First. Peter Lougheed, the most successful Alberta politician of the past half-century, died on Thursday night in the Calgary hospital named after him. He was 84.
“We have lost a great man, and a great Canadian and a great Albertan. And we just want a chance now for Albertans and Canadians to pay tribute to him, and we will,” said former cabinet colleague Don Getty, who succeeded Mr. Lougheed as premier. The Globe and Mail, Friday, September 14, 2012.
Listen to the music: Ernst “last Rose of Summer” & Traditional/Ricci “Romance de Amor”-Ruggiero Ricci
Second. Most astronauts are engineers, fighter pilots or scientists, but the next Canadian in space will bring an artist’s sensibility to his command of the International Space Station.
Chris Hadfield is scheduled to rocket off Dec. 5 for six months in the claustrophobic confines of the space station from a launch pad on a barren plateau in Kazakhstan, along with Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn. Where some might see a long stint of isolation, the veteran Canadian astronaut sees precious time to create music and visual art. The Globe and Mail, Friday, September 14, 2012.
Third. Summit ’72.It was the start of the greatest comeback in hockey history. After game five at Moscow’s Luzhniki Ice Palace, the scoreboard showed a 5-4 loss for team Canada. Congratulations for the Russian hockey players!
The Globe and Mail, Friday, September 14, 2012.
Fourth. “In 2008, Japan’s diet passed a law designed to combat “metabolic syndrome” which is known to Americans as “pre-diabetes” writes Noah Smith in the Atlantic. “The so-called ‘Metabo Law’ requires overweight individuals, or individuals who show the signs of weight-related illnesses, to go to dieting classes. If they fail to attend the classes, the companies that employ them and/or the local governments of the areas in which they live must pay fines to the federal government.
The Globe and Mail, Friday, September 14, 2012.
Fifth. Americans throw away nearly half of their food and, in 2010, recycled only 34 per cent of their waste. In Sweden, by contrast, only 4 per cent of waste from households ends up in landfills. And burning waste powers 20 per cent of the country’s district heating, as well as supplying electricity for a quarter-million homes. “Because it has become so good at recycling,” says The Huffington Post, “Sweden now is importing 800,000 tonnes of trash each year from other European countries, including Norway, power its waste-to-energy program.”
The Globe and Mail, Friday, September 14, 2012.