Here at The Lowdown Blog, we love our country. Not only that but we love the women of Canada. I might be a bit biased but I think that Canadian women are the greatest in the world. Since I know the Yanks will be promoting their finest on Independence Day, to celebrate Canada Day here’s another look at 25 of the hottest Canadian women. Happy Canada Day!
Sunday Link-Off: Common Sense Prevailing
It’s the last link-off of the Google Reader era. What am I going to do without it? I basically rely on it to help run my blogging pseudo-empire. Well, I’m boned. In the meantime, here’s our pre-Canada Day linkdump. We have our usual Canada Day fare tomorrow with the F1 recap and analysis on Tuesday.
So let’s start off our day before Canada Day post with Canadian model Andi Muise.
Texas governor Rick Perry is just the worst. He thinks filibustering god Wendy Davis should support a near ban on abortions in Texas because she was a teenage mother. What a fool. (Think Progress)
Rather than allow general trolling, two major newspapers used a new commenting system to categorize the people commenting on stories about gay marriage. (Nieman Lab)
Pandora might be great for us as music lovers but it doesn’t pay to have your music on there. (The Trichordist)
Entertainment Link-Off: It All Goes Down
It’s battle of the buddy action movies this weekend. On one end, there’s Channing Tatum teaming up with Jamie Foxx for White House Down. On the other it’s Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in The Heat. Whatever you fancy, it will be one action packed screening at the cinemas! Once again, I’m not sure who to start off the ELO with, so here’s Jamie Chung getting into some American patriotic gear just ahead of Independence Day
After the jump, it might not be the end for This is the End, see what Peter Jackson has in store for the extended edition of The Hobbit, Marvel wants Vin Diesel, watch Sly and Ah-nold break out of a prison, World War Z deviates quite a bit from the source material, Max Landis didn’t like Man of Steel and the top 10 Backstreet Boys lyrics of all time Continue reading
Caption This: June 22 – 28, 2013
Inspired by the Globe and Mail’s caption writing person, we waste our time writing funny picture captions for some of the more interesting photos we come across when blogging. So here are some of the best pictures from the past week with a funny (-ish) caption. Continue reading
Xbox One vs. PS4: Who’s Really Over-Delivering Value?
In an interview on Bloomberg TV last week, Microsoft President of Interactive Entertainment, Don Mattrick, said that the Xbox One was over-delivering on value. In fact, the Xbox boss went so far as to say, “We’re delivering thousands of dollars of value to people.”
The problem is that no one apart from Mattrick, Microsoft employees and the staunchest of Xbox loyalists believe this to be the case. When you look at the dollars and cents of the next generation of consoles, it’s pretty obvious that the Xbox isn’t actually over-delivering and definitely not thousands of dollars worth of over-delivery.
F1 Power Rankings: British Grand Prix
After a three-week break, the Formula One circus returns home to England for the British Grand Prix at the historic Silverstone Circuit. The big story over the break was what would happen to Mercedes GP over the Pirelli tyre test. It turns out that nothing happened because the FIA is terrible. Well, we move on to Silverstone and I think that Mercedes isn’t the favourite but they’re in better shape than they were before Monaco.
British Grand Prix Heroes (Infographic)
This weekend is Formula One’s British Grand Prix which is one of the premier races in the sport. To celebrate this week’s big race, our friends at MoneySupermarket asked a group of respected online motorsports writers (and me) who the greatest British Formula One drivers of all-time are. The results of the expert poll have been compiled on this handy infographic.
In case you were wondering, my three picks were Jim Clark, Graham Hill and John Surtees.
Wednesday Link-Off: The Story Beyond The Story
It’s the middle of the week which means that it’s time for some links. Are you ready for life without Google Reader? Because starting next Wednesday, the linkdump might be in some trouble while I figure out how to do RSS without Google Reader. In the meantime, normal programming continues. Since Wimbledon is this week, let’s kick off this post with Maria Sharapova.
Ezra Klien and Evan Soltas have an interesting theory about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. He doesn’t exist and is actually an NSA creation to distract the press from digging into PRISM. (Wonkblog)
David Gregory thinks Glenn Greenwald should be charged with aiding and abetting Snowden because DG has no respect for journalism. (Freedom of the Press Foundation)
Yesterday, the US Supreme Court axed a key part of the Voter Rights Act. That’s going to allow some serious skewing of electoral districts and may disinfranchise minorities. (The Guardian)
IndyCar – Iowa Indy 250: A Happy Day in Hinchtown
It’s not been a good run for Canadian mayors lately. The Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, is in the middle of a scandal over an alleged video of him smoking crack. Corruption has resulted in a revolving door in the mayor’s offices of Montreal and its suburbs. However, in the lovely city of Hinchtown, all is well this weekend after the mayor, James Hinchcliffe, won his third IndyCar race of the season and first on an oval after dominating the Iowa 250.
24 Hours of Le Mans: Bittersweet Victory
The battle between Audi and Toyota for the overall victory was expected to come down to the difference between Audi’s raw pace and Toyota’s superior range on a tank of fuel. What it came down to, as it so often does at Le Mans, was luck and reliability. The #2 Audi of Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Loic Duval had the best luck and speed on the day’s worth of racing and picked up the win in the biggest event in sportscar racing.
Sadly, the win for Audi and the epic battle between Audi and Toyota was overshadowed by the first death in the 24 Hours of Le Mans since 1986 when GTE Am Aston Martin of Allan Simonsen died after a crash early in the race.
The Lowdown 