Clouds

When something like that happens, the reaction as reported in the Press, always seems so trite. He was a wonderful young man. He will be greatly missed.
The truth is, to his friends and family, the news that their son, their friend was the one, the one from the story that shocked the world. And that news will explode in slow motion, like the old newsreel of the nuclear mushroom.

And the fingers are already being pointed. The 'suspect' is an immigrant. Well, maybe he was a wrong 'un right from the start, perhaps he had something in his brain that was ticking down the seconds until the moment when he ripped and hacked another's life from him.
But Canada needs to think on how she treats her immigrants. Making the notion of assimilation a question on the immigration form doesn't address the problem.

At least Canada gets that she needs immigration.
On the one hand, maybe we wouldn't be in the mess that we are now were there fewer people on the planet, but that's not a given. There are solutions and the more people we have working on the problem, the more likely we are to find them.
But every country needs to maintain a population level to maintain their economy, unless we suddenly develop really good AI. So we, and many, many others, need immigrants, and that's not an easy statement coming from someone who grew up with the rantings of Enoch Powell ringing in their ears.

Last night we watched the film, 'Becoming Jane', about Jane Austen. It was a nice little film. At the end the credits said that Jane Austen had written the six of the greatest novels ever written in the English language.
Ok.
Well, like many others, I had a Jane Austen phase and devoured her work. I'm not sure whether they were the greatest, but they were exceedingly good. But for the life of me, I could only remember five. It bugged me, and then, just as I was about to look up the sixth, I remembered the first one we read at school, 'Northanger Abbey'.

One of the blogs I read, 'The Urban Feminist', pointed out an interesting rule, an observation of Alison Bechdel of 'Dykes to Watch out for'. When watching a movie, she checks the following :-

"1. Does it have at least two women in it,

2. Who [at some point] talk to each other,

3. About something besides a man."

Mmmmmm. Food for thought.