Aptenobytes

Crane goes up across the street

This is the house next door that has been declared unfit for habitation due to it falling over into the excavaton pit.

Note that you can see daylight between the bricks in the picture below.

And here are some pics of the crane going up last night. They started last night at 7PM. Not impressed with the city on this. I got the notice from Tega Homes on Thursday that there would be overnight construction. When I phoned 311, they told me that no permit had been filed for a noise exemption. It wasn't until I phoned again on Friday that I was told that they had received a noise exemption.

Now they turn on the lights for the night. The first piece is up ( behind the Gingko tree).

Second piece getting attached.

And when I woke this morning, the crane was complete.

Centropolis excavation

Some pics of the construction cater corner from my home.

Lansdowne Debate

I've been closely following the debate about what to do with Lansdowne Park here in town. I'm ambivalent about the whole thing. It's a site that matters to me, as it's the only real place to see massive shows like the Pink Floyd show I saw way back when. It's important for a large city like Ottawa to have somewhere to gather in large groups for communal events, whether it is a concert or a sporting event. I think that it's as important as libraries and art galleries. I think we should have found the wherewithal to fund it from city taxes.

The reality in this city is that it ain't going to happen. So we have OSEG coming forward to partner with the city for it. And that partnership is coming at a price. And that price is selling off some of the land. I advocated for it to be turned over as a long term lease, but that fell on deaf ears.

So we're left with what is possible, and politics has often been described as the art of the possible. So, taking that sow's ear, we're attempting to sew a silk purse.

The first half of the purse is the urban park design. They had a design competition, and ended up choosing the most banal design, and then cutting out the interesting bits, the bridge and the island:

I much preferred option A:
as it had much better integration into the environs, and it also skipped the bridge, as my preferred site for a pedestrian bridge is a bit further north.
Oh well.
The commercial part doesn't look like it will fare much better, but the details are still being worked out . Hopefully they come up with something that really is urban, not somebody's fantasy of what urban ought to be. That never turns out well.

Quick concept plan for a rapid transit route.

Just threw this together to use as a concept.

Sombrio the Movie

Sombrio Beach, the movie. I haven't seen it yet, but I plan to.

For those who don't know the place, Sombrio Beach is one of the best surfing spots on Vancouver Island. It was also the home to a squatting community that had lived peacefully there for decades. The inhabitants were all kicked out of their homes when the government made it a park for yuppies to hike through.

It really angered me when the government kicked them out, and not just because it meant my Dad was kicked out of his cabin and moved closer to me. It was a really neat community, and a good place for a lot of people who just didn't, couldn't or wouldn't fit in with regular society. It's sad that places like that are being eliminated.

More on the gun grab in NO

Looks like I'm not the only one to be upset:
Volokh Conspiracy addresses the legal issues
Glenn at Instapundit quickly posts a Volokh link

For a bit of discussion, join in at AR15.com or at Packing.org

For the reactions from the gun rights organizations, a typically tepid post from the NRA, a stronger one from GOA, and JPFO. 'Course the ACLU is absent as always.

Even, or even especially if you don't like the fact that gun ownership is a right in the US of A, you should be upset that the government is acting like your Bill of Rights are suggestions, not ironclad. The First could be next

.

Time to gear up for a hell of an election season

Hmm. Looks like we're getting a Grand Slam of elections this year. Provincial elections set for May 17th, Municipals in November, and odd are for a June federal election.

Being a political junkie, this should be fun|evil|exhiliarating|frustration way.

Tomorrow is December 6th - Part 2

On December 6th, 1989 a madman stalked the hallways of L'École Polytechnique in Montréal. He shot and killed fourteen women. He singled out women. While he stalked these women down, he was screaming "I hate feminists". He was born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian immigrant man who was an alcoholic and abusive to Gamil's mother. When his parents divorced, his name was changed to Marc LePine.

This tragic event shocked Quebec, Canada, and the world. A cry went up in certain corners to ban guns, something that resonated here in Canada. This event led to a series of gun controls that ended up costing over $2 billion dollars, yet the coroners report had this to say:

The issue of firearms control has intentionally not been addressed. With the unlimited ammunition and time that Marc Lépine had available to him, he would probably have been able to achieve similar results even with a conventional hunting weapon, which itself is readily accessible. On the other hand, the importance of the questions raised in respect of pre-hospital care and police emergency response are matters that are worthy of our full attention.

So, today I read an article. It was talking about how women's shelters were running out of money. I think to myself, what the hell is wrong here?

We've spent $2billion dollars on a gun registry, and can't afford to keep our shelters open. That's fucked up. Really. That is tremendously, and horrifically twisted.

The gun registry has been called a memorial to those fourteen women. It isn't. As a licensed gun owner which he was, Marc Lepine could walk into a store today, and walk out with the exact same semi-automatic firearm that he did that day over fifteen years ago. In actual fact, the system as it stands today is even less likely to stop people who shouldn't get firearms from getting them.

I have been fighting for years to destroy that memorial, because I don't see it as such. I see it as a continuation of the attitudes that led to their deaths. These women have been portrayed as victims of Marc Lepine. The sad fact is that Marc Lepine was a victim of poverty, an abused childhood, and a twisted religious upbringing. He didn't stand a chance. They were victims of a system that has systematically told women that they can't defend themselves. How many times could those women have fought back and won? How many of them would have died if we had CCW in Canada.

The reality is that too many people were killed and injured that day because they trusted the system to protect them, and the system can't protect them. There are going to be other mass murders. We really have to change our attitude towards self defence, so that the next Gamil Gharbi runs into women who will fight back.

I am not blaming those women for not fighting back, for being Too Canadian. It's how we as Canadians have been trained to be. It's how we've been taught. Our government has made us believe that it's the Canadian way. The same reason that not a single man stepped forward to grab Gamil, despite there being opportunities to do so, but instead they docilely walked out of a classroom with a crazed armed man, leaving the women behind.

So what would I like the legacy, or the memorial to be? For one, I'd like to see some of the $2 billion spent on programs to help women who were abused. I'd also like to see programs aimed at the chidren of families that are dysfunctional. I'd like see that we stop future Gamil Gharbi's from ever getting created. Ultimately I'd like to see a society where neighbours see a man in crisis who's about to go postal, and step in to help him. I'd like to see CCW implemented in Canada so that if those programs fail, women won't have to hide under chairs and helplessly hope for someone else to come and help them.

Ultimately I'd like to see a society where people actually give a shit. Where people who are insane get the help they need, where people who are in danger can not only help themselves, but also count on the help of the people around them.



Nef pour quatorze reines - Memorial to the women who died

How evil was the Santa Clara decision?

An excerpy from an essay on Corporate Personhood::

Before the Supreme Court determined that corporations were persons and hence had constitutional rights female citizens had decided that the Fourteenth Amendment should be interpreted to give them the right to vote. In Minor v. Happersett the Supreme Court ruled that "women" were not persons for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Found the essay linked from ReclaimDemocracy.org, a site well worth perusing.

Looking forward

So RadGeek kicked off a look into where we go starting Wednesday.. Something I've been thinking about for a while.

The religious right built up from PTA, city councils and other grassroot activism. I decided about two years ago that I'd start getting involved in local politics. It's somewhere we can start and actually make a difference.

So, what have I been up to? Well, being a small businessperson, I'm part of my local Chamber of Commerce. I'm on the Street Issues Committee, which here in town is working together with the Social Service Providers. Rather than having us fighting, we're actually working together to find common ground. Work like this goes to the people who show up. There are an awful lot of dumb ass little committees like this that end up changing the face of a community over time.

Some small efforts, and probably not a lot by themselves, but if every radical started getting involved in the real work of deciding what their community was going to be like, it'll add up.

Things that can be accomplished:

• Affecting local schools, fighting creationism in the classrooms through activism in school boards.
• Affecting city councils, ensuring balance in zoning to ensure a healthy business climate as well as mixed housing. This gives the poor opportunities, as well as making sure that we don't have ghettos or rich enclaves. When we all live together, we learn to understand each other.
• Getting involved in Chambers of Commerce as small businesspeople and/or cooperatives gives a counter to the mega corps, chains, and major property owenrs that too often control them.

From there, with an organized base in communities large and small, there is a base on which to build up to larger battles.

So how do we get there? Well, we're using some of the best tools right now. We're communicating through blogs, sharing . The other thing that needs to be done is to make the right alliances. To start communicating amongst each other, sharing stories and tactics that work. We can pull this back from the brink, not just in the US, but up here in Canada, and hopefully in Mexico, and the rest of Latin America. Think global, act local. It's an old saying, but it's wise.