Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti (Seal Press, 2007). Subtitled A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, this book, written by the founder of the spunky and newsworthy blog Feministing, should be required reading for all Grade 9 students in the US. OK, Canadians should read it too, but so much of the politics and backlash Valenti discusses are American-centric (e.g., access to affordable and ubiquitous healthcare, politics around repro rights, mat and pat policies, Congressional hijinks, etc).

Depressing politics aside, Valenti's upbeat nature and entreaties for social activism are encouraging. Makes me feel old, though. In 1972 I ran around my high school halls with a copy of Vivian Gornick's Woman in a Sexist Society and noone challenged me on that...

Communiqué: Sûreté du Québec.

CBC Coverage

So Los Tres Amigos were just in Montebello talking about the SPP (see the Council of Canadians Integrate This! resources) ; Daniel Tencer's overview of media coverage in Maisonneuve provides a good overview...while Maude Barlow is quoted in The Ottawa Citizen, Summit critics 'vindicated':

The Council of Canadians and several other groups have demanded greater transparency, painting the NACC (North American Competitivess Council) as a secretive and elite club that uses special access with prime ministers and presidents to push an agenda of continental integration. Ms. Barlow said the "jaw-dropping" report is an admission that the SPP won't succeed without more public input. "We've saying that for three years, and for three years they've been having their private meetings with leaders and scoffing at us for criticizing them," Ms. Barlow said outside a Montebello ice cream stand. "For me, what happened was they got caught. All of a sudden they're admitting that this executive level of decision-making isn't going to fly because they forgot about democracy.

And, re the video above, now police deny using their own as provocateurs according to the Toronto Star.

At Con U I currently supervise and have supervised several PhD and MA students. As well, I've been on many committees as second or third reader, committee member, external reader etc.

It's the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, and the reissues and the tributes are pouring in, as with today's Sunday NY Times and Matt Weiland on reading K. twenty years ago and the Paper Cuts blog on Kerouac, including the original 1957 review of the book in the Times.

Sean O'Hagan in the Guardian reports on OTR's influence throughout the years, and how his legacy is being carried on -- or not. In production - a film, and now The Jack Kerouac Project, a clothing line by Hogan. You know, leather jackets that are new and chi-chi priced but you can get the more authentic cracked, stinky and ripped version in TO's Kensington Market.

Jack must be rolling in his grave.

Never doubt the influence, however, of OTR and beat lit on the formative psyche of American youth throughout the ages, including me some 30-odd years ago:

William Gibson's Spook Country, (Putnam, 2007).

His descriptions of everyday uses of technology have evolved from earlier fantasies of now commensensical realities to contemporary uses within art & culture - wardriving, mobile-VR locative art, ipods as data storage...

in a succinctness that is often hilariously low-key in its characterizations...referencing recent political events, news items and hip to mainstream and underground pop culture:

Hollis thought he looked a little like William Burroughs, minus the bohemian substrate (or perhaps the methadone). Like someone who'd be invited quail shooting with the vice-president, though too careful to get himself shot. His remaining hair neatly barbered. Seriously good dark overcoat. p. 294

T. Coraghessan Boyle (Penguin Books, 2006).

More than a 21st century tale of identity theft, the cross-country chase of Dana and Bridger across Middle America as depicted by Boyle is scathing and sticky. Here's the thief Peck in a western road resto:

Breakfast on the road was always the weakest link in the culinary chain, a kind of deprivation of the senses that reduced every possibility to a variant on eggs/sausage links/silver-dollar pancakes and maple-colored Karo syrup. It bored him. Made him angry...by the time they were sliding into the booth with its butt-warmed benches and the red Formica tabletop strewn with the refuse of the previous party, he was feeling murderous......She pointed to the next booth over, where a whole rat-pack of kids --six or seven of them -- dug into various ice-cream concoctions while their parents, two interchangeable couples with porcine faces and a lack of style that was nothing short of brutal, roared over their coffee and grease-splattered plates as if they'd been drunk for days." (p. 185-6)

My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.
--Interview by Nick Horby with David Simon, the creater-writer-producer of HBO's brilliant The Wire, in the August 07 issue of The Believer.

Oh, Farley Mowat you venerable old crusty Canadian icon; a quote from you in an article by Jane Taber in last week's Saturday Globe and Mail on Green Party Leader Elizabeth May's teenage daughter makes me want to do more than cry wolf!

Commenting on the well-read, independent, politically astute and self-possessed young woman, Mowat comments: ""This is one of the things that is a little bit scary about her. She seems almost unassailable. I wouldn't have the first idea of how to go about trying to seduce her - if I was that kind of guy."

Well. You're obviously the kind of guy that imagines such a scenario. Or, maybe you're the kind of guy that thinks this kind of comment is flattering.

And I'm the kind of gal that finds a comment like this in our national newspaper kind of disturbing.

Caffeine may help older women protect their thinking skills, according to a study published in the August 7, 2007, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology....

The study found that women age 65 and older who drank more than three cups of coffee (or the equivalent in tea) per day had less decline over time on tests of memory than women who drank one cup or less of coffee or tea per day...

"Caffeine is a psychostimulant which appears to reduce cognitive decline in women,"..." Caffeine consumers did not seem to have lower rates of dementia...".

D'uh....

Report on SSHRC -funded Research Project: Children, Young People, and New Media in the Home (2002-06)

My objectives for this research project were to examine young people's use of the internet by focusing on the overall media environment at home. In particular I was keen to give children and youth the opportunity to actively discuss their everyday uses of the internet, without having their voices filtered through adult perspectives. This was a timely project as for many Canadian families the internet was quickly becoming a domestic utility, used alongside (and sometimes more than) television, radio and newspapers. The research questions that guided my research included those focusing on access, lifestyle, uses, social change, content, and commercialization.

As the research developed it took on two distinct trajectories: 1) interviews with children and youth in their home; and 2) research on policy issues related to youth and new media as well as research on the commercial aspects of new media products for kids.

Papers published from this research project (see below) reinforced the findings from the interviews. Papers looked at the creation of internet communities by and for youth (NeoPets, Gurl.com, MySpace, Mary-Kate and Ashley, the Pro-Ana sites) with a focus on critically assessing the commercial implications of these sites and the policy issues they raised, particularly privacy and data mining practices. A focus on gender differences was evident in papers on the Pro-Ana community, efforts to protect young girls from sexual predators on the internet, and the design of mobile phones marketed to young girls. Policy issues played a central role in all of the papers, from an analysis of the federal SchoolNet program and its purported attempts to 'wire' up all K-12 schools in Canada, to free speech issues (Pro-Ana), to debates over downloading.

The 35 semi-structured interviews took place in Ottawa, Windsor, Montreal and Toronto and were conducted by the student research assistants. Securing ethics clearances from the universities including both parental assent and children's consent forms proved to be time-consuming but the processes in both institutions were professional and diligent. Locating children and youth was time-consuming and necessitated creating trust amongst the student interviewers and the parents and children. The Canadian Journal of Communication (Shade, Porter & Sanchez, 2005) article outlines the research analysis from the interviews. Topics included: time spent online, uses of the internet for leisure and schoolwork, perceptions about privacy and attitudes towards online advertising, music downloading practices, and identity play. Our study indicates that while children and youth are active and intrepid internet surfers, they use the internet to extend their local and school-based ties, and that they have very little concern for offensive or illegal content issues. Furthermore, while parents and policymakers raise concerns about violence and pornography, our research indicates that there are more insidious potential areas of concern that raise important ethical and political considerations: a lack of awareness of privacy information and a proliferation of data mining targeting youth; a lack of discussion of questions surrounding copyright, downloading, and online plagiarism; and a tendency of policymakers to address children as consumers of entertainment rather than as potential citizens or active media producers.

These findings are of special interest for government policy. Canadian internet policy has tended to ignore how children and young people have become a viable and integral online target market, which is a disquieting omission when considering the overall political economic framework of the internet and the profitable demographic that marketers are seeking to attract. Although PIPEDA (the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) legislation protects personal information collection, used or disclosed by commercial interests, Canada does not yet have the equivalent to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). On the popular practice of peer-to-peer downloading of music, video, and film, continued vilification of these youth practices by industry will not work when trying to solve this complex social and policy issue. Policymakers need to think critically--and creatively--about developing digital literacy skills that consider children and young people as valid and active citizens. Policymakers might want to shift their focus to the proactive development of digital literacy skills, particularly those focusing on the authenticity and prevalence of commercial content, raising awareness of privacy rights, and copyright education.

Globe and Mail, Tues., January 3 1994...

Here's the blurb etc. for COMS 843/COM7113/EDM9235, a Winter 08 course in the Joint PhD Program, Politiques de communication/Communication Policy. Details to follow, likely in early December...

COMS 225
MEDIA INSTITUTIONS AND POLICIES
FALL 2007

This used to be COMS 326, with other related resources on the 808 blog .

Reading list below, full outline coming later in August....

Provocative and disturbing: The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian in the July 30th issue of The Nation.

Read alongside excerpts of the brilliant Dispatches by Michael Herr abt his account of Viet Nam...published 30 years ago....