Time Warp

Alright, I don't know about the rest of you but... I'm pretty sure that time has speeded up a lot in the last year or two. Somehow it never seems like there is enough time in a day or a week or a month. The days just speed by and the weekend is over before it even began!

What's happening?? Is this just a "getting older" thing? Or does time really speed up? I think back to when I was in my 20s and 30s and I seemed to have a tonne of free time! What happened? Do I just have way more projects on the go? Or is there just less time?

Fascination with the Old

The web/smartphone app "Instagram" has been on the news lately... snapped up by Facebook for a ridiculous amount of money. I didn't understand the fascination with Instagram until I installed it on my smartphone a week ago. Oh my goodness... what fun!

To Do List

Ah the humble to-do list. There are so many ways of keeping track of the various things we need to get done in a day or a week or a month. Usually a piece of paper is sufficient - sometimes the back of an envelope or a receipt. Sometimes an actual notepad or notebook. Sometimes a tiny little sticky note. Whatever it might be, the to-do list is there to serve us. If we can find it... Because let's face it... to-do lists have a habit of being mislaid... or of walking of away... And so we start a new list with the first item being "Find old to-do list"!

What the heck is NESS?

Have you ever heard of NESS? I guess you'd need a context... it has nothing to do with the Loch Ness monster. It stands for National Emergency Stockpile System. Does that help? Probably not... Maybe you heard on the news that the federal government of Canada recently released a supply of drugs from its emergency stockpile due to a shortage from supplier Sandoz. That's NESS.

Connections: Obesity and Autism

We've been hearing about the rise in obesity in the population - not just in First World countries but elsewhere also. Studies suggest a link between our extremely unhealthy fast-food, high-sugar diets combined with a sedentary lifestyle (like sitting in front of the computer all day). We eat poorly and exercise less. Simple really... and so our waistlines get bigger and we pack on the pounds.

What Goes Around... Comes Around

Some of you might be old enough to remember "slates"... remember, they were used in schools by students. Or if you're not old enough, maybe you've seen them on Little House on the Prairie or Anne of Green Gables or something similar. They looked something like this...

Students had chalk and they would do their sums on their slate boards, erase them with a damp cloth and then do some more. They could practice their writing and then erase it and try it over again. No wasted paper (paper was expensive back then)...

That was... oh... how long ago... 70, 80, 90 years ago?? Something like that... and it was a good system, a natural system... Slate is a stone... the frame was wood (trees) and the chalk was... well... chalk... another stone. They could last a very long time as well... unless someone broke one over a student's head (didn't Anne of Green Gables have a temper?).

Anyhow, fast forward 70, 80, 90 years to today... and what do we have? We have something called the Boogie Board.... This is what it looks like...Hmmm...

The idea is this... it has a screen that students can use with a plastic pen-like scribe tool.. They can write their sums on it... and then with a flick of that button at the top, erase everything. They can practice their writing on it... and then erase it. It saves on paper... which is a big expense in schools nowadays.

The whole Edmonton school district is apparently going with Boogie Board Tablets... yes they are... What's it made out of? Probably a lot of plastic and metal and glass... Quite expensive too...

What goes around... comes around... Back in the days of slate, paper was expensive and scarce. Nowadays paper is everywhere, but so much use means it is expensive... and hard on the environment... But what happens to a dead-Boogie Board??

A Penny for Your Thoughts...

Well, by this point we all know that the penny is an endangered species... at least in Canada. Let's have a moment of silence for the humble penny...

Ah, the penny... so maligned, done in by inflation. I remember when you could get a piece of gum for a penny... but those days are long gone!

But the demise of the penny makes me wonder... what will happen to our cultural icons and customs and ideas? What will happen to:

"A penny for your thoughts...
"Lucky penny"
"Penny wise and pound foolish"
"A penny saved is a penny earned"
"A bad penny always comes back"
"I don't owe you a penny"
"Down to the last penny"
"... and not a penny less"

What will happen to those little plastic containers at the check-out till where people can take a penny or leave a penny? What will happen to all of those penny-presses at tourist attractions like Niagara Falls - where you pay $1 to have your penny flattened and embossed with an image of the attraction? What are we going to use to play board games or dominoes?

Are pennies going to become serious collectors items? As people use them to buy things, the stores give them to the banks and the banks turn them over to the Canadian Mint who will melt them back down to elemental copper. Is there going to be copper glut on the market?

Oh... all the questions... maybe we'll end up talking about "lucky nickels" in the future.

We shall reap what we sow...

There's a saying in the Bible - you shall reap what you sow. I was musing on that this morning and started wondering... maybe that is more literal than we realize... We tend to think of it as, yeah, we'll reap what we sow in our lifetime. But what if we will reap what we sow beyond our lifetime... or into the next lifetime?

I think in particular of the environmental crisis... global climate change, tar sands, rising oceans, desertification, deforestation, etc. A long list of issues that we are sowing today. We are a short-sighted species though, so we don't really think of the long-term consequences. We are more concerned with political re-election and/or financial gain. Let's face it, most of us aren't willing to pay more for organic produce, even though it is better for the environment (less phosphate fertilizer and pesticides used.... less to end up in our rivers... less to end up in our oceans... less algal blooms in oceans... less dead zones in oceans). No, we are concerned with how to save money now... not with what the world might look like in 50 or 100 years.

But what if... what if... instead of the Christian view of the after life... we were to hold a different view? What if, instead of thinking that, well, we die and that's the end of it... we just go to heaven, put up our feet. What if, instead of that... it was something more along the lines of this... this life, this incarnation in bodily form is only one of many that we have had and will continue to have. What if, instead of death being the end of it all, death is just the start of another grand adventure? What if, when we die, we dip back into the oceanic pool of spiritual consciousness and then come back out again to have another shot at the game of life? Well then... we may very well reap in that life, what we have sown in this life. It might very well come back to bite us in the butt... Some food for thought...