In this hectic world, often we don’t have sufficient time to connect the dots between seemingly disconnected stories that flicked their way through our collective consciousness. To help bridge this gap, say hello to Connecting The Dots, where I’ll endeavour to bring together and seemingly disparate stories into a contextualized, cohesive whole. Or I’ll just slap together tangentially related stories and wrap up with some grandiose closing sentence. Either way, let’s go!
This is an age of information, right? Right? We have seen the future of “investigative journalism” — and it is WikiLeaks. Now media outlets needn’t fear the societal repercussions of their merciless cuts to investigative reporting. Rather than paying for “reporters” to “cultivate sources” and “investigate” “stories”, they can simply wait for anonymous whistleblowers to send shit to WikiLeaks, which the online muck-racking storehouse will then turn over to the big media outlets, for their unpaid interns to pore over.
OK, so I’m sure the transfer of 92,000 documents about the Afghanistan war from WikiLeaks to The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel was more involved than that. And my snarky synopsis notwithstanding, the rise of an organization like WikiLeaks — so long as they’re vigilantly professional — is a good thing for society in general. The ultimate function of journalism in a functioning democracy is to hold decision-makers to account for their actions, by providing the populace with all of the relevant information. Whether that information is revealed by intrepid beat-working by a paid journo, or provided by a spurned soldier or ex-employee of a big firm is, in the end, irrelevant, so long as the information being disseminated is accurate and pertinent.
The critical importance of accurate information in a functioning democracy is what makes the most recent decision of our nation’s autocratic assholes, lead by Stephen Harper, so infuriating. Apparently their plan to scrap the mandatory census, in favour of a voluntary one, was months in the making prior to its announcement earlier this month. That decision, supposedly an attempt to avoid infringing upon the privacy rights of Canadians, seems so monumentally and mind-bogglingly idiotic that I’m supremely grateful for folks like Paul Saurette, who can lay out exactly why this move isn’t mere short-sighted stupidity on the Conservatives’ part; rather, it’s the latest cynical attempt to radically alter the landscape of Canadian political philosophy by choking off the flow of dissenting views.
Please, someone out there who has something incriminating on Harper… go to WikiLeaks. We need something irrefutable, something concrete that will get his scumbag out of power once and for all. (Ray Novak, I’m looking at you.)
Leaders lead. ‘Cause that’s what they do. It’s not been a good week-or-so for folks in positions of power. BP CEO Tony Hayward has (finally) announced that his tenure at the helm of the disgraced oil giant will end in a few months’ time (though that’s probably a relief for him, as he can finally get his life back — unlike the 11 rig workers who died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion). Apple CEO Steve Jobs has faced criticism for his “smug and defiant” response to concerns over the fact that the iPhone 4 carries a pretty fundamental flaw.
Thankfully, it’s not all doom and gloom for our society’s movers and shakers — President Obama is set to become the first sitting president in U.S. history to appear on a daytime talk show when he visits The View later this week. You’d think he’s probably mentally unstable from dealing with the Gulf oil spill, the economic stimulus package, the health-care reform fight and two wars… but to voluntarily subject himself to the inane nattering of the imbeciles on that panel — well, he must be on pretty solid psychological footing. Good on him.
Don’t drink and drive… unless it’s POWERTHIRST. The Ontario government moved today to acknowledge the danger that even small levels of alcohol can have on one’s ability to drive (especially for young drivers), by implementing a zero-alcohol policy for drivers 21 and younger. I’ve got no qualms with this, as there’s no doubt that consuming a beverage that can fundamentally alter your perception of reality isn’t something that should be done before getting behind the wheel of a multi-thousand-pound potential death-machine.
So… when does the crackdown on energy drinks begin?
Yes, in a bit of coincidental timing that seems tailor-made for this blog post, an editorial put online today by the Canadian Medical Association Journal posits that the government should investigate the potential health hazards of energy drinks for children and young adults. The issue is that, of course, Red Bull and its terrifying ilk contain ridiculous overdoses of caffeine, to which young people aren’t accustomed (since they haven’t yet developed a tolerance over years or decades of obsessive coffee-drinking necessary to simply trudge through the agony of everyday existence).
Is it possible that slugging an energy drink could make someone as jittery and potentially dangerous behind the wheel as “just a couple of” drinks?
Moreover, what happens if they’ve actually drank a Red Bull & vodka?
(Actually, I can answer that last one: They’re an idiot and shouldn’t be on the road — or anywhere, for that matter.)