From the NYT:

You think your local water supply is polluted. But you’re getting the runaround from local officials, and you can’t get your local newspaper to look into your concerns. What do you do?

A group of journalists say they have an answer. You hire them to investigate and write about what they find.

The idea, which they are calling “community-funded journalism,” is now being tested in the San Francisco Bay area, where a new nonprofit, Spot Us, is using its Web site, spot.us, to solicit ideas for investigative articles and the money to pay for the reporting. But the experiment has also raised concerns of journalism being bought by the highest bidder.

The idea is that anyone can propose a story, though the editors at Spot Us ultimately choose which stories to pursue. Then the burden is put on the citizenry, which is asked to contribute money to pay upfront all of the estimated reporting costs. If the money doesn’t materialize, the idea goes unreported.

“Spot Us would give a new sense of editorial power to the public,” said David Cohn, a 26-year-old Web journalist who received a $340,000, two-year grant from the Knight Foundation to test his idea. “I’m not Bill and Melinda Gates, but I can give $10. This is the Obama model. This is the Howard Dean model.”

And if they did, they probably wouldn't care. From a BBC story about a conflict between Mayans in Guatemala and Canada's Goldcorp over a proposed gold mine in the Central American country.

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From a BBC interview with the likely next president of Pakistan:

Asif Ali Zardari said, in a BBC interview, that the world and Pakistan were losing the war on terror.

"It is an insurgency", he said, "and an ideological war. It is our country and we will defend it.

"The world is losing the war. I think at the moment they (the Taleban) definitely have the upper hand.

"The issue, which is not just a bad case scenario as far as Pakistan is concerned or as Afghanistan is concerned but it is going to be spreading further. The whole world is going to be affected by it."

Also see this Aug. 21 BBC story: Spiral of violence threatens Pakistan.

This guest BBC column by high-profile Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid is also worth a read: Pakistan's new stage of struggle.

Rex Murphy wrote the following in Saturday's Globe and Mail:

Now we hear that, actually, the law he passed changed nothing. I like parliamentary expert Ned Franks's description of that law as meaning “a fixed election date if necessary, but not necessarily a fixed election date,” which the good Queen's professor supplemented with the observation that “it's what in the trade they call a ‘pious hope.' ”

From my Wednesday CTV.ca feature:

Queens University's Ned Franks agrees, telling CTV.ca the bill creates more of a political problem for Harper than a legal or constitutional one in calling an early election. He agreed one could think of the law as 'a fixed election date if necessary, but not necessarily a fixed election date' -- to paraphrase former prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. "It's what in the trade they call a 'pious hope' -- in other words, a promise that can be broken with impunity if you think you can get away with it," he said of the act.

From the NYT:

- The Edge of Heaven

- Tell No One

- Frozen River

- The Last Mistress

- A Girl Cut In Two

- Vicky Cristina Barcelona

- Trumbo

- Man On A Wire

- Days and Clouds

- Elegy

Would Usain Bolt been as successful at the Beijing Games had he been named Usain Stroll, Usain Saunter or Usain Mosey?

The NYT's Dexter Filkins, writing in the NYT Magazine, tells about what it was like when he confirmed to a U.S. Marine that his comrade -- his face "opened in a large V, split like meat, fish maybe" -- was dead. Filkins was out on patrol with the jarheads in Fallujah, Iraq back in November 2004:

I felt it then. Darting, out of reach. You go into these places, and you think they’re overrated, they are not nearly as dangerous as people say. Keep your head; keep the gunfire in front of you. You get close and come out unscathed every time, your face as youthful and as untroubled as before. The life of the reporter: always someone else’s pain. A woman in an Iraqi hospital cradles her son newly blinded, and a single tear rolls down her cheek. The cheek is so dry, and the tear moves so slowly that you focus on it for a while, the tear traveling across the wide desert plain. You need a corpse for the newspaper, so you take a bunch of marines to get one. Then suddenly it’s there, the warm liquid on your face, the death you have always avoided, smiling back at you as if it knew all along. Your fault.

Filkins needed the corpse of an insurgent for a photo. The Marines offered to go up a minaret tower in search of one, bounding ahead of Filkins and his photographer.

The soldier who died that day was Lance Cpl. William L. Miller, a 22-year-old from Pearland, Texas. Filkins ran into the yound Marine's parents a few months later while at a memorial service in North Carolina. He approached them with trepidation.

“We’re so grateful to you,” Lewis (the father - BD) said to me when the service was over, down on the gym floor. “If it weren’t for you, we would never have known how our son died.”

From Reuters:

Ahmed Nouri Raziak, 38, was handed over to representatives of the Associated Press at a U.S. military compound in Baghdad. He had been detained by U.S. and Iraqi forces at his home in the northern city of Tikrit on June 4, the agency said in a report from Baghdad.

Raziak's release comes two days after the military freed an Iraqi cameraman for Reuters, Ali al-Mashhadani, who was held for three weeks without charge after being arrested while renewing his credentials at a U.S. military press office.

As in Mashhadani's case, the U.S. military said it believed Raziak posed a threat, but concluded after a review that he did not. It did not elaborate.

From CTV.ca:

A  Canadian woman is one of two journalists abducted near Mogadishu in Somalia by unidentified armed men.

The journalists were on their way to visit a refugee camp on Saturday.

A hotel employee in Mogadishu said the two journalists went to Elasha, about 18 kilometres southwest of Mogadishu.

"They left this morning and their whereabouts are unknown," Ajos Mohamed Nor told The Associated Press.

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In Tuesday's Toronto Star, Martin Knelman raved about two shows in Montreal: The Yves St. Laurent exhibit at the Museum of Fine Art and and the Quebec Triennial show at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal.

He promised one would be "dazzled to the point of speechlessness " by the retrospective.

YSL was a brilliant, creative fellow, and his work is definitely emblematic of its various times. But at the same time, many of the garments on display had a dated quality to me. And there's little in the exhibit that puts the work in the full context of the times.

Now, if you want jaw-dropping, there are some outstanding pieces in the Quebec Triennial show.

The Triennial only goes to Sept. 7, while the YSL show goes to Sept. 28. On a prosaic note, you can see the triennial exhibit for only $8, while it's $15 to see YSL.

The YSL exhibit is open later, until 9 p.m.. MACM closes at 6 p.m.

Is number two on the New York Times' most-emailed stories list as I write this:

Toronto Journal: In a cyclist-friendly city, a black hole for bikes.

Several weeks ago, I was on the Queen car. As it passed by Kenk's shop near Strachan, the car fell silent as people turned to look at this now infamous shrine. Then there was a low hub-bub punctuated by "three thousand bikes!"

Addendum

There's a "God loves you" pamphlet tucked into the spokes of a small wheel on Kenk's door.

Various graffitti includes "Bad Bikema" and "Center for Poor Karma and Pain Research."

Addendum - II

Towards the end of August, a new piece of graffitti showed up on Kenk's wall: "Thou shalt not steal," signed by ... "The Vindicator."

MySpace, the Huffington Post and the Politico are going to be some of the new players at the coronation of Barack Obama next week.

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The Lakeview Lunch at Dundas and Ossington is up for grabs.

Great atmosphere. Crap food.

I hope whoever takes the joint over does a better job with the chow. But I do hope the decor doesn't get gutted.

Addendum

BlogTO posted on this back on Aug. 12. More deets, pix.

Christie Blatchford replows some old ground.

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Observe carefully:

Let's go through it:

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Warmia's is no more. Some upscale-sounding outfit named Mabel's is moving into the space.

It's to be expected. It isn't Polish people moving into the Roncesvalles area these days, it's affluent yuppies. Kubasa and perogies are hardly diet staples for those people. :)

And Karl's deli space still sits unleased after being forced out of business last year.

Czehoski's, while not on Roncesvalles, is another dead-and-gone East European deli whose passing is still greatly lamented.

Jonathan Dube is now the soon-to-be-ex-director of digital media for CBC.ca and the new vice-president of ABCNews.com. He's leaving after three years on the job.

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This caught my eye today (from CP via CTV.ca):

Information about a mutated fish caught downstream from Alberta's oilsands region will be sent to a joint government-industry group that monitors the health of rivers and lakes.

The 2.5-kilogram goldeye caught last week in Lake Athabasca has two mouths, one beneath the other.

Two boys pointed the deformed fish out to Stuart Macmillan, Parks Canada's manager of resource conservation at Wood Buffalo National Park, who studied it before handing it over to the Mikesew First Nation.

"We had just pulled up to the dock and some kids came over and said, 'Hey, we've got a fish over here with two mouths," Macmillan said Tuesday.

"It was really unusual. The fish has an obvious abnormality. I had never seen anything like that myself before. I can't speculate on what might have caused it." 

The headline is a nod to the classic Simpsons episode Two Cars In Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish.

Watch it here.

From CP via CTV.ca:

The Thetford Chicken Massacre, with its hatchets, booze and bloody headless fowl, has ruffled the feathers of animal welfare activists.

Animal rights groups are condemning the summer ritual, where partygoers lop the heads off chickens and turkeys, toss the birds in the air and wager on where their convulsing bodies will come to a dead stop (pun intended? - BD).

Participants close out the annual rural Quebec celebration with fireworks and a poultry feast on the grill.

Here ya go: Many ways to cook up a federal vote: experts

These archival stories may also be of interest:

March 30, 2008 - Parliament to resume with more Liberal threats

Oct. 5, 2007 - Tories get war room ready for possible election

March 16, 2007 - Tory memo says election could start 'within a week'

Feb. 15, 2007 - Tories set campaign wheels in motion: report

And who can forget these stirring words, uttered by one S. Dion on the evening of Dec. 2, 2006?

"The most exciting race in the history of our party is over. Let's get ready for the election!''

We've been to the precipice before but didn't tip over, is all I'm saying. While news organizations would be well-advised to do some election coverage planning, personally, I'll get excited when I see Mr. Harper moseying over to the GG's place for a little chat.

Addendum

Canada's political conundrum in a nutshell: I overheard two guys in the Roncesvalles area discussing politics. Their consensus: Dion looks weak but Harper's a knob. :)

Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas is the subject of a new HBO documentary.

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From the Ingram 2.0 blog at globeandmail.com:

NewsCred, a startup with offices in Geneva and Stockholm that just launched this morning, wants to try and help change that by allowing readers of news sites and blogs to say whether they think a particular report, story or blog post is credible or not. Those rankings are then aggregated by the site based on a proprietary algorithm, and readers are able to see an overall ranking for the news site or blog, as well as for individual authors or reporters. ...

Another site that has similar goals to NewsCred is NewsTrust.net, a non-profit service run by former journalist Fabrice Florin and an advisory board that includes Craigslist founder Craig Newmark (who has also provided financing for the site). NewsTrust is also a beneficiary of a multi-year grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

China's been building more than an Olympic "one world, one dream" legacy these past few years. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the Pentagon estimates China's nuclear weapons inventory has increased by 25 per cent since 2005. It's also developed new delivery systems.

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J-prof Kelly Toughill wrote the following in a commentary published Aug. 16 in the Toronto Star:

In Mars Attacks, the world was saved by serendipity. It turned out that the screeching sound of Slim Whitman yodelling "Indian Love Call" made the Martians' heads explode.

Perhaps traditional publishers and broadcasters should learn how to yodel. 

She's writing about Google as a media company. The NYT plowed some of this ground on Aug. 10 (as evidenced by this earlier blog posting).

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Say goodnight, Pervez.