When the tank is ready, the betta will appear

I've had a divided 10 gallon tank set up for months now, in the hopes of rescuing another couple of bettas.

Today my landlord gave me her brother-in-law's betta, which she described as half dead because "he forgot to change the water" (the water was full of debris).

Nicky has named the new betta Red Licorice, because of his colour and because Nicky likes candy (our first betta is called Jellybean). Red Licorice is noticeably smaller than Jellybean, I don't know if he is a lot younger, or if it's because of the conditions he was living in.

Unfortunately my digital camera is not working tonight and in any case my site is down so I have nowhere to host the image. :(

Anyway, please join me in welcoming Red Licorice!

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Originally posted on the late great Vegan Porn.

Rejected by Chapters.Indigo.ca

I wanted to become a bookstore affiliate and maybe make a bit of money off some book reviews on my website. I am boycotting Amazon.com until they stop selling foie gras, so I decided to go with Chapters.Indigo.ca.

Here's the reply from Performics (who runs their affiliate programme).

To Rosemary Amey.ca,

Thank you for your interest in the Performics Affiliate Program. At this time we cannot approve your application because of at least ONE of the following reasons:

1. At this time we do not see an appropriate fit with your site and our network of Clients.
2. We were unable to access and review your site from the URL provided in your application, or the site was incomplete.
3. Your site includes adult-related and/or pornographic content.
4. There is religious content on your site.

It is our policy to fully review each site before approval into our network. Please feel free to re-apply after you have made the necessary adjustments to your site.

If you have questions or comments, please contact us at affiliate@performics.com.

Sincerely,

Performics Affiliate Network...powered by ConnectCommerce
www.performics.com

I guess maybe the milk porn image on this page got me in trouble? (Even though it is no more explicit that the Ontario Milk Marketing Board picture on the same page which appeared all over public transit...) Or maybe it was the religious content?

Either way, it seems dumb to reject me for these reasons when Chapters.Indigo.ca sells sexually explicit books and religious books.

Oh well, it's their loss. I'm applying for Barnes and Noble next.

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Originally posted on the late great Vegan Porn.

My betta is sick

Today I was horrified to see that my betta, Jellybean, has a horribly swollen abdomen. He had been moping around at the bottom of the tank more than usual for the last week or so, but he was still eating well and the water tested okay so I was hoping it was nothing.



From what I've read, it could be constipation, or a tumour. I really hope it is just constipation. I recently started using a different betta food because the store was out of the kind I usually get. I hope that's all the problem is. But he is about 2 years old, which is the usual lifespan for bettas though some have lived up to 5 years.

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Originally posted on the late great Vegan Porn.

Blaming mother

As a single mom, not by choice, it has long irked me the way the media constantly blather about the problems suffered by children of single mothers, as though it is the mothers who are lacking, and not the fathers who abandoned their responsibilities in the first place.

For example, I recently attempted to read The Wonder of Boys by Michael Gurian, a book about parenting boys which apparently is intended for families in some parallel universe, where the chief problem experienced by boys is that they expected to act like (stereotypical) girls. (The solution is to accept their stereotypical boy qualities. Of course this doesn't seem to have much application for the universe I live in, where stereotypical boy qualities are not just accepted, they are often forced onto boys, and woe betide the boy who is sensitive, or likes ballet, or otherwise transgresses against the "boy code", as Elaine Aron put it.)

Gurian tries to be nice to us poor single moms, but his attitude is, sorry ladies, you haven't got what it takes. No where (as far as I can tell; I didn't finish the book) does he take the absent fathers to task for their actions (or inaction) which affect their children.

Of course, Gurian's approach is pretty standard these days. But CTV reached a new nadir today in mother blaming.

On March 6, Alnoor Amarsi threw his daugher Inara off a bridge before jumping after her to his death. Incredibly, Inara survived, though she is still in critical condition. In his suicide notes, he said he was going to kill Inara because he hated his estranged wife, Shamsha Amarsi.

To me, it's pretty obvious which is the problem parent here (duh). But evidently not to someone on the CTV.ca news staff, who wrote:

Earlier this month, CTV News Toronto reported that the incident started when the 48-year-old man asked his estranged wife for more time with their daughter.
She said no. That appeared to trigger the tragic chain of events—one which he had apparently threatened before.

Ah. So despite appearances, it was mom's fault that Inara was dropped off a bridge. I guess she shouldn't have selfishly refused to let dad spend more time with the kid. So what if he had already threatened to kill Inara before? Fathers have rights, you know.

Guillotines

Today I succumbed to temptation and put Google Ads on my site.

Of course, because of the way the ads are chosen, some of them contradict my views.

The worst one is, however, is for guillotines to kill lab animals

They sell two models: a small one for rats and mice, and a larger one which will also handle cats, rabbits, and "larger subjects". And they invite vivs to ask them to custom make an even larger model!

Well, I'm hoping that these dumb ads will help bring out why vivisection is bad.

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Originally posted on the late great Vegan Porn.

Today is Shrove Tuesday

A great excuse to make pancakes for supper!

Here's my method:

Put a cup of flour or so into a liquid measuring cup.
Add a heaping spoonful of baking soda and a smidgen of salt.
Add enough soydrink to make into a batter. Thick batter=thick pancakes, thin batter=thin pancakes.
Heat frying pan on low, put in a blob of margarine, then pour on the desired amount of batter. Flip the pancakes when the top looks dry.
I add more margarine each time I pour in more batter.
Serve with real maple syrup.

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Originally posted on the late great Vegan Porn.

Does institutionalized schooling help disabled kids, or create them?

The current vogue for cochlear implants, and the associated difficult finding classes in Sign for intact Deaf children, is yet another example of how institutionalized schooling (and mainstream society) inevitably ends up imposing conformity on students. All kids assigned to the same grade (based on their date of birth) are expected to do and learn the same things at the time. Those who are on a different timetable, if they differ "too much", are diagnosed with "learning disabilities" (or "giftedness"). The ones who are too active to put up with sitting at a desk all day are drugged, and now the deaf kids are surgically altered to suit the system.

I know there is a big desire to mainstream disabled kids by getting them into the same schools as nondisabled kids, but the more I learn about institutionalized schooling the more I am convinced that it will always be problematic for everyone. Even the best teacher in the world cannot truly know and meet the needs of the 20 to 30 kids in the class.

I am determined to continue unschooling my son.

Recently, my landlord asked me, how can unschoolers know if their child is learning disabled?

I replied that the concept of learning disability is controversial. Kids vary a great deal in when they are ready to learn different things--for example, my son learned to walk when he was 16 months, but my landlord's daughter learned to walk when she was 10 months. This doesn't mean that my son is "walking disabled" or her daughter is "walking gifted"—they both learned to walk, and in the long run who cares what age they started? Kids also vary greatly in when they are developmentally ready to learn to read—some kids teach themselves at 4, others don't get it until they are 9 or 10 but in a few years you can't tell the teenagers who were early readers from those who started later. But by putting them in the institutionalized schooling system which demands that everyone do the same thing as their agemates, these differences suddenly become a problem, and are pathologized.

I would like to dismantle institutionalized schooling and the associated societal attitude that everyone should learn the same things and have the same abilities. Instead society seems to be moving in the other direction, with more drugs, surgeries, genetic screening, etc. to ensure our children are more uniform. And here in Canada there is talk of extending the school system to younger children. Maybe at some point in the future the 16-month-old walker will be diagnosed with some kind of disability because he isn't following the system's timetable.

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This article first appeared in a slightly different form on the Bioethics Yahoo! Group.