the internet; big cities

There was something oddly refreshing about driving into Calgary at eleven o'clock last night. Although I've been to Saskatoon, Moose Jaw and Regina a few times each in the past few months, the latter two don't really qualify as cities and I only saw bits of Saskatoon, and only during the day. So the tall office towers shining in the dark, the streetlights, the people out past six in the evening: these sights warmed my heart, which has resided in the small town of Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan (population 1200) for the past three months. I almost felt like I was coming home.

Speaking of coming home, this website's dangerously slow trickle of posts should soon return to the three-times-a-day torrent it once was. Yes, I'm heading back east, to the lands of expert divers and insanely long-running heat waves.

If you're reading this, it means you've either (a) stuck with us through a quiet summer, or (b) found this page after searching for information about actual small, flightless birds. Seriously, we get at least twenty people per day looking for information on the migratory habits of kiwis. As I've wondered before, how could so many people in the world be so interested in this subject? But, hey, whatever drives up the traffic, I guess. (Read these related posts: link, link.)

The point is, my return to the city will eventually result in a renewed passion for writing things to our two readers, one of whom is a friend of mine. (The other is my mom.) I'm hoping SFB's other contributors (Neil, Ian, and Jared) will feel the same. Until then, keep on truckin'. See you in a week or so.

bombings rock London

As everyone will probably know by the time they read this, at least 4 and up to 6 simultaneous bombings occurred in London, England today. Details are still emerging, so I'm not going to bother commenting on maybe and what-ifs, such as whether these were suicide attacks or whether the "Secret Organization - al-Qaeda in Europe"'s claim of responsibility is in any way valid. I'm not even going to bother posting links - if you want to know more, go to news.google.com; stories are everywhere and at this point are reiterating the same 3-4 official public statements.

What I do want to profess is a complete lack of understanding of the mentalities of two groups of people:

1 - The people who perpetuate these attacks. I fail to understand how any rational person, no matter what the circumstance, can believe they gain anything worthwhile by killing innocent people and possibly themselves. I don't see how a group that feels they've been wronged and oppressed can hope to end that state of affairs by enraging their oppressors, and in the process giving the international community more reason to believe that such groups are very, very worthy of being oppressed.

The only thing attacks like these do seem to accomplish is financial destabilization, which leads me to the second incomprehensible mentality of the day:

2 - The people who frantically shuffle their investments at the first hint of this sort of thing. I mean, what sick person's first thought on hearing that dozens of innocent people have been killed is "Oh, man, I'd better sell all my UK stocks!" I'm currently in a macroeconomics course, (bring on the petty "undergrad" flames, Mr. Anonymous) and these sorts of things are self-fulfilling prophecies. Horrible though they are, will these attacks in and of themselves seriously affect the British economy? No. It is the irrational dumping of investments that will cause British markets to fall in the wake of this tragedy, not the bombings themselves.

My heart goes out to London today. I give it a week before we start seeing drafts of the "UK Homeland Security Act." Hopefully they will have more sense than our neighbors to the south when it comes time to vote on them.