This prison-style gate between Pierrefonds and Kirkland makes the Great Wall of Acadie Blvd. look tame by comparison.
This is because of vandalism. People spraying graffiti and stuff.
Look, Kirkland, I know us Pierrefonds scum may scare you a bit, but we’re not all serial back-alley rapists. Perhaps you should tackle your vandalism problem in a less draconian fashion?
Stupidest thing I’ve heard today: People in Quebec City are watering the snow on their lawns to get them to melt faster.
Aside from the insane waste of a precious resource, the potential damage caused to a lawn that’s overwatered, the inefficacy of melting snow with water, and the much more sane alternatives available (like, say, shoveling it or just waiting a week for it to melt on its own), isn’t it a really bad idea to intentionally flood the area around your home during flood season?
Forget Hamilton bagels, the real insult to our very being is in a new product from Kraft: cylindrical bagels filled with cream cheese. I honestly have no words to describe how wrong this is. (via AdFreak)
Jealous, I can only surmise, at other news outlets and their blog thingies, the West Island Chronicle has announced the creation of Sportlight (yes, with an “R”), a “blog” about Montreal’s professional sports teams, the Canadiens, Alouettes and Impact. (It’s also available in French as Montréal en sport)
Sadly, despite their claims of being “experienced” and “up-to-the-minute”, they’re clearly neither. The journalists who write these blogs don’t cover these teams regularly (or at all). They’re just guys who watch hockey on TV and think they’re experts about it.
In other words, it’s just like all those other Habs blogs out there. Not worth seeing unless you know the authors personally.
The problem is that David is trying to slay Goliath on Goliath’s terms. The Gazette’s Habs Inside/Out blog takes advantage of the paper’s access to the team and its reporters’ experience to make it a comprehensive resource. Armchair sports analysts can’t compete with that, so why are they?
I noticed the same problem years ago with student media. Instead of concentrating on university sports where they have the access, time and resources to do a good job (and the lack of competition that would make them the best at what they do), some student newspaper writers prefer to rant about the Habs, doing bad imitations of professional sports writers.
There is no limit to sports that local reporters can cover. Junior teams, college teams, high school teams, all get ignored in big media because there are too many of them and they’re not interesting enough.
The ball is in the court of the local papers to write about local teams. Why is it trying to compete on a level it is guaranteed to lose?
Full disclosure: I work at The Gazette (though I don’t do anything on its Habs blog), and I once interned briefly at the Chronicle.
Even though I have a love life that would make Eliot Spitzer feel bad for me, I always make sure I have some vi@gra and ci@lis at the ready in case the time comes and a wave of ED suddenly strikes.
But those drugs are so expensive. How does a guy get stiff without getting stiffed?
I don’t have those worries anymore, since I found Gary’s Vi@gra and Ci@lis Emporium. There, I can get my pills at prices as low as 2 cents apiece. Sure, they’re not blue or diamond-shaped, they don’t have the logo on them and they taste a lot like chalk, but at 2 cents who cares if you get a dud every once in a while?
And while I’m shopping there, I can get low-priced Rolex watches, Adobe software and all the incest porn I could possibly imagine.
Give them a shot, so they can give you a shot.
If you’re like me, you think Daddy Day Camp is the best movie ever created. This fun-for-the-whole-family film, starring award-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr., is the smash hit sequel to “Daddy Day Care” (notice the last word is different there, how ingenious when they could have just called it Daddy Day Care 2!).
If you never got a chance to see it in the theatre, now’s your chance to see it in your home theatre, at just a bit more than the price of a DVD rental and with none of those annoying extra features and deleted scenes and stuff.
Videotron’s Illico digital service offers Video-on-Demand, a service whereby for only $5, you can download a new release and watch it as many times as you want on your digital terminal over a 24-hour period. If you wanted to rent the DVD, you’d be billed less, which means you’d have to deal with change and stuff, and you’d have anywhere from two days to a week to see the movie. With such a long rental time, you’re bound to get confused and forget the movies altogether, until your living room is filled to the ceiling with rented DVDs you forgot to return.
And if you don’t have Videotron Illico digital TV? Well now’s the time to buy! A basic digital terminal costs $99, but for a limited time only Videotron will give you one for only $49 with contract! That’s practically giving it away! Or you can upgrade to high definition and a personal video recorder for only the low low price of your first-born child! How can you not take advantage of this opportunity?
Buy now!
Ever hear of the Hawaii Chair? It’s all the rage. They’ve had it on Oprah, Dr. Phil, Ellen and all sorts of other shows. It’s been Dugg, YouTubed and talked about all over the blogosphere. Don’t you think it’s time you get in on the action?
The Hawaii Chair combines the ancient art of the Hula with patented health science technology to create a machine that takes the work out of your workout.
Rather than going through the trouble of walking, running, biking, jogging or doing other strenuous, time-wasting exercises, the Hawaii Chair does all your work for you, rotating your bottom and burning the fat while you sit at your desk eating donuts.
And for a limited time, you can buy your own Hawaii Chair for under $300!
Wouldn’t you like to get more informations?
I haven’t tried the chair myself, but the idea alone is enough to sell me. (I’ll get a free chair if this post is seen by at least 100,000 people, so when that happens I’ll update with a more comprehensive review). With a name like Perfect USA though, this company can hardly go wrong.
Be sure to check out some of their other ingenious devices that will save you time, make you healthier and guarantee six-pack abs forever.
If you haven’t had the chance to use Snap Shots(TM) yet, then you’ve been missing out.
Snap is one of the largest distributed media networks on the Internet, already reaching 9% of the US audience (WOW!) and 35 million unique global users each month in 48 languages. Over 100 times per second, they reveal the content that users want, in the best form possible, and deliver it to them right where they are, without forcing them to click links or conduct searches.
Snap Shots (TM) products are used on over 2,000,000 websites and blogs. That’s pretty impressive, and a clear sign that these folks are doing something right. Why would 2 million people use something that wasn’t worth their while?
The way Snap Shots (TM) works is very simple: You install some code in your browser or website, and then when you hover over links, it shows a snapshot of what that link will look like. You can see a webpage before you even go there! Isn’t that way cool?
Because they’re a good corporate citizen, and there are always crazy people out there who are afraid of new technology, Snap even provides a way for people to opt out of the system, disabling it completely.
So there’s nothing to lose. Why not give it a shot?
Back when I was freelancing a lot more than I am now, I did a lot of interviews over the phone. It would always be tiring holding the phone to my ear and typing at the same time.
So I was glad when I got a Motorola H3 Bluetooth Headset, which Overstock.com is selling at rock-bottom prices. You would be stupid to not take advantage.
The inexpensive headset has so many features I can barely list them. For example, it comes with an integrated echo system, which allows whomever you’re talking to to hear their own voice as they do so. Some might call that an annoyance, caused by the fact that the microphone is so close to the speaker, but I think it’s an awesome way for people to know whether or not they’re talking.
Also way cool is the single blue LED on the outside. While some electronic devices have multiple status LEDs, this headset has only one, which blinks with different patterns to tell you what it’s doing. In as little as 15 seconds, you’ll know whether the headset is on, off, charging, charged, on a call, in setup or ringing.
Completing this keep-it-simple philosophy, the device also has only one button to control everything. (Well, not quite, it has a couple of volume buttons too, but everything is important is controlled through the big button.) Want to answer a call? Press the button. Want to redial? Press the button? Turn it on? Press the button. Turn it off? Press the button.
It takes a while to get used to how long to press the button. But even if it redials instead of turning off like it did for me numerous times, that’s ok. It’ll just cause your mom to call you back wondering what’s going on, and you can never talk to your mom too much.
The Motorola H3 Bluetooth Headset is fantastic, and I would so crazily recommend it even if they weren’t giving me $2 to write a blog post about it.
And for you drivers out there, remember that starting today, Quebec law requires hands-free technology in order to operate cellphones while driving. Why not take this opportunity to upgrade to H3?
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but some astute francophone bloggers are noting English-only advertisements on French-language websites like Cyberpresse and Le Devoir.
Assuming it’s not a technical malfunction or clueless advertising agency, should it be a scandal that an ad on a French-language website be in English? A lot of anglophones read French newspapers, watch French television and go to French websites when they can’t find what they need in English. Why not put forward some ads that cater to them?
For example: If The Gazette put a TV ad on RDS during a Habs game to promote its Habs Inside/Out website, in order to reach anglophone Habs enthusiasts who can’t watch the game on another network, or francophone fanatiques who want to immerse themselves in everything about Les Glorieux, would that be so bad?
Or if an anglophone school board had ads in French promoting… oh wait, they already did that. And people are pissed.
In a move sure to piss off francophones from coast to coast, Carleton University’s journalism department has decided that students no longer have to demonstrate a proficiency in French to graduate. (via J-Source)
Considering that half the summer interns The Gazette picks every year come from Carleton (the other half tend to come from Concordia), this seems like a bad idea.
As Graham Fraser, Canada’s official languages commissioner, points out, this isn’t just about journalists working in Quebec. Even those in Victoria will occasionally have to find themselves translating French text into English to understand a story better.
Carleton’s reasoning, and I suppose it’s understandable to a point, is that many students choose to work elsewhere (like outside the country) when they graduate. And many of those students come from elsewhere in the first place. They have no use for French.
But if that’s the reasoning, why bother having language proficiency at all? They require students to have a basic understanding of English and now another language of their choice. What’s the point if not to have the proper skills to practice journalism in Canada? Should learning about Canadian libel law also be optional for people who expect to work overseas?
Montreal’s annual march against police brutality generates a lot of news coverage the only way that protests generate news coverage: by causing destruction.
The mainstream media will give it a photo or short video clip highlighting the worst infractions, with a short brief mentioning how many people showed up, how many were arrested and what kind of damage there was. The next day, we might see an editorial decrying violence to make a point.
The alternative media, meanwhile, will go a bit more in depth about the protesters’ motives (without questioning those motives or the reasons given for them). They’ll also go in depth about accusations of police brutality, usually without trying to get the police’s side on the matter.
The truth, meanwhile, seems to be lost in the middle as the media takes one side or the other.
When I wrote about the protest last year, I concluded that “The entire purpose of anti-police brutality protests is to prompt police brutality.”
While I still believe that to be true (having police brutality at an anti-police-brutality protest helps the protesters’ case — or at least they think it does), I should expand on it a bit. It becomes an excuse for both the police and the radical elements of the anonymous, anarchist, anti-capitalist army to descend into pointless violence just to express their frustrations.
A semi-anonymous person interviewed by The Link said it much the same way (emphasis mine):
“I think in the same way that some of the protesters feel it’s a day they can let out their frustration, I think a lot of the cops feel that way too. And they like it that way,” said Paquette, who’s been homeless in Montreal for over 10 years. Few participants were willing to give their names to the press for fear of recrimination.
You’d think they’d find some more healthy and less expensive way to do so. Maybe a game of paintball or something?
I don’t mean to make light of the situation (though compared to things that happen around the world, with people dying and stuff, it’s kind of hard not to laugh at these people by comparison). But both sides use excessive force with no useful purpose, and nobody seems to care.
The protesters come from various backgrounds. Some are homeless people tired of being banned from every park and pushed out like some fruitcake nobody wants to eat. Some are legitimate victims (or friends of victims) of police brutality who want to speak out. Some are student activists who will support any leftist cause even if they don’t fully understand it. Some are radical anti-capitalists wearing ski masks who think that trashing a few McDonald’s signs will somehow bring about a new world order.
And, yes, some are undercover cops. (I don’t want to minimize how boneheaded an idea that was, and how negatively it affected the reputation of the SQ and all other police forces dealing with protesters, and though we can never be entirely certain, I’ll assume that most of the radical protesters aren’t undercover cops.)
The actions of some protesters are bent out of a (perhaps understandable) frustration. But that frustration isn’t a license to damage property or throw rocks at police. You can’t simply take advantage of the mob in order to shield yourself from consequences.
And that peaceful mob consciously shields the lawbreakers out of some twisted sense of solidarity. In Montebello, those who took rocks got singled out by the crowd, who made it clear that they would not be protected. That earned the legitimate protesters brownie points. It made regular people sympathize with them, and made the police (and their agents provocateurs) turn into the bad guys.
If that happened here, public opinion about these protests would change considerably.
The police, meanwhile, could use these protests as a opportunities to be the bigger person. But they don’t. They respond to transparently ineffective attacks on their massive body armor by literally chasing down protesters like a herd of wild bulls. They use force indiscriminately, against protesters, passers-by and journalists who get in the way. They make arrests by rounding people up like cattle, hitting them with a fine and then releasing them a few blocks away. They make people agree not to participate in protests in order to escape prosecution.
I want to re-emphasize that last sentence in case anyone missed it: Those who are arrested, whether they did anything wrong or not, are told to sign agreements saying they won’t participate in public protests. It’s legal, because people have the choice of going through a long court battle and facing jail time, but only Jaggi Singh is going to go through that on principle.
All this to say that those who take a side in this are either clueless, delusional or lying.
Other coverage of the protest:
Elsewhere in the blogosphere:
Associated Press announced it is beefing up its celebrity news coverage by adding 21 reporters to the beat.
It might be easy to condemn AP for the move, since the wire service alone seems to affect more than half the news articles you see in your daily newspapers (The Gazette, which cut Canadian Press and therefore AP as well last summer, relies on Reuters, Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse, Sports Ticker, New York Times, LA Times/Washington Post and its own Canwest News Service for wire stories).
But the move is simply a reaction to the demands of AP’s members, who are increasingly demanding more celebrity gossip. Setting up a gossip news site is like opening a McDonald’s franchise: It’s embarrassing and unhealthy, but it’s an easy way to make money if you have no ideas.
I guess it’s also like porn that way, if you need a second analogy. But respectable organizations aren’t going to publish outright porn… yet.
Of course, AP says it isn’t out to do trash celebrity journalism, publishing pictures of people without makeup, digging through trash or just plain annoying people trying to go through their daily lives and pretending that’s news.
So I guess it’s more like opening a Subway franchise then. (Or Maxim/FHM, if you’re on the porn analogy route). You can pretend what you create is food, but you still can’t call yourself a chef.
To those of you who care about celebrity gossip, you have only yourselves to blame for this. There could be real journalists tackling real issues in the world, but instead they’re constantly monitoring the status of Britney Spears’s underwear.
According to Canadian Press, “big-name” Canadian actors don’t get the same amount of pay as A-list American actors.
The word “duh” comes to mind.
CBC.ca has a story* about an industry-commissioned survey that shows Canadians don’t quite understand everything about HDTV. Sharp, which commissioned the survey, pulls right out of its ass the theory that “jargon-laden tech reports” are to blame for the problem, especially among women. It’s the media which is not doing a good job explaining HDTV’s technical intricacies to consumers.
While technology articles in newspapers and tech segments on TV news are, indeed, either confusingly jargon-laden or condescendingly over-simplifying, I don’t think they’re the reason for all the misinformation about HDTV.
Instead, I blame the industry itself:
But I don’t expect Sharp to bring that up when they’re busy masturbating over how great they are.
*Dear CBC: If you’re going to rewrite a press release, maybe you should make it slightly less obvious that you’re doing so. For example, you could change the headline. Or you could find another source to quote. Or you could not copy and paste half the press release into your article.
For example:
The knowledge gap persists despite a truly healthy market for flat panel TVs. Overall, the market grew by 72 percent last year, with sales of LCD TVs growing by 84.4 percent. For 2008, projected sales figures from the Consumer Electronics Marketers of Canada (CEMC) indicate a market demand of 2.75 million units.
The poll reports Canadians have a basic understanding of the differences between flat screen technologies – 53 percent prefer LCD to plasma screens – yet few Canadians feel themselves to be truly knowledgeable about the technology.
Women are especially unaware of HDTV features; almost 60 percent said they were not at all knowledgeable about the latest advancements, compared to less than 40 percent of men polled across the country. The jargon-laden language of tech reports may be an issue, with 29 percent of Canadians getting their information about new models from TV ads and programs, compared to only 20 percent from print media and 16 percent from weblogs and product websites.
That was from the press release.
This is from the CBC story:
The knowledge gap persists despite a truly robust market for flat–panel TVs, according to the findings from Nanos Research, commissioned to do the survey by Sharp Electronics of Canada.
Overall, the market grew by 72 per cent last year, with sales of LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) TVs growing by 84.4 per cent, Sharp said. For 2008, projected sales figures from the Consumer Electronics Marketers of Canada (CEMC) indicate a market demand of 2.75 million units.
The poll reports Canadians have a basic understanding of the differences between flat-screen technologies — 53 per cent prefer LCD to plasma screens — yet few Canadians feel themselves to be truly knowledgeable about the technology.
Women are especially unaware of HDTV features, the survey suggested. Almost 60 per cent said they were not at all knowledgeable about the latest advancements, compared to less than 40 per cent of men polled across the country.
The jargon-laden language of tech reports may be an issue, with 29 per cent of Canadians getting their information about new models from TV ads and programs, compared to only 20 per cent from print media and 16 per cent from weblogs and product websites.
Notice some similarity? (I’ve bolded all the changes the CBC made.) I’m just going to go ahead and assume the CBC did not, in fact, check to make sure these statements were true.
(And another thing: “weblogs”? If people don’t understand what a blog is, what makes you think they’ll understand “weblogs”?)