Peter Watts Convicted

[bec_87rb]

I had read a few years ago the sci fi works of Peter Watts, and commented on his favorite themes, etc., and that I was impressed that he was up-front about his atheism being fundamentalist, not amenable to even God appearing to his personally. I like it when people have self-insight, you see.

Color me gob-stopped: Dr. Watts is a convicted felon

Comments

[ieatbigboogers]

I don't feel the same police presence here like I did in California. Never once been pulled over while driving. In California once a burnt-out licence plate and a 12 year old acting "suspicious" in the back seat resulted in guns pointed at my head and me hanging out in the back of a squad car for the better part of an hour while they searched my Tercel. The couple of instances when I've run into the police in Alberta, I've felt I've gotten off fairly easy.

My first summer here I was in the back alley behind Filthy McNasty's Public House in Edmonton sharing a joint with a few friends. When I saw a couple of mounties walking up I figured I had a good chance of spending the night in jail or at the very least being patted down and interrogated. Probably had a pocket knife on me too. I tossed the joint in a puddle, one of the mounties said, "Leave that shit at home," and they both walked on by.

About a year and a half ago, I got caught preparing to water the bushes at a tailgate party before a CFL game. One of my buddies was already relieving himself, and as I tried to explain to the officers I wasn't so much "urinating in public" as "holding myself next to a tree" but we both got $300 fines. The thing is, I was drunk and obnoxious, and did plenty of talking back. Seems to me the Fresno PD back home would have found another charge or two to lay on me.

I'm given reason to believe that if I was native, my experience with the police would be a lot worse. A scandal broke a few years back in Saskatchewan when evidence emerged that for 30 years or so the Saskatoon police department had occasionally picked up drunk native men and dropped them off miles outside of town on cold nights (think 40 below, prairie winters), often without a jacket or even shoes. As you can imagine, these "starlight tours" quite often amounted to a death sentence, all for being Drunk While Indian.