Earthquake jolts Northern California

(CNN) -- A moderate earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.6 struck Northern California on Tuesday night, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake's epicenter was about nine miles northeast of San Jose. It hit at 8:04 p.m.

Catherine Kilkenny gets under a table during the earthquake in San Jose, California.













Mr Kilkenney seems to have his own earthquake in mind.

Price gouging for Canadians?

Lots of publicity right now about what Canadian retailers think of Canadian consumers. With our high Canadian dollar pressure to match US prices is strong. Yet their attitude seems to be that the Canadian market is cream and they charge what they can for extreme profits. I see this as a disdain for their own customers.
Recently I began looking to buy a few things, among them cameras and computer peripherals.
I looked at London Drugs for a Canon S5 IS. A great little camera. London Drugs' price was $499. Canadian. If I drive a few miles to Bellingham, my price would be $337. US! Note that the Canadian dollar is right now at 104 over the US dollar. I have not bought the camera in Vancouver.
Then I went to Future Shop to buy a Lacie 500 gb external hard drive for my computer. The manufacturers suggested list price is $119. Future shop had this item at $274.! Anywhere in Blaine or Bellingham I could change my Canadian dollars for American money and make these two deals at regular US prices. And I have not looked for sales yet in Bellis Faire, for instance.
If you're a Canadian consumer. They are preying on you folks. You represent extra profits for retailers here. Gouge profits. They cry about their costs by that is not our concern. They can drive whatever bargain they like with the manufacturers, it takes strong management to do it but it can be done. As a chain store you just remove their product from your shelves for a week and see what deal they'll give you to get your retail prices in line.
If I buy these two products across the border, I will SAVE $317 DOLLARS over buying them in Canada. That is HUGE and pays for my lunch and the bonus is cheap gas. Three Hundred and seventeen dollars!
And it shows that Canadian retailers have gotten soft and have nothing but disdain for their customers.
Besides, those Americans are WAY more friendly too.

Further interest - Went to buy a magazine, 12.95 Canadian dollars - 9.95 American dollars. So if I go to the bank and change my Canadian into American dollars, it will cost me 9.68 to get 9.95 American. So I save $3.27 on a simple magazine!
Oh yes, I looked at another 500 gig external hard drive - Manufacturers suggested list price, or if I buy it from the web, (free shipping by manufacturer) was $119.00. London Drugs price = $149.00. CostCo price - $179.00.
Sure, I know there are other variables, like travel and effort, but it DOES give you an idea that Canadian retailers are grabbing everything they can out of your pocket. If I am going to pay more, then I'll be supporting the small independant retailer thanks, NOT the chains.

Give yourself some time

Take a quiet hour for yourself. Open your mind. Throw off your preconceived thoughts, and your innate resistance to volatile and disturbing ideas about our world. Be objective, don't argue until you see it all first. Give yourself a chance. Suspend your disbelief for just a while. Don't judge until you see it. Watch the video here ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yx9NRX37SM

Sometimes the evilness of humanity needs to be assimilated to allow hope to emerge for the goodness of humanity.
Just think for yourself .... ask questions.

Death among the criminals - 2 ???

Last night in Surrey, well not actually at night-time, it was apparently around 5:30 pm, supper hour at a MacDonalds restaurant, two groups started shooting at each other in the parking lot. No one was killed among the criminals.
A police spokesman, reassuring the public that it was not a random shooting said, "It was between two groups in the parking lot, the public was not in danger at all, unless it would be from a stray bullet."
Is that supposed to be reassuring? We are supposed to just relax and continue our Big Macs? Maybe just watch the bad guy show outside? Tell our kids, "It's okay, just don't stand in the way of a stray bullet?" Is that an asinine statement by the police or what?
The stray bullets are exactly what we're worried about! Don't the cops understand?
A lot of these criminal gang types are stupid. How many drive-by shootings have sprayed bullets into the wrong house because these a**holes didn't know what street they were on? What about the girl in Gastown who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone pulled a gun and shot at someone else? Killing her. What about that Toronto street shooting? A woman across the street lost her life in a flail of bullets.
The public IS in danger, quit trying to lie for a job poorly done protecting us.
Cruel and unusual punishment is dying simply for being an innocent passer-by. Twenty years in jail for shooting a gun in public is not.
It's justice.

Hydro power in BC. For America?

The plans to build hundreds of Run-of-the-River power projects in BC need to have guidelines placed on these projects before allowing any contracts. Although the attitude of the present government is that it is private enterprise and we never dare put restrictions on what private business can do. What I mean is that allowing private power companies to bypass BC Hydro without rules for the benefit of British Columbians should be a no go. My alarm signals begin to flash when I am told that it is all good for BC people. And that we are presently importing power. My concern is that we are again being told lies by omission, a trademark of Gordon Campbell. We always find out much later that the BC Liberals were scheming against us. We haven’t been told much about selling the power generated by these new projects, except that they will, after a certain time period of selling to BC Hydro, be free to then sell to whoever they like. Read that as America. And at that time, my assumption is that we will have NO authority over our own BC river projects to reclaim that power for ourselves if need be.
Nigel Protter, in a recent Georgia Straight article said, ‘... why should we care where the electricity goes?’ Well wouldn’t we care if we are facing a brown-out in Vancouver and our own rivers are generating power to keep Las Vegas alight? Or that they will provide us with electricity made from our own rivers, but at an ‘American’ price.
Just fine with Environment Minister Barry Penner too. His side-mouth-talking asserted that we would avoid importing power from coal burning or gas burning etc. Ba-ad for us all. Carefully omitting the point, of course, of why we would import any power at all from other sources than our very own rivers. (As an aside, did California EVER pay us that 600 million they owe us for power?)
We need to implement rules to whatever power projects are built, in that WE can reclaim that power back to us without a penalty at any time. That should simply be the cost of private enterprise doing business using BC resources, supposedly owned by the people of BC.
Of course not much of BC is run by British Columbians anymore is it? And one needs to have suspicion with every announcement from this devious government. BC Rail is no longer. Now CN DErail is run out of New York. BC Gas has become Terasen so we won’t even think of it as ours, now run out of Texas. We sent 350 million dollars to Germany to build ships that could have been built here by British Columbians. Not a dime going to a BC worker!
We were once proud of the accomplishments of British Columbians for British Columbia, I wonder if we’ll begin to feel like dupes when we are told to stay away from our own rivers?