For the next month or so, most of the pictures posted will be from this year's Gay Pride Parade. Bringing in more than a million people each year, this event has become a symbol of tolerance not just for gays, but anybody that doesn't fit into the regular social framework. It's a chance for people to express themselves without shame, and I hope to have captured that this year.

When to vote for a Republican

A blogger in Utah will have to vote the Republican she has personally given the finger to on several occasions; because his opponent in the Republican primary, John D. Jacob, claims that Satan is preventing him from winning. To quote John D. Jacob himself: "when that gets out in the paper, I'm going to be one of the screw-loose people."

Like I said, Multiculturalism is broken

CBC Radio's Ideas program, which is always fantastic, is doing a special on Multiculturalism, with a lecture from a UBC Prof. Like every weeknight, it's on at 9:05 PM, 99.1 in Toronto, AM 990 in Winnipeg, and 690 AM in Vancouver, or you can check their Frequency Guide here.

This is Grenadier Pond, about 15 minutes from my house. It's stocked with Bass, and you'll usually find a few fishermen throwing in their lines in the morning.

So I've made the inevitable switch to Canon. For $150 (thanks, craigslist), I secured a 6 year old camera with auto-focus, Programmable mode, built-in flash, Shutter-priority mode, did I mention built-in flash? And these are just the settings that I've most longed for. My Minolta, which served this blog well until it's last day, was 25 years old (my age), and save for Aperture-priority, was purely manual. What was I thinking; it's just not worth it. I tried to be a purist, sticking with manual hardcore mode, but I now feel that my Minolta years were an impure waste of time performing mere manual labour. Film loading couldn't be easier with the new one, and I can see my aperture & shutter selection right in the view-finder. It's amazing what they've accomplished in the last 20 years.

Auto-focus, I can't get over it. $150, for a fantastic Canon Rebel 2000 EOS with a decent 28-90 mm lens. I'll make a note of my first pic to come from this camera.

Happy Birthday Steve, you piece of trash.

My camera died this weekend. The $2000 investment of Digital SLRs is still a year or two away for me, so I'll be looking into a "newer" SLR camera (mine is about 25 years old. Probably a mid-90s Canon with auto-focus and forward compatible lenses (EOS I think), for when I do switch to digital. Built-in flash would be nice.

I went to Henry's, which is a popular new & used camera store in Southern ON, and played around with some DSLRs. The biggest thing I'm currently missing out on was auto-focus, I couldn't get over how handy that is.

In 2000, Canon came out with a feature called ECF, which is Eye Controlled Focus. The camera tracks the movement of your eye, and focuses the lens on what you're looking at. Better keep it honest when taking pictures at the beach!

Terrorism in Canada

As all of you know, a terrorist plot was uncovered recently in Southern Ontario. It's incredibly unfortunate for the millions of peaceful Canadian Muslims that a few extremist members of their religion can conjure up such a negative image of Islam. Our questionable presence in Afghanistan is likely what fueled the anger behind this plot. But leaving that debate for another day, I want to talk about immigration.

Canada prides itself on being a multi-cultural country. The mix of people can be quite beautiful, in urban areas like Toronto, it's fascinating to walk through different neighborhoods and experience so many cultures in one place.

Being an immigrant is something I struggle to comprehend. While my world travels are extremely limited, I was fortunate enough to spend a day in Amsterdam recently. Mentally, I could just feel how different things were. Sensually, there were new smells, sights, and sounds everywhere I went. From the train, I saw people biking through the country-side, the cliche image of a blonde-haired lady in a skirt, happily biking down a picturesque road with tiny houses on either side. Everyone rode bikes, everyone seemed happy, everything was incredibly different. As I left the train and met several Dutch citizens, my perception of the Dutch changed slightly. Yes, they are very liberal, and they do seem very friendly, but it really is a very different way of life. I didn't take it to be better or worse than Canada, just different. That difference was both fascinating and discomforting. It was fascinating to see something I had so often read about and pictured, to have many of my assumptions about society questioned (I'll get to the Dutch's marital beliefs/dis-beliefs another time).

Yet that same new-ness about everything made me feel very out of place. I just knew it would take years of living in such a different world to really feel at home, if I ever would at all. I'm quite sure that many immigrants coming from war-torn countries never truly grasp their new surroundings; whether they consciously refuse to adapt their worldview after immigrating, or whether their mind simply can't undo the injustices they've seen human beings commit, the point is that many immigrants do not assimilate well.

A tiny example of this comes from a week ago, when I was taking pictures around my new neighborhood. There was an old man (likely Polish in this neighborhood), sitting on a bench enjoying some fruit in the sun. He had pineapples, apples, watermelon, and bananas surrounding him, and I thought it would make a great picture. Being a courteous photographer, I asked whether he would mind if I took a picture of him. For the next 3 minutes, I was subjected to a rant about how it's illegal to take pictures of people, how someone once smashed a photographer's camera, and he won in court because it's illegal. I tried and failed to reason with him for a minute, asking him about public security cameras for one thing, but like what I've decided to be many old people do, he simply said "No, no," and re-iterated his point as if I hadn't brought up a counter-point.

This is a polish neighborhood, and it's reasonable to assume he was born in Poland, and judging by his accent, lived a reasonable amount of his life there. This man may have seen terrible, terrible things in his life. His inner portrait of the common person may be extremely different than that of mine; if I had encountered nazi soldiers in my life, I may not thank the local McDonald's clerk for his services either.

Stay with me, I'm getting to it.

Many immigrants take issue with the North American lifestyle. It's usually the religious immigrants who are offended by the liberal lives we appear to lead. But the idea of multi-culturalism is to celebrate these differences. We may make different choices, but as long as we all place ourselves within the justice system and respect each other's choices, we should be able to co-exist.

But if more and more of the fundamentally conservative immigrants move in, where does the majority end up? The Dutch have had to ask these hard questions recently. It is estimated that the majority of children under 14 in Holland's three largest cities are "Non-Western," most of those being Muslim. These muslims are not integrating with the liberal Dutch culture; they despise it. The majority of the muslim children born in the Netherlands marry someone from their ancestral country, and the Islamic immigrants are populating at a much higher rate than the Dutch.

If muslims are projected to make up the majority in the three largest cities of The Netherlands, and they are opposed to dutch culture; then it naturally follows that the Dutch culture will be lost. The government is well aware of this, and has taken some drastic steps in an effort to preserve the Dutch culture, starting with kicking out 26,000 refugees who had failed in their attempts to claim official refugee status.

Macleans has an in-depth article on the "Backlash against Islam," and discusses more about Holland's pro-active plan, including an "integration test" that an estimated 500,000 Dutch citizens may have to take. Some new immigrants will be required to watch videos which portray topless women, and gay men kissing, and clearly inform the viewer that if they have any problems with this, they are not welcome.

I can't help but wonder, if the Islamic immigrants in Holland are populating at exponential rates relative to Dutch citizens, and yet continue to refuse the Dutch culture, what is their reason for moving to Holland? The simple fact that they are populating at exponential rates, and need natural resources? Is it really for the best if Dutch culture becomes mostly congruent to that of Pakistan?

You don't have to go very far in Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, or any other Canadian city to see the beautiful cultures represented by Canadian immigrants that have adapted to our culture. I say adapted to, they haven't necessarily assimilated, but they've found a way to express themselves in society within the laws of our country, and function successfully in our economy. Isn't that the least we can ask for?

3 days ago, I was dropping off a member of my carpool near a subway station on Bloor. I pulled the car into the parking lot of a high-rise building just off the street, and my co-worker left the car. As I was turning around to leave the parking lot, a car squealed out of a parking spot behind me, and parked next to the entrance of the building. The driver of the car, a young man of Eastern descent, jumped out of the car, which was still running, and ran as fast as he could out of the parking lot and across the street between the traffic, where he got into another car. Starting to panic, I tried in vain to leave the parking lot, away from this parked car, but the street was far too busy to get anywhere. As I frantically glanced around, I noticed the man sauntering back to his car, he had forgotten his lunchbox in his boss's car. A week ago, I may have assumed as much. What did *you* think his intentions were?

Kamshots style. During my European travels, I found myself in the home town of one of my favorite photobloggers, so I tried to take a picture using his signature composition technique.