I was looking through a book I read during my MA today, planning on re-reading it this week. I tend to mark up books, write notes, and underline important things to return to later.

For some unknown reason however, I found a drawing of a very tiny horse in one of the margins.

I wish I knew why.

Wondering...

On what could have been the eve of a terrible event in American history, the so-called "International Burn a Qur'an day", I'm left with a mixture of absolute relief that it has been avoided and confusion surrounding both the coverage of the story and those involved.

Any person, regardless of religious orientation, who sets out to deliberately do harm to another person, their beliefs, or their way of life, or their religious leanings, is in my mind a viscously hateful person.

In the case of the small church in Florida, the Pastor, a religious leader, someone who holds a certain level of influence over a sensitive area of the lives of his follows, urged his 50 congregents to meet on the anniversary of 9/11 and burn Qur'an's. The influence a religious leader has over his congregation, in any denomination or religious faith, is a precarious and powerful sort. For a leader to openly encourage hatred, is to fill the followers heads with hatred and a misguided sense of purpose, a holy purpose, as directed by the person they trust with their spiritual well being. By using the guise of religious justification to promote such hateful ideas, is to play upon the deepest insecurities and fears of those who turn to religion for comfort and direction.

What is equally troubling to me, is in the coverage of this event this group and this particular Pastor were never portrayed as the "poster-children" of the Christian faith. It was widely recognized that this was an extreme and unacceptable sect within Christianity, and that the views of this one extremist in no way reflects the beliefs of the whole Christian community. Further, much attention was paid to those standing in opposition, speaking out against the actions of the few. On the flip side, when the religion in question is Islam, and the monsters behind hateful crimes align themselves as Muslim, they become representative of the entire faith. No voice is given to the millions of faithful Muslims who are speaking out against the extremism, who take a stand against intolerance and violence, and who condemn those who commit the crimes in their name. Instead, we are lead to believe that the actions of the few represent the whole.

This unilateral reporting offers no way out of the cycle of misunderstanding and intolerance. It breaks my heart.

Bad news folks.

I just learned that our galaxy is on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy.

So in a mere 4 MILLION years we will take part in a galactic trainwreck of doomsday proportions.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Tell your mom you love her. This is it.

Science?

Watching the National Geographic Channel's "The Known Universe". Now I'm no scientist, so perhaps someone can correct me, but I'm quite sure that the following is not particularly scientific:

- "If an asteroid were to come near us, you might as well bend over, grab your ankles and kiss your ass goodbye" - speaking in purely 'scientific' terms here.....

- "There are a million, or a billion, asteroids out there" - they are clearly completely confident with their calculation here to limit the wiggle room between their numbers.

- "If you had a time machine......" - this appears to be the beginning to many scientific hypothesis'

- "The last time earth faced this threat was 65 million years ago. Does that mean you should lay awake at night worrying? Well its enough to say it happened once, it can happen again" - get in your bunkers! hide your children! SAVE YOURSELVES

- "How will we save ourselves from an asteroid? Former astronaut 'Rusty' thinks he has the answer....a gravity tractor" - thank god we have 'Rusty' working for us.

-"This is called a 'gamaray-burst', doesn't sound particularly scary, but its one of the few things in the universe that gives me the heeby-geebies" - heeby-geeby is a scientific measurement, much the same as 'millions or billions'.

- "If this acrylic ball is earth, and this smaller ball is an asteroid, and we shoot the smaller one from a high powered machine at the larger one, we can assume that the impact would be the equivilant of a larger object traveling at a slower speed" - i...don't understand science, obviously.

Fall's a-comin!

Labour day weekend, and it already feels like fall. Wonderful, glorious fall. My favourite season by a long shot. Hopefully the humid days of summer are behind us, but the frigid days of winter are a long ways off.

Feeling the brisk air and cool breeze immediately conjures images of fall jackets, snappy scarves, and riding boots. My hardly worn white cashmere scarf with embroidered zebras is screaming to be worn on a day like today. Even with nothing pressing to do, and no where to go, a casual stroll uptown might be necessary!

Some people live for the summer; I dream of fall.