blogx
musings of mark since 2001

   Tonight was the Lighting of Bowen Island for Christmas celebration at Artisan and Village square. I went down to take in the festivities and to see the Morris Dancers. They were having a good time, leading the procession down the hill from one square to the next. It reminded me of a parade put on by the Kamloops Rube Band, but on a much smaller scale of course.
   The kids were having the most fun. All had “light sticks” to wave around and luminaries were everywhere to light the path from one square to the next. The dancers sand renditions of all the Xmas favorites while twirling around and hitting their sticks together. Somehow “Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier” got in their too, not much of a Xmas song, but that’s the nature of the dancers – unpredictable.
   The whole affair was pretty much a family thing, so after taking a couple pictures I started getting the Xmas blues and headed on home.

   Not much blogging going on this week, every day has been a late one with Artisan; today being the first one this week without a trip to White Rock, Langley or Surrey. That means I can make the 4:35 pm ferry, which still makes for plenty of hours, (6+), driving the streets of the Lower Mainland.
   I’ve been able to find time to crack open a book I purchased on core PHP programming though in the mornings, and get a few chapters in this weekend hopefully. More computer time working on the Grey Cross logo, they�ve sent a sample of what they want, it’s a jpg for the web so will have to convert it to work for a letterhead. Keeping busy…

   Finally starting to feel like winter here on the Lower Mainland and Bowen Island with a few weeks of rain under our belt; the period even included the prerequisite gloat day over the east coast when we had sunshine and a temp of 17 or 18 degrees, (64F). Most awesome moon, as well as glorious sunrises that make the water pink from the reflection of the sky and then baths our entire little bay in a surrealistic glow.
   We needed the water too, the bottle of island water that I take on my trip to the continent weekdays was tasting a lot like dirt. It looks like a rain forest around here now as well, things were starting to appear kind of withered and brown with an entire spring, summer and fall sans any real rainfall.

   The US hasn’t seen the big brother public surveilance camera craze that has over run Europe, that may be next. Look for the National Guard to be called up in huge numbers soon as well, to be deployed all over their own country. There is already a lot of cameras around if you look closely enough, it’s just not to the pervasive extremes of Europe – yet. This little war is turning out to be a very good thing to help the US Govt. to do what it wants to its people as well as the rest of the world – all in the name of combating terrorism. The US War on Drugs hasn’t worked years later either, but zero tolerance is still in effect.
      A new era for justice in the United States starts out today. The new court created by the Bushies has made its’ first ruling; consisting of overturning another court ruling protecting Americans from intrusive wire tapping. Of course this was all done in the name of combating terrorism, something that the govt. can use ad infinitum for an excuse to prying into the lives of its citizens. And one more thing, this court’s rulings have no mechanism for an appeal and their word is final.
   Both the appeals court and the court whose opinion it overturned today were created solely to administer a 1978 law allowing the government to conduct intelligence wiretaps inside the United States. The three-member appeals court, the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, in issuing its first opinion ever, said that the lower court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, had erred when it tried to impose restrictions on the Justice Department.
   The Court of Review, which had never met before and essentially existed on paper, is made up of Judges Ralph B. Guy of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit; Edward Leavy of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; and Laurence H. Silberman of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. All were appointed to the panel by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist of the Supreme Court.
   Because of the unusual nature of the law on which the case was decided it is unclear whether anybody is in a position to appeal today’s ruling to the Supreme Court. The only party was the Justice Department, which won; the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, who filed briefs, were afforded only friend-of-the-court status, which does not entitle them to appeal.
   This just in: a ruling not to release the names of people held by immigration. See the New York Times article, (requires free membership), more on this later.

   Yippie! Got the site search working now. The problem was indeed that the search engine was being denied permission somewhere, it was figuring out which folder with what .htaccess file in it was the culprit. After including that in the exclude parameters all is well. Hopefully, I’ve got rid of any duplicate search returns by now as well. Have a go if you like at the Search page – it will open in a new window. If you see any problems, please do drop me a line using the Contact page or the comment option below.