I have a hair that's grey near the bottom and dark at the root. This means that this follicle lost its pigment, and then somehow got its pigment back? How the hell does that happen?

I can't believe so many people are this ignorant! And they admitted it to a newspaper reporter!

In light of this information, I propose that everyone should have to take a brief test before voting. Anyone who passes the test, regardless of age, would be allowed to vote.

The questions on this test are as follows. (This one is on the provincial level, it can be altered for other levels of government)

1. Name the current premier and the current leader of the opposition
2. Name two political parties and the leaders of those parties
3. Name two candidates in your riding and their party affiliations
4. Name one issue in this election, and briefly describe any candidate's or party's stance on that issue.

They should make public washroom doors open automatically from the inside but not from the outside

It's like the instant I graduated, my body betrayed me. It realized "Okay, she's not a student any more, she's a professional - let the aging process begin!" Grey hairs are more frequent, fine lines are starting to appear around my eyes, my ankles are (imperceptibly to anyone but me) thicker, red stretchmarks have appeared where only white stretchmarks have been before, my tummy sticks out enough to make any clothes that aren't perfectly cut look frumpy, my waist is suddenly higher than the waistband of any of my clothes...

...but in my body's sudden rush to age me, it forgot to turn off the acne.

It's weird, my diet is healthier than it has ever been, my weight on the scale is the same, I get the same amount, if not more, exercise than I did at any point during school, but suddenly I'm aging. I thought I'd have a few more years before this happens.

But despite all this, I don't wish for a younger body. Maybe my 19 year old body, before the first grey hair turned up, but I certainly don't covet the adolescent body. It was awkward, ever-evolving, betraying me at every turn, always older than I felt. Perhaps this just means that my body is always destined to be older than I feel.

Is your ISP Shawcable? Do you have my old school email address in your addressbook? Do you have an email address @eaglefaith.com.hk in your address book? If you answered yes to all these questions, your computer has a virus.

Now, because I know you all want insight into my twisted little life, a list of some of my Guilty Pleasures (the first ten I can think of):

- Lemon butter cookies
- M*A*S*H
- The rampant plot and character analysis found in the forums of Harry Potter fanfic sites
- Dogs With Jobs
- cutebabyanimals.com
- Insaniquarium
- On days when I don't have to get up early, setting my alarm to play the radio at some time in the morning, ignoring it, and dozing back off
- Loudly cracking some random joint in the middle of a conversation, making it look like an accident ,and innocently continuing talking as though I have no idea that I just produced this disgusting noise
- Reading the comics before the rest of the newspaper
- Putting mustard on my fries

I'm surprised to see Ernie Eves make such a stupid strategic error. If he does, in fact, mean that he doesn't intend to impose his personal values on the province, it would have been a better move to keep his mouth shut.

In making this statement, he might have been attempting to pander to those who are vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage. However, he isn't actually attempting to make any policy to eliminate same-sex marriage, and lip service isn't likely to earn him any extra votes. Also, he is the leader of the most right-wing provincial party in Ontario (with the possible exception of fringe parties that I've never heard of and never win seats), so people who are opposed to same-sex marriage are most likely to vote for his party anyway. So he has won few, if any, votes, but likely lost the votes of every queer conservative in the province and the few other conservatives who support same-sex marriage. If it's a question of a politician whose fiscal policy you like versus a politician who respects your human rights, I think human rights are going to win out every time.

Attention world: you need to evaluate politicians based on their party's policy, not on their speeches in times of crisis. Speeches aren't leadership - they're being a talking head delivering the message that was agreed upon in the war room and designed by speechwriters and damage control specialists. You can only evaluate leadership based on policy and execution thereof, which is best determined by looking at the party's past record and the speeches they make to each other within the party itself.

I'm watching Monty Python, and despite the fact that it's one of those horribly-edited A&E episodes, it's full of lovely moments that I had completely forgotten about: The Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things, Eric Idle standing innocently in a drawing room while furniture collapses and people die all around him, Welsh coal-miners arguing about the Treaty of Utrecht - I can't believe I'd forgotten about all of this!

A few days ago I was watching a documentary on LaughLab. One of the things they did in their experiments was ask people to rate how funny each joke was, and then they ranked this by country. Germany ranked the most jokes as funnier, while Canada was a distant tenth. The people at LaughLab said this means Germans have the best sense of humour, but I'm not sure if thinking everything is funny constitutes a sense of humour.

Then today I read about an experiment where they asked people of various ages to pick the punchlines for some jokes from a multiple choice list. Younger people got all the punchlines correct, while older people missed a few. They concluded that this means older people lose their sense of humour.

I think they're missing a factor that can explain the findings of both these experiments: the internet. There are a lot of jokes on the internet, possibly every joke in the world. Jokes get posted onlines as quickly as they get thought up. I know that since I got online, hearing a joke I have never heard before has become an extremely rare occurence. And the vast majority of these rare occurences happen online.

Canada is one of the most wired nations in the world. While everyone in the laughlab experiment must be online, it is more likely that Canadians have been online longer than some other nationalities, and therefore have heard more jokes. Canadians rate the jokes lower simply because they've heard them before. I love the joke about the two hunters that won the title of funniest joke in the world, but I know it already so I might not laugh when you tell me it. Meanwhile, I might laugh at a not-as-good joke that I've heard before.

Similarly, young people are much likelier to be online than old people. Since being online increases the likelihood that they've heard the jokes used in the experiment, they are able to complete the punchline not because of a better sense of humour, but because they already know the joke.

I expected better from the Toronto Star. Phys ed classes are not going to get kids to embrace a healthier lifestyle. It may get them moving for a couple of years, but it is not likely to have good long-term effects.

Two questions to ask yourself:

1. How many people do you know who developed a great love of athletics and fitness because of gym class? ("because", NOT "despite")


2. How many people do you know who developed a great dislike of athletics and fitness because of gym class?

People who think gym class is panacea may have forgotten that it's nothing but torture for everyone, with the possible exception of the kids who are already athletic.

A lot of the political analysis I've been reading lately seems to point to one thing. Politicians ignore young people's key issues because young people vote in very low numbers. It's easy to understand why - most parties that represent our views are traditionally marginalized, it's harder to vote when you're in the limbo between living in one city for school and having your permanent address in another city, and those politcians really don't seem to care about us.

We have to make them notice us by voting, of course, but we also need to make them notice us before there is anything to vote on. So the homework for everyone reading this who is under 25 is to engage in one piece of political activism at each level (local, provincial, federal) before each respective election. A piece of political activism can be writing or emailing your representative, writing a letter to the editor, starting a petition - anything to indicate your support for or disapproval of any issue. Those who have two addresses depending on the time of year can rightfully write to their representatives in each jurisdiction, thus being heard twice!

If every young person in the country spoke out and said "I'm here, and I have political opinions too!" those grownups would think twice before marginalizing us.

So get out there, do something, and pass this message on.

The problem with the movie Thirteen is that it will make parents freak out. Parents will hear about the plot of this movie (even if they don't see it themselves) and think they have to supervise their daughters better, and then they will keep too tight a rein on normal, shy, awkward, confused adolescents who just want to spend a bit of time with their friends without their parents breathing down their neck. Normally-attentive and over-protective parents will supervise their kids even more, keeping them from having a normal social life and thus alienating them from the peer group and making them more inclined to indulge in risky behaviour when given the opportunity in order to assert their independence from the oppressive regime at home. Meanwhile neglectful parents, to whom the cautionary aspect of this tale was likely originally directed, are not likely to notice. This movie is a bad strategic move on the part of everyone involved.

Someone should invent a way to do a search-and-replace through an entire folder of documents instead of having to S&R each document individually.

I took a sick day this afternoon. It's weird - I wasn't hugely sick, but I had this crazy headache that seemed immune to Advil, and it was preventing me from working. I simply couldn't think. So I went home and lay down in my dark cool room and slept for four hours. I feel a bit better now - I could probably still sleep through the evening, but I have laundry that badly needs doing. I still don't know what was/is wrong with me. It almost seemed like a migraine, but I don't get migraines.

Someone needs to make an algorithm that will index the Webtender database and determine what combinations of ingredients will make the most possible drinks. I.e., this program should be able to answer the question "What ten ingredients should I buy to allow me the most drink-making possibilities?"

Bonus points for a program that will tell you which ingredients to buy to make the most possible orange-juice-based drinks.

I just realized that all day today I was using "I typed it by hand" to mean "I actually typed the words into the computer rather than copy-pasting them from somewhere." Sign of the times?

Why do elevators have stop buttons? I can't think of any situation in which bringing an elevator to a sudden stop would be helpful. Unless, I suppose, it was in freefall, but I doubt a button would help then.

I got tomorrow off too! WOOO five day weekend!!!

I love my job :)