Submitted by Cedric Hughes on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 18:11
This past summer we became accustomed to reading good news stories about automobiles. The newspaper sidebars—“Motorcyclist dies” or “Pedestrian hit”—didn’t disappear, but multi-column attention on automobiles was mostly paid in business stories. The saving of the North American auto industry, and ‘cash for clunkers’—now over in the United States and not about to happen in Canada, at least from government coffers— were big stories.
In mid-August, a marketing story proclaimed Canada, out of five countries—the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand—as having the largest number of different anti-drinking and driving campaigns as well as the lowest drunk driving fatality rate: 2.61 per 100,000 as compared to the US highest rate of 4.54 per 100,000. At about the same time, ICBC announced it was cutting optional insurance rates by an average of 3% effective October 1st. ICBC’s president said, “[W]e are continuing to see a decline in the number and total cost of injury claims.”
Lower Mainlanders celebrated the opening of the new Golden Ears toll bridge and Vancouver’s new status as the first major Canadian city with a rapid transit link to its international airport. And the bike lane experiment on the Burrard Bridge has been, thus far, “uneventful.” Some change from this build-up of good news came from an upfront acknowledgment of long-weekend road safety risks in the “Health Tips” column in The Province newspaper entitled, “Avoid holiday disasters.” The four tips: Don’t text and drive, don’t drink and drive, don’t speed, and do wear your seat belt were a perfect summary of the basics.
Then grim reality returned to the front pages: On August 26th, a right-turning truck in Vancouver hit a mother crossing the street pushing her two-year-old daughter in a stroller killing the baby and injuring the mother. Reportedly, the male truck driver had twice fallen asleep on his previous job as a result of his insulin-dependent diabetes.
On August 31st, in Toronto, a 33-year-old bicycle courier died after being dragged about 100 metres while hanging on to the curbside of a vehicle driven by the former Attorney General of Ontario, Michael Bryant. Mr. Bryant has been charged with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death.
On September 3rd, in Jaffray, BC, a car that lost control speeding around the corner killed an eight-year-old boy biking to the local creek. The driver who fled the scene was reportedly under a one-year driving prohibition for impaired driving.
On September 5th, in Port Coquitlam, an SUV collided with a sedan killing the sedan driver and injuring the three passengers. The SUV driver and his passenger fled the scene but later turned themselves into police.
On September 7th, in Burnaby, a car driven by an elderly man plowed through two gas station pumps before crashing into a recently gassed-up car. The crash ignited an intense fire. Miraculously, no one was killed. What caused the striking car to lose control is under investigation.
Clearly, it will be a long time before all news is good news for motorists.
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The Skiing Hunter
It is now well known that around 50,000 years ago, homo sapiens sapiens moved out of Africa.
Some already quite hardy homo sapiens sapiens moved out and survived by hunting small to medium sized animals near the ice sheets of our last glacial age. The prey animals there fed on lichens.
Through selective breeding (a must during extreme climate), hunting for these hardy people became instinctive as in a Charles Darwin sense of the word. Then hunting larger animals became possible with "skiies" and suddenly the megafauna was hunted out.
These hunters bought skiies with them to the Americas, the "Clovis" people subsequently used skiies to hunt the megafauna to extinction. Everywhere "Skiing-Hunters" shows up, magefauna disappeared.
Elsewhere, less hardy ones moved out to relatively warmer areas, they gathering and snare chickens there, in time they discovered agriculture, that is long before the end of our last glacial age.
There are many many things tied in with the "Skiing-Hunters" and about the "Chicken-Snarer" that I have just described. I will cover these ties, in point form now and in detail when asked then I plan to give the details verbally.
- What happened to the hunting instincts after the glacial age.
- Did it morphed into something else, as in thrill seeking and risk taking.
- Did war and sports replaced hunting.
- Downhill skiing is a 15,000 to 30,000 year old sport.
- Did it lead to a need for speed.
- Did some civilizations sprang up based on this instinct, according to Darwinian theories this can happen.
- Everything we are doing is to quench the skiing-hunter's instinct.
- All Expressions reflects and points to the experiences.
- Look for Korean kids on some future Winter Games podiums, there are skiing-hunters.
- Skiing-hunter made extinct by it's own hands and by the change in living conditions.
- The need for violence a remnant from the days of the violent hunting act, using spears or clubs on or off skiies.
Of course this list will go on.
As for the "Chicken-Snarer" all statements and questions above can be applied and answered fully.
Their world is one of silks and fine dinning as oppose to fighting and survival.