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This Blog site will remain active for a while in case anyone wants to revisit old entries, (not that I really think that would be a very frequent need).

This blog was hitting between 50 - 100 hits on most days at the end of December.  Hopefully those visitors will make the transfer to the new site and like what they find. 

First, I've done a lot of serious hiking.  I can remember many instances, whether it be hiking to the top of a peak in New Mexico, the bottom of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, or the Tobermory stretch of the Bruce Trail in Ontario, where I had to push myself well beyond any comfort zone.  Hiking up switchbacks, you learn not to look up and see how far you actually are from the top.  You just keep going, often telling yourself you need to stop, but continuing to put one foot in front of the other because you know you have to.  Nobody's going to carry you.  The campsite, the car or whatever is not going to magically appear any closer.  Reality wins.   Pushing through that kind of limitation forces you to just put aside the discomfort and, ultimately, not give it any power over you. 

The second factor that I think has resulted in a higher pain threshold is the meditation practice in which I'm engaged.  Like the hiking, meditation is very much a matter of pushing through and setting aside distraction.  It is a single mindedness and concentration which allows you to derail distractions so that they don't have power over you.

Between these two practices, I feel that I've developed a very useful characteristic.  I would recommend both as worthwhile challenges, and I would encourage parents and youth to not avoid challenge and discomfort.  Living a protected life makes for soft people with low thresholds when facing many of  life's adversities, not just pain.  Callouses, whether physical or mental, produce resilience, -and that's one of the most important characteristics that anyone can acquire. 

I'm partial to killer hikes and meditation, however I'm sure that similar results can be gotten from some sports activities or other endeavors.  Whatever it is, though, it has to be unforgiving.  You have to have a real reason for not quitting.  Unfortunately, as shown by the Toronto Maple Leafs, sports activities and teams don't always yield the same harsh consequences if you fail as does other things, like dieing on the side of a mountain if you don't finish the hike. 

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1. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach : Not all parts of this album is to my taste, but I can’t help being amazed at the quality and the variety.

2. Gaslight Anthem – American Slang

3. Band Of Horses – Infinite Arms : The better of the two albums on the list this year that make me yearn for new Fleet Foxes material.  Great tunes.

4. LCD Soundsytem – This Is Happening ; Again, diverse, interesting, experimentally new.

5. Ben Folds & Nick Hornby – Lonely Avenue :  Great collaboration.  Amazing tunes and lyrics.

6. Paul Weller – Wake Up The Nation : And he did.  Pperhaps the most under rated performer today!!

7. Take That : This one has to grow on you.  A little bit of Green Day.  A little Muse.  Along with some Kinks-like lyrics.

8. Mumford and Sons – Sigh No More : The other one that echoes Fleet Foxes.  This is a great album, but sometimes seems very repetitive in its tunes.

9. Deer Hunter – Halcyon Digest

10. Cee Lo Green - Lady Killer : Not my usual musical fare, but just full of raw energy, with a couple of really killer songs.

11. Elton John and Leon Russell – The Union : For sure a couple of old timers, but put them together and magic seems to happen.  There was a big swing back to old school this past year with Plant’s new album, The Black Keys and others.  This is the one that seems to pull off “old school” the best.

12. Peter Wolf – Midnight Souvenirs : OK, a little more old school.  this one has solid, catchy tunes and moving performances.

I haven’t put too many book reviews up lately, so for those who care here are a few book suggestions, primarily fiction and primarily science fiction, ‘cause that’s what I do.

1.  Robert Sawyer’s Wake and Watch were probably the two best reads that I came across this year.  I got to the former a little late, but the latter was published this year.  These two books follow a teenage girl’s discovery of an emerging AI on the Internet.  Sawyer’s writing is always packed with hard science due to his own background.  These books also seem to have been a place for Sawyer to slip in a lot of interesting anecdotes and bits of information that he must have been sitting on for some time.  This makes for an humorous read in some cases.  Fortunately there is another volume in this series on the way, Wonder.

2.  Another author that I discovered this year in the hard SciFi realm was John Scalzi.  I first found Scalzi through his non-fiction book, Your   Will be Graded, which is a collection of entries from his blog, “Whatever”.  The Blog has since become a daily favourite and in many instances an inspiration for my own Blog.  The Old Man’s War series, which currently has four volumes, has been a refreshing read.  I’ve read the first two, Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades, and found them to be superbly written in the style of Robert Heinlein, full of intelligent ideas and mature excitement.  Looking forward to the last two.

3.  Two series that have published new works this year are Brian Herbert’s additions to the Dune series and Stirling’s additions to The Change series.  The Winds Of Dune fills in some of the stories from just before and after the primary Dune book.  As such, it would be of limited interest to anyone who was not immersed in the Dune series, but, like an old friend’s visit, it is still a welcome addition to the saga.  The High King of Montival is the latest contribution by Stirling to the story of The Change, and Rudy’s almost painfully slow progress on his pilgrimage.  I find that reading Stirling always involves a fair bit of gleaning through is Dickenesque writing.  To my mind he just goes way overboard on description, but some people may like that sort of thing.  The story, though, is very engaging, and Stirling will continue to have my attention, even though he plans to use another two opus works to finish the story.

4.  One of the most unique books I came across this year, already reviewed once earlier in this Blog, was The Child Thief by Bram.  This is a dark, violent twist on Peter Pan.  This original reboot depicts Peter Pan as obsessed with the war against evil in Neverland, willing to kidnap children from the real world to fight in his battle.  Surprisingly well written, almost poetic in places.

   What to write on??  Well I guess the obligatory year starter would be resolutions and plans for the New Year.

   As I said earlier, the retirement thing got off to a reasonable start over the past few months, but one of my main goals was to devote more time to personal maintenance.  This would include better fitness and diet, along with more time for personal development in other areas.  My copy of Integral Life Practice (A 21st Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening) has been sitting on my living room table for about four months now, and I've polished off a whopping 48 pages.  That about sums it up.  Ok, so resolution #1 is to hit this personal maintenance plan a little harder.  After all, I can't really complain that I don't have the time.

   2011 will see at least two major trips.  The first is my photo trip to Costa Rica, which is in the latter half of Feb.  This promises to be a great educational opportunity and the people I'm going with seem like they'll be a lot of fun.  I'm sure you'll hear lots more about it later and inevitably there'll be the photos.  The second trip will be during the summer, when I plan to take my Phoenix youth group to the Smoky Mountains.  I've done this trip a few times before and it's always been highly successful on all fronts.  Photography can be fantastic there, too, but it's also about the great hiking and other attractions.

   This blog has give me the opportunity to polish my writing abilities, but it's all rather informal.  Again, people are encouraging me to write something more formal.  I don't know whether it would be fiction or non-fiction or maybe even autobiographical, but I'm feeling more and more ready to tackle that, and hopefully something will gel in 2011.

   I didn't get nearly as far as I'd hoped in revamping my web site.  The current stuff is set up, but I wanted to put up a scrap book of all of my old youth groups, and add a Travel section.  That's still a goal, and should help keep me out of trouble for the next year.

   Anyway, enough about me.  What are your goals for 2011?

   People are saying "Where's your 2010 music list?"  Well, I'm compiling it now and it should be up within a few days.

   The new Blog, whenever it kicks in, will still be available through the link on my main web index page.  When the switch happens, anyone who's bookmarked this site will find a message directing you to the new Blog site. 

   For a month or so after the switch, I'll probably maintain two links on the index page, designating them as new and old blog.  I'll also start by running entries on both sites for at least a few days or a week in order to make sure things are going the way I want them to.  I'm not sure about advertisements on the new site.  It's a free hosting service, so there may be some.  We'll see whether or not that's tolerable or whether we end up with Viagra ads between entries.

   This is all going to happen as time permits over the next week or two.  In the meantime I'll still be ranting here much as I have been in the past.  Thanks for checking in with my humble opinions.  I'd love to see people leave more comments.

   So, a hologram is a representation or picture of an object made with two beams of light with the image being recorded using the interference pattern created by the light beams.  Maybe that's a little complex, but the important bits are that it is the result of an object being scanned by two or more beams of light and the image being the result of an interaction of these light beams, rather than a simple capture of a single light beam.  The result is a 3D image of the object rather than a 2D image, shifting as you change your viewing angle.  Another unique thing about holographic images is that all the information is recorded in every part of the image, so if you break the photograph into five pieces, you end up with five complete pictures. 

   So, what's a holographic argument?  One of the things that I didn't like about the discussion flow chart was is that it only allowed for whatever the "rationalist" defined as rational thought, which would probably be classical logic, cause and effect, Newtonian and Cartesian scientific method.  That seems to be a bit narrow for my liking.  It's kind of like someone telling you that the whole world is red, but saying that you can only look through red coloured glasses. 

   The alternative, as many of you know from my previous ranting, is looking at things through an Integral Model, a la Ken Wilber.  The importance of which model you use to view reality is critical, as was recently asserted by Stephen Hawking in his latest book.  Any experienced phenomenon, even those recorded by scientific instruments, is subject to the subjectivity of the observer, their conceptual level of understanding and the filters through which they interpret everything.  In Wilber's Integral model, rather than throwing this subjectivity into relativistic chaos, it becomes organized into a hierarchical meta-model, which would take pages and pages to properly explain.  Those interested can find out more HERE.

   Like the holographic image, the holographic argument examines a question from a variety of angles and on a variety of levels, knowing that no single perspective will tell the whole story.  Something approximating truth emerges from all of the angles, and, indeed, from the interaction (interference) between different models.  An example of the latter can be seen when you ask questons that can't be answered by one model, and find another that will provide answers.  Not only is there information in the answers, but also in the nature of the models that can and can't provide them.

   I'm not sure the person who drew up the flow chart would be up to that sort of discussion, probably wanting to retreat to their Aristotelian logic and classical scientific method.  He would claim that I was violating his standards, when in fact I am just going beyond them. 

   Hmm.  The beginning of an idea.