It’s not every day that someone you know wins a contest to design the look for new public transit bus.

On Monday, December 11, the Hamilton Street Railway (HSR) unveiled the winning design for Hamilton’s new articulated hybrid buses, and dontcha know the winner was by Dave Kuruc of Mixed Media on James North in Hamilton.

Dave is an all round good guy, and I’m tickled by this news. Plus I actually really like his design.

As reported at Raise the Hammer:

“The purchase of seven of these articulated (bendy-bus) hybrids along with several diesel and hybrid 40 foot buses represent the largest single purchase in the history of the HSR.

Also, these 60-foot articulated buses will be the first in North America delivered by New Flyer with the restyled exterior and interior enhancements.

These new buses should hit the streets in February 2007, and I’m sure will be a big hit with the public. Congrats to Dave and to the HSR.”

Things have changed since I was in school. I mean things other than the two to three hours of homework that kids drag home each night.

The first thing that surprised me was that eight year old Grade Three students are now generating bar graphs in their math class. When I was that age we learned “arithmetic,” not “math.”
Now it’s bar graphs, before they can multiply or divide.

Next was an oral presentation which said that they could choose to do it dressed as their favourite character, using a puppet, as a newscast, or in a PowerPoint presentation.

Powerpoint? For eight year olds?

Now three weeks later the same kids are being told to use Venn diagrams as part of a geometry lesson.

I won’t claim to remember everything about Grade Three, but I am damned sure that Bar graphs, Powerpoint, and Venn diagrams weren’t part of it. Heck, I’m not sure my Grade three teacher knew about any of those.

Besides, if these kids really need to make bar graphs, let’s just teach them how to use Excel.