Friday 25 May 2012

news feeds may 25


The Gardiner Expressway is an ugly eyesore down by our waterfront.  Essential? Maybe at a time, but it's done. It's deteriorating at a rapid rate with walkways and traffic lanes deemed "unsafe" (because of falling concrete from the rotting underside of the Gardiner above). Remember Mayor Miller saying something about dismantling the Gardiner (and making our waterfront much nicer)all together, and yes, while the cost will be huge, it will be more effective than doing patch work repairs on the decaying Expressway for x amount of years. Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong said of the falling debris, "One incident is a freak occurrence, a second incident becomes troubling. When you have a third incident happen then you start to connect data points and you have a trend." What trending? #deathbygardiner
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Facebook's stock has been sinking like a stone, down 15% since it's original offering a week ago.  Shares at the opening of Friday morning were going for around $32 a share from the $38.23 it was trading for it's first day on the Nasdaq just a week ago.  Investors are also launching a lawsuit against the company, saying that Facebook's underwriters gave favourable treatment to institutional investors by disclosing negative information about the stock that was withheld from other investors. Named in the lawsuit were Zuckerberg, and underwriters JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital, and Merrill Lynch.  Facebook reps have said the lawsuit is "without merit," whereas the banks and investment firms declined to comment on the matter. It was one of the most highly anticipated IPOs of all time. It set trading volume records but has essentially been a huge disappointment.  Nasdaq dropped the ball after the start of trading on opening day was delayed by half an hour, then complaints poured in from investors that their orders were not processed correctly and in some cases, they paid a higher share price than when they made the purchase after waiting a few days for confirmation (also a ludicrous amount of time). 
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As much fun as Barack Obama calling Mitt Romney's speech on the country's finances "cow pie distortion" in Iowa but I gotta hand it to Bill Clinton.. what do you say about this guy? He was recently photographed in Monte Carlo, Monaco hanging out with porn stars. The 65 year old ex-president and noted cigar enthusiast was in the country for a gala benefit the William J Clinton Foundation and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. Brooklyn Lee, who originally put the pic on her twitter, and Tasha Reign are the actresses in the photo with another girl, who is not a porn star. No matter how you slice it, Bill looks more than happy to be in the photo!


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Carl Safina has submitted an excerpt from his book "The View From Lazy Point" to Adbusters magazine examining the first century of corporate America. Quite lengthy but a great read.

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Kind of a drag, but whatever, let's roll with it. There's a article on The Guardian (UK Edition) on the top five regrets of the dying. It was compiled by an Australian born nurse named Bronnie Ware who has spent several years caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of her lives. She has heard so many dashed hopes, dreams, wishes that she has put her observations into a book called, fittingly, "The Top Five Regrets Of the Dying." At number five "I wish that I had let myself be happier," to which Ware said "Surprisingly common on. Many did not realize that happiness is a choice.". But the top two seem much more common to be and to the people I know. "I wish I hadn't worked so hard." That was much more applicable to men because of their role in the older generation as bread-winners, but women are affected by this who are from the post-baby boomer crowd and Ware said patients "deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence." Also, at the top of the list, was "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." Before violins stop playing I'll just link the article if you want to check it out. 

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Kids are smart. There's this 9 year old Scottish girl named Martha Payne who was fed up with the lack of quality in her school lunches and decided to do something about it. Martha and her camera launched the blog "Never Second" that spread all over the web within five posts, attracting the attention of local/international media, and of course school lunch guru Jamie Oliver. Basically, she took a picture of her lunch and rated them based on taste and healthiness using a kid-centric food rating system. Martha's dad met with local officials and was told that the kids could eat unlimited salad, fruit and bread at her school. Good job kid!
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TV listing and entertainment website Zap2it have an interview up with Dan Castellanta, the voice of Homer Simpson asking about how Homer's voice has evolved since the show made it's debut. He originally based the voice on the brilliant Walter Matthau because of his big mouth, droopy face and deadpan delivery, but as the show (and animation) evolved so did the voice of Homer, which Castellanta "As it progressed Homer got a little rounder. His emotions were going all over the place. I sort of just found it by accident. It just found it's place." He was also asked if people recognize his voice, but he made sure to be clear that his normal voice was nothing like that of Homer. Simpsons season finale aired last Sunday on Fox, and will be starting it's 24th season in the fall. But back to Walter Matthau. The Odd Couple, Bad News Bears, Charade, Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie or Grumpy Old Men are all incredible movies, and even bad ones like, oh, The Couch Trip with Dan Aykroyd he is always the best part of his movies. He also has the perfect voice for a cartoon character. Here's Walter (and Jack Lemmon, Ann-Margaret and Burgess Meredith)



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Today mark's the actual 35th anniversary of the release day of Star Wars so I'll spare another post on it and just link back to "May the Fourth Be With You."
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Well, ain't this the truth?


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