Happy Burthday Burton!

Burton Cummings, the voice and soul of The Guess Who, was born on this day in 1947. That makes him 58.

Happy Birthday BC!

Jeff Lynne Song Database

The Jeff Lynne Song Database is a great resource to learn about the ELO leader's involvement in every song he's touched - as an instrumentalist, vocalist, producer, writer etc. It's quite a list.

December 30 was Jeff's birthday. Happy #58, Jeff!

This kind of trouble ....

I was playing Trouble with a youngster when I remembered some silly words to this commercial from decades ago. A Google search quickly brought up the complete words at ScottBecker's GeekList:

If you've got trouble, wait! Don't run!
This kind of Trouble is lots of fun!
Pop-O-Matic pops the dice.
Pop a six and you move twice.
Race your men around the track and try to send the others back. That's Pop-O-Matic Trouble!
Watch the dice in the plastic bubble, it pops you in and out of trouble.
Here comes Sister! LOOK OUT, JACK!!
You've got trouble. You go back.
The game is fun for Dad and Mother, and Sis can trouble her mean old brother.

Radio gaga - a first

On December 23, 1900, a Canadian made the first radio broadcast.

Reginald Fessenden sang Christmas hymns during a historic transmission from Massachusetts to Scotland.

The CBC Archives site has an interesting story about the event.

Calculus and driver's licences

The Ontario government is making changes to the education system, two of which are silly moves, imho.

Calculus is being dropped from the high school math courses in order to dumb down the curriculum. Apparently it's been difficult for students to grasp it since OAC (formerly known as grade 13) was eliminated. So the solution is to drop it, and expect universities to pick it up.

It's a silly move, because calculus is an essential fundamental for physical science, mathematics and engineering programs. It's also a great intellectual exercise that develops analytical and problem-solving skills.

Students in other provinces can manage calculus in high school - they've never had OAC - so Ontario students should be able to keep up. It’s not for everyone, but for many in the academic stream, it’s a crucial course.

The government also wants to raise the age of school-leaving to 18 from 16. One of the tools they want to use to compel people to stay is to deny a driver's licence to anyone who quits school before 18. This is a mean-spirited and vindictive move reminiscent of the Mike Harris Tories.

Instead of using punitive measures to compel people to stay in school, the government must make high school more relevant for those who are likely to leave.

Bacon online

At the Oracle of Bacon at Virginia, you can play an online version of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. The University of Virginia's Department of Computer Science site allows you to input the name of an actor, director or other hollywood celeb and then find out how that person links to KB.

It works by mining the Internet Movie Database, which is a great web resource in and of itself. If you don't have it bookmarked, do it now.

Kids these days

A young woman at the University of Western Ontario recently did a striptease that was caught on camera, with pictures posted on the web. (I won't provide a link here. You'll have to find that yourself.) She was apparently a willing participant. But I wonder - what will she think of this in 20 or 30 years?

Sometimes the getting of wisdom is a slow, painful process!

Child care plans

In the current federal election campaign in Canada, there's been a lot of talk about different philosophical approaches to government support of child care. The Liberals and NDP want to expand publicly funded day care spaces. The Conservatives want to provide an allowance of $1,200 per year per child under six, taxable in the hands of the parent with the lower income.

My own view is that there should be a combination of the two: provide funded spaces for those who want them, and compensate to some extent parents who choose to stay home to raise their kids.

For me, it boils down to these four points:

1. Parents know what is best for their children.


2. Governments should empower parents to make choices for their children's care.


3. For parents to make choices, there must be viable options from which to choose.


4. Governments should not criticize the choices that parents make - because their friends, family, neighbours, co-workers and complete strangers can and will do that.

My ELO includes Jeff Lynne (and my Guess Who includes Burton and Randy)

I am a big Beatles fan. I also really like ELO and The Guess Who.

Jeff Lynne is the visionary - the songwriter, producer, lead vocalist, lead guitarist, the genius behind Electric Light Orchestra. He made it what it was, and created the great musical legacy.

The Guess Who were Canada's leading rock group. Burton Cummings is the voice and sould of the group, its chief songwriter and, with Randy Bachman from 1966-1970, the architect of its leap to success. There have been two reunion periods since the breakup in 1975 that have included Burton and Randy - in 1983, and from 1999-2003.

There are other incarnations, with similar names (in the case of ELO) or the name itself (in the case of The Guess Who). They still perform.

But for me, they're not the real things. Check who is in the group before you buy tickets. That's all I'm suggesting.

That name again is Mister Plow!

Back in the 1970s in Ontario, there was a public service announcement that ran for several winters. It was a request for drivers to be mindful of the slow-travelling snowplows sauntering down the road.

In the ad, done with very simple animation, there was a prototype of a souped-up high-speed plow. The only problem was that "the gall darn thing gets stuck in the dad gum snow."

Does anybody remember that? I've searched the web, but can't find any references to it.