Tuesday, November 11 is Remembrance Day in Canada. In case you forget why we take 2 minutes of silence to remember those who have died, watch this video and read the lyrics. The video/song is called A Pittance of Time, by Terry Kelly.

A Pittance Of Time 4:43
Written by Terry Kelly © Jefter Publishing – SOCAN

They fought and some died for their homeland.
They fought and some died, now it’s our land.
Look at his little child; there’s no fear in her eyes.
Could he not show respect for other dads who have died?

Take two minutes, would you mind?
It’s a pittance of time,
For the boys and the girls who went over.
In peace may they rest, may we never
forget why they died.
It’s a pittance of time.

God forgive me for wanting to strike him.
Give me strength so as not to be like him.
My heart pounds in my breast, fingers pressed to my lips,
My throat wants to bawl out, my tongue barely resists.

But two minutes I will bide.
It’s a pittance of time,
For the boys and the girls who went over.
In peace may they rest.
May we never forget why they died.
It’s a pittance of time.

Read the letters and poems of the heroes at home.
They have casualties, battles, and fears of their own.
There’s a price to be paid if you go, if you stay.
Freedom’s fought for and won in numerous ways.

Take two minutes, would you mind?
It’s a pittance of time,
For the boys and the girls all over.
May we never forget, our young become vets.
At the end of the line,
It’s a pittance of time.

It takes courage to fight in your own war.
It takes courage to fight someone else’s war.
Our peacekeepers tell of their own living hell.
They bring hope to foreign lands that hate mongers can’t kill.

Take two minutes, would you mind?
It’s a pittance of time,
For the boys and the girls who go over.
In peacetime our best still don battle dress
And lay their lives on the line.
It’s a pittance of time

In peace may they rest,
Lest we forget why they died.
Take a pittance of time.

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In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

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For the month of November, I will be growing a mustache and raising money for a charity called Movember that promotes the awareness of prostate cancer. Some fast facts about prostate cancer:

• Every year around 24,700 Canadian men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and about 4,300 die of the disease, making it the number one cancer threat to Canadian men.
• 1 in 7 men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetime.
• All men over the age of 40 are potentially at risk and should talk to their doctor about the disease and early detection. Prostate cancer is 95% curable if detected and treated early.

Help me out by clicking the donate button and do your part in helping to save lives! I will be taking pictures of my mustache growth everyday and posting them here to show that I’m commited to the cause. I appreciate your support!

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What does freedom mean?

Does it relate more to the political definition: “the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression”

Or the philosophical argument: “the idea of being free, is a broad concept that has been given numerous interpretations by philosophies and schools of thought. The protection of interpersonal freedom can be the object of a social and political investigation, while the metaphysical foundation of inner freedom is a philosophical and psychological question”

I like to rather think of freedom as doing what you want (that which makes you happy) and feeling that you can do what you want when you want (granted much of this “freedom” relates to your financial state).

This is why I feel that the above definition (in philosophical terms) is best when enhanced by the idea of financial freedom. And in that case, we shall truly be free.

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by Sonny Carroll

A time comes in your life when you finally get it…when, in the midst of all your fears and insanity, you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out…ENOUGH! Enough fighting and crying and blaming and struggling to hold on. Then, like a child quieting down after a tantrum, you blink back your tears and begin to look at the world through new eyes.

This is your awakening.

You realize it’s time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change, or for happiness, safety and security to magically appear over the next horizon. You realize that in the real world there aren’t always fairy tale endings, and that any guarantee of “happily ever after” must begin with you…and in the process a sense of serenity is born of acceptance. You awaken to the face that you are not perfect and that not everyone will always love, appreciate or approve of who or what you are…and that’s OK. They are entitled to their own views and opinions. You learn the importance of loving and championing yourself…and in the process a sense of newfound confidence is born of self-approval.

You stop complaining and blaming other people for the things they did to you – or didn’t do for you – and learn that the only thing you can really count on is the unexpected. You learn that people don’t always say what they mean or mean what they say and that not everyone will always be there for you and that everything isn’t always about you. So, you learn to stand on your own and to take care of yourself…and in the process a sense of safety and security is born of self-reliance.

You stop judging and pointing fingers and you begin to accept people as they are and to overlook their shortcomings and human frailties…and in the process a sense of peace and contentment is born of forgiveness.

You learn to open up to new worlds and different points of view. You begin reassessing and redefining who you are and for what you really stand. You learn the difference between wanting and needing and you begin to discard the doctrines and values you’ve outgrown, or with which you should never have bought into to begin. You learn that there is power and glory in creating and contributing and you stop maneuvering through life merely as a “consumer” looking for your next fix.

You learn that principles such as honesty and integrity are not the outdated ideals of a bygone era, but the mortar that holds together the foundation upon which you must build a life. You learn that you don’t know everything, it’s not your job to save the world and that you can’t teach a pig to sing. You learn that the only cross to bear is the one you choose to carry and that martyrs get burned at the stake.

Then you learn about love. You learn to look at relationships as they really are and not as you would have them be. You learn that alone does not mean lonely. You stop trying to control people, situations and outcomes. You learn to distinguish between guilt and responsibility and the importance of setting boundaries and learning to say NO.

You also stop working so hard at putting your feelings aside, smoothing things over and ignoring your needs. You learn that your body really is your temple. You begin to care for it and treat it with respect. You begin to eat a balanced diet, drink more water, and take more time to exercise. You learn that being tired fuels doubt, fear, and uncertainty and so you take more time to rest. And, just as food fuels the body, laughter fuels our soul. So you take more time to laugh and to play. You learn that, for the most part, you get in life what you believe you deserve, and that much of life truly is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You learn that anything worth achieving is worth working for and that wishing for something to happen is different than working toward making it happen. More importantly, you learn that in order to achieve success you need direction, discipline and perseverance. You also learn that no one can do it all alone, and that it’s OK to risk asking for help. You learn the only thing you must truly fear is fear itself. You learn to step right into and through your fears because you know that whatever happens you can handle it and to give in to fear is to give away the right to live life on your own terms. You learn to fight for your life and not to squander it living under a cloud of impending doom. You learn that life isn’t always fair, you don’t always get what you think you deserve and that sometimes bad things happen to unsuspecting, good people…and you learn not to always take it personally. You learn that nobody’s punishing you and everything isn’t always somebody’s fault. It’s just life happening. You learn to admit when you are wrong and to build bridges instead of walls. You learn that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be understood and redirected or they will suffocate the life out of you and poison the universe that surrounds you.

You learn to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple things we take for granted, things that millions of people upon the earth can only dream about: a full refrigerator, clean running water, a soft warm bed, a long hot shower. Then, you begin to take responsibility for yourself and you make yourself a promise to never betray yourself and to never, ever settle for less than your heart’s desire. You make it a point to keep smiling, to keep trusting, and to stay open to every wonderful possibility. You hang a wind chime outside your window so you can listen to the wind.

Finally, with courage in your heart, you take a stand, you take a deep breath, and you begin to design the life you want to live as best you can.

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So a strange thing happened this weekend…

I was on a pub crawl for hallowe’en which consisted of 5 bars and many drinks. After the crawl, my buddy Dean and I, and his friend/colleague Tom (owner of the company that ran the pub crawl), went to 1410; a bar on 17th Ave for some more drinking. Now, while we were there, the lights came, the music went down, and we got ready to leave. However, being Hallowe’en I was on the lookout for costumes; good bad, and fake. Fake you ask? Well, there were a lot of cops out on the town (real and dressed up) and earlier we were talking about the point of how would you know who was who? Anyway, I noticed a table of roughly 10 people in military uniforms. Now, they all looked so good and real that I knew they couldn’t be fake. But I went over to find out regardless. I ended up talking to this group for 20 or so minutes, and found out that they had just come from a dinner ceremony at SAIT. There were a few of them who had lots of bars on their jacket representing awards and status achieved.

Now, after about 10 minutes or so, Dean came over and joined in our conversation. And during this conversation, the strangest thing happened…we both got an intense sense of pride and respect for of all these people. It could have been partly due to the fact that we had consumed many liters of fine beer, or it could have been the fact that this group was so welcoming, humble, and decorated. I definitely think it was a combination of the two, and by the end of the chat, just as we were leaving, it was almost like a chill came over my body because of what it all meant to me at that moment. I mean yes, their job is to serve and protect us, but still. They risk their lives for us knowing that many of the jobs they take could be their last.

That being said, please, on November 11, take a moment of silence for those who have fought and died for us in the past, present and the future.

And while you’re at it, watch this great song by Terry Kelly about taking a moment of silence: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KYlrrAWCTRg

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In case you haven’t heard this great song by Billy Joel, I recommend listening to it before reading the rest of this post…you can listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

Just today, while listening to some Billy Joel, I was reintroduced to this great great song. In high school, our Outdoor Pursuits teacher, Mr. Fletcher, gave us an assignment to look up every historical reference in this song and find out what it meant. The assignment was worth something like 112 points – which equaled the number of historical references in the song. He was a huge history buff, and thought it would be an interested assignment. Which it was. However, whether he knew it or not, there are websites devoted to this song, and each historical reference is linked to a corresponding page with some information about that reference. So the assignment, while informative, was quite easy.

Here are the lyrics to the song, with the references linked (I’m sure some of the links don’t work as this is an old site):

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, “The King and I”, and “The Catcher in the Rye”

Eisenhower, vaccine, England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

CHORUS
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

A super video of the song: Billy Joel – “We Didn’t Start the Fire”

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Dear God, I really thought that I had seen everything. Apparently not. Check this out:http://tlc.discovery.com/tv-schedules/series.html?paid=2.14464.55746.27637.2

On this show, they featured 4 people who were morbidly obese. One guy consumed 36,000 calories in one day. More than a normal man should be consuming in 2 WEEKS! He was spending roughly $14,000 a year on chocolate bars! He ate 48 bags of chips in one day. Snacks alone contributed for 23,000 calories. He’s eating enough to gain 4 pounds PER DAY. He hasn’t walked in 6 years. Here they go featuring drug addicts on the tv show Intervention on A&E, and why has there not been a similar show for these food addicts? Are they not much worse? Where does he get the money to do this? Where does any of them get the money to afford the food they are eating? This guy re-mortgaged his house, and ended up spending half of that money on food. I was honestly speechless watching this show. There are so many problems in the world, but I honestly believe that food is the worst issue (drug) of all. Look at all the restaurants in Calgary. So much fat, sodium, sugar, and calories. Why is nothing being done? Why are people fat? Why don’t people exercise? Why do people spend so much money on food? Why do greedy companies like McDonald’s, KFC, Krispy Kreme, and others care so little about the health of humans, and so much about making profits? Why not make the push to go into healthy food? Healthy food can taste great and not load the pounds on us. Something needs to be done. We need to speak up about this. Sure, there are many other issues that need to be dealt with, but what will those issues matter when people are dying of being fat? Seriously. It’s outrageous.

This has been bugging me for a long time, and it seems that there are many news reports on about this, but what is actually being done? Why are these reports being shown on tv? Is anything actually being done?

I haven’t really asked this before, but I would love to hear any thoughts or comments you have on what I believe is a continental epidemic. Not just in North America, but also in Europe (where the show above was filmed).

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Check out this story from Slashdot: link here

Apparently Google Maps is blurring out images of sensitive location, such as the 2 locations in the link above (one is a nuclear research facility on a university campus in the States, and the other is a power plant in Massachusetts.

Thoughts? Why should they blur it out? Are they that worried about terrorists tracking these locations, and using google maps to attack them? C’mon, let’s get serious here.

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So I’m going to keep this short, but here goes:

Tonight on Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, there was a report on the 2008 presidential campaign, and the reporter made a statement to the effect that in order for a candidate to have a chance at running, they would need to fundraise at least $100 million. There was also a comment made that some of the candidates would be raising close to $300 million. more here

A few stories later, there was a report on New Orleans and how the city is doing 16 months later. And it’s not good. Although the city has applied for more than $300 million in aid from FEMA, they have only received about 1/3 of that funding. Apparently the discrepancy is due to errors in the city’s application, but knowing they need that much money, and having seen the story above about the amount of money that the presidential candidate will be raising makes me sick. Why doesn’t the US government pledge to give more money to New Orleans and Louisiana in general instead of pledging to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq? It seems like we have all of our priorities backwards.

In Philosophy we are learning about the theory of Consequentialism, and soon about Deontology. Basically, consequentialism says that one makes decisions based on what is for the good of the people involved. So, if killing one person meant that 5 would be saved, and saving 1 meant that 6 would be killed, then we should kill that one person. We should live a life where we make decisions that are for the good of humankind. But, everyday there are contradictions to this belief all over the world. In theory, this is a great belief, but in order for it to work, everyone has to live by it. If not everyone lives by it, then it won’t be feasible. Instead, although a few will be making good decisions, a few will be living selfishly and constantly hurt those who are trying to live for the good of humankind.

On the weekend, Sheena and I watched Al Gore’s movie, A Inconvenient Truth. It’s awesome. It’s awesome in a scary, sickening, painfully truthful way. Gore has been saying essentially the same thing for 30 years, and really, how many people have been listening? How would the US, and for that matter, the world be any different had he been elected as president in the place of Bush? I’d like to believe that he would have focused more on the environment, and what we are doing instead of what other countries are doing. I realize that we have to proactive and the US is great for that; who knows, had they not done anything about Iraq, maybe Saddam would have done something. In any case, the issues that really matter, the issues that will guide our future existence on this planet, the issues that we know the least about are the issues that we are spending the least amount of time, money, and press on.

In my opinion, we (as a people) should be focusing on the following issues:

1) Space – there is life out there. When we do find it, it will be the single largest discovery in the history of the world. We mustn’t give up because there have been accidents. Read Michael Crichton’s new book “Next” and you may just see my point of view, or at least understand where I’m coming from.

2) Ocean – along the same lines as space, I believe that we need to explore the oceans more. Who knows just what they hold? And after all, 75% of the world is covered in water, and like 95% of that is salt water, which is not potable, so we need to also focus research on extracting the salt from the water.

3) Global Warming – as mentioned above, watch “An Inconvenient Truth” and read “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton. This issue is very real. This issue won’t be solved overnight. And if we don’t do something about it soon, then soon it will be too late.

4) Overconsumption – this has many facets, but the one that comes to mind is the theory of 80/20; 20% of the population consumes 80% of the resources. This is true in North America. If you don’t believe what I’m saying, or don’t think it’s really that big of an issue, then take a trip to the US. Notice how many fast food restaurants there are the next time you’re driving. Take notice how many vehicles there are on the roads. We are very quickly moving away from a people that is becoming so lazy that we would love to save a few seconds in the most trivial of tasks (why else do people do the things they do when they drive? – i.e. eating breakfast, reading the paper, putting on makeup?). Soon everything that we do in a day will be automated, and will require such little effort from us that we will feel very useless in the average day. More and more people are developing diseases (diabetes, heart disease) from what we eat, and what we don’t do (exercise, eat healthy). It’s very simple. Eat better, and exercise. Yet, many people think that only one of those will work. Some think that if they eat crap food, but exercise all the time, then they will be fine. That’s false. Some think that if they eat healthy food, but don’t exercise, then they will be fine. That’s also false. If you had to pick one, obviously it’s better to eat healthy than to not exercise, but everyone has the time and the ability to do both. They just need to cut out the less important things – watching tv, playing video games, watching movies, shopping, etc.

5) Less drugs – every so often, when I’m up really late at night, I’ll stumble across an infomercial about the book “Natural Cures They Don’t Want You to Know About” and other books from the same author. What’s amazing to me, and I believe this guy, is that he promotes healing through the use of everything but drugs from people like Tylenol, Advil, or Aspirin. From what I gathered from his responses, much of the cures are simply eating healthy food. And think about it. Why would any doctor want there to exist a cure for cancer, diabetes, MS, AIDS, and Alzheimer’s Disease among others. Why they wouldn’t want there to be a cure is because? if everyone is healed, then that means a lot less sick people, and a lot less doctors would be needed. Also, drug companies for sure wouldn’t want there to be any cures for the diseases that their drugs are supposed to treat because in that case they would be out of business. It’s late, and I’m headed for bed, and I could definitely go on about this issue for a long time, but for now, I will leave it at that.

We as a people have come a long way, but we also have a long way to go. The only way we can change is to think about what we see, hear, and read. In this way, we can all evolve as a species together, and help each other out. True, this is more of a communistic view, where everyone is equal but we can all do our part. As a whole, we have much more power than a single person.

Think about it.
That is all.

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