Real Talk!

The world spins topsy & gas prices go bump in the night while the U.S. candidates take jabs at each other with quips about lipstick.

There are people who don’t understand that the Georgia in conflict isn’t in North America.

I’ve got friends and family with loyal and long-term employment histories, finding they’re in the midst of changeovers, takeovers and job loss. People are getting their heads cut off on the Greyhound and attacked with hammers on the subway, while they nap.

Yesterday afternoon, a dead man tumbled out of a moving, champagne coloured Lexus on the 401,near Keele Street, in Toronto. The day before, a teenager was shot while standing at a bus stop.

Also yesterday, there was an announcement from the Toronto District (Public) School Board and the Toronto District Catholic Board that Toronto Police Officers will be in 27 high schools in Toronto, beginning next week.

In Edmonton, yesterday, an 81-year-old granny was charged with assaulting a police office. On Monday, a young girl from Hinton, Alberta (289 kms West of Edmonton)
Escaped the clutches of a would-be abductor by jumping out of his moving vehicle.

Today in Geneva, multinational scientists tested the Large Hadron Collider. What’s that, you ask? It’s a gigantic particle accelerator that has been set up in a 5-billion-dollar, 17-mile long tunnel, nearly 330’ underground. Hopes are that the collider will provide information that will give us new insight into the most fundamental aspects of matter.

In fact, they think that this little baby is going to give us the secret of the Higgs boson.

WHA?

Wikipedia says: “The Higgs boson or BEH Mechanism, popularised as the "God Particle", is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics; and is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed.”

Now, don’t you feel better?

A 6.1 magnatude quake hit in the epicenter town of Bandar-e-Khamir- Iran today.
The death count has risen to 120 and an unknown number of people remain unaccounted for in the landslides that swept through Central China on Monday.

A report today says the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is pointing fingers at meat-eating peoples for greenhouse emissions. Apparently, worldwide livestock farming generates 18% of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions — while, all the world's cars, trains, planes and boats account for a combined 13% of greenhouse gas emissions. I wonder if they included military vehicles.

They did say that the average person in the industrialized world eats more than 176 lb. of meat annually and about 66 lb. per person by the average resident of the developing world.

Ottawa's third suspected case of listeriosis was announced on Monday. The case has been associated with the recent listeriosis crisis to sweep the country.

The American Society for Microbiology has released a report on an observational study of hand-washing habits. Their findings indicate that 90% of women wash their hands after using a public washroom, only 75% of men wash their hands.

Yesterday, Asif Ali Zardari was sworn in as Pakistan’s new President. He took the oath of office, with a portrait of his assassinated wife Benazir Bhutto on one side and a picture of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Pakistan's first elected leader) on the other.

Hurricane Ike, currently swirling in the Gulf of Mexico, has been upgraded to a category-2 storm with 85| mile-per-hour-plus winds. Ike has left much damage in the Caribbean and toppled buildings in Cuba. Ike is expected to pick up speed and slam the mid-Texas coast, on Saturday.

San Antonio, Texas has announced plans to harvest methane gas from human waste and convert it to a clean-burning fuel. Apparently, residents of San Antonio produce more than 140,000 tons of bio-solids each year.

Two vans were needed to remove the 20,000+letters a Scottish postman had hidden in his home in Germany- he said he didn’t have enough time to deliver the mail. This past year he was given excessive homework from his night school courses.

A 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit Chile, today, about 63 miles east of Iquique and in the area of large copper mines.

At least 3 million people have been displaced since the Kosi River burst through a dam in Nepal three weeks ago. Health concerns are grave. Some 250,000 acres of farmland remain submerged in the region that stretches through India, into Bangladesh.

Estimates say that some 60,000 people have taken refuge at temporary camps in Haiti, after the recent hurricane. Conditions are said to be desperate.

In Bancroft, today. So far, so good.