Home
B*****
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 101
...and I just heard - via Facebook, of one of our more charming homeless local's unfortunate demise. B*****, met her some 6 or so years ago, just becoming an addict. An abortion she didn't want and no ability to process the trauma.
When I met her she was housed, then soon enough not, always pleasant, usually after a fashion sober - but her habits were probably more nocturnal and done away from the madding crowds and main streets. A victim, one of three, a couple of weeks ago, the "bad batch" the police posted a warning about.
You'd run into her, in the niche in the alley outside my back door, sweeping it out, organizing the trash, pulling weeds, setting up house for a few hours. Notes written on signboards to her. She was pretty and popular.
So to read of her death was a bit of a shock, no obituary, but the street agencies did a celebration of life for her, and the comments on Facebook, almost a hundred, all kind. A decent person laid low by circumstance and trauma.
The other two, I don't know, maybe locals but I've heard nothing, there are so many itinerant homeless on the streets that it's hard to say, did they move on, or did they become statistics? I should start volunteering at the soup kitchen, it would keep me more in the loop...
Beringer's Lying Stones
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 572
A rather amusing 18th Century Hoax that had some rather unfortunate consequences for all parties involved.
Link: Wikipedia on Beringer's Lying Stones
Link: The Geological Society
And you can read (well, I was just there for the illustrations) the original manuscript here: https://books.google.ca/books?id=3PhcAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
Droll indeed, although I can see how wanting so badly to believe led to errors (and mischief) all round...
Bicycle Helmets
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 125
I've gone on about the unsustainability of those reusable grocery bags, few (if any) of which ever offset their environmental footprints, and travel-mugs, few (or none) of which ever reach the required number of uses needed to offset the disposable paper ones they're replacing, today it'll be about Bicycle Helmets, child car seats, and any number of other bits and bollocks we're forced to buy.
On that note, carrying groceries home in my brand-new canvas grocery carrier when - swinging it over my shoulder - the handles flew off. A 2 cent plastic bag from China would have been more durable. Back to the conversation...
Bike Helmets can't be sold used through thrift shops - like life-jackets or infant car seats they pose a liability - if they don't work as expected or advertised the thrift shop can be held liable.
This is because the helmet "may have" at some point in it's life sustained an invisible injury which compromises it's ability to protect the riders head. If you get in an accident with a bicycle helmet and it's in any way impacted you are supposed to presume it saved your life and purchase a whole new one.
This, of course, is bullshit. Every thrift shop in Canada throws thousands of these away per year - perfectly good, reusable, recyclable, merely so the bicycle helmet manufacturers can sell us another.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. First of all - if the standard of safety / manufacture is so low than they can't withstand multiple impacts (imagine a football/hockey player being required to replace a helmet after every hit?) they should be prohibited. Second of all - it would cost pennies on the helmet - IF THAT - to implement a paint/color change protocol into the design that would show when a helmet had sustained serious injury. This should be a mandate.
Anyways, why change now, we're clearly all on the way to hell in a handbasket...
Charles Dickens - The Mystery of Edwin Druid
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 423
First Dickens I've probably read in almost 40 years.
I enjoyed it, probably his popularity threw me off. I was a trifle annoyed that of all the books of his I should choose to read it should end up being the one he died midway through writing, although the trajectory was fair enough that I could make a few sound guesses as to how he would have ended it. What I don't get, though, is what was to become of the abundance of secondary characters - Crisparkle, Honeythunder, Sapsea, etc.
In any event, the bookstores are full of this so in the months it takes for the Postal Strike to resolve itself I can tuck in with a bit of Dickens...certainly he's in the Xmas spirit.
Page 78 of 1088