Canadian companies answer the enviro-call

More than a little corporate pride can be heard in Daniel Gagne's voice as it comes down the line from his Montreal office at Bell Canada.

He earnestly rattles off the telecommunications provider's notable achievements: Nearly 500,000 cellphones diverted from landfills since 2003, nearly 300,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases eliminated and, if that wasn't enough, a cool $1-million trimmed through paper recycling.

"We see that we have responsibilities. We need to control our own environment and reduce our energy consumption," says Mr. Gagne, Bell's director of corporate responsibility and the environment. "But we're convinced we can help others do so, too."

Posted in Environment on 02/26/2009 - 0 Comments

Swimming robots

Hey science fans, let's talk about technology and Raquel Welch.

You remember Welch and the scientists in Fantastic Voyage? They jumped in a submarine, got shrunk down to microscopic size and were injected into a guy's body?

Posted in The loh down on 12/06/2008 - 0 Comments

Virgin births

It's all happening again - the miracle, the wonder, the mystery of the virgin birth. But our modern day miracle mom isn't named Mary, there isn't any myrrh and she ain't in a manger. No. Her name is Flora, and she's a Komodo dragon--biggest reptile in the world.. Recently, Flora fertilized, laid, and hatched eight eggs at the Chester Zoo, in England-without ANY help from Mr Komodo. She has wise men lining up to marvel at...

Posted in The loh down on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments

Politics of parking tickets

New York is a tough town, overrun as it is with all those ruffians, scallawags, ne'er do wells. And you know exactly who we mean, don't you? UN diplomats. World peace? Oh sure--THEY'RE all for it. But paying their parking tickets? Not so much. That's the conclusion of an unusual joint study by Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley that looked at diplomatic parking fines as a barometer, of sorts, for corruption and negative feeling about US foreign policy. The researchers found that United Nations diplomats racked up a staggering...

Posted in The loh down on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments

Wobbology

The next time you're at a restaurant table so tippy it threatens the internal stability of your margarita, just remember. . . Wobblology. It's the science of, yes, wobbly restaurant tables. New Scientist magazine coined the term, but the credit goes to both the hard-working researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and physicists at Switzerland's famous CERN lab. For months, the two groups worked feverishly and separately on the same problem: to determine the mathematical model for fixing four-legged tables that wobble because the floor under them isn't smooth. Unlike the average Joe, the scientists weren't allowed to use...

Posted in The loh down on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments

Space law

Captain Kirk had it right. Great ship, multicultural bevy of scientists, go-go boots, phasers, di-lithium crystals-- The one thing he didn't take was an attorney. But that was then. These days, LAWYERS are the new space pioneers, boldly going where no litigation has gone before. Because space law is now one of the hottest growth areas in ...

Posted in The loh down on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments

Sexy seahorses

They're graceful, interesting to look at. . . and they'll have sex with ANYBODY. You're right, it's... the seahorse. I know, I know - you heard that seahorses are faithful and monogamous... never stray... they're so sensitive and enlightened males even have the babies... But no, says Paul Bullimore of Britain's Sea Life Centre. He was one of fifteen scientists to take part in a study of seahorses from three different species from Australia, the Caribbean, and the English Channel. Over a month, the scientists studied ninety seahorses and recorded a whopping three thousand, one hundred and sixty-eight sexual...

Posted in The loh down on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments

Queen's English

Repeat after me: Thet men is wearing a bleck het. Congratulations -- you sound just like Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth did in 1952. These days, Lillibet has moved a bit down market. According to a new study, she now says something closer to: "That man is wearing a black hat." Australian phonetics professor Jonathan Harrington discovered the Queen's slide down the upper class ladder...

Posted in The loh down on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments

Procrastination

You can blame the Blackberry. Oh, sure, it's handy--you can read ten emails in the time it takes to make toast. And playing Minesweeper during meetings sure makes the time fly. But according to Piers Steel, an industrial psychologist at the University of Calgary, your little black box is making you into a time waster. A lolly-gagger of the first order. A PROCRASTINATOR. After analyzing the results of seven hundred economic and psychological studies on procrastination, Steel discovered the horrible truth...

Posted in The loh down on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments

Painless

Which hurts more--slowly creeping barefoot across a bed of hot coals, or shoving razor sharp knives into your arms? Neither! If you belong to a certain street-performing family from Pakistan. All six members of the extended family have never--and I mean EVER--experienced any pain. Not even when they perform daredevil feats like hot coal-walking to...

Posted in The loh down on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments