Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week’s distinguished lecture, documentary & interview symposium. This week, for your delectation, we have Dr. Eric Kandel, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons, and Dr. Thomas Jessell, who for the past two decades has worked to understand how nerve cells in the developing spinal cord assemble into functional circuits that control sensory perception and motor actions, presenting the four talks of the 2008 Holiday Lectures on Science series, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which was entitled: Making your Mind ~ Molecules, Motion, and Memory.

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Several months ago a federal court ruled that the government’s Information Commissioner should be allowed to review documents withheld by the CBC in order to determine whether the CBC is justified in withholding the information. The ruling is currently under appeal, with the CBC citing it’s own Policies and Guidelines, which provide a “specific exclusion for any information that relates to (the CBC’s) journalistic, creative, or programming activities.”
Two days ago, perhaps in response to public pressure from both the media and from Heritage Minister James Moore, the CBC purchased a series of newspaper ads lauding itself for releasing thousands of pages of documents. How much did these ads cost the taxpayers who fund this multi-billion dollar crown corporation?

(CBC Radio-Canada spokesman Marco Dube) said that because the ads were purchased through a third-party agency, the CBC could not immediately disclose the cost incurred for the marketing rollout of its transparency and accountability initiative.

Set your irony meter to Red Alert:

“We’re doing this for Canadians to make sure that Canadians understand that we’re transparent and accountable, and that’s why we bought ads in the papers.”

Yes, Canadians, make sure you understand that the CBC is transparent and accountable:

(Lawyer and access to information specialist Michel Drapeau) once received a 1,562 page reply to one of his requests, yet only 30 pages had any information on them. The rest was either blank or blacked out. Two weeks ago CBC replied to a request on how much was spent to settle harassment complaints by issuing 52 pages of records with all the details stripped out.

Boys will be boys … after all:

Jodie Lynn Bryant was enjoying a campfire in a Regina backyard on the May long weekend when a stranger in a passing car smiled, lifted a stolen rifle and took the 21-year-old’s life with a single pull of the trigger.
Asked by his friend what he was doing, the 16-year-old murderer replied, “Oh, just having fun.”

Irish Welfare expenditures are 32.5% of the entire annual budget; ahead of even healthcare which comes in at 24.8%.
For some Eurocrats, this is the crisis they’ve been waiting for … but somebody forgot to inform the crisis.

… or, Why the West Wins: (language warning)