Earlier this summer, my partner and I bought these cute, func­tional, folding bikes that have already become our pri­mary mode of trans­porta­tion. I used to bike when I was a wee teenager, growing up in New Jersey, while my partner had never biked before.

So lately, we have been going out biking almost everyday, get­ting used to the rules and routes of the city, it’s a whole other world when you’re on a bike. I noticed that when I first started dri­ving years ago too – your per­spec­tive of the space you inhabit changes based on your mode of trans­porta­tion – sub­ways make me con­sider the under­ground routes to get from one part of the city to another, cars make me con­sider the high­ways, the one-way streets, the alter­na­tive smaller streets I can take to avoid heavy traffic. And now, biking is teaching me to notice even more things like where the ramps are, where the road is most uneven, where there are long blocks versus short blocks, and where the road is on an incline and where it’s on a decline, where cars tend to cluster and where there are bike lanes in the city.

I love noticing this shift in per­spec­tive, and I would encourage everyone to try dif­ferent modes of trans­porta­tion in what­ever area you’re in, to get an idea of the per­spec­tive shift – try walking around for a week instead of dri­ving to wher­ever you nor­mally go in your neigh­bor­hood. Or take the train or the bus, instead of dri­ving to a dis­tant des­ti­na­tion. Most of us are so hooked on cars and high­ways and parking lots, that we rarely just walk, or bike any­where. I urge you to try it some­time, espe­cially if you live in a part of the planet where it’s the later half of the summer season now. Just go, go out, and walk, or bike if you can get a bicycle (hint: they’re also a lot cheaper than cars!). You’ll love it!

On a related note, check out this site to see how Toronto is becoming more and more bike-friendly.

A long but highly insightful con­ver­sa­tion between acclaimed authors Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji on the nature of belief, Islamism, the his­tory of Islam and Quran, and what to do in a world full of cra­zies on both the Islamist side and the racist west­erner side. Rational, thinking people of all vari­eties will enjoy this video… please watch in full, it’s worth it. Intelligent com­ments are welcome.

This is encour­aging news for people who are com­pas­sionate towards all ani­mals: KFC Canada lis­tens to PETA.

Most people saw this coming years ago.

At 10:59 a.m., a cheer went up on trading room floor

Is that in Canadian or American dol­lars?
“It didn’t really matter,” Mr. Feig says with a laugh. “It’s the same price either way.”

Just got back from another night of Fringing here in Toronto. Yesterday we saw a one-man show by Chris Gibbs, who is fan­tastic and very engaging, highly intro­spec­tive and almost dan­ger­ously (to him­self) funny. We actu­ally ended up there thinking we were going to see “An Inconvenient Musical”. Turned out we had mixed up the show times! No regrets though, this Englishman is a fine come­dian and writer. In his show “Gibberish”, Chris takes his obvi­ously nat­ural obser­va­tional qual­i­ties and mashes them up with a good helping of utter irrev­er­ence, all while man­aging to blow a couple of bal­loons on stage.

Tonight we caught “F[_]ck Off and Die: Tales in Teen Angst Poetry“, a one-woman show by Sara Bynoe. Absolutely bril­liant! She takes you on a bright and cheerful journey through the dark and morose and highly self-referential jungle of teenage angst poetry. It’s absolutely, deliri­ously hilar­ious for anyone, espe­cially those of us who were grungers and mis­fits, who were trag­i­cally poetic and poet­i­cally bored, in the ’90′s.

Tomorrow, it’s another day, another play.
Or 2 or 3…

Tories reopen same-sex mar­riage debate.

Poor clue­less Stephen Harper… just doesn’t realize what cen­tury he’s in. As one com­menter on this article put it, “Harper is a com­plete fool. A bigot, prej­u­diced, homo­phobic simple little man.”