photo credit: Dan4th

When it became clear that Democratic candidate Obama stood good chances of winning the presidential election, gun sales surged in the United States. This is despite Obama’s campaign declarations of support for second amendment rights and promises not to impose new restrictions on gun owners.

This week the Chicago Tribune published Obama anti-gun? No, anti-gun control which points out the lack of new gun control measures introduced so far into Obama’s tenure. The article offers good reasons for this:
1) He said he wouldn’t
2) He appears generally uninterested in doing so
3) Even if he did want to do anything, he faces a divided house – it’s much more important for him to pick bigger battles (e.g. war, health care).

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Miss England will competing soon in the Miss World competition.

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Gus from Florida has been having a rough time; on December 14, 2009, he woke up and realized to his horror that the world has he knew it had come to an end in a frightening zombie apocalypse. How does Gus cope with his new reality? He Tweets it.

@manvszombies is one of the more entertaining uses of Twitter we’ve seen in awhile. The author has gone so far as to post Twitpics depicting his various (warning: gory) victories against the zombie hordes. It’s not World War Z, but it’s pretty entertaining.

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As companies fell one by one, they tried all kinds of bonehead tactics, including suing themselves for damages. The once proud Citigroup self-destructed. Ultimately employees bore the brunt of the economic damage. Greed managed to prevail, of course, as Canada’s capital was held ransom by its transit union in the middle of winter, putting even more of the city’s lowest earners out of work.

Even countries failed. However, it appeared no one told Sweden there was an economic crisis (maybe fueled by the success of the Pirate Party?) while Latvia folded. Eventually the DOW recovered a bit – joy!

Technology may be speeding up our sharing of information, but we still like our embattled old newspapers. Not that it matters, since the only news agency worth following is the BBC, anyway.

Remember Illinois Governer Blagojevich? Let’s not even go there. Blackberry got a presidential endorsement worth over $50 million when President-elect Obama refused to part ways with his cherished device – forcing the CIA to build him a specially-secured unit.

Your privacy remains under siege, but no one seems to worry about the implications of airing their private life on the Internet. The prevailing view is that nothing is your fault anyway – in a particularly gross turn of events, an Ohio teen claimed he shot his parents because they took away his video game.

Facebook is constantly in the news. Your friends are worth less than whopper sandwiches – maybe we would value them more if they weren’t all illiterate.

A bunch of unlikely events happened this year. An African-American man became the 44th President of the United States (and he had his job cut out for him right away), and the Arizona Cardinals made it to the superbowl (although Pittsburgh won it, so all is well in the world). Even the Oscars were weak. While we were otherwise occupied, the monkeys tried to take over.

Not news anymore: The world continues to teeter at the edge of an energy abyss and the powers that be continue to squawk about the merits of the data used to arrive at climate change conclusions when we would be all better off if we started to explore green alternatives. We didn’t even trouble ourselves to write an article about Copenhagen – why bother wasting our breath. Even wind turbines are under seige. California is taking the lead in reducing automobile emissions – time will tell whether they are successful in guiding the rest of the world. I help out by cutting my own firewood from trees that are already dead; I’m a light-weight – real environmentalists use only the finest organic wood(!?). In the end it’s not about technology or one-off changes – creating a sustainable world is going to be hard work – we should start sooner rather than later. Look out for the resource land rush.

At least the spirit of discovery was strong. Using the omniscient Google Earth, scientists were not only able to find the garden of Eden, they were able to find the Lost City of Atlantis! (Although, they lost it again with some haste) Never doubt free information, and never question the wisdom of Wikipedia. Not only is Google leading the way in discovery, they’re leading the way in environmental stewardship by switching their lawn care to goats rather than gas-wasting lawnmowers.

The world continues to resist the magnificent western culture; India made waves once again for its anti-kissing stance… why don’t they want to be hyper-sexualized like us? I wonder if their teenagers spend most of their online time lookup up cosmetic surgery. Maybe they just hate long DVD introductions?

The golden age of Hollywood may be over, but Apple’s is just beginning as video gaming’s Renaissance continues. Sony wasn’t doing so well, and found itself trying to explain why we should care about its PlayStation console. The brave new world has us playing against each other online rather than in the same room.

Back to Obama – the man had some great ideas for improving world security and saving lots of money, and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his idealism. We’re hoping 2010 is the year he finally gains traction. How long will Obama cause jubilation everywhere he travels?

With all the coverage in sports, talk of respect and restructuring of the NHL points system (which must have cost Montreal the cup), no one noticed that Cuba’s government shuffled or that the United Kingdom was thinking about letting Catholics reign as monarchs. Wait a minute stop the presses – Michael Jackson died, nothing else matters!

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Funny how we are so willing to give up our privacy for such paltry reasons. Seemingly harmless information like our birth date is pure gold for marketers looking to target our age groups; the same information is useful for thieves looking to forge our identities and opening credit lines in our name. Services like Facebook have found they can get people to give up their most intimate details by simply putting up a form asking for it.

At the same time, we’re terrified of the hypothetical terrorists who lurk behind every corner. We tolerate the presence of surveillance networks under the pretense that we are somehow safer.

CCTV networks are starting to crop up in North America, but in the UK where they are prevalent they have been shown to only assist in solving 1 crime for every 1,000 cameras. That is a lot of video footage to have to sort through on an ongoing basis.

Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the presence of outside organizations in our lives. What value does the newest brand loyalty card have if you need to earn 100,000 arbitrary points to qualify for a token discount? Merchants who offer these types of programs derive much greater benefit from tracking our spending habits and preferences than we do by giving up our information.

Maybe we can live without the up-sell. Maybe we aren’t in as much danger as we thought – or at a minimum, maybe we’re not any safer after building these walls of technology.

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President Obama had an interesting wake up call this Friday. Just imagine the look of groggy confusion that must have been on his face when Press Secretary Robert Gibbs woke him up just before 6am to tell him he had won the Nobel Prize. The White House had no advance warning of the news from Norway, so the only immediate reaction they were able to give was ‘Wow’.

Obama has certainly had a busy presidency right from day one. He’s changed the face of celebrity endorsements, given green energy a kick in the behind, closed CIA detention centres, promoted nuclear nonproliferation, pumped trillions of dollars into the economy (in theory) and dazzled America’s neighbours with friendly foreign visits. His message of hope and change have certainly captured the imagination of the entire world, but does that really qualify him for a Nobel Peace Prize?

One might argue that the grand promises made by Obama have changed the way people look at the world and set the course for positive change. On the other hand, critics would argue the prize is given prematurely – certainly one of the other 200-plus nominees have made more concrete contributions to peace and development. That’s not to say that Obama shouldn’t be awarded the prize – perhaps we should have simply waited until some of the results of all those promises start to materialize.

In the end, the Nobel prize is a monumental honour and one for which we offer great congratulations for the President’s achievement.

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The American media in particular takes a lot of flak about it’s worship of celebrities when the rest of the world is just as obsessed (I’m thinking in particular of the tabloid journalists in the UK and their constant hounding of royalty, Lily Allen, etc). When Twitter is the most “reliable” source of actual news, I am very worried. (Note: I’m talking about during the week here. It’s a well-known fact that nothing newsworthy happens on weekends).

I was very disappointed to go to the home page of one of my primary news sources today (CBC News) and find not one but six prominent features (four with photos!) about Michael Jackson’s passing. One headline near the top of the page talked about the protests in Iran. No coverage on Congress’ 219-212 passing of the significant American Clean Energy and Security Act!

The BBC (aka world’s best news) was better, but not by much: Their home page was adorned with Michael Jackson’s image only once, above all other news. The US Congress was at position #2. Iran was conspicuously absent.

While Michael Jackson’s passing is of importance to a great number of people, using his image to push print is irresponsible opportunism in a world where clear leadership and strong journalism is needed more than ever. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be reported – I’m saying it should be part of the day’s news rather than all of the day’s news.

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

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While the ATU were out waving their fists on the streets of Ottawa for the better part of two months, the people of the city must have wished they lived in Toronto, where apparently the powers that be have a sense of humour.

A rap video called I Get On (The TTC) created by performers from Scarborough made the rounds in December 2008 garnered attention from city hall and earned the duo free metro passes.

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A major government shuffle in Cuba occured today.  Two long serving ministers were removed, and a number of departments were combined.  In reading the BBC article that reported it, one line really struck me.

“It was announced at the end of the midday news bulletin, after the weather and sports, the Associated Press news agency reports. ” (Source: BBC news)

I find it a little funny that major news for Cuba took a backburner to the weather and sports.  I guess they’re not so different from the Americans after all!

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President Obama visited Ottawa last Thursday and he kicked up quite a storm.  Interestingly the most publicized part of his trip was not his visit with Prime Minister Harper (or their subsequent discussions), the safety precautions involved (half the city was blocked off), or even the fact that he is restoring a long time tradition for American Presidents to make Canada their first stop.

No, the big story was cookies.

President Obama visited the Moulin de Provence bakery in the Byward Market area of Ottawa, and bought four cookies.  Oh the speculation!  Who is the fourth cookie for?  Does Obama eat cookies?  Does he like Canadian cookies?

He also bought a keychain and a snowglobe.  From what I hear, both of them are now unavailable because everyone is buying them.  I find the rockstar Obama gets fascinating – I can’t remember any political figure that’s been treated this way before.  Maybe when he retires he should make a pop group or something.  Obama and the Clintons, anyone?

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