Samuel L. Jackson, Canadian movie star
By Mark Leiren-Young It takes years to make a movie. It takes less than 48 hours to determine its fate. If the box office numbers from Friday and Saturday night aren’t impressive, a movie won’t be in theatres the following week. Samuel L. Jackson’s latest, The Samaritan, opens tonight and if you’re looking for a [...]
Fort McMurray’s Keyano College sends arts to tailings pond
By Frank Moher The sacking of four instructors in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Keyano College in Fort McMurray is creating an uproar well beyond the city better known for its resource extraction talents. Artists, of course, are well aware that their masters — whether they be cabinet ministers or academic administrators — [...]
Carbon capture: Opportunity cost; opportunity, lost
By Saskboy One of the more ridiculous logical fallacies that climate change denialists use is that carbon dioxide can’t be pollution because it can also be breathed by plant life. It’s really sweet they care so much about plants’ respiration, but I’m a little more concerned with the survivability of humanity. (Never mind that most [...]
Let’s get this party started
By Mark Evans South of the border, the party is raging. You can almost hear Prince’s “1999″ playing in the background as startups find themselves being courted by investors and snapped up for eye-popping amounts. The current case in point is Facebook’s $1-billion purchase of Instagram, which is staggering any way you want to slice [...]
Ottawa ventures forth
By Mark Evans While Canada’s venture capital sector is showing signs of improvement, it is a long way from being robust, let alone healthy. So it was encouraging to see the Conservatives commit $500-million to support venture capital initiatives. The support consists of $400-million into VC investment, although the details have not been disclosed yet, [...]
So what if RIM failed? Would that be all bad?
By Mark Evans As an enthusiastic supporter of Canada’s high-tech community, I’m hoping RIM can somehow find a way to revive its flagging fortunes. But the terrible debut of the PlayBook, the modest reception to the BlackBerry 9900, and October’s global network outage has not only put RIM on its heels but caused some industry [...]
Should the CBC boot Cherry and O’Leary?
By Frank Moher It’s not at all a bad thing that CBC loudmouths Don Cherry and Kevin O’Leary have agitated some viewers lately, Cherry with his rant against former NHL enforcers who have come out against violence in hockey, and O’Leary with his interview of American journalist Chris Hedges, in which he told the Pulitzer [...]
Letter to Steve Jobs
by Eric Pettifor Dear Mr. Jobs: I write to you on the occasion of your death to congratulate you on making a difference. As more of a technology visionary and businessman than a true geek (that was your erstwhile partner Steve Wozniak, or “Woz”), you may not recall that this was the concern of a [...]
Canada’s startups get the flag
By Mark Evans Canada’s startup landscape is healthier than ever, as evidenced by the recent International Startup Festival in Montreal. Putting aside the ambitious name (I would have selected something like the Canadian Startup Festival), the fact that it was well-organized and well-attended suggests there might just be some real traction within the startup community. [...]
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