• Goatse is dead; long live iGoatse.

When pharma licenses attack!

Dying man denied free drug:

Raymond Bouchard was delighted to learn that he qualified to receive a free drug to treat the cancer that is killing him [but] Health Canada won't release Thalomid to him because a licensed alternative is available -- it just happens to come with a $35,000 price tag.

With Health Canada's recent decision to stop releasing Thalomid, which U.S.-based Celgene Corp. will provide at no cost under its compassionate-use program, there's no way Mr. Bouchard, 73, can afford the licensed alternative, Velcade, to treat his multiple myeloma.

[read more @ Globe and Mail]

• An excerpt from The Itty Bitty Kitchen Handbook [101 Cookbooks]


• Volcano Remedy, avec M. Chocolat et M. Bidet [Bumblenut via bOINGbOING]


• Tudor published a book while I wasn't looking.

• "The province should be investing in proximity solutions rather than mobility solutions. When things are close together we don’t need to move around as much." [Spacing]


• One of these turbines would look awful nice on my balcony [via Gizmodo]


• Holy crap [MeFi]

• Subway to York is 10 years off, says TTC chair [CBC]


• "Various Canadian libraries have joined the Internet Archive to scan various collections of books as part of a high volume book scanning pilot project. Custom scanning equipment and open source software has been developed by the Internet Archive to support the needs of the partner libraries and their collections. This is being hosted at the University of Toronto." [Archive.org]

• TTC + Google = Sweet (eventually?) [Toronto Star, CTV]

• Off the Truck is (will be?) a Woot for Candians [EDGE 102]


• Problem: boredom/ignorance. Solution: list of latin phrases [Wikipedia]

It's cold, but not that cold

Source: Electricity consumption per capita [UNDP]

Tags: Electricity, Per capita, Consumption.

• 5 things you should know about healthcare wait times [Council of Canadians]


• Wake me up stickers for nap-happy transit folk [Londonist, via Torontoist]

Vee belieef in nussing, Lebowski

More where that came from, too.

• People are still reading Hamlet?

• Booyah! Queen's Park to green-light Spadina subway extension in this month's budget... to prolong the deficit on purpose? [Toronto Star, Transit Toronto]


• "A record 20,000 delegates are expected to meet for the 16th International AIDS conference in Toronto in August, organizers announced yesterday." [National Post]


• Brison to blame for income trust leak? [Globe and Mail]


• "A group of 27 clergy and laity from 12 faiths -- including the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, Zen, Daoist and aboriginal traditions -- have submitted affidavits stating they make regular use of the Jesuit property for meditative and prayerful retreats, and their spiritual quests would be impaired by the lights and traffic noise of a Wal-Mart store." [Globe and Mail]

• Toronto Hydro to offer cheap wifi downtown [Toronto Star, Spacing]


• This three part migraine "simulation" offers an accurate, if cheesy, depiction of "a day in the life of a person with migraine." The same site (Mind Over Migraine, covert pimpage for Ortho-MacNeil Neurologics' drug Topamax) also has some interesting migraine survey results.


• Will 9,100 OPSEU-organized college faculty members end up on picket lines? The deadline is midnight tonight. As usual, student group histrionics about being used as "pawns" in an evil, evil game abound.

• What the crap? 8% off shipping for eBay sellers using Canada Post?


• The City of Toronto needs 1,500 volunteers on April 19th for a Street Needs Assesment, basically a one-night census of the homeless. If you're interested in helping out, there's an online registration form.

Flying is Dying - "Fuel consumption figures for both fast passenger ships and ultra high-speed trains suggest that their carbon emissions are comparable to those of planes. What all this means is that if we want to stop the planet from cooking, we will simply have to stop traveling at the kind of speeds that planes permit." [AlterNet via Treehugger]

Tags: Air travel, Global warming, Climate change.

• Uberbru is an all-natural, 'open source' (?) hemp ale [via This Magazine]


• Six Cent Press makes sweet buttons cheap.


• CMA slammed for 'blatant interference' - "Any attempt by the CMA to impose its influence on [its medical journal] editors would be catastrophic for the CMAJ's reputation..." [Globe and Mail]