news
Newsstand: April 19, 2011
Illustration by Sasha Plotnikova/Torontoist.
Sometimes it’s Tuesday, and sometimes it’s not. This time it is. In the news: trash-talking trash talks at City Hall; Trudeau to the rescue in the 905; Scarborough teacher teaching kids to lie better; and staff report shmaff report, Doug Ford just wants to play ball hockey.
Everyone at City Hall is talking trash after a staff report recommended contracting out city garbage collection in a big chunk of downtown. According to the report (and the Toronto Sun), privatizing trash collection will save the City about $8 million, and whiney councillors who refuse to give up council’s signing authority on the contracts will cost the City $3.3 million. And you could probably stand to make a little money of your own if you wager that Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) and Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East) will probably be amongst those objecting councillors.
Another buzz kill of a staff report recommends keeping the ban on road hockey, despite Doug Ford’s (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) charming boyhood reverie of frolicking on the Etobicoke streets of yore.
GTA Grits fans got a visit from that dreamiest of Liberal candidates, Justin Trudeau, on Monday. Trudeau is taking time off from campaigning in his Montreal riding to boost flailing Liberal candidates in the 905 and out on the west coast. Wee Trudeau was ferried to seven ridings in eight hours in a 10-year-old Toyota Camry, which is either a well-crafted ploy to make him seem like an average working guy (hey, just like one of us!) or a sign of how dire the Liberals’ situation is these days.
Small Toronto-based tech firm i4i was seeking vengeance at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. The firm went after computing powerhouse Microsoft for patent infringement in a case that has now gone all the way to America’s highest court, and could drastically alter the intellectual property law in that country. Basically, the Toronto nerds say the American nerds used some of their patented technology. Now lawyers for Microsoft (who are being cheered on by Apple, Cisco, and Google) are arguing i4i shouldn’t have been granted a patent at all and would really appreciate it if in the future the court would just undo patents at Microsoft’s behest. kthxbai.
And speaking of nerds, two grade eight students from Scarborough won a Scrabble tournament down in Florida with the help of made up words. Apparently that’s okay in Scrabble, as long as you lie convincingly. The boys are part of a Scrabble team at their school, and the faculty supervisor says the team is great for building vocabulary and math skills. And lying.