Occupy Regina Passes Fourth Night

I’ve had a great time every evening I’ve stopped by Occupy Regina in Victoria Park. The protesters are an eclectic and growing group of educated, and less educated, working, and disabled, homeless, and housed people from many different backgrounds. Tonight I talked with long time friends, friends recently met, and met a homeless woman named Stella who wants to contribute her knowledge of surviving cold Regina Winters to those hunkered down in their tents on the North East corner of Victoria Park. I think it’s a suitable christening for the new city square, so freshly unveiled that the construction fences are not all gone yet.

When I arrived tonight there were people playing soccer, others cycling, more skateboarding, and adults playing hacky-sack. Last night there was a DJ. The atmosphere is fun, and hopeful, and you should check it out whenever you’re downtown. It’s even worth a special trip, to see the growing community in a place no one thought anyone would manage to camp a single night successfully just 5 days ago. The world is changing for the better, and Regina isn’t being left behind this time.

Many people don’t feel safe in downtown Regina after dark? Why? Because there are not a lot of people around, and some who are around you’re not sure if you want to meet them. Well, Occupy Regina is changing that feeling, because there are good people always in Victoria Park who are looking out for trouble and asking it to move along. A couple of people were passing through with a smell of marijuana in the air around them, and the Occupiers quickly asked them to take it out of the park. There are children present at the protest, and media frequently comes by, and the group is self policing to keep the park tidy and law abiding.

Bart Soroka gave me this interview on the first afternoon of Occupy Regina (which is held in support of Occupy Wall Street).

Battlefield Earth

Vancouver is Canada’s latest battlefield. I don’t think Regina’s population would easily riot, not even over the Riders. We’ve come to accept losing the Grey Cup pretty well, and when we won, the party didn’t get out of hand. Sure, the Regina Riot is famous, but that was a bunch of out-of-towners pent up and beat down by Ottawa. No more passenger trains in Regina, so no more problems.

I watched “Battlefield Earth” [5/10] tonight, and it was no where near as bad as the reviews make it out to be. Sure it’s not very realistic, but it’s sci-fi.

You Don’t Know Democracy

Most Canadians will tell you that Canada is a democracy, and that they think democracies are the best political systems in the world. What I suspect 1/3 or more of the population cannot tell you, is WHY they think democracies are good, and link their points with their support of certain politicians and parties. Politics has come to be perceived as a professional sport to Canadians — optional to play in and to watch.

Pick a favourite team, or ignore it altogether, and vote only if you feel like it, as if it’s as important as tuning into the Grey Cup game or Canadian Idol. Non-voters and some voters alike admit they stopped caring about democracy, long ago. They simultaneously admit that the system directly hurts them, and their friends. How can you treat apathy on that level, where painful stimulus can’t elicit a response (anymore)? What can empower these people who feel let down by democracy; failed by their neighbours and politicians?

Well, politics isn’t a sport, no matter the number of analogies linking them. Politics is closer to a soap opera, or pro-wrestling — scripted and influencing, with good people, bad guys, and really bad guys. The major differences are that soap operas can’t turn you into a criminal overnight by changing a copyright law, or destroy your job by legalizing marijuana, or send you to die in a war, or make you pay taxes, or cut you off from social assistance. Sports don’t decide if you’ll have clean water to drink, and clean air to breathe, or if you’ll go bankrupt if you get cancer, or if you’ll even get medicine for treatment. Anything that really matters in your world is not decided by sports or soap operas, it’s decided by politics. Who is supposed to control politics in a democracy? The Queen. Harper? Wait, the People are!

In this loveless marriage we call Canadian democracy, is there hope for people who want to remain free? Can we reach peoples’ minds and get them to question what it takes to maintain a democracy, before desperate people make the Toronto G20 look like a walk in the park? Without a legal means to criticize the government, only criminal means are an option, logically. So what’s the big deal with Free Speech Zones, and unconstitutional mass arrests? Figure it out – the people in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya sure did!

Try explaining to people that the fundamental difference between democracies and totalitarian regimes is who is in charge. It seems complicated for some reason. It shouldn’t be, and it should be understood by every person in Canada that politicians and media who do away with dissenters’ voices, have stopped acting as forces to maintain a democracy, and have thus become almost as great a threat to democracy as terrorists. Democracy cannot survive without active participation of citizens, so people that suppress or prevent participation, are anti-democratic.

Too Darn Much

There’s way too much juicy election coverage to write about. I don’t have time to even read everything I want to. So what do I do? Well, I can identify a few things that are timeless (or should be) throughout the campaign, and schedule some posts for appearance later in the month.

Things like election predictions, or even the final results, are timeless. Support for candidates are mildly interesting, especially if it’s done in a non-partisan manner.

There are back burner issues, that while not immediately important, show the true colours of those who favour them. The dome stadium for Saskatchewan means what?

Mercury Messenger ; Social Guru

Messenger is going to be sending pictures back to earth of the planet Mercury, starting in April of this year! I can hardly wait!

Messenger is just one of the eleven major space missions that are scheduled to make headlines in 2011.

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Some Saskatchewan blogs recently appearing on the SaskBlogs Aggregator 2.0:

Good advice if you want to use Twitter as a business.

Another Saskatchewan sports fan with a blog.

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I wish more UofR talks were available on the web after they take place! Then people could see me more often, asking questions of the presenters. I missed this lecture, that’s why there wasn’t a live blog for it.

Green Drinks

I was a presenter at tonight’s Green Drinks in Regina at Abstractions Cafe on Rose St. I talked for a few minutes, then took a lot of intelligent questions from the crowd that had gathered to hear more about the Regina Car Share Co-operative and our progress after being in full running mode for a year and a month. Mr. Orban from the crowd wondered why we didn’t have a hybrid in our fleet, for instance. I said we’d love to, but we don’t have the money for one. There’s also the reason that car sharing is still greener than personal car ownership so long as the fleet is more efficient than the average vehicles owned by individuals. This is because more people using better cars means less air pollution, because they are using inefficient and less maintained vehicles less often.

Carla Ballman also presented on the Only Green company and its products.

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Huffb1 would like to remind you that if you’re a slave to the rhythm, don’t be on the stairs. Ouch.

Sad Day For Saskatchewan

Well, the Riders lost their second Grey Cup in a row. It’s not terrible to be second best, but it would be a lot more fun to be number 1, especially after last year’s disappointing second half and dramatic finish.

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And Leslie Nielsen died too. There won’t be as many smiling faces for a day or two around here. At least he’s Dead and Loving It, but film lost a great actor.

Coupe Grey Cup 2010

The CFL’s biggest game of the year is upon us, but many fans are going to have trouble seeing it. This is a great disappointment, but not a big surprise. The CFL has been terrible throughout my life at exploiting TV and the Internet for marketing and entertainment purposes. When I was a kid, I could see no more than 2 (Rider) games a year on CBC TV (we did not have a big satellite dish to get TSN). With the blackout lifted, a great many more Rider games are available, but only to TSN subscribers. People with antenna TVs have been forgotten about by the CFL. Read KangaKucha‘s comment about international streaming — the CFL has gone backwards in past years! I use Justin.TV sometimes to watch, but in Mexico that was not possible without paying the pirate streamers. Fortunately there was a bar in Mexico run by a Saskatchewan woman who had a TSN subscription.

The CFL doesn’t do everything wrong. They have very good web content when they provide it. But they should not make it so hard to watch the CFL if someone doesn’t (or can’t) subscribe to TSN. The Super Bowl is on CTV, so why isn’t the Grey Cup?

GO RIDERS! /=S=/

Your Horrorscope

If you’re a Leo, don’t make any drastic changes in your life this week. Any new life arrangements may not work out.

Everyone else, have a Happy Halloween!

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The Riders stank today, but not as vigourously as they have in past weeks.

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I got a haircut today, and made pancakes. These would normally be unrelated events, but today they were linked.

I cleverly keep pancakes in the oven while making more, to keep them hot. Sadly it’s not the first time I’ve gone back to the oven later in the day to discover that there are some leftovers quite cold and lonely in the oven still. I’ll have to work on remembering to refrigerate all leftovers more promptly, even though I’m usually quite good at it if things are on the counter or table.

Roger Clemens Should be President

If you lie to Congress, make sure you’re the President; Then it’s okay. If you’re just some former Blue Jays baseball pitcher, then watch out, you’re going to jail.

If you’re mislead into lying to Congress unwittingly, you get an award. Maybe Clemens can claim that he was duped?

Roger Clemens = new way to trend in top spot on Twitter: Get charged with a crime while being a sports celebrity!