Archives for January 2010

Look, I understand that Roman Polanski’s wife would try to put the best possible spin on the thing, but this is pushing it. You can’t excuse something like raping a 13-year-old girl on the mood of the “crazy” 1970s. That’s just dumb, and I wish people would stop making excuses for what he did.

Cute. A list of life-changing products for the past decade. Only one food-related item on it. Clearly, girls have become gadget fiends. I would add to the list my personal kitchen-related favourite gadget: Martha Stewart’s recipe finder. How I managed to live before that, I will never know.

Ha:

Historically, marriage was the surest route to financial security for women. Nowadays it’s men who are increasingly getting the biggest economic boost from tying the knot, according to a new analysis of census data.

[…]

In 1970, according to the report, 28 percent of wives in this age range had husbands who were better educated than they were, outnumbering the 20 percent whose husbands had less education. By 2007, these patterns had reversed — 19 percent of wives had husbands with more education, compared with 28 percent whose husbands had less education.In the remaining couples — about half in 1970 and 2007 — spouses had similar education levels.

Only 4 percent of husbands had wives who earned more than they did in 1970, compared with 22 percent in 2007.

This piece explains the difference between “highly sexual” women and women who aren’t quite so sexual. It appears there’s not really all that much that’s different:

… both highly sexual and less sexual women reported having sex for the first time at age 17, on average. And both groups reported having sex the same number of times per week (once/twice to three to five times). They also reported having had a similar number of committed partners (3.62 among highly sexual women compared to 2.56 among their counterparts). Highly sexual women did, however, report having had a greater number of casual sex partners compared to their less sexually interested sisters—on average, 7.96 versus 4.28, respectively.

You know the affair John Edwards denied having that led to a child he denied fathering? Now he says: “I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves,” and, “it was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter”.

And if you believe him, I’ve got some land in Florida to sell you. Once you’ve read this account, you’ll understand why. Pity the poor child.

But isn’t 11 hours of media consumption a day more than enough for most children?

The Kaiser Family Foundation has the results in from its latest media usage study, and it was enough to shock the authors.

The last time the Foundation looked at the media usage of 8- to 18-year-olds was five years ago, when they were at just shy of six and a half hours of media consumption per day. At that point, the study authors felt that they must have hit a ceiling on media usage.

Not so, according to the latest study, which puts the average up more than an hour to upwards of seven and a half hours per day. Plus, for the first time, time spent watching TV actually dropped in favor of other forms of media, including listening to music, using a computer, playing video games, reading print publications and watching movies.

Moreover, because so many of the kids are multitasking by consuming multiple forms of media at the same time, they actually end up consuming closer to 11 hours’ worth of media content within that seven and half-hour span. Nor does do those hours include the time kids are spending talking on their cell phones (half an hour) or sending text messages (an hour and a half).

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Andrea is confused: Since when is reading a form of media? “Plus, for the first time, time spent watching TV actually dropped in favor of other forms of media, including listening to music, using a computer, playing video games, reading print publications and watching movies.” Methinks their definitions are a bit too broad. Reading whether on Kindle or a good old-fashioned paper book shouldn’t count in this tally as time spent “with media.”

The struggle for binding agreements on climate change a social justice battle of Wilberforce dimensions? I’ll let readers decide.

Our moment of opportunity came and then went, and here we are now, the fate of civilization and of millions of the planet’s life forms hanging by the frayed thread of inaction,” she wrote. She situated herself in the tradition of Christian leaders who have fought for social change, including British abolitionist William Wilberforce and Canadian suffragette Nellie McClung.”

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Brigitte can’t control herself, she’s stuck ROFL: ANDREA!!! You’re killing me!

This is why you should never pose nude, anywhere, anytime, boys and girls. Because the images will follow you no matter what you accomplish in life, no matter where you go. (Plus it’s very cheesy. And shows a lack of character. And terrible judgment. Do I need to go on?)

I’m glad this Scott Brown won though. Goes to show you how even cheesy, nude-photo-posing folks can have a tremendous affect on the course of history.

I live in Ottawa. It’s a nice, quiet place. With pretty parks and trees and moms pushing strollers. Dogs, too. Lots of dogs in Ottawa. Nice dogs; friendly and well-behaved. It’s a nice place. Except for this:

More than 400 unique Ottawa-based IP addresses were offering child pornography images over file sharing programs in the last month, Toronto police Det. Const. Christopher Purchas told an Ottawa court Tuesday.

He was speaking during the sentencing hearing for Stéphane Durocher, an Ottawa-area man who pleaded guilty in June to two counts of possessing child pornography.

The testimony has provided a rare snapshot of Ottawa’s Internet child pornography community.

Purchas first showed the court a large Google Earth map of Canada covered in red dots, each representing “hubs” of hundreds of IP addresses identified as being available to share child pornography online.

He testified that 405 IP addresses in Ottawa alone had made child pornography available in the past 30 days.

At least 10 of those addresses had gone online more than 28 times, Purchas said, or an average of nearly once per day.

The busiest IP address had gone online 193 times in the past month, he said.

Maybe I’m hopelessly naive, but I had no idea there could be so many right here in this nice, quiet town.