If you haven't sponsored Eddie Izzard yet, now's the time!

Tomorrow is the last day of Eddie Izzard 27 marathons in 27 day challenge.

So far, he has completed 25 marathons in 26 days, after losing a day to a medical emergency.  So he decided he's going to make it up by running two marathons (84 km) tomorrow, even though he's never done a double marathon before.  And, because apparently that's not challenging enough, he then decided to up his last day's run to 90 km, in honour of South Africa's Comrades Marathon.

Eddie is scheduled to start his double marathon at 5 a.m. South African time (which is about 2 hours after I click Publish on this post), and to end 12 hour later. 

I ardently wish him all the good luck in the known universe, and sincerely hope that enough money is raised that everyone involved feels fully satisfied that this increasingly herculean undertaking was completely worthwhile.

You can follow Eddie's adventure live on BBC, Twitter, and Periscope, and donate via Sport Relief.

Mandatory Star Wars Day post

Turns out the North is actually empty

A while back, I asked "Is the North actually empty?"  I'd seen maps that suggest large swaths of completely uninhabited land, and I was wondering whether they're genuinely empty or just sparsely populated.

Today I stumbled upon this cool map of North America showing a dot for every person reported in the Canada and US censuses.  Based on this map, it appears that large swaths of the North are actually completely devoid of human habitation.  You can zoom in and get a full page of white, with no dots whatsoever.

That's awesome, in both senses of the word.

Why are we resistant to the idea that we might have privilege?

Reading Scalzi's Lowest Difficulty Setting and the follow-up got me thinking. People are generally quite resistant to the idea that they have any sort of privilege. Their (and my) automatic, knee-jerk response tends to be "What? No I don't!"

But why is this?

I can tell you why I'm resistant to it. I'm resistant to it because for the vast majority of my life I was being given the message that I'm lucky about and should be thankful for things I didn't care about, many of which I didn't even like. For example, my parents would take us on stressfully long family vacations - whole summers lost to fighting off carsickness while having zero privacy - and tell me that I should be grateful that I get to travel. When we were travelling, my parents tried to save money by never eating at restaurants, instead taking us to a supermarket and telling us to pick out what we wanted to eat for dinner. But we never had a fridge or a stove or a microwave (and often not even a kettle), or even dishes or utensils. I'd ask if we can go to a restaurant because I'd been yearning for days for a nice big salad and a steaming plate of pasta, and they'd tell me I should be thankful we have food at all. My father went through this phase where he calculated that if they hadn't had kids they could drive a Mercedes instead of a Honda so he told us that we should be thankful they made that sacrifice and decided to have us. But, on top of the fact that I'm intrinsically nihilistic, this was during the worst of my bullying; I, and everyone else involved, would have been far happier if they'd gone for the Mercedes instead. (Even now, if I hadn't been born I obviously wouldn't be around to care, and I seriously doubt my parents would be postmenopausally regretting not having an overly-introverted, socially-awkward daughter with a non-lucrative career path and a lifestyle that rejects their values.)

So, because of all this, any sort of hint or insinuation that I have some sort of privilege or advantage or some other thing I should be thankful for evokes this feeling of all this stressful shit that I didn't even want to deal with in the first place piling up my tetris blocks and if they'd just left me alone I could go be alone in my room with a book and be much happier.

But these are all my own personal neuroses, stemming directly from specific feelings and experiences in my own life. None of this is broadly applicable to the general population.

So where's it coming from for everyone else?

Best story ever

A while back, I stumbled upon a blog by a woman who was raised in a fundamentalist christian household and grew up to marry a minister and have lots of children in quick succession.  I found the author sympathetic and engaging, and was soon reading it regularly because I was just so interested in a life that's so different from my own. 

This blogger has recently posted the most amazing story - and the most romantic real-life love story - I've ever heard of. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, start to finish.

Watch a dog rescue another dog!

(via @EddieIzzard)

Drop everything and watch the baby goat being adorable!

In which my planned blog post is obsoleted

I was going to blog about this, but POGGE beat me to it and did it far better than I could have. Please go read POGGE if you'd normally read my posts on municipal politics.

My traditional post-election test of the Hill Knowlton predictor

Click here for a projection of the 2011 election outcome made with the actual 2011 popular vote numbers.

It predicts Conservative 166, NDP 70, Liberal 36, Bloc 35, Green 0, Other 1.

You can click on the map to see what it predicts for your own riding.

Quick, drop everything and watch the sleepy baby bunny!

Wherein Eddie Izzard explains you what I've learned from him

The most important of the many many things I've learned from Eddie Izzard is how to be brave and confident by admitting your shortcomings upfront. This is something I've just absorbed from watching him, and I haven't been able to articulate to others precisely how or why it works, or why exactly watching Eddie leads me to learn this lesson.

Fortunately, Eddie can articulate it himself:

Cute of the day

Did you go look at how big the Pakistan flood is? If not, go look at it now.

Did you look at it? Really?

Okay, now you can watch the monkey with the pet kitten

Lookit the itty bitty bunny!

(Yes, that's a dandelion he's eating! That's how small he is!)

This is so cool!

Sesame Street from 1977. Buffy Sainte Marie explains breastfeeding to Big Bird, while actually feeding her real-life baby! I love how it's so simple and age-appropriate, and yet answers every possible question without any drama

Dog show dress codes

A while back, I discovered that dog shows have dress codes for humans.

This video takes this phenomenon to its natural conclusion:

This makes me ridiculously happy

Apparently Hugh Jackman can juggle fire

A number of people I know (some of whom are reading this) are totally fangirl for Hugh Jackman. While they present a sound thesis supported by well-structured arguments and copious documentary evidence, he doesn't quite do it for me.

However, you have do to admire someone who can just randomly and gratuitously juggle fire.

Monkeys vs. Jello

Kitten!

(as always, via Malene Arpe)

Astronauts and dogs and Twitter

1. Astronaut Leland Melvin appears to have had a formal astronaut portrait taken with his big gorgeous dogs! I'd love to have been behind the scenes in that photo session.

2. Astronauts Scott Kelly and Ron Garan, currently in Moscow, found a stray dog...on a train!