My favourite iPad comment

The ever-interesting Steven Morris guest blogs on the iPad.

For immediate release

Today Steven Morris launched a new hi-tech product called the "i've had."

As in, "I have had e-fucking-nough of Steve Jobs and his endless greed and attempts to corner Apple's share of the market.

Just what the world needs: one more silly gadget- the iPad - which upon reflection for all of a nanosecond, one realizes one can do without. Not to mention all the African nations that have their economies undermined, no pun intended, because of the race to extract elements from the ground required to fabricate the things.

Write me and I'll send you a copy of the "i've had."

It is just like a business card, and on it is printed: "Steve Jobs is a greedy *&^hole."

(Let us not go into the subject of all the people who will now be acting like they invented the iPad because they forked over $500 for the thing. We'll save that for next month, when I launch the "iMad.")

Preparing for life with Alzheimer's

I seem to be doing a lot of stories related to mental health lately. Alzheimer's is not exactly a mental health issue, but there are some similarities -- and it's good to see that people are more willing to discuss the disease openly, rather than trying to hide it.

Yesterday, I was in the studio at Maritime Noon to talk about how patients and their loved ones can prepare for life with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia. You can listen to the conversation here.

The NFB's upcoming online releases

The National Film Board of Canada just released its list of films that will be put online free over the next three months. And it contains some real gems.

A pair of animated films, including one by Richard Condie. should be high on your must-watch list. Condie's The Apprentice is one of the weirdest pieces of animation I've ever seen. It's not so much the technique -- which features Condie's typical wavy-lined, buck-toothed characters, but the bizarreness of the story, such as it is. As a former NFB colleague (I don't work there now, but I used to) once said to me, "If you can figure out what the hell it's about, let me know."

The other animation classic here is What on Earth? It's done newsreel-style, as Martians study our planet and conclude that it is ruled by the automobile. Still as funny today as when it was released in 1966.

Oscar-winner Terre Nash's Who's Counting: Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics is one of those Film Board perennials. Well over a decade after its release, I run into people who have seen it and for whom Marilin Waring's message resonates. That message is that there has to be a better way to measure economic progress than GDP -- one that takes into account benefits that are not currently measured.

The Devil You Know: Inside the Mind of Todd McFarlane, directed by Kenton Vaughan, is a portrait of one weird dude. You may know Todd McFarlane as the creator of Spawn -- but did you know he was a minor-league ballplayer who says he would have gladly given up his comics career for a chance to play baseball in the Major Leagues?

Passchendaele, Paul Gross's monumental First World War labour of love, is also going online. Haven't seen this one, so I can't comment -- but clearly the NFB was smart to get these digital rights in exchange for their participation in the film.

RIP a Remix Manifesto is already available free online, but chopped up into chapters. I'm assuming the upcoming nfb.ca release will let us Canadians watch the whole thing in one piece. (It's already available in the US as a pay-what-you-want download.) RIP is a good intro to the copyright wars, even though it conflates a couple of different issues: file sharing and use of original works in remixes, and seems to treat them as though they're the same thing.

For teachers, the Science, Please! series (Une minute de science, in French) offers funny little videos on basic science subjects. This is the perfect format for them, as long as a class is outfitted with wireless access, computer and projector.

Finally, there's an irony in the fact that Colin Low's The Children of Fogo Island is near the top of this list. The irony doesn't have to do with the film -- a simple, beautiful evocation of childhood -- but with the format. Colin once told me that he would rather have a church basement full of people engaged in watching a film than a national broadcast that was seen by far more people, but had far less impact on each individual. I'm not sure what he thinks of digital media and viewing phones solo at your computer, or on your phone.

Some good viewing, and if you download the NFB iPhone app, you can take it with you.

Friends of Redtail

My half-hour documentary on the Friends of Redtail is online here.

This may seem like a story you've heard before: local group bands together to try and protect forest from clear-cutting.

But there is more to it than that. The Friends of Redtail don't want to create what they call "a tree museum" -- and they are looking to create a new model of local ownership and control of resources.

There are some great characters in this piece, including Billy MacDonald, who runs the nature camp from which the Friends take their name, and who is one of the only people in Canada to have successfully fought the National Energy Board; and Bernadette Romanowsky, a retired lawyer and mother of (I believe) 10.

Time to bare arms

Orly Taitz (sorry, Dr. Orly Taitz, Esquire), writes:

Seeing targeted destruction of our economy, our security, dissipation of American jobs, massive corruption in the Government, Congress Department of Justice and Judiciary, it might be time to start rallies and protests using our second amendment right to bear arms and organise in militias.

This appears to be a corrected version. The first version I saw called for

rallies and protests using our second amendment right to bare arms and organise in militias. (Emphasis added.)

Certainly, if you live in any part of the country where the winter weather is making itself felt, this is not the time to bare arms.

Christmas in Bridgewater

Bridgewater's first Community Christmas Dinner is on tomorrow. When organizers Brian Braganza and Cate Trueman started talking about it a few months back, they were hoping to have 50 people come out and celebrate Christmas dinner together.

Tomorrow, they are expecting to serve 500 people.

It's not a soup kitchen type event. Everybody is welcome, and more than 17o people are volunteering to do everything from moving tables to serving dinner. As one of the women I interviewed about the event said, "It's like the community is giving itself a big hug."

I did a small piece on the dinner for our local CBC radio morning show, and you can listen to it here.

Suggested gifts

I hate what corporate gift suggestions say about how retrograde our views of age and gender are.

Or maybe we are not that retrograde. Maybe it's just the inherent conservatism of most organizations trying to sell us stuff.

I find it most striking around Father's Day, when I see gift giving ideas for dad that would be totally unsuitable for me and for most of the other dads I know. Things related to golf, for instance. I'm waiting for the day a retailer targets the kids of dads like me: "Get dad the latest from 3 Inches of Blood!"

But, of course, you can see our cultural cliches front and centre this time of year -- in holiday gift guides. While ordering some items on Amazon the other day, I clicked on the link to "Gift Central" to see what the company suggests for different types of recipients.

And I was appalled.

I started with the suggestions for 10-12 year-olds. I've heard lots of people dismayed about how much time kids spend playing video games and how little time they spend reading. And they talk about it like this is something that just happens. Well, it doesn't just happen. The games are pushed on them and their parents all the time. When the first of two pages of gift recommendations consists almost entirely of video games, you're sending a message about what you think kids want and what they should have.

Teens? Same story, only with more expensive toys thrown in too: games, cameras, computers.

Grandfathers are conservative and nostalgic: World War II, A book on "The fall and rise of Canada's Founding Values" and Fred and Ginger. Actually, there was one item on the grandpa page I'd go for: Golden Age Marvel Comics Omnibus Volume 1. But if you're getting it for me please pick it up at Strange Adventures instead.

Apparently my wife would like Susan Boyle (mysteriously, this one, along with Michael Bublé are suggested for "music lovers" too), cooking, cake decorating, and pastel-coloured electronics.

Grandma is interested in a lot of the same stuff as grandpa, substituting the odd gardening book for the odd sports book. And she also apparently has no taste, given that a "Family Circus" book is recommended. It seems to me there was a mixer featured for Grandma the other day too, but I'm not seeing it on there now.

And kids, if you are shopping for me, please don't believe Amazon when they suggest I might like anything by Dan Brown, Carrie Underwood or Blue Rodeo.