I try not to rant here at Slaw, but today, I am making an exception. Among all the political hoopla, famine, flooding and war, I am choosing to rant about something that with very little effort is easily remedied.
News Releases.

I follow news releases using RSS feeds for several levels of government. There is little that annoyes me as much as a news release that has no information in it. For example, Government of Canada Travel Updates.

Here is the headline from the News Releases page on the Canada News Centre:

09:25 ADT (Tuesday, Apr 19, 2011) –

In this New York Times article, Gary Taubes joins two apparently well established medical facts:

• sugar causes liver fat, and consequently insulin resistance, resulting in elevated insulin levels
• insulin encourages the growth of cancerous tumours

Would this relationship be a basis for legal action? The Canadian sugar industry ships $800 million worth annually. . . . [more]

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In the Globe and Mail this morning, I learn that researchers have found that the songs of male humpback whales change from year to year and, indeed, propagate throughout the world community of humpbacks, rather in the way that pop tunes spread among human beings — or the way that negative advertising infects ever larger portions of the polity. It seemed like a day to go with the whales, rather than the pols, so I hunted up these travelling humpback songs for you, finding them in the Wired story on this cetacean phenom.

A travelling sound more… melodious to our . . . [more]

I recently received at my work email address a link to a YouTube video of a very popular Irish television show, Mrs Brown’s Boys. In my opinion, this is the best comedy show that has come from the BBC in a very long time. The episode in question, “Mrs. Brown gets a bikini wax”, was so funny to me, I was crying from laughter at my desk. My first impulse was to share the video with some of my co-workers who have a similar sense of humour. However, I hesitated before I pressed the send button, and I . . . [more]

As we often do on Slaw, I’m going to alert you to a nifty Google doodle today:

Today is the 50th anniversary of the first spaceflight of a human being. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth for 108 minutes in his Vostok spacecraft. Gagarin died on March 27, 1968. . . . [more]

There is an excellent message from Governor General David Johnston in the Canada News Centre about National Volunteer Week.

This spirit of giving, which often develops at a very young age and helps to define our collective identity, forms the very basis of any dynamic society.

and later

During National Volunteer Week, I invite Canadians to think about how they can make a difference in their communities and get involved. Let us take this opportunity to recognize and celebrate the work of all volunteers.

I hope you enjoy reading Slaw.ca this week. It is the work of many volunteers. If . . . [more]

Every now and again judges have to deal with unrepresented plaintiffs. Sometimes there’s a good reason why P couldn’t find representation. That will usually make the judge’s job harder.

Consider this description of of a recent claim. The amount claimed was a 200 hundred million. There’s no indication why the plaintiff chose that figure.

The action arises from the purchase of a … refrigerator by the Plaintiff on or about September 25, 1999.

P alleges as against the defendants defective repair service, electronic surveillance by the defendants of the plaintiff, theft via Internet of his personal files, data and emails,

Thinking runs in ruts and it takes a whole lot of effort to get it back on the tarmac again. Habit’s what does it, I’d say: we get used to picking up notions with the same old mental toolset, with the result that our views remain fairly fixed no matter what the world may lay at our feet. As the saying goes, we wind up holding a hammer so everything looks pretty much like a nail.

Getting a new mind tool can be wonderfully liberating. Which is why, although it’s a Friday, I’m going to point you to a box . . . [more]

The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village.

– Marshall McLuhan

In 2011, the University of Alberta will host the Herbert Marshall McLuhan Edmonton Centenary. Being the city of McLuhan’s birth, Edmonton boasts a special connection to the Canadian icon, even though others are also celebrating.

I offer you this link as tribute to Marshal McLuhan – the 1971 convocation address when the University of Alberta awarded him with an honorary Doctor of Laws.

Considering the number of times he has been mentioned here, I wonder what Prof. McLuhan would say about . . . [more]

On October 30, 1938 — okay, the day before Halloween — Orson Welles broadcast to the US his rather creative version of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. As most of you likely know, after starting his regular radio program with a sententious (and somewhat boring) reading of the first part of the 1898 novel, Welles’s Mercury Theater on the Air players interrupted with a series of mock news reports that eventually told of an invasion from Mars. Panic ensued in many parts of America. Gotcha!

Thanks to the miracle of the internet, you can listen to the hour-long . . . [more]

Remember the flame things in chemistry lab in highschool or university? Bunsen burners, right? Turns out that chemist Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen did a bit more than start fires. Google is celebrating his birthday, which was either today or yesterday in 1811. If you hurry, you can catch their fun animated doodle:

. . . [more]