New Media

Taking our cue from the mind-bogglingly popular holiday TV yuletide log (and Vancouver’s Beyond Robson Christmas post), Currents offers this warm holiday cheer, courtesy of Youtube. Cheers.

Democracy is restored (sort of) to the Land of Smiles.

The junta has stepped down and it looks like the democrats are back in. Of course, there were a few bumps along the way: The Asian Network for Free Elections, or ANFREL, an Asian election watchdog, said Tuesday that several political parties practiced pre-election vote-buying. It cited in-kind gifts, cash handouts, electronic transfers of money, payments to attend party rallies and free sightseeing trips.

Yikes. Two steps forward, one step back.

Pretty much says it all, eh?

Below, readers may find one of the more classic (and my personal favorite) Christmas sequences of any holiday film from the legendary Scrooged (1988). Clearly, it was ahead of its time.

The Christmas spirit has finally gotten to me: I’m going to buy a Mac.

I’ve been procrastinating on a laptop purchase for a year and it’s finally do or die time. Over few weeks of browsing for digital cameras (and ultimately picking up a very reasonably-priced and impressive Fuji model), my attention strayed often to laptops – particularly, the non-PC kind. Far too many of my writer and multi-media wielding friends and relatives have already taken a bite of the Apple – some of them made the move years ago, before iPod was just an idea. Their enthusiasm seems to be the kind that people most often reserve for cults.

Ultimately, the Macs just look too good and work too well to say no. Besides, their commercials are awfully persuasive.

UPDATE: Bought it, but now waiting for the machine to power up overnight. Tomorrow would be awfully like Christmas morning if I were of that cultural persuasion.

Ah, the latest incidence of identity politics and victim-cloaked self-righteousness being used as a weapon to blunt our tradition of free speech in Canada.

Here’s the story: Supporters of Laibar Singh, an Indian who entered Canada on a fake passport in 2003 and was to be deported from Vancouver’s YVR earlier this month, are upset with media reports that they had abandoned the failed refugee status claimant and ‘confronted’ the media to reiterate their support for him.

Interestingly, the much-syndicated report goes on to explain that Singh continued to enjoy full support from the whole South Asian community and many white mainstream organisations.

Just for the record, what exactly is a “white mainstream organization”? The reporter in this case seems to be less than familiar with the realities of our wonderfully multi-hued urban landscape in Canada. The report seems to make more of a statement about the perspective and practices of newsmakers outside of this country.