Torontoist's Mark Mann reports on Art Spiegelman's recent lecture here in Toronto on cartoons and freedom of speech.

Art Spiegelman’s reputation doesn’t do him justice. Most people will recognize his name from his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, a devastating, multi-layered account of the Holocaust. But Spiegelman produced iconic work ( Read more... )

• blogTO lists the five oldest restaurants in Toronto, finding out that the oldest date from the 1920s.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about how tourism helps revive her sense that people are good.
• Centauri Dreams considers how an Encyclopedia Galactica could possibly work.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to papers speculating that hot massive O- ( Read more... )

• Al Jazeera notes that Tunisia is still on the brink, looks at the good relations between Indians and Pakistanis outside of South Asia, suspects that a largely Armenian-populated area in Georgia might erupt, and reports on satellite imagery of Boko Haram's devastation in Nigeria.
• Bloomberg notes that a North Korean camp survivor caught in lies might ( Read more... )

• 3 Quarks Daily's S. Abbas Raza argues that the Charlie Hebdo shooting is one element of the issues of many in the Muslim world with their neighbours, something that gets mainly Muslim victims.
• Al Jazeera's Massoud Hayoun reports on fears among Muslims tht the Charlie Hebdo shootings might lead to a collapse in communal relations, while Arthur ( Read more... )

Cartoonist Yasmine Surovec, author and composer of the delightful Cat versus Human cartoon (hint: it's about cats), came up on the 31st of December with a retelling of the classic Hans Christian Andersen short story "The Little Match Girl"http://www.catversushuman. ( Read more... )

• Patrick Banks depicts the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
• feorag does the same with Cthulhu.

Visit and view, if you dare.

UPDATE (4:35 PM) : HTML corrected.

I've a rough draft in the workers, expect it tomorrow. For the time being, let me just say that I don't think that they work because they just aren't good satire at all, and that it's for this reason I find the fuss kicked up about them ridiculous. They're stupid, and they're pointless, and it's a bloody tragedy that they've become a central ( Read more... )

My first alma mater, rather.

At the University of Prince Edward Island, a student newspaper became one of the first Canadian papers to reprint the incendiary editorial cartoons when it published them in its Wednesday edition ( Read more... )

In the uproar surrounding the cartoons of Muhammad, I've ben struck by the over-easy equation of blasphemous drawings of religious prophets with Holocaust denial, made with the intent of saying that if the one's okay the other is too, or vice versa. The key perceived similarity between blasphemy and holocaust denial seems to be rooted in the belief ( Read more... )

The people attacking the cartoons on the grounds that they're blasphemous haven't tried nearly enough to explain why blasphemy--by members, by non-members--shouldn't be permissible, or to justify why threats of violence should spilled out willy-nilly. The people defending the cartoons on the grounds of freedom of speech aren't bothering to address ( Read more... )