So we headed down the Queensway late Sunday night to drop off our daughter and her boyfriend at the (depressing) downtown Greyhound bus station. They are headed back to Vancouver (where they study at Emily Carr University on Granville Island) via bus: you just can’t beat $240 for two people to travel across the country. However, for your $240 you can count on losing at least one bag along the way. It’s just that kind of a gong-show.

What I want to talk about is the new “security measures” implemented since the unfortunate incident in Manitoba last summer. These “security measures” are supposed to protect the travelling public from crazies with knives. As you may have seen, I put “security measures” in quotation marks, because, well, the “security” isn’t there, and “measures” is a very big word for what it is: two guys beside a fold-out plastic camping table, and all that is keeping ”us” separated from “them” is a type of barrier you may find at your local bank branch (those posts and the retractable “tape” type separators to guide you through a maze to the teller). The kids were required to open up their “carry-ons” and since they each carry laptops and electronics all had to be taken out and opened. My daughter could not get her laptop out of her bag quickly (her mother taught her how to pack well) so the “security” guy said she could move on without looking in her bag. The line-up was getting long… After the kids went past these two guys, we followed them along the walk-way from Checkpoint Charlie to the doors (about 30 feet, again, all that separated us was the tape) and did our hugs (that’s right: we hugged eachother right through the security barrier keeping “public” and “secured travellers” apart) and said our goodbyes, at which time we could have easily passed them several knives, guns, cleavers, baseball bats, what have you, if we were so inclined, without the “security” personnel ever knowing about it. Then they step out to the bus platform, and the bus driver loads the bus with their bags. Unfortunately, the bus driver has no idea which bags were “carry-on” (and thus: checked out) and which bags are luggage (not checked at all) and so they could have easily switched an unchecked luggage bag for a “carry-on” bag… Put your knives in the “luggage” bag, then step out of the door and carry-on your un-checked luggage bag onto the bus.

This is what Greyhound came up with: how can we calm the public with the cheapest “security measures” possible, to give the illusion that “we’re doing SOMETHING”, which isn’t anything at all: it’s all a show. Even my feeble attempt at putting myself into a ”criminal mindset” could penetrate that fortress of security on at least three occasions. Can you image what those crazies can come up with? 

Who said: “The only thing worse than no security, is a false security”?

After a devastating report late last week, the Alarmist Warmists were obviously looking for something visual and stunning to bring the cause back on track. And this weekend, they got it: a nice large chunk of ice broke off  the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica, destroying an ice-bridge, and creating a new island. Nicely viewed from space with beautiful satellite pictures for proof. Words like “could”, “likely” and “may” are strewn across the article bringing it in-line with those in the hay-day of Global Warming in the late 1990′s.

“We’re back, baby!”

Something I don’t get though… the article speaks of things like “first time in history” and “historic” and then says the following to make its case:

Cores of sediments on the seabed indicate that some of these ice shelves had been in place for at least 10,000 years. Vaughan said an ice shelf would take many hundreds of years to form.

Wait a minute, if these ice shelves have been in place for at least 10,000 years, doesn’t that mean that sometime before 10,000 years ago, there weren’t any ice shelves? And if “they take hudreds of years to form”, how can it be that them being gone is an historic first? If they need to form, there has to be a period where there are none. Am I wrong? Doesn’t this mean the term ”first time in history” is a lie?

But I must be wrong: these Alarmist-Warmists don’t lie. They want to save us.

Don’t they?