her public persona. (Photo: Murray in 1975 in Cambridge, Mass.)

THE INTERNET AT 40 | Pentagon-sponsored project, born Oct. 29, 1969 at 10:30 p.m.  Pacific Time, crashed on first try. And Net historians have been chuckling about that ever since. But then, the first photocopiers routinely caught fire as toner overheated. Amazing thing is that after four decades, cyberspace still seems bright, shiny and new - and only recently a threat to traditional mass media. A reminder about the slow pace of widespread adoption of new technologies. The internal combustion engine and television are other examples of innovations that took half a century to become pervasive. For practical purposes, the Net wasn't invented until 1990, when Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, assigning addresses to each of thousands, now billions of pages on the Net, making them easily retrievable. 

WE PREFER THE HUGELY FLAWED STATUS QUO | Obama's sweeping financial-market reforms get an initial thumbs-down in Congress. The remarkable scope of audacious proposed reforms was outlined here on Wednesday.

PREVIEW | B.C. Interior's real-estate bust chronicled in Globe's Report on Business Mag today.

MARS BECKONS | Russian space chief exhorts Kremlin to OK manned flights to red planet. You're thinking, don't the impoverished Russians have better things to spend limited funds on? But this could be our collective Plan B if efforts to curb global heating fail.

U.S. HEALTHCARE DRAMA | Pelosi (left) unveils ambitious House bill that includes "public option." Popular support for government insurer as alternative is high because the likes of Aetna, UnitedHealth and Wellpoint have so powerfully alienated Americans with skyhigh premiums and chronic reneging on claims obligations. And in epic P.R. blunder, they're now jacking up premiums at last minute to cash in before reform passes, further weakening their fierce lobbying effort to block the reforms. Reuters mocks heft of 1,990-page House bill, bigger than War and Peace (just shy of 1,500 pages.) You hear this all the time of supposedly overly detailed legislation. Well, guess what? The most trifling piece of proposed legislation clocks in at 200 to 400 pages. A a great deal of the contents are loopholes secured by lobbyists for special pleaders - among the first to complain the resulting bill is hopelessly complex - and in this case the legislation covers nearly one-fifth of the U.S. economy. Yesterday's Tory data dump on Ottawa's stimulus spending is 4,476 pages. Deal with it.

CLIMATE CHANGE DRAMA | U.S. big business rejects own Chamber of Commerce's anti-reform stance. China, once leading denialist, now trying to take lead in progressive climate-change initiatives and global diplomacy. Scientific report out of Canadian North shows multiyear Arctic ice is now effectively gone. Solar power entrepreneurs upbeat about their profit prospects beyond 2010. Globe's Jeffrey Simpson nails it on the impractical climate-change goals Canada will present at Copenhagen summit. Actually, as Mr. S. says, the goals aren't impractical, it's Ottawa's do-nothing approach that ensures failure - and world leaders know it. Which means we'll be wallflowers in the Danish capital, as usual for these events. Meanwhile, Prentice (pictured) rips climate-change report by David Suzuki Foundation as "irresponsible." Can't imagine he's even read it yet. You see what I mean.

MSM'S ONE BRIGHT SPOT | It's cable. Cogeco Cable reports another strong quarter yesterday, following good numbers from Rogers earlier this week. More evidence that N.A. cable alone is thriving during post-Depression record ad drought. Why? Cable derives revenue not from advertisers but subscribers and the fees it charges networks to carry their signals.

NATIONAL POST R.I.P.? | Bankrupt CanWest threatens to close Post immediately if it can't transfer the loss-making paper to its healthier big-city papers division. Post has lost money in each of the 11 years since its founding in 1998 by Conrad Black. Observers expect bankruptcy court today to approve transfer, since creditors have already approved the request. CanWest argues Post is integral to operations of Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Sun and its other papers - a specious ploy given that in 2005 reorg CanWest removed struggling national daily from its newly formed newspaper division. 

PROFITS BAROMETER | Winners: Cogeco Inc., Cogeco Cable, Cott, Motorola. Losers: Barrick Gold (stunning $5.7 billion writedown), Imperial Oil, Sprint Nextel.

THEY NEVER LEARN | Accounting "irregularities" rise among small and big businesses. A coping mechanism during recession. This is the principal counter-argument to opponents of government-mandated reforms. Left to its own devices, business can't be trusted to do that right thing, just as Adam Smith said. Gresham's Law comes into play (bad money drives out good): Honest businesspeople are forced to adopt methods of unscruplous operators or risk being put out of business by them.

RISKY TRICK-OR-TREATING | Candy collectors in Churchill, Man. on guard against polar bears. Hallowe'en coincides with predatory bears' season of restless wandering until ice floes freeze into solid plain they migrate to. Children in "polar bear capital of the world" taught not to follow bear tracks and not to dress as polar bears or any white blob that could be mistaken for one.

QUOTE OF THE DAY | "Those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals which might endanger the security of the whole society are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments." -Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).

Courtesy The New Yorker, Nov. 2 edition. 

Enjoy your day.

Our ungrateful American friends. (cont.)

It happens.

You're a journalist on deadline with a non-story. You struggle to come up with an engaging lead paragraph. This isn't your "beat" - a tech writer turned out this swine-flu piece for the Washington Post - and rather a lot of ignorance gets printed. You start with a cliche that applies to the wrong nationality, and it's downhill from there. Not your fault, really. Wrong writer for the story.

Par example:

   Poll: One in three Canadians are sane (hand shake story)

   Michael Arrington, TechCrunch.com, Washington Post 
   Monday, October 19, 2009; 2:37 PM

They say going to war without Canada is like going deer hunting without an accordion (ok, they actually say that about the French, but whatever). And we've had repeated run-ins with our frozen neighbor to the north in the past (see here, here, here). So you'd think the Canadians wouldn't be our first choice of allies in our war against the hand shake.

But they also say the enemy of your enemy is your friend. And so, by that crazy logic, I am now friends with Canada. Or at least, one in three Canadians. Because they've joined us, CNN, the Dalai Lama, the Obamas, the Boston Globe and some random town in Germany in our fight against the dreaded, disease spreading hand shake.

The Globe And Mail...writes that one in three Canadians won't shake hands due to flu concerns.

Dear Mike:

Actually, they universally say among armed forces worldwide that fighting alongside the notoriously trigger-happy Americans is a good way to get yourself killed by "friendly fire," as the families of four of our soldiers murdered and eight injured by the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan on April 18, 2002 can attest. Be that as it may, your frozen friends have fought alongside you in two world wars, Korea, the Gulf War and in the most violent part of Afghanistan, where we've been fighting since 2002, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, while you guys were fighting the wrong war in the wrong place against the wrong enemy. And where we suffered our 132nd military fatality yesterday. As in World War I, we're enduring more fatalities per capita than our allies, because we're trained for shooting wars and prefer challenging combat missions where others before us have failed to patrol duty in pacified zones.

We did take a pass on Vietnam, although we provided you munitions for it, and on Iraq, although we tried at the U.N. in early 2003 to sway the non-voting members of the Security Council to support your resolution before you abruptly withdrew it. And then we sent three warships into the Persian Gulf to free up your troops on the mainland, who were so few in number that failure was preordained. You appear to be making the same mistake again now in Afghanistan - not enough boots on the ground - but all the same we're determined to keep helping your out in that god-forsaken place until 2011, at which point we'll have deployed our combat forces there for 9 years.

Just as Billy Falkner was so eager to fight in the First World War that he trekked to the frozen north to sign up with Canucks hell-bent on killing Huns (hence the name change to the Anglicized William Faulkner), thousands of Canadians headed south in the Sixties to fight with you in Southeast Asia. Second only to the Aussies, if there's a fight going on, we want to be there. The NHL is a vicarious thrill, as fighting goes. At times, the urge to feel that "pink mist" in our faces when our comrades are blown to bits is too great to resist.

Now that you've slurring us and the French, who wisely warned you off Vietnam, having failed there themselves, and who were the third-largest allied combatants in the Gulf War, after yourselves and the Brits, please understand we have no hard feelings. Though your values are God and carpeting, we feel a need to defend them. Let anyone lay a hand on your homeland and, regardless of your consistent ingratitude, we will fight to the death for your conception of life, liberty and happiness. Just do us this one favour and keep your notion of LLH from seeping through our porous border. The concealed small-bore weaponry you carry into places of worship, for instance - and you can guess the rest.

Update: We lost another young Canadian to an IED today. Make that 133 precious dead fighting a war in service to America's strategic interests, not ours.  

 

 

You go, girls...Oy.

Maureen Dowd deftly handles the non-story of Barack Obama's boys'-club presidency.

Which, BTW, relies heavily on counsel from the following:

Cabinet

Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State

Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services

Lisa Jackson, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency

Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor

Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

Senior White House staff

Christina Romer, chair, Council of Economic Advisers

Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change

Melody Barnes, Director of the Domestic Policy Council

Nancy Sutley, chair, Council on Environmental Quality

Samantha Power, Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council.

Valerie Jarrett, Senior Adviser and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement

Then there's...Michelle.

And...Nancy.

11 easy ways to destroy your small business.

From Jay Goltz, owner of five small businesses in Chicago:

1. The lowly extension cord. People get cold feet. They get a space heater. They plug it into a two-pronged extension cord. They forget to unplug it when they leave work. That night, while you are sleeping, your entire business burns down. Your brilliant marketing plan, your three-year projections, all of your records, your new product samples … . You get the idea. This is not something that most business owners think about, but insurance companies know that extension cords and space heaters are major fire hazards. It is good practice not to allow any extension cords in your business that aren’t three-pronged.