Air Canada Jazz removes life vests to lighten planes

It's hard to imagine myself swimming 50 nautical miles with only a seat cushion to keep me afloat. I think I would prefer it if they got rid of the seat cushions and kept the life jackets!

TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- An official with Air Canada's regional carrier Jazz says the airline is removing life vests from all its planes to save weight and fuel.

Jazz spokeswoman Manon Stuart said Thursday that Transport Canada regulations allow airlines to use flotation devices instead of life vests, provided the planes remain within 50 miles of shore.

Magic is magic, in any language

Mad Magazine's War on Bush

Mad Magazine's "The Mad War on Bush" gathers a truly superlative collection of parody and satire from eight years' worth of Mad lampoons.

As Jimmy Kimmel notes in his introduction to the book, there are many things to hate about the Bush regime, but it has been very, very kind to political satirists.

Mad Magazine has had a glorious eight years with this presidency.

BoingBoing has added some great links to the story.

Aliens living among us - Vido evidence!

Once you see what is living around us in the world, you might not take the idea of alien life as lightly anymore ...

[ Time lapse video of slime mold and mushrooms - cool! ]

Daniel aims his slingshot at Microsoft

Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives.

The lawsuit by Facil was lodged with the Quebec Superior Court on July 15 and made public on Wednesday. In it, the group says the provincial government has refused to entertain competing bids from all software providers, opting instead to supply public-sector departments with products bought from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle Corp.

Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally.

The Barnes Dance comes to Toronto

One of Toronto's busiest intersections is now a test track for a new way of crossing the street. It's known as the scramble. (or the Barnes Dance: see earlier post)

What it means is that vehicle traffic stops with red lights in all four directions, followed by a pedestrian free-for-all, where people cross the intersection in any direction they choose: left, right, diagonally.

Toronto politicians decided to try out the scramble at four intersections: first up is Yonge and Dundas, followed by Yonge and Bloor, Bay and Bloor, and Bay and Dundas.

A face you can trust

Recently, behavioral scientists have begun to unravel the inner workings of trust. Their aim is to decode the subtle signals that we send out and pick up, the cues that, often without our knowledge, shape our sense of someone's reliability.
Researchers have discovered that surprisingly small factors - where we meet someone, whether their posture mimics ours, even the slope of their eyebrows or the thickness of their chin - can matter as much or more than what they say about themselves. We size up someone's trustworthiness within milliseconds of meeting them, and while we can revise our first impression, there are powerful psychological tendencies that often prevent us from doing so - tendencies that apply even more strongly if we've grown close.

Gay is the new Black

A routine trip to the Social Security office Monday turned into 30 minutes of shock, disbelief and irritation for Lapriss Gilbert, who was forced to leave the federal building by a guard who objected to her "lesbian.com" T-shirt.

As she headed for a line to pick up a Social Security card for her son, Gilbert was stopped by a guard who said her T-shirt, naming an educational and resource Web site for gay women, was offensive.

Ready. Aim. Fire!

I'm not sure whether this would be fun to do or not, but it sure would be fun to watch OTHER people do it. It is a device which catapults swimmers into the air and an unspecified distance across the pool. Somebody is crazy here and it's not me! LOL

OK. Who pulled the plug?

Hong Kong is in a constant quest to be bigger and better, the photo is of the Wampoa Shopping Center. This huge ship is smack in the middle of a new housing, business and hotel precinct that replaced a major slum area of old Hong Kong. Inside are restaurants, shops, and a cinema complex.