Month: June 2010

things getting worse → Canadians

On By Rick McIn food, health & fitness, things getting worse2 Comments

Statscan found that 18 per cent of adult Canadians, about 4.4 million people, were classified as obese in 2009, up from 15 per cent in 2003.

We’re still getting fatter.

With less leisure time to exercise.

* One in five Canadian adult feels “caught in a time crunch,” experiencing high levels of time pressure
* That number is on the rise: the proportion of those who said they were in a time crunch grew to 19.6 per cent in 2005 from 16.4 per cent in 1992
* The average proportion of our waking lives devoted to social and leisure activities dropped by 20 per cent between 1998 and 2005
* A much higher proportion of females than males reported time pressure in 2005 — 22.7 for women, 16 per cent for men
* More than one in four employed Canadians were responsible for the care of an elderly dependent, and one in five (16.8 per cent) had responsibility for both child care and elder care in 2009
* The proportion of Canadians worked non-standard hours (weekends, evenings, nights, rotating shifts jumped from 23 per cent in 1992 to 29 per cent in 2009 …

… for the first time in 2 centuries, Canadians can expect to die earlier (younger) than their parents. …


Update – This article, linked by Chopbox, seems to contradict the one above: Life expectancy in Canada nears 81

brutal NBA Final game 7

On By Rick McIn product complaints, sport - pro1 Comment

Bryant, Artest rally Lakers to 16th championship

… yesterday’s Game 7 of the NBA Finals between the L.A. Lakers and the Boston Celtics produced an astounding 3,085 tweets per second — over 185,000 tweets every minute. …

One of those tweets was mine: “… neither of these teams deserves to win a Championship“.

[picapp align=”center” wrap=”false” link=”term=Kobe+foul&iid=9142022″ src=”http://view.picapp.com/pictures.photo/image/9142022/los-angeles-lakers-guard/los-angeles-lakers-guard.jpg?size=500&imageId=9142022″ width=”380″ height=”279″ /]

I agree with John Gruber:

… what struck me the most watching this series, and especially game seven, is what an ugly, ugly game the NBA has devolved into. No beauty and very little strategy offensively from either side. No ball movement, and lots of standing around. Very hard to believe that these are the two best teams in the league. The Lakers shot just 33 percent from the field and yet clearly deserved to win the game. For decades, a game seven in the Finals between the Celtics and Lakers resulted in basketball at its very best. Now, it’s basketball at its worst. Brutal.

Daring Fireball

… on the other hand, it was still far more entertaining that any of the World Cup Soccer Games.

Sarah Palin defends Drill Baby Drill

On By Rick McIn governmentLeave a comment

“Drill, Baby, Drill!” was a 2008 Republican campaign slogan originally used at the 2008 Republican National Convention by former Maryland Lieutenant Governor, current RNC chairman Michael Steele. The slogan expressed support for increased drilling for petroleum as a source of additional energy. …

Sarah Palin used it often during that campaign.

I watched the vice-Presidential debate where Palin mocked Joe Biden for saying that deep water drilling wasn’t safe.

… Republicans continued to use the slogan after the 2008 election.

In 2010, however, the slogan received renewed attention because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a major oil spill at a BP offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill is causing extensive environmental damages and economic losses estimated in the billions of dollars. As a result, some proponents of “Drill, baby, drill” became embarrassed about their previous support. The slogan was parodied as “Spill, baby, spill”, and “Kill baby, Kill”.

Two senior Republican Senators, Jon Kyl and Pat Roberts, made comments attempting to distance themselves and the Republican Party from the slogan …

The right thing to do after the oil spill would be to drop that catch phrase as a political talking point. Politicians in times of disaster should work together to solve the problem.

Sarah Palin, instead, on June 6th put this up on Twitter.

Yep. She’s got the gall to blame environmentalists for this spill.

Her post on Facebook was a little more coherent:

… “Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country’s energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It’s catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it.” …

All politicians are lying swine. But I can’t think of a worse liar in politics today than Sarah Palin.

She must think her followers are stupid enough to believe this spin.

The Road – Cormac McCarthy

On By Rick McIn books, product endorsements4 Comments

The world will end not with a bang, but a whimper.

I just finished the audio version of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel The Road.

It won the the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

… a boy and his father lurch across the cold, wretched, wet, corpse-strewn, ashen landscape of a post-apocalyptic world. The imagery is brutal even by Cormac McCarthy’s high standards for despair. This parable is also trenchant and terrifying, written with stripped-down urgency and fueled by the force of a universal nightmare. “The Road” would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty.

This is an exquisitely bleak incantation — pure poetic brimstone. …

NY Times book review – The Road Through Hell, Paved With Desperation

Highly recommended if you think you have the stomach for it.

Parents of young children may want to pass it by.

I don’t think this book could translate well into a movie. On the other hand, I can’t think of any actor more suited to play the father than Viggo Mortensen.

new iPhone 4

On By Rick McIn Apple, Google, product complaintsLeave a comment

… Steve Jobs unveiled the forthcoming iPhone 4 at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Among the most praised features of the new smartphone is its new “retina display,” but how good does the iPhone 4’s screen really look?

At 326 pixels per inch, the pixel density of the iPhone 4 is four times that of the iPhone 3. …

Mashable

Click PLAY or watch a video demo on flickr.

Pretty.

But, I’m still not convinced this phone or any other is worth signing on for a 2yr contract. (3yr in Canada!)

Likely I’ll end up with an unlocked, no contract iPhone 3 or, possibly, an Android phone.

Certainly I’d almost never use the Facetime video chat feature.

Glee makes life worth living

On By Rick McIn product endorsements, TVLeave a comment

Just watched the finale of Season 1.

Fantastic.

Click PLAY or watch a clip on YouTube.

It’s been renewed for not just next season, but for the next two.

I love Glee.

You can watch the finale in Canada on Global, in the USA on Fox.

cute kids … ??

On By Rick McIn humourLeave a comment

The Eyebrows advert is a British advertising campaign launched by Cadbury plc in 2009 to promote their Dairy Milk-brand chocolate.

The advert features two children, a boy and a girl, sitting in front of a grey backdrop at a photographer’s studio. When the photographer leaves the shot to answer the telephone, the boy presses a button on his watch, at which point “Don’t Stop The Rock” by Freestyle Express begins to play. …

Click PLAY or watch them on YouTube.