For those who are unfamiliar with Canadian news, or who live with your heads buried in the sand, Robert Dziekanski was a Polish man immigrating to Canada to be with his mother. He’d apparently never flown before, and was at least somewhat frightened by the prospect of human flight – at least of the personal kind. I could drone on about the incident, but to get down to brass tacks, it can be summed up as: man is afraid of flight and stressed out, doesn’t speak English, lost in airport for a long period of time, nobody tries to help him find a translator, he gets agitated and starts throwing things around (as may be the Polish custom – I have no idea about the culture of ex Soviet bloc rubbish countries), security calls the RCMP, the RCMP (4 pretty buff men) come in and taser him, causing five times, including while he is on the ground, kneel on his head, and stand around while he dies. This, by the way, was video recorded, and the video is available on the wikipedia page (I believe – use Google).

OK – so we’ve established that this man was an ignoramus from the hinterlands, but did he deserve to die? Probably not. First off, while not necessarily related, I should point out that one of the officers has since been charged in connection with a fatal hit n’ run incident. Additionally, from watching the video, it’s incredibly obvious that the RCMP officers involved used excessive force.

The RCMP as an organisation, for its part, has been handling the situation far from well, and in my opinion, deserves many a harsh word. They have repeatedly made outrageous claims regarding the incident, such as the suggestion that Dziekanski was showing an “aggressive stance” by raising his hands (hands up – again, watch the video), and now, they give us this:

Psychologist defends claim Mounties panicked in airport Taser incident

Seriously? God keep our land glorious and free indeed.

Welp, heading back to Canada at the end of the month. Might get a bit of poker in beforehand. I’ve got a big project to do with work to work on, so I’m sort of excited about that. One of those things that’s been dragging on for a long time, and which should clear the way for rapid progress once it’s complete. Since my cousin (and boss) has the work ethic of a concentration camp inmate, I suppose I’ll be working long days, although that’s not a bad thing as I should be able to save up quite a lot of money.

After these two moths of extreme work, I’ll most likely be visiting family/friends and playing a lot more poker. The games in Alberta were super soft last time I was there, and now that I have a good bankroll, I can only hope that the games are still good.

As far as personal projects, I’m chipping away at pokerscraper in my spare time, and have some work done on hand import classes. I always seem to get hung up on the details, though. Right now I’m pondering the advantages of the Kohana vs Symfony frameworks.

That’s all for now..