I noticed last night that orkut now lists the exact number of smileys, ice cubes, and hearts that you have. Which is interesting because now you can see the ratios of your ratings (it can't be an absolute value because I have more ice cubes than I have actual friends). So I'm roughly equal in smileys and hearts, but have a spike in cubes. It would be more interesting if they showed the exact number of votes you had - that way, you'd know exactly how many of the people on your friends list thought a, b, or c of you. And if you're really anal you could watch to see which votes increased when you added new friends.

There's something perversely intimate about orkut. Yet I do not withhold information from it, nor do I stop using it. In fact, sometimes I go and add information to it. These networking sites are strangely not unlike high school. How many friends do you have and just how popular are you? I never had many of the former, and was definitely not the latter. Doing better on orkut than I did as a teenager - and perhaps that's the whole point.

Proposed bill would ban both the production and sale of foie gras in California. I've never had foie gras and only the other day learned how it comes from the fatty livers of geese and ducks, and that they literally force feed the birds in order to produce the swollen little organs. I've been thinking about it ever since and thought it was ironic that this proposed ban was on the frontpage of sfgate this morning. It is bizarre to me that people can often treat animals, not as living creatures, but simply as materials in a manufacturing process.