Things I learned this week 26 Feb 2012

• Obama can sing.
• Federal scientists in Canada are not allowed to speak to reporters without the 'consent' of media relations officers in the Conservative government.
• Bridesmaids is a funny movie.
• Vic Toews doesn't even understand what's in his own bill (C-30).
• We can now watch replays of supernovas that happened centuries ago via their reflections in interstellar dust clouds.
• Freddie Mercury rushed to record the vocals to new songs right up until the day he died.
• If you format a couple dozen complete rows in Excel with fill colour (all the way to the right-most column), Excel will be so bogged down, it will refuse to do a lot of things - insert new rows among them.
• Diane Finley in conversation with the press admitted that while Canada could likely afford to sustain Old Age Security, said.... "there are other things we would like to spend our money on". (I think she meant 'our' money)
• The Tragically Hip got a street named after them in Kingston Ontario (where they're from).
• According to the Conservatives, when you release facts about a person from public documents, it's sleazy politics. But when you give false information to citizens so that they miss their chance to vote, that's just campaigning.
• Historically (500 years ago), people used to sleep, not 8 hours in a row, but in two 4 hour chunks, separated by a couple of hours of being awake.
• France has abolished the term Mademoiselle from all official documents because it suggests a woman is 'available'.