i know i said i was gonna shut things down here. but the weird thing is that that didn’t change my traffic stats. nice to know that i’m not required to write on my own blog.

my kids and i went up to kelowna to help my morn get her place ready to sell; she’s gonna do the smart thing and sell just before the market goes *poof*. in fact it’s already dropped a few points over the last few months. insiders suggest that prices are artificially high by about 20-25%, driven by real estate speculators. that should be about the amount it will drop over the next little while.

after the dust clears she’ll find a place to rent until the market corrects.

but i’ve been talking to my kids and the money struggles they are having. even my son who works in construction is being hit hard – last month he spent $400.00 in gas alone just to commute to his work site. accommodation and transportation costs are eating up most of his income.

i’m suggesting to the family that we go old skool and consolidate. it was the promise of capitalism that broke up family members into their own individual enclaves, and i suppose that was once affordable although socially undesirable. but for increasing numbers of people it has become untenable to have family members scattered here and there and each paying for their separate, isolated lifestyles, ones they could at least partially share.

we haven’t decided yet, but my mom is thinking of moving down here and sharing a place with my daughter. maybe stu would come over as well. the kids are adamant that they don’t want to live alternatively (rv/boat) but at the very least sharing a place would save everyone a lot of money while being able to support each other. and another problem with  living isolated is there is always so much stuff to deal with and take care of on your own, which translates into stress.
they don’t want to liveabaord so that leaves me out and maybe tracy. maybe she would go between two homes, i don’t know. i’ve found my nirvana and i’m not giving it up.

it is possible that the ongoing, massive failure of capitalism (we ain’t even there yet) would have a bright side- sure we’ll own less, but just maybe we’ll have our communities and families back. how did we ever get the idea that things are better than people? oh wait, yeah, advertising, assorted medias, government policies…

tracy and i are seriously considering going further in simplifying our lives by getting rid of cellphones and cars. there is a fantastic car share co-op in victoria and cycling makes getting around a snap. no repairs, insurance, gas parking, accidents, thefts and hit and runs and break-ins. we just got a whopping cell phone bill for $380.00 for the three phones because i had a lot of phone business i had to take care of and it pushed my minutes into the stratosphere. i would have used skype but it’s been acting up lately. i might try a dedicated voip phone system. funny, i can’t recall the last time i got a call on my cell that required me to get it while i was away from home. i only got my first cell in 2000; somehow i survived before then. in fact, i just read in the g&m that only about 2/3 of canadians own cellphones. most of the remaining 1/3 live in sask and the yukon.
being a retired hipster this will be a real break from my past. i mean, i should be lining up to buy an iphone right? but unfrtunately no matter how hip i was, what things have translated into is big money for flashy toys to show how cool you are, nobody needs a $600 phone plus exhorbitant monthly charges. it’s tha cache thing. which is worth about as much as the sludge i pump out of my holding tank.
frankly, owning a hoodride has a hell of a lot more meaning and provides an actual political statement compareed to the chinese manufacturered toys of self importance. if you don’t know the meaning of hoodride, look it up-it’s so cool.

my hoodride:

sweet 1968 vw single cab pickup, first year bay window vw,  original dealer logo, lowered with american alloy wheels. paint is crap. it turns heads everwhere and poeple constantly come up to me to tell me how cool my rig is. and no ubiquitous toy phone – i built this fucker outta two trucks. guys can blow 100 grand ona sweet-ass mercedes or bmw and nobody notices it. but this cheap old truck is what makes people smile and point. it’s for sale btw, $10,000 and i’ll lose money even at that price. nothing to do with a hoodride, just how things worked out.

i would also like to find out if i can get a break on my power if we switched to our solar panels in the summer; it would be nice to get further off the grid. right now we pay $50.00 a month for power and yet have less living space than almost everyone else at the dock, so we are subsidizing them. not a big deal, but i would like to find a way of opting out if i want to.

as canoe cove marine doesn’t see fit to fix the damage they did to my engine i’m going through insurance, and they can haul them into the courthouse. but i have to figger out how to get satan outta his hole. there is no hatch to take off to expose him, so he kinda has to slide back into the salon and then be lifted out, maybe with the boom. if i’m very lucky i will be able to to replace said rear crankshaft seal without pulling the engine. but the v-drive and tranny have to come out. fortunately, the insurance co will pay me my going rate to do the work.

btw, i got an email from cbc asking about my floating commune idea; i’ll have to get back to them. should be interesting…

more good news is that apple is giving me a brand new laptop to replace this one. although i’ve got two years worth of use out of this macbook, it had several warranteed problems with it because it was new technology. early-adopter syndrome they call it. anyway, to make amends they are giving me a new one complete with upgraded 2 gigs of ram, 160 gig harddrive and upgraded processor and an upgraded dvd burner superdrive. not bad. i doubt any other manufacturer would stand behind their product in such a way. good for apple.

Eddie Vedder & Rahat Fateh Ali Khan “the Long Road”

I got this email recently. i’m very glad something is being done with the old girl. i even watched in amazement as smoke started pumping out of her stack the other morning. nothing moved but it seemed they got engines going (or something was on fire?).

Hello!
 
Was on your site, very cool!!
 
Thought you folks might find this interesting, living in the Victoria Harbour about the SS Beaver at Fishermen’s Wharf.
 
After four years, and about a million dollars, a lot of hard work, sweat and tears, we all are very passionate in bringing back The 136′ SS Beaver in all her grace and glory.
 
Our Mission, is to create History, Community and Fun. Our goal this summer, is to reintroduce The SS Beaver back to Canada and it’s rich heritage, to recapture Canada’s interest in this beautiful vessel, and we are doing it at a great time too, with all our exciting events happening in the City of Victoria, BC-150, Tall Ships Festival, History Bites, Classic Boat Festival and so many more, with future plans in cruising to Vancouver for the 2010 Games.
 
“The “SS Beaver” is a fantastic opportunity right now in British Columbia’s sesquicentennial year.
As you know, The original “Beaver” was at the reading of the proclamation of the joining of the two colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia in 1858 and in 2008 our “SS Beaver” wants to be  viewed as an asset that all British Columbians, Canadians and World visitors can call on as a vehicle to provide space and transportation for social, business, family and government events. Emphasis will be placed on the vessel and its place in BC history as a former Canadian Navy vessel notwithstanding its connection to the original SS Beaver and the huge community building that took place around that ships’ efforts.

all i can add is good luck to them.

other news

i’ve recently begun volunteer work for a way cool non-profit org called innovative communities.org
what this org does is bring together people from all over the world to work on projects for the disadvantaged. what’s unique about this is that it is totally online and virtual – no offices.  we bring together experts and money and solutions to bring about real change on the ground. because of this unique structure and the fact that we are 100% volunteer run, our overhead is only 5%, meaning 95% of allocated funds go to projects. For iniatiatives in the developing world  it’s 100%!

we are also 100% transparent and our accounts are online. oh, and we’re not talking a few pennies here -we have assets in the millions.

currently our website is ghastly (ironic for an online org) and that’s the first thing i’m dealing with. our new look should be launched shortly.

as part of this, here’s an email i sent to our prez -

 i think there is a housing opportunity that isn’t being accessed. one could approach it from a variety of ways, but the least expensive is what i’ll put forward first.

there are a great many very large wooden boats out there that are going for very little money because the costs of maintenance makes them uneconomical commercially. there is quite a bit of public moorage space in victoria that is managed by the harbour authority. it seems to me that one untapped social housing alternative would be to acquire one of these large vessels and use them as communal housing.
because of course you do not have the kind of space available that you have with say, an apartment, the housing would have to be communal. members would get their own “bedroom”, but living space would be shared. this could be simply low-cost communal housing or perhaps a transition home, a home for single moms and their kids, that kind of thing.
 
i’m sure that the harbour authority could waive moorage fees (once you convinced them about the merits of the scheme), and acquiring a boat for free (maybe something in the 100 foot range) would be quite possible, so the only costs would be renovations, upgrades and so forth.
the harbour authority also charges a flat fee of 40.00/month for power, regardless of vessel size.

fortunately you wouldn’t have to make the vessel seaworthy, which would be very costly; a boat moored to a dock is very different and falls under far fewer regulations than one that sails under it’s own power.

one of the joys of this kind of thing is that I don’t think you have to worry about zoning. there are very, very few regs governing who can live aboard and where. you could distribute vessels around wherever liveaboards are allowed. there are a few large boats here that do have groups of people living on them,
but they still just pay the same amount for moorage and power regardless of how many people live there.

alternatively, you could do the same by building or acquiring a floathome. the upside of this is that you get a more traditional kind of home, the downside is that there are much fewer options available for moorage.

because real estate is such a factor in social housing, and floating housing bypasses this expense, it might be something to think about.

another final benefit is that what are the chances that marginalised people will ever get to live in waterfront accommodations?

nathaniel

and there’s this video…

cool, huh? i’m glad i’m not aboard. can you imagine being on the car deck? or anywhere else for that matter. how do they keep people from falling all over the place? seatbelts?

Sunset Time?

another thing is that i’m ending this blog. i would still keep it up as an online reference for other folks who wonder what the liveaboard life is like (from my perspective), but i’m not sure i have much more to add. they say it takes a year to adapt and by gum they were right. now it’s just life. a very sweet priviliged life, but just life nonetheless. i suspect it will just be more of the same – the occasional disaster, adventure, and a cool, inexpensive way to pass one’s days.

the tendency is to just let things fade out but i don’t like to do it that way. i get a fair  amount of traffic here and i don’t want to leave my readers hanging, wondering if it’ll keep going or what. better to just say i’ve said my say (on this topic) and maybe start another one.

i hope i’ve encouraged folks who are sitting on the fence to move to this lifestyle. it’s fun, it’s sustainable, and it’s inexpensive. what more could you ask for?
 

I got this and i’m putting it here so i can respond…

Well, Nathaniel, you’ve taken one of the possible easy routes out by
driving a wedge between the supposed domains of religion and of science
and then asserting that they operate on the basis of different
paradigms. But they’re equally just paradigms or models, a way of
looking at things. When you say “ideas of spirituality and knowledge of
the physical world are completely separate things” I think of many
people for whom they are one and the same–for whom the sacred is the
physical world. And sometimes scientific claims sound to me
suspiciously like religious ones.
Many religious matters can be
tested scientifically. For instance, suppose someone claims that
meditation calms them down or that people with a religious faith face
death with more ease or are more altruistic. Those statements would all
be testable.
Wallace Stevens said, “The final belief is to believe
in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing
else.” Yann Martel in Life of Pi is saying something similar. But it
depends on how much credence you want to give to the dominant
scientific paradigm and its exclusive claims to “truth.”

i assert the difference because of the ontologies of the paradigms and
because culturally that is how they are perceived; the majority would not point to a rock and say there is god. if everyone
approached the “models” as just one more way of approaching what we
call reality, there would be no problem. the difficulty arises because
politics and social power is involved, and at the very least the
arguments from both sides should be grounded in the ontologies of their
belief systems, and admit their resultant limitations. actually, if they did so (which is waht i was arguing for) there would be no argument.

simply put, science is an “isomorphism” between theory and the
empirical; a guy has a theory and tests the theory against empirical
observations; it is both mind and matter, ideas and measures. it no more encapsulates all of reality than the dregs in
the bottom of a teacup, but within it’s own frame of reference it seems
to do a good job.

Religion, which is human
spirituality made political, is wholly theory based. it is complex,
metaphorical, allegorical, and attemps to define the non-empirical.
because the subject of concern (god) is not empirical or directly observable,
the theoretical postulates do not attempt to justify themselves through
observation; i.e. there is no empirical way to disprove the hypothesis that
jesus is the son of god. those that devised these theologies had no interest in proving their assertions because arguably, they knew
what they were doing was polemic; they were attempting to discuss
something none of the formulators had ever seen or experienced
themselves. religious material can and should be seen more as art.
this has become corrupted over time until we have individuals
attempting to impose the empirical upon this art, and therefore lend it
the power and credibility of – science.

of course before science people often used theological explanations for observed events, but observed events only very loosely informed the theology. and that’s another difference between the paradigms – in science you go back and forth between the observed and the theory, adjusting the latter to more eloquently explain what is being observed. theologies persist despite all physical evidence against them. it doesn’t mean they are “incorrect” within their own frame of reference, but it does mean that they cannot rationally or appropriately be used to explain the physical world.

in response to the above comment, the examples he gave might be thought of as
spritual in nature but they are not part of a theology that attemps to
define god, whch is what i’m discussing here.

as far as beliefs that see the physical world as sacred, i think these
ideas still hold. you may claim that the rocks have a spirit, but that
is still the realm of pure theory because it isn’t testable. the rock itself might be testable, but the hypothesis invokes god, which is not. as i said above, by
definition religions deal with non-testable subjects. this is very
important, because the purpose of spirituality/religion, is to grapple
with questions for which there may be no answer through other means,
including empiricism. while i would not want to walk on a bridge built by
faith, i also wouldn’t want a world view only informed by what is
measureable and testable.