Who's In First Place?

By now most people in North America are aware that Flatland has become an island oasis of economic prosperity awash in a sea of financial turmoil. Thanks to a slow news day at CNN, our brothers and sisters south of the 49th Parallel can now add the descriptor "Economic Haven" to their maps - which have previously shown a vast void to the north of the USA with the appellation "Here Be Monsters or Maybe Nothing" emblazoned across them. To be sure it may be a mixed blessing to have the American Giant become more aware of us than he/she/it already is, especially while desperately seeking a cure for the economic woes that plague the "Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave" (with my sincere apologies to Scotland).

But before we become a tasty morsel to be scarfed up I would like to remind everyone that we didn't get into "first place" in the economic race because we were running faster than our competitors. The truth is that everyone else - EVERYONE - simultaneously blew a head gasket. We just happen to be better off than all of the others who were in or near last place. Hardly something to be as proud or smug about as it seems we are becoming lately.

What I find ironic/frightening/disturbing is that it seems our captains of industry and politics are charting a course for us to build upon the model that just blew up so spectacularly. (That the rest of the world also seems intent on rebuilding what failed - mostly because no one seems creative enough to offer an alternative - is no less disturbing.) I guess hard lessons are learned the hard way - by repetition.

Now I do admit that our time seems to have come when it comes to commodities and new commerce. But if we don't go to school on the difficulties and failures of our neighbors, our eventual destination could hardly be imagined to be much different than theirs. I'll be bold and suggest a new model to look at. After all, what have we got to lose? Quite a lot, apparently!

Jesus spoke about money - a lot. And the "bottom line", as it were, was "it's temporary, and it's on loan - so be wise and careful". We are born empty-handed and so too will we die. In between we have opportunity to have control of much - in North America, Europe, Australia parts of Asia, South America and even Africa these days that can amount to quite a bit more than most others have.

So what will we do with it?

Now that's a question much more worth pondering over than "What will I tweet on Twitter today?".

I'm not going to tell you what do do, but if you are curious - and you must be because you keep watching all that stuff in the media about money - why don't you check out this, this, this and this?

It's a much different take on wealth and economy. And judging by the evidence at hand we could use a bit of "different".

'Nuff Said!

Good Ol' Customer Service

Sasktel is the answer when the “independents” get it wrong. When we migrated to Sasktel almost two years ago the jump.ca guy promised our son Steven that he would be able to download the pictures from his phone directly to his computer. Long story short - Not. Possible. Ever.

In frustration, Steven downloaded his pix over the internet and rang up a $80.00 bill for doing it. I called Sasktel and the guy from customer service understood our problem and did the following:

He cut the bill in half - no questions, no hassles, just done.

He suggested a change to Steven’s package that included a two month free period that equaled the other half of the bill. Wow!!

We then went to Sasktel (at Cornwall), told them our story and Michael (the manager) offered to get Steven into another phone, agreeing that my argument was valid - that we wouldn’t have chosen the one we got if we had the right info at the time of purchase . There was only one tense moment when it seemed that they wanted to charge us for for the new phone (we were willing to pay to upgrade, but not to get an equivalent), but my reasonably gentle but firm and incredulous response ended that idea right there.

Steven now has a phone that does what he wants, plus they downloaded all of his photos currently in the old phone via the internet for free, and I am frankly way impressed. Sasktel fixed jump.ca’s blunder because, in the end we are Sasktel’s customer. I suspect Michael and other employees of Sasktel have some uncharitable ideas about what the fate of jump.ca should be, but the Sasktel folks did the right thing, for the right reasons.

Lost in Translation

No doubt you were aware earlier this year of the publication of the “Gospel of Judas”(Please note: I am always suspicious of any Wikipedia article and you should be too, but the core facts in this linked article are accurate as far as I can determine.) by the National Geographic Society. The practical upshot of the publication of this recently discovered Gnostic gospel was that it purported to portray Judas in a favorable light. The spin went as far as to suggest he was a misunderstood saint, acting out of loving compassion and not at all the sinful tool of those who bore ill will towards Jesus.

Now an acclaimed academic language scholar has put her considerable skills to the task of translating the text and has found that the National Geographic scholars may have not only been rushed in their work to meet publishing deadlines, but may also have been coerced into rendering a translation that produced a much more palatable and thus marketable book. The story of this twisted translation is presented in an article in this weeks’ issue of MacLeans’ magazine.

The following is an excerpt from the article:

“It wasn't long before there was no joy at all in the effort. NG's provocative gospel turns on a handful of phrases, all of which DeConick translated differently. Judas, for example, was not a "spirit" destined for heaven, as NG would have it, but a "demon" with a far different ultimate destination; Judas would "exceed" the other apostles, DeConick agreed, although not in his reward, as NG states, but in the wickedness of his actions. Judas, in fact, was as evil as ever. The Gnostic Christians who wrote the gospel were bitterly opposed to what was already emerging as a core theological concept in Christianity's dominant tradition: the doctrine of the Atonement, whereby God so loved the world he gave his only son for its redemption. To the Gnostics the idea was repellent, no better than child sacrifice. It certainly could not have been God's plan. Judas could only have been acting for the forces of evil.
"I didn't want to write this book," DeConick says. "Some of the NG people are personal friends of mine. But when I mentioned my concerns to another expert, his reaction was 'Oh my God, me too!' The more I talked about what I was doing, I found all this underground support." So how did the eminent scholars on the NG team go off the rails?”

Well I guess MacLeans’ has more than justified my renewing my subscription. As for National Geographic, I’ll be sending them an email and I’m not sure yet whether or not I’ll re-subscribe next year. You might want to send them an email, too. They at least owe us an explanation as to why their scholars’ translation differs so very distinctly from one of their respected peers.

Shalom

*The label "Made in a Hurry" is NEVER a sign of quality or reliability. - BJM*

Dollars to Donuts and Back Again

My friend Lee Distad has weighed in on the subject of the Canadian Loonie attaining parity with the US Greenback. I've commented already at his blogsite, but I found the whole subject so fascinating I decided to place some of my comment here and expand further.

What I found really interesting was how much has changed culturally since the last time our dollar was worth the same amount as a US dollar. As my beloved Professor of Church Leadership and Pastoral Theology, the Rev. Dr. Gary Nelson, reminded us, "Only three things matter in ministry. Context. Context. Context."

It has been a generation since the last time the Canadian Dollar was worth as much as the US Dollar. At that time -

- the Canadian dollar was not called a "Loonie".
- Prince Charles was still single, and by all accounts, not even dating.
- Oprah was unknown and middle-class.
- there were no cellular telephone networks in North America.
- the three best selling home computers were the Commodore PET, Radio Shack TRS-80 and Apple II and they all had just been introduced.
- no one had a debit card and "bank machines" did not exist.
- other than friends or family, no one knew who Johnny Depp was.
- all of the members of The Tragically Hip were too young to go to the bar, let alone play music there.
- it had already been a decade since the Leafs last won the Stanley Cup.
- there was no MTV.
- more people watched TV broadcasts off antennas than cable in Canada.
- Pat Robertson launched the first satellite-delivered basic cable service, called the CBN Cable Network, in the USA.
- no one had e-mail.
- the Toronto Blue Jays launched their franchise.
- "Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope" was in theatres for the first time.
- fuel injection, front-wheel drive and airbags were not standard equipment on most cars sold in North America or worldwide for that matter.
- Michael Jackson was still a member of his family vocal group - "The Jacksons"- and no one even knew they had two sisters named Latoya and Janet.
- Lloyd Robertson's hair was still a "natural" colour, he had only been with CTV for one year and was the co-anchor alongside Harvey Kirk.
- the only people on the "internet" - which still didn't really exist - were the US military, some government agencies in North America, Europe and Asia, a number of universities around the world and a relative handful of scientists.
- no one was worried about AIDS, West Nile Virus, Lyme Disease, SARS, Bird Influenza, Mad Cow Disease or Superbugs.
- the video console game "Pong" by Atari had only been in bars and arcades for two years.
- Microsoft Windows did not exist.
- there was no such thing as "reality TV contests".
- "environmentalism" was a minority lifestyle choice - not a growing worldwide political imperative.

Economists, social & political pundits are making much of this "Loonie" issue. This morning the CBC reported that the Loonie had slipped just below the Greenback only a few hours previously. People, media, governments and institutions will start watching the dollar now with all the neurotic regularity we display when we check our wristwatches. And they will tell the public what will happen and how they should react. And many, many, many of them will do just that. I think we have to realize that for a huge number of people the Canadian economy has crossed over onto uncharted ground, despite the fact that people like myself can remember "the day when".

Like it or not, we now live in a society where the majority of people have the attention span of an over caffeinated squirrel with ADHD. And when our politicians, economists and cultural pundits are also part of that group then I say it's time to listen to Bette Davis -

"Buckle up kiddies. It's going to be a bumpy ride."

When issues like this one pop up and we see that there is a history we can draw upon for wisdom, yet most don't, I wonder if the postmodern rejection of the "meta-narrative" - the story that tells us how we got here and why - is such a smart idea. The philosopher Charles Santayana observed that, "Those who refuse to remember the past are condemned to repeat it." My friend Lee observes that what has happened to our dollar has happened before - things go up in economics and they come down. But this present generation seems to make the myopia of my generation (called the "Me Generation" by some) seem like a momentary lapse of focus by comparison. It hasn't happened before "to us" so therefore we have no way to know how to deal with it. The media echoes that sentiment every day if not in every story they report.

The wise author of Ecclesiastes wrote, "There is nothing new under the sun."

This is especially true of money.

Jesus talked about money - a lot - because money was just as important to people 2000 years ago as it is today. His bottom line was basically this - who is in control, the money or God? One of them will be. You get to choose.

Choose wisely.

Shalom

Just In Case You Didn't Know....

I have been exceptionally frustrated with the "music biz" of late. Shopping for stuff at the retail level has been an exercise in monumental futility.

"Music Retail. It's not about selling you what you want. It's about making you buy what we have!"

Anyway, despite my frustrations I have uncovered some music "gems" so I'll share them for your summer listening.

In the Blues category you need to pick up The Road To Escondido by J.J. Cale & Eric Clapton. Eric has posted on his website that he's taking a couple of years off starting now, so other than his ongoing work at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago each year there will be no tours or recording projects unless something extraordinary strikes his fancy. So get The Road To Escondido and be thankful that every single tune on it is a masterwork 'cause it's gonna hafta satisfy ya for a while!

Patti Smith always had - in my never-to-be-humble opinion - one of the most evocative and powerful voices in rock music history. Now she has released an album of cover tunes that demonstrates that she still possesses a voice of singular presence and power. "Twelve" is an addictive romp - as if anything Patti does could be characterized as a "romp" - through twelve carefully chosen pop/rock "standards". Her rendition of "Gimme Shelter" alone is worth the price of admission.

I'm going to get in trouble here because this next band uses some bad language - but if most Christians I know would be honest it isn't anything worse than what they might have already heard at the movies, theatre, read in books or listened to at the company water-cooler. And most importantly these guys are by far and away less offensive than dozens of other bands who use profanity or controversial subject matter to promote their careers, a manipulative tactic this group definitely does not use.

So if you haven't given Bowling For Soup a chance, this is the summer you should. I suggest you start with "A Hangover You Don't Deserve" which contains their ridiculously infectious Grammy Winning '80's nostalgia anthem "1985". Then if they get as far under your skin as they have mine you'll have acquired one of the most fun new musical obsessions money can be traded for.

Finally just go to http://www.davidusher.com/ and if you don't think "Ugly Is Beautiful" is a killer tune then I give up!

Now the trick is trying to find somewhere to buy these things. If you're patient the internet awaits to serve you AND it's not usually too busy to help.

Peace out children! It's summertime! Time to groove!

Shalom
*Music hath charms.....OH YEAH!*

Of Real Estate, Gambling and Getting Rich

Lots of crazy stuff seems to be going on in the real estate market (don't I know it!). If we had moved only 3 years later from Edmonton to Saskatchewan our house would have sold for double what it did in 2002.

My friend, Lee has a post at his blog that comes from someone intimately involved in the market in Edmonton. The following was going to be my comment/reaction, but I think it better belongs here.

Please understand that I do not want to in any way disparage the hard work, effort, study, training and ability of those who through their diligence and effort make a living in investing in all manner of ways. The following comments are aimed at those who pursue get-rich-quick strategies.

Seems to me a career as a professional Texas No Limit Hold 'Em Poker player would be about as stable as being an undertaker by comparison to gambling in any endeavor without putting in the hard work of learning how to do it well.

As a Christian I have some theological and moral issues with gambling, but I'm always surprised how many of my self-proclaimed brothers and sisters are willing to gamble big-time in real estate, the stock market, commodities or multi-level marketing scams schemes opportunities. And how quickly those with more knowledge in these fields are willing to fleece the naive investor. I am aware that "Caveat Emptor" is the rule of the day, but there are predators about who use the purported "respectability" of many investment disciplines as a mask to hide their duplicitous agendas.

Las Vegas may be the ultimate gambling "sin city", but the establishments there always seem morally superior to me when compared to most of the investment world when it comes to gambling. I mean, at least you get dinner and a show when they take your money, which is more than Wall Street or my adviser at Investors Group offers. And in Vegas they will tell you the odds. Try getting that information from most investment prospectuses.

Waitaminit, what about this - maybe these folks looking to make some money could try this - trade someone work for money! A radical idea I know but it's just crazy enough that it might work. (Please adjust your "Sarcasm-O-Meter" at this point by calibrating it for "10" on the "Snarky Scale". Thank you.)

"How high are the stakes?
How much fortune can you make?
Should I carry on?
Will this matter when I'm gone?"
- lyrics from the song "How High" by Madonna from the album Confessions on a Dance Floor

Now those are really interesting questions considering the source.

We all have to make a living, again I offer the idea that how really, really matters.

Shalom
*It has the novelty of having never actually been tried before.*