canada vs. tobacco

The Canadian Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that provinces can sue tobacco companies for money lost due to health care costs, which, in my opinion, is pretty sweet. Already lawsuits have begun in BC and Quebec - the latter is a class-action suit.

Read the CBC article; the BBC also weighed in on Thursday's ruling.

arcadefire.com redesign

Head on over to ArcadeFire.com to see their new site design. Even if you're not a fan of the band, the whole thing will delight you.

a show

Last night I saw a The Hive Records showcase, featuring a bunch of BC bands playing for a bunch of BC expatriates. I missed the first band, Parks and Rec; Great Aunt Ida was charming; Chet was lead singer Ryan Beattie sans band, and was reminiscent of Martin Tielli's first solo album; They Shoot Horses, Don't They? was Franz Ferdinand plus Donkey Heart plus a brass section.

I ain't got no sample mp3s lyin' around, but you can find some of these bands' music in the little player thing at the top of the Hive site. Chet tracks can also be heard at their New Music Canada site.

giant squid captured on film

For the first time in history, a live giant squid has been photographed. The 25-foot long beast was lured by a baited fishing line by Japanese scientists, who took more than 500 pictures and left with a piece of one of its tentacles.

Twenty-five feet! Check out the article; but be sure to see the pictures.

ice cream scooper to the stars

Celebrities ("celebs") I've scooped ice cream for at my job at Ben and Jerry's, downtown Montreal:

• Montreal Alouettes offensive lineman Dave Mudge, newly traded from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
• The drummer from A Simple Plan (actually I was just working when he came in).
• The Constantines.

Ok, the thing with the Constantines is more that I harrassed them backstage after a show and tried to get them to come get free ice cream. They declined; there was no actual scooping involved. The list is still damned impressive.

cmj mp3s

Music gossipologist Stereogum offers up a treat today: a pile of mp3s from bands he saw play at the CMJ festival. It's a nice selection, and includes two tasty Wolf Parade nuggets from their wonderful new album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, due out on September 27th.

how bin laden escaped tora bora

There's been much said about the United States' failure in Iraq lately, but it turns out that they made some pretty bad decisions in Afghanistan too (remember that other war?). This engrossing New York Times article tells the story of Osama bin Laden's escape from the Tora Bora caves on December 16th, 2001:

"By December 2001, when the final battle of Tora Bora took place, the cave complex had been so refined that it was said to have its own ventilation system and a power system created by a series of hydroelectric generators; bin Laden is believed to have designed the latter. Tora Bora's walls and the floors of its hundreds of rooms were finished and smooth and extended some 350 yards into the granite mountain that enveloped them.

Now, as the last major battle of the war in Afghanistan began, hidden from view inside the caves were an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 well-trained, well-armed men. A mile below, at the base of the caves, some three dozen U.S. Special Forces troops fanned out. They were the only ground forces that senior American military leaders had committed to the Tora Bora campaign."

Read the full article - no subscription required.

crisis averted!

We can all let out a collective sigh of relief now that Canada and Denmark have decided to agree to work on beginning to think about solving the problem of who owns a small piece of uninhabited rock in the Arctic. (Previously on SFB: canada valiantly defends uninhabited rock.) This CBC article on the new developments is, frankly, hilarious:

"The decision [not to decide who owns the island] has caused friction more than once. In 1984, Denmark's minister of Greenland affairs raised a Danish flag on the island. He then buried a bottle of brandy at the base of the flagpole and left a note saying 'Welcome to the Danish island.'"

Incidentally, the note, which was scribbled on a scrap of lined paper, caused a great stir among the two seagulls who sometimes fly over the island.

blair [maybe] criticizes bbc over katrina coverage

Noted stupid guy Rupert Murdoch has claimed that British Prime Minister Tony Blair believes the BBC is "full of hate" for America, and that its coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster was "gloating". Downing Street has not commented on the remarks, which were made (by Murdoch, not Blair) in a speech on Saturday.

I find this story particularly interesting (even though it probably lacks anything more than a grain of truth) because the BBC is my main source for critical main-stream media coverage of American news. Check out their fantastic home page and handy RSS feed.

i have a chardonnay

Yes, it's making the ol' internet rounds, but I'm linking to it anyway: the complete collection of SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skits at Smit Happens. Dave, I'm sorry I was an hour late last night; now you know the reason.

how 'bout that heat?

Scientists are worried about global warming. This is nothing new, but a report has just been released on the state of ice in the Arctic that is rather alarming. For quite some time, we've been seeing ice in the arctic melting - each year, there's less than the year before. In the past 4 years, however, that rate has been accelerating. Sharply. So each year, there's not only less ice than the year before, we've also lost more than we did last year. The reason is a positive reinforcement effect. Ice reflects sunlight a lot more than water does, so as the Arctic becomes less icy and more watery, it also absorbs even more heat.

So what, you say? Well, while most of the ice in the arctic is floating, there's also a lot of ice on Greenland. When landlocked ice melts, it flows into the oceans, and sea levels rise considerably. Most Antarctic ice is landlocked, and the south pole is showing similar behaviour. Ice is also a great heat sink: as your grade 10 science teacher no doubt demonstrated to you, a class of ice water stays at about 0 degrees C until all the ice is melted. But once the ice is gone, the temperature starts to rise. And temperature is the driving force for weather like, oh, say, hurricanes.

If you think Katrina was bad, wait 30 years. If things keep going at current rates, we could see a storm with winds many times as strong flooding the coastal city of Dallas.

don't do this

Cyclists have been out in droves on the streets of Montreal lately, taking advantage of these last few days of warm weather before September waltzes in, half a month late. This is heartening for me as one who is in favour of cycling, but it's also infuriating because all other cyclists are jerks.

And so I offer this one request to any of our cycle-minded readers, which will not do me any good: If you pull up to a corner and I am stopped in front of you, do not pull up beside me. Do not, under any circumstances, pass me before the light changes. I am probably the fastest thing on two non-motorized wheels and I will just end up stuck behind you for another block, silently wishing you terrible ills.

And for anyone who has ever been passed by me, but then pulled up in front of me at an intersection knowing full well that they are slower, I can only say this: I hate you so bad.

You know who you are, lady with the red helmet from today.

You know.

two days of violence in iraq

On Wednesday, twelve bombings killed 167 people in Baghdad. Today, 31 people died in two attacks "about a minute apart", according to AP. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida group took responsibility for the violence, which was directed at the country's majority Shiites. (AP, BBC)

and there's nothing i can do / i only wanna be with you

Hootie and the Blowfish are back, big time. See them follow up Arcade Fire on Letterman.

Edit, after actually watching the clip: But dear god, do not listen to the song. Mute your speakers before clicking that link.

it is on

I have become a seething ball of pure rage. Somewhere out there, an imposter sits and types away at a fake plastic keyboard, mimicking and mocking my every move.

It is on, Ginger D of Johnson City Tennessee. I declare a full-scale information-superhighway-based war. You have chosen unwisely, and you will pay.

hurricane katrina

I just wanted to point out a couple of alternatives to CNN for news on Hurricane Katrina.

• As usual, Jon Stewart of the Daily Show has offered some of the best commentary on the events as they've been unfolding. You can find a roundup of torrents at Common Bits, or you can just stream all the Daily Show segments every day over at the Comedy Central site.
  


• Boing Boing is covering the storm from a more on-the-ground point of view, offering all kinds of first-person accounts and survivor testimonials. They've also been covering a number of stories not handled by the mainstream media and have organized help requests.
  


• Wikipedia has a couple of excellent sites with just about everything you may need to know about the disaster.
  


• Newsweek has this interesting article called How Bush Blew It, which explains that through most of the past two weeks, the president was less aware of what was going on than the average American citizen.
  

The photo is of the eye of the storm, taken from an airplane window. It was found amidst Wikipedia's coverage. You can see the full image here.

you're a strange man, christopher

Forgive the length of this post. I figured since SFB is officially on hiatus, you all need something to tide you over.

As some of you may know, I have a cottage on the Ottawa River up near Pembroke where I just spent the past two weeks. Besides being incredibly relaxing and keeping me from posting anything, the visit yielded an interesting tidbit: old Slang Teasers sheets from when the inimitable Chris last visited our humble establishment.

Slang Teasers is exactly like Balderdash, and basically what you do is get a bunch of people together, have one of them choose from a dictionary of little-used words, and then everybody writes a definition for that word. Then they're read out and people try to guess which definition is the correct one. In this case, though, I have no idea what the correct one is and I don't even know if these are all the sheets from that particular game: I'm just going to post them because they're freakin funny. I'll write the word, followed by definitions from C (for Chris), N (for yours truly), and K (for my sister Kate, who was also in on this little round of debauchery). We may have been drinking. We may not. I honestly can't remember.

{ahem}

GROGHAM:

C: a contemptuous term for a horse
N: the feeling one gets the morning after 5 pitchers, 5 shots, and 5 punches to the head
K: another term for an elderly person who has very little joy left

MOHICIAN:

C: a hairstylist who specializes in mohawks
N: a really fat guy
K: one who requires more water on a daily basis than an average person

PARAM:

C: an extinct, six foot tall ancestor of the modern pit bull
N: one aspect of a larger problem
K: that random guy you always see on Rideau Street

SLUBBERDEGULLION:

C: bird excrement (or "slubber") from the small French town of Gullion, considered a delicacy in many Spanish cities.
N: the servant who swabs a ship's deck
K: a dirty, nasty old man

FROUST:

C: extra sleep taken on Sundays and holidays
N: a German strip-search performed by overweight government officials
K: to make a facial expression similar to a frown, but meaner

SPATCH COCK:

C: a rooster that has died from sexual exhaustion
N: a bird killed and prepared quickly
K: name wives use to demean husbands with unsightly (borderline hideous) genitalia

CATOLLER:

C: sounds emitted during household bestiality
N: one who carefully stretches live cats to various tensions, then strikes them with a mallet to produce music
K: one of those random things you find after a large drunken party

TRUFFLE:

C: the scientifically correct term for a soiled mattress
N: a mushroom found by trained pigs
K: an edible fungus found underground

TO HAVE A COLT'S TOOTH:

C: to keep a young horse's molar in a jar in your sock drawer where you hope no one will ever find it, especially not your cruel, ex-military father
N: to have an unprecedented sexual appetite for horse's mouths
K: to have a desire for the simple pleasures of childhood

DRURY LANE AGUE:

C: a venereal disease
N: how a specific street in downtown London tastes, when licked after a light rain during which the storm sewers have overflowed
K: an ailment in which one suffers rather large and weepy sores in unspeakable regions of the body

MISCEGENATION:

C: a horrible misunderstanding involving a flea collar, three pounds of shrimp, an extinct botswanian tree frog, and a Vietnamese prostitute
N: when people of different races get it on
K: fat children that insist on spanking each other with large wooden spoons

MEDIUS:

N: the average number of people enrolled in a military academy
C: just incredibly fucking great. you know?

hiatus

Small Flightless Bird is on hiatus this week. During the move of our Montreal headquarters, a key laptop was left in Ottawa, rendering the Montreal bureau's internet access sporadic at best. Perhaps the Kingston, Waterloo, or Ottawa teams can pick up the slack until Monday. Until then, please enjoy our Archives.