Groundhog Day

Well the Chinese New Year kicked off yesterday and today Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog, came out and saw his shadow so we're in for another six weeks of winter. Not difficult to believe here in Toronto although yesterday we had a pleasant trip round the bookstores downtown after the three week freeze-up.
The weekend Globe and Mail tells us there are now more mobile phones in the world than landlines, 1.5 billion mobiles against 1.3 billion landlines. All this in the space of thirty years since the first cellphone. The 'mobile' has gone from a must-have accessory for celebrities and businessmen to a naff, rather intrusive item for everybody in that time.
The National Post Review section has an interesting piece on cities turning into tourist destinations by Witold Rybcynski, Meyersohn Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. He says "Probably the only concerns that tourists share with the locals are a demand for good policing, and clean streets." Surely the two things that are increasingly hard to find.