Apparently something I missed on the front page of the Journal on Monday, Graffiti ruffles feathers:

Sara Olsen fell in love with a little black bird at the tender age of 20.

It was in 2005 that she first spotted the bird, stencilled in spraypaint on a grey utility box near the Garneau Theatre. Next to it was a speech bubble containing one word: listen.

...

Scrawl, a website that documents street artwork, calls the artist Listen. According to Scrawl, Listen's original graffiti was done with stencils but has evolved to include markers, stickers, paste-ups and traditional aerosol work.

SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!!

(Sorry)

This is good. Front page of the Journal: Taking on the Tyrrell:

Canada's first creationist museum will open June 5 in Big Valley as "a scientific and biblically based alternative to the evolutionary view of Earth history" put forward by the Royal Tyrrell Museum 60 kilometres to the south, said Harry Nibourg, founder of the Big Valley Creation Science Museum.

Well, it took a while, but:

Dear Paras:

Thank you for your email regarding the ingredients used in our products.

We apologise for the delay in our response; as most of our confectionery products sold in Canada are sourced from sister units, we needed to gather much information before supplying you with an accurate answer.

We would like to confirm that our confectionery products sold in Canada have always, and will continue to contain vegetarian-friendly whey.

We recognize that there are many different approaches to practicing vegetarianism and therefore recommend that consumers read the label of our confectionery products as milk and egg may be present.

We thank you for your interest in our products.


Best regards,


Your Friends at MARS Canada Inc.

I got said soul for a borrowed pencil.

Shit, looks like I'm getting in on the ground floor. Five years from now, I'll either have all the minions I need, or a wealth of firstborns worth at least twice what I paid (two granola bars! Can you imagine?!)

Thanks Paras.

And I'd say yes, owning a soul trumps ownership of the firstborn. I'd sell my firstborn for a lot less than I'd part with my soul. A Hershey bar would probably do it.

Medical Education Understatement of the Day:

Thanks to all for their constructive feedback (aka criticism). I wasn’t feeling the love during the exam, that’s for sure.

-- Oncology Block Coordinator

While I'm answering questions,

Does owning a person's soul trump getting someone's firstborn?

A proxy is basically a pass-through server. Instead of connecting directly to a given website, you connect to the proxy, and it connects to the website for you. The website you're connecting to sees the proxy's IP address and not your own.

Since websites determine geographical location from IP addresses, if your proxy is based in the States, the site you connect to thinks you're in the States.

As usual, wikipedia is more thorough with the info. They also link to some lists of public proxy servers that you can use. They also link to a site with setup instructions.

Still, it's a lot to do (especially for non-tech-savvy users) just to listen to music that you might not know, but suits your tastes. (But, then, isn't that the whole problem with the modern music/copyrights/licensing environment? Too much work to do simple tasks?)