From Cork to Toronto

Arthur C. Clarke died today (actually "tomorrow" in Sri Lanka where he has lived for 52 years). Strangely I was wondering only this past week if he was still about but the departure of the man who predicted geosynchronous satellites twenty years before the 1965 launch of Early Bird ( Intelsat I ) and who collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey was unlikely to be a small ripple. A quick glance at my bookshelf tells me I own about twenty books of Clarke's but I think more remain on the "to follow" shelf in my family's house in Ireland. Although most renowned for The Sentinel / 2001 , Childhood's End and Against The Fall Of Night , I would urge someone who has never read Clarke to seek out first his short stories in collections like The Other Side of the Sky , The Wind From The Sun and Tales From Ten Worlds . He had a few weaker works, particularly his later collaborations such as Cradle which I felt were a vehicle more for his co...

I was vaguely kicking around a notion to blog about this ruling in R. v. National Post since the pressing by the police on the boundary of press privilege has become more urgent and more widespread in recent years but fortunately for me (and potential readers of my half-assed take) Dan Michaluk had got there first . Both of the following issues are not going away, however, and I suspect one day soon a Court is going to be forced to tackle them: [98] The Crown submits that in so finding the reviewing judge made two errors. First, it contends that in today’s society we have no principled basis to distinguish between those journalists who are entitled to confidential source relationships and those who are not. Today, many persons, especially by using the internet, may be called “journalists” or “the press” because they disseminate information to the public, yet may not merit the journalist-confidential source privilege. Second, the Crown contends that we should not sedulously...

The way things are going, Stephane Dion will be supporting a constitutional amendment to extend the current Parliament indefinitely. Swamped under the current Cadman fiasco was any reaction to a February 19 blog post by Paul Wells noting Harper's delay in recognising Kosovo as independent (or declining to do so) and theorising that this was while a delay can be seen as dissuading unilateral secession, openly explaining the delay would endanger Adequiste votes for Tory federal candidates. Well, the only thing worse than a party not declaring a side is to pick both . Jim Karygiannis (from the so-con wing of the Liberal Party ) sided with his Serbian constituents and declared opposition to recognising Kosovo. The problem is that his Leader wants to recognise Kosovo - and Karygiannis can hardly say he missed Dion's take since Wells knew about it 12 days ago and the Montreal Gazette the day before that. That said someone should explain to M. Dion what "unanimous" mea...