Pauls Adventures In Thought

I've been watching a series on History Television called "The Nostradamus Effect". It deals with prophecies of the end days and the relationship between them, and their creators.

As a history buff I have read the quatrains of Nostradamus, and some of the translations. What I find interesting is the question of what we are going to do when the times predicted by these 'prophets' come to pass.

2012 seems to be the next upcoming date for the end of the world. This number is based on a few different cultures, but mainly on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, and the Mayan's knew a lot more about science and astronomy than anyone of their time. They were able to calculate and measure things about our world that we have no hope of doing in our modern world without the help of computers and complex technology.

I'm pretty sure 2012 will come and go, and people will have to look for another dae.
2060, I have learned this evening, is the date that Isaac Newton predicted, based on bible code, that the end of the world will come.

The question I have with this is whether or not there are new prophets out there. I don't subscribe to Prophet Monthly, but if you do you probably realize that prophets generally don't override the statements of previous prophets. For instance the prophets of the bible didn't contradict the prophets before them about the end of days. The book of Revelation doesn't contradict the Old Testament. Newton didn't contradict the prophets of the bible.

However the prophets of 'old' as opposed to people like Nostradamus, Newton, and their peers set real solid dates. I expect that once 2012 comes and goes there will be a lot of predictions and work to find a way to move those dates into the future, and those dates will come and go.

Something to think about...

Oh boy here we go... Caillou yet again for the hundredth time this weekend. Someone please put that kid bald four year old out of my misery.

I wanted to share an interesting philosophical exercise I like to undertake, once and a while, with you.

Imagine if you were looking at the world around you 2500 years ago. Imagine what you knew, and what you understood. You had no idea what the sun was, just that it shone. You had no idea what clouds were made of, just that they brought rain. You had no idea how your body worked.

Imagine what you would think about the world today. Imagine how far we have come 2500 years along.

Imagine then, what the world looked like to someone 40-50 years ago. Imagine what people who lived back then didn't know.

Imagine now, what the things about the world we could possibly know or see in fifty years, or a thousand years from now...

fun ey?

And so the work to clean up the results of a massive earthquake in a third world country continue in earnest.

There has been a lot of money provided to the people of Haiti through aid agencies and governments. There has been a lot of talk of debt forgiveness to the country as well.

This raises some key questions. How did we get here in the first place. When the work of recovering bodies is done we will find that somewhere in the order of 2% of the population of this small island country has perished.

Consider, essentially, the peoples of Subury, North Bay and Sault Ste Marie perishing in an instant. It is a remarkable number.

What is difficult to understand is that this did not have to happen. The people in Haiti and around the world knew that they lived in a region prone to earthquakes. If memory serves me the chain of island on the archipelago between Florida and South America was formed because it is on the edge of the continental shelf.

So there was the knowledge and foresight to predict this sort of devastation. The primary reason there was so much devastation is because the buildings in the capital and surrounding areas were not build with appropriate structures for the circumstances.

This raises the very significant question as to whether something could has been done to prevent this tragedy.
Of course something could and it all goes back to the idea of how we deal with money in this world.

Take, as an example, the very idea of a first world country versus a third world country. The last time I checked there was only one earth and thus one world.

The country of Haiti, like so many others, owes an incredible debt to other nations. But what is an incredible debt to Haiti is not so significant in other parts of the world. Haiti has a current debt of somewhere in the neighborhood of $1billion. This is after a large portion of its previous debt was wiped out. You see Haiti was left with a huge debt to France when it succeeded because... Welll... That's the way the French wanted it. Then the country was ruled by some folks whp stole most of the countries money, and yet they kept getting more loans primarily because they didn't succumb to the will of people like Castro. And 'as long as they aren't reds their okay by us'.

The international banks, most of the, chose to forgive a large portion of the countries debt and it wasn't just free money. The government of Haiti had to show real progress on spending that benefit the people of the country.

What is the point of bringing up the debt? Today Avatar became the highest grossing film of all time. Between Titanic and Avatar we are looking at a gross income of over. $3.6billion. This doesn't include all the other monies generated by the film.

In our 'first world'. we can spend $3.6billion dollars watching people pretend to be on a sinking boat or pretending to be space aliens yet somehow we can't seem to get enough money to a country like Haiti so that hundreds of thousands of people don't die because of a natural disaster.

We are privileged to live in the environment we do, but let us not forget that while we continue to hoard our wealth because it makes us feel good, there are people put there who have nothing.

I am not suggesting that we go around forgiving debt and tossing money at every poor country in the world. What we need to do is find a way where money can be passed to a country and spent in a way that truly helps move that country forward.

Its interesting that in this time in which we live our country is able to define and support a military, but why don't we have a globally deploy able building crew.

With the time and money we are spending blowing things up and defending the weak from tyrants, why can't we also have a similar group of people at the other end of the spectrum.

As much as we spend on bombs and bullets we could spend on reinforcing steel and drywall.

We have thousands of people in Afghanistan helping to build the country and train people and move the country forward. But if it wasn't for the need to use bombs and guns we wouldn't be there doing this.
When we look at how much good a few hundred 'soldiers' could have done teaching construction techniques and stabilizing buildings. In Haiti we can see a future where people that need our help, have asked for it, and are willing to accept it. We could have done so much more.

I wondered, for a while, how people could end up having so many kids... four five, ten, thirty-three... okay I don' t know anyone who's had thirty-three kids...

It was, and continues to be, very interesting and exciting to watch Joey develop and grow. But it wasn't until Anne came around that I realized how much I missed having a baby. There is just so much that babies have to offer. Nothing is more soothing and relaxing than falling asleep with a baby on your chest. It is the closest you'll ever get on this earth to Nirvana.

Now that Anne is getting older, and doing things like pulling up to standing, I realize that the time of her being a baby is coming to a close... and so when I wonder if we should have another its a no-brainer... God willing anyway... But maybe when both of them are able to talk... well it might be different... THREE kids playing recorders at the kitchen table... hmm... maybe not... but at least its not thirty-three

What do you think the chances are that someone at the White House paid someone to make a fuss on a plane and cause NORAD to intercept the plane so that they could pretend like they know what they are doing, after someone with bombs was allowed on a plane last week?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/01/06/oregon.unruly.passenger/index.html

Hi guys, it's me, Stephen Harper.
So, um, the Olympics are in Canada this year, and, well for some silly reason the capital is in Ottawa which is pretty much on the other side of the country... and well.. I'd really like to attend the Olympics, you know, schmooze with the athletes, cheer them on, get one of those fancy foam fingers... and well... um... so um... could I happen to have a couple months of work? Well I already took the time off and there's nothing you can say or do about it... except maybe not vote for me, but apparently Canadians don't care about their government, and what we do, so it doesn't matter...

Thanks and keep up the apathy!

Well it is now 2010.

I remember vaguely discussing, in grade 6, what we would be doing, and how old we would be in the year 2000. We're 10 years beyond and things aren't much different than they were.

Well maybe they are, the Internet, personal computers... Okay and so what has changed in the past 10 years?

As Kathleen has pointed out the American people have elected a black man as president. Yup, kind of an important fact.

And if you are a car aficionado, the V8 engine has now officially begun its extinction with GM stopping production of their primary V8.

On a personal note, 2000 was the decade when Nortel pretty much ceased to exist.

On another personal note, I went from a newbie to Ottawa, living in a disgusting basement apartment with Kathleen to living in what most people in my home town would consider a veritable mansion. Have two kids now, and am aiming for number three in the next year and a half... Oh and the pick-up has been replaced with a mini-van.

I went from being a lazy slob to being in the best shape of my life back again... I started to play hockey again, as an adult. I quit the sport when I was just a kid because I was smaller slower, and weaker than everyone. Now I'm a confident man.

The 2000s brought me to toastmasters, where I've achieved incredible success....

I joined a political party, ran for federal office, quit politics...

An amazing amount of stuff can happen in a decade, and we narry remember it.

Its funny that I can remember that evening of y2k when all my friends from up North(okay so not all my friends...) showed up to our basement apartment in Sandy Hill(near downtown Ottawa), and we walked to Parliament hill to ring in the new millennium. Merriment and the ridiculousness of youth is well remembered. Walking back from the hill down the middle of Rideau street with a few thousand of my closest friends and we belted old lang syne, amongst other songs.

Fast forward ten years, and Kathleen and I didn't make it to midnight. Overwhelmed with keeping up to two young kids really draws on your energy. I'm so proud of what I've done in the past decade, and look forward to many more to come.

I expect that I may reflect for the new few weeks on what the past decade has given and taken...

A friend who works on parliament hill once got asked what exactly the deal was with this 'perogie parliament'.

Well guess what? We've got another Perogie Parliament. In case you missed it, our über-transparent Prime Minister has decided, while nobody was watching ,to prorogue parliament.

What does that mean? Well it mean that any business that was before the house or senate has to be restarted. E.g. all these 'important' bill that the government was trying to pass, or that got 'stuck' in the senate are now gone. It also means that the house will not sit again until the PM decides it will and it will start with a 'speech from the throne'.

Okay, what does it really mean? Well it means we get to see how serious Mr. Harper is about democratic reform. You see a few months ago he broke his own suggestion that the senate should be elected and appointed some of his most noble supporters to a cushy job that most people only show up to do two or three times a week. So now we have a large number of conservative senators in the upper chamber of our government, in fact there are now 48 unelected conservatives and 49 unelected liberals and 4 independents.

If all goes as expected Harper and his folks will now be able to pass archaic laws, and hopefully to everyone's benefit, actually reform our government. But I'm not holding my breath that somehow the first order of business will be to pass a bill to elect the senate in some way shape or form. Nope I expect that the first order of business will be to see how many more giant novelty checks can be handed out before the next election...

"Please put the cat down, I'm pretty sure he doesn't want a bath" and
"That's very nice, but in the future please don't draw on your sister"..