Skip to main content

Yesterday's tragedy

If I had been twenty minutes ahead of where I was, I would likely have been a witness to a terrible automotive accident that took place yesterday in the late morning. From The Vancouver Sun:
According to police, witnesses saw the front forks of the eastbound garbage truck lifting as the vehicle approached the overpass. The forks hit the overpass, shearing it from one of two concrete supports and causing the collapse. The driver was trapped inside his cab as the heavy structure crashed down. "I saw his body get smaller, and [I] stopped my truck inches away from his and jumped out and tried to help him," one witness told BCTV News on Global. "I grabbed him by the hands and tried to tell him help was on the way. He said "help" to me one more time and then died in my hands.
A more recent news story on the accident is on the local CBC News webpage. The clearest picture is this one, from the local newspaper's website, where you can get the best idea of what happened. Yesterday's accident scene. The driver's name has not been released yet and I'm hoping it will be soon. You see, one of the guys I hung out with in high school with drives a garbage truck, and he used to do it in that area. The age and all the rest don't rule him out either. Even though it's unlikely, I'd like to put the thought to rest.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reuters joins CNN on the bench

Makes room for CanWest to join the majors Kudos to CanWest for calling a terrorist a terrorist . Many, including The Last Amazon , will be happy to hear it. Reuters is among the worst of the major western news services, where I would also place the BBC and the CBC. Unsurprisingly, Reuters is not happy about the changes CanWest made to Reuters wire stories: Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline." Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations. "My goal is to protect ...

Wordpress

My move to Mac has been very happy except for two issues - gaming and blogging. For websurfing and multimedia, a Mac is of course a terrific machine. Games on the Mac platform are often ports of games made for the larger PC market and that means a Mac gamer will have to wait for the port. I'm not a heavy gamer by any means but I am very happy that the Mac port of Civilization 4 is finally here. Well, my copy isn't here quite yet - but it has been ordered and ought to be here soon. The blogging issue is more complicated. I'm not fond of writing my posts in a browser window. This goes back to when I was first blogging and I lost one or two large posts into the ether. After that I moved to w.bloggar - a great little app that let me compose on my desktop and then click send when all was said and done. I have not been able to recreate that experience on my Mac, and not for a lack of trying! I looked at Marsedit , but that forces you to compse while staring at a bunch of HMT...

"A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard"

This article argues that universities are obsolete . Herman Melville said that "a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." Melville didn't need college to write "Moby Dick." He needed to read and spend time in the world. Before sailing out on a whaler in 1841, he had already worked on his uncle's farm and as a cabin boy on a ship to England. Peter Drucker urged high-school graduates to do likewise: Work for at least five years. If they went on to college, it would be as grown-ups. You wonder whether colleges, stripped of their education function, wouldn't find other lives as spas, professional-sports franchises or perhaps lightly supervised halfway houses for post-adolescents. The infrastructure is already in place. Putting aside the intellectual class' obsession with things passing and thus bringing the great moment of cosmic progression to a thundering conclusion (yawn), I do think there's something to this. The potential of the podcas...