Newsy bits: Science of Sex, Drugs, and ... food

"For the past 50 years, it's been assumed that differences in male and female brains are generated by the doses of sex hormones they get before birth and throughout life. Now scientists have fingered a gene on the Y chromosome that they say directly molds the brain and behavior independent of the action of hormones."
-http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/221/1

"Cranking up the music can exacerbate the club drug ecstasy's deleterious effects on the brain, according to a new study. When scientists simulated a dance party for rats in the lab, the rodents suffered from reduced brain activity 5 times longer than their counterparts who took the drug in peace and quiet. The findings suggest environment may play a significant role in the harmful effects of the drug among humans."
-http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/216/2

"When wheat is highly processed, the body converts its starches into sugar, potentially contributing to obesity and diabetes. Now a team of researchers has engineered a new variety of the grain that avoids those drawbacks by holding onto its starch as fiber."
-http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/228/4

Question for Canadian Contracters/Freelancers

(1) Rule of thumb: if all of your income is self-employed income, how much of it should you be saving to pay the government at the end of the year?

(2) Anyone remember what percentage of your rent you're allowed to deduct as your "home office" if you don't have an office set aside? Someone told me it was one third.

Question for Torontonians in general:
If you are careful, yet still eating healthy, how much do you think you could eat on per month: $100? 200? 300? 400?

I'm doing an approximate "What is the least amount I can afford to work for if I want the ability to pay my monthly bills + food" guesstimate, so if numbers are off, or from the top of your head, that's ok.

I will probably do a quick attempt to look up these numbers after I eat dinner, and post what I find in an edit to this post.

Weee!

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Emailed a contact made from St. Louis. They do need freelancers, here's their guideline, they publish daily, and they pay at least $225/story. Steady work. But, to do this I think I will need to get my butt to a library that carries science journals every weekend. Anyone have suggestions for nearby libraries that would have lots of science journals that are current?

Budget fun

Figuring taxes in makes a pretty huge difference.

Taxes and CPP in my income bracket will come to about 31%, in part because self employed people are required to contribute 9.9% of their income to CPP (!).

My basic expenses range from $12,360 ($100 a month for food, etc.) - 17,160 ($500 a month for food, etc.).

The basic tax credit is $8,648. Do I understand correctly that the self-employed must either use this, OR deduct, but not both?

If I used the basic credit instead of deducting, and kept my expenses to the bottom of my range, I'd need an income of $21,776 where I'm currently living.

If I didn't keep those expenses down, I'd need an income of more like $28,727.

I would need to either deduct more than $8648, or make more money, or move somewhere cheaper as soon as the lease is up.

...

These numbers are pretty ugly. I really gotta question whether I could make this work.

Thoughts? Advice?

I guess the silver lining is that, if I've got this right... at least it means I don't have to worry about launching into this when I don't feel ready yet. But I WILL have to deal with the incoming CEO, an unknown. One of the things I'm thinking I should do to prep for this is to book the vacation days I want ahead of time. I can always unbook them, or convert them to banked "summer hours" if that policy doesn't disappear.

Thanks to freefloat's comment, I fixed my numbers. Turns out that the range is a much more reasonable $16,300-22,771, which a contract COULD cover, potentially.

Pagan events this summer

[Poll #683042]

I think either KG or Starwood would fit really nicely into my schedule, although both would be... tough. Awakening Isis is at a really bad time for me, but regardless, I'm curious to hear what y'all have to say!