It’s rather sad that the “post 9/11″ world has come to this even in Canada, the militaristic mentality of us against them just doesn’t work on a lost man waiting for his Mom to show up after landing in a strange country. The video is horrifying and will cause tears for some watching, it’s plain to hear that he meant no harm listening to the one woman who made an attempt to communicate with him.
Archive for November, 2007
Death By Taser
Thursday, November 15th, 2007Off Topic
Thursday, November 15th, 2007A thread I can relate to over at the bowen-island-bc.com forum about homelessness on the island, having first hand experience with it here and elsewhere over the past half dozen years. Since about the turn of the century when I stopped working full time to be exact, but then just six or seven short years ago it was easy enough to find a shared space in the very posh Dunbar neighbourhood of Vancouver in the mid $300′s or so for rent.
Good technical forums usually have moderators that brutally weed out irrelevant content and remarks but social ones as BowenOnline are a sounding board for many, so things can get personal real fast. Which is a good thing and a bad thing, good because (within the limits of the non-lurkers that actually post) there’s a range of views to be had about issues on the island and bad because well… the best way to put it is – things sometimes get “off-topic”.
There’s a start on literature available over at the Bowen Community Housing Association for those that are trying to make a difference, and families making less than 28K/year with child can get some assistance from the provincial government.
2001 and United Parcel Service, out at the Vancouver International Airport working alongside Customs started my path towards what can probably be called opting out of the workforce, and that’s when brother number one suggested getting a business licence too come to think of it. Wasn’t too long after that and I was a Bowen resident, go figure. The chart below tells the story money wise for myself, it’s the gross dollar amount before taxes with an estimate for this year. There’s no one to blame but myself for the low income, there isn’t an entrepreneurial bone in my body and have totally lost any desire to make money if there ever was one. Easy enough to do for someone that wants for little; as the song says, for the rest of it you get what you need. Rental assistance would be a great help if that ever happens, averaged out over the past seven years 30% of my income is a little over two hundred a month.
| year | $ amt |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 32905 |
| 2001 | 13191 |
| 2002 | 7068 |
| 2003 | 3787 |
| 2004 | 15593 |
| 2005 | 9670 |
| 2006 | 4864 |
| 2007 | 6000 |
Total = 60173 / 7years = 8596 per year
30% x 716 per month = 214.80 rent
Feels Like Snow
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007Blogging from the Bowen Library this evening; seems I still have one more little thing to work out on the Gospel903 podcast page before it goes live – darn Flash controls are being blocked on Microsoft IE because they have to use Active X, seeing it here on the library computer it also keeps the page from fully loading, sheesh! No problem though, have a couple javascript work arounds in the toolbox to handle it and knock on wood that’s all it is.
Feeling more like it’s going to snow any time now, temperature keeps fluctuating near a few degrees above zero (Celsius) over night and certainly wet enough. A day off from the hourly job tomorrow, then it’s a five (or six?) days in a row from an inventory count being thrown in between the two normal days off on Sunday and Monday. Will be glad when it’s over, and should make for a nice healthy start on the lap top fund when the pay is deposited. Another two pay periods after that puts the time-line of getting one about the middle of December still, looking forward to getting caught up on things with the net again.
A little further away from Bowen Island, the “clown” saga continues and with no surprise at all to me or probably most people that are familiar with the justice system, the protests are falling on deaf ears when it comes to the Crown Prosecutor. Seems Crown feels they not only have a leg to stand on, (which technically they do in my humble opinion) but there are grounds to escalate the situation and have done so. So far for myself having not seen any transcripts, video, pictures or talked to any first hand witnesses personally am still of the mind there was some trespass involved on the part of the clown according to the minimal *actual* information available. So it would also seem to be no wonder the Crown is a little perturbed with what most mainland people perceive as wealthy Bowen Islanders in a snit because someone missed a ferry sailing.
While the ferry non-controversy continues, wont take much surfing to discover Bush is still talking about World War 3 happening and of course it’s none of his fault; repeating again the falsehood that Iran ever said they “they want to destroy Israel”. Meanwhile the country he’s defending has never signed the NPT like Iran did, and they have a supply of nukes now to go with their experience that for all intents and purposes appears to be committing genocide against the Palestinian peoples.
Also headlining news world wide is Pakistan’s troubles, Russia is still p.o.’d with everyone but China, tyrants run amok in countries like Burma and Sudan but there’s other news so let’s just do some business in the meantime and make it look good eh? Maybe because the world seems to be so unstable since the turn of the century, having a cause that involves wearing red noses and supporting a clown that went too far is escapism; or perhaps simply giving up on being able to affect the larger world and wanting to control something at closer to home even though the consequences of things far away may have much greater effect on their lives in the long run than a missed ferry ride.