Happy New Years!

Happy New Year One + All!

The Best + Worst of 2012

CBC's Top 35 Canadian news images of 2012: CBC Photos

Canada Presses top news photos of the year with commentary: Canada Photos

Toronto Star top Canadian sports images from 2012: Canada Sports

Check out Postmedia for some offbeat but insightful Canadiana 2012 photos. Kinda cool: Postmedia

Time Lightbox top news photos of 2012, one for every day of the year! See: 366 Photos!

Here's their top 36 landscape photos, many of them very poignant: landscapes: Landscapes

Toronto Sun's Readers Choice Top Picks of anything and everything Toronto 2012: Toronto Star Readers Picks

Now Magazines Best and Worst of 2012 focuses on Toronto first, Ontario second and is much much more lefty trendy than any of the other local mainstream publications. Not the best  broadly analytical news source but quite often a very different, interesting read/ spin nonetheless. Entertainment picks in Toronto arts, music favourites plus clubs, galleries, dining, and shopping are also a lot more offbeat and unique. See: Nows 2012

Now Magazines Top Ontario Politicians in 2012: Andrea Horwath! Worst; McGuinty. More at: Top Politicos?

Now's Top Mayor Rob Ford fiascos in 2012: Ford Fiascos

Popmatter's top 10 to 100 of everything musical from 2012. There are many charts for lots of genres with special attention paid to Canadian Artists genres. I used to love these music lists as a kid. So let me put up a good link for you now. See Top Music

Quite frankly I buy a few hundred cds and vinyl records a year, minimum, but I recognize few on these lists.Here's a list that makes more sense to me as far as Canadiana goes. It's the Top 100 Canadian albums of all time, well from 1957 to 2007. Works for me: A chart where the top ten is still ruled by Neil Young [#1], the Guess Who [American Woman!!], The Band, Rush, the Tragically Hip and so on. See: All time Top 100 Canadian albums

Globe + Mails best book lists of 2012, fiction, international, poetry and graphic novels etc. See: Best Reads?

Rotten Tomatoes Top 100 Movies of 2012. If you haven't discovered this site all ready, check it out now. It avoids hype, doesn't care if a film is a blockbuster or not. Provides a wide range of critic and fan reviews both pro and con, and they are really hard markers. An average film get 60-68%, and let's face it a lot of movies are just average or even worse. Anyway this is what I use for a night out at the movies. See: Rotten Tomatoes Top 100 Movies

TV.Coms Top 100 TV shows for 2012. Pretty thorough, with a lot of HBO + Superchannel special series rather than the usual commercial fare. Includes a write up for each. "Walking Dead" only makes it to #2 and I don't see "Son's of Anarchy", "Boardwalk Empire" or "Park Avenue 666" in the top 10. Tch! Tch! See: Top 100 TV Shows

Zeitgeist 2012: Googles Top Searches for the year includes news events by country, 
people, videos, consumer electronics, athletes and images. These are usually all the most commercial stuff, but let's face it, that's what most people like best, of course. Here's a snapshot of pop culture in 2012 based upon the Google numbers. See: Zeitgeist 2012

New Years News:

Bill 115 midnight deadline passes uneventfully. OSSTF President Coran reacts to CUPE's 11th hour deal. Broten says wait til Thursday to see what happens next. Bill 115 deadline

ETFO job actions still pending. While you are here also vote on the Bill 115 poll. The elementary teachers are losing. Typical for theToronto Sun: ETFO?

 

 

Toronto as filmed by Commander Hadfield aboard the space station New Years Day. That's me waving in the bottom left.

 

Canada's Commander Chris Hatfield sends his new year greeting from the International Space Station. By the way, contrary to popular belief, he is not the first Canadian space commander that would've been Captain James Kirk, and he was commander of the Starship Enterprise, not some space station made of tin cans and solar panels. Nope! No way! Not Kirk. But a tip o' the hat to Chris all the same, just so long as we got that straight! ;-) See: Canada in Space

The War of 1812 didn't end in 1812! No sireee! This year we see a re-enaction of the tall ship battles near Brockville and up the St. Lawrence River between the US and Canada. A buncha Canucks will be meeting at the Red George Pub in Prescott on Sunday January 20th to discuss plans. Yanks are invited too [!?] ;-) Hope everyone doesn't get carried away and decided to re-enact the march on Washington and burn down the White House again. Could be tense! See: War of 1812 + 1

60 killed in a crowd stampede watching fireworks on the Ivory Coast when security forces make them leave. Wow! For shivers go to the: Ivory Coast

A call for the US to lift the 1961 embargo against Cuba. Hey dudes! The Cold War is over! Here's why it no longer makes sense: Cuba Embargo