So the internet at York isn't working. However Google/ Gmail is working fine, as are many other sites owned by Google. My personal opinion is that Google has officially taken over the world and now decides what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately, YouTube wasn't one of the ones that made it. Sorry, YouTube, we will no longer be able to watch overweight men sing German songs out of tune.

Since Blogger is working fine, I'm going to entertain myself by talking .. er, to myself. What is the deal with airline food?!?

I'm kidding.

Seriously though, what a segue. I'm flying to Chicago this afternoon, and I'm very excited about it. I likes Chicago, it's a fun city with a peculiar, warm sort of energy that one doesn't often find. And the shopping is lovely. I of course, have to try and control myself because I'm spending too much money and Canada likes to milk people dry by stealing approximately 99% of their income so that people on welfare can sit home and drink beer.

Of course, not all people on welfare drink beer, but I'm eschewing my right to buy shoes, and therefore I give myself permission to rant.

Oops we did it again...

So the US lost some guns. So they end up in the 'wrong hands' (Mayyybe, but you know, Probably Not), and their grandiose plan to help train Iraqi forces so that they can finally get out of dodge has once again, been thwarted. Yeah, and Rumsfeld moonlights as Tinkerbell on the weekends.

I'm sorry, you can lose a handkerchief, a cell phone or even a kid. But losing... oh let me see: 110,000 AK-47 rifles; 80,000 Pistols; 135,000 Body armour pieces and 115,000 Helmets is not something you do by accident

("When I looked up they were just GAWNE sir! I don't rightly know how it happened! Must have been those damn EYEraqi militants again, dangawne it!")

Meanwhile the Pentagon wants another $2bn for more hardware, while improving accountability of course. They won't tell anyone how their accounting system works, must be another one of Cheney's personal code of secrecy "Treated as Secret/SCI" files. And people wonder why the healthcare system is shot to shite.

Now of course, the Americans will have to stay in the country longer (or at least until Bush finishes up his megalomaniacal dictatorship term). And so it goes on.

Meanwhile, where would you go if you could go anywhere in the world? I love those Air Canada websavers, they just open up the world to you in one swoop, and if I wanted to go somewhere totally random, where should it be? Preferably somewhere there isn't a war on of course. Or a flood. Or a famine. Or a toxic water/ chemical leak. Or...



Actually, nevermind.

The time has come, the walrus said...

Today I read an article on BBC news that I really liked.

Slowing down time

Now, as many know, I've always maintained that time is simply a concept - therefore fluid, not linear and certainly not absolute. More than anything, I think time or timeliness is more a matter of respecting those around you, and less a matter of making the most out of one's life. This article seems to agree.

Maybe it's just me, but somehow when I schedule my time in a day, the day seems to pass by faster. Now that's great when you're sitting in an office, or you're in school, waiting for exams to pass, I grant you. I think it's because when we make compartments like that, we're basically living from block to block. And here again, we take linear time and change it (or rather, our perception of it) to suit our needs.

Why then, is it odd (to those that believe in absolute linearity) when people go the other day? Take time, and de-linearize it? If time is a concept, then we, as creators of that concept should be able to play with it. Spending exactly one hour and thirty-five minutes in a gym should essentially serve the same (if not a higher) purpose as spending an evening wandering about your neighbourhood market.

The other aspect the article talks about - is the relative perception of time between that of a child and an adult. I remember, as a kid, being absolutely fascinated by everything. When I was a kid, I had to touch everything I saw. Drove my mother batty sometimes. However, for me, it was extremely important to experience everything using as much sensory input as possible - I'd smell things, touch them, look at them, so I could get a complete picture. Maybe it comes from being a visual person, I don't know, my brother isn't and I've never seen him being as curious as I was.

Of course, this curiosity led to a fair amount of mishaps, I've wandered off numerous times, causing many moments of sheer panic for mater dear, I've burned, cut and otherwise injured myself, trying to touch things I oughtn't (touching the hot side of irons often, for some reason - burned my palm more times than I can count), and so on.

Anyway, the point after all this meandering, is that children experience things differently than grownups. My friend's son, Ben, spent almost an entire evening at my house yesterday, staring at the CN tower changing colors. He even had his dinner while watching it. I love my view, but I don't think I've ever done that. My evening flew by in a flurry of cooking and hosting and other things, but I'm sure his took its sweet time.

There's no moral to this post really, just that I continue to think that time is fluid and even though I'm trying to be a little grown up and respect the space others give me in their lives, I don't plan to become any more linear anytime soon.