• Podcast 36 | Week of 31.03.2013
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Monthly Archives: March 2013
The Making of a Great Wife
LAST WEEK the Conservative Party of Canada’s Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Keith Ashfield, improvised some lines in an otherwise scripted event staged to cheerlead the 2013 federal budget. At the Morena family home in Fredericton, New Brunswick, he complimented eldest daughter Grace, observing that she is ‘a great cook’ who will one day ‘make a wonderful wife for somebody.’
Chinua Achebe, Jason Molina, Malala Yousafzai, History Channel, Sasquatch, Buttocks and Beer
• Podcast 35 | Week of 24.03.2013
Article of the Week: Why Canada Needs the Sasquatch, Vice Magazine.
Download entire podcast (320 kbps mp3).
The Iraq War: a One-Hour Roundtable Retrospective
No Story for Old Men: Reading Jennifer L. Armentrout’s “Wait for You”
PRECEDENT was established this week when a self-published ebook became a New York Times bestseller. Wait for You is a “new adult” romance written under the pen name J. Lynn by Jennifer L. Armentrout.
Thoughts on the Phone
IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD mall there are fourteen stores in which you may buy a phone. The phones today being sold are, it is true, smart phones — but I wonder how long these shops can carry on, all selling roughly the same product and within yards of one another. In any case, and for now, folks are buying quite a number of these gizmotrons.
North Korea is a crime organization masquerading as government
WITHIN DAYS of the return of Dennis Rodman, the ad-hoc US Secretary for DPRK-American Goodwill, we now have for our consumption James R. Clapper’s “Worldwide Threat Assessment,” presented March 12 to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In his crisp overview, titled “Iran and North Korea Developing WMD-Applicable Capabilities, ” the Director of National Intelligence makes ample use of the phrase “we do not know” — and though you may be tempted to deride, this is the Hermit Kingdom we’re speaking of, after all.
Stompin Tom, Bradford Batman, Calligraphers, Ikea, Métis Ruling, Volvo, Vikings, Prehistoric Camels
Death by Exposure
EARLIER IN THE WEEK, journalist Nate Thayer posted an entry to his website titled “A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist — 2013.” Now, this is not any old journalist we’re talking about. Nate Thayer has written for dozens of highly regarded publications. He’s won meaningful and serious awards for his investigative journalism. The man interviewed Pol Pot.
Canada’s Little War Against Contraband Tobacco
If you were a collector of jurisdictional nightmare, then your holy grail possession would surely be the small Kanien’keha:ka — or Mohawk, as it’s called in English — community of Akwesasne. Transected by two provincial, one state and two federal boundaries (Ontario, Quebec, New York, Canada and the United States of America), Akwesasne is something of a “hotspot,” and not by coincidence.
Sinkholes, Supreme Court, Toronto Crane Tweets, Free Speech, Dennis Rodman, Pessimism, Sequestration
How Thought Crime Came to Canada
WITH THOMAS FLANAGAN and William Whatcott so heavily in the news, section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms might well be designated trope of the moment. Section 2(b), as we are of late reminded, grants to Canadian citizens their freedoms of conscience and religion, thought, belief, opinion and expression. The Charter also submits these freedoms only to “such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
Journalism, Essays, Broadcasting, Books 