Ideeahs

Over the last months I have been reading articles and books on the subject of philosophy.  I've come to the conclusion that humankind's love of negativity extends to our ideas and theories on the subject of life itself and how one should find their way through it.  Just as our media thrives on wars, disease, crime, bankruptcy, accidents it turns out that modern day philosophers tend to write their theories in the context of what misfortune humans are involved in - harassment, family disputes, divorce, depression, various types of losses.  It seems easier to draw a theory to its conclusion using a desperate situation  rather than abstracting the actual situation, or, even better, taking a positive action to arrive to the theoretical conclusion. The best example that springs to mind is that the ego is considered negative even when its actions are positive.  Philosophers will state that the ego is in control of your self and that your true self cannot thrive so long as the ego is

There is no cubic metre of air or litre of water on Earth that is untouched by man.  Heavy metals are found in the depths of the oceans, particles of exhaust are found on the snows of the Himalayas.  The atmosphere, at its outer edges, 100 kilometeres above the earth, is polluted.  Even the area of space around our planet is litered with junked satellites and various other bits of machinery or tools. Man has been screwing with nature for thousands of years.  We were even prior to the industrial revolution.  We have crossed various grains to make more resistant cereal.  Same with flowers, tomatoes and many other plants.  Of course the industrial revolution increased the pace at which we have been able to screw with nature. Having said all of this though I have wondered whether man made is natural?  Afterall man is natural.  We are an animal roaming the earth.  Our brain and resulting abilities have evolved in a way that has led to oil being pumped from the earth.  We have taken what is

We now have about 40 centimetres in our neighbourhood.  This is only the second time that I have seen this much snow in Vancouver in the sixteen years I have lived here.  The average high at this time of year is about six degrees.  Normally we have rain. The result of all of this is a city that is shut down.  The Vancouver Police Department today asked everyone to not travel unless absolutely necessary.  Numerous streets are closed.  The City of Vancouver is simply unable to cope with this quantity of snow.  So this makes for some interesting days. My wife suggested that we should go into our neighbouring forest and find a hill that she had heard about a few years back.  We went for a walk on a path called the Lily of the Valley and found the hill, just off the trail, on the fourth fairway of the golf course that adjoins this forest.  It was great fun sledding on our newly discovered hill, under a tree, over a few bumps that had been created by previous sledders. On the thirty minute w

A British Aircraft Corporation BAC-111 in Quebecair colours is overflying the apartment building I live in.  I place the binoculars to my eyes and look at its registration number and refer to one of my airline fleet guides to see whether I have ever seen this particular BAC-111.  I jot down the time and date.  Within a minute it will be touching down on runway 24R at Dorval Airport. On the floor my personal fleet of Lintoy metal aircraft await their next flight.  I open up the international Official Airline Guide book and, as is often the case, I pick a flight departing from Aalborg, Denmark, the first airport listed in the OAG.  The Scandinavian Airline Systems' McDonnell Douglas DC-9 takes off on its way to Copenhagen...a short thirty or forty minute flight.  I'll be landing soon. Where will I fly to next? Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Today we attended our children's school Christmas Concert (sorry, Winter Concert for the PC).  The parents sat in rows, on chairs and wooden benches.  We were sat quite closely for the three hour show.  Late during the second half one of the teachers pulled out his guitar and sang us a song entitled "Christmas in the Trenches" by an American folk singer named John McCutcheon. This song is about an informal truce that took place between German and British soldiers near the town of Ypres, Belgium on December 24, 1914.  The Germans had been singing carols in their trenches and the Brits responded with their own.  Eventually the men emptied out of their respective trenches and met in the middle, in no man's land, to exchange cigarettes, booze and chocolates.  They exchanged stories of home and pictures of family.  They buried the dead that had been lying in the no man's land.  They played a football match.  Boys having fun in a school yard - a school where none of the

An interesting conversation about our society arose a few days ago when my wife and I looked at the size of the cups we were drinking our after-dinner tea from.  We bought them at Pier 1 import a few years back.  Nice looking things - the ceramic has a water-colour looking design, green with red flowers on a yellow background.  They can hold about 500 millimetres of liquid.  So the conversation evolved from there. We spoke about how our grandmothers used to knit sweaters rather than buying them.  How, as we grew taller and our arms longer, they would unknit the sweater and make a larger one from the same yarn rather than buy a new one. Granny would also cook meals at home, from scratch.  Ready made sauces, vinaigrettes were not available.  She would have to mix the lemon or vinegar with the oil.  The spaghetti sauce had to be made and simmered for the hour.  Cake making involved mixing flour with eggs, sugar, baking powder, butter - not opening up a package and adding water. Granny had

I had forgotten that as a child, lying in bed at night in the dark of my room, I used to see little dots of different colours.  Green, red, blue....tiny little dots.  They would only appear in the dark, would be more pronounced if I closed my eyes and even more pronounced if I shut my eyes as tight as I possibly could.  I would lie in bed, close my eyes and see these dots wondering what they were and being mesmerized by them.  Was it space?  Where did the colours come from given the fact that my eyes were closed?  Eventually I would fall asleep. I had forgotten about these dots until a recent evening when I spent a few minutes with my daughter putting her to bed, kissing and hugging her goodnight.  She started talking to me about the difficulties she sometimes has falling asleep due to her imagination running wild about us being killed or robbed.  About coyotes.  She also mentioned that she saw dots.  When I asked her to describe them they were small, colourful and more vivid when her

I brought our car in for service yesterday .  During my wait I headed to a bookstore and spent an hour or so browsing books and magazines.  Bookstores are great places to hang out.  So many subjects, so much knowledge, so many ideas presented.  It makes me want to sponge up those ideas, that knowledge, those subjects up.  It also reinforces for me that there is so much to learn and see and yet there is relatively little that we learn and see during our lifetimes. I walked out with two magazines.  The Economist's The World in 2009 and National Geographic's Space special edition. As the day went on I finished reading the Space magazine.  Space and the universe are subjects that have amazed me since I was a child.  This universe that our tiny blue ball is a part of is incomprehensible due to its size.  Reading the magazine I learned that we had not only gone to the Moon and landed probes on Mars and Venus but that we had also landed probes on Titan (one of Saturn's moons) and

My seven-year-old son is a U2 fan - he has been influenced by me as he's heard enough of their music and seen enough concert footage to know many of the songs by heart.  Tonight we watched the Vertigo concert video taped in Chicago. Bono's political comments about war, peace and poverty led my son and I into a conversation about the human spirit.  How we all need to make a difference in this world and that it really is up to each of us to mobilize ourselves, and others, to make that positive difference.  He said a few things that I found interesting: "Children can make a difference because they are younger and will have more time to think" "What if people don't listen?" "We need to debate" All truths, those three statements. 1.  Parents around the world are raising the next generation of leaders.  As a result we parents play a crucial role in the world's future.  We had better take that role seriously. 2.  Many will not listen and continue

These days I spend a lot of time sitting, MacBook on my lap, writing.  Now that I have my entire CD collection ripped to my iTunes library I can throw headphones on, shuffle 3300 songs and be surprised by the mix that gets created.  I have been listening to a lot of music that I would not have listened to the "old" way.  One CD that I would not have grabbed from the shelf, opened up and inserted into the CD player is Up!  Shania Twain released this CD in 2002. Anyhow...to the subject that sprang to mind today as the tune Ka-Ching! was played.  Back in 2002, before any news media outlets caught on to the rising credit storm, before it became popular to discuss, there were some experts ringing alarm bells.  The economy was running on fumes and people were spending beyond their means.  It turns out that Shania was one of those who was also ringing bells.  I wonder whether her legions of listeners heeded her advice back in 2002.  More than sixteen million copies of Up! have been

The antics of Canada's leaders are reminding me of a book entitled "Lord of the Flies" written by William Golding.  Our political leaders are considering themselves and their own success rather than that of the greater good, that of the country of Canada.  They are ALL to be blamed for this distraction and for the dead-end that we seemed to have reached -  Conservative, Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois. I listened to about fifteen minutes of Question Period yesterday and was not surprised by the behaviour I saw.  There was nothing cordial about it.  There was nothing professional about it.  There were not any constructive comments made.  They accused each other of lying and of gamesmanship (all true, by the way, from an observer's perspective).  It reminded me of a bunch of drunken and very emotional sports fans, faces painted in their team's colours, wanting to destroy their opponents. So now the propaganda machines kick in with attack ads on radio and television.

Last night on the CBC's nightly newscast, The National, Rex Murphy had a few thoughts he wanted to share on what is happening in Ottawa these days.  All Canadians should listen to it. I agree completely wth his statement that the shenanigans are all driven by partisan politics and have nothing to do with Canada's interests.  Our politicians are so out of tune with the citizens who elect them.  They are focused on the political process and what loop holes might exist to allow them to grab power.  Political parties exist for their own sake not for the sake of the citizens who foolishly elect them. All Politics, No Government You can read the transcript below (which I copied from this CBC website page) or you can watch the video by clicking here . Rex Murphy Point of View December 1, 2008 Political scientists will stagger gibbering witless to their graves trying to figure out why the Prime Minister decided to kick off a brand new session of a civil parliament, in the middle of a