Thanks Simon ( I sure do wish you had a blog or like a page or something, it's weird that I can't link love you ever - you provide so much useful data).

Sounds like Heather Mallick was on of the kids who teased me about my footwear.

What gives people? Since when is it okay *under any circumstances* to suggest that a woman you disagree with has a “toned-down version of the porn actress look.” Imagine it wasn't a woman you felt naturally superior to Ms. Mallick, say it was someone from your own 'set' would you say that?? I bet not.

That's kind of how I am interpreting the whole Sarah Palin love her her then leave her situation. My friend Victor got me all caught up on the latest pallywag and she's basically done. Check out this Huffington post piece Jack Cafferty: If Sarah Palin Being One Heartbeat Away "Doesn't Scare The Hell Out Of You, It Should" and then Get some interview clips from Palin's debacle with Katie Couric.

Finally watch Tina Fey's satire that is more or less imitation and be disturbed.

Here's why I say disturbed. While I was watching Fey do a dead-to-rights impersonation I realized Palin's gender/class origins are a big factor in her plummet from grace. Americans ( or maybe just the American media) do not like down-home ladies who get too big for their boots, Palin is basically a political Brittany Spears, a trailer-town ingenue who gets put on a pedestal and then pulled down by the same set of people who liked her initially for being 'one of them'. Politically it mimics the fate of so many down-home girls who get jilted by undependable irresponsible swains, Palin has gone from he object of media affection to the target of it's rage. The media should be focused on the strategists who cynically manipulated voter emotion by choosing an unprepared candidate on the virtue of her personality/gender and yes, class origins, not her qualifications. Once politics as marketing put an unprepared ill-equipped person in shotgun, I wonder whether the same factors made it easier for the media to justify their nasty reporting? There are so many prior models (Brittany, Roseanne Barr to name two) in celebrity culture after all.

I recently took a ride-share from Montreal to Toronto. The driver was a Chinese-Canadian engineer, about my age, who's boyfriend worked for Bombardier. Her other passengers were an Israeli geologist visiting Canada to do some work named Gior, et moi.

We had some unusual discussions, the engineer, the geologist and I. Primarily about Judaism, because once I told Gior my heritage, it was, as they say, all over but the crying. Suffice to say he and I had very different views on the state of Isreal. I took great pains not to share my views, because who wants to be trapped in a car with two squabbling Jews? I thought the engineer was very nice and she certainly didn't sign on for supper at the Fishbiens when she agreed to give two perfect strangers a lift.

Anyways when Gior and I weren't being argumentative little kakers, the engineer would say that she really admired the Jewish people for creating such a supportive culture for each other. I had mixed feelings about her assertion in the moment, thinking: "Are we supportive of each other or do we just have bad boundaries and poor social skills? Gior you wanna field that one or should I?" But whether or not Jews are supportive or just way too in each others business, The Great Schlep is a great and hilarious 'movement' endorsed by none other then Sarah Silverman, and it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Jews do have your back, and also are a bunch of nosy nudgy noodniks.

"The Great Schlep aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor. Don’t have grandparents in Florida? Not Jewish? No problem! You can still become a schlepper and make change happen in 2008, simply by talking to your relatives about Obama."

The best line: How do I go? Call up your grandparents and tell them to get the couch ready.

This is why being Jewish is both hilarious, wonderful, and annoying all at once.

To be creative is, in fact, Canadian: Mr. Harper is wrong: There's more to the arts than a bunch of rich people at galas whining about their grants - By Margeret Atwood. Who btw, was my Mom's babysitter for a short time.

Okay so I live in a BQ riding as of the last election, as this article rightly points out,
the Bloq are gaining an advantage in ridings such as mine because the vote between the other parties is more or less split. Like all Canadians of sound mind and body, I am terrified of a conservative majority, but not so excited about voting pragmatically (for BQ) just to do my bit to prevent a Conservative majority.

I am the only person I know who would link to David Simon giving a lecture before even watching The Wire.

Hi all - please sign this petition demanding that Elizabeth May - leader of the Green party - participate in the electoral debates. Along with being inconvenient not being able to hear the Green's position on a number of important issues, it is also a miscarriage of electoral justice.

Also I will be angry if you don't, though not as angry as our friends the dolphins.

"The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people."

I stole that from a photo album of a labour day march Katie put up on FB.

Confession: I am working on Labour Day, and also sweating. I need to do something about the proximity of my work table to extreme sources of daytime heat and sunlight.

If information is power, then access is empowering

The way Mefi posts work is one smartypants takes a whole wack of links about a particular subject and makes a suitable short link essay. The idea in this link essay: That the bottom of the pyramid is where the next generation of tech development should be aimed as both a solution for poverty, and to open new markets. The rationale for this approach is the fascinating proliferation of cellular tech in developing countries, places where infrastructure-heavy technologies have not had such a profound effect. I find the argument fascinating, and not surprisingly problematic.

Kory Teneycke, the Tory Communications Minister described the PromArt program as a boondoggle.

I decided to go look that one up, because last time I checked describing something as a 'boondoggle' was a rhetorical flourish and not an economic reality.

For the record Wikipedia says:

"More recently, the term boondoggle has come to refer to a government or corporate project involving large numbers of people and usually, heavy expenditure, where at some point the key operators have realized that the project is never going to work, but are reluctant to bring this to the attention of their superiors."

Alright so let's wander on over to the Prom-Arts page and see what the program promises, and apparently does not deliver. Well, they certainly aren't blowing a wad of cash on their web presence eh??" Seriously as far as I can tell based on this less-fugly infosheet Prom-Art does exactly what it is supposed to do: Give artists not very large amounts of money to go and try and get audiences abroad. That's what gov agencies are good at - arms length support for Canadian artists. I just don't understand why, whenever the Canadian government wants to tighten it's grip on artists and arts funding they go in for a full-nelson of moral outrage.