Social justice through photography.

PhotoSensitive is a social-conscious collective of hundreds of photographers depicting deprivation worldwide. It was founded 20 years ago by photojournalist Andrew Stawicki, once a photographer at the Toronto Star. A selection of its photos appears here. 

In 1989, the Parliament of Canada voted to eradicate poverty by 2000. PhotoSensitive photographers crossed Canada in 2000, chronicling the rising level of poverty.

Two women with encouraging words in a region of Kenya with a high rate of AIDS/HIV infection.

 

Viva Mexico.

A bit late on this, my apologies - Mexico celebrates its 200th anniversary, with the Big Day being yesterday, two centuries to the day in 1810 that the nation of roughly 100 million gained its independence.

Hundreds of thousands gather in the Zocalo plaza in downtown Mexico city. -AP

A parade-goer waves honours the Mexican tricolor. -AP

A dolphin race is replicated in downtown Mexico City. -AP 

Parade-goers manipulate manequins representing revolutionary figures. -AP

Young Mariachi musicians in bicentennial parade. -AP

 

Hoisted, petard, blogger, own.

My apologies to Robert Peston, who informs me that my father's idiot son misidentified the BBB Business Editor as Robert Preston in a blog posting near you. Not among the world's more interesting events, except, of course, I was faulting Peston for praising a BBC report that, incidentally, misspelled Basel.

Wish I could say I had The Music Man on the brain. No such luck. 

Who ya gonna read?

Here are the obligatory bios of two favourite financial bloggers, Robert Preston at BBC and Felix Salmon at Reuters. Based on what they choose to say about themselves - terribly earnest at the BBC, irreverent at Reuters - which gentleman more catches your fancy as to likely content selection and insight?

About this blog

 I'm Robert Peston, the BBC's business editor. This blog is my take on the business

 stories and issues that matter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Felix Salmon | Shedding no tiers

Sep 14, 2010 01:36 EDT

Felix Salmon is a Reuters blogger. Any views expressed may or may not be his own, but in any case are very unlikely to be those of his employer.

 

And here's Felix's Twitter logo with a typical item:

 

felixsalmon

Exterminators made $258 million from bedbugs in 2009, up 263 percent from three years before: http://bit.ly/dxMrEA about 5 hours ago via bitly

 

I've long thought what a treat it would be to have the name Felix Salmon - I love cats, cats love fish - an aces name for an irreverent commentator also blessed with such valuable insights. Which is not to take anything away from from Robert Preston, who's just as likely to take you down unconventional - which is to say useful - paths of inquiry. My beef is with the BBC - if the Beeb's the cause of it - for not letting Preston be a little more mirthful introducing himself to new readers.

This is very "inside baseball," and my apologies. Among the blognoscenti (nice how TypePad doesn't put a bright red squiggly line under that non-word) one does have the ability with "self-identifiers" to have a bit of fun and stand out a little compared with the standard descriptives for traditional broadcast and dead-tree commentators. As in "John King, CNN White House correspondent" (zzzz) and "Peter Howell, Star film critic." My colleague Peter can draw a provocative quote from the stoniest, most hostile Hollywood celeb, and his insights are cutting.

Not that you'd know it from Peter's descriptive, or mine - for the Star's print editions or this blog. Arghhh. So, especially among those of you who've been reading this blog for some time (bless you), suggested improvements over what I have to say for myself are very welcome. (Whatever you suggest can only be an improvement over what I hastily came up with in March 2009.)

Speaking of which, that current tag of Felix's - "Shedding no tiers" - is a reference to the recent Basel III deliberations on increasing core Tier One capital at global banks to avoid another 2008-09 meltdown. Until a few days ago, Felix's tag told us he was out fetching the Tabasco - which I didn't quite get, but it lightened my day just the same. (My favourite libation is Bloody Caesars.) 

While I'm in by now the 13th inning of this exercise in inside baseball, Preston is right to admonish business journalists (that's my hand up, confessing my sins) for largely ignoring the Basel process. I wasn't behind the door when the topic of the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS) came up in Economics 307, but I did share in the collective shrug among those of us more interested in the aspects of human nature that drive CEOs than such arcana (to us) as M2 money supply and core Tier One capital reserves. Too bad, given the undeniable import of the recent Basel pow-wow. To say nothing of how the shadowy BIS figures into most "world-government" conspiracies I've come across since my leisure-suit days.

Basle, er Basel, on the banks of the Rhine, home of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the "central bankers' central bank," from which new rules strengthening bank capital reserves to avoid another meltdown emerged on the weekend. (Wikipedia Commons)

That said, in praising his employer for being perhaps the only English-language media outlet to highlight the the release Sunday of the new Basel III rules for global banking, Preston should have checked first on the wording of the BBC's otherwise laudable highlighting of the milestone. Somehow, the Beeb, world's largest newsgathering operation, with a 6-billion-pound budget, manages to do something even I've avoided all these years, which is to spell the third-largest Swiss city "Basle." In the opening paragraph, no less. Perhaps the global cutback in newsroom copy editors has reached even the BBC, in which case God help us all. At least the confusion wasn't with the proprietor of "Fawlty Towers." Though given the shortcomings identified in the new banking rules by many experts, Basil III might be the word for it among naysayers.

 

 

Enjoy your day.

Getty Images. 

 

 

All-purpose stress reliever.

Besides, no one likes to disappoint Her Majesty.

H/T Andrew Sullivan.

Happy 60th, Bill Murray.

Forget for a moment the Bill Murray of Meatballs (Canada, 1979) and Caddyshack (U.S., 1980). Murray made box-office smash Ghostbusters (U.S.1984) plausible as high camp. And his mournful humanity made a success of the repeatedly watchable Groundhog Day (U.S., 1983) and Lost in Translation (U.S./Japan, 2003).

BIll Murray, erstwhile Little Caesar's pizza dresser, at the Toronto International Film Festival. -CP

The Guardian marks the Chicago native's 60th birthday with 60 little-known Murray facts, including these:

Bill Murray had originally planned a career as a doctor, although he left university after being arrested for possession of marijuana. Truly, medicine's loss was ruefully existential arthouse cinema's gain.

Murray was pulled over by Swedish police on suspicion of driving a golf cart under the influence of alcohol.

He remains the only actor to have starred in both Hamlet and Charlie's Angels in the same year.

Murray says that he only agreed to make Garfield because he thought the script was written by the Coen Brothers. It wasn't. It was written by Joel Cohen, the man who wrote Daddy Day Camp.

Murray's constant mood swings led Dan Aykroyd to give him the nickname 'The Murricane'.

In 1997, Murray was named as the 82nd best movie star ever in an Empire magazine list.

Murray once wrote a book called Cinderella Story: My Life In Golf.

One Amazon review of it contains the word 'garbage' repeated 20 times in a row.

A recording of Murray performing Roxy Music's "More Than This" is a hidden track on the Lost In Translation soundtrack album. God knows why.

The one world leader who Murray most accurately resembles is poisoned former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko.

Lorenzo Music voiced the Bill Murray character in the Ghostbusters cartoon. And Bill Murray voiced the Lorenzo Music character in the Garfield film.

It's said that Bill Murray likes to sneak up behind strangers in New York, whisper, 'Guess who?' And, when they turn around, tell them: 'No one will ever believe you.'

Presumably he leaves before they can tell their friends that poisoned former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko just snuck up behind them.

Bill Murray's sister is a nun.

In Groundhog Day, Murray repeated the same day countless times in order to win Andie MacDowell's heart. That remains the most amount of effort that any film character has expended for such a meagre reward.

During the filming of Groundhog Day, Murray was asked to hire an assistant to act as a buffer between him and the studio. He deliberately settled on a deaf mute who could only communicate in Native American sign language.

 

 

 

Sick business trick of 2010: vanity sizing.

Abram Sauer at Esquire calls out major apparel marketers for lying to prospective customers about pseudo-sizing their garments to sell more legwear. That pair of Old Navy pants with the 36" waist that fits so surprisingly easily - it's closer to a 41" waist.

H/T Andrew Sullivan.

Quick Links. (Monday, Sept. 13)

POLITICS

Tea Party influence alienates Harper from everyday Canadians. (Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star)

Time for Obama to fight back. (Frank Rich, NYT). Mr. O says "they treat me like a dog." Fine. Start sinking your teeth into the junkyard mutts thwarting a second American Century.

Yet bet it will be worse if the GOP sweeps in November. (Paul Krugman, NYT)

Obama and the lonely centre. (Jonathan Chait, New Republic)

ECONOMY AND BUSINESS

Gartner forecasts global Android supremacy in three years. (Mike Smith, San Jose Mercury News)

Fuel-sipping Fiat Punto diesel. Alas, available in Europe only. (Fiat photo) 

How our diesel aversion stymies our fuel-efficiency and eco goals. (Jeremy Cato, Globe and Mail) Half of all cars sold in Europe now are high-tech diesels, boasting 30% high fuel efficiency. But, to pick one example, Ford won't sell the diesel version of its hot Fiesta in North Americans because Canadians and Americans still have an outdated notion of diesel as dirty and fit only for trucks and fam equipment.

Employers and shoppers pay less, and everyone suffers. (Daniel Gross, Slate)

 
Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp., last week introduces ousted H-P chief executive Mark Hurd as an Oracle v-p. -AP 

Let us count the ways in which the H-P board is a poster child for abysmal corporate governance. (Joe Nocera, NYT)

Wonder why intimidated stock-market analysts still lack the guts to put "sell" signals on shares you should dump? A blow-by-blow of the sad fate of an analyst who told his clients the truth. (Andrew Martin and Louise Story, NYT)

Obama's quiet triumph: infrastructure banks, unsexy, under-reported breakthrough in rebuilding America.(Alexander Hart, New Republic)

Why the economic slump goes on. (Paul Krugman and Robin Wells, New York Review of Books)

CULTURE

 

Golf: Appalling sport. Tiger: appalling man. (John Doyle, Globe and Mail)

A proposed Canadian copy-cat of Fox News is "a rancid idea" the regulators should nix. (Heather Mallick, Toronto Star)

Valaquez, the "painter's painter," 350 years later. (Willibald Sauerlander, New York Review of Books)

Sexist book reviewing and Jonathan Franzen, author of the hour, at the NYT. (Ruth Franklin, New Republic)

Robert Redford promoting his latest film at the Toronto International Film Festival. -AP

At TIFF, Redford concedes the irony that the Sundance Kid promotes gun control. (Peter Goddard, Q&A in Toronto Star)

Geoffrey Canada, John Legend and Bill Gates in Toronto promoting U.S. education doc Waiting for Superman. -CP

At another TIFF presser, Geoffrey Canada, John Legend and Bill Gates excoriate abysmal U.S. education conditions, warn Canada, "which is slipping" from falling into same trap, as they promote doc, Waiting for Superman, on the failure of "Leave No Child Behind." (Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew, Toronto Star)

UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Columnist withdraws full-throated endorsement of veganism. Allows that some vegetable oils have a bigger ecological footprint than animal fats, and that vegan farming means the large-scale killing of animals. (George Monbiot, Guardian)

APPRECIATION

Tony Judt, historian non pareil. (1948-2010) (Timothy Garten Ash, New York Review of Books)

Trailblazing New Wave film director Claude Chabrol. (1930-2010) (Jenny Barchfield, AP)

Enjoy your weekend.

 
"Angel Over Munich," instalation by German artist Ottmar Hoerl at Holy Cross Church, Munich. -Reuters.