While Ontario suffers a heat wave for three days in a row, Calgary is expecting a snow storm with 10 to 20 cms!

A new sensation in Egyptian songs is Nader Abou El Leef.

His real name is Nader Anwar Gaber, and he is from Alexandria.

The Arabic Wikipedia has a biography of him and the Egyptian dialect wikipedia has another.

Right after the provocative animated TV show South Park depicted prophet Muhammad in a bear suit, someone started a Facebook group called Everybody Draw Muhammad Day. This echoed far and wide, with Pakistan's court ordering the blocking of Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and other web sites.

There are lots of hoaxes floating around on the internet. They are often not propagated by technically savvy people.

However, here is one hoax that comes as a message from Facebook. The sad part is that it was sent to me by a computer engineer.

It claims that Facebook is becoming slow and that the alleged reason is lots of inactive members. If you do not forward it to 15 others, your account will be deleted!

A typical chain letter in the social networking age ...

For the first time in 10 years, I saw today an adult male yellow warbler.

Because of the stunningly bright yellow color, I thought at first that it is an American Goldfinch. But moving closer, it was apparent this is different bird. A bit smaller, lacking the bold black marking of the goldfinch, and having prominent streaks on the breast. It was inside a bush, well hidden, and had it not flew from another tree into the nearby bush, I would not have noticed it.

Encouraging news for wildlife and nature enthusiasts.

Grey whales, once hunted to near extinction have appeared in two new places, far apart.

One was in downtown Vancouver, and the other is in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Hope this is a sign of less pollution and that conservation efforts are working.

This is sad ...

The USA military expenditure, according to 2005 figures is US$ 548,531,000,000 per year.

This is almost 6 times more than the second largest military spender (China).

A simple calculation shows that the US can cut their defense spending by half, and still be at 3 times more than China.

This could balance their budget over the years too, and perhaps cause economic growth as well, while keeping them as the best defended country in the world.

Warren Wershler-Henry, assistant professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, has conducted a study that concluded that intellectual property law does not serve the creators, and stifle cultural exchange. He also observes that companies like Sony, Apple and Amazon want to channel all content via their proprietary "hermetically sealed" platforms, and that this hurts the doctrine of first sale, when books are effectively licensed not sold.

My daughter Suhaila likes to draw and paint.

She wanted to get a tablet that she can draw with, without the awkwardness of using a mouse for a task that is better handled by a pen.

So, when Staples had a $50 off sale ($249.99) on the Wacom Intuos 4 (Small) tablet, there was finally a chance to get it at a lower cost.

Joining the heels of WIND Mobile, a new company, Mobilicity, will start operations in Spring 2010.