Thursday, September 20, 2007

My son the road engineer; making tracks for morons

One of the activities of little boys is making roadways in the playground sand. The other evening, Anton and I arrived at a local playground with a variety of small plastic digging tools. Immediately he set to laying out an elaborate road system. Then he made a long winding road away from his main site.

He announced "That road is for jackasses so they don't drive on the good roads". I reflected that my on-road terminology was having an effect- he recently had taken a certain joy in the phrase "learn to drive, moron" which he yells at fast moving or erratic drivers.

Perhaps he has the right idea; leave certain roads unrestricted and only minimally supervised, and let people drive on them at their own risk- a sort of libertarian Autobahn. Then tightly control the remaining roads, especially in residential areas. Hopefully the incompetent, immature and down-right homicidal drivers will be removed from the genepool.

Friday, September 07, 2007

disturbing dichotomies

Aside from being a neat alliteration, it disturbs me that Gatineau has 60 000 citizens without a family doctor, but Montreal has a Birkenstocks Hospital.

More distressing is that Canada's New Government has proposed a ban on camcorders, but doesn't want to ban handguns. Apparently Movie studio's profits are very important, Canadian citizen's safety less so.

I guess tough on crime means crime against foreign corporations not Canadians.

 
"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
-E.M. Forster