Skip to content

Macleans.ca

Canada’s magazine

Tag Archives: Add new tag

The world’s newest oldest mum

At age 70, Rajo Devi of  Alewi, India has become the world’s oldest mother, abetted by donor eggs and an “intra cytoplasmic” sperm injection technique that permits even low-quality sperm to inseminate embryos (Devi’s husband is 72).  The couple has suffered the stigma of being childless for 55 years, they told the Times of India. Just wait for the outrage they’re about to face now. Slate.com‘s insightful science writer William Saleton does a nice summary here.

UPDATED AGAIN: If Sun Tzu had access to a demon dialer …

… this is totally the kind of thing he’d include in the second edition of Art of War. otherwise, I can’t imagine who could possibly come up with an election eve strategy as evilly brilliant – or brilliantly evil – as the one that apparently played out in the race underway in Saanich-Gulf Islands on Thanksgiving Monday – spotted by the force of nature that is National Newswatch, of course:

Oh yeah, she’s also a woman…

Shimon Peres has chosen Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to form a new Israeli government, giving her 42 days to pull together a coalition. When she does, Israel will have women heading three branches of government–Livni as PM,  Dalia Itzik as Knesset Speaker and Dorit Beinish president of the Supreme Court.  How many modern democracies can boast the same? Clearly a comfort level with female power explains the refreshing absence of  “gender” blather surrounding the appointment.  Still, obvious comparisons with the last woman to hold the post are being made. But as The Age argues here the mother of two and former corporate attorney and Mossad secret agent isn’t a “second Golda.”

Symptomatic?

Sparrow’s fall might be just an episode, unless it turns out to be a symptom of a deeper flaw in the Conservative campaign. Harper seems to want to run a classic front-runner’s race: reassuring, quietly confident, besweatered. Stay the Course. The Land is Strong. Yet his own weird linking of climate change policy and national unity, and Sparrow’s ugly mistake, and even the silly Puffin thing—all suggest a party more naturally inclined toward the scrappy, noisy, risky, at times reckless, style of come-from-behind outsiders. Maybe that’s still how they see themselves. But they can’t have it both ways. Right now, their style undermines their intended message.

Will McCain pick a chick?

The Telegraph is reporting the Dems are quaking at the prospect of McCain naming a female VP running mate tomorrow. As a political move it would have the one-two punch of being both smarmy and canny. The Republicans have never had a woman on the presidential ballot,  so McCain’s ticket would be given instant historic import. It would also cast him the definitive alpha male, something that might be a problem, say, if he were standing next to the younger, chiseled Mitt Romney.

You Can Judge a Drink By Its Cover

The taste of bottled mineral water depends its journey through different rocks and minerals. And while taste matters, so too does touch, according to a study by Maureen Morrin, a professor of marketing at the Rutgers School of Business. Studying the responses of 1,000 men and women, she found that people would rate the taste of the water according to the container holding it. When served in a firm cup, people would find it more tasty, compared to a flimsy one.