73-year-old college basketball player

A 73-Year-Old Gives Basketball a Second Shot - NY Times

Retired newspaper editor, Ken Mink, goes back to college, and joins the Roane State Community College basketball team.  This is a heartwarming little story

How to Raise the World's IQ - Hint: It's in the salt

Raising the World’s I.Q. – Nicholas Kristof  NY Times

What’s the most effective solution when providing aid for international development?  It’s Salt Iodization. 

It sounds boring, but according to Nicholas Kristof, it’s amazingly effective at preventing mental and physiological deficiencies.  And who is the world leader in this cheap and effective development program?  It’s Canada.  Who knew?

Singing: The Key To A Long Life?

Singing: The Key To A Long Life – NPR by Brian Eno

Apparently musician, composer and producer Brian Eno is a big fan of group singing, and explains why in this instalment of “This I Believe”, a discussion of core values that guide people’s lives.

 

 

Best films of 2008 - Times Online

The 100 Best Movies of 2008 - Times Online

The critics from London's Times Online list their 5-star and 4-star film picks from their reviews of the past year. I do have some squabbles with the British critics' favourite movies (including movies that were released in 2006 and 2007), it's a great way for me to find new movies and DVDs to add to my Zip list, because Zip.ca has the DVDs you are looking you for. Search our library now.

Where's my cursor?

cursors

Which cursor is yours when you move the mouse?  Confusing, but funny.

The Netflix Conundrum

If You Liked This, You’re Sure to Love That – NY Times

This article, by the fantastic Clive Thompson, discusses the Netflix contest, where programmers try to improve the movie recommendation formula that Netflix uses. Netflix is the popular American DVD-by-mail subscription company (in Canada, I use zip.ca)

While the top researchers keep getting better at making movie suggestions, one of the things that stumps them is the “Napoleon Dynamite problem”.

5 Canadian Financial Blogs (from the National Post)

Yesterday's National Post had links to five Canadian financial blogs, described as the "Investosphere".  While it's easy enough to find American blogs and articles to help you with your personal finances, finding Canadian writing is much more complicated.  Here are the blogs they featured:

Canadian Capitalist

"A Canadian Personal Finance Weblog", which writes about a variety of personal finance topics and aggregates financial news for Canadians

Four Pillars

Focuses on investing, real estate, personal finance and saving money

The Dividend Guy

Describes itself as "one guy's journey to passive income through dividend investing"

ABCs of Investing

Teaches the basics of Canadian investing in concise, readable posts.

The Real Estate Renegades

Any discussion about investing by Canadians needs to include real estate.  This blog claims to be an investing guide to Canadian real estate in normal English.

How to Quickly iPhone-ize Your Website

HOW TO: Instantly iPhone-ize Your Website

Intersquash is a new company that will convert your existing website into an iPhone compatible website quickly, and for free.  Here is a demo Intersquash video from Vimeo.

From Mashable

Run Backups on any Wii Without a Modchip

Run Backups on any Wii Without a Modchip

I haven't tried this with my Nintendo Wii, but apparently it is possible to create and use backup game discs, without having to modify your Wii with a chip.

25 Free Digital Audio Editors

25 Free Digital Audio Editors You Should Know 

As someone that got a degree doing digital recording and composing electronic music, it's great to know that the range of free music production tools keeps expanding and improving.