From the Globe and Mail:

Perhaps one day, they'll print it on T-shirts: I Went Through the September Wringer of 2008.

From the BBC:

Militants in Pakistan pose a threat to the country's existence, according the the American General, David Petraeus.

Jagoda Pike is off to head the Ontario bid committee for the 2015 Pan American Games.

Southam/CanWest veteran and TorStar board member Don Babick is taking the job on an interim basis, according to a TorStar news release.

Pike became the Star's publisher in October 2006 (here's a post from that time).

Washington Post business columnist Steve Pearlstine shakes his head at the collective reaction to the financial crisis in the U.S.

This page has an interactive timeline that marks developments in the crisis since Sept. 7, when the U.S. government bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage lending companies.

This page shows the geographic breakdown of the House of Representatives vote.

The NYT also had an animated infographic that walks you through the day's numeric festivities in reaction to the voting, but unfortunately, one can't link directly to this item; it's embedded on the home page but not into any related story pages.

Update

After the Asian markets opened, the NYT shifted its homepage infographic to track the carnage on the other side of the dateline.

The item is about reaction by Torontonians to today's stock market carnage.

But it's a newspaper website! :)

See it here.

(And yes, I know they've been doing Globe Docs for a while)

In My Market Bakery in Kensington Market, there is the following notice:

Did you lose your machete?

We may have it!

Skill testing question required!

The rightful owner either hasn't been by to claim it, or hasn't passed the skill-testing question requirement.

The gals who work there tell me it's a nice machete, with a fairly stylish sheath.

This leaves me wondering why the owner doesn't step forward. I mean, if you lost your machete, wouldn't you know? And wouldn't you want it back? And if not, why not?

Do some reporting this election season, preferrably from all-candidates forums.

I came up with these in a Feb. 8, 1998 posting to CAJ-L, an email discussion list for journalists. I think they stand up, so here's a slightly-tweaked version: Read them, study them, absorb their lessons and then go forth and be controversial (the principles also apply to blog postings):

1. Do no research: Too many facts clouds the mind and makes the issue more complex, and that may make it harder for you to get into the proper state of agitation. A controversial column is a simple column.

2. Write fast and don't think: Again, by writing from your gut, quickly and without intellectualizing, you will achieve the Zen-like state of clarity you need to make a strong, simple, irksome point.

3. Avoid fairness like the plague: If people want fairness and balance, let them read some boring news story. You're expressing an opinion, and a controversial opinion is never fair. For that reason, be careful in your choice of words. As an example, you can't use the word "hate" too much in a controversial column.

4. Pick your targets carefully: The best controversial columns are ones that create public reaction, and to do that, you need someone to play along. Therefore, attack a group that already feels aggrieved or misunderstood. To really twist the knife, base your attack on a stereotype about which the group feels particularly sensitive. They'll seek publicity by attacking your column which in turn creates publicity for you. Everyone wins!

I would note that neither Heather Mallick or Ann Coulter need lessons from me.

I'm trying to find something I once wrote that I thought was rather witty. In that process, I also found this post I made to CAJ-L, an email discussion list for journalists, on June 3, 1997. I thought it might be worth revisiting, given that Canada is currently in election mode.

Saturday's Report on Business called itself The Debt Issue, and highlighted the following number in red type:

$2,587,527,300,000

That would be total U.S. consumer debt ... and counting.

Here are som other factoids the Globe dug up:

$1.62 trillion - In "non-revolving" loans for cars and houses. The figuure was $922 billion in 1999.

$970 billion - In "revolving loans" such as credit card debt. The figure was $611 billion in 1999.

70 per cent - Is the amount that U.S. consumer debt has increased this decade.

From Globe and Mail Update:

A hurricane of bad credit card debt will start crashing ashore in the United States in the first quarter of next year, even as the mortgage crisis continues, analysts at New York research firm Innovest Strategic Value Advisors warned Monday.

From a Saturday Globe and Mail column by Avner Mandelman. He talked about how the Roman general Fabius used an early "rope-a-dope" strategy against Hannibal and let the invader destroy the Italian countryside for a while before taking him on:

... Today's debt tsunami may have to be allowed to exhaust itself by eating up the only store of value left: Everyone's savings (including foreigners'), following massive money printing. And so inflation must come back, the U.S. dollar must decline, gold must rise, and bonds must tank - eventually. And if bonds fall, they would take the market down with them - and the economy.

Unless. Unless.

Unless this financial debacle ends the same way the previous one did in the late Thirties - in a large-scale war. Because with so much capital destroyed, democracies look mostly inward, their will to respond firmly and early to mad rulers and evil dictators is diminished, and so evil can run unchecked for a while - until it becomes intolerable and war becomes inevitable. And a large-scale modern war, unfortunately, boosts the economy - at least for a while.

Will the late Thirties' history repeat? I hope not. But time will tell. Meanwhile, see gold as an inflation substitute for cash, and get ready to enjoy the market rise after this lengthy, scary bottom. Hannibal, remember, stopped at the gates of Rome, and so will this market slide stop - very soon.

CBC News publisher John Cruickshank has the following headline over his letter about the Sept. 5 Heather Mallick column about Sarah Palin: "We erred in our judgment." It doesn't get better for Mallick from there.

It's been a temperate summer in much of North America. So does that mean global warming is over? Not by a long shot.

Sweden and Denmark are two countries that adopted carbon taxes in the early 1990s. Surprisingly, their citizens don't find themselves living in caves with rags wrapped around their feet today.

In the 1990s, Pakistan's government began nurturing the Taliban as a way to gain influence over Afghanistan. But now, Islamabad's malignant child is turning on its parent.

Observe:

You can find the caption text here. And here's the link to Ibbitson's column on the McCain-Obama debate.

From a CTV.ca blog posting by CTV News parliamentary reporter Roger Smith:

Even as he accused reporters of taking the low road, Stephen Harper seemed eager to follow.

Amid the flurry of apologies and resignations by candidates for past indiscretions, Harper blamed the media.

"I do think some of these stories are 'gotcha' journalism that have nothing to do with what's important in the campaign."

Yet his own Tory war room, like all the others, fuel the mud-slinging by flooding reporters with e-mails full of accusations about rival candidates.

Addendum

Sean O'Malley, who runs the CTV News election desk, blogged about gotcha games in a Sept. 29 posting.

From the BBC (Sept. 25):

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has ordered the release from prison of a local journalist whose jailing in June sparked an international outcry.

Abdulkarim Khiwani was given a six-year term after being accused of supporting Shia rebels fighting the government in the north since 2004.

But his lawyers maintained material about rebels found in his possession was essential for his journalism.

The United States had condemned the sentence, as had Amnesty International.

The court decided "to release him from jail after he pledged to respect the constitution and the country's laws", said Justice Minister Ghazi al-Aghbari.

There is no word on the fate of a dozen other people sentenced at the same time - one of whom was condemned to death.

In late August, Curtis Brainard -- editor of the Observatory, the Columbia Journalism Review's online critique of science and environmental reporting -- examined how the U.S. media is covering the climate issue.

Here's part one.

And here's part two.

From the Global Carbon Project's Carbon Budget 2007:

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are growing x4 faster since 2000 than during the previous decade, and above the worst case emission scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Less Developed Countries are now emitting more carbon than Developed Countries.

The carbon intensity of the world’s economy is improving slower than previous decades.

The efficiency of natural sinks has decreased by 5% over the last 50 years (and will continue to do so in the future), implying that the longer it takes to begin reducing emissions significantly, the larger the cuts needed to stabilize atmospheric CO2.

All these changes have led to an acceleration of atmospheric CO2 growth 33% faster since 2000 than in the previous two decades, implying a stronger climate forcing and sooner than expected.

... And I don't own a van or a car.

From the BBC:

Car sleepers are on the rise in California which has been hit hard by the housing crisis

Santa Barbara boasts a classic laidback California lifestyle, with uncongested beaches, wholesome cafes and charming Spanish-style architecture.

Of course there's a hefty price tag: nestled between the gentle Santa Ynez mountains and the inviting Pacific Ocean are multi-million dollar homes.

But in this sun-washed haven of wealth, many live far from the American dream.

In a car park across the street from luxury mansions, the evening brings a strange sight.

A few cars arrive and take up spaces in different corners. In each car, a woman, perhaps a few pets, bags of possessions and bedding.

Across the street from homes with bedrooms to spare, these are Santa Barbara's car sleepers.

Homeless within the last year, they are a direct consequence of America's housing market collapse.

I was hoping for ironic in the headline. I hope it didn't come across as overly flip. This is a human tragedy.

While all political candidates spin, U.S. Republican nominee John McCain's campaign has developed an unprecedented track record of distortions and outright lies. But some political science research indicates there may be method to his madness.

From the Globe and Mail:

They still make cult movies, don't they? It's hard to tell sometimes, seeing as how many of the flicks that became staples at North America's repertory theatres and campus film societies – e.g., The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pink Flamingos – are now pushing 40. And as we learned from all those nights we spent watching Logan's Run, anything that old is not to be trusted.

It's not that there aren't newer films that are just as deranged as the original midnight movies. The trouble was that with the waning of the rep circuit and the audience's isolation and fragmentation due to home video and DVD, it became more difficult for a prime piece of cinematic audacity to develop the following it might have once earned via late-night engagements at neighbourhood theatres.

One very welcome development in Toronto's film scene is the resurgence of the cult movie, presented the way it should be – on a big screen in a room full of rowdy patrons, rooms like the revived Fox Theatre in the Beaches and Trash Palace (see www.trashpalace.ca for schedule and not-so-secret secret location). Ironically, with their retro-grindhouse, cult-oriented programming, such venues cater not to the boomers who watched El Topo whilst stoned out of their minds, but to later generations of movie fans whose education in cinema's seedier side was conducted principally through home viewing and who are hungry for a more participatory experience.

Presented at Innis Town Hall at the University of Toronto's Innis College and open to the public free of charge, the Free Friday Film series is another sign of life. Brandishing a purist attitude (they only screen 35-mm prints – no DVDs), the student programmers are admirable for their willingness to add new faves to an increasingly musty canon of cult flicks. Screening Friday night is one such candidate, which has already earned the reputation as one of the decade's most mystifying yet delightful movie curios.

Here's some of the Innis screenings

• Funky Forest: The First Contact (tonight)
• Open Your Eyes - Oct. 3
• Buffalo 66 - Oct. 17
• La Haine - Nov. 21

Here's an earlier post on Trash Palace. And here's a 2005 effort -- Cult movie experiences in theatres: Time to let go?

Here's some of the Canadian news organizations with twitter feeds:

CBC (the leader in terms of followers, with 1,514 as of this writing)

But some new ones appear to have sprung up recently:

Maclean's (119 followers)

TheStar.com (86 followers)

Globeandmail.com politics (10 followers)

My thoughts?

I think the idea of niche Twitter feeds makes sense. So better something from globeandmail.com politics than a generalized news feed from the Star or CBC. I'm finding I'm getting too much of stuff I don't want from the CBC.

But another problem is all those outlets are just using Twitter as another type of RSS feed, which is a practice I disagree with. Twitter feeds that are all repurposing, all the time aren't helpful.

To me, a great tweet should be something that doesn't need to be said in more than 140 characters -- and shouldn't be. And it's something that should be of the moment.

That being said, here's how twittering could be done better. Look at one sample tweet from the Globe:

Liberals failing to draw women voters: While the Tories are more popular with men, the NDP, Bloc an.. http://tinyurl.com/3zma3h

Blah, blah, blah. Ah, the downside of automated feeds.

A suggestion, folks:

Liberals failing to draw women voters - http://tinyurl.com/3zma3h

Just flow the headline in and you'll be better off. If you could have written a Twitter-specific headline like 'Liberals failing to draw women voters: poll', even better. BTW, here's the original:

Liberals failing to draw women voters1

While the Tories are more popular with men, the NDP, Bloc and Greens are splitting off female vote

Someone who's got a flair for catchy blog headlines is Kady O'Malley of macleans.ca (a personal favourite: Do you think it's easy to secure e-mail lists?). But I'm guessing her stuff also gets automatically fed into Twitter. Otherwise, how would you explain a mess like this?

For some reason, her stuff looks cleaner on the main Maclean's feed. But again, just using Twitter to pimp one's blog or news is underutilizing the medium.

If you want to see how the pros do it ...

Actually, I should say that Susan Ormiston (of CBC's Ormiston Online) has a somewhat clean feed, but there's duplicate postings in it -- and no conversation.

Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Project at Simon Fraser University, had some useful perspective Tuesday on why al Qaeda might be strangling itself with its own violence.

From Daily Kos:

Bill O'Reilly and crew over at FOX are on a witch hunt.  They feel that the columnist Heather Mallick has gone to far in her criticisms of Sarah Palin.  They feelt it is OK to attack the CBC with threats and personally threaten this woman to the point that she needs a personal security guard.  

• kanuk's diary :: ::

I recieved this email in my box.

Heather Mallick is being subjected to extreme abuse from hundreds of
Canadians and Americans on her recent column about Sarah Palin, and
even some threats. Fox News in the U.S. has enlisted David Warren of
the Ottawa Citizen to attack her as well. She now has to have a
personal security guard. Could you please go to the following columns.

A Mighty Wind:
http://www.cbc.ca/...

Dire predictions call for traditional approach:
http://www.cbc.ca/...

If you see sexism and unfairness in the comments, please report these
abusive messages to the Omsbudsman. The Omsbudsman link is at the very
bottom of the webpage (click Omsbudsman from the list, then click
"Contact Us" for instructions on sending a complaint). Also please
alert your friends and networks to do the same, if you can. Thank you
so much!
Joyce Arthur

I will make the necessary contacts, but I thought I should share it with the DailyKos community, as some on here my want to show their support for Heather, and let them know not all Americans share the same views as Bill O'Reilly.

Here's my earlier thoughts on Mallick's column.

Nobody should be threatened to the point where they require personal security, but to be frank, I don't have sympathy for people of any stripe who just want to engage in nasty personal attacks.

If Mallick wants to be the left-wing Ann Coulter of Canada, that's her choice. But she must accept some of the consequences.

Continuing in this vein of frankness, however, it's the absolute pinnacle of hypocrisy for many conservative commentators to be whining about Mallick given their long track record of egregious ad hominem assaults on left-leaning political and cultural figures they dislike. Sorry, that's not quite true. Anyone who doesn't like what she wrote and then responded in kind (or worse) has reached that dubious pinnacle.

And don't take the above warning by Joyce Arthur too seriously. I saw the clip of David Warren, and he wasn't exactly calling for Mallick's head to be paraded around on a pike.

Here's a related Andrew Potter blog posting on macleans.ca.

From the subhead to Andrew Coyne's commentary in Maclean's: "Politicians learn from their mistakes, sometimes. The media keep repeating theirs."