Category Archive: 2011

I haven’t been watching enough commercial TV to form an opinion this year, but have you noticed all the food commercials that are starring farmers and farm animals lately? Do they need to convince us what we are eating is in fact “real” food?  Sometimes I wonder (especially when my mind wanders along the New Jersey turnpike).

Related Story/Statistic:

In western countries, consumers have been blissfully strolling through grocery checkouts oblivious to a global food shortage which many credit  for sparking the April Spring riots in the Middle East. While the rest of the world is experiencing double-digit inflation on basic foods, here in North America the price tag for food at the supermarket has been only inching up (by 0.3 per cent in January of 2011).  “The reason for this, according to a recent CitiGroup report, is—to put it bluntly—that most of what we eat isn’t really food.” 

“The Mayonnaise Jar”– Another one of those feel good life lessons that everyone can prosper from in the years to come. Read it here:

Runners up:

The easiest lesson on economics and social studies you will ever encounter. See it here. Hans Rosling makes learning easy by combining enormous quantities of public data with the delivery style of a professional sports commentator. If you liked that one here is another.

While the rest of the world is battling the costs of government largesse and entitlement, our “less government” party floats legislation that will add 33 additional members of Parliament, all of them imminent back-benchers who will have as much say on legislation as I have on the outcome of the next Olympic Dance Pairs competition.

There are currently over 80 Canadians suffering from a rare and fatal blood disease called PNH. This year all of the Canadian Provinces agreed to pay the $500,000 per patient per year (for the rest of their lives) that is being asked for a drug that will restore health and longevity to those patients.  Soliris is the world’s most expensive drug. The only thing harder than the accountant and/or CEO that can put that kind of a price on a human life is imagining what kind of production process could possibly cost that amount of money.

For the second year in a row Canada is ranked the world’s Number 1 national brand (in terms of tourism).

While our politicians and regulators dodge issues and we dodge falling bridges, tunnels and the odd satellite we learn that:

1. there is an estimated infrastructure deficit of $123 Billion in Canadian towns and cities today (more than double the $60B that it was estimated to be in 2003); and
2. experts predict Canada could face a shortfall of up to one million skilled tradespeople by 2020.

That’s right folks! The western world wrings its hands and twiddles its thumbs while worrying about finding the megabucks it will take to send junior (and juniette) to university so they can compete with billions of Asian and European graduates who can also “just phone it in” on their shiny new smart phones at a much lower rate of pay (that cannot be taxed in this country).  Meanwhile our over educated but unskilled populace is unqualified for those jobs that will never be able to be handled at a call centre or sweat shop in the developing world.  Read more here.

Just another multicultural misunderstanding where one man’s honour is another man’s freakish obsessive-compulsive control psychopathy.   After drowning two daughters and one(?) wife in a Kingston, Ontario canal lock, this loving Canadian(?) father, his other(?) wife and one son are dragged before “His Honour” to answer for that crime (oops) honourable undertaking of familial love.  The verdict is not in yet as court was adjourned for the HolidayBabymas break.

A $6Million defamation suit brought by Barrick Gold, the world’s largest gold mining company, against the Quebec authors of a book critical of mining practices in Africa is thrown out of court when the judge learns they filed the suit without ever having had the opportunity to learn what was in the book. In a province that, according to many headlines this year would seem the epitome, if not the defining authority on corruption, collusion, intimidation and unusual court rulings, this is good news (and it only took seven pages and half a bottle of muse to find it).