January 21, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Extra, Extra: Romantic Sports Journalism, Dealing With Ice, and All the Planes That Fly

Every weekday’s end, we collect just about everything you ought to care about or ought not to miss.

Photo by Flickr user robbiesaurus.

If you could ask Eugenie Bouchard—the tennis player who, with a recent win in Australia, became the first Canadian in 30 years to make it to a Grand Slam semifinal—any question in the world, what would it be? Would it be something about training, or mental focus, or goals? Or would it instead be a more challenging, unapologetically hard-hitting question along the lines of: “If you could date anyone in the world of sport, of movies…who would you date?” If you went with the latter, you’re not alone.

Despite the fact that this past month felt like a hundred winters rolled into one, winter is not yet over—which means that we still have months and months of not much sun but a whole lot of cold and snow to go before spring. If you’re looking for new and perhaps unexpected ways to deal with some of the more slippery effects of this season, the Star has a list of “Five things you can use instead of road salt.” It also provides an answer to the age-old question: “Can I pour gasoline on my driveway and light it to de-ice the surface?” (Hint: the answer is an emphatic “no.”)
If you want to get a sense of just how busy the world is, and just how full our skies are, take a look at this interactive offering from the Guardian, which displays the locations of all commercial planes in the air at any given moment. You will likely be struck by the scale and scope of human industry, and also feel quite dizzy.