The extremely unusual is going on. And not all of it is Canadian.

• Example One: Hockey Night in Canada, the theme song of the weekly broadcast (entitled, as you may imagine, ‘Hockey Night in Canada’) from Canada’s public broadcaster is no longer licensed by said public broadcaster.

Ordinarily, these copyright-kinda things blow over, but this won’t; too many Canadians associate the song with the sport. Problematically — and probably why television network CTV bought the song’s rights in perpetuity — two generations of Canadians associate the song with CBC’s television and radio hockey broadcasts.
Is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation going to take this lying down? Probably.

• Example two: Lynda Carter — the 1970s Amazon ‘Wonder Woman‘ to her friends — was canoeing on the Potomac when she sighted a floating body and had the presence of mind to enlist the aid of nearby fishermen in contacting authorities.

Ms Carter mentioned she didn’t have a cellphone, but doesn’t the invisible canoe have a powerful invisible communications system?

• Example three: Apple Inc. has taken their expensive iPhone and have

a) made it twice as fast, and

b) made it affordable(!).

No kidding. Check it out!

Fifty years go by like nothing . . . and so it is with the famed peace sign, whose 50th anniversary was recently observed.

. . .

Filipino Good Friday re-enactors have been admonished by local health officials to get tetanus inoculations before

a) flagellating themselves, and
b) having nails hammered into their hands and feet while tied to crosses.
They also recommend that the whips utilized be hygienic and “well-maintained.” Good advice all around.

. . .

Take Pork Off Your Fork?

Almost 10 per cent of packaged pork chops and ground pork purchased by researchers in four Canadian provinces were infected with MRSA — Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus — a ’super’ bacterium once primarily seen in hospitals.

The good news? MRSA doesn’t survive cooking. Providing pork is properly cooked (no pink within) and properly handled prior to cooking (wash your hands after touching any raw meat — especially pork and chicken — or use an alcohol-based hand-sanitizer), eating your chops and porkburgers shouldn’t kill you.

Better news? Pork roasts purchased by the researchers were uninfected.

. . .

Happy Easter, y’all.

Excess money? A remedy for that could be a whack of movies from United Artists. The United Artists 90th Anniversary Prestige Collection provides you with enough entertainment to last you into your dotage.

. . .

We Get Spam

A mister ‘Alfonzo Rosa’ entitles his sales pitch, “You won’t need to furtively put socks into your trunks anymore!”

Oh, goody!

. . .

Dan Fogelberg died of prostate cancer today.  He was 56.  I remember him through songs of haunting melody: Run for the Roses and Longer among them.

Out of South Korea comes news that a quarry worker was killed by his LG cell phone.

- - -

WiseAndFoolish recommends that folks always be nice to their cell phones.

- - -

The battery in the victim’s "rigorously tested" phone is believed to have exploded, sending telephonic shrapnel through the 33-year-old’s heart and lungs.

This appears to mirror the experience of a Chinese welder, whose Nokia cell phone’s battery exploded, puncturing his heart with a resultantly broken rib.  The 22-year-old died after being taken to hospital.

A quick check of my logs indicates that a large percentage of visitors have popped by due to a post here entitled YAS (Yet Another Scandal).

The post in question briefly mentioned Tammy Faye Messner.  Ms Messner’s website hasn’t been updated since October, and her cancer has recently taken a bad turn.
There’s a surprising groundswell of interest in Ms Messner; from the odd pairing with Ron Jeremy on The Surreal Life 2, to the Larry King interviews, Ms Messner has managed to remain in the public eye.  Witness, if you will, ‘Big Tent: The Tammy Faye Bakker Musical‘ . . . possibly coming soon to an off-Broadway venue near you. Ex-husband Jim is preaching on television again, though in considerably reduced means from the glory days.

Jay Bakker, on the other hand, is a rising star. The son of Jim and Tammy is definitely not yer average preacher.
As a gentle means of introduction, Apple’s iTunes has an episode of Rev. Jay Bakker’s ‘One Punk Under God‘ gratis.  The six-episode documentary by the Sundance Channel will premiere on December 13th.

Science has outdone itself yet again, providing an explanation (and a mathematical formula, yet) for the famed ‘beer-goggle effect’ — an observable, quantifiable and too-often-replicated happenstance wherein ugly people pass along their genes by sneakily appearing attractive to the inebriated.
The same findings were earlier noted in Scotland by University of Glasgow and St Andrews professors, who apparently weren’t funded by Bausch and Lomb.

– BBC News

Good news on the cancer front, as both effective treatments and preventatives are announced. Gardasil and Cervarix are vaccines with proven efficacy in protecting against most human papillomavirus-caused (HPV) cervical cancers. Moreover, there are indications that Gardasil could protect against HPV strains it doesn’t immediately target, as effective antibodies against them are produced within the vaccine’s recipients.

National Cancer Institute researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland announced the first successful treatment of cancer through gene therapy. Two men (of 17 treated) whose white blood cells were modifed to recognize and attack advanced melanoma cells are still tumor-free roughly two years after initial treatment. The abstract may be seen here.

Steve Irwin, world-famous 44-year-old Australian ‘Crocodile Hunter’, was killed by a stingray barb piercing his heart. Mr Irwin was a ridiculously-likeable person, in my opinion, and his passing will sadden many.

Tom Cruise, perhaps hearing the fuse hissing on the bomb beneath his career, apologized to Brooke Shields for some extraordinarily insensitive public statements he uttered about the actress’s post-partum depression and the treatment she had been undergoing.

Sources:
BBC News. Earthtimes.org. Reuters. StarNewsOnline.com.  Science.

Crazy Frogs and Wrist-flowers

Originally uploaded by z0ot.

It’s summer, and time for the kids to have a blast at the local fair. Up for grabs at the carney booths: Crazy Frog!

Don’t know who you are?

OkCupid has a battery of tests that’ll tell you several things, some of which may be accurate. Or not. They’re a better-than-average means of wasting some time while waiting for online poker opponents to fold.

Examples:

1. My political stripe.

2. My Intuition Type

More Scientific You have: 77% SCIENTIFIC INTUITION and 70% EMOTIONAL INTUITION The graph on the right represents your place in Intuition 2-Space. As you can see, you scored above average on emotional intuition and well above average on scientific intuition.Your scientific intuition is stronger than your emotional intuition. Your Emotional Intuition score is a measure of how well you understand people, especially their unspoken needs and sympathies. A high score score usually indicates social grace and persuasiveness. A low score usually means you’re good at Quake.Your Scientific Intuition score tells you how in tune you are with the world around you; how well you understand your physical and intellectual environment. People with high scores here are apt to succeed in business and, of course, the sciences. Try my other test! The 3 Variable Funny Test It rules. My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 83% on Scientific You scored higher than 59% on Interpersonal Link: The 2-Variable Intuition Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

OkCupid is a dating site, so — if you’re married and are in it for the tests — try not to get picked up.

BBC News spans the planet. It’s a hoot to see headlines like this mixed in with terrorist coverage and bird ‘flu disaster planning.

BBC NEWS | England | Coventry/Warwickshire | Duck seen with dart in its head