Rotundus.com

"Unfortunately, I will not be able to purchase many of the toys that my sons have asked for; we simply don't have the money," wrote Todd Helmkamp of Hudson, Ind. "By bombarding them with advertisements ... you are placing parents like me in the unenviable position of having to tell our children that we can't afford the toys you promote."

- Excerpted from an article describing a letter-writing campaign

<sarcasm>I, of course, got absolutely every single thing that I ever wanted as a kid.</sarcasm>

An interesting book on Western consumerism is Consumed by Benjamin Barber, which is one book that I've been working my way through this year. It notes Bush's request post 9/11 for the people to continue to fill the shopping malls and spend money. It notes government complaints about people in certain countries saving too much money and failing to go into debt to purchase things. It goes through some of the campaigns to create desires which a product can then be purchased to satisfy. All in all an interesting book.

Somehow McDonald's seems to find their method of placing things between bread worthy of a patent. Amazingly no one seems to have heard of something called a "sandwich" before.

The present invention relates to a sandwich assembly tool and methods of making a sandwich, which may be a hot or cold sandwich, quickly by pre-assembly of various sandwich components and simultaneous preparation of different parts of the same sandwich. The sandwich assembly tool is composed of a member preferably having one or two cavities for containing a quantity of garnish. The cavities are used for the assembly of the sandwich. The tool may have a raised ridge adjacent one or both cavities for placement against the hinge of a bread component. Methods of making a sandwich are disclosed. The methods may include one or more of the use of preasseribled sandwich fillings, assembly of garnishes in advance of a customer's order or while ether portions of the sandwich are being heated using the sandwich assembly tool, the simultaneous heating of a bread component and the sandwich filling, placing the bread component over the tool containing garnish, and inverting the tool and bread combination to deposit the sandwich garnish onto the bread component.

(From WIPO's patent application database; HT: The Guardian)

In related news, IBM would like to patent splitting the tab at restaurants.

Aren't you glad we have such a wonderful patent system?

I must admit that I'm mildly surprised that SFU wasn't the culprit.

The Carleton University Students' Association has voted to drop a cystic fibrosis charity as the beneficiary of its annual Shinearama fundraiser, supporting a motion that argued the disease is not "inclusive" enough.

Cystic fibrosis "has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men" said the motion read Monday night to student councillors, who voted almost unanimously in favour of it.

(From the National Post)

In related news, breast cancer and prostate cancer occur at roughly the same rates in Canada and about the same as far as survivability is concerned. Of course, there's 10x as much funding for research into breast cancer research as into prostate cancer.

Here's another equally crazy story from a second Canadian university:

Two weeks ago, Queen's announced the hiring of six "intergroup facilitators" who will live in residence halls with students. According to the university, the facilitators will "address issues relating to social identities." One of their methods will be intervening in students' conversations involving controversial issues or offensive language.

(Excerpted from the McGill Tribune)