blogx
musings of mark since 2001

They are getting ready to arrest those wanting Eagle Ridge Bluffs to not have a road going through it but under it, along with a contingent of earthy and aboriginal people. The road argument goes along the lines that a tunnel running under the mountain will do less environmental damage than a road going through a cut in the bluff and over a creek in the area.

Some people from the Squamish Nation tribe that originally claimed the area for themselves along with Betty Krawczyk and company are part of the protest, both arguing for no development what so ever which is morally justifiable if you care about the earth, it’s something she’s done for years. The Squamish protesters are the ones that are in longstanding disagreement about who is the leader of the band(s) period, and are not part of the many deals that have been made with various tribes for the Olympics. An native elder is the first to be arrested, no doubt the most visible and experienced for their cause will be the ones the police will want to get under control at the outset.

The other contingent appears to consist mainly of wealthy West Vancouver-ites that aren’t protesting a road per se, they want to make some money from the Olympics too after all. But their multi-million dollar views and property values will be affected. Lots of neighbors showing up for the spectacle of a helicopter flying about while their wealthy neighbors are hauled off to jail, something that few of them probably ever thought they would be doing in their lifetime.

The area itself has a mix of typical ocean-side cum rain-forest denizens, and some arbutus trees that are commonly found on the wind swept bluffs all around my island, which is minutes away from the proposed road and protest. There are also some hard to spot red-legged frogs there, no doubt upset themselves being found out and that they have suddenly become a center of attention.

Moving day isn’t in the cards for the little guys though, the road is going over them and the cut itself is a minor one compared to some that have been done in the name of road creation in this province. This isn’t going to be a fill and cut road, but one built on stilts, that when you look over the edge of, (in this area at least), a verdant green rain forest floor greets your view. It’s a common way to do it in this neck of the woods, the forest floor is so thick that a number of pads for stilts in the long run is easier to do, and you end up with a smaller footprint.

Regardless of whether anyone thinks roads and “progress” are necessarily a good thing, this one is going to be built because 2010 Winter Olympics and the money for it demands a full two-lane each way highway to handle the traffic that is going to be generated. As it is now, the single lane parts of the highway are holders of the highest highway fatality records in the province for any stretch of road, it can’t handle the traffic it has already. The idea that a tunnel would do less environmental damage is specious at best, tunnels and entrances are as permanent as the cut to be made in the small bluff, and with the amount of water around here a tunnel would create some serious water diversions.

The Coalition to Save Eagleridge Bluffs at Horseshoe Bay has two images on their web site available, the first shows the before picure and the second shows the after picture. Right in the middle of the image, there is a large white building. That is one house. A few of them would fill up the area that the cut would take out, those slightly less fortunate West Vancouver residents have already taken a wide swath of the forest for themselves and the residents about to be arrested are seeing their buffer zone get smaller and mountain views not so pretty.

Other than for the Squamish and Betty K. who have legitimate concerns, it seems that most people in the lower mainland are not too sympathetic to those that are living beneath the soon to be created gash in the earth. It will serve the interests of those people getting their “money’s worth” on the Olympic spectacle to have a safe road to one of the event’s major venues, and the cut with a stilt road is the one that is going to be built. I haven’t seen anything to say that in the long run the impact on wildlife wouldn’t actually be less not using a tunnel, just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean that there isn’t an impact, especially in an area that’s due for a 6+ earthquake.

Looks like the comment spam has died down with the Word Press upgrade, glad that’s over for a while. Elsewhere in IT world, those upgrading to the new Windows Vista are going to be in for a learning experience from the way Paul Thurrott describes it’s User Account Protection schema on his Windows Super Site.

In the Linux world, we are quite used to having something called a root user, who is only logged on to the system for the very short time that something is required for root to do, which is rare after the normal user’s working day environment is set up properly. For home Windows users that have no experience with a networks, (users and groups), they will some learning curve until they figure out that time spent to set up the computer for your environment before actually getting down to any work saves time in the long run. For me, that means at least a couple days installing and diddling with the interfaces of various programs that I use daily to the way I like ‘em.

P.T. doesn’t sound too impressed with the latest offering from B.G., his take is that it’s going to be even later than planned, regardless of how soon the favoured oil companies get their copies to try out. Wouldn’t you know it, today Forbes reported on Ballmer’s visit to Tokyo saying that “another few weeks” will have to be added to the ship date. It’s got to be an awfully buggy operating system to be taking this long, the new features are already available from other vendors with different names for those that want to seek them out.

Another week in and it’s the traditional May “two-four” three day long weekend, so named not for the date of the holiday but for the size of the case of beer to drink at the campground while waiting for the rain to quit. A better year than many, sunshine all the way up to early this evening so those coming out of their tents tomorrow morning will still feel like it’s been a traditional beginning of the summer.

Haven’t turned the comments back on for this blog yet, upgraded to the latest and greatest Word Press just last night but have yet to get any of the anti-spam plugins installed. This blog for the past few years has just been a place for me to ramble on anyways and not a political force of any sort so not a big deal, it’s easy to contact me if it’s really important.

“Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good and evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” - Albert Einstein

Comments are off for a little while due to some misguided soul leaving about 300 comment spams from yesterday and overnight. I password protected the directory for a little while yesterday hoping they would get the message, but after taking it off last night a new batch of comment spam was waiting in the morning.

Not sure what these people are trying to accomplish, the technique worked for about a month to increase rankings, but Google completely ignores this sort of thing now. There is a time lag between each spam of about a minute, so methinks they aren’t using an automated script for it and someone has been scammed into thinking they are going to make a bunch of money and hence have spent hours and hours creating individual spams.

At first I was blocking IP addresses, they are using proxies lately so that may be part of the reason for the lag between comments, it does free up more time for me now that they do that, don’t even bother with it now and just mass delete them. Oops, still got some spam coming in, blogx is gone for a little while again.