Davey Boy 2.0

REBECCA FLEMING The un-news was short-lived. On Feb. 18, the media had legendary Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot dead, then un-dead, within the span of about an hour. That was pretty easy for Mr. Lightfoot to clear up, from his car on the way to the dentist. But my own good no-name, not so much. I, Rebecca Fleming (heard of me? Didn't think so), have been identified by several news sources as ground zero for the rumour. I, a full-time biologist with two little kids recovering from gastroenteritis, apparently have nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon in quarantine than to start celebrity death hoaxes. The idea is kind of appealing in principle - having the time, free headspace and lack of conscience to dream up twisted schemes like this. Not to mention having that kind of clout and credibility. Can you imagine? Move over, Perez Hilton. But alas, my sole claim to infamy is that I, @fleminski, was the first to tweet "RIP Gordon Lightfoot." I had heard the news from a mutual friend of Ronnie Hawkins (who, incidentally, introduced my parents to each other). Someone claiming to be Gordon Lightfoot's grandson started the whole business with a prank call to Mr. Hawkins's management. But nobody seems to be interested in him. He used the telephone. And dude, that's just so 20th century. If you want to spread things fast, Twitter is your friend. Or your enemy, as the case may be. I was a Twitter nobody with a mere 100 followers, tweeting just for fun, a molecule in the Twitter sea. But 10 minutes after I posted that seemingly innocent tweet, I got a call from a CanWest reporter. I pretty much had the feeling of floating above my body when I realized the magnitude of what I had done. But my first thought wasn't, "What if it isn't true?" It was, "What if his family doesn't know yet?" The reporter assured me she had heard the rumour elsewhere and needed a source, so I spilled. Then I set about protecting my tweets in a vain attempt to stop the spread of the news. Not long afterward, I got a tweet from @rootsmusicanada, who had confirmed that Gordon Lightfoot was alive and well. After a brief moment with my head between my knees, trying to maintain consciousness, I posted an apologetic retraction, which went out to, well, nobody, because my tweets were protected. Around the same time, I started seeing "RIP Gordon Lightfoot" everywhere. On Facebook, on Twitter and, oh my gosh, in the news. I panicked. I deleted my Twitter account outright (RIP @fleminski) and turned off my computer in the hope that it would all just go away. It didn't. By the time I went back online, Gordon Lightfoot was officially undead (phew!) and the witch hunt was on (uh-oh!). Media guru and sleuth Ian Capstick was hot on my trail, and even had my picture and the dreaded tweet in question on his blog. Commenters were gleefully posting personal information about me: my full name, where I lived, whom I worked for. So I did what anybody in my situation would do. I opened a bottle of wine, and began to drink. Meanwhile, Ronnie Hawkins, Gordon Lightfoot's production company and the media were unable to make any kind of connection between the phone-call hoax and my tweet, and nobody was quite sure which came first. Of course, @fleminski was nowhere to be found. But never mind that. In reality, my tweet was a pop rock compared to respected CanWest journalist David Akin's atomic bomb. He innocently tweeted, to his many journalist followers, a CanWest alert: "Gordon Lightfoot has died, sources close to the singer say." Kaboom. You can figure out the rest. In the wake of Lightfoot's good-humoured resurrection, a huge blamestorm blew through the media and blogosphere, and few seemed to be able to get the story straight. People largely blamed Twitter and lack of journalistic integrity. And they blamed little old me. Hardly anybody seemed to care about the prankster who started this whole thing with a call to Mr. Hawkins's management. But I'm betting even he is surprised at the magnitude of the outcome. I think this all boils down to the fact that we're human. It's not unusual for people to die. And we're inherently gullible, especially when we have no reason to doubt the story or the source. Ronnie Hawkins believed his management. CanWest and I believed Ronnie Hawkins. David Akin believed CanWest. The rest of the media believed David Akin. Thankfully, Gordon Lightfoot didn't believe the radio, or he wouldn't have made it to his dentist appointment. Though I wasn't the origin of this hoax, I know that I acted as a significant and unwitting catalyst, and for that I am deeply sorry. I am glad that Gordon Lightfoot lives on to sing about the things that make us all human. Our passions, our fears and, most of all, our mistakes. Rebecca Fleming lives in Ottawa.

Washing the dog "Pet owners in Japan are washing their dogs and cats in specially designed vending machines to save money in the recession," Ananova.com reports. "More and more people are making use of machines such as one installed at a pet supermarket called Joyful Honda in the suburbs of Tokyo. It washes and blow-dries dogs and cats for the equivalent of just L 3.50 [$5.70 Canadian] - a massive saving on the costs of pet stylists who charge more than L 20 [$32.50] for a full wash and blow dry. . . . The 33-minute process includes a shampoo, a rinse and a dry.

"Scientists have known that newly acquired, short-term memories are often fleeting," ScienceDaily reports. "But a new study in flies suggests that kind of forgetfulness doesn't just happen. Rather, an active process of erasing memories may in some ways be as important as the ability to lay down new memories, say researchers who report their findings in the Feb. 19 issue of the journal Cell. 'Learning activates the biochemical formation of memory,' says Yi Zhong of Tsinghua University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. 'But you need to remove memories for new information to come in. We've found that forgetting is an active process to remove memory.' "

:surprise:

- foodie hipsters drive way out of their way to buy special eggs to go with their soy latte weekend eco-breakfast, - organic farmers know how to take advantage and have jacked up the price after getting the hipsters hooked - lame-o egghead authorities cracking down

sometimes a cigar isn't just a cigar

Too bad Carradonna retired as well!

one man's bewildered is another man's baked

well dinghy's more of a hockey connaisseu... wait no, that's not it... cheesesteaks?!?

CatPhish was a bit like that when I met her

SARAH ELTON Special to The Globe and Mail To farmers' markets across the country they flock, foodies in search of free-range eggs fresh from the farm. But they must move quickly because demand far outstrips supply. The eggs - laid by hens that roam free, eat bugs and live an existence that is antithetical to the life of the caged battery fowl that produce for supermarkets - sell out quickly. That is, unless you know who to ask and where to find them. Or, in some cases, the secret password. Dawn Woodward, owner of Evelyn's Crackers, an artisan baked-goods company in Toronto, will show up at the market at 7 a.m. for farm-fresh eggs or drive an hour out of town to find them. When she's leaving the city, she phones ahead to place an order with one of the hundreds of small farms in the country that sell pastured eggs. "The flavour is better," she says. "They are fresher and richer. They're sweeter, a fuller flavour." She prefers eggs laid by hens allowed to scratch and wander - when she can get them. This longing for farm eggs has pushed the price of a dozen to about $5, roughly the same price you pay for organic eggs at the supermarket. In California, where alternative eggs have reached cult status and where the farmers who raise them are stars - starmers - a carton can cost $8 (U.S.). The eggs offer smaller producers a good revenue source. But this growing market for a different kind of egg is creating tension between the small farms that raise them and the egg marketing board that has helped to develop the mainstream egg industry in Canada and its large chicken farms. This tension now is putting the future supply of this sought-after product in question as what some call the "egg police" crack down on the grey market. "It's a huge issue," says Tom Henry, a Vancouver Island farmer and editor of the magazine Small Farm Canada. "The right to sell eggs is the small-farm equivalent of the right to bear arms." Egg farming is governed by a supply management system in Canada, which means provincial egg marketing boards control the number of eggs produced. This quota system maintains a constant price, and proponents say it ensures that farmers make a living and consumers have a steady supply of eggs. But the eggs produced on farms that hold the quotas are not the eggs that foodies desire. It's the small, often organic operator who is supplying the fresh eggs to farmers' markets. Any farmer is permitted to keep 99 laying hens without buying quota, which is worth thousands of dollars, and they can sell their eggs from the farm gate without grading them, a process that evaluates quality. But they are forbidden from selling them elsewhere unless they are graded, which, for the small farmer, is a tough regulation to meet because grading stations are often a long way from the farm and it is expensive to set one up. This has created a grey market for eggs. If you know the password, you can buy a verboten dozen at an Ontario health food store. Often those popular eggs at the farmers' markets are kept out of sight - for a reason. "It's more like Prohibition," Mr. Henry says, "with far more people ignoring the regulations and selling eggs." But the risk may be high. There is talk of the "egg police" that keep track of who's doing what and rumours of farmers getting in trouble for breaking the rules. In 2008, a farmer was fined $3,000 (Canadian) for selling eggs to Ottawa-area restaurants. And in a notorious case in Eastern Ontario in 2006, the egg marketing board, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and police officers raided one farm and pressed charges including unlawful possession of laying hens because the farmer allegedly owned more than the permitted 99. Many small-scale farmers would rather not draw attention to their operations. "I'd prefer not to be on the radar screen, period," says one Ontario farmer who raises slightly less than 100 birds and tries to follow the rules. "It's a bit frustrating because I know there is demand out there for the eggs we can produce." It is not only the income that draws the small farmer to raise hens, says Karen Maitland of the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario. "They are part of the ecosystem when you look at a diversified farm," she says, explaining that the birds add to a farm by producing fertilizer. Because quota is pricey, the system doesn't work for small farms who keep a few chickens, she says. "We have to be careful because this is our system," says Laurent Souligny, chair of the Egg Farmers of Canada, regarding the rational behind the rules. "We have to make sure there are enough eggs out there and we don't to flood the system." Supply management keeps prices fair for both farmers and consumers because it controls the amount of product for sale. His organization is worried that too many eggs on the market could disrupt this balance. Mr. Henry sees it differently. He believes the egg marketing boards aren't anxious to make room in the marketplace for these alternative eggs because they invite the consumer to compare and contrast the two different products. "There are a lot of tough questions being asked of conventional egg producers because of an increased awareness of how chickens are raised," he says. The solution, however, is not to get rid of supply management, says the small farmer in Ontario, but to figure out how to fit this kind of operation into the existing system. He would like to be able to sell his eggs without having to grade them, as has recently been allowed on Vancouver Island after the health authority instructed its inspectors not to distinguish between graded and ungraded eggs. You can now buy the sought-after eggs at the store and they can be used in restaurants and commercial kitchens. "It's ultimately going to be a political decision to change this," the farmer says. "If consumers could taste the alternative, they'd want more."

I heard the glowdar is among the most finely tuned of all the -dars. You'll be fine, unless NW is skulking around of course

http://ehealthforum.com/health/topic103170.html First and foremost I sincerely hope not to offend anyone. I have had issues for a very long time in regards to my sexuality. I have never had homosexual thoughts but I do admit it did take me a while before I was strongly attracted to women and started dating at all. I was a virgin for a long time and actually almost had to be convinced to lose my virginity by a close friend of mine. It started out with kissing then lead to the whole "shebang." Yes, she was pregnant; however she was not showing very much at the time. We continued to have a physical relationship through the pregnancy and her belly got big and she got pretty voluptuous over all. Towards the end I wanted to get more serious with her as I new the baby was coming. She then dropped the bomb shell on me. She said she was attracted to me, however she was only participating in our physical relationship because she was extremely “horny†(for lack of a better word) and wanted to feel sexy through her pregnancy. She said she thought she had made this clear. She may have, but my crush was so big that I must have forgotten about that. I have had regular (non-pregnant) girlfriends since then however I do find that I am extremely attracted to pregnant girls. When at malls, stores, restaurants noticing a pregnant girl I will open doors and strike up little innocent conversations (weird?). I have even become very depressed over this attraction and feel like a “Freak†or misfit a few times a week. I did have one GF that was kinda ok with it. She was a fun girl and actually dressed up to look pregnant in pretty elaborately, realistic way with cute maternity clothes and all. She had no complaints and we had alot of fun. She ended up getting back with her ex boyfriend and cutting just about all communication with me. So my question is this… am I Crazy or Sick? What do you think? Please help me out.

Poll Part 1 Who is the coolest pregnant woman in Hamilton? A) Large Marge Someone else other than LM C) Chug! Part 2 Should LM go to the cougar bar with all it's added hilarity or a proper sports bar? A) Cougar Sports C) Chug!

dare to dream, mon ami

i think the punk was leaning more toward you having [color:#cccccc]your a banana split

save the whales!

I'm thinking of listening to tunes instead of the TSN yutzes tonight

perhaps you'd be better off analysing your neighbour's peewee team, son

i'm starting to suspect an ABC campaign on ollie's part Anyone But Canada

new rule: one chug for every time i reply to myself in this thread apologies if i've posted this before, it's England's plan B for the WC

rock and facking roll, mon ami

happy birthday, nice norks

This may be a good time to ask Badams to recount the time Brett Lindros and Mark Muller went toe to toe late one night at Stages in Kingston

facksakes, BR Can you get tested somewhere not associated with the co.? best of luck