9 posts tagged “thought provoking”
What will our homes look like 237 years?
While on a quest for new places to ride, Laurie and I stumbled across this faltering, but still quite impressive, stone home. The stones that make up this structure have worn the years' weather with the same stamina as those who laid these walls and lived within them.
Forged from the need for a sturdy shelter during the tumultuous American Revolution, this house served as both home and stronghold for locals who fought to keep America free from the English. The stone walls were originally laid in 1770 by its owner, Colonel John Martin. Col. Martin played a key role in defending the area from the Tories and led the assault on Tories Den, their secret cave hideout in Hanging Rock Mountain.
Col. Martin survived the war and raised several children in Stone House. In April of 1823, Martin defended his ground one last time. This time, he did not battle onrushing warriors but instead his home was being threatened by a grass fire. Once the fire was under control, Martin sat near his home to rest where he quietly passed away at the age of 67.
Click here for the Stokes Country page on The Rock House.
Video: Show us your favorite show, scene or movie that takes place in the future.
I've posted about "Brazil"(1985) before, but this surreal film which looks like the future, the past, and neither all at the same time deserves a video post. So here it is. My favorite part is when Sam Lowry says "I could be anybody" and the guy behind the desk replies, "No you couldn't, sir. This is information retrieval."
The film, directed by the brilliant Terry Gilliam, rings frighteningly true to the current war on terrorism in the United States. This is my previous post on the film which compares the film to our current state of affairs.
The Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: -2.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.23
| Authoritarian | |||
| Left |
|
Right | |
| Libertarian | |||
If nothing else, it was good to know that I'm on the opposite side of Dubbya. Neat test, though..
What's yours? Check here.
- Hunter S. Thompson
It's a strange world we live in, isn't it? At one time, the city of Greensboro, NC was the scene of some of America's most gruesome and deadliest battles. During the civil war, most of the area saw combat at one time or another, but battles in Greensboro were some of the pivotal moments in the war that divided this young country.
The lives lost, and the heroes that fought here are immortalized in statue and in name. In fact, one of the more populated, and oldest, streets is actually called "Battleground". Today, Battleground is like many other American streets: it has a few Taco Bells, houses mixed in with strip malls, and a WalMart. But, it also has Battleground Park.
This park has numerous statues and points of interest which can be seen by driving through or by walking. There are also a number of mountain bike trails. One trail in particular refuses to let us riders forget who helped protect the park from invading big-box stores or being trampled on by housing communities. I took this photo while riding the trails today. It is of a grave marker from the civil war era. I don't know anything else about it, but it is certainly a reminder of the historical significance of the trail that I enjoy often.
This is a long post, but worth the read... I hope!
Just over seven months ago, I left Canada with my fiancée, our cat and our car. We loaded everything we own into a giant UHaul, strapped the car to a trailer and climbed aboard for a journey into the unknown, just like in Star Trek. Also, just like in Star Trek, we had a mission: "To seek out new lives and better places of employment".
At the time we left, our immigration case had ground to halt thanks to our loud and unpleasant neighbors who stole our mail, which included forms from USCIS that absolutely had to be returned. Even though I didn't know what my immigration status was going to be when I got there, we had decided to move from British Columbia to North Carolina, and once I make a decision, I stick to it. The day that we left, we were absolutely exhausted from cleaning and loading the truck and it was raining so hard I was beginning to think that we should pack our swimsuits along in the truck with us. And, it was honestly not easy to leave behind family and the place we'd lived and gone to university for the past four years. But, our plan was in place and it was time to get the wheels rolling.
Our 2900 mile drive, as estimated by Google Maps, should have taken just a little under two days. Well, we weren't even close! It took us seven days to make the journey, not counting our three-day stop in Minneapolis to pick out an engagement ring. By the time we arrived, we were tired of riding in the truck, tired of greasy restaurants and cheap motels, and our cat was tired of not being able to run around and climb things all day.
The day we arrived was ironically the same dark, wet weather as the day we left more than ten days ago. Since then, a lot has happened: my financée became my wife, we installed a wood floor in the place where we would be living for the next two years and our cat has found all the best places to climb and hide in our new home. It has been really great being here with my new family and they've welcomed me as one of their own. And recently, I began the task of finding work now that my legal-to-work date is closing in.
I actually like interviewing for jobs, and it was particularly nice to look for work here, as there are so many more career opportunities for people with my skills here than where we left. I also really like the people - southern hospitality isn't a myth! However, when they're behind the wheel of a car, its battle-conditions, just like everywhere else.
Today marks the four-week countdown until I can finally rejoin the working-class! Thanks to a great law firm who has helped us out a lot, my new wife and I are finally at a point where we are saving for a house. She has already started work because she is American, but the really interesting thing is that we both wound up interviewing for positions with the same company.
Although we were being interviewed for different positions and by different people, we told the company that we were married so that there wouldn't be any surprises if we were offered positions and showed up to work, already in an 'office romance' together. Luckily, they did not care that we were married and in fact seemed to like the fact they're getting a team. We were both offered the positions that we applied for and we now both work for a very progressive software development company. In four short weeks, we'll be commuting to work together, just like we did when we were taking classes in Canada!
Since I've been here, many people have asked me, "Why did you leave Canada? It's so beautiful there!". They're right - it is beautiful. But it's far from perfect. Not to say that anywhere could be perfect in every way, but for those who asked, this is my "top-ten" list as to why I left British Columbia for North Carolina:
- Home prices: CBCNEWS: "Vancouver houses prices still highest in Canada". That quote, from June 2006, states that prices went up a whopping 23.7% in just one year. The average price: $518,176! Completely insane, if you ask me. The average house price in the city where we now work: only $121,575.. just a little cheaper!
- Medical system: Don't tell me the Canadian medical system is free, because it isn't. It's rolled into taxes, which hides the real costs, so no one can really be sure how expensive it is. However, taxes are very high in Canada, so it's not too hard to make the connection. And as for the service, let me share a little experience I had: A few years back I was 'gifted' with kidney stones. For anyone who doesn't already know, this is a pain level that has few, if any, parallels in human experience. It's bad, but not life-threatening, so to receive the treatment that would break up the stones, I had to wait my turn. It was almost two months before I got my turn, and even then I had to get to the machine on my own! If the machine had been at the hospital in the city where I lived, that wouldn't have been too bad, but I had to go 250 miles, each way, just to get there! I missed more than two months of work, earning a fraction of my salary while on disability pay and had to go 500 miles round-trip while suffering intense discomfort. I've had time to investigate the process here in North Carolina, and there are many of these machines in hospitals all over the state. And, the waiting time would be hours-to-days, not months.
- Gas prices: Taking into account metric to Imperial conversion and currency differences, the price for a gallon of gas down the street here in North Carolina is $2.38 compared to the same gallon of gas in British Columbia, which is $3.32! Almost a whole dollar more per gallon for the exact same gas. For me, that works out to $10 more per tank for gas in BC.
- Wages: Although the minimum wage in Canada is higher than in the US, the average annual wage for someone who does the kind of work that I do in BC is $41,000 compared to $62,000 in North Carolina. The opportunities for advancement are also much greater here.
- Happiness: Maybe its the house prices, or the price of fuel or that people have to wait in line for months to have a painful medical condition relieved, but when I'm shopping or at a restaurant or just walking down the street, people just seem happier.
- Education: 18 of the "Top 20" Universities world wide are in the United States (TIME.COM). One has to look down to #24 to find University of Toronto for the first Canadian listing, and to #37 to find British Columbia's "UBC".
- The Avro Arrow: In the frigid spring of 1959, the Canadian government decided that it was a good idea to destroy the greatest aircraft the world had ever seen. This incomprehensible action was the catalyst to the 'brain-drain' from Canada to the United States which saw many of the world's finest aeronautical engineers move into the American space program. Included in the list of expatriates was the brilliant Jim Chamberlin, who became a lead engineer for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft programs. Incidentally, Jim Chamberlin is a personal hero of mine, not only for his work on the Arrow and the NASA space program, but I also have a personal connection to him since we share the same birthday and grew up in the same town in Canada.
- Shopping: 24hr WalMart, 24hr Target and 24hr Harris Teeter. 'Nuff said?
- Car insurance: When buying insurance in BC, you get two choices: ICBC or ICBC. In the US, the concept of state-owned insurance is a little too "commie", so insurance is handled as a free market commodity. The result is better coverage for less money. Plus, I get to buy insurance from a lizard! How cool is that?
- Hockey: I don't mind the game, but I am a big Formula 1 fan and whenever a race is on at the same time as a hockey game, the race is bumped to a later date or is not played at all. In North Carolina, hockey is semi-tolerated but racing is BIG!
I truely hope that no one is offended by this. However, I didn't say anything that wasn't true - so there! Like I said earlier, no place is perfect in every way so I wanted to put a few things that I miss about Canada:
- My son. Goes without saying, but he is #1. I see him and talk to him often, but moving away from him was the hardest thing I ever did.
- My family. Love you mom, dad, sis, bro-in-law and their kiddies!
- Friends: I don't have too many of them in Canada, but you know who you are.
- Mountains. It's really flat here and I used to really like riding into the mountains on my bike to get away from the world.
- Boxing day. In the US, its called 'black Friday' and its after the US Thanksgiving. Black Friday is cool, and has better sales than Boxing Day, but when it's the day after Christmas, its like getting a second chance to get yourself the gifts that you didn't get the day before!
- Kenna Cartwright Park: This park has excellent mountain biking trails that I rode almost daily, sometimes twice a day. Good times..
- Crispy Cheesers: Little Ceasar's Pizza in Canada has something called the Crispy Cheeser, which is not made by US-based Little Ceasar's. They're very tasty, but kinda bad for the tummy!
- Tim Hortons: The closest we have here is KrispyKreme, which isn't very close at all.
- Fewer churches: There are too many churches here! I think everyone should be able to believe whatever they want, as long as they keep it to themselves. But, its pretty hard to ignore all the church-ey messages that are everywhere, including stuck onto all the exercise machines at the local "Y" that I go to.
- Relaxed people: In general, Canadians are pretty mellow people, and that's a good thing.
There are a lot of other great things about life in Canada, but these are the ones that I will personally miss. As of today, I join a long list of Canadian expatriates as I have now officially left Canada. One is never really gone until the Canadian Revenue Agency knows about it, and I've just gotten off the phone with them to tell them that I've gone. It's an unusual feeling, but not an uncomfortable one, as I've always felt as though I 'fit in' better in the United States, anyways.
With that, I bid Canada a sweet 'farewell'.
Empower yourselves, my friends, in the belief that all the good things in your life happen because you make them happen.
So also do the bad things. Or, it is simply random timing. Either way, why credit your fate to an imaginary creature spawned from the fear of the unknown by your distant ancestors?
The Earth is not flat, nor the center of the universe. There are billions of planets in the universe with billions of years of history - no one is watching out for humanity, nor have they ever been. We are a microscopic, almost immeasurable part of the universe's existence. No one else cares about our comparative infinitesimally brief existence.
There are no ghosts, not even holy ones. If you think humanity needs a saviour, and we probably do, look to yourself: our legacy will determine humanity's survival.
Immortality is ours for the taking!
Maybe not in my generation, maybe not even in generation of my offspring.. but Ray Kurzweil has put into words that which I have always felt: that human reality and technology will come to a convergence in such a way to change perceptions so dramatically that our definitions of what is real will no longer apply.
Once thought to be achieved through life extension drugs, true human immortality will more be a function of how we use technology to carry ourselves into, and beyond, the point of temporal singularity.
Like about a zillion other bloggers, I have to say something about the two artists who were arrested today in Boston for their flagrant disregard for safety by displaying signs which bear no resemblance whatsoever to bombs.
What kind of paranoid society are we building where goofy cartoon-like images are mistaken for terrorist activities? Granted, I've never actually seen a terrorist (that I know of..) or a suicide bomber (I'm sure of that..), but I'm pretty certain that they don't dress up like a monochromatic, 2-dimensional Spongebob Squarepants. And if they did, they would be pretty easy to pick out of a crowd.
Our friends at Wikipedia discuss 'paranoia' as the psychosis of holding beliefs in an irrational threat. When we start believing that harmless signs resembling a Lite-Brite set (look it up if you've not seen one before) are explosives, then people will start seeing bombs (and bombers) everywhere. Its kind of like that Seinfeld episode where Uncle Leo thinks that everyone is an anti-Semite. We laughed at that, but its going to be a lot harder to laugh at this event - this is real paranoia, not a sit-com.
The road to Paranoia-town is incredibly easy to get lost on, but almost impossible to turn around on. Once one starts to see terrorists in everyday things, it only feeds the paranoia to find terrorists is even more everyday things. Just like Uncle Leo believing that his hamburger was overcooked because he is Jewish, I believe that this event is only the beginning: soon, we'll be hearing of false-arrests for suspected terrorists doing the mundane things that they've always done. Kids tossing eggs on Halloween: terrorists; the 'Check Engine' light on your car: terrorist auto mechanics; spyware on your computer: installed by terrorists.
Maybe not. However, it wasn't too long ago that one of my favorite actors, Jonathon Pryce, was the lead in a film that is spookily-familiar to the direction that I see our society now wandering perilously towards. Before Pryce was Governor Swann in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series of films, he was the hapless bystander in a society plagued by terrorists.
In the film "Brazil" (1985), Pryce is one cog in the machine of a government that is out-of-control paranoid in its search for terrorists. During the course of the film, we see an innocent man being charged and eventually tortured because of his "affiliation" with a terrorist. The problem is that his only affiliation with the terrorist is the spelling of his name - nothing more. Despite the massive effort from the government in the film, and the over-exhuberant police force to curtail terrorism, we see that "no actual terrorists" are caught. But, instead of calling off the government sanctioned kidnapping and torture of innocent people, their plan is to make more government and tighten security. Sound familiar?
Currently in real-life, not in a sarcastic parody, there is already a "no-fly" list that bans people from flying based only on the spelling of their name. Passports are required documents to travel almost anywhere (quote from "Brazil": "Is it stamped??"). Billions of dollars spent and the loss of life in a war against terror that has turned up scant few 'real' terrorists, and has probably caused the buildup of real terrorists that is now happening around the world.
The unnamed government in "Brazil" eventually collapses in on itself, and we're led to believe that a new day is on the horizon where people can travel without prosecution or interrogation. That change will probably come for our society, too. But that change will not come without pain, or resistance.
The problem with someone who is paranoid is that if you choose to dispute their accusations, you only point a finger at yourself making them think that you, too, are a terrorist. Ironically, that has already happened: Mr. James Moore, a critic of the Bush administration, was placed on the "no-fly" list simply for disagreeing with the administration.
Don't get me wrong - I don't condone terrorists, I think bombs are generally a bad idea, and I like it when the police catch the bad-guy. However, when we start arresting people for drawing cartoons, its time to have a good look in the metaphorical mirror before we all wind up on the "no-fly" list.
Show us something thought-provoking.
Submitted by luminousshadow11.
This is a photograph of Badwater Basin, altitude: 282 feet below sea level. I took it from an natural outcropping of jasper which was littered with evidence that it was used to 'manufacture' arrow-heads by native North Americans.
Following the hiker code which states "Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints", I was obligated to leave the half-completed and damaged arrow-heads behind, taking care to not even change their positions.
Because Death Valley is such a static place, I knew that the last people to stand where I stood, about 2000-3000 years ago, shared this same amazing vista while they crafted their hunting implements.
