SciFi.com has launched Youwillknowthetruth.com, a daily clue to the resolution of Battlestar Galactica. There’s a new tidbit up every day until the show begins its final run on Jan. 16th.

Kind of a cool promo tool, but the clues are rather low-cal. So far we have a quote by one of the Hybrids, an audio clip, a Lee Adama presidential press conference, and a baby with a Cylon glowy spine. Of course! It’s all so clear now!

Anyhoo, looking forward to getting to the bottom of all this. And I suspect this website will be of little help. Thanks to Herhighnessness for the twitter tip.

If you’re a human being, you couldn’t help but be horrified by the Mumbai terror attacks. But if you were a journalists, Web 2.0er or crusty media critic, you were probably also struck by the role social media played in the attack. Between blogs, Twitter, and Flickr, ordinary citizens close to action provided an avalanche of updates, photos, and commentary.

It didn’t take long for observers to rise up on their hind legs and declare that social media had somehow “come of age” or “come into its own” as a news-gathering force. Twitter was deemed to be particularly relevant, unleashing a storm of bite-sized info about the crisis. Leading the cheers were the Twitterers themselves, often pointing out how awesome they were during the attacks. The techno-optimists – or those who believe that technology will save us all – were having a field day.

As a blogger, I obviously find some value in social media. And the ability of blogs and Twitter to “group-source” breaking news is impressive. But at times like this, I always feel the need to inject a little reality into all the congratulatory high-fiving.

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Yar, it be time for some links, matey. And rum. Don’t forget the rum.

Toronto

• The economic crisis may put recycling plants out of business. Goodbye green bins.

Canada

• No more flavoured cigarillos for us. I guess that’s bad in the abstract.

World

• A Wal-Mart employee was trampled and killed by a crazed mob of Black Friday shoppers. Way to go, America.
• “An eye-for-an-eye” justice is alive and well in Iran. Literally.
• Fighting continues in Mumbai, the Bangkok airport is still closed, and Somali pirates just seized a chemical tanker. Terrific.
• Greenland is now independent from Denmark. The Danes seem oddly non-plussed to lose a giant, frozen hunk of…oh, right.
• The world’s first credit crunch. It’s 88BC, and someone’s foreclosing on your romanesque villa.
• The Australian army accidentally tear-gassed two schools.

Pop Culture

• New York’s Thanksgiving Parade gets rickrolled. He’s a good sport, isn’t he?

• Are you  fierce individualist? You might just like beer.
• The world’s oldest person has relinquished her title.
• Studies reveal women will be sympathetic to a sick man for about five minutes. That long?
• Scientists have calculated the fastest possible time for a human to run the 100m: 9.48 seconds.

CBC’s Jesse Brown has a great article up on how Canada is fast becoming a digital ghetto. The chief offenders are:

• The CRTC‘s recent decision to block small ISP’s who, unlike Bell and Rogers, want to offer their customers service sans data shaping.
• The continuing spectre of a new copyright bill. In last week’s throne speech, the Cons re-iterated their desire to “modernize” Canadian copyright law. In other words, business wins, we lose.
• Twitter’s decision to disallow outgoing SMS notifications to Canadian customers, based on the exhorbitant charges levied by our TelCos.

An interesting read, and a useful piece of alarm sounding. Information and communications technology in Canada is a mess. It’ll be up to us to make sure it gets sorted to our benefit. Via Michael Geist.

What a coup.

The University of Waterloo’s Perimeter Institute has succeeded in attracting Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s foremost theoretical physicists and all-around intellectual ninja. This is a huge step for the Institute, liable to cement its position as a global hub for research.

Hawking has accepted the position of “Distinguished Research Chair” at Perimeter, and will conduct a series of lectures. According to his handlers, he has no plans to move to Canada full-time. Still, just knowing that Hawking will be regularly less than an hour down the road makes me feel somehow smarter.

Thursday is “Thor’s Day”. So grab your hammer and let’s look at some links.

Canada

• The Carleton University Student Association has reinstated the Shinerama campaign. Now, let’s think a bit more carefully before we nix a valuable charity for stupid reasons next time, huh?

World

• The latest from Mumbai: numerous hostages still being held 18 hours after fighting started. Over 100 people were killed in the terrorist attacks.
• Hitler’s 18k bookmark has been recovered by US Customs agents. In other news, Hitler apparently read books.
• There was a riot at the Nerf Factory in China. Hopefully, it didn’t look like this

 Media

• Yesterday’s attacks on Mumbai demonstrated the emerging power of social media to break news. The big agencies are still catching up to Twitter.
• Former CBC News boss is the new publisher of the Toronto Star.
• Twitter is no longer allowing SMS notifications for Canadian users. Jerks.

Science & Tech

• Scientists find the world’s oldest pot stash.
• Obama will not give up his Blackberry without a fight.
• Enceladus: the solar system’s most expectorant moon.

Twitter is going nuts over the Mumbai shootings/explosions that began about three hours ago. You can monitor it here.

Western media is still reporting low casualty counts, but incoming reports suggest around 85 dead, plus around 40 Western hostages at the Taj Mahal hotel. There are also unconfirmed reports that the shooters are targeting tourists. Bad craziness. If anyone hears anything else, let me know.

UPDATE:

• The LA Times is reporting and official count of 78 dead, at least 200 wounded.
• The Guardian says more than 80 are dead after strikes on seven different sites.