Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was the victim of a practical joke, or “hoax,” on Tuesday.
Someone broke into the website of the Conservative party. (Harper is the leader of the Conservatives.) They posted a fake article about him.
The article said Harper had been rushed to hospital after he had choked on some hash browns at breakfast.
It said that his wife, Laureen, called 911 because the Prime Minister couldn’t breathe and that he was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Toronto.
Last year Apple invented an amazing new piece of technology, called the iPad. It was different from anything anyone had seen before. It is a slim, flat screen but it acts like a computer. And because it’s a “touch-screen,” you use your fingers to move and open files.
Last week, Apple announced the iPad 2, a new and improved version of the iPad.
The company was very excited about the iPad 2. In fact, the head of the company, Steve Jobs, has been away sick for a long time but he came back to make the announcement himself.
In 1997, there was a very famous chess match. The world champion chess player, Gary Kasparov, went up against a special challenger: a computer. The computer was called “Deep Blue” and it was built by IBM just to play chess. Deep Blue won the six-game chess match.
This year, IBM came up with a new challenge. They decided to build a computer that could match wits with two humans on a game show called Jeopardy!. The computer is called Watson, and its “brain power” is equal to thousands of home computers.
Playing chess is something computers can do very well because it relies on quickly deciding between different moves. However, answering questions and understanding English is not something computers do well. In Jeopardy!, the questions may include riddles, puns and cultural references. These are things humans are good at, but computers are not.
Restaurants are using iPads to let customers get information about their food and place their order.
An iPad is a flat, square computer – like a large iPhone but instead of making phone calls it displays information and can access the Internet. It has a touch screen, so people can use their fingers to work it.
Chicago Cut is a steakhouse in the U.S. They have 40 iPads in their restaurant so people can see their wine list and order a bottle of wine. They can also get information on the wine to find out what it tastes like before they order it.
Scientists have figured out that the bones of an ancient teenager, buried near Britain’s mysterious Stonehenge monument, came from hundreds of kilometers away.
The wealthy teen was buried with a string of amber beads around his neck. He is known to researchers as “the boy with the amber necklace.”
He originally came from The Mediterranean, and was likely a tourist, visiting Stonehenge much as people do today—as a tourist destination.
Canada is leading the way in “barcoding” all animals on earth.
Scientists around the world are undertaking a massive project to help protect animals. And Canadians (in fact, Torontonians) are leading the way.
One day, the project will allow you to point your camera phone at an animal or a bug and a screen will pop up with the name of the species and a description of it.
You’re standing in front of a billboard. Suddenly, it changes and the screen displays an advertisement for fruit roll-ups, then one for the new Harry Potter movie, and then one for Monopoly. It’s almost as if the billboard knows what […]
