Aftermath of Luther College incident

Today's media offerings on the gunman incident at Luther College High School have mostly consisted of journalistic cud-chewing. However, I did find a couple of interesting things hinted at in today's CBC article.

Charges have been laid against the young offender, who obviously can't be named. True to form, his parents are shocked and say that their son is basically a good kid. Sometimes, the modern interpretation of "good" is so elastic that the word becomes essentially meaningless, seeing as it seems to exclude nothing. Granted, it's obvious the young fellow wanted to make a statement, rather than killing people, so he's not as bad as he could have been. But still... Not knowing enough about the whole situation, I won't say anything else. I know parents always want to believe the best of their children and it's pretty devastating when you are dramatically confronted with the proof you were wrong. Denial is perhaps necessary for emotional survival, at least in the short term.

Brad Tilling, the boy's lawyer, told reporters after the brief appearance that his client was calm and understood what was happening.

Tilling said the parents of the youth were shocked by the allegations against their son.

"They would like people to know that he is a good kid and obviously there was some difficulty the other day," Tilling said.

"There's apparently quite a story behind that," Tilling added and suggested that details would come at a later time.

"But basically they want people to know he's a good kid and this is an aberration," he concluded.

I have a hard time imagining a "story" that would justify the boy's behaviour.

The other thing that really caught my eye is that the College may have alerted the authorities in regard to this young fellow as early as last year.

Perlson (the College president) said the student was expelled last year, but declined to say why.

"I can tell you there was concern. And we expressed that concern to authorities."

Which raises the question: what concerns did they share with "authorities" and should the police have picked up on it? Or were they relatively inconsequential, putting the boy on a list with hundreds of others who seemed only likely to indulge in minor mischief? I'm not one of these people who expect authorities to have perfect foresight, but I'm also aware that they drop the ball sometimes, and the results can be fatal. I hope somebody is pressing the issue. If the boy had been intent on killing, things would have turned out very differently.


Technorati tags: Luther College

Steampunk Festival

Heather over at The Galaxy Express has devoted this week to steampunk, in all its creaking glory.

I'm pointing this out mainly because The Galaxy Express is becoming a must-read for anyone interested in science fiction/fantasy. A lot of work goes into it, and the seriousness shows. So if speculative fiction is your thing, check it out.


Technorati tags: Science fiction, Fantasy

A nice clear explanation of the current financial crisis

I found this layman's explanation of the upheaval on Wall Street in an off-topic section of a writer's forum. It's clear and written in non-technical language and presented in easy bite-size concepts so that non-economists can wrap their heads around it. I hope this fellow works as a technical writer or a journalist, because people who can explain things well are all too rare.

Some of the posts that followed were pretty good too, so click here if you want to read the whole thread.

And here is Chuck Colson's take on the moral and political aspects, complete with a bibliography of links at the bottom.


Technorati tags: Banking crisis, Wall Street

Gunman in my alma mater [Updated 8:05]

This makes it all come home, doesn't it? In the most literal way. When a gunman holds the student body hostage in the gymnasium of the high school you went to, all those school shooting stories take on a whole new reality.

The news is just breaking, but it appears to have had a happy ending. The gunman was taken into custody and no shots were fired.

Some classic elements are present from what I can see. An unhappy former student. Male. Probably young, so the chances of me knowing him are more than remote.

I am so thankful no one was killed. My adolescent memories are already going to have to deal with the images of a gunman in the halls. Peopling them with corpses would be unbearable.



Updates will follow if there's anything interesting.

If anybody from Regina has information that isn't hitting the national media, please let me know.

Updates
The gunman, still unnamed, is indeed young. He would have been part of the Grade 12 class had he still been attending Luther College High School. He approached the pastor leading the daily chapel service and required him at gunpoint to read a three-page letter. School officials managed to clear out most of the students, but the Grade 12 class remained. I'm having a hard time picturing how that went, but further reports should hopefully clear that up.

Reactions of students have been similar to mine: how could this happen here? A small, academically oriented, private school with church affiliations (not that you should conclude that the student body is particularly religious). It doesn't seem to fit. But then these things rarely do, do they? Both school officials and police are being very tight-lipped about the identity of the gunman and what exactly happened. Rumours say that there was perhaps some advance warning, that the gun was only an airgun and not a firearm. Is bullying the issue here?

The gunman had a pellet gun, not a real firearm. This has apparently been announced on the local radio in Regina.

From the comment trail on the CBC article:

Everyone... I was there. im a new student grade 9 in fact... we went into chapel like any other ordinary day when a guy came in. Blonde hair and a camo gun... a compact .22 or 355 magnum.. im not an expert so anyway... we were in the gym/chapel for about 40 minutes.... people were crying... we (me and my friends) thought this was a skit/drill.... Sadly, it was not... It was pure terror and fear... I can say one thing... i never felt so emotional about high-school shootings... But trust me. if it ever happens to you, you will be very scared.... the first thing i did when i was scared was turn my cell phone level to vibrate... i sent a text to my dad telling him there was a guy with a gun in the school... after, my mom called. i ducked behind a student and told my mom.... call the cops.... thaank her soul, she did... the cops were on their way.... Our principal, MR. Anderson taackled the gunman and we all ran out.... when we ran we all knew then it wasnt a drill... The police and swat were there.... and we ran to the daycare to escape the high-school... my parents later found me and about 30 - 1 hour after the incident. here i am typing... I want to get the word out... To everyone in highschool or not... please FEEL sorry for the victims... I never thought this would happen to me... Untill it did... I NOW know the feelings of people in High-school shootings..... MY feelings go out to them....

If youve read this I, Thank you...

The letter apparently contained a disjointed rant about the boy's expulsion last year.

One news report incorrectly identifies the school as Catholic. I guess the Chinese don't get the incongruity of a Catholic school named Luther.

The principal, Mark Anderson, intervened physically (either tackling him or just grabbing the gun, there are different reports) when he realized that the gun was not a firearm.

Another report:

The principal of the school says he wrestled away the gun from an angry youth who had barged into the school's chapel in the middle of morning prayer.

Luther College's Mark Anderson says he kept talking with the youth, who was holding the school's pastor at gunpoint and making him read a letter.

Anderson says he got close enough to see that the weapon was not a real handgun.

At that point, he grappled with the suspect and held him until police arrived and arrested him.

No shots were fired and no one was injured.

Police, who have a 16-year-old in custody, say the weapon was an air-driven pellet pistol.

Police, including a SWAT team, converged on the school after receiving calls about the incident.

More details:

While police set up outside the school, inside the gym, Luther's principal Mark Anderson noticed the weapon was not as serious as first thought, so he approached the suspect and tried talking him out of acting further.

Anderson said he got a hold of the boy, but the suspect wringled loose.

Other teachers closed around him and then the SWAT team members from the Regina Police Service took him into custody.

More than 400 students were in the gym when the boy first entered.

Anderson estimates about 250 were able to get out while he talked to the boy

And here's the bullying aspect:

Alex McNair, a student at the Luther College high school, said the gunman forced the pastor to read a letter about his expulsion. He said the letter was about how the gunman had been bullied.

More student testimonies here.

Further details from this afternoon's press conference. It includes praise for students and staff for keeping their composure and handling the situation well.


Technorati tags: School shooting, Luther College

The Walrus Diet

It's really very simple. If you can't get your hands on fresh walrus steak, you don't eat.

Why are you looking at me like that? It would work, wouldn't it?

Okay, maybe not. In all seriousness, I have decided to go against my principles and go on a diet. But my kind of diet. And I fully expect it to work.

Why are you looking at me like that? Yes, you heard me right. Dieting violates my principles. Primarily the principle of not banging my head against a cold, hard wall. Let's face it. 99% of the people I know and know of who go on diets, especially the ones who get spectacular results, pack it all back on in record time, with a few bonus pounds as a penalty for deluding themselves.

The reason for this is simple. They haven't learned to eat properly as a lifestyle. They have the discipline to deprive themselves for a time, but not enough to eat only what they need for the rest of their lives.

I, on the other hand, have the opposite problem. My weight has changed very little in the last twenty years. I'm really quite good at eating healthily and in reasonable amounts. What I'm really, really bad at is depriving myself long enough to take it off. Exercise isn't a good option for me because of my chronic fatigue. More than a certain amount of exertion and I am too tired to do anything else. And guess what? Then I tend to eat too much. So while I do try to get moderate amounts of exercise for other health reasons, I can't step it up enough to make a big difference in my weight. So what's a gal to do?

Enter the next important principle in why diets don't work. Dieters tend to plateau after about three weeks, even if they are following their diet religiously. The reason for this is simple too. The body gets the message that it's famine time and slows down the metabolism. You burn fewer calories and get kind of slow and stupid. The standard way around this - and it's a good way too - is to rev up the metabolism through exercise. Again, not a good choice for me.

But then I got to thinking. Another way to beat this problem would be to quit dieting before the three weeks are up. And to make very sure that I didn't gain the weight back. And to do this repeatedly. Diet a bit. Lose a little weight. Go back to normal eating.

Sounds like a plan to me. So for the first fifteen to twenty days of every month, I will diet. For the rest of the month dieting will be strictly verboten. So will putting the weight back on.

To implement this, I bought a decent scale. (Like the one in the picture, but round.) I'd been using my clothes to let me know if my weight was going up or down, but that's not very effective at monitoring day-to-day progress in increments smaller than 5-10 pounds. I needed mathematical accountability.

My diet plan? Well, it's very simple. I'm eating smaller amounts, less often. The small indulgences I normally permit myself are out, for the most part. I keep my mind busy with writing and the Internet (and I do them as far from the kitchen as possible) so I don't eat out of sheer distraction. I started a little late this month, but so far I've lost almost four pounds. (If you think I am going to tell you what the starting number was, you are out of your mind.) I'll take it up to the twentieth, and then I'll eat my normal way, keeping a daily eye on the scales to make sure I don't slide more than half a pound either way from my new weight. If I keep this up, a year from now I'll be forty to fifty pounds lighter.

If you want to try the Walrus Diet, any healthy dieting method at all should do the trick. Just don't go over twenty days at a time. If you do, let me know, and we'll do some commiserating.

I'll make the occasional update, either in the comment trail or in new posts so you can find out if the Walrus Diet actually works. And so I have the extra motivation of not making a fool of myself in public.


Technorati tags: Diets

The ultimate in political rants

Edward Willett, who is both an American and a Canadian, who moves in circles who insist on rotating in opposite directions, has penned a political rant for the current elections that is bound to please everybody, as well as tickling their funny bones. Click on over and take a look.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - a book review

Hemingway on acid. That's what this book felt like to me. And after I read Philip K. Dick's Wikipedia entry, I started to understand why.

The spare, clipped prose, the protagonist who is at once emotional and detached, the macho worldview, all these smack of Hemingway. The way Dick messes with your assumptions is pure Dick. The way the bottom falls out of reality altogether by the end of the book, that is pure acid.

For the first part of the book, Dick plays with very similar themes as Katerina Sedia's The Alchemy of Stone, those of marginality, defining human-ness, the way we deal with those perceived as "other." Dick takes it a step further, and challenges the new assumptions we have made by following along with his story, which I found delightful. And then he challenged so many assumptions, I was no longer sure which direction was up, leaving me both confused and intrigued.

It's this last word that is important. Usually books that confuse me that badly irritate me enough that I put the author on my "don't bother with" list. But I am almost certain to pick up another Philip K. Dick book, wondering if I won't be able to get it this time.

Having said all that, there are clumsy moments in this book. He is particularly fond of doing infodumps disguised as dialogue, which really should have been dealt with before the book went to print. Characters expounding to each other on things they all know, receptionists suddenly spouting the detailed technical specs on the latest model of android - I don't think so.

So the final word for me is that I will read Philip K. Dick again, not expecting to be awestruck, but challenged and intrigued.


Technorati tags: Philip K. Dick, Science fiction, Book review

But when you've got election blahs, there's nothing like aliens to spice things up

Because on October 14th, the aliens are coming. According to Australian author, actress and psychic Blossom Goodchild, a massive spaceship will hover over Alabama (???) for 72 hours starting on October 14, to silence naysayers once and for all. Not to worry. The spaceship comes from the Federation of Light. (Not the Galactic Federation of Light, as some have erroneously stated.)

Canadian UFOlogist Stephane Wuttunee has noted the the convergence of dates also. And he has an explanation.

To stir the waters even further, consider that the Canadian Prime Minister Mr. Stephen Harper in the last week has called for surprise federal elections to occur on (you guessed it) … October 14th, 2008. According to Mr. Alfred Webre from Exopolitics.com, world officials are taking the announcement of the arrival of an extraterrestrial spacecraft in our skies seriously, and plans may already be underway to pull public focus away from such a seminal event and place it on more domestic and political issues instead. In this case, the controversy generated by surprise federal elections would tie up Canadian airwaves quite nicely. If extraterrestrials wish for their presence to be known to the world on that day, they would need to account for this type of potential interference, along with one million other variables.

Of course, being highly evolved Beings, they (hopefully) would.

Well yes, because a Canadian election would certainly be a major distraction from an alien manifestation, wouldn't it? The global press will be massively present in Ottawa and completely unwilling to peel their attention away from the spectacle of Stephen and Stephane duking it out. And Canadians themselves will be too transfixed to notice anything else at all.

Works every time.

His article concludes with a fascinating little video that demonstrates how Goodchild's channeling of the term "snow cone" proves the absolute validity of the October 14th prediction.



Feel like you're entering another dimension? Yeah, I did too. But I haven't laughed so long and so hard in a while, so I am grateful.


Technorati tags: Aliens, Blossom Goodchild, Stephen Harper

Election blahs

With elections coming up both north and south of the border, I am finding great difficulty drumming up enthusiasm for either contest. Amba is even worse off:

I'm so disgusted all around that I'm teetering on that "UNDECIDED: whether to vote or not" precipice these days. Each campaign keeps going to extremes that drive me toward the other. Right now I'm feeling that the Republicans don't deserve to be rewarded for this kind of anything-goes campaigning. Yesterday it was Obama supporters' clueless arrogance that was driving me towards McCain.

It is rather a sad thing when you have to vote for whomever disgusts you least. Do all the nasty, sneering partisans not realize that they are driving undecideds further away?

Granted, the Americans have the disease of nasty partisanship worse than we do. Perhaps that is one of the inherent failings of a two-party system: it is so much easier to become polarized.

Still, there are plenty of Canadians who are afflicted also. Some of them, unfortunately, work for political parties. I suspect the puffin incident will blow over rather quickly, seeing as it was so quickly disowned by the Conservatives. People who are too young to remember kitten-eating aliens and the Charest Conservatives' attack ads sneering at Chrétien's facial paralysis and how disastrously they back-fired should not be put in charge of websites unsupervised.

I personally am trying to ignore political advertising as much as humanly possible. No one party excites me. Unlike Amba, I am not going to fall off a cliff. As a moderate, the smaller parties are unlikely to get my vote. Of the two major parties, neither one excites my admiration. But one has dug a larger hole in my esteem over the years than the other, so for this election, I'm probably going to vote for the one with the shallower hole. Not very inspiring, but a girl has to decide somehow.

If anybody can cite me reasons why either the Liberals or Conservatives deserve some admiration, I am willing to listen. I can think of a couple of things myself, but they neither one has enough positives to turn those holes into hills.

And if anybody wants to put a good word in for one side or another in the American race, feel free too. The operative term is "good word". I am sick to death of sneers and mud-slinging.

(Yes, I know my recent post about Jack Layton had a bit of a sneer to it. But just a bit. That level of political cluelessness is hard to ignore.)

Technorati tags: Canadian election

The Taliban just doesn't get public relations

Now they're trying to influence Canadian voters. They want us to vote for someone who will pull our soldiers out of Afghanistan. To make sure we get the message, they're stepping up attacks on our troops.

You've got to feel sorry for Jack Layton. Both Harper and Dion have made it clear that they are committed to staying in Afghanistan, and that they won't be intimidated by Taliban threats. The only major nation-wide party calling for a withdrawal is the NDP. By default, the Taliban is saying, "Vote NDP." Which puts poor Layton in the awkward position of trying to defend a platform plank that gets a stamp of approval from the Taliban.

Somehow I don't think they'll be mentioning this "endorsement" on the NDP website.


Technorati tags: Taliban, Canadian election