I haven't commented yet on the decision by Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams to go to the U.S. for some type of heart procedure but curiously watching the story develop. The amount of commentary from both sides of the border has been incredible with pundits from the left and right using it to make their case about government-run health care.
Fortunately a few cooler heads have prevailed and note quite correctly that all this commentary is taking place in a vacuum. The Williams family has said next to nothing about the circumstances that lead to the Premier leaving the province.
There are potentially a lot of reasons why he would get surgery in the U.S. including that the procedure he required isn't available in Newfoundland. For those who haven't been to the beautiful province, it is rather remote out there in Atlantic Ocean. There only about 500,000 people living in the province and its largest city has only 100,000 residents. There are a lot of things available in British Columbia, Ontario or Quebec that you can't get in Newfoundland.
If you need to leave the island for some urgently required services, what's the difference if you fly out to Toronto or Boston? That's the reality of living on the "Rock". But we don't really know the circumstances so let's just leave it at that. You can't condemn the entire Canadian publicly-funded system over one case just as you wouldn't condemn the American system because one woman dies in a New York hospital emergency room after sitting there for almost 24 hours.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Danny Williams story is just too over the top
Monday, February 08, 2010
Heinz develops Ketchup breakthrough
Your suffering may finally be over, fast food fiends. No more awkwardly torn ketchup packets and tomato-soaked fingers. No more dipping your fries into a dollop of ketchup on a napkin or burger wrapper. NO. Heinz has introduced the ketchup packet 2.0, and the future looks...well, remarkably like the containers of McNugget dipping sauces McDonald's has been using since the '80s. But it's still an improvement.
This bold technological breakthrough took a lot of research.
Heinz struggled for years to develop a container that lets diners dip or squeeze, and to produce it at a cost acceptable to its restaurant customers.
"The packet has long been the bane of our consumers," said Dave Ciesinski, vice president of Heinz Ketchup. "The biggest complaint is there is no way to dip and eat it on-the-go."
Sarah Palin should invest in a telepromter
And in case you missed it, here's the picture of Sarah Palin and her Alaskan telepalmpter at the Tea Party Convention in Tennessee over the weekend. The note on her hand says: "Energy", "Tax" and "Lift American Spirits." My daughter stopped writing notes on her hand at 11. OK it was 15.
Update: Dystonia woman was nuts
Back in October of last year I posted a story about a woman that had a disorder called dystonia. She could walk backward normally, run normally, but could not walk normally forward. She claimed to have gotten the disorder from a flu shot but more likely from spending too much time eating magic mushrooms. It appears she sucked in a lot of people as she was recently filmed walking around normally. Her explanation is worth the price of admission.
Another Father of the Year candidate
A GI waterboarded his 4-year-old daughter in their suburban Tacoma, Wash., home because she couldn't recite the alphabet, police reported.
Joshua Tabor, 27, allegedly admitted to police he used the torture technique because his daughter was terrified of water and he was furious she didn't know her ABCs.
Tabor was arrested Sunday and charged with assault of a child.
Tabor, a soldier at the Lewis-McChord base in Tacoma, Wash., told police he held the little girl's head backward in a sink of water, Yelm Police Chief Todd Stancil told the the local newspaper, the Nisqually Valley News.
Stancil said Tabor had admitted to using this means of punishment three to four times.
Police found the little girl locked in a bathroom with bruises on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat.
Asked how she got the bruises, the girl is said to have replied, "Daddy did it."
Cops arrested Tabor after neighborhood residents reported him walking around his neighborhood drunk, wearing a Kevlar Army helmet and threatening to break windows.
source
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Friday, February 05, 2010
12 year old arrested and handcuffed for doodling
Although she remains suspended from school and must perform eight hours of community service, city officials say Alexa's arrest "shouldn't have happened."
Thursday, February 04, 2010
New York boy apprehended with 2 inch toy gun
An irate Staten Island mom blasted a grade school principal for treating her son like a pint-sized Plaxico Burress after he brought a 2-inch-long toy gun to school.
The fourth-grader was nearly suspended for playing with the tiny toy at lunch.
"The gun was so little," the boy said. "I don't understand why the principal got so upset. I was a little nervous. They made me sign a statement."
Patrick and a friend were playing with Lego figures in the school cafeteria on Tuesday when he pulled out the faux machine gun and stuck it in the hands of his plastic police officer.
After a meeting between the principal and the parents, the boy was spared any disciplinary action. City school officials said Patrick agreed to leave the "gun" at home.
source
The down side of big contracts under the NHL salary cap
The standard procedure in the NHL these days is to lock up your big stars to long term contracts. The Islanders got the ball rolling in 2001 by signing Alexei Yashin to a 10-year, $87.5 million contract. That was eclipsed in 2006 n 2006, when they signed Rick DiPietro to a 15-year, $67.5 million contract. There was Mike Richards' contract at 12-year, $69 million, Vincent Lecavalier received an 11-year contract worth $85 million, Roberto Luongo got a 12-year, $64 million contract, but the wopper goes to Alex Ovechkin at 13 years and an incredible $124 million.
The thinking among GMs is that you can't afford to lose a franchise player and if you don't pay your star big bucks then someone else will. With players becoming eligible for free agency at much younger ages, these players are being locked up for 10 years or more. However, not only are the risks high if you don't lock your stars in to long term contracts but they are also high when you do sign them. Players get hurt (DiPietro), their production can decline earlier than anticipated (Lecavlier) or they just don't develop into the player you were expecting (Spezza).
The NHL has only had three 50-goal scorers over the age of 30 - Johnny Bucyk (35), Jaromir Jagr (34) and Joe Mullen (32). Goal scorers decline considerably after age 30. But all of these star players will be pulling in big salaries well into their 30s. Should you be stuck with a contract that goes bad or that you can no longer afford, dropping that salary will be a challenge.
The two big contracts that Brian Burke recently picked up are classic examples. J-S Giguere in 2007, signed a 4-year, $24 million contact with Anaheim at the age of 30. Not a huge contract for today's standards. But shortly afterwards, his production began to decline and by the end of last season he had lost his starting job to Jonas Hiller. But no one was interested in picking up a goalie with declining skills that would be paid $7 million next season. That would place him tied for second among the highest paid goalies. In the end they had no choice but to accept two toxic contracts from the Leafs because they perceived that to be a preferable situation to carrying Giguere for another season.
As for Dion Phaneuf, the Flames signed him to a 6-year, $39 million contract at the age of 23. They were expecting him to develop into a franchise player and were paying him accordingly. But it never happened so they found themselves stuck with the 8th best paid defenseman who possessed very ordinary statistics. But with a contract like that you can't expect to trade Phaneuf for Ilya Kovalchuk. Instead the best the Flames could do was a package of players from one of the worst teams in the league. If they had no impact in Toronto, nothing is going to change in Calgary.
As they say in the securities world, buy low and sell high. Nothing could be truer in the NHL today.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
I just started feeling this stabbing pain in my neck....
Mugging victim Julia Popova calmly went home after being robbed on her way home from work - without realising she had a six inch knife stuck into her neck.
The 22-year-old office worker had grappled with her attacker when he snatched her handbag as she walked to her parents' home in the Russian capital Moscow. But she was so shocked by the ordeal she didn't know that the thug had buried a kitchen knife in her neck just fractions of an inch from her spinal cord.
Her horrified parents rushed her to hospital where surgeons managed to remove the blade without damaging Julia's spine.
"Shock had kicked in and her body prevented her from feeling any pain. She simply walked home without feeling the knife in her back," said one medic.
Al Qaida to use exploding boobs?
Agents for Britain's MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives.
Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives – usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) – are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up.
Similar surgery has been performed on male suicide bombers. In their cases, the explosives are inserted in the appendix area or in a buttock. Both are parts of the body that diabetics use to inject themselves with their prescribed drugs.
The discovery of these methods was made after the London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came close to blowing up an airliner on Christmas Day with explosives he had stuffed inside his underpants.Top surgeons who work in the National Health Service confirmed the feasibility of the explosive implants.
source
Man sues over exploding cigarette
An Indonesian man has been given compensation after a cigarette he was smoking exploded, taking out six teeth.
Andi Susanto, 31, told Indonesian media the cigarette had blown up in his mouth while he was riding a motorcycle.
He accepted a payment of 5m rupiah ($535) and all his medical costs from PT Nojorono Tobacco, makers of the brand of cigarette he was smoking. Police are investigating what caused the blast, but Mr Susanto said he would try to give up smoking now anyway.
He said he had been smoking since he was a schoolboy and had never had any problems. "The incident was all so unexpected". He said the company had talked to his family and agreed to "settle it amicably" with an out-of-court settlement.
A spokesman for Clas Mild cigarettes, the brand Mr Susanto had been smoking, said there were no plans for a recall.
"We are communicating with the police and still waiting on the forensic laboratory tests," Iwan Sulistyo said. "We do not put any strange materials in the cigarettes, so we think that this is a weird case. This is the first time for us."
Just wondering what the settlement of that lawsuit would have been in America? Hey that woman who spilled hot coffee in her lap got $640,000 from Mcdonalds. An exploding cigar that knocked out six teeth would be work millions!
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Leafs now have a Puck Bunny, Elisha Cuthbert
Hey not only did the Maple Leafs pick up Dion Phaneuf on the weekend but now the ACC will have its own Puck Bunny in the form of actress Elisha Cuthbert. You remember her, the ex-girlfriend of Sean Avery who he referred to as his "sloppy seconds."
Not only did she go out with Avery but also Mike Komisarek when he was with Montreal. Come to think of it, Komisarek is also on the Leafs now. Wonder how that is going to play out?
Almost caught again
His backside is a little too pale to be Tiger Woods so I'm guessing John Edwards.
More Parents of the Year Candidates
Police say the parents of a 12 year-old girl forced her to live locked in a closet with no light and minimal contact with the outside world. Police say no one had a clue about the abuse, not neighbors or school officials, until the girl's brother spoke up. When police went to the family's home, they found the girl locked inside the closet.
She was allegedly only let out so she could go to school, eat, or use the bathroom during the day. The bucket in the space was her bathroom at night. Police say she was forced to clean it every morning.
The girl's mother told police she kept the girl locked up because she didn't want her stealing food from the refrigerator. But police say the girl needed to eat. They say she was malnourished and looked like an 8 or 9 year-old instead of 12.
The girl's parents are in jail. Leticia and Alfredo Ines are charged with injury to a child and unlawful restraint. The mother is a Wal-Mart employee. The step-father is a maintenance worker with
source
Groundhog Day Recipe
Groundhog Pie
1 groundhog, skinned and cleaned
1/4 cup onion
1/4 cup green pepper
1/2 tbsp minced parsley
1 tbsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
4 1/2 tbsp. flour
3 cups broth
Biscuits:
1 cup flour
2 tbsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. fat
1/4 cup milk
Cut groundhog into 2 or 3 pieces. Parboil for 1 hour. Remove meat from bones in large pieces. Add onion, green pepper, parsley, salt, pepper, and flour to the broth and stir until it thickens. If the broth does not measure 3 cups, add water. Add the meat to the broth mixture and stir thoroughly. Pour into baking dish.
For biscuits: sift flour, baking powder, and salt together. Cut in the fat and add the liquid. Stir until the dry ingredients are moist. Roll only enough to make it fit the dish. Place dough on top of meat, put in a hot oven (400 degrees F.) and bake 30 to 40 minutes or until dough is browned. Serves 6-8.
