Earlier this week a Great White attacked and killed a surfer who was being towed behind a boat off the coast near Adelaide, Australia. In the wake of the horrific media reports of the attack, politicians have called for a hunt of the specific shark for public safety. I find this debate interesting. On the one hand, the shark is only acting out its nature which is to prey upon anything it can catch in its own environment. On the other hand, the public may be at risk if the shark continues to target such easy prey as surfers. In this BBC story the father of the killed surfer states that he doesn't blame the shark and wants the hunt called off. In British Columbia a bear (such as the Grizzly) that kills or attacks a human is automatically hunted down and killed on the grounds that the animal has learned to use humans as a food source. The difference between the shark and bear problem is that humans share the same environment as bears in many rural areas whereas in the water humans can choose whether or not they wish to enter the domain of the Great White Shark. The shark population in SE Asia is under great pressure from the other great predator, human beings who have come to view the sharks (especially their fins) as a great delicacy. Often the fins themselves are cut off sharks and the dying animals are thrown back into the sea.

My weekend visit to Hornby made me think more and more about alternate lifestyles. Although I only spent two days there and was on vacation it was interesting to note the slowed down pace of life and also the extent of space between people. In Vancouver the moment I step out of the elevator I'm on a street with a handful of people walking to work and cars pushing through intersections. On the island there was ... nothing... the croaking of ravens and the sound of wind through the trees with people to see only if you sought them out. Meanwhile all you can see are trees, the ocean and the stark blazing sunshine. This kind of change of pace can certainly do something to your thought processes. Emptiness in time and in space. Would that be freeing or would that be frightening?

As promised, a gallery from my two days on Hornby. From L to R, a morning walk along a cliffside on Halliwell Park; a yoga sequence on the rocks of Tribune Bay; two surprised harbour seals basking on St. John's Point; an island girl basking on rocks on Tribune Bay; the two of us against the roots of an uprooted tree.

I'm back from Hornby and enjoyed it a lot. I will post pictures later but for now let me rave about the pleasure of driving on island roads with almost no traffic. There is a certain pleasure to driving at top speed but when you have instead sweeping roads with nice curves and dips and bumps you don't need to be breaking the speed limit (though I probably was anyway). Getting there was a bit of a chore involving a long stretch of highway driving on Vancouver Island and three ferries (though two of them were small). I made it to Hornby and back on 3/4 of my tank. My latest fuel calc is: 11.1 L/100 km or 25.2mpg (43.599L/390.5 kilometres). My previous calc >>

I am reading Gwynne Dyer's "Future Tense: the Coming World Order" in which he argues right from the beginning that the best thing for the new world is for the Americans to lose fast so the west can get out of the Middle East and the hot conflict can start simmering down.

He also argues that in all the unsuccessful insurgencies the population turned on the insurgents because the insurgents had no one to kill except the native population. In the successful insurgencies the rebels could focus the conflict on the occupying power or foreign colonists.

He uses as one of the examples the two insurgencies in Algeria. The Marxist insurgency against the French in the 70s was successful because the French occupying military and their colonists presented a foreign target for the Algerian rebels so every action taken by each side had as a consequence increased focus on the foreign presence. In contrast to this, the GIA insurgency in the 90s to present has almost entirely petered out because the vicious extremist groups had no foreign presence to focus on, their daily acts of savagery against the population couldn't gain them any support. Indeed, it is charged that the government further marginalized the movement by committing further acts against villagers and pinning those acts on the GIA.

Dyer argues that the situation in Iraq is far worse for the U.S. than it was for the French in Algeria in the 70s. The French then had ruled Algeria for almost a century and had one million settlers in its 'African province', some for many generations, among some seven million Muslims. The Fourth Republic at the height of the insurgency had 500,000 troops and had the advantage of being just across the Mediterranean. By contrast, the Americans' only presence in Iraq is in the form of the military occupational forces. The numbers are no where near the French presence at the time. The Americans had no presence whatsoever in Iraq prior to invasion and no history. Similar to the French situation, the Americans have presented a foreign target to insurgent attacks and a focus for insurgent propaganda and like the French have engaged the resentment of the population by heavy handedness.

In Dyer's estimation then the U.S. will eventually lose in Iraq (even though they may withdraw and claim victory), it is only a question of when and how much misery will ensue before that happens. More on Gwynnedyer.net. An excerpt from the book is here >>

Never mind that most laptops are extremely hot and could boil your member if you keep it on your privates, researchers now say that the increased temperature over time could damage sperm production. The solution? Use it on a desk. By the way I will be off for a few days to Hornby Island and yes, I will be taking my laptop with me to get some writing and reading done. Read the Globe and Mail article here >>

Any year with a Terence Malick film is a good year. There were mixed reviews to "The Thin Red Line" because of its disjointed, free-form structure but there was no denying that it was an extremely gorgeous, thoughtful film. Sometime in 2005 the enigmatic Malick will be releasing a Colin Farrell-starred retelling of the Pocohontas story. Watch the new teaser trailer here. I like the imagery from the trailer with the contrast between the bare, feathered and painted bodies of the Indians and the messy, armoured bodies of the Europeans.

An Illinois zoo has arranged a highly unusual but pretty cool ritual for their gorilla charges. When the matriarch of the gorilla group had to be euthanized, the keepers allowed the rest of the apes to mourn the body by gathering around. Since gorillas are highly social animals (our cousins, after all) then it follows that they should be allowed to do what is natural when one of their family members dies. Also, the Calgary Zoo is in mourning after a baby elephant they had been struggling to save died. Its mother, who had no experience with babies, rejected the calf and it was left to the humans to intercede. Elephants, of course, are also extremely social and when taken out of their normally large groups, the knowledge they need is not passed down.