Fare thee well, my ferry fey

So, the Duke Point ferry terminal is up and running again at last, after, what, 4 months, and $2 million or so in repairs, and all, I hear, because of a relatively inexpensive electronic component.  Ad nauseam, we are the hapless hostages of technology.  But I have, once again, come up with a Most Satisfactory Solution.

BC Ferries should fit out all vessels with banks of oars, like the Greek and Roman galleys.  Not as the main power source, you understand, but as a backup in case of engine failure.  Man the oars with able-bodied welfare recipients, of which there is NEVER, EVER a shortage here in Lotusland.  Pay them welfare + 10%, to take care of employment expenses, and a fat cash bonus anytime they actually have to row.  Since they will only be called upon to do any real work on the rarest of occasions, they should be perfectly happy, since that's what they're doing anyway.

Round up the Occupiers and toss them in, too.  They'll love it.  They'll be out of the rain and getting money for nothing, which is all they really want, as far as I can see.  And their parents will then clean and remodel their basements, generating no end of economic activity, and maybe even go on extended vacations, boosting the tourism sector.  The possibilities are endless.  Everybody wins.

Which is why, of course, nothing like this will ever happen.

Epi-pensive

I read, sometime in the retrievable past, that the current proliferation of allergies in Western society is suspected to be due to our unusually (compared with most of human history) hygienic environment: the immune system doesn't have enough to do, so it goes a bit squirrelly and starts fighting imaginary invaders.

It occurred to me, sometime around May 1, that the Occupy movement is something very similar, on a political and sociological level.  We've had peace and safety for two generations now, and nothing loftier than our own comfort and convenience to work for.  Sounds lovely, but, being human, we languish without something bigger than ourselves to give us purpose.  How many imaginary crises have come and gone in the last few decades?  Remember the hole in the ozone?  Y2K? SARS?  Global warming?  And now we have the intellectually and morally bankrupt Occupiers, who don't seem to know what they want, other than to be free of the behavioural norms of civilized society.  And to get everything for free.

Sadly, the only thing likely to cure these yutzes is a major war.  A real war, a clear and present threat to their physical safety.  Their heads would snap back into common-sense mode pretty quickly.  Or they'd be conscripted and end up as cannon fodder.  Either way, the whining would stop and the streets would be clean.  But it's bitter medicine.