Toronto Star: Court puts heat on grow-ops Sat Oct 30 15:23:07 2004 Police can use infrared heat scanners from outside to locate pot grow-ops. Maybe this will stem the tide. I'm getting tired of smelling pot when I walk down the street. |
BusinessWeek: Is China Running Out Of Workers? |
More factories coming online, fewer female workers due to the one-child policy and higher income on farms due to increased food prices means fewer available factory workers per factory.
Now, much to the surprise of Lou and tens of thousands of other factory owners across China, the endless supply of new workers can no longer be taken for granted. Lou's packaging factory, for instance, is running well below capacity because he has only been able to find 170 of the 300 workers he needs. And even though he has jacked up wages some 30% since the beginning of the year, to an average of $85 a month, turnover is getting worse. |
Toronto Star: Ahoy, seniors: Take a cruise into retirement |
Living on board ship is a feasible option for seniors, costs about the same as a room in a traditional retirement home and is infinitely more attractive, according to a study in today's issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society. |
Toronto Minor Hockey in turmoil |
The Toronto Star has a series of articles about certain people who seem to be taking over minor hockey in and around Toronto, raising fees for kids. 'I want them to open their books' and Team sued parents over hockey fees.
Stuart Hyman, a 40-year-old real estate broker in Toronto, has become the lightning rod for questions about the rising cost of youth hockey. |
Toronto Star: Trash talking makes city green |
Even the sophisticates of Hogtown — from Rosedale matrons to Guildwood gentry and South Kingsway executives — have embraced the vilest task known to man; they've taken to sorting waste, trash, detritus, by hand. |
NY Post: Chris Byron - TRAVELZOO'S SKIDOO |
Travelzoo was created in the spring of 1998 by a young fellow named Ralph Bartel, who had earned a doctorate in journalism and the media from a university in Germany and had been working as a management assistant at the Grunner und Jahr publishing house. |
Toronto Star: Quebecers love the easy life, poll suggests |
Quebecers work fewer hours, sleep more and watch more TV than other Canadians, and they also read less and spend less time exercising, indicates a recent poll. |
Business Week: Now College Grads Can't Find A Job |
Scary if this continues. Open source software isn't going to help the situation. It'll depress salaries for programmers compared to an environment with mostly closed-source software.
If any student trying to enter the workforce in China should have an easy time finding a plum job, it's Wang Zhaohui. In July, the 30-year-old graduated from China Agricultural University in Beijing -- China's top agriculture academy -- with a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology. That makes him well-positioned to take advantage of the government's drive to upgrade its competitiveness in science and technology. But for months now, Wang has been seeking a position with a university, research center, or biotech company -- and has had no luck. He says many classmates are having similar trouble. |
MSNBC: For Starbucks, two blocks is too far |
Bloody lazy people. Two blocks is too far? That means they'll use less calories to load up on those high calorie liquid caffeine rockets. Sheesh.
There are so few Starbucks Corp. stores in the world that customers are sometimes forced to journey more than two blocks to find one, the coffee retailer's chief executive bemoaned Thursday. |
CNN: Jim Carrey becomes U.S. citizen |
"This country has helped define me and make my dreams come true," said Carrey, 42, in a statement. |
CNN: Study: One in 100 adults asexual |
It offered respondent a list of options. One read: "I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all." One percent said they agreed with the statement. |
CNet: Microsoft selling new Windows at cut-rate price |
Despite all the changes Microsoft is touting with the new version of Media Center, the biggest change may be one that the company barely mentions: the price drop. |
NY Times: Cellphone Industry Hits Snag as It Woos Untapped Market |
Mr. Scocca and millions of other senior citizens are an alluring lot for the mobile phone industry, which has virtually tapped out the rest of the adult market. While about 80 percent of people 19 to 65 own mobile phones and more than 45 percent of those 10 to 18 do, only 39 percent of people 65 and older use them, according to the Yankee Group, a research firm. Moreover, older people who do use phones spend less money for fewer minutes each month than Americans under 65, the firm says. |
CNet: Phone line alchemy: Copper into fiber |
I can't see fiber-to-the-home being an economical feature for the phone companies unless they can get some long term commitments from their customers.
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NY Times: A Home Theater That Rattles the Windows Without Breaking the Bank |
BUT while prices have been falling and lower-end systems have gained popularity, sound quality is starting to improve, even at the low end of the market, said David Carnoy, executive editor at CNet.com, a site that reviews consumer electronics. |
NY Times: Erase Debt Now. (Lose Your House Later.) |
MICHAEL A. KNOX thought he had run out of ways to pay off his credit card bills when he got the salesman's call two years ago. To wipe out his nearly $20,000 debt, he was told, all he had to do was take out a new, bigger mortgage on his house. |
NY Times: Lies and the Lying C.E.O.'s Who Tell Them |
The questioner wanted to know if customers were holding off buying PeopleSoft software out of fear that the goods would become obsolete if Oracle eventually won the battle. (Both companies sell so-called enterprise software that helps corporations handle things like finance and manufacturing.) |
NY Times: Wealth of Others Helped to Shape Kerry's Life |
If Mr. Kerry is more vulnerable to such impressions than many other politicians, perhaps that is because of his unusual background. He grew up in a family with little extra money, but he was constantly pressed up against the windows of a more glamorous and wealthy world, thanks to his mother, Rosemary Forbes. (His mother, as one of 11 siblings in the Forbes family that made its fortune in the China trade, inherited little of her own parents' fortune.) As a boy, he often stayed at Groton House, the 300-acre Massachusetts estate owned by a maternal aunt and uncle, Angela and Frederick Winthrop. And in the summers, he stayed in Brittany at Les Essarts, as the Forbes estate is known. |
NY Times: So Alike, Rivals Make It Personal |
Both men are of aristocratic stock. But within the elite, where subtle gradations of background take on particular force, Mr. Kerry was an insider's outsider. Unlike the Bushes, who were Protestant, the Kerrys were Catholic and they were not wealthy. |
Seattle Times: "Major screw-up": Boot-camp virus runs rampant |
More than three decades ago, the Pentagon created two pills to ward off a lethal virus infecting boot-camp recruits. But defense officials abandoned the program in 1996 as too expensive. Now recruits are dying, thousands are falling ill, and the military is desperately racing to bring back a vaccine it once owned. |
CNN: Most and least expensive markets |
Actual data is at Most expensive housing markets |
Wired.com: Change in the Chinese Wind |
The world's largest wind power project will begin construction this month near Beijing, bringing green energy and cleaner air to the 2008 Summer Olympics and city residents coping with some of the worst air pollution in the world. |
Mens News Daily: Kerry Actually DID Win the Debate…Before He LOST It! |
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NY Times - Pension Failures Foil 6-Figure Retirements, Too |
Mr. Paulsen, 61, is just one of more than 500,000 Americans whose pension plans have failed in the last three years and been taken over by the federal government, leaving many without health insurance and some, like Mr. Paulsen - high earners who retire early - with pensions much lower than those they had counted on. |
NY Times: Almost Here: Cellphones at 37,000 Feet |
Airbus said the system, which relays signals from a picocell unit on the plane to a Globalstar satellite for distribution to ground-based G.S.M. networks, will be ready for installation on commercial aircraft in early 2006. |
Washington Post: A: Quiz Bowl. Q: What Do Top Game Show Players Prize? |
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Washington Post: Baby Snakehead Is No Bundle of Joy |
The northern snakehead, a native of China and Korea, is a voracious predator that can grow several feet long. It first gained notoriety in this area in 2002, when a pair were discovered in a Crofton pond, along with thousands of young. The pond was poisoned to kill the fish. |
Globe and Mail: Woods snorkels off Barbados coast amid wedding rumours |
I guess the engagement/wedding is still on.
Newspapers in Barbados and Ireland have reported that the golfer will marry his fiancee early this week at the Sandy Lane luxury resort on the Caribbean island's west coast. |
NY Times: With Fruits and Vegetables, More Can Be Less |
"People tend to eat a consistent weight of food," Dr. Rolls has found. When consuming a calorie-dense food high in fat, people are likely to eat more calories just to get in a satisfying amount of food. |
SJMercury: File-swap software gets a speedy update |
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NY Times: Google Shares Just May Be Winners After All |
Mary Meeker, the Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter in the offering, published a model that valued Google shares at $132 each. |
NY Times: Former Executive Testifies, Offering Insider's Look at Enron's Deal Making |
The executive, Michael Kopper, one Mr. Fastow's lieutenants, offered descriptions of the deals he participated in with his former boss, including efforts to obstruct justice once the scandal began to unfold by destroying computers containing potentially damaging evidence. |
Washington Post: Higher Costs, Less Care |
Nationwide, workers' costs for health insurance have risen by 36 percent since 2000, dwarfing the average 12.4 percent increase in earnings since President Bush took office, the liberal consumer group Families USA reports in an analysis scheduled for release today. The number of Americans spending more than a quarter of their income on medical costs climbed from 11.6 million in 2000 to 14.3 million this year, according to the group. |
NY Times: Condominiums for Businesses Fill a Niche in California |
At 1,500 to 3,000 square feet, the units are tiny by commercial real estate standards. But they fill a niche in the San Jose area that hardly anyone realized existed before Venture Commerce opened its first condominium in 2002 in Morgan Hill, a suburb. |
NY Times: Solving a Riddle Written in Silver |
An archaeological discovery in 1979 revealed that the Priestly Benediction, as the verse from Numbers 6:24-26 is called, appeared to be the earliest biblical passage ever found in ancient artifacts. Two tiny strips of silver, each wound tightly like a miniature scroll and bearing the inscribed words, were uncovered in a tomb outside Jerusalem and initially dated from the late seventh or early sixth century B.C. - some 400 years before the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. |
MSNBC: Research shows walking might ward off Alzheimer’s |
Walking regularly at age 70 and beyond can help keep the mind sharp and ward off Alzheimer’s disease, according to research suggesting that what is good for the heart is also good for the brain. |
AppleInsider.com: Xbox team joins Virtual PC development |
One of the features reportedly shelved until a future release was native graphics card support. But precisely what is delaying this feature remains a mystery to even some members of the Virtual PC team, as they are not the ones responsible for the implementation. |