Partisan rants & city politics
Pull up Gottc.ca in your cell phone's browser to snag bus schedules in a stripped-down, low-bandwidth (i.e. high-cheapness), fancy-pants way. Reading schedules from bus stop poles is for chumps! [via Torontoist]
Labels: ttc
Environment czar calls firing a 'surprise' - "[Johanne] Gelinas, whose last report urged a massive scale-up of efforts to combat climate change, learned of her dismissal Tuesday from an online news report, said a source... Auditor General Sheila Fraser, Gelinas’ boss, issued a news release saying Gelinas was leaving 'to pursue other opportunities.'" [Toronto Star]
Labels: environment, parliament
Harper letter called Kyoto 'socialist scheme' - "With polls showing the environment is a top priority with voters and Harper keen to bolster his environmental credentials, the [2002 fundraising] letter could prove embarrassing. It was circulated Tuesday by the Liberals, who said it unmasks Harper as a climate-change denier... These days, Harper avoids criticizing the Kyoto accord, and simply dismisses its targets as unattainable " [Toronto Star]
Labels: conservative, environment, int'l relations, parliament
Survey shows 13% of Americans never heard of global warming - "The report, by ACNielsen of more than 25,000 Internet users, showed that 57 percent of people around the world considered global warming a 'very serious problem' and a further 34 percent rated it a 'serious problem.'" [Reuters]
Labels: environment, polls, United States
NDP leader wants $10 wage vote - "'New Democrats will not sleep, we will not slumber, we will not rest until Ontario has a $10-an-hour minimum wage and every working person in this province gets a fair day's pay for a hard day's work,' Hampton said yesterday in his keynote address at the provincial NDP convention in Toronto." [Toronto Star]
Labels: labour, minimum wage, NDP, poverty, queen's park
White-label ATMs a black mark on banks, MP fumes - "A joint venture by two of Canada's banks that own and operate so-called white-label bank machines has the federal NDP's ethics critic crying foul." [London Free Press]
Labels: banks, NDP, parliament
Lapel pins trumpet Mayor's mantra - "How do you spot Mayor David Miller's supporters at City Hall? Check their lapels. There is a good chance that a Millerite will be sporting a blue-and-white lapel pin emblazoned with Toronto's logo and the words: 'Opportunity. Liveability. Prosperity.'" [National Post]
Labels: Toronto
Review minimum wage, Tory urges - "He proposed a commission that would consult broadly with business and social justice groups annually and decide whether the minimum wage, which rises 25 cents to $8 an hour next week, should be changed to reflect economic conditions." [Toronto Star]
Labels: conservative, labour, minimum wage, poverty, queen's park
Toronto home prices up 290% - "While Barrie topped the survey [at 372%], other locations in the Golden Horseshoe area also did well. St. Catharines was in second place, showing a 329 per cent increase, the equivalent of a 6 per cent annual increase compounded... close behind was the Hamilton-Burlington area with a 325 per cent increase." [Toronto Star]
New York's $140-million subway radio system is garbled - "The system was completed in October, after years of effort to make it possible for transit officers in the subway to talk with officers aboveground." [Globe and Mail]
Mennonites may lose Canadian citizenship over 1920s glitch - "Those who are in Canada when they discover this, government usually does not deport them, it looks for a way of getting them reinstated. But it's a cumbersome, and sometimes expensive and very inconvenient process." [CBC]
Labels: citizenship
'Fast clothes' good for fashion but bad for the environment - "It is hard to imagine how customers who rush after trends, or the stores that serve them, will respond to the report's suggestions: that people lease clothes and return them at the end of a month or a season, so the garments can be lent again — like library books — to someone else, and that they buy more expensive and durable clothing that can be worn for years." [Int'l Herald Tribune]
Labels: consumerism, environment, language, waste
U.S. envoy slams Arar efforts - "...the U.S. found its own reasons to keep Mr. Arar on the watch list, [Public Safetly Minister Stockwell] Day says he's seen the information and found nothing new to suggest Mr. Arar is a safety risk." [Globe and Mail]
Labels: int'l relations, United States
Strange maps is a blog of bizarro cartography, fictional and otherwise. See the world political map of Orwell's 1984, the original Gerrymander, or world hog population density. [via Kottke]
Labels: maps
GO chief defends service - "Bear with us. It's growing pains. We will come back on stream. I think our reliability is still much better than the road system." [Toronto Star]
Labels: transit
"Get it to Go Green advocates sustainable take-out containers, which are often made of sugar cane, corn, and potato starch. Such materials are biodegradable, non-toxic, and do not contain cancer causing agents, unlike the materials in paper, plastic, and Styrofoam." [Torontoist]
Labels: consumerism, environment, waste
"Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega will be released from prison on Sept. 9" [Toronto Star]
"[Ségolène] Royal sparked a diplomatic row on Monday by suggesting she is sympathetic to the idea of Quebec sovereignty after a short meeting with André Boisclair, the head of the separatist Parti Québécois." [CBC]
Labels: int'l relations, quebec
Guiding Light: Which book light outshines the others? - "If these people have nothing to hide, why do they sneak off to a dark corner with their tiny, battery-operated lights? Why do they continue to read after their spouses have gone to sleep? What, exactly, are these book lighters planning?" [Slate]
Homeless shelters overloaded, critics say - "The hidden-camera operation is the latest move by the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee, a veteran group of homelessness activists critical of Mayor David Miller's strategy on the homeless." [Globe and Mail]
Labels: homelessness, poverty, Toronto
RIP, Walk left/stand right: "Removing the signs won't discourage walking on escalators, because they never encouraged it in the first place. Instead, the signs, simple and crude as they were, promoted order and kindness over chaos and confusion." [Torontoist]
Those of you wishing to ridicule my about my latest gadget obsession can ready yourselves for a geektastic back-and-forth by checking out Wikipedia's iPhone article, which is already (un?)surprisingly robust.
Labels: iPhone
Labels: ttc
I received a Scrabble board from Larissa for Christmas. Tonight, we used it. As expected, she issued me a sound drubbing.
