kiran’s pensieve

Found this off this blog:

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.”

BBC NEWS | Health | Woman sees own heart on display

Accompanied by a video of this rare sort of news story.

This should make things even more interesting…

Aging workforce a tidal wave ready to hit economy

This was an interesting article about Canada’s aging population, that is not being replaced with children at the same rate. RESP’s, child tax credits, public healthcare, open immigration policy, these are all methods in which the government is trying to raise the numbers of the Canada’s youth population. As a G8 country with universal health care and high living standards, it’s quite an ominous thought that if the human “refill rate” in Canada remains the same, that within the next 10 years, “Canada may have more people at the age where they can leave the labour force than people at the age where they can begin working,”.

That doesn’t sound good.

Extending the working lives of everyone over a certain age is not only not going to solve the problem, it could make things worse. Ever seen an 95 year old drive? But seriously, after having worked for all these decades, the generations of people approaching their later years should be allowed some rest and reprieve, wouldn’t you agree?

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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…

Because there really aren’t bigger problems in the world.

The professor had hoped to spend the afternoon listening to discourse on arcane topics. Instead, he was handcuffed to another suspect and fingerprinted in a detention centre, where his peppermints were confiscated, “presumably on the suspicion that they might be some kind of narcotic”.

There’s a news story I’ve been following for a while that has to do with a London, Ontario family of a same-sex couple who had a child with a male friend. The second female member of the couple (the non-bio mother) had applied to gain status as the child’s third parent, and as of a ruling yesterday, she now has this status.

“Boy can have two mothers and a father, Ontario appeal court rules”
A.A. and C.C. have been in a stable same-sex union since 1990. In 1999, they decided to start a family with the assistance of their friend B.B.

The two women would be the primary caregivers of the child, but they believed it would be in the child’s best interests that B.B. remain involved in the child’s life.

Not only is this wonderful news for the progressive, sophisticated community of open minded individuals paving the beautiful realities of tomorrow in the face of traditionalists who would rather see loveless nuclear marriages than happy open families, this is also excellent for the child who will get to enjoy the love and support of 3 parents, 6 grandparents and a much larger family base than most others in the world.

There are those who believe that the human race is headed for hell specifically because the traditional definitions of marriage, family and community are being re-written. I say to them, who came up with those traditional definitions? Do you think things were always so? No they were not. Our idea of the 2 parent nuclear family is very recent. In fact untill about the middle ages, the Church itself frowned upon marriage of any kind. Until the Industrial Revolution, children were raised by an interconnected network of familial bonds with both blood and non-blood relatives. Monogamy itself is a concept very recently enforced in human history, there are many cultures in the world where it’s still not the norm.

So what’s the big deal? I say let all children enjoy the benefits of having more people love them and care for them. I say let all adults enjoy the same benefits. Let’s stop thinking of love as a limited commodity that must be held back. Instead let’s free ourselves to be who we know we are in our deepest dreams. Lets love and let love.