Canadian burglar returns family’s stolen goods with apology note. Adds in $50 for broken door.

Oh, Canada! (please sing that to the proper melody)

I was reading that article on hearing voices and thought it sounded familiar -- it was, I read the book it's based on. The subject fascinates me. I've heard voices on two occasions. It didn't bother me much, but I wonder how often this happens and leads people to think they're going mad, or that God is talking to them, or that ghosts exist or they're experiencing telepathy? I wonder if concentrating on the experience could indeed strengthen the tendency to have those experiences? I wonder what it means for questions of identity and ego. Fascinating, but hard to study.

Mostly, I wonder why I can't concentrate on work at all.

More cool news from Canada:

The Canadian government has officially declared itself anti-zombie

The cliche is that Canadians are unfailingly nice polite, but that apparently politeness does not extend to the living dead. When the New Democratic Party's Pat Martin asked the government if the nation was prepared for a zombie attack, Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird spoke on behalf of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and put Canada's collective brains at ease. The full question and answer, courtesy of The Ottawa Citizen, is below because it's completely awesome:

"I rise today to salute the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and the province of Quebec for putting in place emergency measures to deal with the possibility of an invasion of zombies," Martin said. "I do not need to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that zombies do not recognize borders and that a zombie invasion in the United States could easily turn into a continent wide pandemic if it is not contained."

He continued: "On behalf of concerned Canadians everywhere, I want to ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs – is he working with his American counterparts to develop an international zombie strategy, so that a zombie invasion does not turn into a zombie apocalypse?

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird replied: "I want to assure the member and all Canadians that I am dead-icated to ensuring that this never happens. I want to say categorically to this member and through him to all Canadians that under the leadership of this Prime Minister Canada will never become a safe haven for zombies, ever."

The best part? The subtle intimation that future governments may actually be pro-zombie. Now someone needs to ask them if they're going to build a Death Star. Thanks to everyone who sent in the tip!

ita - I am pretty sure it was racial descrimination. There is a possibility is was gender descrimination or harrassment. Either way - it was a case or one person doing it, and a chain of people up knowing about it and doing nothing, so the whole lot got fired.

Woah.

a chain of people up knowing about it and doing nothing, so the whole lot got fired.

My brain cycled through both Penn State athletics and the Vatican at this description. So, umm, yay for at least doing better in the end than massively corrupt overly-rich institutions with no chance at meaningful oversight?

Although I will not argue with the choice at the top of this list of comic's 50 sexiest male characters, some of the choices for inclusion, exclusion, and relative ranking are inexplicable.

And others are getting looked up when I reach home.

But that would certainly be a case where hearing voices is considered normal.

But there are reasonably few scenarios these days where Christians in the West would be expected to *hear* God, no? That was an episode of last season's Blue Bloods, now that I think about it. You could get away with it in Jamaica, for sure, but I feel like the First World has taken steps to educate its people out of that expectation.

But there are reasonably few scenarios these days where Christians in the West would be expected to *hear* God, no?

Apparently it's considered normal for some sects of Mormanism? At least that's the impression I got from Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven."

But there are reasonably few scenarios these days where Christians in the West would be expected to *hear* God, no?

Well the report I heard implied that it's fairly standard at least among some evangelical groups. But I honestly don't know, not being an evangelical. "Some evangelical groups" is pretty darn vague too.

I just realized I'm making that terrible mistake of talking about things on the internet that I don't really know much about. And probably getting it wrong and being unintentionally insulting to boot!

Big!Boss's wife once claimed to have heard God, audibly. The message? (I am SO not making this up.) "[Name], eat an egg."

So she ate an egg. (God didn't specify if it had to be raw or cooked, so she hard-boiled it.)

Yeah.