January 8, 2009 – Life Begins at 41…or maybe 43

Ottawa snow storm, January 7, 2009 — Snow storm and empty Transitway

Day 30. Vote day.

Wonder if the turnout will be affected by all the snow that fell yesterday (15 cm, plus another 10 cm expected by rush hour this morning).

Cue the thriller music. Duhn duhn DUUUHN. What will happen? Will the city be rescued in time? Or is Superman stuck in traffic?

There’s a Citymark page for the strike that pulls relevant information from various social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Youtube, and photo repositories like Flickr.

Latest news articles (there aren’t many since there really isn’t much to write about that hasn’t already been written until after the voting today)

Other interesting sites:

(Sounds like a new blockbuster movie, doesn’t it?)

After the controversy over Facebook deleting pictures of women breast feeding, artist Phil Hansen (check out his awesome art creations at his Youtube channel or in his Goodbye Art blog; you won’t regret it) decided to experiment. Shirtless pictures of men are not banned from Facebook — clearly male nipples are acceptable — so Phil decided to create a profile photo for himself from a collage of pictures of his own nipples. The result is brilliant. He posted the video of him creating the photo on Youtube:

It took two days, but Facebook finally deleted the photo and warned him:

So, number of acceptable female nipples on Facebook = 0, number of acceptable male nipples = 2-ish. Pretty much reflects society as a whole (unless you’re in Toronto where I believe women are still permitted to be topless in public). Breastfeeding clearly falls into a different category than random topless women, though. While I’m not personally thrilled at breastfeeding women hauling out their breasts in public, most that I know are very discreet about it (and even if they weren’t, my personal discomfort is my problem, not theirs, and I certainly wouldn’t want breastfeeding or photos of breastfeeding banned anywhere as a result).

Membership in the “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!(Official petition to Facebook)” Facebook group, which appears to have been created in August 2007, grew by leaps and bounds after the controversy erupted and currently has 154,176 members.