From Cork to Toronto

Slashdot discusses the Wall Street Journal's reporting on the vanishing of fact-checking in publishing , following the Oprah-James Frey controversy. Apparently publishers don't make enough money to check facts and the publisher of Frey's book was lauded for "taking one for the team" following Oprah's tongue-lashing . This all makes criticisms of Wikipedia , which survives on donations, rather amusing in their ferocity when the so-called professionals aren't doing it and the printed word is much harder to amend once released. This is not to say Wikipedia shouldn't get it right and keep doing so, merely that relying on the word of Doubleday as a primary reference source doesn't seem safe either. The Minneapolis-St Paul StarTribune reminds us of their 2003 reporting of questions about Frey's book which makes the publisher's defence rather less tenable. The verdict from one Slashdot user: "Money has a strong influence on the weak minde...

It's amusing to see the flailings of NOW to try defending those it loves (primarily David Miller and his new press spokesman, formerly of that publication) including Buzz Hargrove, who is quoted in this week's issue that strategic voting was a success. This comes as a surprise to most NDPers (the ones wearing "Buzz off, I'm voting NDP" buttons) who are saying so publicly. I imagine Sid Ryan is saying so too - beaten by a Tory thanks to that brilliant CAW voting trick. That said I have little sympathy for smug Adam Giambrone and the guy he couldn't get elected, Gord Perks who did not give up his eye soapbox for the campaign. NOW is positively apoplectic at the thought of Marilyn Churley running against Hizzoner and possibly letting in Jane Pitfield on a split vote - can't see it happening myself once she calms down, and anyway Jack did her the most damage by evicting her into Beaches-East York. If anyone saw me on a Thursday evening plucking NOW from th...

One is always torn about how to react to the boorishness that emanates from the Sexational Sindo , whether it be that 03 team of scantily clad yoofs or the ever declining quality of Brendan O'Connor's output. Does one merely treat it as background noise, albeit one bought in distressingly large quantities, or try and divine whether new lows have been reached . We used to define ourselves in terms of fairly well run nations (and Italy) but apparently if Eilis O'Hanlon is to be believed , anything is acceptable as long as it's worse in Estonia or India or Poland. President Obasanjo of Nigeria's outrage towards "unBiblical" homosexuality would be better directed against the practise of female genital mutilation in his country , for instance, by Christians as well as other religions. I mean, crikey, there are some total basket cases in the world, Haiti and Iraq coming first to mind, but that doesn't make those our law and order baseline surely? As long ...

Sicilian Notes has been monopolising most of Mental Meanderings' output this weekend, which means we got no post-game report on Amelie Mauresmo's first grand slam title . Some controversy about the manner of her win , although it seems she had her own problems to contend with . That said, if ever needing a reason to watch a French woman on telly, I'd sooner watch the news .

Earlier this week I wrote about the impending (hell, current) power crunch in Ontario. Yesterday's Star has an editorial and today quotes Premier McGuinty on the issue of the city's power future. One of the statements it makes is quite stunning - that no power is generated in the City of Toronto. It's also not quite true - all over the city various facilities such as hospitals have generators which could be used to maintain city power at crisis points if the means to exchange power with the grid existed, and sufficient safeguards were built into the system to ensure the generator could isolate itself from the grid to protect the facility it is powering if the grid itself becomes unstable. Power grids generally are quite old-school in their lack of flexibility compared to telecoms which are accelerating towards fully distributed operation. The ideal is for power to be produced as near its users as possible, to enable communities to be more self-sufficient and the gri...

Can't help but feel the best reaction the "international community" (there's a joke) could have to the recent Palestinian election is to ignore the fact of who was elected and pretend it's really still Fatah in power, sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting LALALALALA if someone says the H-word . If the Shinners are any guide, the best way of neutering them is to turn them into, essentially, class traitors by drowning them in money, ministries and motorcades. There will always the residual "Ruairi Bin Bradaigh" types left screaming for martyrdom but the "Peace Process" moved faster in NI when the ban on having Grizzly Adams on the telly was lifted and even faster once they got into Stormont.

On the Macleans blogs, Paul Wells discusses what it means to "take complete responsibility" for a disaster from the perspective of Liberal strategists by means of comparison to stock Scooby-Doo plots. It's an entertaining read but hardly novel, as resigning and meaning it as opposed to hoping it will be shortly forgotten ( David Blunkett , Peter Mandelson ) or just plain brazening it out ( Harinder Takhar ) is the modern way of things. The last resignation on the grounds of taking responsibility I can recall was Lord Carrington for failing to foresee/prevent the Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982 . Still, worth a look I think.