A veteran Canadian media analyst challenges the CBC's interpretation of its ratings from this past year.

From the BBC:

The holes in Samantha Wilson's lungs are getting bigger.

There is no cure for her illness and if it continues to get worse it will eventually kill her.

Samantha is 37 and has emphysema, a progressive condition normally associated with older people who have smoked tobacco regularly throughout their lives.

Samantha's doctor, Dr Onn Min Kon, a consultant physician of respiratory medicine at St Mary's Hospital in London, believes her cannabis smoking may be to blame for her condition.

Dr Kon said he had several other young patients who smoke cannabis and have lung diseases normally seen only in older tobacco smokers.

He said: "I've got a collection of young people who have lungs that look like they're 65-year-olds."

And I pronounce it good. It put a smile on my face, a buzz in my head and wonder in my soul the way a particularly perfectly decorated Christmas tree does. The Crystal makes Bloor Street look much more 21st Century.

(And if anyone expects me to say, "It makes Toronto world class!," I'm not going there)

Christopher Hume, the Toronto Star's architecture critic, attempts to answer the question Has the cultural renaissance begun? -- or, more accurately, attempts to suck people into buying Sunday's and Monday's editions of the Star for the answer.

However, there are some useful links to follow within it.

From the Observer:

BBC news is preparing to axe hundreds of jobs as part of the plans by director-general Mark Thompson to cut the corporation's budget.

Flagship shows including The 10 O'Clock News and Newsnight could be affected, according to insiders, and many of the BBC's renowned foreign bureaux are likely to be scaled down or closed.

Senior executives are currently deciding which jobs will go, but one source said: 'Many hundreds of jobs are under threat in news and there are serious questions over whether the quality of programmes like Newsnight and The 10 O'Clock News can be maintained.'

The BBC's news division, which employs around 2,000 journalists, has been asked to find savings of 5 per cent a year for the next five years, according to senior sources.

Thompson is demanding the cuts following the government's decision in January to award the corporation a below-inflation licence fee increase, starting from April this year, instead of the inflation plus 2.3 per cent settlement the BBC asked for.

Nancy Cleeland spent 10 years as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times. She writes in the Huffington Post why she was glad to accept a buyout and leave: (h/t to Getting It Right)

The Globe and Mail's Stephen Brunt has a big feature on Ultimate Fighting in Saturday's paper. Being the elitist that I am, having got some college and all, I found this sentence particularly amusing:

When I attended one of those early shows in Buffalo, the fights seemed remarkably crude and pointless, and the audience seemed drawn from a demographic that would have found pro wrestling as challenging as Shakespeare.

My first and only introduction to Ultimate Fighting came about five years ago in a scuzzy Scarborough bar frequented by my uncle -- plus a few who could have been Goodfellas extras, plus a few more from the Larry The Cable Guy demographic.

I was obviously repulsed by what was happening on screen. One of the sub-humans noticed this. With eyes glittering, he turned and asked me in an eerie voice: "Whatsamatter man? Too real for you?"

Yes! Exactly!

The full story might not be available online for non-subscribers to the Globe, but it's worth a read if you can access it by whatever means necessary.