Rotundus.com

Speaking out against $600-a-week grocery bills

Government intervention isn't likely to lower costs I'd think, just transfer it to other Canadians - like already done for some foods as the article notes. The comparative price calculator in the piece is somewhat fun to play with. Spending, e.g. $300 million on a road connecting a hamlet of 824 people to a village of 3321 people seems likely to significantly lower the incremental cost of food in said hamlet, but I'm not sure it's likely to lower overall costs even if it does something to increase investment in the area.

Google+ invite lands man in jail

Did Thomas Gagnon violate the terms of a restraining order via computer or did Google's aggressive social network cast him into a circle of hell?

Woman to Return to Her Husband After He Promises Toilet

Somehow I'm guessing that toilets won't solve all marriage problems.

FAA Discovers That Commercial Pilots Suck at Manually Flying Planes

"By examining data from over 9,000 commercial flights world-wide, the FAA found that about two-thirds of the involved pilots either made mistakes using flight computers or simply had significant difficulty manually flying planes in general. And not only are these automation-reliant pilots a problem, they're actually the biggest threat to airliner safety world-wide"

I recently stumbled across a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville, a name I think I first encountered in a history class on the French Revolution. In other words the following quote dates back roughly 175 years.

What did he have to say that might be of relevance here?

There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make man and woman into beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things - their occupations, their pleasures, their business. It may readily be conceived that by thus attempting to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded, and from so preposterous a medley of the works of nature nothing could ever result but weak men and disorderly women.

Doesn't sound all that far off from what you see today.

I've mentioned before that due to the Canadian government's policies, I follow a policy that assumes if it's Canadian it's crap. One of my exceptions to that rule is French-language content from Quebec that makes it into English markets in Canada, as there it has a language barrier to break through. Given that exception, I was wondering how much of an influence language barriers are. I've previously noted that European TV fails its 50% European content target despite having a vastly larger population base than Canada which forcibly imposes its 50% content quota.

What that piece didn't get into was the language barrier and it's effect, given that the EU is broken up into areas with various predominant languages. Then I found some information on the popularity of Dutch-language content in Dutch theatres:

Dutch films were increasingly popular ... The share of Dutch films in the number of visits rose from 14% to over 20%.

Funnily enough, the second most popular title was a nature documentary entitled The New Wilderness (when translated) - though Canada's Wood Buffalo National Park is larger than the entire country of the Netherlands.

The number of people who speak Dutch as their primary language is about 23 million, compared to Canada's population of about 33 million yet the Dutch watching 20% Dutch-language content in theatres seems to represent an increase.

English-speaking Canada doesn't face that language barrier and constitutes only a small fraction of the English-speaking world. Even in the non-English-speaking world, you may see English content being produced - e.g. French TV shows are now being filmed in English in an attempt to gain an international audience, being then dubbed into French for domestic broadcast. In other words, I think my policy remains justified. Unfortunately, unless being broadcast internationally for the most part if I discover a film or TV series is Canadian it's even to justify not watching it.

(The second exception to my if-it's-Canadian-it's-crap policy is content filmed in Canada by foreign companies for their markets where content quotas aren't relevant - e.g. I've found myself enjoying the show Almost Human which is filmed in Vancouver but for American networks).

What if natural products came with a list of ingredients?

"This poster series breaks down all the major ingredients in popular natural foods—using E-numbers and IUPAC names instead of common names where they exist. Anthocynanins, for example, which are said to give blueberries their "superfood" status, are also known as E163." That said, sometimes a thing may be greater than the sum of its (known) parts.

Teen Mom Who ‘Leaked’ Her Sex Tape Announces She’s Writing a ‘Christian Parenting Book’

"Farrah Abraham — the 'Teen Mom' on MTV who parlayed her 15 minutes of fame into a 'leaked' porno with James Deen, a forthcoming erotic fiction novel, and a line of sex toys — just announced her latest project." Don't think I'll put this book on my to-be-recommended list.

How Clever, Netflix Monitors BitTorrent To Purchase Shows

Apparently I've been giving Netflix the wrong idea by sourcing DVDs or buying movies online rather than taking the easier approach of just torrenting them. A few movies I've currently got on order: Germany, Pale Mother, Come and See, Léon Morin, Priest, and The Winter War. Been on a WW2-movie watching kick lately though none of these are English movies - being German, Russian/Soviet, French, and Finnish respectively. Also got the Israeli film The Attack in digital form from Cineplex Canada during their Christmas-related sales.

Booth Babes Don’t Work

Apparently it may be better to hire on the basis of skill than appearance. Who could have guessed?