The Northern Pikes: Canadian
“Girl With A Problem”; ‘Snow In June‘ (1990)
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The First Three News Stories On 08/06/07
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Yesterday’s News Sometime Later: Technically the idea behind this post was to compare the news cycles of Canadian, American and British national and local news… unfortunately I haven’t been able to give it as much attention as I think it requires. Hopefully over the next few weeks I can make it work again.
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7pm PBS: The News Hour
1) Bridge Cleanup Starts: It’ll take at least eighteen months to rebuild the collapsed Minneapolis highway. It was a two-bridge system, four lanes each way. By the time they’re done they’ll have to replace the side which didn’t fall. Same materials, same builders, same engineers and same completion date means its outlived it’s safety date as well. There are over a hundred bridges in Quebec which have recently been deemed hazards. Traffic on each of them has been reduced, including a ban on larger vehicles. It’s the same in Ontario and most of the Northern and NorthEastern American States. My grandfather was the project manager / engineer on most of the infrastructure surrounding Montreal. We were watching some of the coverage and he was saying “most of this stuff was only engineered to last thirty, maybe forty years. There hasn’t been a serious infrastructure upgrade [in these regions] in decades so, surprise, things fall apart.”
2) State Of Emergency Declared: These fires have been burning all summer. Just like they do every summer. Having worked (not as a fire person) in a fire zone for several months I can say basically the fire people working on these things are trying a) not to get killed; b) to guide the fire away from populated areas, c) on their days off to get “Townies” to sleep with them. Because the thing is, no human being has ever put out one of these monster forest fires. Not in Canada, America, Australia, Brazil or Thailand… of course, in those last two, no one’s really trying anyway. These kind of fires are only put out when a) there’s nothing left to burn; b) the rain puts it out, or; c) enough people get into the prayer circle. So, on Sunday, Montana’s governor declared a state of emergency. Which means the insurance money can now start flowing.
3) Mine Rescue Ongoing: Seismic counters have been going off since the initial cave-in, which has prohibited rescue workers from searching for the six men trapped underground in a coal mine near Crandall Canyon, Utah. It’s a fairly remote region aboot 140 miles from Salt Lake City.
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10pm CBC: The National
1) Caffeine Boosts Brain Power: A four-year French study has found that elderly women who drink more than three cups of coffee per day are more mentally alert and agile than women who don’t drink coffee. Specifically, ingesting 300mgs of caffeine everyday means women are less likely to have memory impairments, and the effect grows with age. This report, which studied 7,017 people over the age of 65, ruled out the effects of education and income. In the report the researchers said their study isn’t meant to be definitive proof, and they don’t understand how it works, or even why it works, it’s just that it seems to…
2) Ubiquitous Chemical Damaging People: For years it has been known that “Bisphenol-A”, one of the most common chemicals available, in fact it’s in every plastic item made, has been damaging the physiology of animals and possibly humans thanks to it’s ability to mimic estrogen. Remember aboot ten years ago when people started finding frogs with both sexes, or entire colonies of female-only reptiles? Taa-daa. Aboot three billion kilograms of Bisphenol-A is placed into products every year. When those products decompose, Bisphenol-A is released into the water-table. Hearings started today in an American Senate committee to decide if it’s appropriate to ban the chemical. The “American Chemical Council” was quoted as saying “hey, all chemicals need a home. We’re not deliberately evil, you know. We hated our fathers.”
3) Utah Miners Trapped: Six men are trapped 1500 feet below the surface in a coal mine in Utah. They are believed to be still alive, although no contact has been made. If they made it to one of the “safe zones” they should have enough oxygen, water and food for more than a week.
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11pm CTV National News
1) 9yr Old Girl Still Missing: Police in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec — aboot 140 kilometres northeast of Montreal — are still searching for a nine-year old girl, Cedrika Provencher, who has been missing since last Tuesday. Police believe a man approached three other girls in her neighbourhood claiming to be looking for his lost puppy. People were approached by a girl matching Cedrika’s description who was asking aboot a lost puppy. Look… it’s not complicated, if you’ve got a young child you have to street-proof them. You have to make sure they understand that men do not ask children to help look for a puppy. If they’re young either you walk with them to and from wherever they’re going, or you hire a babysitter or nanny. You do not let them walk across town wearing a bathing suit.
2) Death Threats Against Minister: This was, quite possibly, the quickest news item ever to make it to the number two slot on the CTV Newslist. If Tom Clark gave this twenty seconds I’ll eat my blog. Some random Canadian lost a lot of coin when the tax system was changed so he threatened, in a series of emails, to harm, hurt and kill the Canadian Minister of Finance, The Right Honourable Jim Flaherty. The random and unidentified Canadian was arrested.
3) UK Foot & Mouth Back: Sixty animals in Britain have been infected with Foot & Mouth disease leading “Europe” and Canada to ban animal imports from the UK. People travelling to Canada and several other countries from Britain must go through a disinfection process. The British Government, having faced terrorists and extreme flooding in the past few months, called it “an incident, not yet a crisis”. Six years ago six million animals had to be put down, at a cost of US$20B to the economy. At the moment it is believed the virus was released, by accident, from one of two laboratories close to the infection zone. I think the next step will involve either all Britons being turned to pillars of salt, or the main island itself will rise up, turn over, and slowly sink beneath the waves.
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If you find a broken link, or the YouTube stuff isn’t loading
properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.
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0_o
cultural sn:afu 