http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/07/13/pregnancy.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6897564.stm

India has plans to require all pregnant women to register their pregnancies with the government.  Women will also have to ask the government for permission to have an abortion.  The government says that this is to prevent women from aborting their female babies (due to the huge dowry required when those girls marry).

Holy Human Rights Infringement, Batman!

If this proposal goes through:

- will babies born to mothers who didn't register their pregnancies have restricted rights?
- will women who don't get permission for their abortions end up getting one anyhow in unsanitary, dangerous conditions?
- will the government charge a fee to register a pregnancy and then end up making more money?
- how will this be policed?
- will women eventually have to undergo a pregnancy test before they can get a government job?
- will they go to jail or be fined if they didn't register their pregnancy?
- will an unregistered baby be taken away and a generation of non-registered orphans be created?

Why not change the dowry system instead? 

I just posted a comment to the CBC website about this article:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2007/06/26/black-bear.html

Here’s what I said:

Your headline is misleading. It implies that the woman was being attacked by the bear, when in fact the bear was merely nosing around her property, probably just looking for food. I find it disturbing that instead of making her property less attractive to bears (removing garbage, etc.) or contacting authorities, she just kills it.

shaorn found out today that her friend from university just died. 43 years old and had a heart attack while riding his bike.

I didn't know him, but I feel really weird: I don't know what to say to Shaorn, I'm glad I have a physical booked for Wednesday, and I'm going through all those "life is short" thoughts.

When something bad happens it always reminds me that the days are ticking and I'd better get off my sorry ass and do something positive. And I'd better openly and frequently express my feelings for those I love.

As part of our obsessive apartment redecoration stint, we decided to build a headboard for our bed. All we needed was a piece of plywood, upholstery foam, and fabric.

We chose fabric on Thursday right after work at a store close to our offices. But being after 6 pm on the Thursday night before the long weekend, we were in a bit of a pinch to find a store that would carry upholstery foam and plywood.

We decided that if we were going to a) drive, and b) to a big-box store, that it had at least better be Canadian-owned. So off to RONA we went.

I have to say, our experience at RONA took DIY to a whole new level. Having found the lumber section, we waited for about 10 minutes at what appeared to be the order desk. When no one came to help us, we chased store workers around until finally one stopped for us and told us we needed to go to the Cut Shop. He showed us where that was and paged the Cut Shop Guy. Things were looking up.

Will Ferrell. Lanky, silly, boogers-kinda-manboy.

At least that's what I thought of him until I saw Stranger Than Fiction.

He plays Harold Crick, all-around lonely, repressed guy. Being an IRS agent, he obsessively counts things: the number of strokes he uses to brush his teeth,  the exact number of minutes in his coffee break, the number of steps to the bus stop. He lives a regimented and colourless existence.

Until he starts hearing a voice in his head narrate his life.

The voice is that of famous author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a recluse with writer's block. Thompson creates a morose, chain-smoking Salinger whose characters always meet horrible deaths. She's having a hard time with Harold, though; she can't seem to find the right way to kill him off. So her publisher sends her an assistant (Queen Latifah) to help her finish her novel.

While he's waiting for the bus, Harold hears the author mention his imminent death.  Shaken, he takes a week vacation (watch for Tom Hulce's wonderful hippie HR manager). With help from literature professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), Harold tries to piece together what's going on and how to prevent his death.

This film shares the tone and meta construction of films like Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Being John Malkovich. Strong acting, great writing, and a very palatable life-is-worth-it message.

Definitely not boogers.

On Friday night we went to the ROM for an event called Food for the Mood. Three presenters spoke on the use of food as aphrodisiac: in ancient Egypt, in the Kama Sutra, and in ancient and modern North America. Although billed as "hands-on", I didn't see any artifacts that I could touch. However, the presentations were funny, well-delivered, and very informative.  And everyone got a handmade truffle (from George Brown student chefs) at the end. Mmm mmm.

We learned that many current rituals have their origin in ancient customs.  For example, in ancient Egypt the water lily was used frequently to set an amorous mood and was inhaled or soaked in wine for its psychoactive properties. A dozen long-stemmed roses doesn't have quite the same effect. Montezuma II is said to have drank 50 cups of chocolate a day. Casanova, too, drank chocolate in order to have luck with the ladies. Wonder how far he would get with a heart-shaped box from Shoppers?

On a separate note, apparently the Kama Sutra contains many images and references to same-gender sex. I've never read it, but presenter Sudharshan Duraiyappah explained that the book refers to four states of sexual identity: male, female, mixed-gender, and gender-neutral. It contains the idea that there exist people who are not strictly male or female in their physical, emotional, and psychological states. The concept is lost in translation from Sanskrit to two-gender-only English. I've only been able to find references online to the concept of a third gender, and would be interested in reading anything anyone can find on the four-gender idea.

shaorn and I are celebrating our 5th anniversary today.  We were thinking about where to go for dinner tonight and thought it might be nice to visit one of the places we went to when we first got together. Hm...


- We first met at Satellite, an off-shoot of Zelda's. It's now a pet food store.
- Afterwards, we headed over to Slack Alice's for drinks.  It's now under new management, renovated, and just called Slacks.
- At the end of the night we went to the Red Spot, which, well, I have no idea what happened to it.
- Date number two was spent at the Queenshead Pub, underneath Pimblett's. Which is no more.
- For our third date we went to Slack Alice's to watch Queer as Folk on the big screen TV. Again, gone.
- After the third date we spent a lot of time at Mitzi's Sister, which had just opened up on the corner. Until it moved to a larger location down the road in the old Tennesse Restaurant.

What does it mean that all the places we used to go to are gone!?

I think it's a good sign.

Places and things and people will change throughout our lives together.
But the glowing spark within us remains.

To a kind-hearted, intelligent, deep, funny and loving man. May you have many, many happy days.


Wednesday, January 17th
If your birthday is today:

You will get more than your share of challenges over the next 12 months but only because the cosmic powers-that-be know you have what it takes to turn them into triumphs. Don't worry if the odds are stacked against you because you have hidden reserves which will come to the surface whenever you need them.

I found out something this week that could dramatically change my job.  I work for an online marketing company and about 50% of my job involves designing and coding marketing emails like newsletters, invitations to events, news updates, etc. 

Most of our clients' customers (the ones who receive the mailings) use Microsoft's Outlook as their email application. So I spend a lot of time making sure that my design and code looks perfect in Outlook.  I'm also concerned that it looks great in Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Entourage, etc., but Outlook is my main concern.

Outlook currently uses Internet Explorer as the engine to display HTML in emails. Web coders (like me) generally despise IE because it does its own version of the CSS box model. What looks perfect when viewed with Firefox, Netscape, Opera, and Safari often looks like crap in IE. 

But things were looking up when Microsoft introduced IE 7! The company seemed to have actually listened to the people who make websites. IE 7 is a whole lot better at respecting W3C standards. Making emails look good for Outlook could get easier!

However, I just heard something mind-boggling. For the release of Outlook 2007, instead of using the much-improved IE 7 as its HTML engine, Microsoft is planning to use...

Word.

My heart sank.

Have you ever tried to make a web page by using Word? It might look pretty on the outside, but its guts are disgusting.

Here's an example:

- what the page looks like

 - the code for my page when hand-coded using an HTML editor

versus

- the code for my page when created using Word

Blech.

As one article put it,  Microsoft is about to "take email design back five years". Bastards.</p>

greekcub asked: Given the choice what is the one thing you would take with you on deserted island and why (excluding any type of rescue device)?

My practical answer would be a very large supply of fresh water.

My impractical answer would be an MP3 player loaded with Stevie Wonder's Innervisions album.  I would listen to it in little spurts whenever I felt hopeless, to conserve the batteries.

colorfilter has some cool astrology icons, like the one I use here.

My first instinct was to respond "scissors", so I must stick to this answer and try to understand why.

I saw this personality test on drew1963's post - my results were exactly what I expected. My parents think I'm a bleeding heart and my ex thought I was too capitalist, if that tells you anything.

Here's the test

And here are my results:

Social-Liberal
You scored 71 Equality, 57 Liberty, and 35 Stability!
Your commitment to both liberty and equality makes you a blend of the Liberal and the Socialist. You value liberty particularly in cultural and personal life. You also value government intervention to promote equity in economic life while still supporting private enterprise. For you liberty and equality are two parts of the same condition. Everyone has to be free to pursue their own way-of-life but in order for that to happen everyone must start with a similar basic standard of living.

Ask me any question you want and I will post the honest answer here in my journal as a separate entry. I won't reveal details like my employer, home address, etc.

Our office is closed until January 8th, so I had great plans for this week. Top of my list was to move all of my blog entries from Blogger to LiveJournal. Well, after visiting two snotty-nosed nephews over Christmas, my top priority on New Year's Eve became blowing my nose and taking my asthma drugs on schedule. So my week of vacation has turned into a free week of sick leave. Both earthmonkey69 and shaorn have been sick also, so I'm in good company.

So I've decided to leave my Blogger stuff where it is and start fresh on LiveJournal.

Thanks for welcoming me!

I've been blogging on Blogger but it seems that many people I want to connect with are on LiveJournal, so I'm making the switch. Will see if there's a way to transfer my entries from one to the other. If not, I guess I'll have to start fresh. I'll be posting my thoughts on social issues, Toronto, and posting the odd (really odd?) poem and photo. Glad to be here!

I'm at page 129 of my new book. I'm reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Loved Neuromancer (the only other one I've read - didn't get to it until about 15 years after everyone I know did).

The main character is a follower of what is called the footage, a series of video clips dropped in various hidden places all over the Internet. She is part of a forum on the footage, located at Festish:Footage:Forum. So I naturally googled "F:F:F" and "footage" and found surprisingly very little. I had expected that the publisher would have littered the Internet with faux footage clips or created a fake forum. Turns out there is a forum, but it appears to be genuine. Which strikes me as brilliant on the part of the publisher. The book looks at the organic buzz that gets created around something mysterious and special. They didn't start a forum, because they knew someone else would. They didn't create footage because they knew eventually someone else would.

Then it gets weird.

One of the concepts mentioned in the book is apophenia. Stuff of mania, bad drug trips, and conspiracy theorists? I think not.

All weekend long we've been laughing at the Strindberg & Helium website. Then on F:F:F I spotted a reference to August Strindberg (will add the link as soon as I find it again)!

Whoa. I love this stuff.