MTL buses - bureaucracy gone mad

Here's a horrible story about a mother fined $219 by Montreal Transit for not having the exact change for a bus fare -- at ten o'clock at night, with her toddler in tow, after spending five hours in the emergency room, kicked off the bus for trying to give a bus driver a $5 bill for her $3 fare.
So why wouldn't he just accept the $5 bill?  Why did he call the inspectors on her?  Why are Montreal bus inspectors driving around at 10 at night handing out fines and kicking mothers and children off buses?
Why didn't someone else on the bus pay her fare?
What is the matter with these people?
Municipal transit companies are always whining about why people don't take the bus more often -- and then they treat their customers this way. This kind of attitude is EXACTLY why nobody wants to take a bus anywhere anymore. UPDATE: A commenter on the Montreal Gazette story provides more details:

My husband Wayne Larsen, and I were on the bus. I did offer to pay her fare to both the driver and the inspectors. I was told by the inspector "No, no, it's ok, it's free." I assumed that meant they were giving her a warning like they did to the other passenger. I thought they would drive her home. I had no idea that this was how the situation ended or I would have stayed. We told the Gazette about offering to pay her fare.

This makes it even worse -- the bus company decided to "punish" her for the effrontery of trying to pay her fare with a $5 bill -- instead of just accepting the fare from another passenger, they wanted to make her wait with her toddler on a streetcorner in the middle of the night for another bus. That'll show her who is in charge around here!

Photos of Canada

This Sikh motorcycle club is only one of Naomi Harris' unique photos of Canada.  More here:  Naomi Harris: “Oh Canada” is a road trip for a Canadian photographer looking to find home.

Compare and contrast

The contrast could not be greater.
Montreal police spend a full day dealing with a demonstrably-violent mentally ill man who shot at them from a house with 180 guns; they finally subdue him with rubber bullets.
A Toronto police officer spends less than five minutes yelling at a potentially-violent mentally disturbed teenager armed with a paring knife; then shoots him nine times. While the other officers at the scene nonchalantly stroll past the bus door.



CBC has an article posted about police use-of-force training -- likely foreshadowing what will be the police defense:

"We teach what courts have said, when it's appropriate to use force," said Fawcett. "The courts have laid down pretty reasonable rules when it comes to the use of deadly force."
"When it comes to making a decision about the reasonableness of use of force, essentially what the courts have said is you have to be a doppelganger or a ghost in the shoes of the officer and see what they saw, not what the video camera showed, not what another witness saw.
"What was the perception of the officer and was that perception reasonable? And of course what the courts have also said [is that] you can't expect cool reflection in the face of an uplifted knife."

It sounds like the George Zimmerman defense all over again -- that the mere perception of danger, rather than the reality, is sufficient to justify a lethal response.

Adjectives for the Harper Cons

Cloud, meet silver lining.
The Harper Con's cheap partisan dissing of astronaut and Liberal MP Marc Garneau has produced a very useful set of adjectives which we can all use in the future.
Under FOIA, the Canadian Press obtained a batch of emails to then-heritage minister James Moore from the Canadian public relating to the snub of Garneau over Canadarm unveiling in April.  Here's how people described what was done to Garneau:

The list of adjectives and phrases in the more than 60 emails was all negative: childish, despicably partisan, tacky, classless and petty, absolute disgrace, spiteful and mean-spirited, ungracious, nasty, ignorant, sleazy behaviour, loutish behaviour, puerile, boorish discourtesy.

Yep, that pretty well sums it up.

Bring on the BC bud

Kinsella thinks Trudeau's pot legalization proposal is a mistake:

To sum up: a policy that is made on the fly, apparently without much caucus consultation – to curry favour with a segment who mostly don’t vote – and that will (a) place Liberals on the defensive in the 2015 election and (b) would have a debilitating effect on Canadians, and Canadian trade, at the border. Some Liberals may think that’s great. I think it’s dumb.

He may be right, but I hope not.
This summer when we were on the ferry between Vancouver and Victoria, a sardonic announcement came over the PA system asking the the group smoking marijuana on deck six to put it out, with the reminder that though it was legal in Washington state it wasn't legal in BC.  The boat rocked with laughter.  That's how seriously everyone now takes our drug laws.
Of all the "wars" fought in my lifetime, the war on drugs has been the stupidest and the most destructive, ruining young people's lives with criminal records while enriching some of the worst criminal organizations on the continent. If all of the people now addicted to alcohol could switch to cannabis, their families would be a lot better off -- nobody ever got high and started a fight in a bar or beat up on their wife and kids.
And BC growers could make a fortune.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue

So I decided earlier this week to add Salon.com to the new links on my blogroll.
Then they publish this ridiculous piece of Drudge-report link-bait, apparently because they thought they should be contrarian about Obama's fine Trayvon Martin speech.
Then they published this ridiculous piece of tripe about how Ted Cruz could beat Hillary for president, which is stupid on so many levels, not the least because Cruz was born in Calgary and isn't even eligible to run for president anyway so who cares.
Bye-bye, Salon.

Diving into the racist cesspits

At Eschaton, Thers wrote yesterday:

You know, anyone who thinks that we as a nation have Overcome Racism ought to check out the comments section of any local newspaper that has any online story whatsoever to do with race, however tangentially. That comments section is, I guarantee, a fucking racist cesspit.

Canada has its own racist cesspits when it comes to the comments on news stories about our Aboriginal people.  MP Charlie Angus flags some recent horrible comments:

Online commentators responded to the natural disasters in places like Oklahoma, Bracebridge or Alberta with an outpouring of comments that were very heartfelt and moving.
And yet, when two communities in my region -- Attawapiskat and Kashechewan -- were hit by flash flooding earlier this spring, the pages were overwhelmed with vicious glee. . . The idea that government agencies might send aid to help these Canadian citizens sent the online commentators into a rage.

And I'm sorry, I had intended to quote some of the comments that Angus used to illustrate his article but I just can't --  they make me feel tainted even to repeat.  Just go read the link.
What Angus asks is why the rest of us are apparently so willing to tolerate these cesspits, to go along with what is being said, to not push back.

I used to think that trolls wrote this crap because they could post their junk anonymously. But now I seeing people who are not only willing to sign their name but supply an accompanying headshot. Far from feeling marginalized, the purveyors of these false stereotypes -- the "lazy" Indian, the "corrupt" Chief, the "ripped off" taxpayer" -- seems to be hijacking the public conversation away from issues like chronic infrastructure underfunding, third class education and the inability to share in economic development.
Having received such little push back the trolls continue to promote even more dehumanizing caricatures. In a recent comment on Attawapiskat one person wrote, "Europeans have created the modern world, while you people created lice, fleas and more welfare recipients." Such screeds were once found on marginal Neo-Nazi sites. They now find themselves at home on the public spaces provided by reputable media organizations.

In my own case, I usually don't even read these types of news comments.  I'm uncomfortable getting into pissing matches with foul-mouthed, ill-informed and mean-spirited people, and I didn't think I could say anything that would change their minds anyway.
But it never occurred to me to wonder about the effects of my cowardice on Aboriginal people:

. . . I think of the trauma experienced by children in Attawapiskat by online attacks. When the media began reporting on their struggle to have a school built in the community, the online haters overwhelmed the comments pages. A teacher in Attawapiskat told me the children were very shaken up when they read the long string of abusive comments that demeaned them as "lazy Indians," "losers", "gasoline sniffers," etc.
. . . Some Aboriginal friends have asked me if the silence from general society reflects a tacit support for such views? I certainly don't believe this is the case, but clearly Canadians and the media need to do better.

This brought me up short.  It never occurred to me that my silence implied consent with what the racists are saying.
So once more into the breach, dear friends.  As I wrote a long time ago, we cannot always choose the battle. Sometimes all we can do is choose our side.  
My side is with Charlie Angus and the children of Attawapiskat.  And if this means I have to dive into the cesspits of news comment sections from now on, then so be it.

Baby's first year

A Second a Day from Birth. - YouTube: ""

You won't be able to stop smiling.
Thanks to Daily Kos.

Gay marriage approved in Great Britain

George Takei posted this photo montage in celebration.

Canada played hunger games with Aboriginal children

Reading this made me sick: Hungry Canadian aboriginal children were used in government experiments during 1940s, researcher says:

The first experiment began in 1942 on 300 Norway House Cree. Of that group, 125 were selected to receive vitamin supplements, which were withheld from the rest.
At the time, researchers calculated the local people were living on less than 1,500 calories a day. Normal, healthy adults generally require at least 2,000.
In 1947, plans were developed for research on about 1,000 hungry aboriginal children in six residential schools in Port Alberni, B.C., Kenora, Ont., Schubenacadie, N.S., and Lethbridge, Alta.
One school for two years deliberately held milk rations to less than half the recommended amount to get a ‘baseline’ reading for when the allowance was increased. At another school, children were divided into one group that received vitamin, iron and iodine supplements and one that didn’t.
One school depressed levels of vitamin B1 to create another baseline before levels were boosted.
And, so that all the results could be properly measured, one school was allowed none of those supplements.

How appalling that anyone thought they had the right to treat other Canadians this way. Who published this research anyway -- the Mengele journal?

Enemies lists and members bills

The Harper Cons are warning new and shuffled Cabinet ministers about who their friends and enemies are:

On the “Transition Binder Check List” are 10 items, such as: “What to expect soon” and “Who to appoint,” as well as “Who to engage or avoid: friend and enemy stakeholders” and “What to avoid: pet bureaucratic projects.”
Item No. 6 on the list is “Who to avoid: bureaucrats that can’t take no (or yes) for an answer,” but Furtado said in a later email that day — also obtained by the Star — that this list was “no longer required.”

Another news story adds the tidbit that new ministers are also being briefed about "private members bills" -- I wonder if this lends credence to the assertion that the Harper Cons are purposefully using such bills as an easier way to implement government policies without all that bother of committee reviews and hearings?

The bitter legacy of race in America

I'm not surprised at the Zimmerman acquittal and neither is anyone else.
First, the prosecution didn't really prove its case very well; second, in the United States, white people usually get the benefit of the doubt, while black people do not.
When Obama was elected in 2008, the self-satisfied attitude of the media was that the race problem in America could now be declared solved.
It wasn't, of course.

It is a complicated thing to be young, black, and male in America. Not only are you well aware that many people are afraid of you—you can see them clutching their purses or stiffening in their subway seats when you sit across from them—you must also remain conscious of the fact that people expect you to be apologetic for their fear. It’s your job to be remorseful about the fact that your very nature makes them uncomfortable, like a pilot having to apologize to a fearful flyer for being in the sky.
If you’re a black man and you don’t remain vigilant of and obsequious to white people’s panic in your presence—if you, say, punch a man who accosts you during dinner with your girlfriend and screams “Nigger!” in your face, or if you, say, punch a man who is following you without cause in the dark with a handgun at his side—then you must be prepared to be arrested, be beaten, be shot through the heart and lung and die on the way home to watch a basketball game with your family. And after you are dead, other blacks should be prepared for people to say you are a vicious thug who deserved it. You smoked weed, for instance, and got in some fights at school (like I did)—obviously you had it coming. You were a ticking time bomb, and sooner or later someone was going to have to put you down.

The skinny on Sharknado

When we saw the ads this week for Sharknado, we thought it was another Shark Week joke commercial, like Snuffy the Seal.
But Sharknado is real. Terribly terribly real.
Its the newest trend in movies, the schlock ripoff.  More here --Inside the Asylum, One of the Most Successful Low-Budget Movie Studios:

For a typical film, the Asylum floats a concept to its stable of writers. They blast back a slew of 100-word pitches. If the Asylum chooses Horton’s concept, he bangs out a draft in 10 days, then hands it off to a producer; revisions are made, then the Asylum shoots the film, fast.
...When Latt runs down the list of the Asylum films slated for production in the first half of this year, it sounds like a list of hot-button search terms: zombies, sharks, haunted houses, talking dogs. It’s almost as if the Asylum doesn’t even have to make the movie—but it does, for “just a little bit less” than what they will collect from the Netflix-Redbox-Syfy group of middlemen who are likely to buy it. It doesn’t matter how unwatchable it is.

Never underestimate the creativity of Hollywood.

End of the game

When I read Ender's Game I enjoyed it and looked forward to reading more.
Then I found out how virulently anti-gay Orson Scott Card is, and how extensively he worked against gay marriage.
So I just can't read anything else he has written, because it only reminds me of his mean-spirited bigotry.  I guess many others feel the same way -- there's a boycott being organized of the upcoming Ender's Game film.
So now Card is whining about how everybody should demonstrate how fair they are by being tolerant of his intolerance.  The internet is laughing at him.

Lac-Mégantic disaster

The Lac-Mégantic disaster happened when we were on holidays and we were not really following the news.
Now that I am catching up, I have realized that the magnitude of this terrible disaster.  Police have now released several photos of the destruction.
These comparison photos ran in our newspaper:


The more I read about it, the more it looks to be one of those "perfect storm" situations where a series of problems and maybe also some human or systematic errors cascaded and compounded.  Looking at the photos, its not surprising that they haven't found all of the bodies yet, and maybe never will.