I’m figuring all your regular Six writers are busy with budget stuff, and you’ll no doubt get blow-by-blow details about that later. Here are some other recent developments.
1. GATORADE LOGO OR WHITE POWER SYMBOL?: A witness hate-crime trial in New York State said the defendant got the idea for one of his homemade tattoos from prison TV drama Oz and didn’t know it was a white-power symbol, says the New York Times. Another witness says the defendant knew. Either way, the kid’s dad is pissed.
2. SASK. TEEPEE RINGS DESTROYED: According to the Leader-Post, a SaskPower contractor destroyed about seven teepee rings near Willow Bunch because he took a shortcut. A damn shame.
3. ITALIAN-CANADIAN PAPER’S TURMOIL: Corriere Canadese, Canada’s daily Italian paper, was going to get $2.8 million dollars from the Italian government. No more – now, that’s getting cut in half, according to the Globe and Mail. I checked out the paper’s website but, as a guy with no Italian experience, I was lost. Everyone on the front page seemed to be smiling, at least.
4. “MISHANDLING” SEEMS LIKE SUCH AN UNDERSTATEMENT: Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of a bishop of a diocese in Southern Ireland, reports the New York Times. Bishop John Magee had allegedly failed to deal with priests abusing children.
5. A NEW MEANING FOR THE PHRASE “GOOGLE BOMB”: It’s old news by now that Google is pulling its mainland China service. It’s also nothing new that the Chinese government sensors the hell out of the Internet, with or without Google’s help. A recent Guardian UK article about the topic is notable for being a good round-up and for just having an awesome title: “Google row: China’s army of censors battles to defeat the internet.”
6. ROBO-BABY: A group of Japanese students have created a robot baby. Yahoo! News UK reports that “it would be great if some people started feeling that they wanted to have their own baby, if they started feeling that working is not everything.” Watching at the video, that terrifying face beamed into the inside of a silicone balloon just terrifies me. I’m considering running out to get a vasectomy as we speak if this is the result of procreation.
