Proof: assume there is a finite number of primes, p₁, p₂, p₃, …, p_n, with p_n being the largest. Consider (p₁ x p₂ x p₃ x … x p_n) + 1, this number has no prime divisors and is greater than p_n, making it the exception that proves the rule. QED.

One of the easiest ways to tell which is the house I’m living in now is that on the upper front balcony someone has put up a giant yellow “ribbon” which says “Support our Troops” on it.  This phrase has always bugged me, and not just coming from a Mennonite background.  The real reason it bugs me can be summarized up in a single question, “what does that even mean?”

I’ve always found it weird how someone can say that they oppose the government’s decisions, and how they think it’s wrong for the armed forces to be doing whatever it is they’re doing, but to then immediately say they support the troops.  Thinking about it now (as I write this I have no idea what I’m going to say, I’m just making it up as I go along) I guess it kind of reminds me of the unconditional love a parent has for their children, that or the girl who keeps going back to her abusive boyfriend.  The idea that no matter what they do wrong it doesn’t matter, they’re still loved.

The justification these people who blindly want to support our troops use is that “they’re fighting for our freedoms.”  Even when you disagree with the fighting they’re doing, even if the battles being fought seem to only be about international posturing, or resources or interests of the rich and powerful.  Somehow, they’re still fighting for our freedoms.  Now, you may say that their intentions for signing up in the first place were there, and that it was the government’s fault for using the forces for wrong, but I ask you this.  Canada has had troops in Afghanistan since 2001, as has the US, who also had troops in Iraq from 2003 until earlier this year.  In that time, anyone signing up has known that they could be asked to go and participate in these conflicts.  What that says to me, is that anyone who’s signed up since these wars started is most definitely not fighting for our freedoms, and they knew that going into it too.

Why sign up then?  I would suspect that in most cases it’s because finding jobs can be hard, or stressful, especially if you were the type who couldn’t even get through highschool.  This however is an easy to get job, where there always seems to be positions open.  Maybe they’re just poor and want a free post-secondary education.  Perhaps some are out of touch with current events enough to think that what they are doing will be to protect us.  The only catch to all of these is that you need to be willing to go out and kill people (and I bet there have been some people who have joined for that reason too, but I wouldn’t think very many), and to accept that fact that you could be killed too.

If you want to “support our troops” I suppose that means you’re for these things, the decent paying jobs and the free education.  The question I have is this, why is it that our society doesn’t think these are things that should be given to people, unless they agree to go kill other people (unless you’re name is Karla Homolka, at which point society doesn’t think you should get free education for killing people).  why not support the troops before they become troops, or support them so they don’t need to become troops.

Right now, if you’re still reading this, and enraged that so far I’ve compared members of the armed forces to abusive boyfriends, psychopaths, and people without a proper grip on reality, then you’re probably doubly outraged that I’ve chosen to do so on the 11th of November.  I’ve seen plenty of comments on the internet regarding this, the one day of the year for veterans, that it’s supposed to not be about politics and instead about remembering the people who sacrificed themselves in the name of their country (presumably for future generations).  The thing about that is that this is wrong.  Who remembers hearing the phrases “never again” and “war is hell” especially at this time of year.  That’s what we need to be remembering.  The goal isn’t to idolize people who died during the wars, otherwise, we’re going to have a new generation who thinks it’s noble to go off and do it again so they can then be remembered the same way.  That actually sounds to me to be kind of familiar to conditions that led up to the first world war.  Does anyone else think it’s kinda funny that something called “the war to end all wars” is only helping to make war more acceptable (not to mention being a part of a chain of events that led to the conditions allowing Hitler to rise to power)?  No, of course it’s not funny, it’s war, millions of people died, and they did so for no real purpose, there’s nothing funny about it, just despicable and regrettable.

In case you want more examples of these men you call heroes make pretty bad role models here’s some other things to consider:

During the lead-up to the second world war, many Jews tried to leave Germany because of the persecution.  However, before 1945 antisemitism was perfectly reasonable to western society, and the attempted refuges weren’t allowed entry into other countries and they were then forced to go back to Germany, possibly to their deaths.

If you look at old propaganda posters from the time frame you’ll note that they don’t cover the treatment of Jews, there’s really two reasons for that.  First like I mentioned above, nobody really cared, and second nobody knew what was happening.  The men signing up weren’t doing it to save the Jews, they were doing it because they were told to, please stop assigning this extra level of fighting for the oppressed in the way you remember them, they weren’t.  As far as anyone here knew European Jews were being treated the same as North American people of Japanese decent.  If for some reason you don’t want to believe this, then that means the countries (including this one) I mentioned above who turned away immigrants knowingly sent them to their deaths.

It’s about time to wrap this up, but really here’s what I want to say.  If you’re taking the time today, or any day to remember the soldiers who died in really any way, ask yourself this, what was the difference between them and the men they were killing.  Both had families who cared for them (unless those families were blown apart like the massive number of other civilian deaths brought on by war).  Both were following orders, and both were hating the other for no real reason other than someone else told them to.  Remember those civilian deaths on either side, and just remember that everything about it was wrong.  Use this as a chance to remember what a senseless waste it is, and that our goal really should be “Never Again.”

It’s also a time of year where people are talking about elections.  Municipal elections were recently held in Toronto and having just moved here I seem to every day read a new article about people who still can’t understand how Ford could win the mayoral election.  Similarly it’s been less than a week since the US had an election, and for years now Canada seems to be on the brink of a new federal election just as soon as Harper thinks he can win a Majority by breaking his own election law that prevents the Prime Minister from being allowed to ask for an election for the sole reason of a power grab.  The idea of the opposition being able to force an election is long past since Mr. Harper was able to convince the former Governor General that since parliament was not functional and that the government was not able to pass any legislation (whereas the opposition could) it didn’t mean that the government didn’t have the confidence of parliament (and thus there should be an election, or an offer for the opposition to form a coalition) it was time to just put a hold on the sitting of parliament (so that the opposition couldn’t pass their legislation and he could go and (somehow) convince Canadians that it was undemocratic for a majority of parliament to oppose a government that fewer than 20% of Canadians (taking into account voter turnout) voted for.  I only hope that the current Governor General acts differently, although knowing that the position is appointed at the suggestion of the Prime Minister, I’m fairly certain Mr. Johnston was asked in his “job interview” what he would do if it came up, and I’m even more certain Mr. Harper wouldn’t offer the job to anyone who gave any hint of not doing his bidding.

All that said, I’m not here to complain about politics.  I’m here to fix politics, as the solutions all seem so simple (except for one).  To fix problems, we first need to know what they are (even if that isn’t normally what you do in politics).  My solutions cover voter ignorance, apathy (specifically youth) and vote splitting.

I’m going to start with what I think is the easy one, and that is apathy of the youth.  Combined with my other solutions which will help people believe that the system isn’t broken and that they can affect things I suggest one simple thing.  Unless they’ve changed the curriculum since I was in highschool in grade 10 you are required to take a 1/2 course on civics.  This civics course at least for me focused mostly on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that is in the constitution.  One of these rights being repeated over and over to you by the teacher, and that you’re forced to regurgitate on tests is that EVERY Canadian citizen has the right to vote.  Anybody who hasn’t skipped a grade or failed a grade (and started at the normal age) will be somewhere between ages 14 and 16 when they take this class depending on when in the year they take it, and when in the year their birthday is.  Remember, the constitution says every single Canadian has the right to vote, it doesn’t say every Canadian over the age of 18, it says, every Canadian, and you’re telling this to a bunch of 14-16 year-olds.  Do you know what this taught 15 year old me?  The system is inherently broken.  The most basic law of the land, the one that governs all other laws is misleading you, and that doesn’t give me any faith.  I just realized this is a lot of text just for me to say “lower the voting age so people who are learning about how government works don’t feel disenfranchised.”  Even though that doesn’t actually solve the apparent logical fallacy, most people are so self centered that it won’t even occur to them that it’s still lying because it’s not lying about them.  You may respond to this by saying “but I know what people that age are like, they’re stupid, and care more about their hair, and whether so-and-so is going out with whosit or not, I don’t want to give them the power to affect tax rates or foreign policy no matter how little affect they actually get” and don’t worry I’m far ahead of you.

Voter ignorance is I think perhaps the biggest problem facing every level of politics today, and in every region I can think of.  Politicians are able to convince people to vote against their best interests, because people can’t be bothered to care about what’s actually happening.  The answer is simple, even if the implementation is hard.  Let’s test them.  I say, to be allowed to vote, you should first have to pass a “voters test.”  You may say that that’s an easy thing to corrupt, and the person making said test could rig it so that it only passed people they liked and I agree that that’s a problem.  However, if we only had it test facts, and we made it multiple choice (so that unreadable writing and misspellings or alternate correct answers can’t be rejected)  I’m talking questions like “for what position is the person you’re voting for running?” if someone picks “mayor” when the answer is “member of (federal) parliament” then their vote is discounted, because honestly, I don’t think any reasonable person could have a problem with that.  No trick questions, no hard ones, just facts that anyone with any understanding of the system has, something that you have to be purposefully ignorant to get wrong.  An even better testing system would be to make ballots be multiple choice tests, asking questions about the issues, and depending on how you answer the questions, your vote is cast for a specific candidate (the candidates of course would need to be involved in the creation of this test, this of course is not practical in any way, but would be great if it could be done).  Any language could be made available on request in this age of the internet.

As for my vote splitting, the solution here is simple, in fact it’s so simple I think all the major parties in Canada use it at their leadership conventions.  Vote, if there’s someone with >50% they win, otherwise, eliminate the person with fewest votes, and then loop until someone wins.  Now, you may say that that’s too many elections and one is expensive enough, well then in that case just rank the candidates all at once.  If your first choice is eliminated then go to the second choice on the ballot (unless they’re already eliminated, then move onto third, etc.)  How many people in Canada vote Liberal not because they want to, but because they don’t want the Conservatives to win?  This way, they can vote for their first choice first, but then if that smaller party doesn’t win then at least your voice is heard for the other party you’d prefer.  It’s too bad this system is too complicated for so many people, as when I was voting in the municipal election, the person in front of me at the polling station was having a hard time understanding how the ballot worked when it was something like this:

█   █ John Jackson

█   █ Jack Johnson

and you had to draw a line connecting the blocks between the name of the person you wanted like this:

█—█ John Jackson

you were also explicitly told not to put an x like:

█ x █ Jack Johnson

There were even diagrams showing what a proper ballot looked like.  If you can’t understand that then how are you supposed to be able to understand how to rank your choices?  Then again, maybe you’d be weeded out by my voter competency test so it doesn’t even matter

So there you have it, 3 kinda simple changes to make, that would greatly benefit our political process, at least if we want to keep a representative “democracy” like we currently have.  Anyway, I think there’s a chance this could be my longest post yet, I have a few more coming very soon, so check back in a week or so, one kinda has a relevance time limit of next Thursday so I promise it by then.

Not quite summer, but I may as well go back as far as May for a couple of things that I can think of worth saying something about, both have had fairly new things too so perhaps it’s good to bring them up again. I’ll be doing this in roughly chronological order but I forget exact details.

Let’s start this off with Ironman 2. It just came out on DVD but I haven’t got it or seen the new releases yet (if I even do). It’s a pretty standard superhero movie, probably on the better end of that spectrum (but there’s been a lot of very bad ones, so that doesn’t mean too much). Fun enough, but nothing exceptional. I wouldn’t think it would be possible (especially in the superhero style with an origin story in the first movie) to put more exposition in the sequel but somehow they succeeded. Fun but nothing special.

Also coming out in May (I think) was the game Red Dead Redemption. Made by the same company that does Grand Theft Auto, it’s basically that but western. It’s weird how this game has ended up, I really enjoyed the story, and played that through till completion (unless there’s another ending after the last one I saw, there was like 3 endings that I played through). There’s a few side things I never completed and I kinda wanted to go back and do that, but it just doesn’t have that same feel going back afterwards (especially with the *trying to avoid spoilers* drastic change your player goes through very near the end) and I can’t bring myself to want to play it again, despite the fact that they’ve definitely tried to add some levels of replayability to it. Multiplayer seems tacked on, bland and not well balanced but they keep adding DLC (with prices on the high end for more avatars and a game mode or two). The highlight of the game is the single player experience, and the scenery, and once you’ve done that there’s nothing left, and they’re not even trying to add to it while trying to add to the worse parts.

Inception is probably the most overrated movie since, well since Avatar. I suppose that’s not that impactful, since one year isn’t that long, but honestly I can’t think of anything that compares to either of these two in that respect (maybe the first Shrek). The story and all the details made no sense, and I don’t mean this like I didn’t understand what was happening, I did, it was just dumb and poorly thought through. Let’s start with what I think is the worst example of this, his top. He uses it to tell if it’s in a dream or not, as in his dreams it doesn’t stop spinning, but in someone else’s dream it does, so if he spins it, and it doesn’t stop then he’s obviously dreaming, but if it does stop then either he’s in someone else’s dream, or he’s in the real world. What garbage is this? It doesn’t work, and if you think about it at all you see this problem. Why was one character able to change shapes and no one else? My suspension of disbelief is willing to allow the movie to have coherent dreams which follow causality (which dreams don’t) and it’s willing to allow the technology to go into someone else’s dream. However, it does not allow things like “we’ll make it so that when your sleeping body falls you wake up” only to show many times sleeping bodies falling without waking up (but then they do when they try to wake them up). Why is gravity all screwed up on one level, but not the next? Luckily I think this is also the type of movie that after everyone talks about how good it is, largely forgets about shortly afterwards, as long as people don’t go bringing it up again, months after most people forgot, those Jerks!

On the other hand, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World was a great movie that apparently no one went to see. The biggest complaint I’ve heard is that some characters were so funny they kind of stole the show from the main characters. I think the books are better than the movie, and although I agree many of the changes are things that are needed to condense the story to fit in the movie, and many of them were really good (this is the kind of thing that happens when you actually involve the original author in the making of the movie) I’m still kinda disappointed that in the movie, Scott never fought any robots, why would they take out fighting robots? One thing I find kinda weird too, is that people talk about Michael Cera being typecast, and that this is another instance of that, but the character of Scott Pilgrim isn’t really like any of his previous roles at all. Unfortunately that wasn’t conveyed in the script or to the director or to the actor. Scott is supposed to be a huge narcissist, and also quite stupid. It’s kinda weird, Scott Pilgrim the character from the books has many character traits similar to characters from a TV show apparently no one watched called Arrested Development. One however is almost the complete opposite of Scott Pilgrim, and I leave it to the reader to guess who I’m referring to. (If you don’t know, I guess you’re going to have to go and read the Scott Pilgrim books and watch Arrested Development, and even if you do know you should do those things again, because they’re so awesome).

The last Scott Pilgrim book also came out this summer (before the movie) and it was also good, but I’m not going to talk much about it, instead I want to talk about the game they made for PS3 and 360. Its release corresponded with the release of the movie, but followed more of the book (until the end, when it went off on its own, but the movie did that too) which among other things means in the game you do get to fight robots! I’ll claim here that this is easily one of the best games based off a movie, partly because it wasn’t really based off the movie. The game, the movie and the last book were all made at about the same time. It’s really quite amazing how well the game (with gameplay based of those old brawlers like Double Dragon, River City Ransom, or the Ninja Turtles games where you just walk through the levels beating guys up) feels like it belongs with the story (which is actually a pretty typical romantic comedy). This probably has more to do with Brian Lee O’Mally’s books than Ubisoft’s game but this game is easily worth the price to download (probably even a better value than a ticket to go see the movie).

NHL 11, EA’s most recent game in their ongoing series had what sounded like enough improvements that I felt like I should pick it up this year, and so I did, they talked so much about their new real-time physics, which is a big help, the thing that really sold me on it was the inclusion of the CHL (which to those of you who don’t know is made up of 3 leagues, the WHL, QMJHL, and OHL). Yeah I pretty much picked it up because I can play as the Kitchener Rangers in it. Year after year, at least lately, it’s been EA’s NHL series winning sports video game of the year awards, and there is a reason why. That said there’s still lots of room for improvement too. Off the top of my head, I can tell you that it’s really frustrating how the CPU is able to take the puck away from you, and skate on, whereas your methods to try the same thing only result in the puck being knocked away (often to just a different player on the other team). In EA’s soccer games, the players will try and take the ball away from another player just by running close to him, in their hockey games, the CPU will do that too, but the player will sit there and do nothing making some frustrating and unrealistic plays. There also seems to be a problem in this year’s game where players will pass in the wrong direction, often sending it directly to the other team, without any teammate who could have received the pass in that direction. Players will often move out of good scoring positions and into heavier cover for some reason, and they’ve still not fixed the problem where players do nothing to try and keep the puck onside (so if a player is near the line, they’ll often take the puck out of the zone and then put it back it for seemingly no reason causing a bad offside. Sometimes I wish EA’s different teams would work more closely together though. The NHL franchise has many good things about it, but could use some of the features from FIFA and some from Madden, and so on, it wouldn’t even cost much, as everything involved is already theirs.

I was going to talk about Civ 5 here too, but This is long enough for now, and since it came out September 21st I can call it a fall release and do that some other time.

Swearing just isn’t something I do. I find it’s a good way to tell the world that you have a limited vocabulary, and aren’t able to control yourself. I find there’s also a link between the intelligence of what the person is saying (not necessarily the person themselves, just the point they’re trying to get across) and the amount of swearing in said point (this is definitely a one way link too, as you don’t need to look very far to see someone sounding stupid without swearing at all). This is all personal views though, but I bet it would be a really interesting study to see if there was a way to put it together.

That said, this isn’t really what I want to talk about though, I don’t actually care if you swear or not, I’m just going to reserve the right to not respect your views if you need to resort to using some words ironically. What I want to discuss is the people who actually get offended at the use of these words or somehow think that certain sounds or combinations of letters can be bad.

My wife recently watched all of the new Battlestar Galactica series (and has actually watched some of the old one on our netflix free trial) and since then I’ve noticed her using the word they made up for that show in order to have the characters “swear” without getting in trouble with the censor. I find it silly to do this though, as why are you even saying that word? Why do some people say “sugar” or “fudge” or any number of other euphemisms when they’re upset?

The thing is, everyone knows what it is you’re meaning to say. What are words if not just a way of conveying ideas and emotions and information from one person to another. In that case aren’t all these euphemisms the same as the words you’re trying not to say in the first place? The intent and the idea is the same, and yet somehow people think they’re different words when they’re really not.

I suppose the exception here is if you think words can actually take on some level of power more than just conveying an idea, like a really superstitious person, or someone who believes in magic, or a writer for Doctor Who. If you think that “curse” words can actually lay a curse, then I guess that explains why you might want to avoid using some words but if that’s the case then your points sound less intelligent than the people I was talking about above, the ones who have more swear words in their sentences than other words.

So here’s the question I pose to you readers of this site, and in fact to everyone else, feel free to pass it on to them for me. What is it about certain words, certain combinations of either syllables or letters that make them any worse than other words? I want to hear your answers. The said, if your answer is “they’re bad because they were bad before and therefore they still are now” then please answer part two of the question, which is simply “Why?” If your answer involves saying “body parts and functions are bad” then I have a couple things to say to you. First: “why?” and second: “arm!”

A few weeks ago we decided to go see a Jays game as the first of my “see all the professional teams in Toronto” plan. I had been in the library that’s close to here, waiting for Kathleen to check her email (we hadn’t actually had internet access yet) and I saw that day’s edition of the Star, and among other things saw that the Jays were playing that night. I asked Kathleen if she wanted to go to a game bought some tickets and a few hours later we were leaving to see the game.

As a side note here, regarding buying tickets for these events, Ticketmaster has such a horrible website with almost no usability, and random extra charges added on they alone kinda make me want to rethink this sports thing, as I’ll have to use them to get tickets to pretty much every game I want to try and see.

On arriving at the Skydome (I’ve already said in this post that I dislike Rogers, so is it a surprise to see me call the place by its old name instead of its current one?) we had to walk across to the box office to pick up our tickets and saw something that made little sense to me. Did you know that you can order cable or internet at the Skydome? Rogers actually has one of their Rogers Plus stores inside the building. I really want to know if they’ve ever sold an internet package at that location.

At least 5 times on our walk from Union Station to the Skydome we were approached by scalpers offering to sell us tickets to the game we were off to see. I find this really quite odd, as the stands were quite empty, and although I know they don’t even bother trying to sell tickets for most of the seats there were still hundreds if not thousands of seats available. Why buys scalped tickets to something that’s not even close to being sold out? Do they sell the tickets cheaper, and if so is that cheaper price worth the chance that they’re not legit tickets?

After a very small complication picking up our tickets (I had ordered them and given my new address, the person at the box office asked to see my drivers licence, which was under the old one, and got confused) we went into the building. I feel like I could get in trouble for saying this, but if you ever want to take something into the building that you’re not supposed to take it, give it to a female. Security pats down men but not women, I guess they follow the TSA method of security, make it look like they’re doing something, when really they’re not.

We hadn’t left ourselves enough time to eat before going to the game, so we decided to try and get food there. It was probably a mistake, but then again the food is part of the experience, There’s probably not many of these sporting events in the city where a hot dog and a pretzel cost more than the price of the ticket but that just goes to show how little you can get tickets for (and some of how expensive the food is). It turns out they have some promotions where you can get a ticket and all you can eat hot dogs, popcorn, nachos, pop and maybe other things too, and although I don’t remember the price anymore, it seems like it could actually be a good deal, especially with how long baseball games are. I think if they’re still doing this next year I’m going to have to try that.

I was kind of surprised, although after thinking about it, not really, that Kathleen said she’d never been to an MLB baseball game before. I had been to so many when I was younger, my schools would plan trips every year where they got some buses and families could buy tickets to go to a game at a group rate. Her growing up twice as far away from Toronto as me probably makes a bit of a difference on that, and I feel like it’s safe to say that sports are a much bigger deal in my family than hers.

Like the hockey games we’ve gone to in the past, I spent most of the evening explaining the rules of the game to Kathleen and pointing out various other little facts about the game, and location. It reminds me of the one story I kinda like to tell about Grade 8 gym. We got to the time of year where the gym teacher decided we were going to play baseball. There were really only two people in the class who knew more of the rules of the game to be able to play it, and I was one of them. I’m not sure if it’s something to be proud of or disappointed in others that the nerdy kid who spent his lunch hours playing Magic: the Gathering, or Sim City in the computer lab also apparently knew (some) sports better than everyone else. Back to the Jays game though, most of my interesting tidbits were so out of date, I also had to say “I’m pretty sure this isn’t true anymore but there was a time when…” They messed me up quite a bit when just as their “Let’s Go Blue Jays” song was finishing I was going to say how (and I know this isn’t true anymore) the Jays were the only team in MLB that played their own song during the 7th inning stretch whereas everyone else played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” they started to play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

The article I had read in the Star which alerted me to the fact that this game was even happening had spent some time talking about how the Jays were the team in the leagues who had the most home-runs so far in the season, and that they were so far ahead there was really no hope of them being caught. That didn’t prepare me for how many home runs were hit this game there were a lot, even a few hit by Texas. Maybe it’s just that the last time I paid any attention to baseball the players didn’t use steroids as much (or more likely, the steroids weren’t as good back then) but I was quite surprised by the amount of them. They ended up winning the game, and quite convincingly too (although there was a point in time in the middle of the game it was close) and we began our trek home.

It was weird walking down the ramp leaving the stadium, because any game I’ve ever been to in the past it’s been really crowded and slow moving, whereas we didn’t see anyone else (although could hear a couple other people). I was also kind of surprised how many random people we passed by walking back to Union, and then on the subway asked how the game went, I figured for the most part people don’t really care enough about baseball to even know there was a game. Then again, if you’re at Union Station and you see a crowd (albeit a small one) walking from the skywalk with some of them wearing Jays paraphernalia I guess it’s a pretty safe assumption a game just ended.

Was a fun night, but I think either the Leafs or the Marlies are next, and I think that’s going to be far more exciting (although also far more likely for the home team to lose). That said I can easily see myself going to more Jays games while we’re living in the city, and I can’t imagine affording to go to multiple leafs games even if prices seem to be going down because they’ve been sucking so much.

_{All this said, it’s easy to change themes, so this post may not stand the test of time very well.}

I suspect anyone reading this already knows the fact, but the decision to move here was so my wife, Kathleen, could take part in the University of Toronto’s accelerated nursing program.  The plan seems to be to only stay in the city for as long as the program takes, and then to move away, probably back to the Kitchener-Waterloo area, when it’s over.  Since we’re both viewing this as a sort of temporary residence I’ve decided that in these two years we’re here to try and do a large number of Toronto activities, most notably, I’ve set the goal of trying to see every professional sports team that plays in the city with the possible exception of the Raptors (because I don’t think I can make myself care).  One team is already checked off, but that story is for another post.

On one of our first afternoons here we decided that instead of spending the whole day unpacking (something we should really finish sometime) we’d go off to the mall, but also use this as an opportunity to try out the TTC’s various methods of transportation.  Yorkdale was an obvious choice partly because it’s not actually that far, and gave us an opportunity to take the subway, but also because I was fairly certain they had an Arby’s in the food court (Last I checked there was only one restaurant in all of Kitchener and Waterloo, and it was so far away from everything, so I try to get to them when I can).  We set out early in the afternoon on a walk to the subway station during a terrible heat wave, and it turns out the subway is further away from here than I had thought (I knew where the next station north was, but it turns out instead of just going south from there the train goes south-east and we needed to walk much more).  By the time we finally got to the train we were already exhausted and we were only a fraction of the way to our destination.

The walk around the mall was kinda boring, but it turns out I was right about the Arby’s and so it was worth it all along, as the 2nd largest mall in the city, and 5th largest in the country I have to say I am unimpressed, although I’ve been there before so I don’t know what I expected.  Other than the token bookstore, video game store and movie theatre the rest of it is just filled with clothing and cell phones with some food here and there.  I can’t imagine how all these clothing and cell phone stores can be profitable while surrounded by competition but apparently there is money to be made by having 5 different providers with stores, as well as several stores willing to sell you a phone and set you up with a provider that has their own store nearby (I don’t remember but if you told me that Rogers had multiple stores in the mall I wouldn’t be surprised, and I’m not counting Fido here, but normal Rogers stores, just on opposite sides of the mall so you don’t need to go all the way over there to get yourself a new phone.

I’ve been to many malls less than half the size according to wikipedia that had a better variety of stores, it may be big and fancy but it certainly doesn’t have much for me (except delicious roast beef sandwiches) and it seems there’s other places closer with the same services in a more compact way, but how can you know that when you’ve lived in the city less than a day and don’t have internet access?  In the end, we got everything we were looking for that afternoon (as well as air conditioning during horrible heat) and made our trip home this time taking the street car back from the subway making the trip much more enjoyable.

Let’s just get right to the big one that seems to be involved in most of these arguments.  Evolution, and the age of the earth/universe.  The Bible says that God created the universe in 6 days.  The first thing I want to ask you is what is a day and how long is it?  You may say that that’s simple, a day is a rotation of the Earth around its axis and it’s 24 hours long.  Well what if I told you that using highly accurate tools, people have measured that the Earth’s rotation is actually slowing down.  Each day is longer than the one before it.  The point I want to make here is that the length of a day isn’t a constant at all, it’s changing and so in the creation story when it says “day” it probably didn’t mean exactly twenty-four hours.

Important Interlude 1.  Language:  Whenever you read the Bible you also need to remember you’re not reading it in its original form.  It was written in Hebrew or Greek and then translated into Latin, and maybe even a couple other steps along the way.  Sometimes the best word to use in a translation doesn’t mean exactly the same thing as the other word, and sometimes meanings of words within a language can change over time.  Using “day” as an example, I bet people who didn’t know the Earth rotated at all didn’t think day meant a rotation around an axis, and yet that’s now what it means.  The counter argument to that then is the whole “God’s at work during translations making sure the translators get it right.”  In 1631 some people printing an edition of the King James Bible and they made a mistake, they left out a single word.  The word “not.”  It was supposed to be in between the words “thou shalt” and “commit adultery” which leads to some interesting repercussions if God actually makes sure people don’t make mistakes when printing the Bible.

Anyway back to evolution.  God created all the animals, first in the ocean, then on land then man.  It doesn’t say how he did this does it?  Imagine you’re a sculptor, you start out with a block of stone, or a lot of clay or something, and then you start working.  Your work doesn’t suddenly go from that block into the sculpture, it takes time, and as it goes through the process it becomes more and more like what it’s eventually going to be.  My argument here, is then quite simple.  Creating the universe also means creating all the laws of nature, and the way things work and interact with each other.  When asked why you never see direct acts of divine intervention a fundamentalist will tell you God acts subtly, yet the ideas for evolution here say that it could simply be a subtle tool used to create things.

I have another way of looking at these things too, but first I have another question for you regarding the whole creation in 6 days story.  The Bible does a good job talking about the different prophets and what God told them.  It has pretty much everything that Moses was apparently told written down in the Torah, and so I ask you, who was it that God told this story of creation to and why aren’t they an important figure?  It’s not like man was around to see these things happen in the first place, and this is slowly easing us into my next observation.

If a young child without a very good grasp of the world asks you “where did I come from?”  How likely are you to tell them the whole truth?  Have you ever asked them to guess how old you are?  or how much money a car costs?  I bet the answer you get isn’t very accurate, they haven’t learned these concepts well enough yet.  Now imagine asking questions about the way the universe works to a group of people who only recently learned how to farm, and who don’t have a method of communicating with each other without being in close physical proximity to each other.  Try explaining how stars work with fusion to people who wouldn’t figure out what hydrogen is (the most common element in the universe) for another five thousand years.  In all the history of mankind, it was only just over 300 years ago that someone noticed that if something is moving, it’s going to keep moving unless something happens to it.  We’ve been too immature as a species to be able to comprehend the truths of the universe.  Just like how when a small child asks you a question you don’t answer it perfectly, but come up with an answer that sort of works.

Anyway I think that’s going on long enough about this for now, I guess the important thing that I wanted to get across  here was this:  The Bible (at least the Old Testament part) was written thousands of years ago, aimed mostly at Jews who were living thousands of years ago.  That’s not to say there’s not important messages in it, but it was written in a way that they could understand it.  They had no idea what we were going to become and what we would know now.