Great Innovations in Ketchup Packets
Published February 5, 2010 @ 08:01 in News

Every year in grade school we had to make and present a science project. One year, I did my project on ketchup. I'm an authority on the subject.

There's major news from the ketchup packet industry at this hour. Heinz has revamped their packets.

The redesigned ketchup pack, unveiled Thursday by H.J. Heinz Co., is shaped like a shallow cup. The top can be peeled back for dipping, or the end can be torn off for squeezing. It holds three times as much ketchup as a traditional packet.

40 years in the making... What the hell took them so long?

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Grace Hospital Not Dying
Published February 4, 2010 @ 13:40 in News

I was pleased to read that the Salvation Army has saved Toronto Grace hospital. The charity has run the Toronto Grace since 1889.

I've had a soft spot in my heart for Toronto Grace since watching Allan King's excellent documentary "Dying at Grace". It's about five patients dying in the Palliative Care Unit of the Salvation Army Toronto Grace Health Centre. We meet them, spend time with them and then we watch them die. It's terribly chilling, totally effective, and in many ways, absolutely reassuring.

If you ever get a chance to see Dying at Grace, I strongly urge you to do so.

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Canada Throws the DART at Haiti
Published January 13, 2010 @ 14:02 in News

The Disaster Assistance Response Team, or DART for short, is a specialized team of about 200 Canadian Forces soldiers that flies into disaster areas around the world to provide drinking water and medical treatment until long-term aid arrives. The military created DART in 1996 because of its experience in Rwanda two years earlier, when international relief organizations arrived too late to save thousands of people from a cholera epidemic.

Yesterday's deadly 7.0 earthquake in Haiti will kill thousands. Our 200-member rapid response unit, which can operate a mobile command centre and a medical facility with water purification equipment capable of producing 100,000 litres of clean drinking water, will be deployed to Haiti.

The only question is when and how to balance the need for medical professionals to treat the sick and wounded against the need for engineers and infrastructure specialists who can prop up damaged bridges and buildings in a land where flimsy construction standards were no match for the sliding tectonic plates.

Port-au-Prince has been devastated. I don't think sending prayers will be sufficient. The DART is a good start, but the Haitian people are going to need a lot more help than that.

[picture via The Big Picture]

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All-Day Kindergarten Comes Too Late For Me
Published January 12, 2010 @ 09:18 in News

My kids' school will have full-day kindergarten next fall. This is an initiative from Dalton McGuinty's government.

Almost 600 elementary schools across Ontario will be named Tuesday by Premier Dalton McGuinty as the first in the plan to provide a full school day for kindergarten children from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., plus affordable before- and after-school care, should parents want it.

I think this is fantastic, but it's exactly one year too late for me. My youngest starts grade one in the fall. I missed it by thiiiiiis much.

This makes up for the good luck I had in '93 when I was the last graduating class from Michael Power's original location near Islington and Bloor. They moved near Centennial Park in the fall of '93 and I had no interest in that extra commute west.

Even Steven.

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24 Million Single Chinese Men
Published January 11, 2010 @ 17:33 in News

A lot of obvious news came across the wire today. Mark McGwire took steroids, Sarah Palin is contributing to Fox News and Simon Cowell is quitting American Idol. No surprises there.

It's also no surprise that they have a serious problem in China with men outnumbering women. More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020.

The study said the key contributing factors to the phenomenon included the nation's family-planning policy, which restricts the number of children citizens may have, as well as an insufficient social security system.

The situation influenced people to seek male offspring, who are preferred for their greater earning potential as adults and thus their ability to care for their elderly parents.

Sex-specific abortions are common in China. The strong cultural preference in China is to have boys over girls, so when the ultrasound shows it's a girl, it's often aborted. You can blame the single child policy for that lovely little factoid.

The normal male-female ratio is between 103-107 males for every 100 females but in parts of China it's as high as 130 males for every 100 females.

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Rage Against The Machine vs Simon Cowell
Published December 23, 2009 @ 09:37 in Music, News

I love this story out of the UK.

A Simon Cowell act has topped the United Kingdom pop chart at Christmas four years in a row. X-Factor artist Joe McElderry's Christmas song "The Climb" was a virtual shoe-in to top the charts this year, which would give Cowell an impressive five year win streak.

A grass-roots campaign started on Facebook sought to make a statement by getting Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name" to the top of the UK chart this Christmas. "Killing in the Name" has that awesome line "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me."

Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello took note, joined the cause and pledged to donate all proceeds to charity.

I'm happy to report that "Killing in the Name" sold more than 500,000 copies this past week, while McElderry's song fell short of the top spot, with 450,000.

It is indeed the anarchy Christmas miracle of 2009!

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The Truth About Tiger Woods
Published December 1, 2009 @ 20:22 in News

I've taken a few days to write about Tiger-gate because I've been waiting patiently for someone to break this story wide open. I mean, it's obvious, right? I certainly wasn't buying what Tiger Woods was selling. Not for a nanosecond.

Tiger's extramarital relations were discovered by his wife, who reacted violently. At some point during the heated exchange, she grabbed a golf club. To escape the tension, Tiger sped away while Elin Nordegren clubbed the car with the golf club.

It's all so obvious. There's even video evidence. Watch the video below, starting at the 55-second mark.

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Utah Spelunker's Death Reminds me of Omayra Sánchez
Published November 28, 2009 @ 09:58 in News

I find it difficult to even read about the 26-year-old Utah spelunker who died after being trapped in a cave's narrow crevice.

I can't imagine how helpless rescuers must have felt, knowing John Jones was there and being unable to free him. They'll never be able to recover his body so they're going to shut down the cave instead.

The entire episode reminded me of Omayra Sánchez. I only learnt about Omayra Sánchez a couple of years ago and that story and this story are eerily similar. Omayra Sánchez was trapped in water, but she was trapped in such a fashion that they couldn't help her, and efforts to drain the water around her failed. They could see her and talk to her, but they couldn't free her.

Here's Omayra, shortly before she passed away.

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National Post Could Close
Published October 29, 2009 @ 18:03 in News

The National Post could close after tomorrow.

Creditors of the company have indicated they are no longer prepared to fund continuing losses at the Post, which employs 277 people, Canwest said.

The creditor group “will not continue to support funding the National Post Company in the long or short term past Oct. 30, 2009,” Canwest said in a court report released Thursday.

I don't read the National Post, but I'll be sorry to see it go because it was always the paper most likely to write about me. There was this time this time and this time and this time.

By the way, The New York Times calls The National Post "Canada's cheeky conservative paper". I think "cheeky" is being kind. It was more like Canada's Fox News paper.

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I Like thestar.com Redesign
Published October 19, 2009 @ 13:08 in News, Toronto News ~ Toronto Focus

The Toronto Star recently redesigned their website. Here's a screen cap of their current Sports page.

I like it. It's clean and simple, and content is king. I like their use of white space and padding. It's definitely an improved site.

It's tough going for the newspaper industry. Their web presence is so vital and none of us want to register to see the content let alone pay for it. Monetizing online content isn't easy. Sure, if you get eyeballs you can sell ads, but imagine trying to support an entire news organization like the Toronto Star with online ads.

Then there's guys like me who never see the ads. The reason you see no ads in the screen cap above is because I surf the web with Adblock Plus added on to my Firefox web browser. I haven't seen an ad online in years.

Still, you've got to have a good web presence, and this redesign is a good one.

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