Just yesterday, Statistics Canada released labour force figures for employment (or lack thereof) in British Columbia, and across Canada.
As is the case in the United States, in Canada — and more particularly in British Columbia — the economy is experiencing what is being euphemistically referred to (in Orwellian terms, although politicians have no trouble at all using this doublespeak) as a “jobless recovery”.
This morning, Mark Fiore comments on this so-called “jobless recovery”.
Can’t help but ‘Smile’
In Vancouver, it’s spring break. Some 538,000 children across the province of British Columbia children are off school for the next 9 days, and parents are scrambling to find something with which to keep their children occupied during this period.
How fortunate, then, that Columbia Tri-Star home video has just released Mona Lisa Smile, an engaging and watchable “noble teacher” period drama (think Dead Poet’s Society) about a progressive art-history professor (Julia Roberts) who transports her bohemian West Coast sensibilities to the upper-crust East Coast Wellesley College. On teacher Katherine Watson’s first day in class, she discovers that the student body is all brain and no imagination. The girls are hyperintelligent slaves to the textbook, mere regurgitators of established wisdom — including the widely held belief that the degree they want is just flypaper to attract the husband they need. Exemplary feminist melodrama, Mona Lisa Smile is this week’s VanRamblings.com video / DVD recommendation. And a good one it is, too.
Also, new at your local video store this second weekend in March: Undefeated, a made-for-HBO-TV story about a boxer who rises in rank to be the champion of his weight class only to lose touch with his principles; and, Red Water, the story of a pair of ruthless criminals who search for stolen drug money that’s been dropped in a river (do you think that there might be a man-eating bull shark in that river?).
What’s Coming to the Screen on Your Wrist
Geez, watches are such boring, pedestrian things; I mean, they just tell time, don’t they?
Of course, the geeky thing to do would be to replace it with one of the new SPOT wireless watches, which give you weather, news headlines, calendar reminders, etc. via MSN. Because the content for such watches is limited at this time, many will wait before dumping their old-fashioned timepieces (and pay $10 a month for a subscription to a watch).
But SpotStop.com points to an advertisement from watch-maker Fossil and MSN that suggests possible future content.
Next up, for sure, for SPOT watches will be sports scores (can’t wait, huh?). Other content coming soon: traffic conditions and alerts; a dining guide (to nearby restaurants); a movie time / location finder; and “daily diversions” (horoscopes, lottery numbers, words of the day, etc.).
An Unusually Brazen Dirty Tricks Operation
Looks like the “vast right-wing conspiracy” crew are back in business down south.
Writing in Salon magazine, Joe Conason prepares readers for what is sure to become “an unusually nasty presidential election”, pointing to this ad by Citizens United, written and produced by the same group of “consultants” who brought Paula Jones, Willie Horton and Whitewater to the world.
In the coming months, we will all become witness to a “scorched earth campaign”, the likes of which we’ve not seen since the last Presidential election, the focus of which will most certainly play on the resentment of U.S. citizens towards the French, and gays and lesbians. If Bushies’ handlers are really really lucky, they’ll even dredge up a sex scandal.