Fall colors surrounded the Humber Marshes in Toronto, Ontario on the morning of 25-October-2009
TORONTO, ONTARIO - The fall colors are now near their peak in Toronto, Ontario as seen above--unfortunately, the weather hadn't been conducive to viewing them until the skies cleared just today. If the forecast is to be believed, all the leaves might be gone before another sunny day appears here, so most people may be reduced to looking at pictures of colors from other regions on their computers.
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Some computer users are delighted that the Windows 7 operating system was released on Thursday. Leave it to the CBC's Jian Ghomeshi to point out in his "Q" monologue that the "Start Menu" has been eliminated. Ghomeshi mentioned that Microsoft had paid big money (about $10 million) to use the Rolling Stones single "Start Me Up" to promote the Start Menu. What he didn't mention--but was pointed out back in 1995 by technology talk show host Leo Laporte--is that the choice of music was especially appropriate because of the lyric "You make a grown man cry" which Windows 95 certainly did to many grown men.
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Also notable on the radio in the past week is that National Public Radio in the United States has started doing some of its hourly newscasts from NPR West in Culver City, California. Since the launch of the network, its hourly newscasts had originated in Washington, DC. In addition to the top-of-the-hour afternoon newscasts last week, the bottom of the hour newscasts from Anne Taylor during All Things Considered were also "from NPR West."
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NPR is one of several news organizations that suddenly seemed to start calling the second place finisher in the recent controversial elections in Afghanistan "Dr. Abdullah Abdullah." Previously, many of them had simply called him "Abdullah Abdullah." Is the fact that incumbent Hamid Karzai is now tainted by the rigging of the election suddenly now making it "necessary" for the media to paint Adbullah as more credible, instead of as a borderline extremist as he was originally portrayed? Personally, I had never understood why more attention had not been paid to Abdullah, the former foreign minister, in either a positive or negative light since it became clear from polling that he was the likely second-place candidate.
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I increasingly consume media whether from NPR or elsewhere through podcasts. Long-time readers of this blog may recall my lament that I could never catch up on podcasts from about a year ago. Well, for the first time I can remember since October 2007, I had a completely empty podcast directory in iTunes yesterday. It will be interesting to see how long that lasts.
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