This is Justin Bieber covering The Tragically Hip during a concert in Malaysia. Kudos to a Canadian superstar paying tribute to Canadian icons but also…gah!
Shea and I attempt to re-create one of our (okay, my!) favourite snacks from our Hawaii trip. Pretty close though I think the version we ate had fresh kim-chi in it as well.
You know, one of the biggest mysteries in my life (not really) is wondering how every western society on earth can have some form of socialized medicine for its citizens and yet a large part of the population of the United States persists in the belief that their nightmare of a private, insurance-based system is the best in the world.
(Actually not that much of a mystery when you take about three seconds to think on it. Take a combination of American exceptionalism and a pig-headed belief in the dark side of the American Dream, “Every man for himself”, mix in a large dollop of religious brainwashing, a faulty education system, enormous wealth inequity and there you go – St. AnyElsewhere.)
And yes, “St. AnyElsewhere” is a stupid, out-dated, barely relevant pun/joke. Sorry about that – I’m sad for myself that I couldn’t think of anything better.
The average life expectancy for a Canadian male is currently 78 years. That means as I turn 39 today, I have officially reached the half-way point of my expected life span on this planet (and accounting for abuses suffered in earlier years – from over-drinking to being exposed to god knows what working at a gas station and being around farm chemicals much of my life – who knows how much that may reduce that number.)
But on the other hand, medical science continues to extend life expectancies and that 78 is probably a lot higher than my dad would’ve been told he could expect to live to when he was 39 (or my grandfather or great-grandfather.) Plus I’m from a very long-lived family – I think my one grandpa lived to 80 while my grandma lived to 97. On the maternal side of the family, my other grandpa lived to 88 while his wife lived to 84. (All numbers from memory so I may be off on some or all of them.)
Anyhow, happy birthday – for the next year, I get to be “39 and holding”!
One Hundred Zeroes – ongoing updated list of Amazon bestseller e-books available for free
Book Burning Party To Save a Library – this story and video made the rounds of the biblioblog/FB/Twitter-sphere awhile ago saying that an amazing ad campaign promoting a book burning at a soon-to-be-closed library system helped shock people out of their “all tax = bad” attitudes (although one comment in this MetaFilter thread indicates the ad agency may be exaggerating their influence. If true, a good reminder to keep your skept-o-metre 2000 turned up to 10 because I’m sure I’m not the only one who completely believed this information as presented…by an ad agency. Yikes!)
After being one of the hottest web properties and spurning a $200 MILLION dollar offer from Google, user-driven voting site Digg was sold last week for a measley $500,000. Some commentators thought it was competition from user-driven sharing sites like Facebook and Twitter that put the nail in Digg’s coffin but ignored the rise of the much more similar but well-designed (ironically, by having a basic, old-fashioned, text-based design) Reddit.
