The Globe and Mail has a story about a 10th planet being added to the solar system's group of planets.

It's icy, rocky and bigger than Pluto. And according to scientists who found it orbiting the sun, it's the newest planet on our solar system's block.

The planet — the farthest-known object in the solar system — is currently 9 billion miles away from the sun, or about three times Pluto's current distance from the sun.

“This is the first object to be confirmed to be larger than Pluto in the outer solar system,” Michael Brown, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology, said Friday in a telephone briefing announcing the discovery.

Mr. Brown labelled the object as a 10th planet, but there are scientists who dispute the classification of Pluto as such.

My favourite part of this story is the repeated comments about how Pluto may not be a planet. It has been too long, people. Pluto is a planet whether you like it or not!

I had forgotten.

My parents hadn't been born yet when the bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, even I know, we should not forget this moment in our history.

I found this web site that has a model of Hiroshima "before and after".

• It's been 60 years, and people are forgetting
• Hiroshima Survivors Speak
• On the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• They Survived
• Actors evoke Hiroshima, Nagasaki bombings
• The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I have recently fallen in love with CBC Radio 3's podcast! It is just SOOO good!

They have some really cool music, some sparse (at least, thus far) commentary, and it just plain rocks. I like how they promote new and emerging artists...

So, what will ShaneWorld.ca podcast become? A podcast to promote up and coming writers? Hmmmm.

This morning on the CBC Arts section and there is this great article about John Cusack entitled the Cult of Cusack: Why to women love this man?.

John Cusack is no Brad Pitt. He’s got an oval head, a thorny nose, a maw like a coin slot and eyes that seem to disappear when he squints. His face is one of a kind, to be sure, but he’s nobody’s idea of a hunk.

And yet throughout the trite new romantic comedy Must Love Dogs, females repeatedly — almost mechanically — tout his character’s cuteness, which only proves the extent to which the Cult of Cusack informs our culture. Even screenwriters have bought into it.

The truth is Brad Pitt wishes he were John Cusack. For women of a certain age — maybe between 25 and 45 — Cusack is the ideal male. It’s not the image of perfection perpetuated in hip-hop videos or, say, a Brad Pitt movie, but rather a figure a teen girl might rhapsodize about in her diary.

To me the answer is simple. John Cusack is an "everyman". Everyone loves him.

The Globe and Mail is the best paper in the world. They cover all the important national and world news but are not afraid to cover strange and funny things.

There have been salvage operations to recover gold, silver coins and other forms of sunken treasure. But in a first, divers plunged to the depths of Quebec's Saguenay River yesterday to recover 2,000 pounds of sunken cheddar.

This was no random shipwreck's cargo.

The cheese was deliberately dropped to the bottom by an entrepreneurial cheese-maker named Luc Boivin.

I would try the cheese. Would you?

Starvation is killing thousands in Africa and no one seems to care. According to the CBC, no one seemed to notice the calls for aid last year. Locust infestation and dry weather killed off livestock and crops - sending already cash strapped nations into further chaos. Throw in an already chaotic situation with civil wars and the situation in Darfur, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

In comparison, the tsunami in Asia last December had billions in aid thrown at the aftermath and quickly. One thing I found interesting when I started reading about the horrible things going on in Africa in the last year, there were very few reports (if any) in regards to missing or hurt travelers from abroad.

So, what the heck went wrong?

Have we been so programmed to follow the "if it bleeds it leads" mentality that we have learned to not care about something like what has happened in Africa?

I certainly hope we all haven't. But, who am I? I live here too and I didn't see it coming either. Many did.

If you haven't heard already, James Montgomery Doohan has passed away.

James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series and motion pictures who responded to the apocryphal command "Beam me up, Scotty," died early Wednesday. He was 85.

Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) at his Redmond, Washington, home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, he said.

My grandmother passed away from problems due to Alzheimer's. My heart goes out to his family. Like Bones, Scotty will be remembered.

More here on CBC.ca

UPDATE: Doohan will receive a space memorial.