I wish I could buy those cheap mangoes. I love them and my kids really love them. But I find that I cannot enjoy a mango as much as I used to because, drat it all, I can read. Here’s what I have been reading lately: Canadians pay about seven per cent of their income […]
Of lights and lasers
Now that I’ve just about completely replaced all incandescent lights in my apartment with compact fluorescents (CFL), GE has announced a new, improved, more energy efficient incandescent. Eventually, they say, it’ll be better than CFL. What’s up with that, and why didn’t they do it sooner? The press release doesn’t say, and I won’t speculate […]
I should be so oppressed
I try to stay in a good mood about Quebec. I really do. I try to think fond thoughts about rural Quebec and its picturesque little roads and the charming Montreal restaurants nad bakeries. And, well, Mordecai Richler was from Quebec. But really I do not like Quebec. I find that I cannot think of […]
Owe Canada! Part 2: You can’t always get what you want
Marni Ko In Part One of this series, Marnie Ko detailed the effects of increasing debt on North American households. In Part Two, she examines the role the taxman plays in creating poverty in Canada, and looks for solutions. Charles Moore, a Nova Scotia writer, argues in a recent article that skyrocketing indebtedness is a […]
The Walrus: dull, and proud of it
By Frank Moher A new issue of The Walrus is upon us, and across the nation, crickets chirp. The cover story offers this breaking news: the earth is warming. “In the last decade,” writes its author, Alanna Mitchell, “the most authoritative reports on climate change have presented increasingly pessimistic worst-case scenarios about rising temperatures.” Really? […]
Desperate housewives, and husbands, and single parents, and kids . . .
Marni Ko On January 10, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation released a damning report documenting the $18.4 billion Industry Canada handed out in the form of corporate welfare between April 1, 1982 and March 31, 2006. Of that, one-third of the money went to just 50 companies, $10 billion of which was a grant or a […]
Dingbat of darkness
Nobody wants to hear defence critic Denis Coderre holler for the referee when the Liberal record is criticized. Especially when the criticism is more than fair. It is General Rick Hillier’s duty to report the state of Canada’s armed forces, even if he uses inflammatory language like “decade of darkness” to describe the cuts that […]
Patriot games
By Frank Moher It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the on-air contingent of the so-called alternative media (and no, we’re not talking Air America). It began when the website of the Republic Broadcasting Network, a freedom-fightin’ radio and webcasting outfit from Austin, Texas, suddenly disappeared and was replaced with an announcement from the […]
Narrative interruptus
Review by Frank Moher Brett Josef Grubisic’s first novel, The Age of Cities (Arsenal Pulp Press, 240 pp., $19.95), is going to be terrific once he finishes it. For now, we’re offered this odd case of narrative interruptus. For nearly all of its length, The Age of Cities is charming, droll, and absorbing. In unassuming […]
Windows? Linux? OS/X? Why choose?
What the devil are we going to do with all the power that the latest computers offer, given that soon you won’t be able to buy a machine with less than two cores on the CPU and less than a gigabyte of RAM? Well, one possibility that more and more people are taking advantage of […]
