You know: Go the extra mile, work the extra hours, finish that impossible project, and reap the rewards.

But you shouldn't be given incentives to do the most basic functions of your job. For that, you already get a paycheck. And if you perform those functions day after day, week after week, year after year, you get to keep your paycheck and not get fired. Not getting fired is a great incentive.

Doctors, nurses and other health-care workers at Canada's largest research hospital will soon learn that cleanliness is not only next to godliness - it also brings them that much closer to a Timbit.

In an effort to persuade hospital workers to properly clean their hands, a roaming posse of infection control staff at University Health Network will give a $2 Tim Hortons gift certificate to some of those caught cleaning their hands at its Princess Margaret, Toronto General and Toronto Western hospitals.

In the real world, if you do not perform the basic functions of your job, you lose it. A "disincentive", I believe it's called. Maybe that's what we need, instead.

Labels: Apocalypso, Health, Oddities

Sigh. Oh well, it could have been worse. It could have been Ahmedinejad.

Labels: Apocalypso, Environment, Goracle, Lies Damn Lies

... had they run this poll in New Orleans.

An asteroid is on a collision course with the earth and you have one hour left to live. What would you do in your last 60 minutes?

Not surprisingly, the majority of Britons questioned in a survey -- 54 percent -- said they would like to spend it either with or on the phone to their loved ones.

But the survey revealed a strong hedonistic streak -- 13 percent would sit back, accept the inevitable and reach for a glass of champagne.

Sex appealed to only nine percent while just three percent would turn to prayer.

Two percent intriguingly said they would reach for some fatty food while another two percent decided, with just an hour's life to go, that it was time to start looting.

Labels: Apocalypso, United Kingdom

Obviously this explains the prevalence of gay marriage, metrosexuals, and Colin & Justin.

Back in the summer of 2001, a team of Canadian and U.S. researchers spiked a lake in Northwestern Ontario with traces of synthetic estrogen used in human birth control pills. They then repeated the unusual treatment for the next two years and sat back and watched what happened to minnows living in the lake.

The results were nothing short of frightening. Exposing fish to tiny doses of the active ingredient in the pill, amounts little more than a whiff of estrogen, started turning male fish into females. Instead of sperm, they started developing eggs. Instead of looking like males, they became indistinguishable from females. Within a year of exposure, the minnow population began to crash. Within a few years, the fish, which at one time teemed in the lake, had practically vanished.

Ok, but what do these fish have to do with Colin & Justin, you ask? Fair question. It seems that the test samples of estrogen were meant to mimic the type and quantity of estrogen that makes it through waste water purification. Which means I - on the Pill - take a piss. It gets cleansed and purified, and your son drinks it. Next thing you know he's talking about his feelings, writing poetry, and making moon-eyes at the boy next door.

It's not known what effect, if any, human exposure to estrogen in drinking water might have, although Dr. Kidd said it is an area that should be a research priority. Reproductive problems in human males, such as declining sperm counts and testicular cancer, have been rising in recent decades, and the causes are not known.

"When we see these kinds of responses in fish, it raises a red flag for what these compounds are doing to humans," she said.

Dear God, what have we done? We take the Pill to avoid having children, and it emasculates our men to virtually ensure that we'll never have children. Obviously I can't cast the first stone here, but I definitely think it's worth further study.

Labels: Apocalypso, Science, Sex

It must be one of the seven signs of the apocalypse.

A group of strangers came together on a road in north Pickering making extraordinary efforts to save the driver of a pickup truck.

The truck left the roadway and overturned Wednesday night. A small farm pond on Brock Road was the scene of the accident at about 8 p.m.

Police say the truck's driver had been drinking and lost control. The vehicle ended up in the pond, prompting a group of passersby to rush into the cold water.

About 30 people helped flip the pickup onto its side. But the driver could not be found.

So the group, led by two off-duty firefighters, organized a rapid search for the missing man.

"We organized ... an arm-to-arm search," Greg Beatty, a firefighter at the Pickering nuclear power plant, told CTV's Jim Junkin Thursday morning.

The group joined hands and walked forward into the water, searching for the missing driver.

The driver, alas, did not make it. But lets hope the spirit of humanity lasts a while in this self-centered part of the country.

Labels: Apocalypso, Canadiana

A 2 1/2 -year-old boy was severely burned at the playground of a grade school in Middle River after going down a slide doused in sulfuric acid and landing in a pool of the corrosive liquid.

Something makes me think it was merely a teenage prank, because the liquid was stolen from a supply closet at the school. But even if it was other kids, how have we come from ding-dong-ditch to this? And what comes next?

Labels: Apocalypso