![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1842/785/400/summer%20vacation%202005.jpg)
Mr. Nag and I are taking a road trip to the Gaspe.
Sherri Finkbine, a TV presenter from Phoenix in Arizona, was denied
an abortion in her home-state following intense negative publicity surrounding her case. The 30-year-old mother decided to terminate her fifth pregnancy after discovering that tranquilizers she had taken in the first few weeks of her
pregnancy contained the drug Thalidomide.
It might seem that art historians require only art to go about their
business. In fact, they also need stories to link the works together and make them jump off gallery walls. Canadian art history has often seemed at a disadvantage when stacked against the glamorous narratives of European art . Madness, mistresses, absinthe, scandals at the Salon , but really, we just need a little spin.
Take the women of the Beaver Hall Group. The work is there, from vivid post-impressionist landscapes to pared-down modernist portraiture. Now, with a brisk, approachable book by Toronto-based art historian Evelyn Walters, so are the stories.
The Women of Beaver Hall: Canadian Modernist Painters concentrates on 10 Montreal women associated with the Beaver Hall Group in the 1920s and '30s. "We had a swell time actually," declared Anne Savage, looking back at their years of creative camaraderie. In a quiet, quintessentially Canadian way, they did.
"It can stop a bullet from an AK-47, shrug off a roadside bomb, and it makes a Hummer look like a chick car. The $200,000 (U.S.) Gurkha is coming to a road near you , thanks to a King City-based company that is finding itself in demand because of the global war on terror. 'They are pretty awesome machines,' says William Whyte, owner of Armet Armored Vehicles Inc., the company that builds the Gurkha. 'We've been stopped on roads with people taking pictures and wanting to know what they are.' The Gurkha can go more than 150 kilometres per hour , plenty fast for a military vehicle , and is the highest level of protection you can get next to sitting in a tank, Whyte says. It certainly looks fierce enough.
The squat 8,620 kilogram vehicle looks every bit the ticked-off hedgehog, bristling with testosterone and armour plating."
'A job advertisement saying that `smokers need not apply' would not seem to fall under any of the prohibited grounds (under EU legislation),' Vladimir Spidla, the commissioner for employment and equal opportunities, wrote to Stihler, who showed the letter to the press.
This would have pleased the employer who placed the ad, call-centre director Philip Tobin, who reportedly told Irish radio in May, 'If these people (meaning smokers) can ignore so many
warnings and all that evidence then they haven't got the level of intelligence that I am looking for. Smokers are idiots.'
In other words, if you're addicted to nicotine, a substance that studies have repeatedly shown to be more difficult to withdraw from than heroin, you're too dumb to answer the phone.