Put that in your cup and drink it!

Degrees diner has done the unthinkable:

Coffee refills have gone from $.75 to $1.25, meaning that putting my fair-trade organic coffee into my reusable mug approximately 10 times this week will cost me $5 more than it did last week!

In fact, the third-floor UMSU-operated eatery has increased the price of environmental consciousness across the board, by adding a $.25 surcharge to all takeout.

Of course I applaud the move. Degrees take-out containment has gone entirely biodegradable, meaning that your vegan-delicious lunch will now come with a fork made out of potatoes — they’re even hawking reusable mugs made out of corn.

And, considering that the former take-out dishes were composed of Styrofoam, Styrofoam, and more Styrofoam, the benefits are obvious.

But what about the cost? Will I continue to pay, now $2.25 for a large fair-trade coffee in an Ecotainer cup, when across the hall I can buy a “venti,” 10 per cent fairly traded Starbucks coffee in a paper cup from IQ’s for a mere $1.87 ($1 in my mug)?

More importantly, can you put a price on being good to the planet? Like the whole world before them, Degrees has.

And so have I.

Just please don't increase the price again! Please?


*Yet another one of my micro-torials that got cut due to space constraints.

I'm so vain!

OK, listen. You haven't entered a parallel universe where I actually like photos of me. But I do like this one, so if you feel the need to look at a photo of me, look at this one. Stolen from the credited, and very talented, David Ian Lipnowski's facebook.

Important existential questions:

If I live for my dreams, will I be a martyr when I die of old age?

Is there any other option?

If the National Post arrives before midnight, is it Monday's paper?

If CanWest style doesn't cite scoops, but CP style does, is it inevitable that CanWest's martyrdom will succeed all ethical martyrdoms? (And by extension, that selfishness, at the bottom of it all, has already won?)

How much can you help before you hinder?

If I pluck my first grey hair, does that mean I'm finally mature?

Is "quasi-existential" really an oxymoron? If so, aren't the terms individually philosophically meaningless? (Can two individually semantically meaningless terms be more or less meaningful when combined?)

If I find any more spelling mistakes in this blog post, will my head explode?

If so many things make my legs shake, and so many things drive me to abstraction, am I just an emotionless moron? Or are the things all one and the same?

I ______ Mondays.

News update

Peppers prevent cancer: BBC

Chavez plans hit Venezuelan market: BBC

Mr Chavez's announcement drew criticism from the US.

"The news comes as a surprise, as we were under the impression that President Chavez supported direct foreign investments," said Bank of America analysts in a research note.

"Nationalisation has a long and inglorious history of failure around the world," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

"If any US companies are affected, we would expect them to be promptly and fairly compensated," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

Aspirin 'stops (adult-onset) asthma developing': BBC

Israel Interior Ministry file distributed on the web: Jerusalem Post

File-sharing firm to buy own 'nation' to avoid international copyright laws: PC Advisor

Esperanto proves resilient as the movement lasts 120 years: CP

Spy coon caper loses traction with retraction from U.S. spy agency: CP

OTTAWA (CP) - It seems there's no danger of your spare change spying on you after all.

Canada's anti-drug strategy a failure, study suggests: CBC (Globe story)

Scientists create anti-cancer chickens: CBC (note: actual headline says 'chicken eggs'; I thought that was unnecessary.)

Confessions of a teenage fabulist: What happens when a scholarship student at a top Canadian J-school fabricates a few articles? Nothing, apparently: Maisonneuve
(Ask if you want the last few hilarious days of chatter about this article on the CAJ listserv.)

Pirates of the Canadians: Globe
At one point during 2006, Canadian theatres were the source for nearly 50 per cent of illegal camcords across the globe . . .

Toronto company has dibs on iPhone: Globe
“There's nobody infringing on our trademark in Canada at the present time. There's announcements but no one has actually infringed yet. Apple hasn't launched their iPhone in Canada and Cisco hasn't launched their iPhone in Canada, either. So it's still yet to be determined and that's why we're taking our time and studying our moves.”

Also, I'm watching a hilarious movie, Green Pastures, right now — it re-enacts important scenes from the Bible in "a black people's world." I still haven't decided if it's supposed to be funny or if, when it was made — 1936 — making a movie out of one big racist joke was OK, and it was the actors who injected the subtle humour. Either way, it makes me want to see Little Mosque on the Prairie for myself.

CanWest merger causes existential problems: the tyee

News update

American students get obesity report cards: NYT.

Related: Nick Martin sounds off on new provincial requirement that schools develop nutrition policies: Telling Tales Out of School (his blog).

Mark Twain — the father of the Internet: the tyee.

SK editor under fire over joke about women: CBC.

*"Women are like guns, keep one around long enough and you're going to want to shoot it" is the joke.

CP reports sextuplets (kind of): CP

*"A woman has given birth to sextuplets at a Vancouver hospital, a source has confirmed to The Canadian Press. No other details are being revealed but sources have told two Vancouver news outlets . . . "

Dinner lady death driver jailed: BBC.

*The story with the "best" headline of the day goes on to chastise the "heroin user" and "'thoroughly amoral individual'" responsible.

Photoshopped image of Portage La Prairie MP David Faurschou from Mia Rabson's FP blog On The Ledge.

Image of the creepiest Sun Girl in a while, from the Edmonton Sun.

brilliant ideas.

This morning's news update:

Money makes people mean: CBC news

Vancouver Island woman loses Skittles lawsuit: CBC news (she was rollerskating and tripped)

Scientists pioneer ethical drugs: Guardian

Scientists pay off Guardian for positive coverage: story No. 2 on the Guardian

Making fun of Pitchfork amuses me

Yukon murder-free for 2 years: CBC news

I love Heather Mallick: New year's resolutions for CBC

I'm going to PI school

The social dimension of automobiling: the tyee

Climate change 'controversy': NY TImes

Attention news editors: Canada's New Government Supports Three NL Publishers With Over $200K

Oh yeah, and happy 2007!


*photo: idolator.com

Strange things I've found on craigslist

Need new breasts

---

Reply to: sale-234320155@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-11-13, 5:58PM CST


Would love some assistance.
Breast cancer took my self-image away.
Would love some new breasts but can't afford it.
Can we work something out?
Please contact me for more information.

Thanks!


--
not to be outdone . . .

Wanted: used women's socks/nylons - $10

---

Reply to: sale-225261292@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-10-24, 6:12PM CDT


Looking for used, sweaty, dirty, smelly women's socks right from their feet and willing to buy them from local women once in a while. Write me and we can work something out, prefer socks which have been worn for a longer period of time straight. (at least a few days in a row) Willing to buy used nylons as well depending on situation, please just write and ask me for more specifics on what I will pay you.

RADIO SPOOF DRAWS SUPPORT FOR NAZI-LIKE TREATMENT OF U.S. MUSLIMS

WASHINGTON, D.C., 11/27/06) - A parody of anti-Muslim bigotry on a Washington, D.C., radio station drew support for treating American Muslims in a manner similar to how the Jewish community was targeted in Nazi Germany.

In his 630 WMAL program on Sunday, November 26, talk show host Jerry Klein seemed to advocate a government program to force all Muslims to wear “identifying markers.” He stated: “I’m thinking either it should be an arm band, a crescent moon arm band, or it should be a crescent moon tattoo.” (4:00) Klein said: “If it means that we have to round them up and do a tattoo in a place where everybody knows where to find it, then that’s what we’ll have to do.” (11:38)

He was joking, apparently. [link] — (includes stream of radio show)

The second-biggest scoop

It was about 6:15 on a Friday morning when Michael Newsom, the campus news editor for The Daily Mississippian at the University of Mississippi, got a wake-up call from Elizabeth Ogden, the paper's former photo editor.

And it was December 2006 when I found out about The Student Newspaper Survival Guide. Oh yes.

The biggest scoop of all!

A Senate committee recently held hearings into the Canadian news media, including the key questions of convergence and cross-media ownership, and it issued a report with some mild recommendations for reform this past summer. The senators might have shed some light on the question of media profitability had they done what a previous Senate inquiry into the mass media did in 1969 -- force the media companies to open their books -- but they didn't. Back then, the hearings chaired by Senator Keith Davey found media profits "astonishing" at 12 to 17 per cent in newspapers, 21 to 26 per cent in radio, and 36 to 64 per cent in television, compared to 9 to 10 percent in other businesses.

"An industry that is supposed to abhor secrets is sitting on one of the best-kept, least-discussed secrets, one of the hottest scoops, in the entire field of Canadian business -- their own balance sheets," declared the 1970 Senate report.

(link)

I'm back!

Oh yes. Oh, yes.