thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
strangers gathering in small groups, talking through a horrifying event that defied rational explanation.I tried to lay down at 4 o'clock this morning and I was up 10 minutes later, because every time I close my eyes I see this man in the window with some guy's head I just smoked a cigarette with an hour before, said passenger Cody Olmstead, who was on his way home to Nova Scotia.Mr. Olmstead may have been the last person to speak to the victim before he was killed. He said they exchanged pleasantries, but not much more. The young man, who was about 5 foot 8 and 150 pounds, was dressed in baggy, hip-hop clothing, passengers said. He seemed to be all right. I didn't get to know him, he said. He just told me where he was going. I told him where I was going.At first, Mr. Olmstead said, he thought it was a regular fistfight. But when somebody yelled knife, everyone started to run. What can you do when a man's got a knife the size of, you know, it's a big knife. So we just tried to stay out of the way, he said. He said he didn't notice any tension between the two men beforehand, or even a minor incident that could have sparked a confrontation.No, there was no tension. The guy got on the bus, sat down beside the fellow. The fellow offered him the seat, woke up, said, Yeah, go ahead,' fell back asleep. Next thing you know, he's getting stabbed repetitively, he said. And then I guess he cuts buddy's head off, and he walks up to the door, holds the head in the door and just looks at him, crazy like, and just drops the head.Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day called Thursday's incident horrific and said his heart goes to the family of the victim. However, he played down the possibility of enacting tough security measures in Canada's bus terminals, similar to what exists in airports.People should always be open to looking at precautionary measures. But let's keep in mind that as bizarre and tragic as this is, it is extremely rare, Mr. Day said.He also dismissed talk by some opposition MPs of a knife registry, saying that millions of them are bought each year simply for kitchen use. He added that there are already provisions in the Criminal Code against crimes and assaults.Speaking at a Conservative Party caucus meeting, Mr. Day said he does not want to jeopardize the investigation, but added he wants to see the killer convicted in court.Grief counsellors from the Brandon Regional Health Authority were made available to the passengers at the hotel Wednesday night. They were eventually allowed to complete their journey to Winnipeg, even though all their possessions had to be left on the bus while police continued their search of the crime scene. Greyhound paid for them to buy clothes Thursday, and later transported them into Winnipeg, where some were reunited with anxious family members late in the afternoon.The bus remained parked at the side of the Trans-Canada
Highway Thursday, about 20 kilometres west of Portage La Prairie, as forensic teams sifted through evidence.With reports from Joe Friesen in Winnipeg and Daniel Leblanc in Levis, Que.*************************************************************Suspect called friendly, reliable employee, Josh Wingrove, August 1.It was last summer when Vince Weiguang Li first gave Vincent Augert a call.Mr. Li was responding to an advertisement for Vinco Newspaper Distribution, a company contracted to deliver newspapers in Edmonton. He was looking for part-time work to supplement his income from another job at a local McDonald's restaurant.He got the job, delivering to homes in the city's northeast end.Mr. Li was a quiet man who spoke quickly, often making his English difficult to understand, Mr. Augert, 42, remembered. But he was friendly and a reliable employee.Mr. Li, 40, showed up dutifully in the wee hours each morning for 13 months.He just came, picked up his papers, didn't talk to anybody. Picked up his papers, and did his things, Mr. Augert said.In early July, he asked Mr. Augert for a day off at the end of the month, for a job interview. ...He indicated he'd need a day off at the end of the month, and he had to go to Winnipeg for an interview, and he would get back to me when he knew the day. He didn't get back to Mr. Augert. Then came Monday, the last day Mr. Li showed up for work. On Tuesday, wondering where his trustworthy employee had disappeared to, Mr. Augert called his cellphone. A woman called back saying she was Mr. Li's wife.Monday morning he picked up his newspapers, and that was it. He picked up his newspapers, and fell off the face of the earth, Mr. Augert said.Mr. Li didn't show up Wednesday or Thursday, the same day reports of a gruesome attack aboard an eastbound Edmonton-to-Winnipeg Greyhound bus began to surface. Thursday evening, Mr. Augert spoke again with the woman he believed to be Mrs. Li. She basically just said that she didn't know where he was, and that he had told her he'd left out of town on an emergency, Mr. Augert said.Throughout Thursday, the bus investigation progressed. A man was thought to have stabbed another man dozens of times.Mr. Augert and his fellow newspaper distributors recognized the name and photo of the alleged killer the next day, and couldn't believe it was the Mr. Li they'dworked with.It was just a total shock. I would have never thought this would ever happen, Mr. Augert said. There was nothing to believe or suggest that he would have it in him to do something like this.Mr. Li appeared in court Friday, his feet shackled, not uttering a word. His wife couldn't be reached for comment.*************************************************************'Please kill me,' accused pleads, Joe Friesen, August 5.ERICKSON, MAN. Vince Li stood in a Manitoba courtroom Tuesday pleading for it all to end.Please kill me, he said quietly, in a court packed with journalists and members of the victim's family.Mr. Li, 40, is accused of stabbing and beheading 22-year-old Tim McLean, a complete stranger, who was sleeping next to him on a
Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg on July 30.The judge ordered a psychiatric assessment to determine whether Mr. Li is fit to stand trial and whether he can be held criminally responsible for his actions. He has so far refused to speak to a lawyer.Court was told Mr. Li spent four days in a Canadian psychiatric facility at some point, but the Crown is still trying to determine where and when. Crown lawyer Joyce Dalmyn said Mr. Li has not yet offered any explanation for what occurred aboard Greyhound 1170.No explanation, no note, almost nothing verbal, Ms. Dalmyn said. There is nothing to indicate it's anything other than a random and unprovoked attack.Meanwhile, new details have emerged about how Mr. Li spent the 24 hours before Mr. McLean was killed, including that he spent a night on a public bench, sold a laptop to a teenager that contained personal letters and photos, as well as a note that expressed feelings of guilt at leaving China, and confusion about life in Canada.Mr. Li first stepped off the Greyhound bus from Edmonton in the tiny western Manitoba town of Erickson, population 456, just before 6 p.m. last Tuesday, July 29.He strode across the street from the convenience store, which doubles as a bus depot, carrying five pieces of luggage under his arms. He was wearing small black sunglasses, a green shirt and a hat, and looked perfectly put together, like a businessman, said Darren Beatty, a 15-year-old student who works at a local gas station.The whole time I seen him he never took off his sunglasses, Mr. Beatty said.He watched him sit down on a shaded wooden bench next to the Co-Op grocery on Main Street, arranging his bags around him and resting his arms as though he were sitting in an arm chair.He didn't move for the next three hours. Around 9 p.m., he walked into the M and M store, where David Dauphinais's husband Darren was working alone.Mr. Li hung around for what felt like ages, making Darren extremely uncomfortable. He called his husband, saying he was afraid to walk home.He was really freaked out, Mr. Dauphinais said. He said there was something about this guy that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.Darren's a treaty Indian. When Darren gets nervous about somebody, I listen.Mr. Dauphinais rushed back from a meeting, only to find that Mr. Li had left the store when another customer walked in.That night neither could sleep, fretting about the mysterious stranger. Mr. Dauphinais got out of bed at 3 a.m. and went down to check on his store. He saw Mr. Li sitting across the street, bolt upright on the bench, eyes wide open.The following morning, Mr. Beatty was riding his bike when he saw a laptop on the curb. The screen was open and a hand-written sign said $600 for sale, or best offer.He circled on his bike, noted the brand-new Acer 4200, and approached Mr. Li.He offered $100, then immediately lowered it to $50. Mr. Li contemplated for a moment. That's probably enough
to get you a bus ticket, Mr. Beatty said. They settled on $60, plus a bag.I just thought he was a guy having a hard time, he said, adding he never felt threatened. He seemed lost. As I was talking to him about [the laptop] he muttered something about America. He had a thick accent so it was hard to understand. He seemed really happy to get some money in his hand.Mr. Beatty brought the computer home, and, after returning to get the password from Mr. Li (it was 7777), he unwittingly opened a window on the world of a man who would soon become one of Canada's most notorious accused killers.He found more than 20 resumes, each tailored to a specific job application. One was for a police service, one for McDonald's, one for Wal-Mart. He also found dozens of photos that he assumed were taken by Mr. Li, including several of a black military plane that he thought were taken by an amateur in mid-air. There were photos of a formal Chinese military parade, and others of Chinese models in clothes, and some of mountains in British Columbia.There was a letter in Mandarin, translated with Google translator, which seemed to be addressed to someone back in China. It said he was happy to be free, living under beautiful, free skies, but that he felt guilty for leaving China, and that everything in Canada was not as he expected, Mr. Beatty said. Mr. Li, who recently worked as a newspaper deliveryman, immigrated to Canada in 2001 under the federal skilled worker program, though it's not known whether it was Mr. Li or his wife Anna who qualified. He's believed to be a Canadian citizen.On the morning after the attack, Mr. Beatty got a call from the RCMP at work, saying an incident had occurred involving the man who sold him his laptop. An officer visited his home and seized the computer, saying he might get restitution but wasn't likely to get the laptop back.I asked the cop, Did he use my money to buy a weapon? But he said, No, not that we know of,' Mr. Beatty said.Mr. Li returned to the M and M store around 1:30 p.m. Mr. Dauphinais said he stood waiting in an alley behind the store for the next 41/2 hours for the bus to arrive. Just before 6 p.m., he boarded the Greyhound in Erickson, not Brandon as several witnesses reported, and sat down near the front. After a cigarette break in Brandon, he moved to the back and sat next to Mr. McLean.Court was told Tuesday that when he was arrested, Mr. Li was carrying a plastic bag containing a human nose, ear and part of a mouth, believed to be Mr. McLean's, and that police officers saw him hacking at and eating the corpse. During the ensuing standoff RCMP officers heard him say, I have to stay on the bus forever.Mr. Li's next court appearance is Sept. 8.The nut of the story, by my lights, is right here:Mr. Li first stepped off the
Greyhound bus from Edmonton in the tiny western Manitoba town of Erickson, population 456, just before 6 p.m. last Tuesday, July 29....The whole time I seen him he never took off his sunglasses, Mr. Beatty said. He watched him sit down on a shaded wooden bench next to the Co-Op grocery on Main Street, arranging his bags around him and resting his arms as though he were sitting in an arm chair. He didn't move for the next three hours. Around 9 p.m., he walked into the M and M store, where David Dauphinais's husband Darren was working alone. Mr. Li hung around for what felt like ages, making Darren extremely uncomfortable. He called his husband, saying he was afraid to walk home. He was really freaked out, Mr. Dauphinais said. He said there was something about this guy that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Darren's a treaty Indian. When Darren gets nervous about somebody, I listen....The following morning, Mr. Beatty was riding his bike when he saw a laptop on the curb. The screen was open and a hand-written sign said $600 for sale, or best offer. He circled on his bike, noted the brand-new Acer 4200, and approached Mr. Li. He offered $100, then immediately lowered it to $50. Mr. Li contemplated for a moment. That's probably enough to get you a bus ticket, Mr. Beatty said. They settled on $60, plus a bag. I just thought he was a guy having a hard time, he said, adding he never felt threatened. He seemed lost. As I was talking to him about [the laptop] he muttered something about America. He had a thick accent so it was hard to understand. He seemed really happy to get some money in his hand. Mr. Beatty brought the computer home, and, after returning to get the password from Mr. Li (it was 7777), he unwittingly opened a window on the world of a man who would soon become one of Canada's most notorious accused killers. He found more than 20 resumes, each tailored to a specific job application. One was for a police service, one for McDonald's, one for Wal-Mart....Mr. Li returned to the M and M store around 1:30 p.m. Mr. Dauphinais said he stood waiting in an alley behind the store for the next 4 1/2 hours for the bus to arrive. Just before 6 p.m., he boarded the Greyhound in Erickson, not Brandon as several witnesses reported, and sat down near the front. After a cigarette break in Brandon, he moved to the back and sat next to Mr. McLean.1. There is a difference between the resume you give to Wal-mart and the one you give to McDonald's?2. For a full 24 hours he sat on the street of a tiny prairie town and nobody engaged him beyond ripping off his computer?These photographs by Andre Salcedo are anything but a litle cup of cream cheeze and they are also nothing at all like the thumbnails - click on the thumbnail for a higher resolution
Up, Down.Carnival in the Piazza Colonna, Rome - Jan Miel - 1645 & The Fight Between Carnival and Lent - Pieter Bruegel - 1559. One Carnival for the rich, another for the poor. One for the pious and another for the profane. One for the hip and one for the square. Charles Taylor seems to think that the struggle is over, that the battle has been won by secular reality - and to a degree he is right. The Rio de Janeiro Carnaval, for example, has been taken over by the bureaucrats and categorical classifiers, all very carefully regulated and controlled. But still, the birth rate here spikes in November/December - nine months after Carnaval. My friend smiles when I consider the birth date of her son and say, "Ai, engravidou durante Carnaval?"And the Bloco da Ansiedade each year in Ipanema, starting at Praca General Osorio, site of the weekly Sunday Feira Hippie / Hippie Craft Fair, and getting maybe two blocks before it stalls in permanent confusion.(Antonio Carlos Maia - psicologo, Daniel Perez - comerciante, Fernando Carvalho - escultor/empresario, Fernanda Caetano - atriz/empresaria)BLOCO DA ANSIEDADE / Anxiety ParadeBRINCAR NAO NECESSITA DE PRESCRICAO MEDICA. O ABUSO PODE CAUSAR INDEPENDENCIA / Playing does not require a doctor's prescription. Abuse may cause independenceFUNDADO NO CARNAVAL DO ANO QUE VEM / Founded at next year's carnivalI knew something was up the very day I arrived in Brasil. "It was springtime in Paris and cunt was in the air," as Henry Miller put it so eloquently in Quiet Days in Clichy. Right from the marvellous stench coming from the bayous near the airport it was clear that something very different was happening here:"And you know something's happening but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"That was years ago. More recently I have become obsessed with samba dancers (as you may have noticed if you read any my latest posts to the end) and naturally, I have been wondering about this - still trying to figgure out what's happnin' in there? Charles Taylor has something to say about Carnival in his A Secular Age which I have been picking up on, and Taylor refers to another fellow, Victor Witter Turner (1920 1983) and his wife Edith.Two notions I have bumped into so far - Liminal & Anti-Structure ...Liminal: Of or pertaining to the threshold or initial stage of a process. Of or pertaining to a limen or threshold.Polysemy, Polysemous: The fact of having several meanings; the possession of multiple meanings, senses, or connotations.Etymology of semy & semous coming through 'sema' meaning 'sign' rather than 'serere' meaning 'to sow' as I previously thought (which happens to be the root of semen and a nice symmetry I always thought :-) oh well.Anti-Structure: periods of time and modalities of relationship in which normal social structural patterns are suspended, altered, or transcended (for example, Carnival/Carnaval doh!).The key here is the word 'transcended,' the clue if you like. One could ask why people use words like 'modalities' when 'modes' would do, but that is another issue. This whole area
industry, everything from John Kenneth Galbraith's classic The Affluent Society to No Logo and Adbusters magazine. Not only are we making marketers smarter, we're apparently making ourselves dumber. A hard sell and a soft sell are both sells that you can decide to take or leave. A sell disguised as a desire not to be sold to, which you have created by demonstrating that you're too smart to be sold to, is something about which you can offer no decision.If, discerning that little endgame, you are brave enough to query your own desires and sift them for validity, what you will find is the unsettling mixture of memory, longing, prejudice, imitation, narrative looseness and delusion known as personal identity. Marketers will be with us just like raccoons will, and for the same reason: Despite ourselves, we have desires that they exploit for their own ends.You can do the dance of sideways dodges, trying to stay cooler than the cool-hunters, savvier than the savvy-trappers. But however you dodge, you are done, because they're already inside your head. You could always make this point in a critical way. But that would only inspire some sly marketer somewhere to take that point and run with it - under cover, of course, but running all the same. (Hip new branding shop: Smart Raccoon PLC.)Resistance is not just futile, it is the energy of their evolution. So stop the feeding. Criticism of advertising is over. It never happened. You have not read this article. This article never happened.Express no preferences. Form no attachments.Have a beer. Any beer.Mark Kingwell is professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. His new book is Opening Gambits: Essays on Art and Philosophy.*************************************************************Unpasteurized Milk - The right to rawness, Globe Editorial, August 4.Some of the more worrisome instincts of the nanny state were on display in an Ontario courtroom last week as farmer Michael Schmidt was told he would soon stand trial for producing raw, unpasteurized milk.Its sale is banned in Canada because milk that is not heated up to kill germs can harbour dangerous bacteria, and has been linked to E. coli infections.Except among the health nuts and gourmands who love to drink it, and the bureaucrats who try to stop them, raw milk is an obscure subject. But its illegal status deserves scrutiny.While some level of consumer protection is an obvious government responsibility, the raw-milk ban is unjustified and unfair. Milk is hardly the only possible source of bacteria such as E. coli, outbreaks of which have been traced to beef, spinach, onions, alfalfa sprouts and water.None of these products has ever been banned by health regulators, and with good reason. The issue is never the products themselves, but poor farming and production practices. The same is true of raw milk. It can be dangerous, but the vast majority of the time it is perfectly safe. For proof, look to Europe, where raw milk is relatively common.Even if raw milk is, on the whole, somewhat more dangerous than other products, so what? Consumers are trusted to make informed choices about
SUMMA, with distribution in Canada and the United States. OntarBio was later transformed into a farmers' cooperative with over eighty members. In 1989, Schmidt helped introduce roadside grazing using 500 to 1000 sheep, for landscaping and to avoid spraying for weeds.A COW FOR ALL SEASONSThe Schmidts' first cows at Glencolton were black and white Holsteins, the "official" cow of Canada, the breed that produces the most milk and the highest profits in a confinement dairy system. But the Schmidts soon became interested in the Canadienne breed. Descended from the Normandie cow, the Canadienne was the first cow on the North American continent. It is a small cow that can withstand the cold Canadian winters. Her milk is very richhigh in butterfat, lactose and milk solidsmaking it an ideal milk for cheese.Michael's search for pure breeds sent him to Quebec. The Canadienne is the poor man's cow. In the early 1900s, government policy forbade grants to farmers who had Canadiennes and no bank would give loans for any breed except Holsteins. Banks love the Holstein, explains Schmidt, because she is expensive to maintainleading to more bank loans, more debt for the farmer, more worry and more and more emphasis on squeezing the highest level of production out of the original investment. The Canadienne, by contrast, can survive on hay. She has low production but is inexpensive to maintain. In 1987, the Schmidts purchased 12 purebred Canadiennes from a Quebec farmer. Since that time their herd has been closed. They have bred the Canadienne genetics into their original Holsteins, using several Canadienne bulls.When Michael Schmidt talks about what's wrong with modern milk production, he begins with a reverent description of the cow. The undomesticated cow produces 1000 to 1500 liters of milk per year. When the cow was domesticated, this amount was increased to about 4000 litersa number that works out to about 1000 gallons per yearwith good nutrition and careful handling. The cow has four teats which tradition distributes as follows: one for the calf, one for the other animals on the farm, one for the family that lives on the farm and one for families that live in the towns or cities. The output of the cow can be increased to 6000 or even 7000 liters per year without undue stress on the cow and this is as it should be since so many people now live in cities. You can't keep a cow in a high-rise apartment. Michael Schmidt's cows are not pushed, however. They give about 4000 liters per year, although the amount varies according to the milker. Europeans hired milkmaids who had lovely singing voices, to coax more milk from the cows and Michael notices that the Glencolton cows give more milk when it's Dorothea's turn to do the milking. But the coaxing songs of the milkmaid cannot compete with modern methods for increasing production. The modern cow, bred for volume and kept in confinement, gives anywhere from 12,000 to 24,000 liters per year. Milk production is pushed upwards with a high protein diet, a diet to which the