Last Friday, David Frost was acquitted of all four counts of sexual exploitation. He had been accused of manipulating his former players and their teenage girlfriends into group sex.

Christie Blatchford of the Globe and Mail weighs in on the trial with a superbly inquisitive column.

She writes:

How curious that at the just-ended criminal trial of former junior coach and National Hockey League-accredited player agent David Frost, it was, to use the lexicon of the national game, the girls who had the biggest balls.

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It’s Thanksgiving day for our neighbours next door in the United States.

Thanksgiving comes with a lot of historical baggage of course around colonization, the pilgrims, etc, but a lot of people have taken it back as simply a day to be thankful. That’s up to you to decide.

Watch this cool video from Longhouse Media with youth from the Swinomish, Lummi and Muckleshoot Nations talk about what Thanksgiving means to them.

So what does it mean to you?

For those of us involved in youth media or technology, the last few weeks have been all about the results of a 3.3 million dollar research project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation called Kids’ Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Culture. The project was carried out by investigators at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley. The purpose of the research? To discover and learn about what young people are doing when they hang out online, doing what researchers like to call “informal learning” and what the rest of us usually refer to as “playing”, “hanging out” and, if we have an assignment due, “wasting time”. During this study dozens of research projects looked at teenagers’ use of MySpace, YouTube, Neopets, gaming sites and more.

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Luddites is the Globe and Mail‘s take on the research. For a more nuanced discussion, here is a video of Mizuko Ito, lead author of the study, talking about the findings.

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Events of late remind me that I need to post this.

Watch this awesome video produced by Native Lens from the always amazing Longhouse Media. These are youth from the Swinomish Tribe who tell YOU loud and clear why they are proud to be Native.

I know I’m damn proud to be Native!

Gender-based jokes that poke “fun” at domestic chores run rampant in the dominant culture. And somehow men are always the butt of the joke. But the “modern woman” is still stuck doing the laundry because the jokes just allow us as a society to shrug off their “inability” as part of their domestic failure as men, and not as part of the actual divisions in the home when it comes to domestic chores.

When it comes to chores I prefer the barter system. It’s what you would do with a roommate, or a sibling, and does not have to be any different when you’re in a relationship that highlights socially defined gender roles. At the end of the day I hate doing the cat litter and any living partner or roommate that is willing to take the cat litter on without complaint is my hero.

Luckily for them I’m always willing to do the laundry in exchange. It also means that I can use soap I’m not allergic to, can use/make less harmful detergents, and can use alternatives to the dryer in the summer (like the laundry line).

With that in mind, I thought I would compile a list of my favourite DIY projects for the laundry so that if you got the sweet deal of laundry over litter, you can have some DIY fun too.

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My younger sister informed me of this during my latest research on youth sexual health resources online.

rejectionhotline.com provides a telephone number you can give to those who apparently “can’t take a hint” when you turn their proposition down.

The thought of this (US-based) company making profits now over the reality of pushiness that exists in our overtly sexual world is disgruntling. But I have to admit the message you hear when you call it is actually kind of funny.

Now, I’ve had my fair share of persistors, although I’m someone who really doesn’t care about being “mean” or being called a bitch if the answer isn’t what they want to hear. No means no, and I have frequently been annoyed by the “Oh but I’m saying no because I have a boyfriend” reasons. Actually if I were single, I’d say no to you too. Thanks.

But not all situations play out like that, and I can definitely see where safety and violence prevention must be considered, especially if you just aren’t a very vocal person.

Thoughts anyone?

Debate is brewing about whether or not coffee cups, plastic bags and water bottles should be banned. The coffee cup purveyors don’t think you could handle it.

“…the possibility of a ban or restrictions raises questions about whether consumers can break their reliance on non-recyclable coffee cups and disposable takeout containers.”
- from the Globe and Mail

Dirty Little Spoons à la Toronto’s Guerrilla Gourmet

The optimistic viewpoint would say that yes, humans of all stripes, even the spoiled ones, can waste less and survive. In fact — and try to stay with me — if we continue to waste as much as we do, we might not survive.

What’s your take? Do you always BYOmug? Are you motivated by discounts, like getting a Grande for the price of a Tall? (Or a Liatorp for the price of a Flarke?)

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The recipients of the 2008 Person’s Case Awards were announced earlier this month. The award honours people who have made “outstanding contributions” to the advancement of Canadian women and is named for the five women who, in 1929, won the right for women to be recognized as persons – The Famous Five.

The list of recipients is impressive but Shari Graydon – a longtime feminist activist and writer – wonders why the youth award was given to a man named Ben Barry for running a modelling agency. Shari has passed on a letter she wrote to the Persons Case Award Committee (see below). In it, she argues that the Person’s Case youth award could have been handed out to one of the hundreds of young women across Canada who struggle to improve women’s lives in meaningful ways.

I agree with Shari. In the face of the continual violence, exploitation, and oppression women in this country face, and considering the tricky tactics the beauty industry uses to sell us things we don’t need, I do not believe that running a for-profit modeling agency should be recognized as making an “outstanding contribution” to women’s lives, and I can think of dozens of young women activists (many of whom frequent this blog) who deserve this award. Maybe Shari’s letter will inspire you to nominate someone next year.

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Earlier this week Forbes.com published an article on the World Economic Forum’s Best Countries for Women study:

“Norway, Finland and Sweden are ranked the best countries for gender equality, according to a recent study from the World Economic Forum, the nonprofit organization known for its annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, for global leaders. Those Nordic countries and their Western European neighbors account for 16 of the top 30 countries with the greatest gender parity in the world.

Meanwhile, the U.S. ranked surprisingly low at No. 27, behind Lesotho (No. 16), Mozambique (No. 18) and Moldova (No. 20). Not surprisingly, the worst-ranked countries were sprinkled throughout the Middle East and Asia. Garden spots like Chad (129th), Saudi Arabia (128th) and Pakistan (127th) populated the bottom of the list.”

It’s a pretty standard article - though I have to say I didn’t share the writer’s CAN YOU BELIEVE THE US IS NOT FIRST??? sentiment. (Annnd I also didn’t care for the flippant way the Middle East and Asia were called out. Not that I’m doubting the numbers, I just don’t like your tone, young man.)

However, I did have two thoughts:

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