Writ of Mainprize

O.k. I've always looked at personal health care products (soaps, shampoos, cremes, cosmetics, etc) with a jaundiced eye. Often it industry comes across as unregulated and they make unverified claims of efficacy. From a Reddit , there was a link to a really good site describing the action of the ingredients in a typical shampoo: Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate, Ammonium Laureth Sulfate The detergents that clean your hair Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone, Sodium Benzoate Preservatives to stop the shampoo from becoming contaminated! Ew! Disodium EDTA, Citric Acid, and Sodium Citrate PH balance to help cleaning and stability Dimethicone and Polyquaternium-10 Conditioners to restore shine and reduce tangles due to the cleaning process. Thickeners Here the article is a little vague. Indirectly, the author suggests that Cocamide MEA is a thickener. Thickeners are required to give a little resistance to the shampoo ... Read the full post »

I keep forgetting to mention the new (well, newish) look of the Toronto Police Pipe Band website, which is much more multimedia friendly, more informative and a little more fun. Check it out.

Homeopathy is a waste of time, effort and money. It kills. Even the World Health Organization has issued a statement regarding the utter lack of evidence. A BBC piece summarizes their stand. Unfortunately, in an effort to maintain "balance" they also get statements from Paula Ross the chief executive of the Society of Homeopaths who ladles out a crock of shit regarding the "evidence" of homeopathy helping childhood diarrhea. See "Analysis of homeopathic treatment of childhood diarrhea. " (critique of article appearing in 'Pediatrics,' vol. 93, p. 719), or Homeopathy for Childhood and Adolescence Ailments: Systematic Review of Randomized Clinical Trials for clear examples that discredit the validity of these studies.

Well, I think the experiment with a self controlled web-box has run its course. For a long while, there was really nothing better. But recently, commercial webhosting has become advanced, reliable, flexible and, most importantly, cheap! So I made the switch to HostGator, for only a few dollars more than I was paying to maintain our old system. Without a doubt, my favourite thing is the significantly increased cpu speed needed for processing dynamic websites. I'm currently in the process of transferring my old site to the new one, so expect things to be wonky for a while.

After looking for several months, we finally found a place we could afford and in a neighbourhood we love.  And what's this about a housing market downturn?  It's definitely all gone in Toronto.  We put several bids on different houses — one of them went 20% over ask, and 11 bidders at that!  It's an older house, so lots of little things need attention.