North of 49

The morning started out bad as I was not feeling well, my head felt like a balloon filled with porridge and gravel. Rather than a bug I think it is just an unhealthy life style catching up with me what with being a career smoker and eating like a teenager. Yeah the pretty much nightly ritual of gettin a glow on has to be mentioned. Add to this a stressful job environment, not because of the work but because of management style and the fact that I have a mind that sometimes wanders. There are other factors that contributed to this nasty injury and I will leave them out as I personally dislike re-visiting the moment in time where it all came to a point of CHAOS! unwrapped to take out the sutures  It truly amazes a person when you look back at a catastrophic event and it plays in slow motion. That is but a memory of what happened, don't look confused just yet I'm sure this thread will become more tangled as I write. I have been in several car accidents where for r

Okay so I am a little late with this but: MERRY                 Christmas!                    While I'm on the subject                                  HAPPY NEW YEAR!                                   Have a good 2012. My Christmas was spent in a little Southern Alberta city. It was a balmy 0 Celsius and hardly any snow. Being with the family is all that counts and this time down South I had a chance to visit many friends and family. When I am there I go under the radar disguised as a Grampy and Grand daughter                                   GRAND FATHER! I love the two of them with all my heart. and the Grandson To have baby smell all over me is simply divine. No amount of treasure could ever be better than that! Sadly I live about 1000kms away from the little darlings. Still I had a great visit with photo's by Caira Gee                                                                                Both of my angels!

So this yet another piece of thread that unwound (funny how the word wound can mean 2 things with a totally different sound, see another thought off of a thought which came from.............come to think this body of mine was created from a thought.....oh crap!) You can see why it takes so long to make a post sometimes!  It is the way my thought process goes its like my thoughts are not arranged in a well ordered grid, I'm not methodical. My thoughts if charted would look  like a winding (another one of "those" words) boulevard snaking through the streets and avenues of information sometimes connecting to neighboring sections sometimes forming an overpass from one neighborhood to another going over yet others that are irrelevant to my apparent destination. OK! Back to the original post. We are so used to Money . The whole concept of currency is unquestioned by most and thought about by very few. We tend to believe that it's what makes the world go around.

The ideas we have now have been with our species for a very long time. Just thought I'd share this clip.

I am confused as to what my blog is called?????? I thought it was North of 49 but when in Google reader it sez The name is "The view from the Hill". Truthfully it was the name I had tried to use but dumped it when I found someone else already had a blog with the same name. I dunno! While on the subject of the more cosmetic aspects of this blog I would like to make a plea. I need help with the layout of my blog and so many out there have kick ass pages. Of course I'll try to navigate this blogger site and see what I can do all by my little lonesome. If you have a tip please deposit it at my email or here in the comment box.

This has been a popular post but after a re-read I found it needed some work and a re-posting. So no you are not going daft thinking you had seen this title before....you have. Anarchy has been a word out there in the news and related vaguely to the Occupy Movement. I wrote this mainly to show that yes I have gone over some material and no I'm not a scholar. Together we will take a look at Anarchy. One: what the heck is it? It, like any ideology, can have a number of variations but the central idea is that there is no one person with power and decisions are made through the collective of the working class. It is argued that it's our natural state, I won't refute that. Two: will it work? In 1930 something there was a anarchistic state created in Spain. The world was in chaos compared to today. Fascism was spreading and the people of Spain created an anarchistic socialist state. More on that period http://www.spunk.org/texts/places

This has been one of the longest writes in my history. Not in the length of this but in the direction that my research took was the direction the article took which took time. OK I'm just sounding confused. I ended up writing two maybe three pieces instead of one. The occupy movement is something that is not an "event" and I think the general population of north america has a hard time with that concept of something continuing beyond the week or two that mainstream media focuses on it. Of course the Tsunami of recent memory or Katrina of yesteryear are by and large out of peoples minds because it is not in their faces. Can't blame them as there is another crisis, a movie star breaking down, tornado thru another town. People aren't stupid but rather are affected by the anesthesia of mindless drivel coming from their environment. It seemed to most that the Occupy Movement came from nowhere yet it would be akin to stepping out of the mist for t

Space the immense mind numbing scale of the Cosmos makes it, for many of us, beyond understanding. To think of infinity is uncomfortable. Science has made many observations over the last 50 years which have explained and made us awe struck in regards to the heavens above. For instance we have thought of our Galaxy as being spiral. Now it is suggested that the Milky Way is a bar galaxy! This is not a life altering fact but it illustrates how little we know of where we live. It underscores the idea that we should find out more about this our Cosmic home. The exploration of intergalactic space is of vital importance to our species. If only in the base need of having a place or way off of planet Earth. If we survive long enough we will have to find a new solar system when this one becomes cold and dead. Might as well start now. This is about the most benign research that I can think of. It seems any work in a field related at all to biology is geared to genetic manipulation. Perhaps I a

So? Soso! So it is. Not sure where this is going as this post was found in drafts, I popped on it's long forgotten title and presto there was a blank screen and mind staring at each other. So, what if We put Science and Spirituality in the same room would we be left with some common ground at the end of the day? While I can rationalize and fully understand the concept of blind faith I have a hard time practicing it. Rather than operating my life in accordance with doctrine, I head for the open road of rational thought and reason. I have felt that I am walking a stable path built on the sober righteousness of facts and left those wearing a cloak of religion, with a smile and friendly nod of course, stuck in a ditch of piety . That covers one hemisphere (luv that word) of the brain, the other side is writing this blog and when we get to t

I have not been posting very much lately. I have tried beating myself up but it seems I am a very bad at it because of the lack of effect. I am in the North of Canada, a new supporter of the NDP and sort of out of work and a little scared by a very simple back strain injury. It has been 25 days of ceaseless annoyance, I have a sore spot on my back or I am in gut wrenching pain but I have not had anything of a normal life since the 14th of last month. Some days I can barely walk and others where I feel very little, though there has been some progress it is there and then we go back to shitty. Tomorrow I see my doctor and the physiotherapist I hope to be back at work on Thursday. Oh yeah I haven't been writing for a reason which makes me a bit embarrassed, I have fallen in love with the TV show Weeds! I have squandered 60hrs watching the series from the beginning. Damn the Internet and Torrents etc. There ya go short and sweet and from here forward I will try to post once a week. Th

Not only that I am a Grandpa TwIce! Ha ha so also my eldest daughter is writing a blog! Looks as though it will be a description of the view of a young mom in a trad family. I'm not sure if I have shared the fact that I am a Grandpa. Twice in fact. momming and other adventures: The more things change. . . : "I am a new mom. My son was born on November 15th by semi emergency C-section. It was semi emergency because he wasn't in danger it just wasn..."

A very nice young lady asked a question of me the other day. "Why do we do things we know are bad for us?" It is a very simple question with no hidden meaning or wherefores and futhermores strewn through the text. No this is one sentence is a simple question which would take volumes to answer. I'll put this in a personal context, I have been told for years that this is bad for my health and I have had friends pass away from cancer and I have seen the effects of emphysema on an aging body yet I still smoke! Why do I smoke cigarettes? The easiest answer and a true one is that I lack the will to quit. This easy answer brings us to a few questions, am I an idiot, mentally incapacitated to the point where reality and logic have flown out the window? Can free will have a negative effect on the human organism? Why is there a dichotomy in the will, everyone to a degree has it so why do some inherently have what I would call well balanced lives when there are others like myself wh