Six In The Morning

Special extra-surly edition!

1 YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW THAT The Canadian government is getting slammed for their crummy track record on openess. Canada's information commissioner singled out the Conservatives for being particularly stingy with information about the government's activities. Freedom of information requests are supposed to be processed within 30 days, but Information commisioner Robert Marleau says that's become the exception, not the rule. Marleau told the Toronto Star that response to freedom of information (FOI) requests are frequently taking more than three months. the Defence Department and the RCMP are among the worst offenders.

Access to information is critical to democracy. These delays make it difficult for Canadians to know what their politicians are up to. The system's breakdown is no good and very, very naughty. You should probably click on this link to the Toronto Star article to learn more. (Toronto Star)

2 YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING, IN FACT Okay, so the CBC's president says the network is in major financial trouble like all media these days (I guess we should get some kind of official CanWest death watch going, huh?). So is our goverment showing leadership and making sure the broadcaster has the cash to do its job? Hahahahaha, sigh. (Toronto Star)

3 STILL ROLLING IN IT Of course why worry about boring stuff like the death of media and our government acting like a secret society that can do whatever it feels like when Saskatchee-wan is bucking the economic trends?

4 SPEAKING OF THAT TREND WE'RE BUCKING That giant sucking sound you're hearing from the south is not your imagination--the U.S. economy is shrinking faster than expected. (New York Times)

5 DELICATE, SENSITIVE BOTTOMS If I ran things it would be against the law to make toilet paper that wasn't recycled. It is insane and evil that trees are cut down to meet our our poop-wiping needs when landfills are cluttered with unrecycled paper. Well, not surprisingly, it turns out American toilet paper causes more environmental damage than SUVs. Those super-soft rolls apparently are being made from woood ripped out of virgin forests.

From the Guardian's article:

"Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age. Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution." Making toilet paper has a significant impact because of chemicals used in pulp manufacture and cutting down forests.

Full horrible, awful details are here. (The Guardian)

6 EVOLUTIONARY STEPS A South African archeolgist speaks about 1.5 million year-old fossilized human footprints discovered in Kenya. The prints are the earliest evidence of upright human walking. Also I'm going to assume that the reason there's only four toes is that second toes don't plant with much weight. Creationotologists are of course free to believe these prints are evidence of four-toed angels. (Associated Press/The Guardian)