1. “Humanoid robot from GM and NASA” by David Pescovitz | Boing Boing
Robotic technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, and automakers are at the forefront of development. Honda and Toyota are already producing humanoid robots that have enough manual dexterity to play musical instruments. Now General Motors, in partnership with NASA, is getting in the game by manufacturing robots designed to assist astronauts. Does anyone else think this “Robonaut” looks like a busboy from the Mos Eisley Cantina?

2. “Why did the police take aim at pedestrians?” by Dylan Reid | Spacing Toronto
January saw a rash of pedestrian deaths in the city of Toronto, with fourteen accident-related fatalities within the first twenty-five days of 2010. City police have responded by cracking down on the pedestrians themselves. Reid points out how this action ignores the other half of the equation, namely the behaviour of drivers.

3. “District 9’s Director on What Aliens Will Look Like” by Morgan Clendaniel | GOOD Blog
Neill Blomkamp, director of last year’s critically acclaimed District 9, discusses why the alien creatures he created for his film do not reflect his view of what “real-life” aliens will look like. Most interestingly, he discusses why he believes our civilization may just be the most advanced in the galaxy.

4. “Integrity Isn’t Just a Military Value” by Laura Flanders | The Notion
Flanders applauds the direction that Barack Obama is taking on the U.S. military’s controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, but goes on to explain that what America really needs is a comprehensive, nation-wide law that applies to all professions — not just the armed forces. In many states, it’s still legal to fire someone based on sexual orientation.

5. “2010 Olympics Inspire Wave of Vancouver Books” by Jenn Laidlaw | Beyond Robson
Vancouver is set to enjoy its moment in the international spotlight that is the Olympics, and the publishing industry is betting that the attention will translate into book sales. As a young city with a relatively meagre population (compared with other North American metropolises), Vancouver has never really received its due in the book world, other than predictable coffee table tomes that celebrate its geographic setting. Laidlaw examines two new books that look at Vancouver in ways never before explored in literature.

6. “Facebook’s Six-Year Evolution” by John Hudson | The Atlantic Wire
In 2009, Facebook surpassed MySpace to become the most popular social network in the world; on Thursday, it surpassed 400 million users. In the six years since the site went online it has endured its fair share of controversy, focused mainly on privacy issues and user revolts against its many redesigns. Hudson provides commentary on and links to other retrospectives of its unrivalled success.

7. “Auteur Directors Directing the Super Bowl” by Kurt Halfyard | Row Three
Super Bowl XLIV will be played this Sunday in Miami, pitting the Indianapolis Colts against the New Orleans Saints. This video by director Andrew Bouvé asks and answers the question: what if Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, or Werner Herzog directed the Super Bowl? Funny how they all wind up looking like NFL Films productions.

8. “Shackleton’s Whisky Dug Up in Antarctica” by Robert Mackey | The Lede
Whisky lovers and Antarctic history buffs rejoice! A team of researchers has found three crates of Scotch whisky (and two crates of brandy) buried by polar explorer Ernest Shackleton during his failed 1909 bid to reach the South Pole. Now a crack squad of whisky scientists has the chance to analyze the samples and recreate the long-lost recipe for Shackleton’s preferred blend of Whyte & Mackay whisky.

9. “Liberals Wouldn’t Have to be So Condescending if The People Who Disagreed With Them Weren’t Such Idiots” by Nick Gillespie | Hit & Run
Don’t be taken by the cheeky headline. This is deep thinking about a guilty secret of many liberals: the condescending inability to comprehend conservative and neo-conservative viewpoints.

10. “Is redesigned Monopoly the worst thing ever?” by Mark Medley | The Ampersand
Monopoly, the venerable board game born out of the Great Depression, is about to celebrate its seventy-fifth anniversary. To mark the occasion, Hasbro has completely redesigned the game. Set to be released this fall, Monopoly: Revolution features a circular board and inflation-adjusted prices (ex. $2 million for passing Go). Is it the worst thing ever? Probably not, but for some die-hard fans, it certainly seems to be.

PARIS—So, uh … can I please get some more fake money?

This is the portentous question that I had to ask, recently and quite sheepishly, of the King of the Walruses. See, I don’t ever like having to ask His Tuskiness for more fake money. I ask him for fake money all the time (hey, I’m a writer, we’ve got expensive fake-whiskey habits to bankroll). But typically, after a little demonstration of heaving and moaning to remind me who the boss is, he comes through.

It’s perfectly analogous to me being a television teenager from the 1950s hoping to take my “main squeeze” on a big date, only in this case the keys to the family car are actually a wad of fake money, my stern-but-lovable father is actually a 2,000-kilogram mass of tusks and blubber, and my best girl is the Super Bowl.

Also, I don’t actually want to play patty-cakes with her in the backseat of my pa’s Ford Galaxie, I want to bet money on a bunch of different little esoteric things that I think she might do. The Super Bowl, I mean.

Yes, it’s that time of year again, the Sportstrotter’s third annual “Top of the Props” column, a foray into the exciting, perilous world of Super Bowl prop betting. Prop betting is when, instead of gambling on the total outcome of a sporting event, you bet on very specific micro-games within the game. If that doesn’t make sense to you, click here for a more thorough explanation.

In 2008 I did pretty well with my bets, turning 100 fake “Trotterbucks” into 131.46, the cherry on the sundae of watching the New York Giants upset the previously undefeated New England Patriots, 17-14. In 2009, the game was another winner, with Mlle Trotter’s beloved Pittsburgh Steelers winning a wild one over the Arizona Cardinals, 27-23.

You know who wasn’t a winner last year? I mean, other than the Cardinals, and 30 other football teams and what the heck let’s throw the Leafs in there for good measure? Yup, that’s right: me. I managed to turn the previous year’s fattened bankroll into, like, 2 Trotterbucks. It wasn’t pretty. Not nearly enough holdover fake money to have any fun with this year. Plus, I think I lost the change (the coins have King Kaufman’s face on them) in my couch.

Hence, I found myself grovelling to the Blubber-Ball with the Beastly Bicuspids: King Walrus himself.

“Blaargh you? Sportstrotter? What are you doing here?” he belched at me, when I finally tracked him down on a rocky islet off the southeast corner of Baffin Island. His breath reeked of fish, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

“Please, sir. I was wondering if I could have a little bit more fake money? You know, to wager on the Super Bowl?”

“Blaargh don’t you mean the Grey Cup?”

“No, sir,” I said, a little bashful. “Nobody wants to read about me betting on the Grey Cup. They already played the game several months ago. Plus, how can you take a football game seriously when the contest’s defining play is a ‘13 men on the field’ penalty?”

“Blaargh good point, Sportstrotter,” he said. “So how much do you need?”

At this point, I knew I had to play it cool. I had King Walrus right where I wanted him, but if I overshot, I would surely end up looking like an overcooked order of Sportstrotter Spaetzle strewn all across the King’s rocky ledge. “Uh, how much fake money did you give to the Bironist last year when he was handicapping last year’s Giller Prize favourites?”

“Blaargh two-hundred Bironbucks. And I can’t believe he bet it all on the Peter Pocklington biography ‘I’d Trade Him Again!””

Neither could I, to be honest, but I saw my opening. “I’ll take half what he got. One hundred Trotterbucks. Er, if you please, sir.”

He thought about it for a minute, and then – I swear I saw this, with my own two eyes – the Walrus King reached up with his flippers, grabbed his left tusk, and spun it around till half the tusk came loose, like an old-school fountain pen. He tipped the hollow half-tusk upside down and out fluttered a perfect, crisp one-hundred-Trotterbuck bill.

“Blaargh one last thing before you go, Sportstrotter,” I heard him say as I scooped up the money and ran for my life. “You’re not going to piss away all that money on hopeless long-shot wagers again this year, are you?”

*

So with the words of the venerable King Walrus still ringing in my ears, coupled with the grim prospect of returning next February (not the ideal time to travel to Baffin Island) to ask for more money should my bets go sour, I’ve decided to forego the laundry-list of wacky proposition bets this year, and just bet on the outcome of the game itself. Not the games within the game – just the game, people.

Plus, after all the work I put in getting the money, and all the work my buddies Odom and Matty put in trying (and failing) to get the Las Vegas Hilton to release an electronic copy of its seminal list of 400-strong prop to me (apparently, as of Friday afternoon the only way you can get a copy of the prop list is to march into the Hilton sports book and grab a paper copy yourself – update: Matty located a copy late Friday afternoon!), I just can’t motivate myself to care whether Saints backup tight end David Thomas will gain more or less than 9.5 yards on his first reception of the game (take the under, though).

So here’s my analysis of Super Bowl XLIV – Indianapolis Colts versus New Orleans Saints:

Both of these teams were 13-0 this year, and then each floundered a bit down the stretch after taking their foot off the gas pedal (I guess we can be pretty certain that they weren’t driving a Toyota HEY-OHHHH!!!).

In the playoffs, the Saints and the Colts each destroyed a one-dimensional team in the divisional round. Then the Colts came from behind to beat a team starting a rookie quarterback who had a very average season, a team that lost its starting running back during the game, a team that lost games this season to the Bills, the Jags and the Dolphins (twice), a team whose own coach thought they were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs with two weeks to go in the season. In short, the Colts squeaked one out against one of the weakest teams to appear in an AFC title game in recent memory, albeit one that played hard and gave the Colts a run for their money.

The Saints won the NFC title against a team that most sportswriters considered the best team in football when the season began. So why does everybody with an opinion on this game automatically think that the Colts are unbeatable and the Saints are flawed and that Manning is the best so therefore the Colts will definitely win?

So I’ll take the Saints to win, like I did (get ready, I’m about to blow your mind!) … back in SEPTEMBER, in my NFL Preview column.

And not just to cover the spread, which is currently at Colts by 5. To win the game outright. I mean, why wouldn’t I pick the team I pegged at the start of the season to win the Super Bowl when they’re playing a team I didn’t even think was good enough to make the playoffs in the Colts (uh … this is embarrassing … hey, look, what’s that over THERE!)

Wager: New Orleans Saints to win (money line bet), 100 TB at +180, for a potential win of 180 TB.

And if I’m wrong, well, I guess I’ll have plenty of time to work on my grovelling skills before next year’s visit to Baffin Island.

(Image courtesy Boston.com)

An actor achieves immortality through his face, a singer through his voice. An author is able to live eternally through his writing, but for some, the finished words are not enough.

The critical notions surrounding authorship have been contentious since the 1960s, when developments in literary theory upset accepted notions about art. Critics such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault (two names sure to make any humanities graduate student cringe) dismantled the axiom that the author was the architect of a literary work’s interpretive possibilities. Barthes went so far as to declare “the death of the author,” urging scholars to seek out a text’s meaning in its language, rather than in the intentions of its author.

Despite Barthes’ obituary for the author, the cult of authorship persists. Publishers around the world are breathing fresh life into deceased famous authors by posthumously releasing their “lost” works. In 2009, new books by Vladimir Nabokov, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and in a delicious twist of irony, Roland Barthes, hit the shelves. On the slate for the next couple of years are posthumous works by Ralph Ellison, Jack Kerouac, David Foster Wallace, and Roberto Bolaño. (Bolaño’s corpse is proving to be staggeringly prolific, with as many as four releases on the horizon.)

Meanwhile, J.D. Salinger’s recent death has sparked an enormous level of speculation over the wealth of writings he might have been hoarding. At the time of his death, the notoriously cagey author hadn’t published in over forty-five years. It’s long been reported that he wrote upwards of fifteen manuscripts during his self-imposed exile. Despite Salinger’s militant protection of his privacy and apparent desire not to see these writings in the public sphere, it seems all but inevitable that at least some of them will be snatched up and published in the years to come.

While the frenzy surrounding authorial necromancy is infectious, few of these publications live up to the hype. Take last November’s publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s The Original of Laura, which was heralded in some quarters as the literary event of the year. Before his death in 1977, Nabokov instructed that the unfinished novel was to be burned if he should die before it was completed. Going against his father’s instructions, Dmitri Nabokov chose instead to have it published. In his introduction to the book, the son explains that “despite its incompleteness…[the writing] was unprecedented in structure and style,” and as a result, he “could no longer even think of burning Laura.” He justifies his decision by reasoning, “[I do not think] that my father or my father’s shade would have opposed the release of Laura once Laura had survived the hum of time this long… Should I be damned or thanked?”

Dmitri soon got his answer. Despite the flashy packaging — the 138 index cards on which Vladimir composed the fragments are replicated and perforated for the reader’s punch-out pleasure — the book was a flop. Although critics recognized faint glimmers of the brilliance that defined such masterpieces as Lolita and Pale Fire, Laura was ultimately dismissed as uneven, disjointed, and muddled. Tellingly, the final card reads, “efface, expunge, delete, cut out, wipe out, obliterate.”

While readers and critics alike have condemned Dmitri Nabokov’s decision to disobey his father, this same community has been very forgiving of similar betrayals when the final product has been more to its liking. It has long been said that Virgil insisted that the unrevised manuscript of The Aeneid be burned upon his death; his trusted friend Varius chose to release it anyhow. Similarly, if Max Brod, Franz Kafka’s literary executor, had obeyed the writer’s instructions, The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika never would have seen the light of day.

It’s difficult to dispute the opportunistic nature of posthumous publishing. Dave Rosenthal of The Baltimore Sun suggests that the practice is, at its worst, “grave-robbing, crass exploitation to make a few bucks,” with publishers, executors, and academics seizing the chance to capitalize on unseen works by established names. Readers, too, have an almost mystical fascination with the novelty of posthumous literature. It is a means to engage with the dead, or partake in a kind of literary time travel — it is the chance to experience new work by writers who might have died before you were born, and whose voices now appear to be echoing from the mystic beyond.

Unfortunately, it’s rare that a posthumous publication dazzles its audience. Sure, you might argue John Kennedy Toole and Roberto Bolaño are primarily known for their excellent posthumous novels (A Confederacy of Dunces and 2666, respectively), but neither of them were established authors until after their deaths. Generally, it seems that when famous authors make deathbed warnings not to publish something they’ve written, there’s a good reason.

Unfinished novels are also problematic — they are inevitably compared to other works that their authors had the chance to revise and polish. The work-in-progress is frequently edited and modified after an author’s death in order to make it a cohesive product. This is a doubly troublesome, as it both dilutes the original text into a heavily edited shadow of a novel, and simultaneously deprives readers of the immersive experience that exploring an unfinished project can provide. Drafts, notes, and manuscripts are fascinating pieces of ephemera, like journals or correspondence. But like the personal papers of an author, unfinished writings are literary artifacts, not literary works; they lack the finality and the intent that define a finished product. Left untouched, they are valuable glimpses into the author’s writing process, but as artifacts, they should remain untouched and unedited: in no way should they be touted as examples of the author’s artistry.

One example of a published work-in-progress gone awry was Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth, published in 1999, five years after the writer’s death. The only novel Ellison published during his lifetime was 1952’s sprawling masterpiece, Invisible Man, and he spent the next forty-odd years toiling at his next novel. At the time of his death, he left 2,000 pages of his manuscript; Ellison’s literary executor, John F. Callahan, determined to publish his friend’s work, whittled the stack into a 368-page novel. His effort was met with tepid reviews. Michiko Kakutani wrote in the New York Times that Juneteenth “feels disappointingly provisional and incomplete,” and that Ellison’s executor had “effectively changed the book’s entire structure and modus operandi. Instead of the symphonic work Ellison envisioned, Callahan has given us a flawed linear novel, focused around one man’s emotional and political evolution.”

Now, eleven years after Juneteenth’s publication, Callahan is trying again. Last week, the scraps and versions of Ellison’s unfinished opus were published as an annotated, 1136-page work-in-progress entitled Three Days Before the Shooting… This release presents Ellison’s manuscript more or less the way he left it, offering the reader a non-traditional foray into the author’s mind. By contextualizing and accepting the text instead of attempting to finish it, Callahan is finally letting it live.

In the end, the controversy surrounding posthumous publication will endure as long as the publications themselves. Despite the hit-and-miss — mostly miss — nature of the practice, for every Original of Laura, there is a Confederacy of Dunces, a treasure that might have never been unearthed, and for that reason, life after death will continue for many authors who leave unfinished business.

But instead of pouncing on a work that will sell copies for its author’s reputation alone, publishers need to use discretion in terms of the strength of the work, independent of its byline. Continuing on our current path of fetishizing departed authors, we’ll soon see fancy editions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s grocery lists, or leather-bound copies of Virginia Woolf’s to-do reminders. Needless, opportunistic posthumous publications such as those serve no one, least of all the author. In his Slate review of Laura, Aleksandar Hemon quotes Vladimir Nabokov as once having said, “In art, purpose and plan are nothing; only the results count.” By their own shortcomings, the published results of the author’s last, embryonic manuscript proved him right.

(Images courtesy of Random House)

This June’s FIFA World Cup Final South Africa represents a risky bet that, like many wagers, poses itself as a question: Can an African nation successfully host a massive sports tournament without descending into chaos? FIFA, soccer’s international organizing body, has smartly hedged. In choosing South Africa, they can ostensibly tap into the best of both worlds — an industrialized democratic African nation not currently undergoing a civil war, and a first class African country brimming with the continent’s possibilities.

The previous Olympics were, of course, also held in a developing nation, but that event was a breeze by comparison. In Beijing, the regime used an iron hand to tamp down potential flare-ups, especially regarding the key issues of infrastructure and security. The Chinese, however, had one city to deal with, while the 2010 World Cup organizers must manage nine. What’s more, there is no iron hand in South Africa, which is in part what made the country so appealing in the first place. But with horrendous violent crime statistics, Stygian transportation problems and an angry underclass that cannot be controlled by the state, the FIFA showcase could explode like a French striker facing an Italian midfielder.

How shall it all pan out? FIFA — a powerful extra-governmental organization sometimes compared to the pre-Renaissance Vatican — is holding thumbs, to say nothing of the South African authorities. Regardless, World Cup preparations are altering the country — arguably Africa’s most important — and it seems appropriate to document these changes. In this, the first of a series of posts leading up to the 2010 tournament, we shall kick off at centre field, as it were — in the newly refurbished FNB Stadium, now called Soccer City.

It’s a good place to start for several reasons, foremost among them that fact that the grounds are the very place where the new South Africa became a genuine possibility: Nelson Mandela, two days after his release from prison in February 1990, addressed 120,000 people packed into the FNB stands and ushered in the post-apartheid-era. The stadium’s sports history is no less impressive: Countless South African soccer league games have been played at FNB, ferocious battles between Kaiser Chiefs and the Orlando Pirates — the local Manchester United and Chelsea. It is close enough to Coca-Cola Stadium, the site of the epic 1995 Rugby World Cup win recently dramatized by Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, to be sprinkled with some of that event’s nation-building fairy dust. But FNB, a concrete relic of the apartheid years, was too small for a FIFA World Cup final. Enter the trowels, the backhoes, and an impressive $308 million (CDN) — a figure not without controversy in a country where 35 million people live south of the poverty line.

Soccer City lies on a nodal point between Johannesburg proper and its largest, most important township — Soweto. It was here, in this strip of no-man’s land, that the mechanics of apartheid, and more specifically the Group Areas Act, were so perfectly iterated. Millions of blacks were forced to live in informal settlements on the fringes of the city, in order to provide South Africa’s financial heart with a ready supply of labour. Soweto was the flashpoint for the resistance movement; apartheid suffered the first of its interminable death throes after riots tore through the township in 1976. In the late eighties, when apartheid was all but dead, ethnic violence stoked by the regime turned the township into a de facto war zone. Now, Soweto has regained its rightful place as the articulation of the South African paradox: Staggeringly rich, astonishingly poor, vibrant, violent, and pregnant with future possibility.

The township is linked to the city’s northern suburbs by the M2 highway, and to drive this route is to parse Johannesburg’s essential character. This is, and always has been, a mining town. The air is particulate with red dust; there is a taste of metal on the tongue. Slanted roofs of corrugated iron flash with sun; mine dumps striated with red and gold mark the land like tribal scars. As always, the Highveld afternoon is febrile with a coming storm. This is a journey through Johannesburg’s DNA. To the right, the site of Langlaagte farm, where — as all Jo’burg children are taught — a man named George Harrison stumbled over a rich vein of gold on an afternoon in 1886. A week later, a city of tents, picks, shovels and rapacity was born. It spread virus-like into Booysens, Doornfontein and beyond — up the reef, devouring precious metal and people alike.

Only ten years after Mr. Harrison’s fortuitous discovery, Johannesburg was 100,000 strong and delivering 27 percent of the world’s gold supply. Twenty years after incorporation it was — and has remained — the richest and most industrialized city in Africa. As R.V. Selope Thema, editor of the Black Nationalist, once wrote: “There can be no doubt that the historian…will point to the period between the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand and the establishment of the city of Johannesburg as a turning point in the history not only of South Africa, but of the whole continent.”

This history follows the driver as he takes the Nasrec exhibition grounds off-ramp, once home to the Rand Easter Show, the apartheid-era mega funfair that survived the regime for twelve years before being terminated by a violent taxi drivers’ strike. Like an apparition, Soccer City reveals itself through the red dust. The stadium looks as if it has always been here; there are no harsh angles, no sharp edges. What strikes one in this age of architectural ostentation is its modesty, which itself must count as an act of audacity. Officially completed in October of 2009, it is still very much a construction zone, but it is a question of final touches. Four months old, and Soccer City is already an iconic, inviolable part of the Johannesburg landscape.

It is roughly circular, as if fashioned by a hand. (The press materials insist that it takes the form of a calabash, the African clay pot used all over the continent.) Mismatched slats the colour of Johannesburg’s rich earth form the shell. From one angle, the Brixton and Hillbrow towers — landmarks that have always defined the city’s priapic, masculine Id. From another, a flayed mine dump the colour of polished gold. The slats are gently reminiscent of Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project in Seattle, but Soccer City is less whimsical, more reverent. On first glance, one allows that it will stand up against Sir Norman Foster’s refurbished Wembley, and the coming Barcelona FC Camp Nou. North American stadium builders, resolutely Scrooge-like with both space and ingenuity, could learn much here.

The architects, Boogertman Urban Edge + Partners, were commissioned to build a structure accommodating 94,000, with no obstructed sightlines and all the trimmings. The guts of the place are designed to resemble the crisscross of mine shafts that form the innards of the city. There is a vast loading dock, offices, a theatre, and that reflect complicated player hierarchies. On the north side, there is an artifact of the old apartheid-era FNB stadium, which shall function as the holding cell for hooligans visiting from previous colonial powers.

Standing on the field where more than a billion people will watch two nations play for the greatest prize in sports, one can’t help but reflect on how far South Africa has come since the first democratic elections in 1994. Rows of black chairs among the standard orange point to the nine other stadiums dotted across the country — all of them in troubled, vital southern African cities, all of them essential to the future of the continent. For a soccer fan — and really, who isn’t during Cup Final? — this is akin to sitting on God’s lap. That it smells like the playing fields that a Jo’burg boy spent his youth on, that the breeze blowing through the open roof is tinged with sweet-smelling Jo’burg dust, is so profoundly moving that it feels as if the bet FIFA has taken on this wounded country shall make winners of them yet. In the middle of the Soccer City pitch, it’s difficult to imagine anything other than the extended cheers of an ecstatic crowd.

(Photographs by Richard Poplak)

Make your own Vancouver Walrus cover and be entered to win a book prize pack from Douglas & McIntyre.

To celebrate Canada’s Olympic city and our March 2010 Vancouver cover story, we’re asking readers to create their very own Vancouver cover image and submit it to walrusmagazine.com. All eligible covers will be posted in an online gallery for public viewing. The winning image — as determined by online voting — will receive a Vancouver prize pack featuring six books from our generous sponsor, Douglas & McIntyre, along with lots of Walrus goodies.

To enter, just send your Vancouver cover image (photograph, illustration, painting, etc.) to vancouver@walrusmagazine.com. Please make sure you own the rights to the artwork submitted. We require a minimum size of 435 pixels wide by 600 pixels high, and request that you use uniform or low-contrast colours for the top third of the image — we’ll add The Walrus wordmark for you before displaying the covers online.

The contest closes at 5 p.m. PST on March 15; winners will be announced in this space on March 31.

Last Tuesday, the National Post published what turned out to be a great justification for the continued existence of Women’s Studies programs, in the form of an “angry, divisive and dubious” (to borrow a phrase) editorial against the discipline.

Now, the opinions expressed by the Post’s editorial board are, very often, not ours; a right-wing editorial would not normally merit a special response from us. This is different. For one thing, the paper’s official position — it bears repeating, official position — on Women’s Studies programs is outright offensive, and woefully uninformed. It states, for instance, that “Women’s Studies courses have taught that all women — or nearlyall [sic] — are victims and nearly all men are victimizers,” which should seem a careless generalization to anyone with a Women’s Studies degree. It cites dated concepts as though they’re generally accepted premises within this (apparently homogeneous) discipline. There ought to be a variation of Godwin’s Law to cover poorly contextualized Andrea Dworkin quotations.

But it would be too generous to say that the National Post’s editorial writers know little about Women’s Studies. That’s not what bothers us: ignorant stereotypes are familiar to all feminists. No, what disturbs us is that the Post considers Women’s Studies’ aims pernicious. The following quote is not, in fact, lifted from the Onion: “The radical feminism behind these courses has done untold damage to families, our court systems, labour laws, constitutional freedoms and even the ordinary relations between men and women.” Women’s Studies isn’t a corrective to an unjust society, you see — it’s a conspiracy which is responsible for such horrors as “employment equity,” “mandatory diversity training,” and “universal daycare and mandatory government-run kindergarten.” And thanks to feminism and the unbiased, professionally run, and state-subsidized education system it supports, your children may grow up believing that the differences between males and females are “relatively insignificant.”

This is, in our view, utter rubbish, and it is very much not OK. When a group with a longstanding, deeply entrenched systemic advantage — “privilege,” in the parlance of Women’s Studies and programs like it — speaks heatedly of its “rights” vis-à-vis a less privileged group, it’s usually seen as an expression of bigotry. “White rights” are generally invoked by white supremacists. The words “Jewish conspiracy” or “immigrant takeover” are surefire conversation stoppers. Heterosexuals who object to gay pride parades on the basis that no “straight parades” exist are, if not completely homophobic, not all that bright. In either case, the opinions expressed aren’t just stupid; they’re alarming. We don’t see why things should be any different when it comes to gender, and yet the “pendulum has swung” argument is somehow viable when women’s rights is the issue at stake.

It disturbs us that the Post — that any national publication — could consider such nonsense appropriate for publication. Disturbs, but doesn’t surprise. Somehow, sexism doesn’t register harshly; being a pig barely carries a stigma (in fact, you could argue that the inverse is true).

Feminists are used to responding to arguments against, and myths about, feminism with a litany of reasons why it’s still important: rape and sexual abuse; pay inequality; domestic violence; barriers to education and employment; the dearth of female representation in governments worldwide, in the professions, and in arts and letters (including, regrettably, in the pages of this magazine—we’re working on it). We shouldn’t have to; it should be generally accepted. That otherwise intelligent people need to be reminded of why the cause exists — that they find the pursuit of gender equality in any way objectionable, and feel comfortable stating as much to a national audience — is, in fact, a slam-dunk argument for the importance of Women’s Studies programs.

So, thank you National Post Editorial Board. The next time we’re called upon to defend our common sense, we’ll point to your editorial and leave our opponents to figure out the rest.

1. “Beyond the Poverty” by Olivier Jarda with Taylor Marie Young | The Mark
The phrase “the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere” has been used more than any other to describe Haiti in the aftermath of the recent devastating earthquake. While this statement is factual, Jarda and Young argue that it implies a moral superiority on the part of media commentators, most graphically displayed by Pat Robertson’s “Haiti is cursed” rant.

2. “Canadian Reactor Division Is on the Block” by John Lorinc | Green Inc.
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the crown corporation in charge of Canada’s nuclear technology, is looking for investors to help sell its heavy water reactors around the globe. AECL has had its fair share of nuclear troubles recently (ex. the Chalk River/medical isotope debacle), but Ottawa is looking to expand the brand and return Canada to its leading position in nuclear power technology.

3. “Sperm donation drops sharply in UK” | Futurity
Apparently, the drop-off coincided with the passing of a 2006 law that removes donor anonymity. The problem has become so bad that women have resorted to buying fresh sperm on the internet and using DIY insemination kits. Looks like the market has never been better for Stephen Colbert’s Formula 401.

4. “5 Worst Reactions to the State of the Union” by Max Fisher | The Atlantic Wire
US President Barack Obama delivered his first State of the Union speech this week, and his country’s twenty-four-hour cable news channels were there to provide instant analysis — and verbal gaffes galore. Chris Matthews, what were you thinking?

5. “What’s Wrong with the Evening News?” by Morgan Clendaniel | GOOD Blog
Clendaniel finds a pitch-perfect takedown of television journalism, produced by Charlie Brooker of the BBC’s Newswipe.

6. “iPad: Sorry, Steve Jobs — MAD TV beat you to it” by Sarah Liss | Things That Go Pop!
A significant portion of my Wednesday afternoon was spent listening to a shaky audio stream of Steve Jobs’ iPad announcement while clicking through various live blogs of the event. When he announced that Apple’s long-awaited tablet computer would officially be called the iPad, I shuddered for precisely this reason.

7. “Is Apple’s iPad ‘underwhelming’ or ‘a game changer’?” by Regan Ray | J-Source
The iPad has not been met with universal acclaim. Nobody seems to be overly excited about it, while many seem downright angry (I’m looking at you, Gizmodo). Ray provides a good round-up of opinions from the journalism and publishing industries.

8. “Why Are Girl Journalists in Movies So Lame?” by Sara Libby | Double X
Focusing on Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character in the critically acclaimed Crazy Heart, Libby deconstructs how female journalists are portrayed in American cinema: more prone to compromise their journalistic ethics than their male counterparts; often falling for the male subjects of their stories.

9. “Community TV blamed for cable cash crunch” by Cathy Edwards | rabble.ca
Edwards, spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS), laments the death of easily accessible community television. Because of a 1997 CRTC ruling, carriers are no longer obligated to carry public access stations. These stations are now in danger of dying off. Edwards suggests that if Canadians make noise about their demise, the CRTC will have to listen.

10. “Video Podcast #2: Free Hoder” by Jesse Brown | Search Engine
Hossein (“Hoder”) Derakhshan is a Canadian blogger who is being held without charges or trial in Iranian jail. Not so long ago, Hoder was celebrated for teaching Iranians how to use new media as a tool for freedom. Then his political allegiance shifted, and he began writing in support of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Brown argues that in spite of Hoder’s newfound politics, he is a Canadian citizen, and it is the responsibility of our federal government to do everything it can to see him released.

Last summer I took a gig hosting a film screening and lecture series at a library well north of Toronto. In a sterile meeting room upholstered with folding chairs and an extravagant hi-def projector that nobody employed there knew how to use, I began the series by screening Beshkempir, a 1998 Kyrgyz-language Bildungsroman. It’s a poky piece of social realism shot in a country most of my viewers had never heard of, but was a unanimous hit amongst the crowd of suburban housewives and budding cinephiles. The reaction to the second (and final) film I screened was even more startling.

The movie was Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World, one of my favourite Canadian features of the past decade. My idea was that these eager armchair film scholars would learn how vibrant, exciting, and bizarre their national cinema could be. Their response? Not so much.

As I began to suss out feedback, one woman furrowed her brow and shook her head, grumbling “I couldn’t find one thing that I liked about it.” My attempts to defend the film, its extraordinary humour, its stylistic idiosyncrasy, its riffs on American cultural imperialism, and the obsessive peccadilloes of its director fell on deaf ears. Whether they got it didn’t matter. They disliked it.

As I prepared to pack up my notes and get back on the roundabout bus route home to my downtown basement apartment, there was a stir of dissent in the ranks. An older, Eastern European man popped out of his metal chair and ardently defended the film’s clever use of montage editing, and its cartoonishly tragic thematic flourish. Not only did this crotchety retiree get Maddin’s film. He liked it a whole lot too.

Guy Maddin was in Toronto recently, hosting a series of lectures, screenings, and discussions at the University of Toronto. Unofficially dubbed “Maddin Mania” by co-organizer Kay Armatage (the official title was the bulkier “Guy Maddin: Confession and the Cinema of Uninhibition”), the event was an unqualified success, with scads of students, film buffs, and screwball townies packing the university’s Innis Town Hall. As evinced by the scores of at-hand Maddin maniacs (or would-be converts), plenty of people seem to be getting Guy’s films. But, packed house or no, an event like this can prove problematic.

When you welcome a filmmaker of this calibre into the academic institution, you run the risk of further distancing his work from a popular audience. This wouldn’t be such a sticking point where it not for that fact that Guy Maddin, in my estimation at least, is Canada’s premier populist filmmaker.

During a string of introductions on night two of Maddin Mania, Toronto International Film Festival co-director and cineaste-about-town Cameron Bailey acutely described Maddin as Canada’s national filmmaker. And it makes sense. Behind the veneer of his stylistic peculiarities, Maddin trades in distinctly Canadian forms, churning out shorts (The Heart of the World, Glorious), jibes at what Canadian cinema scholar Jim Leach has called our tradition of “documentary-realism” (My Winnipeg, which took the Best Canadian Feature prize at TIFF 2007), and most notably, melodrama (Careful, Saddest Music, and more or less everything else he’s done).

One thing that emerged out of the four-day frenzy of Maddin Mania — besides how intelligent, candid, and wildly funny Guy himself is — was his preoccupation with melodrama. While the term often brings to mind the well-soused domestic drama of Douglas Sirk or the inflated histrionics of a Lifetime movie of the week, Maddin stressed that “good” melodrama presents emotion stripped of pretense. No furtive glances between lovers! No tender handholding! No posturing! No time for timidity or hesitation! Irony be damned! Only naked intention! Heartbreak! Tragedy! Emotional calamity!

Post–Slumdog Millionaire, it’s easy enough to gobble down a bit Kyrgyz filmmaking and empathize with the flat universality of its themes, at the same time indulging the typically Western tourist impulse (“Their clothes are different from my clothes!”). But presented to a room of suburban housewives acclimatized to Can-Cin’s weepier dramatics, one of Maddin’s films may seem baffling, alienating, wacky, or whatever. His filmography is harder to recognize as our own because it doesn’t present itself as The Red Violin or Anne of Green Gables, or whatever we’ve come to expect Canadian cinema to be. But (and here’s the kicker), Maddin’s movies are precisely these kinds of movies.

The difference is that he refuses to slow-play the melodramatic impulses of movies like The Grey Fox, Passchendaele, and everything Atom Egoyan has done. Unlike Egoyan — with his strained families, hidden secrets, mawkish string sections, and increasingly humorless stabs at self-seriousness — Maddin can get emotional without all the maudlin posturing. And all his resounding emotional primitivism is echoed in stylistic appropriation of largely bygone film forms. It’s as if he’s trying to reverse-engineer an origin story for Canadian cinema: one that shuns Bombardier corporate films and Yankee-subsidized Mountie adventures, and instead carries the kernels of our whole existent cinematic traditions, from the melodrama, to the docudrama, to the NFB short. It’s at once characteristically Canadian and defiant, a stiff, sissy-boy slap against our nation’s diagnosed proclivity toward politeness. It’s at once the frankest expression of our national cinematic tendencies and a surrealist remedy for them.

And sure, maybe in ten years we’ll be able to recuperate Egoyan’s ham-fisted heartstring plucking as some clever riff on Joe Eszterhas–styled pulp erotica. But until then, Maddin’s strain of melodrama seems the more decent, and honest, proposal.

(Pictured, Isabella Rossellini and Mark McKinney in a scene from Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World. Photo courtesy of IFC Films)