Do not miss Jeffrey Goldberg's continuing posts about his surprise command audience with Fidel Castro last week. First instalment here; second here. Goldberg is a perplexing figure, a former member of the IDF, quick to call anti-semitism against anyone who balks at his lockstep advocacy of troubling Israeli policies. He caused a stir recently with an Atlantic cover story speculating about an impending Israeli nuclear strike against Iran. Many regarded the article as thinly disguised tub-thumping for such an attack (see here and here), while others demurred. In the end, the Atlantic held an extensive, online print debate about the issue — which...

08 September, 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

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

The US Transportation Safety Administration now keeps airspace safe from attack by snow globes, as well as toothpaste, mouthwash, and hair gel. A blog post by Patrick Smith, the airline pilot who posted this photo to his Flickr account, bores into the core irrationality of the phoney security restrictions citizens have acquiesced to since 9/11. Money quote: Conventional wisdom says the [9/11] terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard boxcutters. But conventional wisdom is wrong. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings. In years...

10 August, 2010
bloomberg_liberty-250New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's stirring defence of the Muslim community's right to build a mosque not far from the destroyed World Trade Centre is widely available on the Internet. But it embodies such rare eloquence in a principled, conservative defence of human freedoms and tolerance, it bears repeating here. First an excerpt:
We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That's life. And it's part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11, 2001. On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn't want us to enjoy the freedoms to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams, and to live our own lives. Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that even here -- in a city that is rooted in Dutch tolerance -- was hard-won over many years. In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue, and they were turned down. In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies, and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.... This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan. Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.
Watch the video here. After the jump, the full text of Bloomberg's speech.
04 August, 2010

Contrarian reader Wallace McLean noticed something else about those maps: [T]he US Census Bureau seems to generate unemployment data for the 3,140 counties and "county-equivalent" units of geography below state level, with an average population of under 100,000. Statistics Canada only provides (roughly) comparable data for 73 "economic regions" within Canada, with no sub-provincial/territorial data for PEI or the territories. The 73 regions have an average population of over 450,000. Even if you could get free and up-to-date data out of Statscan, it's not nearly as fine-grained as what they seem to have in the States. There would seem to be some fundamental...

04 August, 2010

Before a reader draws me up short on Monday's link to an interactive map showing explosive growth of unemployment in the US, I should acknowledge the choropleth problem. James Fallows introduced the issue, and the word, in a blog post about the same map Tuesday. The problem is that geography does not equal population. A choropleth map depicting social trends (unemployment or election results) can mislead if its geographical units (states or provinces) vary widely in population. (The word derives from Greek terms for "area/region" + "multiply.") Fallows gives the example of the razor thin 2004 US presidential election, in which the...

04 August, 2010

A simple interactive graphic brings home the recession's impact on US jobs. Youtube version here. Who wants to make a Canadian version? Oh, right, you have to have a government that makes data readily available in machine readable formats. And if it's survey data, you need a random sample. Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan...

02 August, 2010

Taegan Goddard wants to revive the political term snollygoster, n., classically defined by a passage from the October 28, 1895, edition of the Columbus Dispatch (as cited in the OED): [A] fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force of monumental talknophical assumnancy. Harry Truman sparked a previous revival in 1952, when he used the word in a whistle-stop speech at Parkersburg, W. Va.,  complaining about about politicians who make a show of public prayer: I wish some of these snollygosters would read the New Testament and perform accordingly. Alas, the OED has entries for...

30 July, 2010
Show more
Loading...