Tuesday links

Test your eyeballing skillz. I got 7.28 (deep in the wrong side of the bell curve).


Economist blogger's Toronto tips for visiting business people. Choice quote:

Understatement and a low-key demeanour are looked upon with favour. You should avoid boasting about past achievements or hyping up a product.

Stretchware- A software application that runs in the background, periodically reminding you to do stop what you are doing and stretch. Suggests which sort of stretch to do. 30 day free trial.

Maps of the most famous trips in history.

A history of the development of the Google logo.

Ontario to ban cellphone usage while driving


From yesterday's Globe and Mail:

Transport Canada's 2008 report on driver and phone use rates states that 37 per cent of drivers reported using a cellphone while driving and those people had “the most commonly seen unsafe driving behaviours,” such as tailgating or speeding.

Also, the Ontario Medical Association has concluded that driving and talking on a cellphone creates the same risk for the driver as being at the legal limit for alcohol consumption. OMA research, conducted in September, found that talking on cellphones impaired drivers' visual concentration, the speed at which they process information and their reaction time. Some drivers also abandoned checking their mirrors entirely while on the phone.

If one needed proof that banning cellphones is a good idea, one need look no further than Alberta (AKA the Texas of Canada):

Manitoba and Prince Edward Island are also considering a ban, but in Alberta, Premier Ed Stelmach spoke out against a private member's bill introduced in the legislature to ban drivers from using cellphones.

Bad luck for the Conservatives?

I was crossing Nathan Phillips Square during lunch today when I caught sight of this: a sea gull had seemingly just deposited a fresh poop on grumbly old Winston Churchill's head!

Let's hope it is a portent of the Conservatives' fate in today's federal election. But, then again, having a bird poop on you is supposed to be good luck, so I don't know what to think.

Was this a sign just for me? And if so, does the "call-back" joke to the puffin incident really exist, or is it just in my mind? Troubling thoughts...

List of battle ground ridings to watch

From the Globe and Mail:

ONTARIO BATTLEGROUND RIDINGS
Difference from 2006 election
CONSERVATIVE 35% -2
LIBERAL 31% -8
NDP 10% +5
GREEN 24% +5

The 20 in Ontario are:

Parry Sound-Muskoka, Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, St. Catharines, Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, Brant, Thunder Bay-Superior North, Oakville, Thunder Bay-Rainy River, Huron-Bruce, London-Fanshaw, Ottawa-Orléans, Simcoe North, London West, Barrie, Kitchener- Conestoga, Halton, Peterborough, Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing, Burlington, Mississauga South.

QUEBEC BATTLEGROUND RIDINGS
Difference from 2006 election
CONSERVATIVE 24% -4
LIBERAL 20% -3
NDP 13% +5
GREEN 6% +2
BLOC QUEBECOIS 37% 0

The 15 in Quebec are:

Louis-Hébert, Ahuntsic, Beauport-Limoilou, Brossard-La Prairie, Papineau, Charlesbourg-Haut-Saint-Charles, Hull-Aylmer, Honoré-Mercier, Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, Pontiac, Jeanne-Le Ber, Laval-Les Îles, Gatineau, Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, Brome-Missisquoi.

B.C. BATTLEGROUND RIDINGS
Difference from 2006 election
CONSERVATIVE 32% -3
LIBERAL 30% -3
NDP 24% -3
GREEN 14% +9

The 10 in British Columbia are:

Vancouver Quadra, Vancouver Island North, West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, Fleetwood-Port Kells, Newton-North Delta, Burnaby-Douglas, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, Richmond,

Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission, North Vancouver.

MARGIN OF ERROR +/-3.9% TO 8.8% WITH VARYING SAMPLE SIZES

SOURCE: STRATEGIC COUNSEL

NINIAN CARTER/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Davenport all-candidates meeting

Last night, a final all-candidates meeting was held for Davenport, the riding I live in. 5 of 7 candidates showed up, but, disappointingly, the two communists (M-L and CPC) were the no-shows.

I was counting on the communists to provide some entertainment ever since Roy MacGregor recounted in last Saturday's Globe and Mail how the Commmunist candidate at an all-candidates`meeting he attended in Kitchener was the entertainment highlight.

Luckily, enough other kooks were here to keep things lively.

This is my superficial impression of the candidates, listed in the order that they were introduced:

Peter Ferreira (NDP)– seems an agreeable enough fellow, reminds me strongly of my dentist, who is also quite likeable. Fun fact: Peter received over 40% of the vote in the last provincial election, and still lost.

Wendy Forrest (Ind) – one of the aforementioned kooks, Wendy is a real-estate agent and economic conspiracy theorist. Fun fact: running in the 2006 federal election for the Canadian Action Party, Wendy marshalled a total of 122 votes.

Wayne Scott (Green) – A 40-something or perhaps even 50-something (who can tell with these health freaks?) skinhead, Wayne Scott has been a bike courier for 25 years. Fun fact: Wayne has never owned a car, nor ridden in an aeroplane.

Theresa Rodrigues (CPC) – an unrepentant old skool Conservative with a strong Azorean accent. Fun fact: in the course of the questions segment of the meeting, Theresa was the only candidate to state opposition to the concept of "affordable housing".

Mario Silva (Lib) – the man with a plan. Well spoken, youthful. Kind of reminds me of Dimitar Berbatov, but shorter. Fun fact: Mario is a tiny person, maybe 5 foot 4 inches tall, and that is stretching it.

Simon Luisi (Animal Alliance) – not as entertaining a kook as the real-estate lady, Simon was nervous (or maybe the word is intense). He reminds me of David Byrne, circa Stop Making Sense, in both his persona and his dressing style.

My impressions on the question period segment later.

Peace out!
 

Jack Layton's Debate Zingers

By all accounts (ie. according to the Dipper Chick), J-Lay was the big winner, zinger-wise, in last Thursday's english-language leadership debate.

To Harper:
"Either you don't care or you're incompetent. Which one is it?"
UPDATE 6:30 (PDT)
"Where's your platform, under the sweater?"
UPDATE 7:31 (PDT)

To Dion:
"If you can't do your job as leader of the opposition, I don't know what you are doing running for Prime Minister"

The Dipper Chick's posting also has an embedded video clip showing (I assume) some hot Layton on Dion action. Unfortunately you will have to visit her page to see it because the firewall I spend my days behind (now that I am once again "employed") blocks all external video.

I can't verify it, so I won't embed it. This is just another example of how P. in the T. does it.

Tuesday Morning Links

Plug in a mic and join the Karaoke Party!

Recruiting site for the Dharma Initiative

Gallery of images from the Hubble telescope

Urban Dead- A Massively Multi-Player Web-Based Zombie Apocalypse, free.

Foreign Affairs parody- I ran across it at boing boing.

The Canada joke is very weak, but otherwise this is a funny parody IMHO.

Jump! You Fuckers!, courtesy of Lenin's Tomb.

Choice Harper Quotes

Mason and Nicholas over at Life Without borders have brought to my attention a list (originally compiled by In Their Own Words) of choice Harper quotes from over the years.

The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

For taxpayers, however, it’s a rip-off. And it has nothing to do with gender. Both men and women taxpayers will pay additional money to both men and women in the civil service. That’s why the federal government should scrap its ridiculous pay equity law.

- Stephen Harper on pay equity, NCC Overview, Fall 1998.

Then there is the Progressive Conservative party, the PC party, which won only 20 seats. Now, the term Progressive Conservative will immediately raise suspicions in all of your minds. It should... They were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially -- what else can I say about them? Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system and multicultural policies in the constitution of the country

.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan... Collect our own revenue from personal income tax... Resume provincial responsibility for health-care policy. If Ottawa objects to provincial policy, fight in the courts... [E]ach province should raise its own revenue for health... It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta...

- Stephen Harper in an "Open letter to Ralph Klein," January 24th 2001.

The NDP could be described as basically a party of liberal Democrats, but it's actually worse than that, I have to say. And forgive me jesting again, but the NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

It was probably not an appropriate term, but we support the war effort and believe we should be supporting our troops and our allies and be there with them doing everything necessary to win.

- Stephen Harper supporting the US-lead war on Iraq, Montreal Gazette, April 2nd 2003. Harper also called then-Defence Minister John McCallum an "idiot."

If you've read any of the official propagandas, you've come over the border and entered a bilingual country. In this particular city, Montreal, you may well get that impression. But this city is extremely atypical of this country... So it's basically an English-speaking country, just as English-speaking as, I would guess, the northern part of the United States.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

It will come as no surprise to anybody to know that I support the traditional definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, as expressed in our traditional common law.

- Stephen Harper, Hansard, Address in the House of Commons on Bill C-38, February 16, 2005.

In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

A culture of defeat...

- Stephen Harper, describing the Atlantic provinces, May 2001.

[Y]our country [the USA], and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world.

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

What is the point of the Green Party anyway?

The NDP and Liberals have prioritised green issues within their own policy platforms already, so I fail to see what a Green Party brings to a national election, aside from syphoning off votes from the NDP and Liberals.

What is it that these twisted freaks want? A Harper majority? The mind boggles. The NDP might suck in certain ways, but I think they do a good job of representing environmental concerns.

Rather that ranting on incoherently, I will quote from a posting by Dipper Chick, titled "Elizabeth May is no martyr":

Worse than just a single-issue party, the Green Party is nothing more than a brand name. Kind of like Nike. You want to believe that if you buy brand name running shoes that you will be more fit and look cooler, and that some how they are better than other shoes. But rip off the swoosh and you have an inferior product made by a company with questionable ethics. Branding the Green Party as 'fresh' and 'new' while it is identified, through its name, as an advocate for one of the most topical issues of our time is a marketing ploy. The Liberals have been using their brand name to trick progressive Canadians out of their votes for decades. This tactic is neither 'fresh' nor 'new.'
[snip]
David Suzuki was quoted today saying:

“I can't wait until there is no Green Party,” Dr. Suzuki was quoted as telling the Toronto Star.

“As long as there's a Green party, the implication is that the Greens somehow have a stranglehold on this issue; they're the ones that worry about the environment so the other parties can worry about other things. I don't think it's a ghetto subject.”

If the Green Party should be allowed into the Leadership Debates because an independent MP joined the Greens, I guess we should all be thankful he didn't decide to join the Christian Heritage Party, the Communist Party of Canada (CPC!), or the Work Less Party.

Although, upon reflection, any of these would be more interesting than the Green Party in a debate.

Plus, are we going to be treated to the spectacle of Elizabeth May insisting on being included in french language debates? Ed Broadbent's french was bad enough, so I guess Elizabeth's attempts would at least provide some entertainment to our frenchie brothers and sisters.

Slagging David Beckham

In the past, I have slagged David Beckham. I called him a 'useless tit', and worse, maybe. Since that horrible experience that was the World Cup 2006, however, I couldn't help but notice repeated quotes in the press from non-suckups that David Beckham is, in fact, one of the nicest people you could ever engage in conversation.

I noted these comments, but never really thought about it until last night's England vs. Croatia game.

Beckham didn't come on until late, and when he did he replaced Theo Walcott.

Theo Walcott had scored 3 goals in the 4-1 eventual win over Croatia. A young hat-trick wizard had put England on top for the first time since I gained high-speed internet!

Take a good look at that photo of him congratulating Walcott as Walcott exits the pitch. Real joy in Walcott's achievement.

It seems David Beckham is a guy with some class, not the preening, poncing prat that I had imagined him.

There was an article about this in the Guardian last night entitled Beckham bows to the wonder of Walcott.

Afterthought: Still, one must take into consideration his sarong phase...

Polar Bear 0, Husky 1

Here is photographic evidence of a polar bear, supposed the most implacable land-based carnivore in existence, playing with a tethered Husky.

Is it photoshopped? Because I can't accept that the behaviour of the bear is possible. Unless this particular bear was raised in the company of dogs, then released into the wild when he or she got too unruly?

Accepted wisdom on "the street", at least around here, is that bears *hate* dogs and that walking in the bush with a bunch of yapping pooches will provoke, rather than disperse, any bears around.

I guess I will have to wait for the Globe and Mail (or the City of Toronto) to publish an article instructing me how to behave when bears go bad.

From the text at the bottom of the posting:

The photographer was sure that he was going to see the end of his huskies when the polar bear materialized out of the blue, as it were: But something else happened. The Polar Bear returned every night that week to play with the dogs...

Davidoff: Adventure®

Whilst passing through the Sears fragrance department this morning, I couldn't help but notice that the spokesmodel for the latest, heavily advertised new fragrance (Davidoff: Adventure®) looked familiar.

It took me a few seconds to identify this latest manifestation of the decline and fall of western civilisation: it was Ewan MacGregor, the actor who burst into the public eye with his preformance as a junkie in the indie favourite Trainspotting, then immediately commenced his street-cred downward spiral by acting in no less than 3 Star Wars movies.

In the advert he is staring searchingly into the lens, half-reclining on a desolate hillside somewhere, perhaps Afghanistan.

What is with the scarf, though? That doesn't look adventurous. In fact, it doesn't look practical at all!

Ewan's opening monologue from Trainspotting:

Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing ga me shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.

But who would want to do a thing like that?

A quote off Davidoff's website of Ewan describing Adventure®:

I think it is important to go out and discover what an extraordinary world we have, and the people who live in it, and to broaden our minds instead of to narrow them… The thing about a real journey is that you have to lose control of it. You can't control an adventure. You have to give yourself in to accepting whatever experience is round the corner. And you never have any idea what that might be.

My guess is that someone at Davidoff saw one or more episodes of Ewan's crappy around-the-world-by-motorcycle series, and thought Ewan would make a perfect spokesmodel for a fragrance called Adventure™. (The presence of a motorcycle in the background is a dead give-away.)

I understand Davidoff's reasoning for hiring Ewan. What I don't understand is what Ewan was thinking when he agreed to the contract.

Still EM also appeared in that piece of shit the Pillow Book, so maybe he makes poor decisions. And again, we must come back to the Star Wars films...

In retrospect, perhaps Ewan sucks as an actor, Trainspotting aside, and he has realized this and gone the Mariah Carey merchandising route...

I have accepted the challenge of the Omnivore's 100

I am not even sure what the point of this is supposed to be. Mostly I posted this because things have been *very* slow so far here at my new, unionised job.

The rules for the Omnivore's 100 are

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating

So here I go!

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea (sounds like something one might drink to induce vomiting)
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare (the current Listeria scare has turned me off the possibility of ever trying this)
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp (makes me think of a bony, scaley bottom-feeder)
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich (I believe this means "peanut butter and jam")
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes (I don't think there are such things in Canada)
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Cheese fondue
8. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (is this a joke? One of the hottest peppers in existence, average 50 times hotter than a jalapeno)
27. Dulce de leche (Diabetes warning!)
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (love clam chowder, hate sourdough)
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea (clotted cream is illegal in Canada)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (unless I was trapped in a Road Warrior-type future, in which case I would eat *anything* on this list)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (takes the fear of choking on a bone to the next level)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (inching closer to type 2 Diabetes)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin ("industrial mineral used primarily as an inert filler"?)
64. Currywurst (not sure if this exists in North America)
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini (standard menu item at the Stratford Chefs' School)
73. Louche absinthe (the night after purchasing a bottle of this, I dumped the remainder of the bottle down the drain. Not a good tipple for someone with an Oral Fixation.)
75. Roadkill (aren't most wildlife disease-ridden?)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong (I remember Alex P. Keaton making fun of this in Family Ties)
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant (Does Madeline's count?)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers (if we count zucchini flowers)
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

I had forgotten how much the Olympics suck!

But now, it is all coming back to me.

Even though I don't watch TV any more (instead I libernate it from the intertubes), I am still confounded by impossible-to-avoid Olympic coverage in newspapers, elevator TV, radio bits, etc.

As Adam Radwanski points out in his Globe & Mail blog

I'll admit to being profoundly irritated by the Olympics - all Olympics - to begin with. It's never been clear to me why our sense of national worth should be affected one way or another by our performance in a bunch of sports that we wouldn't remotely care about if they hadn't all been lumped together in one big event. But if you want to make the usual comparison to Australia, as Campbell also did, then fair enough. I find the Aussies' Olympic fixation weird and tedious, but theirs is a comparable democracy that promotes athletics in a reasonably healthy way.

I always thought that the best thing about Canada was that we, collectively, feel no need to wave the flag. Typically, it is Christine 'Man Meat' Blatchford that is leading the Waving the Flag people in Peking.

Christine 'Crusty' Blatchford (as defunct mag Private Eye used to call her) definitely needs some calming down. I suspect she has been allowed to hang out in mens' dressing rooms again, and with the wealth of skin on display in the Olympic Village (unlike Base Kandahar) the possibility of someone taking a hit for the team is very small.

I must admit one Olympic-related vice. The last time I watched random Olympic coverage (and this was only sporadic since CTV had the cunning idea of showing the first season of The Sopranos at 22h00 every night against the CBC coverage) I found myself fascinated by the Womens' Distance Walking competition.

It was a relevation how sexy watching Womens' Distance Walking was, when viewed from the right perspective. Ie. from a vehicle 10m behind the main group.

Beach Volleyball has nothing compared to Ladies' Distance Walking, IMHO.

An apt description of Christiano Ronaldo?

From Guardian article titled "Rooney yet to ignite as United pay for lack of Ronaldo's derring-do":

(My bolding)

Cristiano Ronaldo could be located at Old Trafford yesterday sitting apart from the other injured players, with his baseball cap the wrong way around and unaware or unconcerned that one of the fanzines being sold on Sir Matt Busby Way described him as a "preening, perma-tanned, posturing, petulant prick".

Kudos to the anonymous fanzine writer, and to Daniel Taylor for bringing this description to my attention. I always enjoy alliteration, but especially so when it is applied in such a pithy fashion.

Give me one good reason why Russia SHOULDN'T conquer Georgia

I mean seriously, one good reason. My reasoning:

There is no way in hell any NATO countries, including the Great Satan, will physically intervene in the conflict by sending troops.
They won't even provide air support! (Airlifted "Humanitarian Aid", is a possibility, however.)

Why? Because even though Russia has been portrayed as a basket-case for the last decade and a half, they still have the nuclear and conventional forces to deter any potential adversaries (ie. the Great Satan and/or its NATO stooges). For all practical purposes, it is like dealing with the old USSR.

Who helped out Afghanistan when the USSR invaded in 1980? As Mel Lastman always used to say, NOOOBOOOODY!

Which segues nicely into the next possibility: sanctions, UN-related or otherwise.

Not going to happen. Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and they can veto anything they don't like, just like the Great Satan did when it invaded Iraq.

Any other sanctions (ie. Group of 7 or whatever) will never be enacted because Russia directly controls 25% of Europe's energy purchases.

So no intervention, no effective sanctions. Why shouldn't Russia go all the way and install a pro-Russia regime, especially when doing so would allow control over the pipelines that were routed through Georgia specifically to avoid Russian control?

Someone has got their Game On, and it is definitely not the Great Satan.

Festival of India this weekend

According to a pamphlet handed to me yesterday on Dundas Square by a lean 30-something hippie with a Vishnu tilaka and a german accent, there is going to be a big celebration tomorrow called Festival of India. The festivities will include a parade from Yonge and Bloor down to Queen's Quay followed by a party on Toronto Island (assuming Rudra holds off from raining on their parade).

While I am I great fan of Hindu festivals, I will probably give this one a miss because I get a sense that, although it isn't explicitly laid out on the feedyoursoul.to website, the parade is really being run by a bunch of euro-trash (but in a good way) Krishna Consciousness people (Hari Krishnas), not bona fide Hindus from South Asia.

Not that I have any problem with westerners enthusiastically adopting eastern religions, it is that I fear the experience would seem a bit contrived, relatively speaking.

In case of nuclear disaster

Go inside and turn on your radio or television
Listen to media reports for instructions from the Province on what to do
Follow the directions provided by the Province

Instructions from the City of Toronto's "'Red Page' – Nuclear Emergency Information". (PDF 1.67 MB)

An inquiring mind might wonder what to do if, for instance, there is no electricity to power tv and/or radio.

Or if there was a pandemic resulting in a never ending onslaught of flesh-crazed 'zombies' (this scenario is imagined in 28 Days Later).

According to the Zombie Survival Guide, generated noise like tvs and radios are sure to attract wandering zombies.

I am not sure whether I would rely on the admonishments of the Red Page, regardless of whether the threat is a nuclear accident or an 'infestation'.

Go inside and wait for news? Even if you still have electricity, if you live within 10 kms of the 2 'ground zeroes' portrayed in the graphic above you are probably dead already, even if you don't know it yet.

The advice to keep indoors is probably a governmental attempt to avoid exposing people outside the Death Zone to fleeing Ajaxers and Pickerlings, slowly boiling to death from the inside as they run shrieking and cursing along Kingston Rd. towards downtown.