BLOG THIS | blog.thismagazine.ca: October 2006 Archives

Not that any of us are necessarily that surprised, but the news hardly comes as a welcome reminder. I’ve often been pretty amazed at the collective optimism (ignorance?) of entire populations when things are at their worst, with no hope in sight. It’s bad enough to have to hear about it from afar, but with something as awful as abject hunger one question is never asked, let alone answered: Why aren’t more people worried? Can ignorance really be to blame when you hear warning after warning about how much trouble pollution is getting us in?

In North America there is nothing even approaching urgency toward fixing the problem of global warming. In the past, naysayers have been unwilling to sacrifice jobs and the economy to save the planet in some distant future. Now it looks like we’ll lose both. Stuff like this makes me want to banish any thought of procreating—why bring a child into a place like this?

Not that I’m writing my suicide note—I’m too inspired by the communities around me that actually care about social change—but sometimes it makes me wonder why more people aren’t giving up.

More entries on: Human rights | Planet Earth | Signs of the Apocalypse

October 29, 2006

Crisis? What crisis?

Posted by mason at 11:27 AM ET | Comments (11)

Yesterday, the Toronto Star published a very nice profile of This to mark the occasion of our 40th birthday. I'm now convinced the term "punching above its weight" will soon become synonymous with the magazine, if it's not already.

More entries on: THIS matters

October 27, 2006

Grunge Pays. Who Knew?

Posted by Lisa at 02:34 PM ET | Comments (3)

So Forbes just released it's annual list of the top earning dead celebrities (surely you've been craving such a list for a while now). The top spot went to Kurt Cobain. Fifty million dollars. Wow. He'll surely be on the list again next year since his sober (ahem, cough, cough) widow sold 1/4 of the Nirvana song catalogue to Primary Wave, a company that will place the band's songs in television shows and commercials. Could be a bit of a challenge for a song like "Rape Me," but I have faith that if anyone can find a way to make it happen Primary Wave can. For those worried the band will be selling out (something they were always so scared they were doing), the company's CEO is quoted as saying,

"You will never see Kurt Cobain's music in a fast-food hamburger advertisement -- that won't ever happen. We're looking at things that relate to cutting-edge technologies, products that are green and eco-friendly, products that Kurt would have liked to have his music represented by."

Right. Coming soon to an episode of The Gilmore Girls, "Smells like Teen Spirit." It's the perfect background music for those touching mother and daughter moments.

Here's the list
1. Kurt Cobain ($50M)
2. Elvis Presley ($42M)
3. Charles M. Schulz ($35M)
4. John Lennon ($24M)
5. Albert Einstein ($20M)
6. Andy Warhol ($19M)
7. Dr. Seuss ($10M)
8. Ray Charles ($10M)
9. Marilyn Monroe ($8M)
10. Johnny Cash ($8M)
11. J.R.R Tolkien ($7M)
12. George Harrison ($7M)
13. Bob Marley ($7M)

More entries on: Cultural industries | Ear candy | Signs of the Apocalypse

Soccer Rising; Community Building

Posted by john_d at 10:04 AM ET | Comments (5)

(photo courtesy Toronto FC)

Apologies to all the Toronto-indifferent out there, but sometimes it is just fantastic living in the professional sport centre of this great country. The Leafs are off to their classic shaky start yet they still look better than last year (really, all you can ask of the Leafs right now), the Argos look great to chase the Grey Cup, the Jays have made some recent noise and are bound to make some more next season, and the Raptors have gone undefeated in the NBA pre-season. I was in a meeting yesterday and found myself talking about the wealth of high-quality rugby to be found in the city.

Enter the Toronto Football Club (Toronto FC), the first Major League Soccer expansion team to come north of the 49th -- and a fantastic example of how public/private funding partnerships can be used to build and strengthen communities. These folks know what they're doing. Owned by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (bosses to both the Leafs and Raptors), TFC has leveraged municipal money, private investment and corporate sponsorship to build Canada's premier soccer venue right downtown (and with a lake view). Seating 20,000, BMO Field will be bubbled over in winter to allow for ongoing local league and national team activity. Remember the dream of Montreal's downtown baseball park? Oh, Expos... if only.

Never has there been a better time for fully professional soccer to make its debut in Canada. The last decade has seen a steady, crazy increase in the attention given to both the World Cup Finals and the European Cup (Greece beats Portugal! - Gus, my barber, goes insane with joy; Nelly Furtado is depressed).

Make no mistake, MLS is a serious sporting endeavor in North America. Capitalizing on the extreme popularity of kids' soccer in suburban USA (minivan driving soccer moms are an official, much sought after voting block) Major League Soccer has built a solid following in a country best known for NASCAR and that other football. Choosing Toronto as the latest professional soccer expansion city is a visionary recognition of the international nature of the game, as well as a canny understanding that Canada's diverse population has exactly this sport holding it together. Who in TO wasn't Italian last summer? -- I mean except me, who was German, and very, very disappointed. Still, forze Italia!

Last night Toronto FC held the first of several "pub nights" in the downtown core -- promo events designed to build a dedicated fan base. They brought their head coach, Mo Johnston, and their only player so far, local boy Jim Brennan, to hang out in one of the city's soccer bars and just chat it up with nascent supporters of the club. That's them in the photo above.

I'm not sure if Jane Jacobs was a soccer fan, but leaving the Cervejaria soccer bar on College last night after shaking hands with some of our latest community builders, I knew I was in a healthy, vibrant, living city.

More entries on: Sport

October 23, 2006

50 Years Ago Today

Posted by Krisztina at 03:25 AM ET | Comments (1)

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Hungarian Revolution. Everyone's gonna be talking about it all day today, but don't fear, I've combed Wikipedia and offer you the Coles Notes version, cuz as a Hungarian immigrant, if anyone's gonna be doing internet research on this topic, it should be me.

Ahem. The Hungarian Revolution was a spontaneous and bloody uprising started by students and workers who, after Stalin's death demanded a reform of the Communist Rule with their 16 point agenda, which included establishing free elections and withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact. What started as a march and protest quickly turned to street fighting as Hungarians fought the Russian Army with whatever they had in hand; guns, gasoline, cobblestones, and even kitchen utensils. The revolt spread across the country, radio stations were taken over, the secret police were disbanded and the government was overthrown. But on November 4th 1956 Soviet forces retaliated with Air Strikes squashing the movement and killing many civilians. When the dust settled, upwards of 10,000 were killed (many executed in months after the uprising), 100,000 were imprisoned, and 200,000 fled the country.

Commemorations are being held all across the world, toast the revolutionaries with a shot of palinka if you get the chance.

More entries on: Resistance

October 20, 2006

Procrastination deluxe

Posted by mason at 11:52 AM ET | Comments (4)

It's Friday, and if you can't find anything to procrastinate with, you're just not trying hard enough. (Try it on "manic mode" for best results.)

More entries on: Time Wasters

October 19, 2006

Streets to screens

Posted by mason at 10:34 AM ET | Comments (0)

Time to give you Film Clubbers a fix while we get the club back up and running (expect a return in November, by the way). If you're in or around the Toronto area, the Toronto Public Space Committee's Streets to Screens project has two Canadian premieres this Thursday for their Transit Tales night. The first is Contested Streets: Breaking New York City Gridlock, an effort to explore how best to reclaim New York's public space from the tyrrany of the car. The film looks to London, Paris and elsewhere for ideas, and surely has some lessons for sprawling, auto-centric Canadian cities. The second film is a short called A Conversation with Enrique Penalosa, in which the former mayor of Bogota, Columbia, is asked about his commitment to making his city more bicycle-friendly. Following the screening will be a panel discussion on issues around gridlock.

Screenings will take place at Toronto's Bloor Cinema at 7 p.m.

More entries on: Film

October 18, 2006

yes, this seems like a good time to get messy in public

Posted by john_d at 02:14 PM ET | Comments (3)

The Tories have taken Garth Turner's executive washroom key away. It's in the Globe. You know, Garth Turner...played third base for the Blue Jays in the 80's.

But here's my question -- who writes the Tory press statements? Check out Jaffer's word-like things:

"This is something that has been culminated since Mr. Turner's election to our caucus," Mr. Jaffer said Wednesday at a press conference in Ottawa. He said the primary sources of concern were confidentiality matters and attacks on other party members posted on Mr. Turner's blog.

"There is attacks that were made on individuals, including the Prime Minister," Mr. Jaffer said. "The theme of confidentiality was not being respected, in their opinion, and it restricted the ability for members to operate in a confidential way."

I hate it when themes are not respected and attacks is made.

Not fair? Too picky? Opening the door to examination of my own writing skills? If so, please buy and read my entire book before commenting.

More entries on: Harper Index

I confirm and do not deny

Posted by john_d at 01:37 PM ET | Comments (2)

For those out there who think all I do on this blog is refer to Paul Wells' blog (properly apostropheed this time) and then say something smarmy, read on.

Wells wrote of Ignatieff yesterday:

Michael Ignatieff's campaign is now reduced to a kind of dare. If you don't support him, it's because you're not sophisticated enough. You can't handle his clever insights. You can't parse his subtle arguments. You've known him for 40 years. What are you, some kind of rube? Chicken. Chicken chicken chicken. Give him the job. Better yourself.

To which I would respond, "it is now reduced to that?"

For some sort of record, I like Paul Wells, and he can drink with me in Etobicoke-Lakeshore anytime. There's one really great bar.

More entries on: Media navel-gazing

October 17, 2006

Semi-serious posting delayed by real life

Posted by john_d at 04:50 PM ET | Comments (2)

Please note: I wrote this piece last week, and was about to post it when the news of Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle's death in a tragic plane accident hit the media. I have held it to allow that terrible story due weight.

Why We Love It When The Yanks Lose

They've got all the money; most of the influence; a giant talent pool; a massive, loyal, patriotic following; and for the most part a deferential media that can be lulled into repeating the mantra of their superiority. There are truly good people working the gears of the organization, though most everyone agrees the head guy is a bit of a fish. Even those of us who are not citizens of the Yankee nation understand and respect the justifications for their legendary status. Their history is littered with storied heroes and noble tragedy. They wear an undeniable greatness about them. And yet we do so love it when someone manages to bring them low.

The Euston manifesto folks can relax, because I'm talking baseball, not geo-politics, though maybe an examination of New York Yankee schadenfreude would prove germane to an understanding of why, while everyone is equally pissed off and terrified that irrational, tyrannical North Korea managed to rub George Bush's nice suit in the dirt last week, some of us don't so much mind that dirt was applied to that particular suit. And if anyone doubts that schadenfreude was out there after NK's big boom, let me point to the eminently reasonable Paul Well's blog comment on the subject, a reference to Bush's famous, now infamous, Axis of Evil speech:

Note to self:

In future, try not to write any speeches justifying an invasion of Iraq by saying Iran and North Korea are evil too.

'Kay thanks.

A quick perusal of the Daily Show website will get you much, much more of this kind of sentiment, and that even from within the United States. But back to baseball.

For those who don't follow the sport, the very expensive, very powerful New York Yankees baseball club, winners of the American League Eastern Division, were eliminated from the World Series playoffs by the lowly Detroit Tigers, a team that managed to squeak into the play-offs on what is known as "the wild-card." Really, in baseball terms it wasn't even close. In the face of Detroit pitching, the Yankees much-celebrated batting line-up, the so called "Legion of Doom" gathered up their equipment and went home like so many dejected pre-schoolers looking for a snack before bath time. As a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays, a team genetically determined to hate both the Yanks and the Tigers in head-to-head play, it was very, very easy to pick a favorite. Watching the Tigers hand the Yanks their butts was unbelievably delicious.

The reason fans of other baseball teams get an undeniable guilty pleasure from seeing the Yankees humiliated, especially by such an unlikely bunch as the Detroit Tigers (who just three years ago sported one of the worst records baseball has ever seen) is not because we don't like the idea of either the Yankees or athletic superiority. It's not because we don't believe the most-talented team should win. And nor is it because we have any particular animosity toward the good people of New York. Instead, it's a question of intention and method. The impulse to hate Yankees speaks to the baseball purist's instinct that the best, most correct, most pure way to win the World Series is to compete on a level playing field, to compete fairly and in the spirit of good sportsmanship.

Which is exactly what the Yankees tend not to do. This is a baseball team that spent $194,663,079 on player salaries this past season (source: USA Today). That's more than double the total payroll for the Detroit Tigers ($82,612,866), the guys what beat 'em. My dear Blue Jays, despite a number of expensive additions to their team during the last off-season only spent $71,915,000 in total payroll, and they tended to beat up on the Yankees all season as well. The closest team in payroll to the Yankees is the Boston Red Sox, and they are $74 million shy of the New York number. They are the entire Blue Jay payroll (plus a couple mil) shy of the New York number.

Obscene? A lot of folks think so, but what are you going to do? It's not like the New York Yankees have stolen this money. It's not like they spend money for evil purposes. No, they have a lot of money, so they spend a lot of money, buying up every superstar they can find in an effort to win the World Series (which they have not done since 2000).

In baseball, New York is thought of as America's team. I know a lot of people would disagree, but the numbers don't lie. Major League Baseball official merchandise sales generally show Yankees-wear selling more than any other team's. It would be easy to interpret this as implicit support for a win-at-any-cost mindset -- and some might then even transfer that conclusion into a discussion of America's role in the world.

Some might, but not me. Why not? Because this year it was Detroit's turn to prove that win-at-any-cost does not always translate into winning. And Americans are loving it. Reports this morning show Detroit Tigers gear flying off the racks at MLB faster than anything else, including Yankee stuff. If the perennial popularity of the Yankees suggest that many Americans endorse win-at-any-cost, the Tigers are proving that many more Americans disagree (though they still like winning). Canadian sales of Tiger gear have gone through the roof as well, but that's probably just our legendary anti-Americanism talking.

Now, you go off and figure out the implications of all this for the Democrats.

More entries on: Sport

October 11, 2006

who can they sell this stuff to?

Posted by john_d at 02:46 PM ET | Comments (0)

It's not every day you look to Sun Media for criticism of the new federal government, or even back-handed support for Kyoto. And yet...

Thanks to Paul Wells for pointing to this column in the Sun where Greg Weston reveals some shady play on the truth by Environment Minister Rona Ambrose. A report today by Alan Findlay reveals even more factual sleight of hand.

A little snip:

"Sun Media has learned that costing figures cited by Ambrose during testimony to the environment and sustainable-development committee don't match estimates offered by the purported source."

Testimony to a committee? That sounds an awful lot like the kind of activity that should, by law, involve some dedication to the truth. Someone should check on that.

More entries on: Harper Index

October 06, 2006

Reprehensible repression

Posted by mason at 10:23 PM ET | Comments (1)

Soup is Good Food directed us to a nifty campaign by Amnesty International, a campaign that now has a permanent presence in the right-hand column of Blog This. The idea is to spread the word about sites that are censored in their own countries by publishing their writings. Freedom of speech is a fundamental right that is often being denied people, and part of the power of the internet is to circumvent oppressive authorities who seek to hide injustices.

The green box you see is an attempt at broadening the reach of controversial ideas and proving they are "irrepressible." Each time you load Blog This, a new censored site is excerpted with a links to the site. No shortage of important, censored stories to sift through, from the killing of an opposition politician in Kazakhstan to the kidnapping of reporters in Iraq.

More entries on: Human rights | Interweb | Resistance | THIS matters

Greening Apple

Posted by mason at 05:06 PM ET | Comments (5)

It's about time we saw a campaign like this: Greenpeace has launched an effort to organize Apple customers and demand that the company employ non-toxic materials in its hardware.

For those of us who consider themselves environmentalists and buy a lot of junk from Apple (myself included), it's time to stop turning a blind eye to the harmful impacts of e-waste on the planet, as well as on workers in developing countries.

If any constituency is suited to a campaign getting to change a company's behaviour, it's Apple users. Greenpeace has set up a few cool features on its Green My Apple site that allow creative types to design t-shirts, make videos or print stickers to slap on Apple products.

Let's do it, folks.

More entries on: Activism | Human rights | Interweb | Planet Earth

October 05, 2006

Open source research

Posted by mason at 12:21 PM ET | Comments (16)

A nice post from The Conscious Earth serves as a reminder that oftentimes, activists are working for the common good rather than personal gain. Take David Suzuki. When Liberal party leadership candidate Stéphane Dion borrowed, um, liberally from Suzuki’s research for his environmental platform, Suzuki was pleased, saying, “the whole point of conducting and publishing this research is to get people to actually use it.” Meanwhile, conservative commentators couldn’t get on Dion for “plagiarism” fast enough, completely missing the point.

More entries on: Planet Earth

October 01, 2006

Goodbye Woodward's

Posted by Krisztina at 04:21 PM ET | Comments (3)

Residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside woke up yesterday to the sounds of Woodward's collapse.

The heritage building, which has stood empty for nearly a decade - taking up an entire city block in the poorest neighbourhood in Canada, has been disputed over for years. While developers repeatedly bought and sold the derelict building, never actualizing their plans to resuscitate it, residents and activists protested that such a huge building stood empty while hundreds slept in the streets. The protests culminated in a three month long squat inside and then around the building (once protesters were forcibly removed by the police) in 2002. When the left-leaning COPE party won the Municipal elections that fall, one of their campaign promises was to buy the Woodward's building and turn it into social housing with street level services and businesses that reflect the needs of the area. The homeless protesters were put up in seedy hotels on the city bill and the fight was over.

Unfortunately, the development plans for Woodward's make it look more and more like just another condo hoping to "revitalize" the area. There are only 200 units slated for social housing in the upscale condo with apartments going for $200,000 to $600,000. And with a motto declaring "be bold or move to suburbia", you can be sure they are marketing the disenfranchised Downtown Eastside (DTES) as the hot new "hip" and "edgy" neighbourhood to move into. Instead of reflecting the needs of the community, this new development seems like the first step of the inevitable gentrification of the DTES, just in time for the Olympics. And just how many of the people who camped out in front of Woodward's for 92 days in the cold and wet winter of 2002 will be living in this new condo? I doubt very many.

As the cloud of dust and debris sweeps through the rainy downtown streets, Vancouver housing activists shake their heads and ask themselves "is this what we fought for?"

More entries on: Vancouver

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October 31, 2006

Don't worry, we're doomed