Bruce Cheadle of The Canadian Press has written an analysis piece of the current head-butting going on between the Parliament Hill press gallery and the Prime Minister's Office.

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From the BBC:

The zorb protects the user with a cushion of air

Zorbing - effectively throwing yourself down a slope in a giant ball - has become the latest extreme sport craze to sweep the world.

Although zorbing was invented in 2000, it has only recently begun to take off around the world.

It involves a giant plastic ball, which has two skins - one inside the other. The person zorbing is in the area between the skins, which is pumped up with air. The middle ball effectively suspends them on a cushion of air 700mm off the ground, and the ball is then rolled down a hill.

"It's not really amazingly scary, it's not an amazing adrenaline rush - it's just bizarrely fun," the inventor of zorbing, Andrew Akers, told BBC World Service's Culture Shock programme. "I don't know why."

Like a number of other extreme sports, such as bungee jumping, zorbing originated in New Zealand.

Mr Akers explained that there are a number of reasons New Zealanders why have developed an attraction to developing these types of activities.

"We're so far away from anywhere that we've really had to make our own fun," he said.

(H/T to The Tyee)

Conservative MP Colin Mayes, inheritor of noted anti-racist Darryl Stinson's old Okanagan-Shuswap riding, has written that perhaps jail sentences should be the appropriate punishment for misbehaving journalists.

Update: Mayes has now retracted his remarks.

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Hmmm. Another MSM column that takes a whack at blogs for being something they're not: a news medium. And in this one, Russell Smith also gasps at the hatred projecting out of monitors from blogs. However, some of his points are worthy of consideration.

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A Vermont newspaper publisher is threatening to quit the Associated Press unless he gets some answers on why the agency fired Christopher Graff, the veteran AP bureau chief in the state. And some excerpts from AP boss Tom Curley's response to four politicians over the firing (H/T to Morgan W. Brown).

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An entry in the Chevy Online Apprentice make-your-own ad contest -- some subversive got into the game. :) (H/T to Zerby)

Sincetheir attempt to get Denmark's Jyllands-Posten prosecuted for hate crimes or blasphemy failed, a group of 27 Muslim organizations have now launched a defamation suit against the newspaper over cartoons the paper printed back in ...   more »

On the sign of the Vesta, the venerable T.O. greasy spoon at Bathurst and Dupont: Reputable since 1955.

They have Fench Fries on the menu. I don't know if those are the same as Feedom Fries.

The Western Standard is asking people to pony up a few bucks to help it fight a complaint launched against it by a Calgary Muslim man over the Danish cartoons it reprinted.

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Good news out of Baghdad: Journalist Jill Carroll has been released.

The two biggest unions representing media workers both blasted the new Conservative government's plans to limit media access.

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Don't know how I wound up there, but this blurb on Canoe.ca caught my eye: "Recognizing the changing media landscape, Quebecor is converging its resources to create a new and exciting path to a successful future, ...   more »

Labour lawyer Thomas Geoghehan quite likes The Disposable American, by NYT economics writer Louis Uchitelle.

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This BBC piece looks at the pressures on Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai as he wiggled Abdul Rahman off the hook of an apostasy charge by having the Muslim-turned-Christian declared mentally incompetent.

It's a decent general overview of the case at this point.

The fun fact: No one has ever been executed in Afghanistan for apostasy, even under the Taliban.

Here's a journo-centric bit of info:

In similar cases in recent years, two Afghan editors accused of blasphemy both faced the death sentence, but one claimed asylum abroad and the other was freed after a short spell in jail.

And here's a related story: Italy mulls Afghan convert asylum

What the hell, one more: What Islam says on religious freedom

Unfortunately, Morgan Spurlock, who puked on camera in his film Super Size Me, must be removed from that exclusive and apparently dwindling club.

The PMO is aggressively trying to limit reporters' access. On Monday, Parliamentary security personnel were made to herd journalists away from Harper's office, where a photo op involving cancer-stricken youngsters giving Prime Minister Stephen Harper daffodils was in progress.

Update:This Paul Wells blog posting is probably the best commentary I've seen so far.

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From her column Panic in the Newspaper Biz, distributed by Creator's Syndicate and found by myself on truthout:

I've thought for years that newspapers should all be owned by nonprofits. There is a chance something like this will actually happen-the Newspaper Guild, in alliance with the Communications Workers of America, is getting ready to bid on the 12 KR papers McClatchy has to sell. Eight of the 12 are Guild papers, with combined employment of 7,000 and circulation of 1.3 million. Among the 12 are such outstanding newspapers as The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Jose Mercury News and St. Paul Pioneer Press.

    McClatchy can't swallow all of them, and so the two unions have turned to a "worker-friendly" investment fund to back their bid. Keep an eye on this: It is a most hopeful development.

I also liked this bon mot that kicked the column off:

I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying - it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.

From an NYT article on the new book by magazine editor Bonnie Fuller titled The Joys of Much Too Much:

... Ms. Fuller says she grew up "a geeky, Canadian Jewish girl from a dysfunctional family."

Along the way, she was treated badly by the cool set and suffered from minimal fashion sense, even as she relentlessly pursued a career in fashion journalism — propelled, she said, by her insecurities.

At Cosmopolitan and Glamour, she did not take maternity leaves, setting a whole new standard for pregnant editors. "I'm not embarrassed to say I was reading proofs in the delivery room," she writes.

Not even a little embarrassed?

As the  McClatchy company prepares to sell 12 of the Knight-Ridder newspapers it just bought, prospective suitors have one main question on their mind: Will buying one of the papers help make them a regional superpower?

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Technology journalist Edward Tenner wonders if the brilliant technology behind Google has had a negative impact on the critical faculties of students, who used to have to work their brains to create a decent search query.

In addition, he criticizes Google for basing search results in part on links to a page, which he likens to citation analysis in the natural sciences -- a practice which could leave some very useful information buried.

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The parliamentary vote in Ukraine on Sunday was billed as a contest between the blues of the pro-Russia, old skool forces led by Victor Yanukovych, and the orange, pro-Western reformists led by Viktor Yushchenko -- with the followers of former Yushchenko ally Yulia Tymoshenko thrown in.

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Heavy.com has almost no text on it, with video programming (and ads -- can't forget the ads!) forming most of its content and video games determining its aesthetics. And as a result, it had a measly 5.5 million unique visitors in February, tripling its audience from a year earlier.

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The NYT has obtained a memo of a meeting between Dubya and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Snippets of that memo that made the rounds of the British media a few months ago. While not strictly new news, the NYT account does offer claim to offer much more detail.

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The slow pace of reform and economic pressure by Russia has dampened the enthusiasm of some supporters of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, led by pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko. Voters there are going to the polls today, and the old-skool, pro-Russian forces led by Viktor Yanukovych are expected to make gains.

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This NYT article looks at Al-Jazeera International's coming launch in late May, and what the operation has to do to be successful.

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A new book by Louis Uchitelle, an economics writer for the NYT, is getting released on Tuesday: The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences -- a topic near and dear to my heart. :)

Here's an excerpt of an article based on that book entitled, "Retraining laid-off workers, but for what?":

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A year ago, the corrupt government of Askar Akayev was peacefully replaced in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan. However, the country's problems haven't exactly gone away.

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On March 24, 1976, a military dictatorship came to power in Argentina, lasting until 1983. To be labeled a subversive by the regime would almost certainly mean imprisonment and torture, if not disappearance and death.

At least 9,000 died, and some human rights groups say the true cost in lives is probably closer to 30,000.

But now, Argentinans are confident those horrible times are forever behind them, says this BBC story.

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Democracy Now! had some guests expand on the story I posted earlier this week about the Lincoln Group's public opinion manipulation efforts in Iraq on behalf of the Pentagon.

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There were some late reports Friday that Abdul Rahman, the Afghanistan man who converted to Christianity from Islam, might be freed.

However, Muslim clerics in Afghanistan are still calling for his death, so if the state doesn't kill him, one could be forgiven for wondering if private parties will.

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