Cate Simpson

Stephan Marinoiu, the frustrated father of a 15 year-old autistic boy, began a hunger strike outside the Legislative Assembly of Ontario at Queen’s Park last Sunday, May 4. Six days later, he’s still hanging in there, and although he’s reportedly beginning to show signs of weight loss, he appears to be in good health.

Marinoiu’s son Simon is one of an ever-growing number of children on the waiting list for a government program called Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI), designed to give autistic kids the social skills to lead a more normal life. The program, which provides 20-40 hours per week of one-on-one therapy, specially tweaked for each individual child, is incredibly effective and phenomenally expensive. And, with autism on the rise (the US Centre for Disease Control estimates that around 1 in 165 children are autistic, up from around 1 in 500 a decade ago), the waiting times are getting longer and longer. Some, like Simon, wait years for treatment.

Simon was denied access to the program because he reached the age cut-off for service while still on the waiting list. The age restriction has now been lifted, but researchers insist that for speech and behavioural therapy to make a real difference, it needs to start when the children are young. In his YouTube video, Stephan Marinoiu says that he is making a stand not just for his own struggle, but for all the children who stand to benefit from the IBI program.

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Or it will be tonight between 10:00 and 10:51 p.m., when there will be a total lunar eclipse over Toronto (and various other cities North America and Western Europe, but 10 p.m. is when it’s happening here).

Lunar eclipses may not be as apocalyptic and awe-inspiring as solar eclipses, but they do have the advantage of not blinding you if you stare at them. Also, if you catch one at just the right moment, it will look a bit like the Firefox logo.

Eclipses, like streetcars, are rare creatures that make their long-awaited appearances in clusters of three or more, and the next few years will see several partial eclipses. Tonight, however, is your last chance to catch a total one until 2010. So it’s worth braving the cold, wind, and augers of snow and staking out somewhere with a clear view of the moon to point, take pictures and go, "Ooh."

Or possibly, "Aooooooo."

(Original article)

As the popular phrase goes, when one video store door slams shut, another one opens.

A new video store has sprung up on Dundas (just west of Dufferin) catering to "women and the LGBT community." The store––called West Side Stories––has a broad selection of old and new queer/transgender movies and documentaries, as well as a section for "women in film" alongside the usual array of new releases and cult classics.

It’s encouraging to note that even with the blue-and-yellow behemoths stationed in every neighborhood and the rise of video-on-demand (not to mention wireless broadband making it possible to download pirate movies in under an hour), the market can still support a niche video store in Rua Acores.

First rental is free, because apparently they’ve caught onto the fact that once you’ve rented the first season ofThe L Word, you will keep going back until you’ve watched the whole lot, even though you’ve seen them all already and the tiny one who writes stories about Manatees makes everyone want to throw things.

(Original article)