The Toronto Star
One way street
For the first time, Ontario can’t make up for the loss of its young people to thriving Alberta, Jen Gerson writes
Researchers move ever closer to mechanical versions of us
From the moment the robot walked on screen in Lost in Space one question has haunted the watchers of bad science-fiction television dramas: When do we get our robots, our mechanical soulless friends?
They’re getting closer.
Babies from the ice age
These temporary wombs are refreshed with liquid nitrogen twice a day, keeping sperm and pre-defined cells in a cold, quiet and indefinite stasis. Visitors here wear blue fabric booties and yellow lab coats to keep dust away from the embryos. The fine glass instruments used to poke and prod the ova to life are immaculate. Magnified more than 1,000 times under a microscope, the nucleii holding the genetic information that will determine what these cells have the potential to be, look like exploding stars.
Mourners remember angel
The mothers of Toronto sons killed and maimed by bullets paid their respects at the funeral of 11-year-old Ephraim Brown – the latest young victim.
Ephraim’s service yesterday was held in a church within sight of a telephone-pole memorial in the boy’s Jane St. and Sheppard Ave. W. neighbourhood, marked with candles and bouquets tied with police tape. It was there a week ago that Ephraim was shot through the neck in apparent gang crossfire. He died soon after in hospital.
Argument sparks fatal stabbing
Children and neighbours milled about the front of their apartment building yesterday morning, their annual barbecue temporarily postponed by the stabbing death of a 27-year-old man on the 17th floor.
‘Today, we’re all Hokies’
Prayers and pictures with condolences – the rituals of grief – exploded on the Internet like roadside memorials yesterday as news spread of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
Turning a buck on the weather
Once the domain of soothsayers, dowsers and almanacs, in modern times the weather has become the realm of a far more nebulous lot – commodity brokers.
The WiFi revolution hits a snag
Long lauded as the technology that would turn cities into techie meccas, WiFi continues to creep across metropolises.
Years after North American cities began to plan for the WiFi revolution, these ambitious projects remain slow in coming – and because the next generation of wireless technology is right around the corner, WiFi may soon be irrelevant anyway.
I use it to spy
I found him on Facebook.
He’s chubby now, sports a cubic zirconia in one ear and a thin beard trimmed tight around the jaw. For religious views, he writes: “SMOKE WEED EVERY DAY.” Favourite books: “hahahahahahahahahaha. Who has time to read?” He says he’s an exotic dancer at Chip & Dales where he works “as eye candy for money.”
Handwriting is irrelevant
They couldn’t remember how to write the letter “I.”
