Another Difference For Us Now

When we left the US, it was partly because we felt that the coun­try was going in a direc­tion that we did not agree with, and that the coun­try was con­tin­u­ing its slide into an uglier and more neg­a­tive culture.

Lit­tle did we know that it would also con­tinue move toward a more vio­lent and deadly culture.

All around the world, News­pa­per Edi­to­ri­als, some from coun­tries that have now lost cit­i­zens to the killer of 32 stu­dents and teach­ers, have chas­tised the US for mak­ing the pur­chase of a gun about as easy as a gal­lon of milk. The State of Vir­ginia in par­tic­u­lar has some of the most lax gun laws in Amer­ica, with no back­ground check at gun shows, no wait­ing period before get­ting a gun, no safety train­ing before buy­ing a gun and par­tic­u­larly hor­ri­fy­ing: no restric­tions on the sale or pos­ses­sion of military-style semi-automatic weapons. In Vir­ginia, you can buy an AK47 or an Uzi with the same ease as a hunt­ing rifle.

Appar­ently the Columbine High School mas­sacre (which hap­pened 8 years ago this com­ing Fri­day) was not enough. Italy’s lead­ing daily news­pa­per, the Cor­riere della Sera summed it up well:

The lat­est attack on a U.S. cam­pus will shake up Amer­ica, maybe it will pro­voke more vig­or­ous reac­tions than in the past, but it won’t change the cul­ture of a coun­try that has the notion of self-defense imprinted on its DNA and which con­sid­ers the right of hav­ing guns inalienable.

I’d like to say that this would never hap­pen in Canada, but we also had a shoot­ing at Daw­son Col­lege in Mon­treal last Sep­tem­ber. How­ever, even though Kimveer Gill, another 20-something, opened fire last Sep­tem­ber, killing a young woman and wound­ing 19 oth­ers before he turned the gun on him­self, police responded far more quickly. Maybe this was just luck; It’s hard to say.

What I do know for cer­tain, is that I don’t know a sin­gle per­son here who owns a hand­gun. It’s sim­ply not some­thing that nor­mal, law-abiding cit­i­zens con­sider. How­ever, when we lived in the US, I knew sev­eral peo­ple who had them, and this was in one of the most ‘Lib­eral’ areas of the whole country.

Com­mon sense has always told me that if you have guns around, the like­li­hood of some­one using them to kill some­one else is far greater than if they sim­ply aren’t there. I don’t buy the argu­ment that if you make guns harder to get, ‘then only crim­i­nals will have guns’. Here in Canada and through­out the rest of the civ­i­lized world, that has not been the result. While we can’t claim a per­fect record here, we feel safer, that this is a more peace­ful and less vio­lent place. Maybe that’s what we have to set­tle for these days.

Some Run

Even though it was a Sun­day and even though I didn’t get enough sleep the night before (When will I ever learn?!), we did get up fairly early, and a lit­tle after 9:15 I went down to the edge the nearby park that’s just above 4^th Avenue. Sure enough, the steel band was play­ing and a few run­ners had already run by. The Van­cou­ver 2007 Sun Run was under way!
While I’m sure there are many here who can offer com­ments and/or crit­i­cism of this annual event, I have a some­what unique per­spec­tive as some­one who has had a lot his­tory — as a spec­ta­tor — at another annual run, <a href=“http://www.bostonmarathon.org/BostonMarathon/111thMarathon.asp” target=_blank”>The Boston Marathon (which takes place, today, back in the city that I left when we moved here).

I think it might be good to lay out my com­par­isons on the table, or rather, in a table:

As you can see, there are a lot of dif­fer­ences. In the end, I like both events, and have even given thought (because 10k is a lot more rea­son­able sound­ing than 40k) to per­haps run­ning in the Sun Run next year. Or maybe, walk­ing (or as it’s called ‘strid­ing’). But don’t hold me to it.

Update: I fear that this year’s Marathon will be over­shad­owed in the news by the ter­ri­ble shoot­ings at Vir­ginia Tech. I’m just too shocked to com­ment now, other than to express my hor­ror, and sym­pa­thy for so many peo­ple who have lost so many loved-ones to sense­less vio­lence this April morning.

More Livable for Ducks

A short while ago, Van­cou­ver was once again named one of the most liv­able cities in the world (It came in third, behind Geneva and Zurich, and tied with Vienna, out of 215, just like last time).

And once again, it’s rain­ing like crazy.

It reminded me of a Mer­cer Report video that MJ (Urban­ista) also pointed to:

For read­ers not in Canada, The Mer­cer Report is a is a com­edy show seen through­out Canada which, like Com­edy Central’s The Daily Show, sat­i­rizes News Shows, etc.

Yes, it is liv­able here in Van­cou­ver, and this week I’ve been able to enjoy a bit more of it . I had a tasty pizza-for-one by the fire for lunch with a col­league down by Coal Har­bour at The Mill, a spir­ited farewell party for another co-worker at 6 Acres in Gas­town a decent Viet­namese din­ner with Pam, last night, down­town (too new to have a list­ing or web site), and that’s not even count­ing last week’s out­ing at the Van­Dusen Gar­dens. Tonight, we will hope­fully catch some more of our Canucks’ win­ning ways (the last game was their looongest ever, but they still came out on top!)

Still, some­times I think some of those scenes in the video are not that far off.

On the other hand, I’m not too upset about Toronto-based Mer­cer kid­ding us about our high real estate prices and heavy rain­fall. It’s just as well the ‘Most Liv­able’ moniker didn’t encour­age too many more to move here and spoil it all. So let’s not try to talk them out of these car­i­ca­tures, shall we?

Easter Weekend

Since Pam had Fri­day off (which makes it Good indeed, in my book, at least), we took a lit­tle trip some 25 blocks or so south of us to the Van­Dusen Botan­i­cal Gar­den, where we met up with Bob, whose com­ments can be found on this blog, and his post­ings on Mov­ing to Van­cou­ver. It was a beau­ti­ful day, and warm enough to take our jack­ets off while we all snapped pic­tures of the sur­pris­ingly peace­ful refuge in the midst of the city (or at least, one of it’s closer res­i­den­tial areas). By the time we had walked through most of it, I was starv­ing, so we had a big lunch at the Mem­phis Grill (Pulled-Pork sand­wiches, cole slaw, beans and beer — Mmm, Tasty!)
The rest of the week­end was fairly unevent­ful. We went to one of MJ Ankenman’s Open Houses (a very sophis­ti­cated condo that had a nice view, and an even bet­ter loca­tion: near Smithe and Thur­low, 13^th floor). Pam did some shop­ping and we both did some other errands. As the week­end pro­gressed, the weather got darker, wet­ter and colder, but those few hours spent in the sun­shine on Fri­day made all of the dif­fer­ence.
In the mean­time, we were cheered that the Canucks clinched their divi­sion by beat­ing the San Jose Sharks, so they’ll be in the play­offs. Is it pos­si­ble to imag­ine a Stan­ley Cup in this city again? And not a replica either, which their web site shows you how to make…

When CSPAN Looks Like Monty Python

It’s been nearly a week since it aired, and there have been so many other scan­dals, dis­as­ters and idio­cies since then, because that is what a typ­i­cal week with the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion in power is in the US, but I just had to show this clip.

Here’s the con­text: There was a ‘Brown Bag Lunch’ at the Fed­eral Offices of the GSA, the Gen­eral Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion. The Wikipedia entry for the GSA is this:

The Gen­eral Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion (GSA) is an inde­pen­dent agency of the United States gov­ern­ment, estab­lished in 1949 to help man­age and sup­port the basic func­tion­ing of fed­eral agen­cies. The GSA sup­plies prod­ucts and com­mu­ni­ca­tions for U.S. gov­ern­ment offices, pro­vides trans­porta­tion and office space to fed­eral employ­ees, and devel­ops government-wide cost-minimizing poli­cies, among other man­age­ment tasks. Its stated mis­sion is to “help fed­eral agen­cies bet­ter serve the pub­lic by offer­ing, at best value, supe­rior work­places, expert solu­tions, acqui­si­tion ser­vices and man­age­ment policies.”

Back in Decem­ber of last year, Lurita Doan, (a loyal Repub­li­can sup­porter to the tune of $226,000 in cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions) the GSA’s Inspec­tor Gen­eral, pro­posed cut­ting $5 mil­lion from the bud­get of GSA’s Office of the Inspec­tor Gen­eral for review­ing gov­ern­ment con­tracts for fraud and waste. In other words, remove over­sight. One won­ders where the pres­sure for doing such a thing may have come from (dare I say, Lob­by­ists for Gov­ern­ment Con­trac­tors like Hal­ibur­ton, per­haps?). When other Inspec­tors wouldn’t go along with her plan, (like GSA Inspec­tor Gen­eral Brian D. Miller) she said: “There are two kinds of ter­ror­ism in the US: the exter­nal kind; and inter­nally, the IGs have ter­ror­ized the Regional Administrators.”

That’s right, going against her plan was likened to ‘Ter­ror­ism’. So the ‘You’re either with us or against us’ slo­gan applies to the award­ing of gov­ern­ment con­tracts, too.

But that’s not what this video is about. As I men­tioned ear­lier, this is about a lunchtime pre­sen­ta­tion about a week ago at the GSA’s offices in Wash­ing­ton. It seems that the Pow­er­point slides that were shown dur­ing the lunch some­how found their way to the desk of Con­gress­man Bruce Bra­ley (Rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Iowa). The author of that Pow­er­point was none other than the cen­ter of so many other scan­dals and skul­dug­gery in Wash­ing­ton, Karl Rove.

The clip is a lit­tle long (about 10 min­utes), but some of it is so unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous that I almost have to remind myself that this is real tes­ti­mony, not a com­edy sketch. If you’ve already seen it, you’ll know what I’m talk­ing about. If not, and you have a few min­utes, take a look; Rarely do you see some­one caught in such out­right lies. Ms. Doan was clearly instructed by legal coun­sel to pull the ‘Rea­gan Defense’ (I don’t remem­ber any­thing), but I’m not con­vinced, and I sus­pect that most peo­ple aren’t either.

Oh, and by the way, The Hatch Act of 1939 makes it clear that this sort of thing is ille­gal. Ms. Doan should not only be fired, but she should serve jail time. But that prob­a­bly won’t hap­pen in the slow motion train wreck that is the USA these days.