Andrew Coyne demonstrates afresh why he is my favorite conservative columnist with this attempt to fathom Harper's inexplicable vandalizing of the census. Money quote: It isn’t just that the Tories habitually ignore the expert consensus on a wide range of issues—crime, taxes, climate change—it’s that they want to be seen to be ignoring it. It’s the overt antagonism to experts, and by extension the educated classes, that marks the Tory style. In its own way, it’s a form of class war. You can see it in the sneering references to Michael Ignatieff’s Harvard tenure, in the repeated denunciations of “elites” and “intellectuals.”...

17 August, 2010

Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman did some research before a visit to Canada, and found disquieting signs. His conclusion: I’m not making any predictions here, just noting that if we go beyond banking to ask about household balance sheets and risks thereto, things up north bear watching. Hint: Read the comments, too. Hat tip: Tim Bousquet...

17 August, 2010

Google wasn't always a carrier-humping, net-neutrality, surrender money, and TechCrunch has video to prove it: For those who don't follow tech news, Google pulled a stunning about-face on net-neutrality this week, teaming up with Verizon, the very company it pilloried on the issue, in an agreement to abandon the concept of neutrality for fast-growing wireless portions of the Internet, and for whatever new transmission technologies happen along in future. The do-no-evil company's reversal stunned the tech world. Unabashed Google admirer Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do, called it a Munich Agreement, a description Josh Marshall of TPM Media said was "a...

15 August, 2010

A United Way ad now on display above urinals in select Halifax bars: What you're really giving is decapitation....

15 August, 2010

Isao Hashimoto, a Japanese foreign exchange dealer turned multimedia artist, has produced this bird's eye history of the nuclear era in the form of an animated timeline map showing the 2053 nuclear explosions set off by seven nations between 1945 and 1998. Each second represents one month. Hashimoto used no letters in the film, so speakers of any language can follow it. In the last two minutes of the video, each nation's explosions are highlighted in turn, by location. Hashimoto drew on data assembled by Nils Olaf Bergkvist and Ragnhild Ferm, and co-published by the Swedish Defence Research Establishment and te Stockholm International...

15 August, 2010

Canadian-born child soldier and torture victim Omar Khadr, the only citizen of a western democracy still held in the US Government detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, went on trial this week in the first war crimes prosecution of a child soldier in US history. Under Stephen Harper, Canada is the only western country not to ask for the release of its nationals from the illegal prison camp. The Harper government has flouted court orders requiring it to take action in support of Khadr's civil rights. The U.N. Special Representative on Children in Armed Conflict warned Monday that the legality of Khadr's...

12 August, 2010

A column in the UK Guardian by BC writer Douglas Haddow predicts trouble for Canada's economy if an upcoming referendum in California succeeds in legalizing pot this November. [Y]ou may have noticed that Canadians have been behaving uncharacteristically uppity of late. This new-found swagger is a result of Canada having the dubious distinction of being the "least-bad-rich-world-economy" – an honour that would be rather unimpressive if the rest of the G8 wasn't so persistently gloom-stricken...

12 August, 2010

If the misbegotten attempt to sell NB Power doesn't flatten in NB Premier Shawn Graham, perhaps this Karate Kid tribute will do the trick. With fans like this...

12 August, 2010
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