The Crow and My Nissan Pathfinder

December 25th, 2011 Thomasso

While I was doing my morning chores, I heard the familiar sounds of the gang of Crows perched on the trees cawing away. As usual, they were making their morning racket of noise. This means that they are anticipating food, or one of my deviant neighbours had just fed them peanuts. Either way we go to great lengths to scare them away becuase they cause havoc for the rest of us – the Crows leave their droppings on everything.

Sadly the authorities cannot do anything about the offending people who feed them, so some have devised other means of keeping them away without harming them (the neighbour), and the Crows.

By the way, this post was not suppose to be about issues of bird droppings, but I guess it turned out this way. And, I also do not endorse the harming of any living thing, even Crows – they were here long before we humans were.

So here are some shots of the Crows, doing what Crows do best:

The above image is the Crow that left his gift on my Nissan Pathfinder after I took this photograph. He landed right on the Pathfinder and did his business.

Side note: One of our older neighbours invented a “Sonic Cannon.” He got the idea from the RCMP, who had something similar used for the 2010 Winter Olympics to use on protesters. The device sends out a powerful, yet very narrow, sonic wave that is so loud that your ears ring afterwards. You cannot hear it unless it is aimed right at you. Only a 2 sec long, 120 decibel treatment, is enough to send the birds on their way. They only need one session with it, and after that they only need to see it and they fly away – classical conditioning!

Posted in Diatribe, General, Law and Order, Photographs, Social Justice | Comments Off

Since When is Politics Boring?

December 2nd, 2011 Thomasso

I have always been interested in politics, and my need to know more about it peaked when I took my first Political Science course way back in 2004. I really believe that the first steps in understanding politics is having a really good base of knowledge. I never got any good learning experiences when I was in high school, they never taught it then adequately, and sitting in an armchair would have never gotten me close to what I needed in terms of knowledge (of fully appreciating) all the facets of politics since my University days. I think too, the need to want to learn it plays a huge part in appreciating it?

Here is how I break it down: You have your mainstream politics, and your local politics, but then you have your the in between politics that kind that only deals with the special interest of the clique that you are associated with, and no one else cares about. In my little clique, the Students and Institution of the university that I once belonged to, has had an explosion of activity in the last three days. Student politics has hit the local news media and syberspace like a mid summer grass fire.

The Kwantlen Student Association (KSA) has hit the news feeds with a flurry of activity. On November 30th, 2011, a rally to impeach the current board members from power took place, as over 400 students, whose numbers could form a quorum, voted to oust nearly three quarters of the KSA’s board members. This is politics at its best in my opinion becuase it engaged hundreds of otherwise busy students to take a stand, and hopefully putting a stop to the mountains of negative publicity that Kwantlen Polytechnic University has been getting over this.

Here is the geniuses of the whole movement of the Special General Meeting (SGM) to oust the then KSA on video, thanks the student paper The Runner:

The SGM had its hiccups too on Nov 30, 2011. The fire alarm was pulled twice, and someone sprayed pepper-spry in the hallway leading to the conference room where students had to reregister before the vote took place. Yes, the police and fire department were on the scene.

In the end, the vote took place and the KSA was replaced with about 12 new temporary board members, and changes to the by-laws governing the KSA, and a motion to issue a new election for the new KSA.

With allegations of corruption, criminal and civil wrong doing, out of control spending, and actions that does not benefit the students as a whole, who says student politics is boring?

When I was a student, I missed a golden opportunity right in front of me.

Posted in Diatribe, Events, General, Law, Law and Order, Socail Media, University classes, Video | Comments Off

Social Apathy, or a Psychological Problem

October 29th, 2011 Thomasso

I have been desensitized over the years with news stories of human suffering and tragedy. In my academic studies in criminology, I have read, encountered, and studied both the purely bad and truly evil acts that humans have done, and through this, I have built up a resistance from these deviants, and often criminal cases. However, once in a while, a case pops up that adds a new level to this playing field that supersedes my definition of sick and twisted. The news story of two year old Wang Yueyue who was run over twice on October 13th, 2011, and then eight passers-by walked by her as she lay in the back alley injured from the first vehicle impact (CBCnews, ABC news & BBC news Television, October 14th to October 21, 2011). All of this was captured on a security video camera.

The video footage was grainy, and CBC News censored the image of the child, capturing from the time that she was impacted by the first vehicle, all the people that walked passed her body a she struggled for help, then a second vehicle hitting her, to finally a woman who grabbed her and took her to safety. Even with the child’s body blurred out, the image still shocked me. I had to turn off the television and retreat from what my eyes had just seen.

I knew right away. I knew what had happened as to why so many people walked by as I remembered my lessons in psychology on topics such as “Group Think” and “Passers By” conditions. Could this be prevented, say training people to stop and care?

China is by no means the only place where this has happened. It has happened in Canada, the U.S., Europe, just about anywhere around the world. Some argue that laws and cases where the victim has litigated by the rescuer for causing further injury, is a reason for not getting involved (CBC news, “Was the law at fault in Chinese toddler tragedy?” Oct 22, 2011). Others say that they just do not want to get involved and bare the responsibility and the time that it would take and to deal with the repercussions afterwards (CBC News).

There are people who just do not want to get involved. Simply put, most people in large groups will not even look directly at a victim of need because this would mean taking time, diverting from one’s course, and blending in, following the flow of the crowd. So hiding in numbers makes it easier not to look.

In Canada, we have the right not to rescue in some circumstances. This means that if I see a person drowning in the ocean, and I cannot swim, the Criminal Code protects me from not rescuing the drowning victim because I would then be also putting myself in the same danger as the drowning victim. In Canada, according to the Supreme Court of Canada:

According to the trial judge of a modern case, later affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada, “the law is clear that there is no general duty to come to the rescue of another person … the law leaves the remedy to a person’s conscience.” (“Duty to Rescue,” PSW Law Website: 2009)

However, there are some circumstance that would tie a duty to rescue under statutory law, such as a parent, a person of trust, a life guard, and so on (PSW Law: 2009 Website).

My point to this post is why so many people walked by while the little girl lay on the road at the point of death. Perhaps, as many have said on the media, we must change our values and take action. Some have gone further and saying that laws need to be rewritten to reflect a high moral standard, while others are saying that the law is not the answer, but teaching people to be proactive rather than being nonactive.

I also need to add a legal disclaimer here too: This post is not to be used as information for legal advice, and I encourage you all to do further research on this topic if you need to find a specific legal issue about this. Also, these laws vary from country to country. According to the media, several people were charged in China who injured the little girl while driving their vehicles, so the law enforcement authorities did enforce the law in accordance to that country’s penal code (CBC news, Oct 24, 2011).

This post was originally written on October 24, 2011

Source

ABC News, 2011: “Chinese Toddler Ignored After Hit-and-Run Dies” Oct 21, 2011: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/chinese-toddler-left-bloody-hit-run-dies-14784046

BBC World News, 2011: “Anger and debate over hit-and-run toddler Wang Yue,” Oct 21 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15401055

CBC News, 2011: “Chinese toddler run over twice dies,” Oct 21, 2011: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/10/21/toddler-china.html

CBC News, 2011: “Was the law at fault in Chinese toddler tragedy?” Oct 22, 2011: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/10/22/f-china-yue.html

PSW Law, 2009: http://pswlaw.ca/2009/06/duty-to-rescue/

Posted in Criminal Law, Criminology, Diatribe, General, Law, Law and Order, Socail Media, Social Justice | Comments Off

The Rightness of Wrongness: The Canadian Right

October 25th, 2011 Thomasso

Earlier today I sat in on a gathering of people who talked about the changing evolution of corrections (prisons) that Canadian society was moving towards. A lot of what was said falls into the category of classical social fear; crime is getting out of control and safety for property and person were at the top of the list from almost every speaker who lead the discussion. The dynamics of the meeting was subtle, but from person to person who gave their input, I could see that each changed to fit the “group think” attitudes that prevailed until everyone just agreed.

Am I surprised?

No.

Categorically, the meeting ended with each speaker making a statement that issued an appeal to the government, law enforcement, and to their fellow citizen to pull together and help clamp down on the crime menace. None of the speakers would, however, answer the one key question that hung over the entire meeting, “have you ever been a victim of a crime within the last twelve months”?

The speaker that I thought was the “most out to lunch” was actually the star of the show, so to speak. He was loud, captured the audience, and made tens of statements in less than three minutes before he sat down. His introduction was extreme, and waisted little time getting to the point. He said, “The only real experts on crime are C.O.P.s (sic), and those academics have no clue what is out their in the real world… to create a bunch of theories does not fix anything, we need action now…, and we need to do something about the issues instead of thinking like a bleeding heart Liberal (sic).”

Obviously I cannot argue with someone who has closed their mind to the openness and vastness of human society and the intricateness of human psychology. However, I can make him think further, and go beyond the single brush stroke statements, and make him see that the issues cannot be painted with just one colour. But time is the great definer of getting that message across, and time was not on my side–time ran out for me.

There were several issues that really concerned me that came out of this meeting today. Most are very serious in that they are false and misleading from the truth based on scientific facts. To discount peer reviewed studies, is like going back to the Witch Hunts of the Dark-ages, ignoring the enlightenment of human ontology. To invoke fear, well, that is in itself is a criminal act depending upon the level of unsighted accusations being made, and this gathering came close to breaking that threshold.

In terms of rhetoric, the foundation of my friend’s logos, cited the media as proof enough that crime has gone beyond what anyone organisation can manage to deal with. And with that, came the pathos of his argument, that we should fear, becuase the changing face of our country is diminishing, and we (his group) will be swept a way if we (he) sit back and do nothing. And finally, his ethos of his closing statement was based on his next door neighbour being a police officer, and confiding in him (the speaker) of the moral dilemma of why even the police are powerless in the war on crime.

What I have witnessed today is typical of a group who are trying to deal with a problem that goes beyond the scope that most care to deal with today at a complex level. The study of crime and deviance is a huge field, with many branches that stem into a vast array of specialised fields, as each field has developed into its own faculty or discipline, and few have studied under all of them. I studied Criminology, and I continue on today with that study, looking at both the social and psychological perspectives of humankind; so I try to go to these gathering in hopes that I can broaden the mind of the general public and move forward to a better society. “Baby steps” as an old friend used to say to me, “baby steps.” Not everyone is an academic.

Posted in Criminal Law, Criminology, Diatribe, General, Law, Law and Order, Socail Media, Social Justice | 2 Comments »

Looking at the Money Tree

October 7th, 2011 Thomasso

I have being giving this a lot of thought lately as our economic world falls into the abyss. Everyone is touting that Canada is doing so good in terms of economics, saying that we will weather the bad times and continue on without any devastating crashes compared to the other countries that we stand beside. But for some strange reason, I feel we are not doing as well as our elected and non-elected official are saying.

My doubt is from seeing more and more people on the streets, in and around the Langley Township area, where I live. Sure, the police and public do a great job of forcing the homeless off of the streets, from plain view, during the day, but this is a totally different story when out at night. Every now and then I like to hike the trail called the “Fort to Fort Trail” that follows the Fraser River from where Fort Langley is located.  It is a great trail to walk and run, and it is used a lot, both day and night. However, at night, in the bushes along that path, you can expect to see one or more homeless people camping out.

So, in these tough economics times, and living in a country with so much wealth, why are there homeless people, when, according to our leaders, we are doing so well? Yes, I know the answer(s), but I like asking the question.
I see two classes of homeless now. I see those with mental illnesses, who cannot manage themselves in normal circumstances, and I see people, young and old, who can work, who have education, but are unemployed. Both groups are of great concern to me.

Why do I care? I care because in a country like Canada, we seem to have lost something in our identity, in ourselves, and in our national fabric of how we see ourselves. We seem to have replaced liberalism with something dark and bitter. This started way before the economic meltdown of 2008-09. This was an escalating problem back when times were booming, and Canada was facing a labour shortage. I saw “something” thrown out with the bathwater, as the saying goes, and our good name went with it. The “haves” and “have-not” gap grew in the last decade, based on my own observations, and this really made me ask questions.

I really believe that this issue must be kept up on top of our list of problems socially, so that it is not something that slips down to the bottom of the list of priorities that are of least important. I somehow wish the media would report this message ten times a day, rather than the petty crimes that get front page status all of the time.

Sadly, I believe that Canada has changed, and this change is not something that is totally pure and beneficial to all mankind. Or, maybe Canada was always like this, and I was naive in the lenses of the rose coloured glasses of liberal ideology?

Posted in Around Town, Criminology, Diatribe, General, Law and Order, Social economics, Social Justice | 2 Comments »

X-ing Hell

August 29th, 2011 Thomasso

Yesterday I was crossing Glover Road at Mary Street in Fort Langley when out of no where a cyclist darted out in front of me when I was halfway across the crosswalk. This is not the first time that I have had near misses at this cross walk. Over the years, I can recall three other instances when people either kept on driving, never even slowing while I was crossing, or they would slow down then try to accelerate through the crosswalk before I crossed into the lane that they are in, and one woman even stopped, then sped onwards while I waited for her vehicle to come to a complete stop before I entered the crosswalk.

The cyclists proved to me that it does not matter who your are, or what your mode of transportation is, you have to be on your highest level of alert possible when walking the streets here. This is probably good advice for anyone around the Fraser Valley.

The only thing that I can think of that would make this part of Fort Langley safer would be to request that crossing lights be set up here at this crossing. Pedestrian traffic is very high on this section of Glover Road, but so to is vehicle traffic as more and more people are using River Road to get to 200th Street, or to Highway 1, further South. With the population explosion of the surrounding area, drive-through traffic will probably increase at a very high rate, and so too will the foot traffic.

Comparing Ontario to British Columbia (BC). In the city of Toronto pedestrians must point, with their finger, forward as they cross on the crosswalk. Here in BC, you would be classified as a “nut” if you where to do that. The point would be driven to the motoring public that you intend to cross, but because driver’s are not accustom to this practice, I think you would be ignored here in BC. Drivers in BC, after all, pass other vehicles on the right at intersections, or on single lane roads when a vehicle that is stopped is trying to make a left hand turn. The “me first” attitude is common here, and sadly this has spread to cyclist.

Where’s a COP when you need one?

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Shamming

June 24th, 2011 Thomasso

When I was a first year university student doing my major in Criminology, I was introduced to the concept of shamming through a method of alternative sentencing called Restorative Justice. Back then, the term Restorative Justice was thrown around a lot by various stake holders of both academics and the criminal justice system, as each side had a slightly different take on what it meant to them. All sides incorporated a certain amount of shamming in this concept.

Shamming for the Purpose of Healing

I was introduced to a form of restorative justice that focused on Sentencing Circles and restoring the community and its values of maintaining a relationship between all parties. We would work in groups, primarily with those those offenders who have already been found guilty, and processed through the criminal justice system. We would then gather in a circle and follow various exercises that would help the convicted go through a healing and punishment processes by involving the victims, law enforcement and members of the community, who all participate in this circle. Everyone would work to directly have input and then become involved with the healing/sentencing process too.

The goal of the sentencing circle was to have both the victim and perpetrator express their feelings about that event, and hopefully share, and start to build a bond that was damaged from after the criminal event. This goal was to heal, then restore the lives, and the community, back to it former self. The success of the this method was dependant upon the participants who not only had given up a huge amount of their time, but would also have to endure an emotional taxing experience through the process as well. With the man hours and willingness needed to have success, organising such sentencing circles is a full time job in itself, but everyone who agrees to participate does so with a “mindset” before hand of what they expect the healing and restoring ought to be. It could be healing, forgivingness, shaming, or curiosity – the list can vary from group to group, but each member would have their won reasons for wanting to participate.

Shamming is part of this process. I have seen it take some very ugly turns in the some of the circles that I have worked with. When I first started working in circles, I was very apprehensive about this phase of the sentencing processes becuase I felt, and I still do, that the shamming process should not be apart of it that it would reverse the achievement that was being sought. Latter, after doing several sentencing circles, I found that shamming was almost an integral part of the process but it would have to be tightly regulated with well laid out rules that needed to be agreed upon before hand.

A Culture of Shamming

Shamming is a well practised offensive tactic that we do to elicit an emotional response from our victims, and we all do this very well. Our mentors and guardians use shamming to teach us and correct us when we were young. We then carried and learned more advance techniques of shamming when we are among our peers, and then we reach the stage where we learn to do it to those we never knew before, and carry it out into the public realm.

Public shamming is, in our culture, an almost natural reaction to various forms of crimes and behaviour that we would find unacceptable. The best example, and the reason why I am writing this post out, are the Vancouver Riots from last week after the hockey game, form the Stanley Cup Play-offs. All this week people have been posting their images and naming those in them as part of the public shamming process. The hope is that by naming, or shamming, each of those who participated in the riots, would be embarrassed and ultimately, would be deterred from doing any further act of civil disobedience again.

From Shamming to Vigilantism

The problem is, is it right to do this? Is this public vigilantism? Could this be an offence in of itself, those who are shamming through naming those on social networking sites?

When the Vancouver Police Department asked the public to send in their images and video of the riots, they also asked if anyone could identify those, and send them in, via their Face Book page, their names. I do not believe that the police intended the public to post those names publicly, to start their own shamming sites in the form of there own law enforcement initiatives?

Although I have used shamming for healing, shamming in the context of public humiliation can have considerable negative repercussion, and I my opinion, have the same effect as Labelling Theory suggests, when the harm done is greater than the intended good that was sought as punishment. The publicly defame someone is a life long effect that exceeds the damage done during the criminal event before hand.

The Courts and the Justice System

So, what about criminal justice system, and the wheels of justice in a court of law by a Judge who is unbiased, and who will weigh the scales is justice to fit the crime?

We know from experience that the majority of those who participated, and charged, are not going to be held by police, or convicted in a court of law. We also know that for those who are prosecuted and sentenced, the time and reparations will seem light and mild to the public’s liking. The greatest effect for those sentenced will be the labelling that each person convicted will have in the form of a criminal record which will be with them for the rest of their lives.

It is common knowledge that in out justice system we give the benefit of doubt in a court of law when trying the accused under criminal law. We also know that the standards of criminal law also is vastly different from that of civil law where the scales of justice weigh the amount of rightness and wrongness based on entirely different standards. So only then when that accused has been found guilty that we can say he or she has being convicted and now must be sentenced in accordance to the laws of the land. This is a far cry from the court of public opinion, where shamming maybe tipped towards vigilantism.

Conclusion

Although I do not condole what the people of Vancouver did on June 15, 2011 right after the home town hockey team lost the final match and started rioting causing million of dollars in damages, but I caution people who take it upon themselves to voice their opinions through social media networks of publicly identifying those that they know who participated in the riots rather than going directly to the police. Should those in the riots have to go through the court of public opinion, and be subjected to public humiliation before they enter the justice system?

I think we have started down a slippery slope now that social media devices are common place and people can express themselves, with almost total anonymity, of their feelings and opinions with almost total conjecture and responsibility for their actions. Perhaps there could be a second groundswell of law suits very soon of those who were shamed, as they start to fight back in those same courts, armed with Tweets, Blog-posts and Face Book passages of their defamers.

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Was it a Riot? My City is in Shame.

June 16th, 2011 Thomasso

When I got home from work, I prepared myself for the game, as millions of other Canadians did becuase this was the final big game to prove which team was number one. Hockey is, after all, Canada’s game; our favourite past time as most of us as kids played some form of it at one time or another. In anticipation, I made my dinner early and made sure that I was not going to not be disturbed while watching the game. I did, however, know that the momentum of the Vancouver Canucks was on a downwards roll, so everything was on this final game to decide who was going to take home the cup.

I also knew that Vancouver has a history of rioting after such events, for example,  back in the 1994 Stanley Cup play-offs, when the Canucks lost to the New York Rangers, people turned into hooligans then and went on a rioting rampage through the streets causing millions of dollars in damages. But every city has had its share of riots in one form or another. What makes this so embarrassing is that Vancouver was just on the world stage hosting the Olympics, and that seemed to go fairly smoothly with just little hiccups from a few idiots. So what happened to our peaceful attitude?

Some say, from my Twitter stream, that it was from not enough police on the streets, to the police and the city totally under estimating the potential for such violence to occur. Either way, it did, and we now have a huge P.R. problem becuase of it. But could the police have gone further to at least contain last night’s situation?

I argue that, no, the Vancouver Police could not have gone to point that they could have totally stopped the violence and rioting that we seen last night. Controlling that many people would have required something on the order of what we seen in the G20 protests in Toronto several months back, and that would have being very unacceptable both in terms of Vancouver’s image, and the cost to the taxpayers.

What was intriguing was the use of social media that was given to the police, by the public, so that the police could start identifying and using these images, and videos, as evidence in order to prosecute the accused for their acts of hooliganism. So the age old question of private freedoms versus public rights popped up. The terminology that was used by my Twitter friends was the use social media as a form of surveillance in such cases as last night riots to lay charges by the police.

I am in full complete favour for the use of such media as a tool for laying criminal charges and the prosecution of such individuals by the police. My argument is two fold.

First, police already use such tools out in the public sphere for catching and bringing to justice people who are committing a crime. The courts are already equipped with the tools in the justice system to handle the difference between arbitrary issues and the weight that such evidence is placed against the accused. Photographic evidence is very difficult to use in the courts as it is. The photographer literally must be there as a whiteness if the image is in question, but then now you have a whiteness, which is the strongest form of evidence there it in Canadian Courts, testifying against the accused.

Second, as the use of cameras from smart phones and other devices become the mainstay of everyone around the world, so too does the way these tools are used by all parties in cases of criminal events like rioting. Perhaps the court of public opinion is the most serious for seeing the electronic eyes of these events. The the armchair philosopher who is tying to critically analyse these images, this is secondary to the pure entertainment value that the media gives them while these scenes are played repeatedly every hour of the day until the news losses its splendour. You do not go to a major event without your social media device. Protesters use them, police used them, and the value that we give them changes, from recording history making events, to tools for presenting your side of history, from your point of view. So now the question of surveillance rears its ugly head from the use of social media.

Like yourself witnessing a criminal event, the electronic eye’s gaze is also a party to the criminal event, and at a moral level, and under law in our Criminal Code, you do have an obligation to come forth and  present what you have seen to the police and court of law. But people seem to have a fear of authoritarian governments, and the use of surveillance over the general public they seem to bring with them. (See the movie, or read the book, 1984 as an excellent example). I believe today that the conditions have being met in Canada that justifies the use of such tools for bringing to justice those who cause such damage during acts of great civil unrest. We have balance in our justice system, and a very strong media and public process system that polices the police.

I strongly request that anyone with images of rioters from last night come forward and share your eyes with the police so that justice can be served. For the few people to created such distasteful acts in our city is unacceptable. There is a moral judgement that each person must make, and it is between the public good versus the private rights that each Canadian holds dearly. I hope I have convinced you to make that choice and move forward with it.

Posted in Around Town, Criminal Law, Criminology, Events, General, Law, Law and Order, Socail Media, Social Justice, Twitter | 1 Comment »

To Sue a Bank: Florida USA.

June 5th, 2011 Thomasso

I was laughing out loud when I read this news story. This is not one of those stories you hear of the little guy sticking it to the big guy; but rather, two people fighting it out on a level playing field. What is unusual is that this case involves a Bank being successfully sued by its own customer for not paying the customer’s legal fees from a failed action against that customer.

Please read the story here: “Florida Homeowner Forecloses On Bank of America”

Regrettably this story is far away from where I live, and the rules are very different in my country, but the satisfaction that knowing that there are places on Earth where consumers can seek reparations from the wrongdoer, even if that wrongdoer it a Bank is priceless.

Here in Canada this would be insurmountably more difficult as the seemingly endless resources that our Banks have compared to the average customer is hugely disproportionate. It is possible in Canada to sue a Bank, and be successful too, but these stories are far and few between. People should know the Banks are much larger institutions in Canada than they are in the USA per capita. In Canada we have the Big Five, where as in the USA there are over 3000 Banks throughout the country, so they are much smaller there, and have fewer resources to fight with. They are still dangerous creatures to fight with however!

Realistically there is probably more to the story than what we see. Why did the bank go after the customer for a mortgage that did not exist, as it was stated that the customer paid for the house in cash?

Why did the Bank not acknowledge the judge’s ruling that ordered the bank to pay for the customer’s legal fee as part of the legal defeat is suffered from the lawsuit?

I have to give credit to my form professor from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Bob Basil aka @thebasil for passing this news story via Twitter to me. Thanks Bob!

Posted in Criminology, Diatribe, General, Law and Order, Socail Media, Social economics, Twitter | Comments Off

So, Friday the 13th Eh?

May 13th, 2011 Thomasso

If you are superstitious, then today should have been a red-letter day. But, it was far from being a day when bad things should have occurred, or when everything should have went wrong, the opposite practically happened. The day went incredibly smooth, and was extremely productive. Yes, I was very tired when I got home, but I felt good about it.

There is something to be said about working, even if it is far from what one needs for a comfortable lifestyle. The mind is at ease when you are working. It is pure physiological. You have a goal, a purpose, and there is interaction with people which no doubt helps the human brain function better. Perhaps there is something to be said for the human need of working in a group, even as most seem to hate it.

So I jumped back into the fray, and from a standing position into a full out run, I went to work. Both Thursday and Friday were very laborious for me. Having to focus hard, remember, then regurgitate that information was stressful and punishing, but it quickly came back to me, like ridding a bike, the old neurons started to fire again. Once I got comfortable with the setup, I was able to start running again. All my previous training and experience quickly moved into action and became a natural reflex.

Maybe here I will say this to all those employers who invited me in for an interview, but never called my back. Sorry people (employers), you lose, and you lost big time. As marketers and businesses gurus might have pinpointed you into believing that the pale, stale, males are obsolete, and the young, strong, hard-bodies are what your company needs, then let me say this to you: Take a look at the cost of loyalty, merit and skills versus the youth curve. If you cannot figure that out, then my only statement to you is, “how did you start running a business in today’s economy”? Survival of the fittest—and you are going to lose my friend.

Diversifying is a very old concept. In Canada we do it all the time. Throughout my life, shifts in income have always been the main stay of economic stability. My latest stint has taken me into new uncharted waters, and because of the niche market that I am playing, I will never mention it on my blog in order to keep the competition low. Although you need licensing and a huge amount of training, I still want to keep it low keyed because there are fraudsters and the fakes—people who are deviants and cause great harm to the public and I do not want to them multiply. But yes I have started changing both in terms of work and lifestyle.

My new lifestyle will effect many around me. Perhaps the greatest effect will be on the four levels of governments that are around me who need its citizens to feed it so that it can operate and function. They need capital, revenue, and the turn over in treasury bills diverted back onto cash via taxation. In this brave new world, very little cash will be generated and given back to the wheels of government. It is not that I will be hiding cash, no, it is simply that there is less cash to be had in the market economy.

For example, if Microsoft can buy Skype for something like seven billion dollars in cash, then this is proof that the trickle down effect in retarded, and is not a reliable means of theorizing what is suppose to happen in the real world (CBC News May 10, 2011).

So for cash strapped consumers, cash will still be used, as it is the standard for currency, but it will be kept liquid for as long as possible. Things like credit and loans will be the things of the past as the Banks tighten up too. Sure, Banks will always be there, but only for people who do not really need them for money, and as repositories to keep your money safe until litigation. As for the poor, Banks do not want their business–it is not profitable for them. I blame no one particular person or group, but I will say that this is a cascading effect, and I have changed with each on coming wave.

So I will be focusing on doing more with less. And I have a feeling that I am far from being alone. If every other person is doing this, then I can see the market place changing quite rapidly. In to what, I can only guess, but I think this new change is exciting and may change the “super structure” of “power” as we see it today.
What a Friday the Thirteen eh?  I am happy, glad that I have reach some sort of normality, but sad that my younger friends are going to have an even hard time of reaching the riches of economic success then I did. I am tired, and will not post this entry until Saturday. I am just too tired.

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