I love the Chinese video websites Youku.com and Tudou.com because they allow for really long videos, as well as skirt the copyrighting YouTube succumbed to this summer. You can find all sorts of great stuff on Youku and Tudou, like this Neil Young MTV Unplugged concert. This was my favourite MTV Unplugged concert, even though Bob Dylan is at the top of my list for singer/songwriters.
If you haven’t seen this, please do enjoy. If you have, it probably never gets old. It doesn’t for me.
Statistics Canada released itsMortality, Summary List of Causes 2007 (1.0 MB PDF) today, with a ton of tables on causes of death, by provinces, territories and country, gender, age, etc.
As morbid as it may sound, I thought it was a rather interesting document to browse through. It’s not because I wanted to know about all the ways that people died, in summary groups, but rather how they compared to each other. We often hear about stats on various diseases, accidents, criminal activities and other causes of death. However, it’s often without context, like how does it really compare to other causes since lots of people die every day, or the context whoever is trying to persuade you of something wants you to hear. In other words, death stats are often presented to you in propaganda format. Lobbying format if you want to be kinder.
What the tables in the Mortality Summary List does is let you go through those numbers yourself, though they would generally be of more interest to Canadians since it is about Canadians. See the big and the small numbers of deaths and their causes. Which ones topped the list? Find the causes you’re interested in and see how the number who died compared to other causes. How does cancer compare to car accidents? Is AIDS that prevalent any more? See how it is in your province or territory. Are the top causes the same? Maybe even make comparisons, though you’ll have to do a per capita (per person) or percentage type of calculation to have a fair comparison in some cases. The Mortality Summary List even provided some of those calculations for you!
You’ll never had such a clear idea of what Canadians died of in your life! Were things the way you thought they were? You may want to rethink some things about various issues related to death, whether disease, crime or otherwise, especially where priorities should be put.
Makes for a great school project or presentation, too! Do it well and I promise show and tell won’t have been this interesting in a long time! 🙂
It is too bad this data is relatively old, being for the year 2007 when we are almost nearing the end of 2010. StatCan is generally pretty good at being far more up to date than that. Odd, though, that they have economic data for so many things up to the month when what’s called vital statistics such as this lags almost 3 years behind. However, unless there were some shocking new trend, and I mean shocking by numbers, not by gruesome image or high profile media stories like shark attacks, things won’t have changed much. You’re still getting a pretty good idea of what’s happening. That said, in 2007, deaths by major cardiovascular (heart) disease passed deaths by cancer for the first time in 10 years, though the trend had been predictable from previous years. Together, heart disease and cancer combined for a staggering 59% of all Canadian deaths in 2007.
Can you see the impact of obesity on society coming? Who wants to bet this order remains the same for most of the next 10, maybe even 20 years?
Anyway, it isn’t morbid to mull over stuff like this. Death is a part of life. While this is not a spiritual examination like my philosophy in the previous sentence often suggests, it is a social understanding of it for Canadian society.
And whatever tangents your mind goes on thinking about death, it certainly is a lot to think about!
Seriously, it’s not a morbid exercise. Quite enlightening, in fact. I hope you give it a look.
I’d should do some research to find an American equivalent to have a look. I bet that’d be real interesting, too!
I’ve recently written some posts on purging your Facebook friends list due to the misuse, abuse and harm of Facebook friendships incurred by many people (links below). The issue has recently gotten more attention via talk show host Jimmy Kimmel calling for Wednesday, November 17, to be National Unfriend Day of NUD, and I am here to help with some tips and challenges should you want to take part in National Unfriend Day. This also goes for MySpace, LiveJournal, Bebo and other social networking platforms where you can add friends, but the main focus is on the largest social networking platform in the world, which is Facebook.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Why you would want to take part in Unfriend Day (or do it on another day)
Because Facebook friends can be spies, now or in the future when someone decides to no longer like you, especially people you don’t know well but have as Facebook friends. With Facebook’s new Friendship Page feature that gives everyone creepy new spying capabilities on other people’s profiles, the fact that Facebook friends can be spies has never been truer. Facebook friends have access to everything you have unless you block them from specific things. But let’s be serious. How many people really do that? And even if you did, isn’t that enough of a creep factor to get you to unfriend them? And why are you causing yourself stress in watching your back on Facebook all the time since you might have to block certain friends from potentially every new thing you post?
Jimmy Kimmel talks about unfriending because Facebook has cheapened the meaning of friendship. I have also written similarly about the meaning of friendship versus Facebook friendship. However, there is a real life threat to Facebook friendship and not just an ideology here.
If you missed National Unfriend Day, there’s no reason NUD couldn’t be any other day during the year for you. In fact, I would recommend you purge your Facebook friends list several times during the year.
Facebook activities don’t get you in trouble, Facebook friends who see them do
It seems to me we’ve had enough bad stories of people getting caught on Facebook for everything from cheating to hate statements to inappropriate work comment and other such bad behaviours, but not many people still care all that much. Just remember, those behaviours aren’t what got those people in trouble. It’s the fact they had Facebook friends who saw the behaviours and did something about it, even if unintentional like sharing it in some way, online or in real life.
Will people think you mean for dropping Facebook friends?
Hardly. People seem to think that those with tons of meaningless Facebook friends are the ones who are insecure. Knowing who your friends are, and who are not, is a sign of personal security and integrity, not being mean.
What if the unfriended request being friends again?
If you have common friends with someone you untag, they may notice having been removed if you post something on your mutual friend’s wall and they see it by looking or a notification of others posting on the same post. They’ll probably only realize it because they see your name and realize they hadn’t seen any updates from you in a while. So what if they add you again? Awkward?
Maybe. But you can avoid it by blocking them after you remove them. Or ignore the friendship request. If it means that much to them, and if you have any real friendship in life, they can talk to you about it. If you have any real friendship in life, this Facebook friend stuff shouldn’t matter. Really, it’s not the end of the world.
For those who like to flaunt their life fun on Facebook, especially if there’s a little element of risk to it, how’s about flaunting your Facebook unfriending Facebook tagging style?
Facebook friends dumped tagging meme
I highly recommend you do this after you unfriend the people you tag, of course. Now, you can’t tag a picture with a link to someone you aren’t Facebook friends with, but you can always type in their names instead of choosing from a box listing your Facebook friends. This is like if you were to tag a photo of the Loch Ness monster, Darth Vader, Wolverine, Harry Potter, Bella Swan or anything else. They don’t have Facebook profiles, so far as I know, but you can still tag them in pictures. Same idea for Facebook friends you’ve dumped.
Good luck with National Unfriend Day, Jimmy and the world!
I don’t know how much media clout, or pull, Jimmy Kimmel will have in proposing National Unfriend Day, but it’s good advice. Even if it doesn’t do well, it’s the first year. Things take time to adapt, and more time if it’s a once a year occurrence. But remember what I said above…
If you missed National Unfriend Day, there’s no reason NUD couldn’t be any other day during the year for you. In fact, I would recommend you purge your Facebook friends list several times during the year.
Remember this fun Facebook in Real Life video? It needs a seriously creepy update!
The new Seaport Farmers’ Market in Halifax is almost in full swing now. It is now open 3 days a week, Fri-Sun, and much longer each day than the half day before at the old market that was open just once per week Sat morning. The future intent is for the new market to be open 6 days a week, though the farmers will only be there for 3. The other 3 days will only have craft sellers. It’s a nice big space and I love it, although I hear the busking musicians are disgruntled due to the open space leaving all of them to be heard so they have to compete to get above each other (The Coast, Sep 9 2010). Hey, I like the music and appreciate its contribution to the ambiance of a farmers’ market, but it’s a new farmers’ market building, not a concert hall.
I love the additional selection and larger stands, though I have to curb myself on the cooked food. It smells and tastes great, but just see how much raw food you can get for the same amount of money on a cooked plate, and you’ll not only see the value of labour to your food costs, but also where many of those cents to your food dollar that’s not going to the farmers end up going. Going there with someone who might expect you to buy something, which includes yourself, is also going to be costly with all the potential little craft trinkets you can buy for significant others, kids, etc. It’s great to see all the stuff, but is hard to resist. So far, I have bought nothing other than raw food from the farmers.
I’ll leave with some statistics about the farmers’ market scene in Nova Scotia and the Seaport Farmers’ Market, from various sources like The Coast paper and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
New farmers’ market is in an R-2000 building (NRCan designation) that uses 85% less energy and 50% less water than old market R2000-standard PDF
New farmers’ market is twice the size of old market (which is still open) at 4,000 sq feet
10,000+ visitors per Saturday (August figures, but is still as crowded as far as I can tell)
Total vendors increased by at least 50% between new and old markets opening, though not all are food vendors
NS Community Supported Agriculture farms (CSAs) and farmers’ market bring in about $90M a year (and growing) to farmers (includes prepared foods, possibly crafts, so can’t just take it against farm gate)
For Earth Day 2010, I made a pledge to eat better and have added periodic updates to define and refine the pledge, as well as update on progress. This is the latest one and involves several topics I’ve encountered since my last update.
For Earth Day 2010, I made a pledge to eat better and have added 
Digital Citizen 