This little boy and his parents were very, very lucky! While camping with his family, the 3 year old boy wandered off on his own in his plastic toy truck and ended up on a river. He floated 12 kilometers down the river before being rescued. His parents had assumed he was playing with other children nearby and didn’t notice his absence for almost two hours!
Read the full story here from the Toronto Star.
I love this new ad by Evian. Check it out here.
Do you discriminate by age, race or gender? It’s easy to say “no”, but are you really? Here’s how to find out if you really are. Try the implicit association tests at http://www.implicit.harvard.edu.
Click “Demonstration”, read the instructions carefully, and try it for yourself. Very interesting!
(To save time, there’s no need to fill in your information if you don’t want to, or just don’t want to bother).
For those who live in Toronto or the GTA or who read “Canadian news”, you’ll know that the City of Toronto is on strike.
How does a city go on strike?
Easy! When the union composed of 22,000 municipal workers employed by the City decides to stop allowing people to go to work.
What does the strike mean?
The strike means that many city-run facilities and services are now suspended. That includes:
The reason for the strike?
One of the chief reasons I’ve read is that union workers feel the City is trying to “cheat” them by eliminating roll-over sick days. Currently, these employees are entitled to 18 days of paid sick leave each year. That’s fine, no problems there. Very standard to have sick days, right? (Altho 18 is quite a bit…)
The problem comes in here: If they do not fall sick or do not use all 18 days in the year, they can roll-over their sick days into perpetuity. Yes, that’s right, after working, say 10 years, they could have accumulated 180 days of paid sick days! And the real kicker? When they retire, they get paid out for ALL the sick days they never took.
The union believes it’s unfair for the City to eliminate this “perk” which they claim they’ve earned. One unioned paramedic whined about how the City is trying to pay them less for for more work.
Ya, duh, it’s a recession people! EVERYONE is getting paid less for more work! Actually, you might count yourself lucky to even have a job. Oh wait, it’s hard to lay-off unioned workers, isn’t it?
(Obviously, since I don’t belong to a union, I don’t like unions.)
…
Anyways, I’m happy I’m not in Toronto right now. Friends of mine who still live in Toronto claim the city is really starting to stink since garbage hasn’t been collected and especially since, because drop-off points have been blocked, many people are simply dumping their garbage in the city parks and at abandoned city buildings (which is kind of ironically funny).
Also, it’s been quite funny to read user comments on www.thestar.com. It’s pretty clear people are getting really fed up with the strike. There have been lots of gaffs made by the union-friendly government and THE PEOPLE ARE NOT HAPPY.
The below example is the best (it was an LOL moment for me when I read it).
Excerpt from The Toronto Star:
At a news conference yesterday, Miller wouldn’t comment on what’s happening at the bargaining table, or on issues being negotiated. Instead, he condemned the illegal dumping of garbage in public areas.
“As mayor I’m disappointed that some would be so thoughtless as to use our beautiful parks and green spaces in this way,” he said. “This is just the second day of the strike, which is why it’s important to take a stand now and put those who are illegally dumping on notice that we will not tolerate this kind of activity.”
Comment from a reader:
Hilarious!
Come on, Toronto, get smart. Privatize!!
References:
For any serious players of THE ultimate word game (Scrabble, of course), you’ll know what I mean when I say that a reliable dictionary is an absolute must when trying to maintain order during a heated game. Without this essential tool, the game can quickly go from a competitive, yet social and fun game to one of really high levels of …um, frustration.
So it was a huge surprise to me when the “official” online scrabble dictionary from Hasbro (the maker of Scrabble) was proven UNRELIABLE. What happened?
Well, the website claimed that “toastier” is NOT a word.
WHAT?!
“Toastier” was an 8-letter word that hit a triple-word bonus square AND gave me 50+ bonus points for using all 7 of my letters!
To make things even more confusing, simply typing in the word “toastier” into Google will result in various websites and dictionaries that actually define the word “toastier”. These websites include:
All very dependable, reliable sources. Obviously, the official dictionary is WRONG, right?
And to add to this confusion, the official Hasbro online scrabble dictionary uses the following to describe the word “toasty”. Here it is in its exact form (including capitalizations):
“toasty toastiest toastier adj TOASTIER, TOASTIEST comfortably warm”
So, let me get this straight… they actually use the word “toastier” in their description BUT THEY DON’T THINK IT’S A WORD?!
OMG, this kills me.
Can anyone help to shed light on this? Perhaps I’ve misunderstood something… OR, feel free to add any other inconsistencies / insanities you may have come across.
I’ve just joined the Twitter community and posted my first message last week. I’ve heard a lot about Twitter and was curious and then amazed that so many of my friends are already on and actively “twittering” every week or day and some even 4 or 5 times every day!
For those who don’t know what twitter is, it’s a platform for something similar to your Facebook status. You can write 140 characters at any given time, which forces everyone to be short and sweet. It also allows you to keep up-to-date with what your family and friends are doing or thinking at any given time.
If you’re on twitter, you can find me under ”wangtracy” (I think that should work?) Still figuring this thing out.
Also, an interesting article on the growing popularity of Twitter.