She walked away from the convulsing man, trying not to see. For sight often carries that corollary, action. By ‘unseeing’ or pretending not to see this woman could discard the obligation, leaving the man to die. I am made of some other more humane material, I LOOKED, I saw the man was severely underdressed, jeans and a thin sweater. It was minus 15 degrees out! He had no jacket, or gloves, his hands were white. He was convulsing, face down on the pavement, spasming, jerking around. It was disturbing, no doubt about it, you can see why the lady looked away. But of course she walked away. This man would die if left unattended, I was convinced of this.

I went into the store and approached a security guard, someone who I knew was being paid not to look away. I took her outside to see what I had seen and she sprang to action. An ambulance was called, medical attention was provided.

I curse that woman who was such a coward as to walk away from a dying man on a sidewalk. Who was too weak to carry the small burden of sight.

A continuing and disturbing trend in the United States is disregard for expert opinion. Or at least equating what an expert says with what a reporter says or your neighbor. The idea that all opinion is the same, typically when an expert talks about their field of expertise it is not really their opinion, its the most likely outcome.  Certainly the bona fides of some “experts” should be called into question. An expert in dinosaur bones should not be on TV talking about plastic recycling. A healthy skepticism that leads the curious to dig a little deeper is a good thing.

Now, however we are not seeing skepticism, we see a cynical arrogance. If an expert does not agree with someone’s opinion, they must be full of it. I mean we are an informed public right? This belief, that common sense or faith or intuition can somehow guide a person through difficult or complex issues just as well as high levels of education and years of professional experience. Its not true, sorry but its not. Ever try to do regression analysis for a 200 apples sprayed with pesticide or derive how much pollution tax should be put on 5 power plants in different cities? You can’t guess that stuff, or look it up on a blog.

A person who takes an Economics course, or Statistics, Engineering, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and on and on will tell you flat out, you cannot use ‘common sense’ to understand anything beyond the most rudimentary, and in fact, “common” things. If you did not study, you would fail these subjects, miserably. Why? Well this is not the Middle Ages, most fields are very well developed and require critical skills, analysis and formula or logic that everyday in the 9 to 5 does not. A whole lot of really smart people have combined to make this modern world what it is today. This is why a person must LEARN a field, they cannot guess it.

Yet when it comes to administering a town or city our country, a portfolio with billions in assets or a company with offices in 5 countries, we think people with everyday experience can do just fine. Its absurd. Look around, why are bridges collapsing, homes being washed away and the economy staggering spectacularly? Because the idea that you really don’t need experts has taken hold. The cities structural engineers are telling the city council that they need more money, the bridges are falling into disrepair. The council ignores them, with the public’s blessing; they just have their hand out, sucking off the tit of public funding. Two years later a major bridge collapses killing dozens. Hmm, maybe those structural engineers actually knew what they were talking about!

While a welder or stock broker is a valuable asset in any society they do not replace the architect, engineer or economist. Investors and brokers ignored Warren Buffet who for years had called derivatives trading a ‘time bomb’, now only 2 Wall Street firms with large derivative portfolios exist. School boards ignore overwhelming evidence of natural selection and try to force “intelligent design” into the curriculum as some kind of reasonable alternative. A conservative court justice rules against this policy calling it a gross violation of authority and contrary to the very concept of education. Arrogance and lack of knowledge power both of these examples.

Welders do not draft the blueprints any more than the building architect welds the girders. If the architect was welding the girders, that’s one building I would never go in.  I want competent and certified people doing the work and educated people doing the design.  Think of it, if a chemist was suddenly called upon to run a lathe for the aluminum fabrication facility they would be awful, wrecking valuable material and wasting money and time in the process. Of course, unless the chemist was an egotist, they would tell you that, freely volunteering the limits of their capability and knowledge. Maybe the fact that the chemist would freely admit this should tell you something.  The myth of the superhero is just that, a myth, perhaps its time to listen to those who really do know what they are talking about.

Basically, there just is nothing here in the southern end of Manitoba. Now I hear that the northern end is more interesting but the Northern end is so far away that it takes like 24 hours just to get there and that’s assuming perfect weather and horrible roads. You could fly…

But this is about road attractions. See in Manitoba all the towns are tiny and this being flat ground, there just is not much in the way of geologic formations. The country is not that old and since it is so vast, historical preservation is a relatively new concept so attractions tend to be settler related and most of the settler establishments that sound interesting in a history book are long gone in real life. The stuff that is around is like the west wall of a fort, not a whole fort mind you, a place to explore and photograph, no just like 1 wall; fascinating…

Now, apparently, there are some fossils around Winkler/Morden, I say apparently because I have never seen them. Oh I wanted to but the presentation was so awful that I just went home. 

Let me set the scene; Nina and I were coming back from the states a little trip into the western part of North Dakota. So we had already been in the car for over 4 hours and the thinking was, lets just get back to Winnipeg. But hey, there’s a sign for a Manitoba attraction and this one is for fossils. Its said “Fossils 2 KM” with an arrow to the left; hey, how bad can that be, fossils 2 klicks ahead? It was mid-afternoon a short stop to check out some fossils might be fun after half a day in the car. Problem was there was a lot of road construction and not too many road signs ahead. Well, two clicks ain’t far so I cruise on down the road but there are no signs, no turns, no indications, no nothing. A few clicks ahead later I see a road on my left but no signs of any kind. No road signs, arrows, nothing and the road is kinda hard to see with all the orange mesh and barrels everywhere “Maybe that’s the road” or maybe not so I keep going. A few more klicks and still nothing. Clearly that was the turn and now I need to bust a U. I pull over and after waiting a while for the traffic to thin on this main road reduced to two tiny lanes due to construction and I can turn around.  I approach the unmarked road now from the other side but still no signs for what this road is or where it goes. I take the road anyway, I mean this must be it and I am quickly rewarded with the tell-tale silhouette of the Manitoba attractions sign.  As I get closer I see “Fossils 57 KM”

57?! The last sign said 2!  So the 57 might simply mean 57 km to the next turn? Hell with this.

So even if they seem interesting, you gotta find them first…

That would not be much of a comparison. Kinda like comparing a Cheetah to a tree frog really. But in ,many ways I do have an easier time. Of course Michelangelo was easily the best Sculptor (Moses, David, Pieta) who ever lived, one of the best Renaissance Painters (see the Sistine Chapel), poet, architect (St. Peters dome) and so much more.

But, he had real disadvantages comparatively: Michelangelo had to write letters to correspond with his family. I can pick up the phone and call mine. They may not answer of course but I can leave a message. Michelangelo had to travel by horseback for a week to go from his native Florence to Rome. I made the trip via high-speed rail in less than 2 hours cost about 60 Euro round trip.

I can get on the internet and send photos or my work all over the world, post them on this website, print them and hang them on the wall, mail them to friends. In Michelangelo’s time, people would travel for weeks to see his latest masterpiece. (Actually, I think he wins that one, if people traveled weeks to see my latest work THAT would be an accomplishment.)
Michelangelo lived under a theocracy with a tyrannical pontiff Julius II known as “Il papa terribli” (The terrible Father). Come to think of it I was living in a Theocracy too, at least until I moved out of the states and away from George “I talk to God everyday” Bush. Of course Pope Julius the II ruled for a lot longer than 8 years and the Constitutional protections did not exist (even in their currently shredded form).

Honestly, communication, politics and possibility are far better today then they were in the Renaissance, this website is a testament to that, scheduled elections are a testament to that, modern medicine is a testament to that, signing onto my web-cam is a testament to that. Flying to Europe to photograph Michelangelo’s master pieces is a testament to that.
However, despite clear superiority in travel, and medicine and food and so many other things. Millions of people travel to Italy every year to see sculptures of Michelangelo, paintings by DaVinci and Raphael, Baroque Churches and the Ancient Coliseum. Is it possible that art was better then than it is now?
Michelangelo apprenticed under a master sculpture for a decade; he learned the art of fresco from accomplished guildsmen and local legends. In the Renaissance Art was a craft, a career; you could become a star like being a stockbroker only without the red bull. (Michelangelo even had his own personal biographer) Basically, great artists were the “big swinging dicks” of the Renaissance.

Art today is a folly, a diversion, a hobby or worse, the pursuit of shameless self-promotion (Britney, Boy Bands, Reality TV, etc). Will people 500 years from now make a pilgrimage to see the birthplace of Mel Gibson?
I have been writing poetry for 15 years and yet my formal training consists of a single 1 semester course at an engineering University over a decade ago. I worked at a photography studio for a single year and had to learn the rest the hard way. We, as an era of humanity, have been bewitched by the notion of the self-made artist and the results are obvious; plenty of vision, paucity of skill.

Think of it this way…
Michelangelo lived over 500 years ago but he still gets more Google hits than most people who are alive today. That speaks volumes.

Yesterday I was on the phone with my good friend Carlos. Carlos and his wife were sitting at a restaurant preparing to order when a truck pulled up outside, a man jumped out and started firing a handgun into area and the restaurant. I heard the pandemonium over the phone, the windows being blown-out and people hitting the deck, screams, tables and chairs falling over it sounded like an earthquake. I could hear Carlos yelling at other people to “get down, get down!” I could not understand these sounds coming through my phone. My mind struggling to make sense of this was picturing a tree had falling into the roof or a freak tornado was ripping through. It was not until the gunman peeled away with the gunman in it that Carlos, in an agitated state was able to tell me what had happened.

This inexplicable assault on a restaurant would not have happened if handguns were not so easy to get in the US. This was not a mob hit or some criminal vengeance on a high profile diner. Most likely it was gang initiation, someone young man having to “make his bones” in the local street gang. Ready access to hand guns and assault weapons makes this kind of initiation possible.

Now, in fairness, countries which have restrictions on handguns and assault weapons such as England do still have gangs and initiations. Typically the weapon of choice is a knife and so higher rates of knife violence occur in these countries. However knives, while deadly, pale in comparison to handguns or assault weapons so the fatality rates from these assaults are way lower than the US fatalities from handguns and assault weapons, mere fractions really. Additionally, these countries do not experience the paroxysms of grief that accompany the awful trend in the US of shooting up a place whether it be a college campus, a post office or a restaurant. In societies where handgun and assault weapons are restricted, crime is more localized and violence is not a means of attracting attention because the lack of heavy weapons make such options mere fantasy. Outlandish acts such as firing blindly into a crowded restaurant can only happen if guns are readily available.

Some argue that if more people had guns this would not happen. This argument is dishonest, more guns would mean more incidents involving a gun, its simple statistics. To verify this one need only look at the number of gun related violence which mirrors the rise or fall in the number of weapons in the U.S.

From the above graphic it is obvious that a significant drop in criminal gun play began just before 1995. What caused this? The Brady Bill, which when passed in 1994 made it harder to acquire firearms across the board (background checks and waiting periods, etc). Now, each side of the gun-control debate has good points but clearly the statistics tell the story, less guns - less gun related incidents. The other argument against ‘guns for everyone’ is the understanding that an over-armed citizenry merely re-creates the wild west era. If my friend was armed he would then have the option of firing on the assailant, which while personally satisfying, would greatly increase the odds of a bloody body count as two men traded gunfire within the confines of a crowded restaurant.

This whole scenario, of a man firing into a crowded restaurant, which actually happened on June 28th, 2008 in Phoenix, Arizona is not possible without a well-armed citizenry. Perhaps the founding fathers did not have such horror in mind.

Carlos and his wife are well, and still damn fine human beings.

Its spring cleaning time! You may notice a few things have changed, such as this Blog! More comin’, so keep an eye out. Oh, and while you’re here, check out the new pics and vote for your favorite!