Small things 29 October

• 
  
  If a fast food server is inputting my order as I'm walking in the door because they know me that well, is it safe to say that it's a bit redundant for them to ask to see my proof of vaccine?
• One door closes, another one opens. Especially if your house is haunted. Happy Hallowe'en everyone!
• Nunavummiut is the name of those residents of the Canadian territory of Nunavut.
• If I was in charge, I think I would consider getting Army field hospitals set up in the middle of nowhere and all un-vaccinated patients with Covid would be sent there instead of a regular hospital. This could allow the backlog of surgeries to resume and Covid patients who are vaccinated to be treated in a regular hospital.
• Q. How was Wonder Woman able to get from her island to London in one day?  A. She's an Amazon, so she qualifies for Prime next day shipping...
• Why are prisoners given food and water, but not homeless people?
• If Dracula had a cat, it would always be in the coffin when Drac wanted to sleep.
• Two robots go to a drug dealer's mansion to help steal his wall art and blow up his yacht. #describeamoviebadly [Star Wars Ep VI Return of the Jedi]
• We should all start a new fad where in our resumes under 'interests', we put odd things like Russian food; whoopee cushions; Icelandic craft beer; pirates... 
• Magic dog: Labracadabrador

I ain't afraid of no goats

 

Banks simplified

I need a safe place to put my money.

Banks: Give it to us.

OK. You'll look after it?

Banks: Yes.

Can we earn interest on it?

Banks: A little.

Will you be earning interest on it?

Banks: Oh yeah. A lot.

I can use your services for free then.

Banks: No way. We charge a fee.

But you already make money from my money.

Banks: Yes, but it's not enough.

Why not?

Banks: Because we have to pay our shareholders.

What's that?

Banks: The people who invested in us. They earn the most from all the money.

OK. Can I be a shareholder?

Banks: No. Only rich people can afford our shares.

So, let me get this straight. I give you my money and the people who need the interest the least get the most of it.

Banks: Correct. Would you like to borrow some money? We have lots.

Can anyone get this money?

Banks: Uh no. You have to prove to us that you don't really need it.

Is that free?

Banks: Hell no. Borrowing some of the money is the most expensive thing. Unless....

Unless you're already rich.

Banks: Precisely.

A little Banksy art

 

You just have to elect the right people

This is a video that everyone who doubts the practicality of transforming a city centre (with cold winters) to one that favours pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation over cars should see.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Oslo, Norway.

Trick-or-treating

 

Things I learned lately 29 October

• 
  
  Hertz is buying 100,000 Tesla cars for their fleet and will also build 3,000 charging stations in the areas where the vehicles will rent out.
• General Motors plans to install 4,000 charging stations in Canada as part of a push by the carmaker to invest more heavily into electric vehicles. These chargers would not be limited to GM vehicles. The Detroit-based company says it plans to install 40,000 stations across the U.S. and Canada over the next year, part of a pledge to spend $750 million US to beef up its electric vehicle infrastructure by 2025. For comparison purposes, there are roughly 11,000 gas stations dotted across Canada, so 4,000 new electric charging stations would be a significant increase in the number of places where a driver could get a boost.
• Mat Night, what English Montrealers called the night before Halloween, was the Quebec equivalent of Mischief Night or Devil's Night in some parts of the US.
• Christopher Lloyd is 83 years old. He's been acting since 1975.
• In 1968, Kentucky Fried Chicken tried to expand by opening Kentucky Roast Beef & Kentucky Ham. It barely lasted 2 years. It was good, it was popular, but the margins and efficiency just weren't there.
• All figs are pollinated by fig wasps. Figs and fig wasps help each other with reproduction. To start the cycle, a female fig wasp enters a fig through the tiny hole in the bottom, which is so small that it tears her wings off on the way in. The female lays her eggs in the fig, and will die shortly after. When the larvae hatch, they feed on some delicious fig and wil eventually pupate into matured wasps. The male wasps (who are wingless) will mate with the females, and then start creating tunnels for the now fertile females to exit the fig. The winged females will collect some pollen from her home fig and carry it to a new fig to lay its own eggs. She will exit her home fig to find a new one for her larvae, and will pollinate this new fig when she enters. The males will remain in their home fig until they die. And the cycle goes on and on, pollinating fig after fig, and providing a safe and nutrient rich environment for generations of future fig wasps. So are we eating dead wasps? Yes, most edible figs have at least one dead female wasp inside. But you probably won't see any wasp bodies, as the fig releases an enzyme called ficin that break down the wasp bodies into protein.
• You can mail order edibles from Alberta Cannabis (the provincial government storefront online) and they'll deliver right to your door. No more wondering if a physical store has stock. 

Small things 22 October

• 
  
  The pessimistic doctor will see you by disappointment only.
• Rapper Kanye West has officially changed his name to Ye. [insert joke here] "Name?" "Ye." "What is your name?" "Ye." [to TSA co-worker] "Take this person to the secondary screening room, please." "Ye."
• What if it turns out that when people have to 'quarantine' at home for 2 weeks because they might have Covid, it's really just a ruse? They're probably contestants in a reality TV show and this is their cover.
• I will actually pull over and get out of the car to play with the neighbourhood cats when I see them on their front lawn.
• You know summer's over when you spy dad zipping his zip-off shorts back into pants.
• Candy corn. Like it or no? Discuss.
• Oh, you survived Covid so far? Well, it's flu season now too.
• I actually heard a user at work complain because they didn't get the login username they were hoping for. First world problems.
• A lot of conflict in the wild west could have been avoided if they had just made towns big enough for everyone.
• When you see someone with a Malibu t-shirt and think "They must really love alcohol", just remember, it's a place. Maybe they're not the one who really loves alcohol.
• Imagine Katie Porter as US President with Bernie Sanders as Vice.
• Sooner or later, kids will ask you why we say "hang up" the phone.
• 1980 and 2021 are as far apart as 1980 and 1939.
• I'm not saying he's an alcoholic, but his check liver light is on.

The Roman Empire - 117AD

 

Things I have difficulty understanding

(I don't judge these things, I just don't relate to them or understand them)

• Plastic surgery just for aesthetics
  
  
  
• Leaving a dog in a vehicle for a long time
• Big dogs in small homes
• Furries
• Restaurant hostesses
• Copyright
• Trucks that purposely make black smoke from the exhaust
• Giant SUVs for a couple
• Laughing at others' misfortune
• The continued existence of fax machines
• 32 ounce soft drink servings
• Cold pizza
• Hunting for sport
• $5 coffee
• Millions of dollars per year salary to play a sport
• Our obsession with perfect green grass, or grass period
• The celebration of selfish people
• Reality TV
• Why do washers and dryers have to match?
• Cutting the crusts off of sandwiches

When two monsters love each other...

 

For the mathematically challenged

Dollar stores are made for people who are trying to save money, but can't be bothered (or just can't period) to do the math on why their offerings are not a good deal.

For every $1 in sales, Dollar General and Dollar Tree earn an average gross profit of ~$0.30. That’s more than rivals like Target ($0.28) and Walmart ($0.24). These stores also buy bulk surplus and discontinued items, further increasing their overall profit margins. That $1 Old Spice deodorant might seem like a good deal. But at 0.8 oz., it's less than one-third the size of the standard 3 oz. stick, and on a per-unit basis, it's significantly more expensive than the larger sized offerings at other retailers.

Dollar stores are targeting demographics who either aren't educated enough to spot the scam or who don't make enough to have much choice in where and when they buy their household necessities.

You don't reach 34,000 stores across the US, with a new location opening roughly every 6 or so hours, by operating at a net loss. You do so by tricking your customers into believing they're getting great, cheap deals on name-brand items, when in fact they're simply paying more for less product.

Countries' true size

 

The size of countries shrunk to their true size relative to the equitorial countries.

Things I learned lately 22 October

• 
  
  More Americans live above Toronto's latitude than there are Canadians in total.
• Vikings were chopping wood in Newfoundland in the year 1021.
• Blood donors in Sweden get a text thanking them for their donation, then later another text thanking them that their blood just benefitted a patient.
• There's a McDonalds in Hamburg (of course), Germany that has a float-thru. It's just a regular McDonalds with s street facing side, but they will also bring your food dockside. It's called McBoat.
• The 3 Musketeers bar originally had three pieces in one package, flavoured chocolate, strawberry and vanilla; hence the name. During WWII, rising costs and wartime restrictions on sugar saw the phasing out of the vanilla and strawberry pieces to leave only the more popular chocolate. Costing five cents when it was introduced, it was marketed as one of the largest chocolate bars available, one that could be shared by friends.
• Trump recently told Republican supporters not to vote to protest the 'stolen election'. He's a crafty one.
• The reason French Classic cuisine dominates is because they were the first ones to get wide spread fancy restaurants. This happened because they overthrew their nobility and all these out of work private cooks decided to make their own restaurants. By the time everyone else caught up all the masters were French and then taught everyone else French classical cuisine.
• This East German guy, Gunter Schabowski, was set to announce new travel being allowed outside of East Germany in a few days from the announcement, and one had to wait days to get and have the special travel visa authorized. He was to announce on live government TV. He was rushed and tired, going to the press conference, and had not read the official government press release before coming on live TV. An aide just handed him the paper, which he read on camera. He read the first part of the release, which said "the government now authorizes travel freedom" on live TV. A reporter then asked "so when does this take effect?" He had not had the chance to read about the travel limits and visa requirements yet, so instead of taking several live minutes to read the whole thing, Schabowski just mumbled "as far as I know...right away." This led to thousands of East Germans massing at the Wall and border checkpoints. People got angrier and angrier as they were refused passage. Finally, to avoid a riot or getting hurt themselves, one guard let some people on through. This led to a chain reaction. And so bye-bye, Berlin Wall.
• Politicians fought against child labour laws. They claimed it would ruin the economy.

Who is kidding who?

I'm posting this out of my normal cycle, because we go to the polls to elect our next crop of municipal leaders Monday and Alberta has a couple of things for us to vote on while we're at it.

So, in case you didn't know, the government of Alberta believes that Alberta is getting a crappy deal from the equalization plan that currently exists. You know, the one where the have provinces help out the have-not provinces, managed by the federal government.

One thing Kenney keeps forgetting to mention is that the equalization system was reformed to its current state by the government of.... wait for it..... Stephen Harper! Who else was a member of that government? Jason Kenney. You think I'm kidding. Look it up.

But OK, I'm willing to ignore that fact for a moment. According to Kenney, "This is about whether Alberta should push hard to get a fair deal." His words. Sounds simple enough.

So the question on the ballot reads "Should Alberta push hard to get a fair deal on equalization?", right? Ummm, no. It reads, "Should Section 36(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 — Parliament and the Government of Canada’s commitment to the principle of making equalization payments — be removed from the Constitution?"

How does the average citizen even answer that question? For what it's worth, a Yes vote on that is supposed to mean 'Yes we should push hard' and a No vote is supposed to mean 'No, leave everything as it is.' There should have been a follow-up question. "Isn't that the most messed up referendum question in the history of Canadian referendums?" The Quebec referendum was clearer.

The table at right shows the figures of transfers to every province in 2019/2020 versus 2007/2008, with the percentage change in the last column. Who got the biggest increase? That's right, Alberta.

If you're going to vote on this, do yourself a favour and read up on how the system works first. The facts might surprise you. If you think Kenney's full of hot air, vote NO on Monday to that very unclear question.

Psst, got any food?

 

Small things 15 October

• 80's teachers: "You aren't always going to have a calculator in your pocket." 
  
  
  
• What if 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day' was just cereal lobby propaganda?
• I bought a pair of shoes from a drug dealer. I don't know what she laced them with, but I've been tripping all day.
• One minute you're young and wild, and then you're into air fryers.
• I hope parallel universe me is doing OK too.
• Hershey Kisses are just giant chocolate chips. Sorry.
• Heartbreaking: local cat has never been fed in entire life, says local cat. Sources close to cat claim cat may have actually been fed between 4-6 hours ago. These claims are unverified. Breaking news: cat was fed 20 minutes ago by last person to walk into kitchen. Cat claims fake mews. We now have exclusive footage shot by our news chopper that confirms there's literally still food in the cat's bowl right now.
• An air mattress is great when you want to sleep on the floor but not right away.
• Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.
• Q. What did the hash brownie say? A. I am so baked right now...
• Cashtration: The act of mortgaging a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

Standing on top of the Burj Khalifa

If you're afraid of heights, this Emirates video might make you a bit queasy.

And here's the making of the video video (very short, but still striking).

"18... 19... 20... Ready or not here I come!"

 

"It's not a sports movie! It's a love story!"

If you've got an hour to kill, you may enjoy this little YouTube nugget. Sophia and Sistine, celebrate their 50th podcast "Unwaxed" by interviewing their dad.

In case the names seem familiar, their dad is Sylvester Stallone. You think you know a person, then you hear them talk about their life in a candid way with their family.

It's an interesting story and an inspiration to anyone who feels like a misfit.

Forgot my sheet

 

Things I learned lately 15 October

• Americans are finally learning something that the Germans have known for a couple of decades now. You can grow many types of crops under and in between rows of solar panels.
  
  
  
• The London Eye was meant to be a temporary attraction when it was introduced in 2000. Not one to let the observation wheel competition go unanswered, Dubai now has one, the 'Eye in Dubai', that is almost double the size of the London Eye, at 250 metres tall.
• The Tesla model 3 now outsells the Mercedes C Class, BMW 3 series, Audi A4 and Q5.
• Germany's Sonos Motors is building an electric city car covered in solar panels that can add up to 245km of range per week just from the sun.
• The undeniable fact about the oil industry since 2005 is that it has never seen such extreme price volatility. What we can extrapolate from that fact is that it would be foolish to base an economy on this price.
• Shell has admitted that its oil production peaked in 2019.
• Calgary's ring road, once complete in 2024, will be 101 kilometres long.
• Greater Tokyo's rail system (which includes its two subway systems) moves 40 million people. Every day.

Small things 8 October

• I love when dogs aren't quite committed to a full bark yet, so they just put on their bark face and whisper "boof".
  
  
  
• The average Canadian swallows 7 Timbits in their sleep each year.
• There is no such thing as a 'quick question'.
• If you're going to offer to demo how to turn on someone's hotspot, make sure you prefix this with the word 'wifi'.
• If only the closed mind was teamed with a closed mouth.
• When does a joke become a dad joke? When the punchline is a parent.
• You thought Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist? Nah, he was a real person.
• Some guys be like, "There's no 'we' in fries...."

Come back to the office!

• Horrible toilet paper
• No pets to cuddle with
• No laundry machines
• Depression cubicle
• Gossip
• 2 monitors!
• You'll eat when we tell you to
• No naps
• Overwhelming scents
• Worst coffee in the world
• No pajamas allowed
• Your excuse to ignore Facebook
• Rush hour

Tales from the pandemic

OMG I am so keeping this photo and telling people years from now that this is how we had to grocery shop during the Covid pandemic.

We are multi-modal learners

It has been stated that learning styles are a myth. Their proof? There is simply no credible evidence to support them.

This video does a great job explaining why.

It's really too bad that there are still places that teach this concept as fact.

Anyone want to guess what this represents?

 

How did we get by without all these things?

This is a list of things that didn't exist on (Canadian) grocery store shelves in the 1970s:

• Chocolate topping for ice cream
• Yogurt
• Bagels (bakeries only)
• Granola bars
• 50 kinds of cereal
• Ground coffee
• East Indian anything
• Organic produce
• Flour for bread machines
• Cheese strings
• Shredded cheese (you shredded it yourself)
• Twinkies
• Any kind of soft candy
• Any kind of tortilla chip snack (like Doritos)
• Vitamins
• Non-alcoholic beer
• Tetra packs of anything
• Liquid orange juice (only frozen)
• Liquid lemonade (only frozen)
• 'Premium' ice cream
• Cream cheese in anything other than a solid block
• Almond milk or non-dairy anything
• Gluten-free anything
• Vegan anything
• Fancy hot dogs (we had wieners only)
• 1% or 2% milk (Homo 3.25% only)
• Liquid skim milk (you made it with water and powder)
• Pre-made chocolate milk (you added chocolate powder to white milk)
• Any kind of plastic food bag (we wrapped food in waxed paper, Saran wrap, or aluminum foil)

No smore

 

Things I learned lately 8 October

• 325,000 buildings / houses in Canada are at risk of flooding from heavy rainfall and another 625,000 are at risk from flooding due to rivers breaching their banks. Worse, their owners probably don't know that their properties are at risk of flooding.
• At CodeCon, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla, admitted that the current electrical grid isn't robust enough to handle the electrification of the entire vehicle fleet. He said that this is why he is trying to create more home based power generation via solar installations on all roofs.
• In Iceland, teen numbers for alcohol use dropped from 48% to 5%, and tobacco use from 23% to 3%. They did it through advertising bans, organizations to help kids solve their psychological problems, and most importantly, gave them access to free master classes on dance, music, art and sports as a means of stimulating the same brain biochemical processes that relieve stress as alcohol and nicotine.
• It would be rather pointless to build a pipeline to ship oil sands crude and bitumen to the east for refining because all eastern Canada refineries are built to process light and medium crude.
• When Persian oil was exploited by UK company BP, Persians (Iranians) didn't like that in 1951, they were only getting 17% of oil profits. So their democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq vowed to nationalize BP's interest. In 1953 the UK and US engineered a coup and effectively placed the Shah in charge, who towed the line.
• Harrison Ford was frozen in The Empire Strikes Back because, unlike Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, Ford had only signed on for two films. After the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lucas didn't think Ford would return for the 3rd Star Wars film, but left him frozen just in case.
• Ben and Jerry's has a physical graveyard that they retire old ice cream flavours to, and you can actually go visit it.
• Cigarette filters were designed with color-changing chemicals to give the illusion that they filter out toxins. In reality, the filters have little to no health benefits.

Small things 1 October

• 
  
  A judge took Britney Spear's father's conservatorship away, because it was..................... toxic.
• Do you know what Tommy Guns? I don't want my scalp massaged. I don't want my hair washed. I just want a damned haircut.
• Buy gift cards to your favourite restaurants. Then, if your spouse says "we can't afford to eat out", just suddenly remember that you have a gift card from Christmas or your birthday or something.
• The logical solution to plastic grocery bags is to make them all compostable. We literally buy bags just to compost food, but have nothing useful to do with grocery bags.
• Weekday coffees are medicinal. Sunday coffees are recreational.
• If you sprayed mosquitoes with mosquito repellent, they would never have sex and........ problem solved!
• He talks so much he should go to On and On Anon.
• When I'm retired I won't be hanging out at Tim Hortons. Nope. I'm hanging out at Starbucks with all the wealthy retirees.
• I would tell you a joke about noble gases but it wouldn’t get a reaction.
• There are two kinds of people in the world. 1) Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.

Dan Price strikes again

 

No fluoride thank you

For those of you that are thinking about voting for the re-introduction of fluoride in our drinking water, I would like you to consider a counter viewpoint before making your decision. What prompted this idea of re-fluoridation in the first place was the media's publicity of the result of one study, conducted by university students, over an extremely small sampling of people who had more cavities than in previous years, prior to fluoride being cut out of the water. Unfortunately, the study did not take into account that the people who had more cavities might've had a worse diet than those who had fewer cavities. The study didn’t take diet or income bracket or lifestyle into account, nor did they show what cavity rates were like over a longer period. 

Folks, we are not the only jurisdiction who have grappled with whether or not fluoride should be introduced into the water system. There are many jurisdictions who have never done it, and their cavity rates are lower than places where they do have fluoride in their water. I think this is an important point, because data doesn't lie, especially if you look at a lot of it. If it is actually true that not having fluoride in the water is bad for the dental health of the population, then all the places that don’t have it should have really high levels of cavities. And they do not. Only 4% of the water in Quebec is fluoridated. I wasn't able to get recent stats for BC, but Quebec's rate of cavities is on par with everywhere else. 

Health Canada warned against drawing conclusions one way or the other because the studies to date have not considered other fluoride intake factors, such as the most common intake - toothpaste. In Alberta, actual stats show that communities that do NOT add fluoride to their water showed similar decreases in tooth decay as those that did add fluoride. In one example of the inconsistencies of the data, Radway AB showed a 9% increase in decay with a natural well water fluoride amount of 0.12 ppm. Yet, Busby AB showed a 69% decrease in decay using well water with 0.19 ppm of fluoride. As a reference, communities that fluoridate their water tend to add 1.0 ppm artificially.

Also, those that are for re-introducing fluoride will cite that there is a lot of support amongst dentists. What they don’t tell you is that there are as many or more dentists who don’t support the re-introduction of fluoride, never mind the fact that there are quite a few people worried about what long-term effects drinking fluoride on a regular basis could have on your health, considering that too much fluoride is actually bad for you. Does your dentist let you swallow the fluoride rinse? No. Why is that?

But I am willing to put all of that aside, even if it can be shown that fluoride in the water is good for your dental health, and that if you don't, data indicates it's bad for the dental health of the general population, there is one problem that no one seems to take into consideration. Dosing. The problem with putting fluoride in the water is that there is no way to accurately dose everyone who's drinking that water. 

The reason I say this is because if you fill the tub with city drinking water, depending on where you live, your water may be blue and smell very strongly of chlorine. We asked the City to test our water a few years back after having constant strong chlorine odour and taste, and they admitted that the level of chlorine in our water was rather high and that nothing could be done about it. Let that last part sink in. This is because it is impossible to accurately dose chlorine levels in the water so that everybody gets the same amount. There are going to be some people that hardly get any, there are going to be people that are going to get way too much. I happen to be one of the latter. And my concern is that if it's not possible to limit how much chlorine gets in my drinking water, how are they going to possibly limit how much fluoride gets in my drinking water.

Here are countries with no fluoridation that have great dental health: Switzerland; Sweden; Norway; Netherlands; Latvia; Italy; Hungary; Greece; Germany; France; Finland; Estonia; Denmark; Croatia; Czech Republic; Belgium; Austria.

Back to more stats. Kentucky has the highest rate of tooth decay in the US. 98% of its residents get fluoridated water. Draw your own conclusions. 

I vote no fluoridation. Health Canada doesn't support it. There aren't any conclusive studies that suggest it helps. There may be no conclusive data that it harms, but if it doesn't help according to modern statistics, why bother forcefully medicating a population against their will?

If they put fluoride back in the water, I won't be drinking tap water anymore. Think about the people who can't afford to do that.

i before e, except....

 

How would you like daylight on your drive home from work in winter?

When Albertans go to the polls on 18 October to vote for their councillor and mayor, they will also be asked if they would like to stay with daylight savings time (summer time) all year round and not switch back to standard time.

There are folks who think this is going to mess up our circadian rhythm (body clock). There are also those who think that if we're going to stay with any time, it should be standard time (the time we adopt from November to March).

The thing I dislike about winter the most in Alberta is both going to work and coming home in the dark. If we were to stay with standard time, this would not change but the summer sunset would be an hour earlier, at 8:55pm instead of the current 9:55pm, with a corresponding sunrise at like 4:21am! Not a fan of this outcome. I would prefer the DST all year long. Yes, in winter, the sun wouldn't rise until 9:39am, but even on the shortest day, the sun wouldn't set until 5:40pm. Go to work in the dark, Go home in daylight. Much better.

Things to consider before you cast your vote either way. 

Clever advertising from Nokia

 

Things I learned lately 1 October

• For the first time since 1954, a Royal Canadian Navy ship, the HMCS Harry DeWolf, has completed the journey through the Northwest Passage.
  
  
  
• There's a new idea being explored to give decommissioned coal plants a new life as energy storage plants. Using carbon and aluminum miscibility gap alloy technology, shipping container sized heat batteries get their energy from surplus wind and solar and release it back into the same steam generating mechanisms that the coal plant used to use from burning coal. Imagine being able to not only repurpose coal plants as energy storage, but also re-employ plant workers and build the kind of necessary storage into the grid that makes green energy more attainable.
• Cooperative Truck Platooning System (CTPS) trials will be conducted on Alberta highways. It's when two or more trucks are driving nose to tail automatically and linked using connectivity technology and automated driving support systems.
• Babylon 5 is making a comeback as a reboot by the original creator.
• Steely Dan were almost named Big Nardo and The Eighth Grade.
• Jupiter's great red spot's winds have increased to over 400 mph (643 km/h). So, no flights to Jupiter until further notice.
• Due to various injuries, Phil Collins can't play drums anymore and walks with a cane. But Genesis are currently touring, with Phil's son Nicholas now playing the drums in the band, and Phil sings sitting in a chair at centre stage.
• The most powerful commercial radio station ever was WLW (700KHz AM) in Cincinnati, Ohio, which during certain times in the 1930s broadcasted 500kW radiated power. At night, it covered half the globe. Neighbours within the vicinity of the transmitter told stories about hearing the audio in their pots, pans, and mattresses.