Catching Up 2008-07-23

Yes, I’ve fallen behind.  As the cause of my current malaise choose between the weather, my recent retirement, or the news that delivery of my RV will be delayed.  None of these topics is apt to do much to raise my mood. 

 

With time on my hands I just finished browsing through a week’s worth of news updates from CBC.  The news is filled with murders, scandals, petty larceny, malicious gossip, and predatory online scams while at the same time statistics Canada announces that, overall, crime has decreased by over 8%.  Somehow I felt safer when I was less well-informed.  Lest anyone be hoodwinked into believing that action by any level of government or police service is responsible or that the addition of more police services or government policies and legislation will make us even safer; take note that the primary factor in the drop of crime in North America as a whole is the reduction in the number of people in the demographic that commits crime in the first place.  In simple terms our population is getting older. 

 

I suppose I should be thinking about disconnecting my computer as we are under a severe thunderstorm watch and the sky outside has darkened from grey to nimbus.  Since one is advised to calibrate a laptop battery once a month by running the computer until the onboard system shuts it down this seems like as good a time as any to do just that.  Disconnected from the internet and removed that cable as well.  Since I don’t live out in the country with above ground wires I’ll not run around and disconnect every major appliance in the house as my Mother would have done.  On the other hand I’ll not initiate any phone calls. 

 

The above dirge could have been written at any point in the last week and a half.  This morning, Friday, July 25, 2008, the sun has finally put in an appearance leaving me no environmental excuse to continue in my morose moodiness.  While I cleaned up my kitchen and made a late, for me, breakfast I listened to an Afghani writer talking about the trials of attempting to organize an Afghan Relief Committee in California.  In summarizing a 20 minute excerpt from a book he has written it would seem that even in America Afghan relief is beset by tribalism, suspicion, distrust of authority, in-fighting, and rivalry; the same characteristics that have plagued Afghan society for millennia.