Extra, Extra: Dance Like No One’s Watching, and Make Things That No One’s Expecting

By Meg Campbell

Every weekday’s end, Extra, Extra collects just about everything you ought to care about or ought not miss.

• While the spontaneity of the above dance mob might be up for debate, its cuteness isn’t. Organized by the National Ballet School and filmed yesterday at noon at the Ontario Science Centre, the performance featured 300 kids aged seven to 14 getting down to “Crabbuckit,” while the artist behind that song, k-os, watched from the sidelines.
• According to this story, Harvard academics are shocked that Michael Ignatieff didn’t do better in this month’s federal election. Various articles in Boston-area papers have chided Canadian voters for rejecting Ignatieff, formerly a popular Harvard professor, suggesting it was because of his “Ivy League elitism” and all the time he spent living in the US. That’s one theory!
• What does it mean to be a “maker”? Cinematographer and documentarian Ryan Varga searches for an answer in this mini documentary about the Mini Maker Faire that took place at the Evergreen Brickworks last weekend. Read more about the event here.
• “SlutWalks are what you get when graduate students in feminist studies run out of things to do,” writes Margaret Wente in her Globe column today. “The attitude that rape victims bring it on themselves has largely (though not entirely) disappeared from mainstream society.” In other words, if only some women are being made to feel it’s their fault they were raped, it doesn’t deserve our attention. Which is sort of like your doctor saying: “You only have a small cancerous tumour. Let’s ignore it and see what happens.” Only your doctor wouldn’t say that. But a columnist who offers no facts to back up her claims—and who has a habit of dismissing things she doesn’t understand—just might. Read Sarah Nicole Prickett’s on-the-nose reply to Wente’s column here.

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