Goodbye Blogger

For decades I have used the google search engine and posted my thoughts in google blogger but in recent days everything on that platform seems to have gone tilt. Firstly when using the google search engine the results screen comes up with the most horrible glaring red background with no apparent easy way to go back to white. That I can cure by simply using a different search engine as my default, my current choice is Duck Duck Go. Although I no longer post as many items to blogger as I have over those 20 years I did today attempt to comment upon the current political situation here in Canada only to find out that it is now impossible to directly format the font and size when adding a post to blogger …..as can be seen in this post. What gives, this 'improvement' has effectively put an end to my blogging but perhaps thats a good thing for at 75 I no longer easily accept change. So this is probably goodbye! Support Democracy - Recommend this Post at Progressive Bloggers

Voices with no voice....

  Glen Pearson writes in National Newswatch

“The days of hope, while we still wish for them, seem somehow to be moving out of reach.  We have numerous causes but no cause, millions of voices but no voice.  Every viewpoint counts for something, but if it can’t respect those it opposes, or seek to find common cause for building something better, then millions of voices can merely become a din. “

I believe that sums things up rather well and just about the only thing we can be fairly certain of is that when an election is called, be it next month or next year, the din will become louder and the rhetoric more vicious.

The failure of the effort to bring in electoral reform leaves us with the system whereby we continue to be left with the conundrum of whether to vote for the best individual or indirectly for (or against) the party they represent (in theory they 'represent' us but thats not the way it works most of the time). 

Are we headed, as its becoming elsewhere, a case of a vote with no voters or voters with no vote?

Hat Tip to Owen over at Northern Reflections for this one...... 

 

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A Life of Learning.......

After 75 years of life learning on this planet we call Earth the last 40 or so with a computer of one kind or another on my desk, almost 20 of those with the ability to share my thoughts on that newfangled thing call the 'internet', I thought it was time to take stock of my life. I suspect that given the necessary reduction of interaction with others outside of close family over the last year or more that many folks much younger than I are rethinking their place in this world.

Some folks who have deeply religious or political convictions may have retreated into those polarizing beliefs, certainly many of our neighbors south of the border seem to be heading in that direction and demonstrating the danger of not thinking for ones self and following the herd. Personally I have never had strong political or religious beliefs except to think that perhaps a blind belief in either one (or both) may do more harm than good. This is not to say that we do not need a stable governing system and our democratic one is IMHO about the best, but when it becomes too polarised and confrontational it defeats its purpose.

Much the same can be said of religion, although I can hardly speak authoritatively about it only recently having found that there is a definition of my 'beliefs' (or lack thereof), not that I am much for 'labels' the following sums up my thoughts fairly accurately

Humanists believe that human experience and rational thinking provide the only source of both knowledge and a moral code to live by, they reject the idea of knowledge 'revealed' to human beings by gods.

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities.

Most humanists would agree with the ideas below:

• There are no supernatural beings.

• The material universe is the only thing that exists.

• Science provides the only reliable source of knowledge about this universe.

• We only live this life - there is no after-life, and no such thing as reincarnation.

• Human beings can live ethical and fulfilling lives without religious beliefs.

• Human beings derive their moral code from the lessons of history, personal experience, and thought.

Humanists reject the idea or belief in a supernatural being such as God. This means that humanists class themselves as agnostic or atheist. Humanists have no belief in an afterlife, and so they focus on seeking happiness in this life.

Apparently I may be an atheist but not an agnostic (damn labels again eh).......

An atheist doesn't believe in a god or divine being. ... However, an agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves in a god or religious doctrine. Agnostics assert that it's impossible for human beings to know anything about how the universe was created and whether or not divine beings exist.

I am not sure about that last bit for we learn more and more about the universe around us as our scientific and technical ability evolves, will we ever know all there is to know ...not a chance, but lets keep looking and sharing our finds with all of mankind. I don't know about 'divine beings' whatever the definition of those are, but I am totally convinced that other intelligent beings exist in the universe both less evolved than us and much greater. The question remains whether we manage to evolve much more before we destroy the ability of our world to support the life that developed from space dust over millions of years. Intelligent human beings, there are days when I start to wonder!

What may you ask brought on this introspective, my small handful of regular readers will know I have had very little to say on these pages in the past year or so, its not that I have nothing to say, for even if our situation federally is reasonably stable (for just a short while longer by the look of things) there is more than enough disasters building provincially in various governments across our country to comment upon. Its more that as I gradually move into my dotage I find that my mind outruns my ability to get my thoughts down on paper (actually on computer, my expressions are as old as my body) before have forgotten what I was going to say. I suspect this happens to most 'old' folks sooner or later and we know that for some folk it deteriorates into a total loss of memory and thinking skills, I sure hope I am not headed there and don't think I am but am acutely aware that I am not as 'sharp' as I was 5 years ago. I am sure my major stroke back then, from which I had 'a miraculous recovery' over the following year, has quite a bit to do with both my current thinking and what I view as my gradual inability to 'find' the right words at times.

I will leave you with this thought which sums things up quite nicely......

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
Donald Rumsfeld:

 

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