Lorla’s Blog

National Flowers of Canada

The Leaf of Maple is an official symbol of Canada. The maple leaf was first used as a Canadian symbol in early 18th century and till now is depicted on its current and previous flags, the penny, and on the coat of arms.

Each provinces however have their own floral emblems (I don’t have knowledge about floral emblem of Nunavut). Floral emblems of Canadian provinces and territories are given below:

Alberta - Wild Rose

Wild rose was chosen the provincial flower of Alberta in 1930.

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What is your national flower - 3 - Canada

The Bahamas

The national flower of The Bahamas is the Yellow Elder (Tecoma stans)
The flowers have an odd but pleasing fragrance and also provide nectar for bees. The Indians made bows from its wood, and in Mexico a beer was prepared from its roots; it has also been used for a variety of medicines. Also known as: Yellow Bells, Hardy Yellow Trumpet, Trumpet-flower, Yellow Elder.

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What is your National Flower - 2

I am going to post a series of posts about National flowers (floral emblem) of different countries starting with countries with first letter A.

The National Flower of Albania

The floral emblem of Albania is the red and black poppy. The poppy can be found everywhere in this Mediterranean country, and are recognized for their beauty, medicinal value, and seeds.

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What is your National Flower -Albania, Argentina, Australia, and Austria

A government sponsored list of 101 things that most define Canada missed the most Canadian thing — aboriginals.

The list was commissioned by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Dominion Institute.

Number one in the list is the maple leaf followed by Vimy Ridge and Queen Elizabeth. The Canadian Flag made it to #4.

Over 2,000 Canadians as well as educators and Order of Canada recipients from coast to coast participated. The result is a ranked list of 101 people, places, symbols, events and innovations that respondents believe define our country.

Well, looks like none of the 2000 participants realized that the aboriginal Canadians were important enough to be included in the list. They have set up a site to to ask people “What is missing?” in which general public can cast a vote for #102. That was how aboriginal Canadians were voted 102. People also want Canada “Eh?” in the list. More recommendation are listed here.

After almost 50 years at Cambridge University the leading physicist Stephen Hawking, 66, is considering leaving Britain and move to Canada. He attacked the British government for carrying out “disastrous” cuts in science funding totalling $160 million.

Last month, Hawking said the funding cuts would “cause enormous damage both to British science and to our international reputation.” He is now said to be contemplating an offer to join a fellow academic who is leaving Cambridge this autumn to lead a well-funded Canadian science institute. Neil Turok, an authority on mathematical physics, said “the door is open” for Hawking to join him permanently at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ont., which has received $600 million in funding.

Turok decided to leave Cambridge after failing to persuade university authorities, research councils and sponsors to spend $40 million expanding the university’s Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, which he heads, into a Hawking Institute.

That was the rumor; but Hawking’s office said that Hawking had no plans to leave Britain permanently.

A spokesman was quoted as saying that hawking “is not joining the brain drain”.

UPDATE:

The University of Cambridge has poured cold water on reports its most famous physicist might be coming to Canada to work, saying Wednesday Stephen Hawking “has no plans” to leave. (CBC)

It made news when Google ‘forgot’ to change its logo to give a wink to Canucks on the Canada Day. Although the internet giant has a history of recognizing the Canada Day in the past (except for 2003) July 1st of 2008 brought a bit of hollowness for the Canadians when the same old primary-coloured letters appeared on the Google website. Here is the history and corresponding logos:

• 2007 - the L in Google was transformed into an image of the Peace Tower, complete with fireworks.
• 2006 - there was a Canadian flag
• 2005, a simple Maple Leaf did duty as the first O (although Google’s list of holiday logos for that year lists Canada Day as July 2.)
• 2004, the second G was a loon and its reflection with a Canadian flag hanging off the L.
• 2003, forgot the Canadians
• 2002, a moose lurked behind the word Google with a Canadian flag again suspended from the L.
• 2001, the first year the company marked the holiday, there was a beaver, a Canadian flag and even text saying: “Happy Canada Day.”

Do you really care if Google forgets or recognizes the Canada Day!

When Rogers revealed specifics for the services plans for the upcoming iPhone 3G this Friday many Canadians were not happy.

But why?

Rogers has set a mandatory three-year contract. O2 offers an 18-month contract and throws in the iPhone for free and AT&T has a two-year contract.

In the U.S., AT&T offers 450 minutes of voice, unlimited data and 200 SMS messages. But Rogers thinks Canadian don’t even deserve that.

• $60: 150 minutes of calls, with unlimited evenings and weekends; 400 MB of data; 75 sent SMS messages, with unlimited incoming text messages and visual voicemail messages.
• $75: 300 minutes of calls, 750 MB data and 100 sent SMS messages.
• $100: 600 minutes of calls with 1 GB of data and 200 sent SMS messages.
• $115: 800 minutes of calls, 2 GB of data and 300 sent SMS messages.

There is nothing like “unlimited data” to Canadians for whatever amount they pay!

People are really angry and James Hallen has started a petition at RuinediPhone.com. James is planning to send the online petition to Rogers on July 11th, the day the iPhone 3G is available, and also to send a letter to Steve Jobs. The letter was drafted when there were nearly 6,000 petitions which is a fraction of the current 15,664 number at the time of writing this post.

This is not a scientific achievement as was in this case when a grandmother gave birth to her own grandchild.

An Australian grandmother has given birth to naturally conceived triplets. Janelle Perry, a week short of turning 47 years, gave brith to three boys by caesarian section at Mater Mothers’ Hospital in the east coast city of Brisbane on 19th June 2008.

Newcomers Cooper, Kyle and Jordan join the five more brothers and sisters including four children in their 20s from an earlier marriage and a four-year-old daughter, Rebecca, with her husband Robert.

“Rebecca kept telling me in November, ‘You’ve got three babies in your tummy, Mummy — one for me, one for Dad and one for you’,” Perry said.

“I thought, ‘No way’ and told her, ‘There’s no babies in there’. Then, in December, I found out I was pregnant.”

David Molloy from the Queensland Fertility group said the chance of having identical triplets at the age of 46 was “probably the same as winning Gold Lotto.” (Yahoo news)

Gone are the days when screensavers save your monitors when old CRTs are replaced by flat panel screens. In an effort to save environment an Australian company, Telstra, has decided to remove all animated logo screesavers from the company laptops and computers and replaced with a black, power-saving screensaver.

Well, it sure is another simple method to make your PC greener if you haven’t already done so.

People have crazy ideas to make records!!

You might have heard of records of movie making, movie in theater, or movie sales but movie-viewing record is something new to me.

A German lady continuously watched movies for 117 hours 4 minutes for a record. But this guy from India, Ashish Sharma, watched various movies for 120 hours to make a new record.

Sharma started the marathon movie-watching on June 11 and finished 48 movies in almost five days.