Pie Palace

I’d like to use Gmail to host mail for piepalace.ca, but my current hosting provider doesn’t allow me to set MX records. Does anyone know of a .ca registrar that provides MX customization at a reasonable price?

I don’t want to start out on the wrong foot here, so before I begin, let me say that I appreciate breasts. Not just any breasts, specifically, women’s breasts.

Although I’ve spent a fair portion of my life (figuratively) medatating on the female bosom, I haven’t put much thought to breast implants. For the most part, I’d just thought they were something that trashy wannabe starlets bought. Sure, there might be health concerns, but who cares? Who gets ‘em anyway?

That was before I stumbled across an ad for implants in Marie Claire magazine. The ad wasn’t all that notable, but the next page showed a listing of the health problems associated with new funbags.

Common risks associated with breast augmentation:

Source: Natrelle ad by Allergan Inc. Published in the July 2007 issue of Marie Claire.

	Saline Implants			Silicone Implants
Complication	3 Year Rate	5 Year Rate	7 Year Rate	4 Year Rate
Reoperation	21%	26%	30%	23.5%
Breast Pain	16%	17%	25%	8.2%
Wrinkling	11%	14%	-	NA
Capsular contracture III/IV	9%	11%	16%	13.2%
Implant Replacement/Removal	8%	12%	15	NA
Implant Deflation	5%	7%	10	NA

These numbers are much higher than those published in the Risks section of Implant Forum, but they’re published by the manufacturer, so I suspect that they’re lowballed.

Despite Ontario Today’s biased coverage of the election, not all shows on CBC radio are excluding the Greens. Ottawa Morning has been doing a good job, making sure to include the Greens in their coverage (at least the coverage that I’ve heard). To prove I’m not just a hater, I showed them a little love in the following letter:

Dear sir/madam,

I was pleased to hear you include the Green Party’s position in your piece on municipal infrastructure this morning. Thank-you for providing fair coverage and putting together a great show. Keep up the good work!

I’m starting to think that I should create a category for open letters. In a tag cloud it would probably dominate everything else, however…

If you’re looking at my site (http://piepalace.ca/blog), you’ll notice that I’ve changed the theme. Vicky01 (which I may eventually make freely available) is a retro style theme. It currently supports Gravatars and is fairly CSS heavy. Sadly, most of the images that I’ve used to make it are copyrighted.

If you have any comments or criticism, please post ‘em here. I’m particularly interested if it looks wonky in any particular browser, or if you’re able to make it display errors. In either case, please supply an URL.

Update: Since roughly 0% of the folks who comment on this blog have registered a gravatar, I’ve added default gravatars. If someone without a gravatar posts, the site hashes their email address, and uses that number to decide on a default gravatar. The default gravatar is consistent across comments.
If this annoys any of you, let me know.

Dear Google.

You may have heard of a brand-new technology called CAPTCHA. It allows a program to detect when a human is viewing a resource, such as a web-page; thereby preventing bots from abusing the resource.

When denying access to one of your resources, such as a blog post, because your software erroneously classifies a user’s browser as a bot, you may want to embed a CAPTCHA into the page to allow the user access to it. As you may or may not know, unnecessarily denying access to resources is… well… evil.

Sincerely,
e

Idiots.

Apparently not. According to Evan Hughes of the Ottawa-Greens, the Green approach is to use the free-market as a tool to ensure a sustainable and healthy society. The Conservatives seem to think of the free-market as an end unto itself. But when will these hippies learn to keep their articles short?

It looks like we’re about to go through another election where the Greens are given short shrift by the media. On the off chance our media overlords care about something other than advertising revenue, I’ve signed the petition asking that GPO leader Frank de Jong be allowed onto the all party debates.

I had the misfortune of listening to Ontario Today… umm… today. I say misfortune because (a) I’m home sick, and (b) because they were covering the school funding issue in the Ontario election.

The segment was an hour-long phone in show. Of the 10ish callers, all but two supported the Green Party position: the province should not pay for religious schools. During the call in show, the Ontario Greens were mentioned only a few time in an off-handed manner, even though a vast majority of the callers agreed with the Green position. Their guest was worse, pushing her own view: that all religious schools must be funded.

In a moment of potent middle-crass rage I wrote a strongly worded letter to Ontario Today producers:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was disappointed with your phone-in segment about the proposed changes in Ontario’s funding of religious schools. The coverage all but ignored the Green Party’s stance: that the provincial government should not fund religious schools.

During the opener, when clips from each party were played, the Green Party leader Frank de Jong was not included. Although most callers stated that they wanted to remove provincial funding from religious education, Ms. Celli did not mention that this was the Green Party position. I believe that she did mention the Conservatives by name when asking one of the callers about their position. When your guest repeatedly stated that removing funding for the Catholic system was not possible, she was not challenged.

Ms. Celli did mention the Green Party occasionally, but the Greens were not given the same prominence as the other major parties. Part of your role as media is to report news fairly. By giving the Green Party short shrift, you are making it harder for Ontario’s voters to make an informed decision on October 10.

If you’re ever meeting a four or more people at Pub Italia, make sure that you check the Abbey – head straight to the back, turn right, go straight, then turn right again. It’s there. Chances are your friends are too.

Jim Harris and I go way back. When I was but a wee ankle biter, I had no idea who he was. Similarly, he had absolutely no idea who I was. Our relationship amiably continued in this manner for a number of decades, until I finally met him. It turns out he’s a pretty good guy. As former leader of the Green Party of Canada he has a weird ex-officio status where I read the spam emails he pumps out. Since he’s part of the Vote for MMP campaign, I continuously find out how great MMP is. As if I need to be reminded.

The Vote for MMP campaign has a $10.10 campaign. They’re asking people to donate $10.10 (or some multiple of $10.10) for the Yes campaign. This isn’t your usual corporate-backed campaign with big blobs of money being donated by a few rich individuals. They’re asking for an tiny little bit of money from each citizen of Ontario. So open your wallet! Give ‘em $10 and a dime. Your kids will thank you.