Funny man Craig

I just watched the late late show with Craig Ferguson and man is that guy ever funny! 

must have missed that class...

School and formal education is supposed to prepare you for life. However, I must have been absent the day they covered some miscellaneous topics like:

• What to do if a cricket that you're trying to get out of your house decides to jump into the floor vent and makes loud cricket calls at all hours of the night.
• What to say to a fourteen year old girl who just totally dissed you when she saw your mobile phone and asked "what is that? it's like a brick."
• Ways not to get jumped when encountering an idle Tanzanian youth on a beach... one carrying a machete and another carrying a bow and arrow.
• How to recognize if the French ticket agent who is selling you a ticket is going to screw you by giving you directions to a station approximately 30 km from where you actually need to be.
• How to deal with douchbag French ticket collectors who won't show you their identity cards.

Some random items which came to mind...

Ministry of Education-- get on it.

timbits as a food group...

Craving a single donut at 3:30 AM, I went into a local Tim Hortons to pick up a couple of Timbits. It went something random like this:

Me: Hi, Can I just get 10 timbits please?

Employee: Can I just put it in a bag? Don't worry, I'll give you more...

Me: Uh, okay. I'll just get a few of the blueberry ones... like uh, two.

I left the place with about 40 timbits. About 15 of them were blueberry ones. Here's hoping timbits count as a food group.

bummetry...

Since finishing my MA, I've experienced various degrees of "bummetry"--a new word I invented for being a bum. June was a pretty interesting month as I finally had the opportunity to take the driver's wh(e)eled course I've been putting off for years. A month of driving army trucks around was pretty cool. By far, one of the most laid back courses I've ever done, and a stellar way to get paid.

Right now, life is in a bit of flux. On one hand, there's a world of opportunity, and on the other hand, there's also so little I can do. I've been in the process of applying with the RCMP since August of last year, however, at the one year mark, I am still waiting for the application process to complete. I only got an email today saying that it'll be another couple of months remaining. I refused to believe it, but I think MF was right when I went up to see her and J when she said "you'll be lucky if you get into Depot by January."

I think the girl was right.

So what's there to do now? Well I could go travelling. Or I could sign a contract with the army to go do some exciting stuff outside Canada or I could wait around ambiguously for a yet undetermined amount of time. It's easier writing these options than actually deciding since there are so many factors to consider.

And for the moment, I rest.

wordle my blog...

An interesting look at what I write most about on this blog... via word cloud.

television ptsd...

After a couple of busy weeks, I finally got the time today to sit down and catch up on missed episodes of 'LOST.' Alongside 24, it is my favorite tv show.

I actually found myself cringing and with heart-pangs after watching one gripping scene. I feel sorry for Sawyer... He deserves better.

time for the real world...

I generally don't like to brag, but instead I'm pretty happy that I finally finished the thesis that I've been working on for the past eight months. According to the program head at the university who reviewed my thesis:

[TH]’s thesis, Ordering Disorder: An Evaluation of the effectiveness of International Civilian Police training in Haiti, 1994-2001 is a piece of research that gets at the core nexus of issues surrounding human security and peace building. This is particularly so given the deep levels of human insecurity in Haiti.

This is one of the best thesis that I have read in my
career in terms of how thorough and systematic. An extremely interesting and practical topic dealing with police training in Haiti, one of the world’s poorest country and typically regarded as high up in the league of failed states. [H] wants to know what has hindered the effectiveness and looks at domestic and international factors in the bid to build greater capacity. And
this in one of the most corrupt, crime ridden states in the world
The thesis is very systematic and deliberate and [H]expertly brings theory and empirical data together. There a couple of problems on initial reading:

1) There is an incomplete sentence on p.13
“interviews conducted may have” and that’s it. Need to know what comes next as it seems very relevant to the thesis.
2) It seems there are a fairly small number of interviews.

I liked that the student combined history with the literature review which seemed like a good way to integrate and then develop the 4 themes he uses as a framework for analysis.

This thesis will add a lot to capacity of police training in post conflict situations and contribute to peace building in erstwhile failed states. This would be a very good pass in my estimation.

So yes, eight months of work, 102 pages of contentIn my mind, this sorta makes up for my failed forklift operating test in February.

Time for the real world.

Fido Message

So
it is true! I can post from my phone! Ah technology you're such a flirt.

--
Sent from my Fido Phone

my life as a figurine...

Two weeks ago while I was in Niagara Falls with Kristin, I got an email from one of the managers at work voluntelling me to attend the stand-up parade (ceremony) for the new formation that our unit was going to fall under. I figured it would just be a simple change of command type deal--dress up, stand a bit, and go home--so I didn't quite understand why we were scheduled to leave at 0600 hrs on Thursday and come back on Friday afternoon.

When we finally got there, the troops lined up to draw rifles, bayonets, white belts and white gloves. It started dawning on me that it was a slightly bigger deal than I had originally anticipated. We ended up spending the majority of the day practicing for the ceremony, which was a good thing since most of the troops hadn't done any drill with weapons in AGES. I think in my career thus far with the green team, I've only been on parade with weapons twice. "Rusty" would be an understatement of my ability in this area and I don't think I was the only one.

And it surely didn't help that the drill commands were being given in French by Anglophone speakers. Apparently this was done to try and impress the incoming Colonel's wife. When parade time came, I managed to totally forget all the drill commands in French and as it would happen I was also in the front row of troops directly across from the General, Colonel, and Sergeant-Major. There were a couple of moments at the beginning when this conflux of factors mad me seriously think I was either going to drop my rifle right there on the parade square. Either that or pass out from standing stiff for an extra 20 minutes at the beginning while we waited for the commander to arrive.

The parade was actually a complete gong show. The parade commander actually forgot the proper commands in french and managed to say the wrong things with the result of screwing up half of the troops on parade. And then I managed to absolutely forget all the commands and had to rely on peripheral vision to see what buddy beside me was doing so that I could copy him with a milisecond delay (in a line of troops, even a quarter section out of sync shows). And being directly across from the general, I think it contributed to the fact that he talked to the troops on both sides of me but only gave me a disappointed look when he passed me on inspection. Meh.

The ultimate badass move though would have to go to the commander's son. In a room full of high ranking officers, people in suits and ties and soldiers with swords and dressed to the nines, he managed to perfectly stick out with his huge black button earrings, pink emo t shirt and torn jeans. As the commander was saying some words and thanking his family for their support and apologizing to his son for not being away from home often the son flipped the bird to his dad. That would have to go down in my books as one of the most flippantly uncouth badass slaps in the face I've seen.

Dude.

About an hour and half after it started the ceremony finally ended. And it didn't come a moment too soon as I was feeling the effects of standing stiff on metal soled parade boots (look wonderful, feel not so much) on both my feet, knees and lower back.

I have a quota of formal parades I willingly participate in. I think I've had my fill for the next couple of years. My back would tend to agree.

grinds my gears...

Belligerents in the conflicts of today do not distinguish between foreigners and foreigners working for 'neutral' entities.

To expect that working for an NGO, IO or as a 'journalist' will somehow hide the fact that you're a white person (read: rich, politically valuable hostage) is simply naive.

I'm thinking of Fowler, Lindhout and our latest star, Ms. Archer; although I'm sure there are many others.

People have to seriously start thinking of their safety and taking steps to ensure they do not become a liability to their organizations or a cause of grief for their loved ones. I think the first part of that process is to recognize the very real threat which exists in some places and recognizing that saying you're 'neutral' doesn't make it so in the eyes of many bastards out there.

The ignorance and naivete of some international workers and the organizations they work for (as demonstrated by a couple of cases over the past half year) is simply astounding. I guess, it is like this that some people learn; but eventually, somebody will die learning this particular life lesson.

the Colbert bump to the Space Station...

Just for fun and to demonstrate the power of grassroots politics, I'd encourage everyone to mindlessly follow the dictates of Herr Colbert and suggest that the next part of the ISS Space Station be named "Colbert"

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/name_ISS/index.html

Choose suggest a name and type 'Colbert'

Can't wait to see how NASA reacts to the Colbert Bump.

random thoughts on training and force...

Last month, I went to a talk given by Dave Grossman to CF members and police officers. Grossman is the author of On Killing and On Combat and is a pretty well known figure in military and LE circles for his research into combat stress and human psychology in combat.

His interesting lecture emphasized the importance of training as a key component of 'stress innoculation' against the stresses of combat. According to Grossman, when an individual is caught up in a life or death situation, they rarely rise to the occasion but often 'sink to the level of their training.' Although he went into the psychological and physiological basis for this, I won't go into them, but I will say that it sheds light on the drills which characterize any type of use of force training.

To illustrate, in the army, when soldiers are taught squad attacks, simple procedural steps are drilled into them such that it becomes a reflexive action. On contact, two shots, drop down. Pop pop. Down. Similarly, it is drilled into soldiers that a weapons stoppage is not cleared until rounds are going downrange again.

I think a common thread which draws training together is making the reactions of soldiers or law enforcement reflexive in combat situations. Such that ‘stopping the threat’ becomes a reflex when the rational part of the brain shuts down in a high stress situation.

In the Grossman talk, he illustrated the importance of training by illustrating the example of Jennifer Fulford, a police officer in Florida who despite being shot 10 times (including her shooting arm) managed to shoot and reload with her weak hand to ultimately stop the threat.

“I was not thinking about what I was doing, I was just reacting. I’m glad I had
that training,” said Fulford

Similarly, in July 2006, RCMP Cst Michelle Knopp fell back on her training when, in the course of a pursuit, she came across the vehicle of two of her other colleagues. In that situation she encountered her own life or death threat:

Const. Knopp said she pulled up close [to the other RCMP vehicle] and was about to take off her seatbelt when she heard a loud bang and felt heat on her face. She testified she saw a hole in her
windshield and felt her ear bleeding.

Const. Knopp said she shot at Mr. Dagenais twice and thought she saw him drop to the ground. She quickly got out of car and shot another round toward him, but couldn't see where he was, she said

It is quite possible that had she not reflexively gotten out of her car and fired back that she might have also been killed along with her two colleagues.

In all of this, I find it interesting the relationship between training and instinctive reaction and how training plays such a huge factor in determining whether who survives a lethal confrontation. It also raises the question of the role that training plays in causing unnecssary deaths or injuries. For example, the death of Jean Charles de Menezes an innocent man shot to death by police because they thought he was about to set off a bomb on a London subway. Reflexive responses to threatening cues.

Some random thoughts on training on a Friday afternoon.