[  Mood: Fed Up WIth Life ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
So I was listening to the CBC show Q, and they had an interview with a woman who had developed a physical activity program for young babies. Her premise is that this will encourage physical activity in children and combat obesity.

And as the interview went on, I began to shake my head. I saw this as just another attempt to cater to the parents who want to give their child every advantage and push their children ahead. The problem is most of these "programs" are not based on any kind of valid research.

One of the things the woman being interviewed (Doreen Bolhuis – who bears more than a passing resemblance to Sue Sylvester) claimed is that we containerized babies more than we did twenty years ago. To this, I strongly disagree. Twenty years ago, babies were placed in play-pens, strollers, cribs, jolly jumpers and the like far more. Mostly so mothers could get housework done.

Doreen

Sue

Now we live in a different world. We have playmats and bombo seats. My mother-in-law was horrified that I didn’t follow her practice and use a playyard to contain my son while cleaned the house to Martha Stewart standards. I used my playyard only as a crib when I was travelling. The rest of the time my son was free to play on the floor.

I fear this baby gym craze is the same thing as Baby Einstein, a system to assuage the guilt of modern parents. And it will be disproved just as the "make your baby a genius" products. Unfortunately, some parents will be hoodwinked into spending more money on useless products and babies will be sat in front of a TV in order to be "improved".

I say, let your baby crawl instead, wiggle and roll. And keep them away from processed foods like those silly ready made meals, choosing instead to addict them to fruits and vegetables and you will have a healthy, happy child. Better yet, do this with them, and your health might improve. Mine has!

[  Mood: Amused ]
[  Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
I am always reading. ALWAYS. And as part of that activity, I am always on the lookout for books to pull kids of any age into reading. When I stumbled across this book at the library, I knew I had something.

Amelia’s family is moving and she is not happy about it given that she will be leaving behind her best friend, Nadia. To help her cope with the upheaval, her mother gives her a notebook to write and draw in. And Amelia does pour out her frustration and issues into the book, illustrating it along the way with cleaver drawings.

The reader learns that Amelia is very creative, capturing her impressions of people her life in her book. Most notably is her big sister Cleo, whom Amelia does not get along with. This relationship also serves as a contrast in how different people cope with a move. Cleo immediately unpacks and decorates her room, while Amelia leaves everything in boxes and lies on her bed.

This book is a cross between a picture book and a chapter book, with its mix of long text passages and colourful drawings. There are also plenty of margin drawings, like you would have in a real notebook, adding to the charm of the book. This book is aimed at the stronger primary reader or regular junior student.

This is such an excellent read, I really wish it was genre so it could go in What to Read After Harry.

[  Mood: Fed Up WIth Life ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
So today I was listening to the House, a CBC show on National politics. They had an interview with someone from Shaw Communications, one of the Canadian cable companies that services primarily the western provinces.

I found the interview fascinating. Especially when he complained that Canadians are the number one dowloaders of video in the world. Yet he didn’t want to acknowledge the cable companies role in that.

1) It takes up to a year to get some shows/movies up here in Canada via legitimate methods. So when buzz builds about a show like Burn Notice and we have no where to get it from, Canadians turn to the Internet to find it.

2) Since the introduction of Netflicks and Hulu in the US, illegal downloads have DECREASED in our neighbours to the south. As iTunes has proven, if you give people legitimate access to media, the vast majority of them will take it.

3) Telecom companies profits are doing nothing but climbing, yet they want Canadian citizens to subsidize their infrastructure even more. Even though they already get tax breaks and incentives from the Government to do so. Which means I am already paying for their infrastructure upgrade. Now they want me to pay a second time.

4) The cable companies have ATROCIOUS service. I have a HD PVR that I rent from Rogers. I have had to have it replaced three times as it builds up a memory and starts dropping recordings. One look at my service record and they know this. Technicians have as much admitted to me that Rogers is renting out second-hand/reconditioned PVRs and know they are unreliable. Yet the first thing that customer services says to me when I call to complain again is "it must be on your end" let’s check the line. So when Netflicks comes to town, the possibility of better service makes my ears pick-up.

So you can understand why I given the above, I have little sympathy for them. They, like the music industry before them, know that they will have to change to meet the challenges brought by new technology. And they don’t want to. They are comfortable surrounded by their money and market shares. And monopolies. And they want their buddies in the Government to keep it that way.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[  Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
I stumbled across this book at my local library. You see in addition to using things like Goodreads, CBC Radio and people like Rick Klaw to find my next read, I also like to troll the stacks. Trolling the stacks is the old fashion way to find your next read. You pull books off the shelf, you flip through their pages, you read the dustcover. It was on a recent such trip that I found The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie.

Bindy Mackenzie is a good student. In fact she thinks she is probably the best student at Ashbury High in Sydney, Australia. She also thinks she is the nicest. Again, this would be disputed by her peers, so Bindy documents her life meticulously. Especially her FAD group.

The school board has created a new course called Friendship and Development (FAD) where Bindy has been grouped with others in her Grade 11 year to do character development and the like. The problem is that Bindy does not like many of the other people in FAD. She considers them poisonous, and a name game exercise where people write down what they really think of her only confirms that.

But things begin to go south for Bindy when she becomes more than obsessed with her FAD group, and her life begins to unravel around her. Can Bindy figure out what is going on before its too late?

Author Moriarty constructs a story about a young woman who is not who she thinks she is. Somehow Moriarty makes us care about a young woman who is self-righteous, a little stuck up and very insecure. Maybe it is her choice to tell the story through diaries, memos, transcripts and emails. What ever it does, it works. You end up caring for Bindy a great deal, especially after you read her FAD assignment "The Life of Bindy Mackenzie".

[  Mood: Sick ]
[ Currently: Getting ready to get a blood test then go back to bed ]

Jackson Jones is the star of Nathan Hale Elementary School. Good looking and popular, he is the star quarterback of his peewee football team. He is also the biggest bully in the school, taking great joy in torturing the weak who surround him. Until the day the orthodontist decides he needs braces complete with headgear.

Overnight Jackson finds himself losing everything that made him popular. No more football since he can’t wear a helmet. No more good looking given the headgear. And popular? Forget it. In fact, Jackson finds himself the victim of the same people who used to be his friends. His family reacts equally poorly.

Alone for the first time in his life, Jackson begins to really observe the world around him. He notices many things, but most importantly, he notices that a group of students seem to get up and leave without permission, disappearing for hours at a time. He decides to follow them and learns that there is a group of child superspies working out of the school.

Jackson endeavours to join this group made up of people he used to torture. But can he get the team to work with him in time to save the world from Dr. Jigsaw, a madman bent on rearranging the continents of the world no matter what the cost?

This is a good book that tries to walk the line between action/adventure and comedy. I really wanted to like it and include it in a What to Read After Harry. Author Michael Buckley is well known for his Sister Grimm series. Unfortunately, NERDS is not as funny as it thinks it is leaving it feeling forced at times. So it won’t be on an upcoming list.

[  Mood: Sick ]
[ Currently: About to get ready for work. ]
In case you haven’t heard, the CRTC (telecom regulator) has approved metering the Internet here in Canada. There has been a backlash, but rumours are swirling that there will be a backroom deal to allow metering. There is also some proof that the government basically directed the CRTC to do this.

So, given that I use the Internet and that my husband’s job/company is based on the Internet, I felt compelled to write a letter to my Primeminister urging him to stop the metering of the Internet. I am sharing the text below.

****

Dear Primeminister Harper,

I am writing to you today to add my voice to the thousands, if not millions who are asking you to do something about the CRTC decision that will allow the Internet providers to essentially meter the Internet.

I know you have promised to do something about it, but rumours are leaking out that there will be a deal to allow metering. You MUST not allow this to happen.

Canada is a nation built on communication. The Internet is a vital part of that communication. There are thousands of small businesses that rely on the Internet everyday. If their access is restricted due to metering rates, these business will find their growth severely limited, if not reversed. Businesses like my husband’s.

Think also of all of the telecom companies that make Canada home. The use the Internet to link to other branches in other parts of Canada or other parts of the world. You meter the Internet, they will move elsewhere. Stunting our economic growth.

It would also mean that all the money the government has put into putting services online will be wasted, as Canadians will not want to pay to get access to information. They will be demanding a return to service centres and using the phone to access the information they need.

I am sure the telecom companies have told you they need this money to improve service, but yet their profits have soared to 7.5 billion in 2010. In reality, they are doing this to fight against Netflicks and similar services threaten to cut into their business. The reality is, instead of improving customer service and cutting prices, they want the government and its regulators to put a stop to innovation. Like the recording industry before them, they want the world to stop moving forward rather than change their business practices to meet a new, developing market.

I am sure the telecom industry has told you nothing bad will happen if the metered internet goes through, but the statistics don’t back this up. A good example of this is Australia, which like Canada, has a small population in a large land mass. They meter the Internet, which has restricted the nation’s use of the Internet. Recent statistics show Canada ranks 4th per among the world for Internet use per capita. Australia? 34th.

If the metering is allowed we could soon see our once great telecom industry and all the millions of jobs it provides, not to mention tax dollars it brings into government coffers, dry up and blow away.

Do the smart thing. Stop this. With an election coming, allowing this to go through could cost you big time as people like me remember who let Bell, Rogers and Shaw shut down their small business and vote accordingly.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
A while ago I asked a lot of my Canadian SF/Fan friends to help me put together a list of essential Canadian Spec Fic (yes, KD a list) for RevSF. Dave Duncan’s name kept coming up. This made me want to go back and re-read some of this great Canadian’s work, hense the review below. (And look for the list/article sometime around the end of June.)

Edward is a typical young British man in Edwardian England. The child of British colonial workers who were murdered in Africa, he has gone to a private (called public) school to be trained to be the next generation to run the empire. So when the drums of war start to pound, Edward feels compelled to sign up to fight for king and country.

The problem is that in another place and another time, Edward is the proficized Liberator. His destiny in the other world is to kill death. And the Gods from that world have no intention of letting him die for England when they could kill him or use him to their own ends.

Dave Duncan is one of the best fantasy authors out there. His novels are engaging and well thought out. The cleverness of the title refers to grammar tenses, something the main character Edward wold have learned at grammar school, which again references the time that Edward comes from. Solid bit of writing. Well worth the effort.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[  Currently: Watching Sherlock ]

Author Allison Hoover Bartlett stumbled across the story of John Charles Gilkey, a rare book thief who spent years steeling books from dealers across North America. Gilkey is not a sympathetic figure. A career criminal from a dishonest family who routinely steal from each other, he seems to think that he is owed a good life. A collection of rare books is a symbol of that good life. It does not matter that the collection is funded by stolen credit cards and bad cheques. In fact, Gilkey even views some of his thefts as revenge for slights the various bookstores have given him. Slights such as keeping him on hold too long.

Through looking at Gilkey’s past, crimes and escapades, Bartlett also gives us a look at the rare book business, what makes a book rare, what makes it collectible. She also introduces us to the people who collect books and who sell them. We meet people with obsessions just as strong as Gilkey’s, but who stay on the right of the law. Most interesting among them is Ken Sanders, the rare book dealer who has made it his life’s mission to hunt down people like Gilkey and get them behind bars. She also gives a brief history of rare books and rare book thieves.

Bartlett also finds herself pulled into her story as Gilkey begins to look upon her as his confessor, if not biographer. He seems to crave the attention she gives him and at the same time desires her to chronicle his "accomplishments".

A good book that was enjoyable to listen to as an audio book.