BLOG THIS | blog.thismagazine.ca: December 2007 Archives

We ran into this great roundup of drinks inspired by Charles Dickens novels on the Guardian's book blog. Perfect for those year end parties. Cheers guv'ner.

Toronto ad company Taxi are creating coats for the homeless which will be distributed across North America in 2008.

From Torontoist:

The waterproof, windproof, and plentily-pocketed coat serves as a lightweight jacket during not-too-cold weather, can fold into a backpack during decent weather, and—when you fill the pockets up with newspaper—converts into a super-warm jacket that was tested (in a meat locker, no less!) to be effective up to -29° celsius.

We know that wedding season is months away BUT we also know that you got to start planning that sucker soon. So, if any of you were lucky enough to be proposed to (or know some lucky lovers) point them to Ethical Weddings. Which finds suppliers that are eco-friendly, cruelty-free, etc.

We end this post with two magazine roundups...

The UTNE reader has posted its list of winners for the 2007 Independent Press Awards.

magCulture, a British magazine blog, has its roundup of notable achievements in the magazine world for 2007. I read this blog often to get a glimpse of the great stuff going on in the magazine world outside of North America.

Weekend links will be taking a week off for the holidays but will see all of you soon in 2008. Have a happy holidays and a great rest of 2007.

More entries on: Weekend Links

December 16, 2007

Weekend links: Extra large winter storm edition

Posted by ron at 02:17 PM ET | Comments (1)

With most of Toronto paralyzed by a doozy of a winter storm I'm bringing you an extra large package of links this week:

While, most of us probably aren't thinking about cycling right now, Ontarians are getting a bit of a break when they buy bike stuff. Queen's Park has removed the 8% PST on bike gear.

But it's not all good news on Treehugger. Arthur Erickson's stunning Graham House (really look at the photos, the site is amazing!) is under threat by developers. Sigh.

Google has released its 2007 Zeitgeist. Popular searches this year, iPod and Facebook (duh!) but can someone tell me what badoo is?

Planning on buying a game console this year? Well Greenpeace wants you to think about all the e-waste and packaging that that new wii (or PS3) is going to create.

Washington D.C.'s Newseum has this neat tool that lets you look at newspaper front pages around the world. Sadly, Canada is very under-represented.

Finally, while we're normally against whale hunts, this one intrigued us. The Inupiat Inuit in Alaska have been hunting whales for 1,000 years and are limited to 22 whales a year. The hunt also makes up the bulk of the band's food supply. Photographer Jonathan Harris documents the hunt online with dozens of photographs....

More entries on: Weekend Links

December 10, 2007

Maher Arar helps Amnesty's letter-writing marathon

Posted by mason at 01:37 AM ET | Comments (1)

If you're reading this on Monday, you're likely able to check out live coverage of Amnesty International's Global Write-a-thon in association with the brand new rabble endeavour, rabbletv. Wrongly accused Canadian Maher Arar will be among those speaking during the day's events.

To mark International Human Rights Day, AI is hosting letter-writing events in Ottawa and Toronto to raise awareness of a variety of human rights causes, and has joined forces with online news outlet rabble to provide live online video coverage of the events using the Mogulus player, a first for both organizations. Late Sunday night, there were 937 individual letter-writers and groups across Canada registered for the event, including 49 in Ottawa and 87 in Toronto.

Coverage runs from 11:30 am to 8 pm (presumably this is Eastern time, since the events are in Ontario). Rabble will be basing its coverage out of AI's downtown Toronto office, while AI will file footage from its Ottawa office.

Click here or go to rabble.ca to view the coverage.

(PICTURED: GUANTANAMO BAY DETAINEE OMAR KHADR)

More entries on: Human rights | Media navel-gazing

December 09, 2007

Weekend links: The advertising edition

Posted by ron at 01:59 PM ET | Comments (0)

Advertising is a pretty ubiquitous part of modern life sometimes it's good:

Like this artist who took the subject lines from spam e-mails and turned them into some pretty gorgeous art.

Sometimes it's ugly: Like when advertisers invade your head space.

And other times it's just plain funny. Like when Greenpeace reminds you that sunlight doesn't come out your rear (use a compact fluroescent instead!)

We also want to wish a belated 10th anniversary to our literate friends over at Taddle Creek.

More entries on: Weekend Links

Racial tension in Halifax, fantasy worlds and a chance to win a new book

Posted by annette at 12:13 PM ET | Comments (0)

This Magazine's December Film Club Newsletter is now up here.

Reel Asian.jpg

This month's edition includes a chance to win a copy of the new book "Reel Asian: Asian Canada on Screen." It's a collection (with lots of pictures) examining East and Southeast Asian Canadian contributions to independent film and video.

December film highlights include two highly anticipated releases from directors Clement Virgo and Denys Arcand.

Virgo's new film, Poor Boy's Game, is about a white boxer in Halifax who brutally beats a black man. After being released from a stint in jail for the crime, the black community is still angry and challenges him to fight a prominent black boxer in search of vengeance. The white boxer is trained by his victim's father, played by Danny Glover.

Meanwhile, Arcand's L'Age des tenebres opens in Quebec this month. It's the last installment in the loose trilogy that began with Le Declin de l'empire americain and Les Invasions barbares. It follows a man who escapes his mundane reality by getting lost in his fantasy world.

More entries on: Film

December 07, 2007

Factchecking? The National Post? HA!

Posted by audra at 07:37 PM ET | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Oh dudes, I finally got a new username/password! Lookout, internet! I am so happy to be on here again, because I have a lot of fury to share with you!

To commemorate December 6th this year, Barbara Kay wrote this annoying article where she talks about how women need to get over themselves about being targets of violence, and something about why can't everything be more like Remembrance Day. There are roughly a million things wrong with what she's written, but the most glaring blatant error is this paragraph:

Logic would demand that the buried name of Laurie Dann be as recognizable and as reviled as that of 12/6 killer Marc Lepine's. Dann's hatred for boys exceeded Lepine's for women. A year before the Montreal massacre, this equally psychotic Chicago woman shot five elementary-school boys, poisoned two fraternity kitchens, torched the Young Men's Jewish council, burned two boys in their homes, shot her own son, and murdered an eight-year old boy, claiming he had raped her.

My wonderful friend Sarah Curry has eagle-eyes and is a shrewd researcher, and this claim set off her warning bells, big time. So she did some research, and discovered that almost none of that is true. Two girls were shot, Dann sent poisoned drinks to 6 families and set fire to a house where she babysat in which a mother and her two kids were in the house.

Sarah wrote a great letter to the editor, which I hope they print. I wrote to Barbara Kay herself, hoping that even if she was a rampant anti-feminist, she might at least wanted to be accurate about it.

I can't deny that I also was enjoying the chance to gloat a little, because let's be serious her stuff is tripe and it's nice to be able to poke holes in her "logic".

It went like this:

Me!:
Does the National Post employ any fact checkers? What you have written about Laurie Dann is completely inaccurate. Actual news reportage of the event can be found -- from dozens of legit media sources -- here:

http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/lauriedann.html

Laurie Dann did not solely target males. One male child was killed, no male-specific buildings were burned down, and male and female children both were injured in her spree shooting.

It's frankly astonishing that such a string of invented facts got past the editors.

Audra Williams
Edmonton, AB

Her!
My facts came from a highly accredited scholar's book: Moral Panic by John Fekete. That *is* considered fact checking. And no the Post does not employ fact checkers as we take our facts from what are normally reliable sources. Fekete is a reputable scholar and I had no reason to distrust his claims. Barbara

Me! (after looking up quoted parts of the book>
Oh wow, you sure did take it from that book! Practically verbatim!

I trust there will be some kind of correction or addendum, detailing how one of the cruxes of your article's argument was based on fiction?

audra

Her!
I actually don't think it is important whether Dann killed boys AND girls or just boys, becasue you see the anlogy still holds, since I said she should logically stand in as a symbol for women who abuse children. I think your quarrel is with John Fekete in any case, since I took the information in good faith.

Me!
It does not still stand. This is what you wrote:

"Logic would demand that the buried name of Laurie Dann be as recognizable and as reviled as that of 12/6 killer Marc Lepine's. Dann's hatred for boys exceeded Lepine's for women. "

Which isn't the case at all.

It's so strange to me how unconcerned you are about inaccurate information being in a piece you've written.

I have emailed Fekete as well, don't worry. Maybe as a scholar -- rather than a journalist -- he'll be more concerned about facts.

audra

Her!
Okay, take out the sentence about the hatred. My arument still stands.

Me!
What I'm asking is that YOU take out the sentence about the hatred, actually, rather than leave the inaccuracies online.

Me again!
While you're at it, this bit has to go, too:

"A year before the Montreal massacre, this equally psychotic Chicago woman shot five elementary-school boys, poisoned two fraternity kitchens, torched the Young Men's Jewish council, burned two boys in their homes, shot her own son, and murdered an eight-year old boy, claiming he had raped her. "

Her!
Please inform me of what Fekete tells you. I will adjust my website version accordingly if necessary.

Me!
Is Fekete the only source you will accept on this issue? Because if not, I can cite 48 different newspaper articles.

Her!
Since I took Fekete as my source, I need to know what his source was.

THE END.

Seriously, what the hell. Why do I have to be the one who contacts her source and updates her about the factualness of her own article? And why does the National Post have no factcheckers? It's all so galling.

Today I had an email exchange with the National Post, and it seems like they are willing to print an extensive letter on the subject, which I am going to write this weekend. Hilarious, they seem very insistent that my letter have sources to back up its claims.

I guess the letters page has more exacting standards than the rest of the paper. Sheesh.

More entries on: Media navel-gazing

December 06, 2007

Gay man in Iran executed for alleged "sex crime"

Posted by shawnsyms at 08:24 AM ET | Comments (2)

Makvan Mouloodzadeh was executed in Iran's Kermanshah Central Prison at 5 a.m. yesterday morning, according to a report from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC).

Mouloodzadeh, 21 at the time of his execution, had been accused of having raped other boys when he was 13. But at his trial, all the witnesses retracted their pre-trial testimonies, claiming to have lied to the authorities under duress, according to the IGLHRC report. Mouloodzadeh also told the court that his confession was made under coercion and pleaded not guilty.

After an international outcry spearheaded by IGLHRC, Iran's Chief Justice issued an order to nullify the death sentence. But prison authorities went ahead anyway, informing Mouloodzadeh's family and lawyer after the fact.

IGLHRC is continuing to investigate the facts of this case.

More entries on: LGBT

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THIS MAGAZINE: BECAUSE EVERTHING IS POLITICAL

December 23, 2007

Weekend links: Dickensian drinks; coats for the homeless; very pretty (and smart) magazines

December 16, 2007

Weekend links: Extra large winter storm edition

December 10, 2007

Maher Arar helps Amnesty's letter-writing marathon

December 09, 2007

Weekend links: The advertising edition

Racial tension in Halifax, fantasy worlds and a chance to win a new book

December 07, 2007

Factchecking? The National Post? HA!

December 06, 2007

Gay man in Iran executed for alleged "sex crime"