Welcome to the three-day roundup …
Weekend Edition (August 17, 18, 19) of Clicks of the Day!
Clicks of the Day is a daily round up of news posted Sunday through Thursday with quantity and quality of content differing depending on how busy Linda’s day is.
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Edmonton/Alberta/Canada
- Solemn reflection as Canada marks 70th anniversary of Dieppe raid
- Edmonton police officer completes cross-country ride to raise MS awareness
- Edmonton doesn’t exist?!
- Visually impaired team race in Dragon Boat Festival
- Tweens Against Bullying Festival empowers youth
- Fringe draws large crowds
- U.N. observer mission in Syria ends, violence continues
- Julian Assange demands U.S. end WikiLeaks ‘witch hunt’
- Japan activists land, raise flags on disputed isle
- Largest-ever tobacco study finds ‘urgent need’ for policy change
- All that anti-bacterial soap you’re using is going to stop your heart
- New cancer drug may point way to male birth control pill
- ‘SuperAgers’ in 80s have brains similar to those 20, 30 years younger: study
- Apple a day keeps doctor away…as long as you eat the peel
- Aircraft designed to fly at six times the speed of sound
- People now spend more time watching their phones than their TV
- Facebook trumps Yahoo as second most popular video site
- Your deleted Facebook phtoos will now be gone forever
- New Twitter rules spur online protests
- Online petition urges NBC to cancel ‘Stars earn Stripes’ for glorifying war
- 80 per cent of public schools have contracts with Coke or Pepsi
- L.A. restaurant pays customers to put away their phones
- 2 per cent of Canadians don’t believe in climate change: poll
- Record melting of ice cap is latest sign of extreme warming
- [Infographic]: Who believes the end of civilization is near?
- New ocean health index measures the global state of the seas
- What would happen if the entire world lived like Americans?
- [Photos]: Final meals of Death Row inmates
- [Video]: Animals acting like Sharks Week
- [Infographic]: Power nap styles & how they affect you
- Is it ripe? How to tell when your favourite fruits and vegetables are ready to eat
- [Video]: Mango and Milkshake: Kitten, puppy cuddle in possibly the cutest video on the Internet
- [Video]: Ninja kittens sneak up on their siblings
- [Video]: Kitten nibbles ears
- [Video]: Puppy steals food from big dog when he looks away
“On the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Dieppe, Canada’s veterans are remembering those who lost their lives during the pivotal but disastrous Second World War operation. More than 900 Canadian soldiers died during the failed attempt to wrest the French town from occupying German forces on August 19, 1942.”
Thank you for fighting for Canada.
“It was a ride that took them across the country raising money and awareness for multiple sclerosis and on Sunday, an Edmonton police constable and his dad rode back into Edmonton: mission accomplished. Covering almost 12,000 kilometres in 34 days, Const. Chris Anderson and his dad Dave, a retired Edmonton Police officer, returned home after a cross-country trip to raise money and awareness for multiple sclerosis. Anderson’s sister Erin was diagnosed with MS last year and it was her battle with the disease that inspired the pair to take on the challenge.”
So impressed! Good for them.
“It’s an annual insult. Every year around this time, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s releases its report on the world’s most livable cities with much fanfare. The Economist is a leading international news and business magazine. Every year, Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto make it in the Top 10. This year, Montreal was the only other Canadian city included, coming in at 16th. No Edmonton.”
Boo urns Economist Intelligence Unit! We are livable!
“A new team competing in this year’s Dragon Boat Festival is sending an inspiring message that having a disability isn’t going to hold them back. With life jackets on and paddles in hand, Team Oil City Crew Dragon Sight hits the water along with several other paddlers in the 16th annual Dragon Boat Festival. But the team’s paddlers are unlike any other – 80 per cent of the members are visually impaired. “We can’t see but we can paddle. It’s a very interesting concept,” said assistant team manager Terry Schmolcke.”
Love this! Amazing people. I need to get my butt in gear and DO something.
“Young Edmontonians gathered Sunday to bring awareness to the issue of bullying. It was part of the second annual Tweens Against Bullying Festival held in Callingwood Park Sunday afternoon. “We’re using this festival to empower kids to feel free to speak up,” said young organizer Lakota Gibbons. “It’s a topic that most kids don’t like talking about so we figured it would be good to set up something where kids can come and feel free to talk. It’s hard for them to speak up because they think the bully is going to hurt them even more for speaking up.””
Great kids doing great work!
“It is to soon to tell whether the 31st annual Edmonton Fringe Festival will follow in the footsteps of some of Edmonton’s other summer festivals and break it’s own attendance record, but event coordinators are optimistic about the attendance the festival has gotten so far this year.”
Hoping to check out the festival with my mom tomorrow!
World
“The mandate of the U.N. observer mission in Syria ended Sunday, with the country no closer to a lasting peace than when monitors arrived four months ago.”
Sad.
“Julian Assange demanded that the United States drop its “witch hunt” against WikiLeaks on Sunday as he made his first public appearance after months effectively confined to the Embassy of Ecuador in London. “As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of all our societies,” the founder of website said to cheers from his supporters outside the embassy. “The U.S. war on whistle-blowers must end,” Assange said, calling for the freedom of Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier suspected of giving hundreds of thousands of pages of secret American government documents to Assange for publication on WikiLeaks.”
Indeed.
“Japan’s territorial disputes with its neighbours flared anew on Sunday as a group of nationalist activists swam ashore and raised flags on an island also claimed by China. Chinese took to the streets in protest, as Beijing lodged a formal complaint, urging Tokyo to prevent frictions from escalating further.”
Crazay.
Health
“About half the men in numerous developing nations use tobacco, and women in those regions are taking up smoking at an earlier age than they used to, according to what is being called the largest-ever international study on tobacco use. The study, which covered enough representative samples to estimate tobacco use among 3 billion people, “demonstrates an urgent need for policy change in low- and middle-income countries,” said lead researcher Gary Giovino, whose report was published in the British medical journal The Lancet.”
Stop smoking, people. It kills you.
“Researchers are raising concerns about triclosan, a common chemical in antibacterial soaps, toothpastes, and deodorants, which is even used to “impregnate surfaces and has been added to chopping boards, refrigerators, plastic lunchboxes, mattresses as well as being used in industrial settings, such as food processing plants where walls, floors and exposed machinery have all been treated with triclosan in order to reduce microbial load.” And what, exactly, does triclosan do that’s so problematic? Well, it could stop your heart!”
I do love anti-bacterial soap, lol.
“While women have multiple birth control options available on the pharmacy shelf, men have traditionally been restricted to the condom as their only baby blocker option. That may be about to change, with a new study showing a drug originally developed to treat cancer has the ability to inhibit sperm cell activity and may point the way to a male form of contraception. And once the study subjects went off the drug, known as JQI, the sperm return to their full strength with no side effects, according to the study on mice.”
Intriguing!
“Prevailing wisdom would suggest that the loss of memory and other cognitive functions is an inevitable part of aging. But is it?
That certainly isn’t the case for a rare group of individuals in their 80s, whose memory, attention, problem-solving ability and other brain functions are equal to people 20, and even 30 years, their junior.”
Impressive! I wonder if I will be a SuperAger!
“For the outer layer contains up to six times the amount of chemical ingredients that can combat potentially life threatening high blood pressure, scientists have discovered. Apples have long been known a natural source of antioxidants and chemical compounds called flavanoids, all of which are good for the heart. But anyone who peels their Granny Smith first before eating it could be missing out on most of the health benefits, said researchers from Nova Scotia in Canada.”
Interesting!
Technology/Social Media/Internet
“The Air Force planned a key test Tuesday of an experimental aircraft designed to fly at six times the speed of sound, or about 3,600 mph.”
That’s quite the aircraft.
“Could this be the moment that television officially lost its spot as America’s favorite medium? A survey by InMobi, a mobile ad company, of 1,055 people asked how much time they spend interacting with all forms of media. Users responded that they watched TV for 141 minutes a day. But they spent 144 minutes a day—26% of the nine hours they used various media—with their phones.”
All the more reason to go mobile, mobile, mobile! (If you’re a business/organization).
“Facebook has overtaken Yahoo as the Internet’s most popular site for viewing video last month, according to report from comScore. According to comScore, Facebook saw a bit more than 53 million unique viewers throughout July, compared to Yahoo’s less than 49 million. Google, thanks largely to YouTube, still enjoys a comfortable lead in the race with nearly 157 million total unique viewers.”
Weird. The number of videos I’ve watched on Facebook this year? 0?!
“Until recently, pictures deleted from Facebook were still accessible by entering the image’s direct URL. So, while the pictures may have disappeared from your profile, or that of whomever had uploaded them, they were still available within Facebook’s server. The latest change deletes images permanently from Facebook’s servers within a couple of days.”
Neat.
“Shortly after Twitter announced a stricter set of rules for its application programming interface (API), developers and engineers turned to platform to use the #OccupyTwitter hashtag in protest. “Twitter’s API has more rules than North Korea,” said Aaron Levie, CEO of Box. Nova Spivack, CEO of Bottlenose.com, started a Change.org petition to urge Twitter to keep its developer API ecosystem open. He said, “Twitter, what kind of bird are you becoming? Are you still that cute little bird that everyone loved, or are you becoming a scary bird of prey?””
It is a tad alarming.
“An online petition urges NBC to cancel Stars Earn Stripes, a reality television show in which celebrities compete in military training exercises to win money for charities.”
It is a very tasteless show concept.
Business/Work/Economy/Media
“Is your kid’s public school a Coke school or a Pepsi school? If you don’t know what I mean, consider yourself lucky. Starting in the early ’90s, cash-strapped public schools began selling exclusive “pouring rights” to one or another Big Soda company, which would then supply all the beverages sold in on-site snack bars, stores, and soda machines as well as at sports events. Along with sugary drinks, of course, the companies also stuffed the schools with plenty of advertisements. In 2005, according to one survey, nearly half of all public elementary schools and about 80 percent of public high schools operated under pouring rights contracts. It’s clear what the schools get for their trouble. It’s no wonder that schools turn to selling junky snack food and cutting deals with sugary soda makers to augment stingy school-lunch budgets.”
Oh dear.
“Ever feel like a dinner out at the local restaurant feels more like a trip to Best Buy, with fellow patrons tapping on their smartphones or taking photos of their meal? One restaurant in Los Angeles is now paying customers to check their tech at the door. Eva Restaurant on Beverly Boulevard is offering diners a 5% discount on their bill if they dump their digital devices before being seated, according to radio station KPCC. Owner and chef Mark Gold says it’s a tactic to keep distracted dining to a minimum.”
Interesting… would you give up your phone? I am guilty of looking at my phone way too much at restaurants (and anywhere).
Environment/Space/Animals/Science
“Only two per cent of Canadians who responded to a new opinion poll believed climate change is not occurring. A further nine per cent believed climate change is occurring naturally and 54 per cent felt both humans and nature are playing a role.”
Of course humans are playing a role in climate change. And of course climate change is occurring. Crazy 2 per centers!
“The Greenland ice cap has already broken a record for cumulative melting with a month left to go in the season, the latest indication of a year of extraordinary change across the Arctic. “This is becoming more and more of a trend in the past years,” said New York City College’s Marco Tedesco, who released the data revealing the strength of this year’s Greenland melt season on Wednesday. With another four weeks to go, this year’s cumulative melt is likely to smash the old mark by a considerable margin. The news comes on top of data released by NASA in July that showed melting on the ice cap is the most widespread it’s ever been in 33 years of satellite records. Imagery showed melting was occurring on 97 per cent of the cap’s surface.”
Eep.
“A new global survey has found that 1 in 10 people believes that the end of the world will occur sometime in 2012, when the Mayan calendar ends. Whether inspired by media attention or conspiracy theories, the anxiety about an impending doomsday extends beyond just a tiny fringe group of believers.”
I believe it…
“The U.S. scored a 63 on the new Ocean Health Index—compared with China’s 53—out of a possible 100, according to a new study. The world average was 60, and individual countries and territories ranged from a low of 36—Sierra Leone—to a high of 86, Jarvis Island (map), a U.S. territory in the Pacific. A goal of the index is to help countries make more informed policy decisions, especially in those regions that have already expressed a commitment to improving ocean health.”
Let’s protect our oceans!
“While everyone in the world could fit into a small chunk of America if they all lived in the density of New York, the world wouldn’t survive at all if everyone in the world decided to consume like those New Yorkers (or any Americans). While those of us in the U.S. consume enough resources to take up 4.1 Earth’s worth of resources, the only reason we haven’t eaten through everything is that the rest of the world is balancing us out by using far more reasonable percentages of the Earth.”
Oy.
Weird News, Other News, Good News & Fluff
“The concept of a prisoner’s last meal is a complicated issue, one that forces a person to imagine lavish menus at the same time as they ponder the last hours of their life. One artist, Julia Ziegler-Haynes, captivated for years by this confusing death row custom, has created a series of photographs that explores the unsettling emotions of last requests.”
Not sure why I seem to be coming across so many death row execution kind of articles lately but this is interesting.
“Produced by Internet television company, Revision3, ‘Animals Acting Like Sharks’ week has the drama of a shark attack combined with the squee-ness of a kitten and a puppy. No joke.”
Oodles of cute! Good production value in the video too, lol.
“In a fresh infographic called Napping (published by visual.ly), we get to delve into some mind-blowing research about how you can increase your alertness and performance by just utilizing different kinds of power naps throughout your day. Great minds like Einstein and Edison put these power naps to good use while they were working. Einstein in particular had a peculiar approach to the whole thing.”
I usually partake in the “Lazy Man’s Nap.”
“Don’t pick a bad pineapple or a mealy watermelon again. Know the secrets to fresh and ripe foods before you go wrong at the produce aisle. The kitchen mavens at Stack Exchange provide tips on selecting the freshest fruits and vegetables.”
Yay! Good to know.
“In this YouTube video, a 2-week old kitten named Mango unabashedly smothers some love on tubby little Milkshake, who’s clearly his favorite little pup in the whole wide world.”
SO cute. (Would have been better put to music lol).
Oh my god, hilarious!!!
Sooo cuuuute!!!
Hahahaha!!!
Thor (and/or Loki) Photo of the Day:
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Linda