Author: Sean (Page 5 of 7)

The interesting thing about adopting a humanist outlook on life is the way you start to look at things differently. Things that you just used to accept as that’s just the way it is suddenly seem to not make much sense anymore.

One of those things that has “bothered” me for the last few years has been the basis of our calendar. The Gregorian Calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world. It is based on the believed date of the nativity from the New Testament of the Christian Bible.

For years I have thought that our calendar is kind of annoying. Once you get down to year 1, you jump to year –1 and start counting in reverse. I’ve never liked how we start counting backward, dates just don’t seem right getting “bigger” as you go back in time. It’s one of those things that doesn’t keep you up at night, but you know that it is just a ridiculous system, at least when documenting human history.

I’ve thought for a while that we should pick a date sufficiently far back in the past so that it encompasses all of written human history and move forward from that as a year zero. To me it has always made sense to make it an even multiple of 10,000 so as to be able to keep our current numbering system during a transition period. As it turns out, 10,000 years is just about right, you don’t have to go back further.

So with this in mind, I did a search on the internet last night, figuring that if I had had the idea, chances are someone before had too. The gentleman to the right is Cesare Emiliani, an Italian-American geologist and palaeontologist, who later in life in 1993 proposed just such a system.

He saw four problems with the current calendar: (from Wikipedia)

1. The Anno Domini era is based on an erroneous estimation of the birth year of Jesus Christ. The era places Jesus’ birth year in 1 BC, but modern scholars have determined that he was born in or before 4 BC. Emiliani argues that replacing it with the approximate beginning of the Holocene era makes sense.
2. Emiliani opined that the birth of Jesus Christ is a less universally relevant epoch event than the approximate beginning of the Holocene era.
3. The years BC are counted down when moving from past to future, making calculation of timespans difficult.
4. The Anno Domini era has no year zero, with 1 BC followed immediately by AD 1, complicating the calculation of timespans further.

His solution was the proposal of the Holocene Calendar, or Human Era (HE) calendar which starts at roughly the beginning of the Holocene Epoch. Holocene is Greek meaning entirely recent. It turns out that 10,000 years is right about the time that the Holocene started.

To me the adoption of such a calendar makes sense. It requires very little adjustment to current systems other than sticking a one in front of the current date. I’ve heard people claim that it would cause a future computer problem, however, I personally would be very surprised if computers 8000 years from now were using current code anyway.

Today for example would be April 5, 12014. We could still consider 2014 to be shorthand, but in scientific and historical studies the HE date would be used. Here are common dates from history.

In my opinion such a calendar should be considered our standard calendar, moving us away from a calendar based on an event that is not historically significant to a large part of the human population. It puts most significant human events on one timeline, and for those adverse to change, it affects day to day current calendars very little if at all. I know that in school such a calendar would have made much more sense when studying written human history.

It always amazes me how uncommon “common sense” seems to be. Case in point, the elimination of the penny. After years of NDP MP Pat Martin pushing to get the penny eliminated, the Tory government of finance minister Jim Flaherty finally axed the coin early last year after being announced in the previous year’s budget.

Some people do not agree that the penny should have been eliminated, and someone took to stating that displeasure about Jim Flaherty’s involvement in the whole matter after the announcement of his retirement from politics. From Sound Off in the March 26th edition of the Brandon Sun,

“I will always be able to relate that Flaherty was the minister who, along with MP Pat Martin (NDP), took it upon themselves to eliminate part of the Canadian coinage system that was the foundation and building mainstay of money counting and saving. They called the one cent useless and excised its existence. There were other options that needed weeding, but no, the one-cent piece became their victim and was sacrificed on the stained altar of common sense.”

I’m really not sure what the writer was talking about. The one cent piece was useless to buy anything. We have now eliminated it, and as someone who works in a retail store, we don’t miss it one bit. In fact, everybody adjusted to the new reality in less than a week, and other than a few people thinking that pennies were illegal to use, there was no hiccups that I can remember. Pennies will remain legal tender for the foreseeable future, but no one uses them much anymore after only a year. As for being the foundation of our monetary system, I suppose there is an argument for that, but we once had half-cent coins before Confederation, and getting rid of that foundation didn’t hurt us.

I personally think that we didn’t go far enough. We should get rid of the nickel too. The CBC reported last year that according to Jean-Pierre Aubry of the Desjardin Group we should soon be getting rid of the 5 cent piece. He says, and I agree, that the nickel is approaching the point that the penny was at in 1982, the year that he says we should have gotten rid of the penny.

We really need to look at what these coins are costing us and if they have a use anymore. It is not sensible, despite so-called common sense, to keep using a coin that costs us more to make and handle than it is worth.

To me, the dime should really be the lowest denomination in our monetary system. Despite what the Sound Off writer says, it is the dollar that is the basis of our money, and the coinage smaller than it are only there to break it into parts; in 2014, 10 parts is enough.

Without a nickel of course, we can no longer have quarters, so those would go too. My assumption is that we would have a 10¢, 20¢, and 50¢ coin along with the loonie and toonie. At that point we could get rid of the rounding up or down system we have now for cash transactions and go to only the one decimal place for cash and electronic transactions. We did okay rounding away the 3rd decimal place for a century, I’m sure we could do the same thing one decimal place over.

Since our coinage would have to be retooled, we need to look at this now. Getting rid of the penny was simple, but getting rid of the nickel will take more than just stopping circulation. We had the ability to leave the penny until long after it was useful because its removal was so easy. The nickel we’ll actually need a plan. We should probably ramp up 50¢ piece production and put a 20¢ piece into circulation fairly soon, so that we can slowly reduce quarters and nickels until that day when we get rid of them altogether. And if we’re going to introduce new coins, we should do it now while cash registers still have that extra spot left over from the penny. This one shouldn’t wait another 30 years to happen.

Corporations are not people. I don’t care what the Supreme Court of the United States says on the matter. They are not people. It’s a ridiculous notion, and it is creating some pretty ridiculous arguments as a result.

Today in the United States, the Supreme Court heard arguments involving a chain store called Hobby Lobby and its claim that its religious rights were being trampled on by the requirement in The Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, that Hobby Lobby needs to offer health insurance that covers contraception to its employees, if it decides to offer health care at all. It doesn’t have to provide contraception to its employees, just offer a health insurance plan that covers it.

Hobby Lobby claims that that requirement goes against its religious rights because its owners believe that some forms of contraception are actually similar to abortion, which is against their religious beliefs.

So, now everyone seems to think that the decision is whether or not a company can have a religious belief and get an exemption to a law based on that belief. I have seen many people pointing out that such an exemption in this case would lead to exemptions in other cases. Maybe someone doesn’t believe in speed limits; should they get to travel as fast as they want on the roads? People and corporations would start saying that firing LGBTQ employees was okay because their religious beliefs made it so. Those are all very good and valid reasons for the SCOTUS to rule against Hobby Lobby… but it is all missing the point.

The part that never seems to get brought up is the employee’s religious rights. Seriously, if Hobby Lobby can claim its religious freedom is being infringed, what about the employee? This is the damn problem with our society these days. Why is all the focus on the company? The employee is a person and unlike the company, the employee was the one that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was referring to when it was written over a couple centuries ago.

For me it comes down to this, the law must protect the person who is in the less powerful role. The employer, whether a corporation or an individual, is in a position of power over the employee in many ways; dictating their religious choices should not be one. Hobby Lobby has decided to offer health plans to their employees, something that they do not have to do, but which they do for the tax break it gives them. If it hurts their religious morals so much, then they could forego the tax break, but they want the money more than they want to follow their so-called conscience. When they made that decision, that was the end of their choice. At that point the employee’s religious freedom kicks in, part of which is being able to not be bound to your employer’s religious beliefs.

If you think that you get to impose your religious beliefs on other people, then religious freedom is not exactly the concept that you think it is.

See that bus bench? I did, last night, on Princess Avenue next to the old fire hall. When I saw it, I just shook my head and rolled my eyes.

Of course if you go to the site, it claims that induced abortions have been shown to increase breast cancer risk. Never mind that their is no causal link found despite the site’s claim otherwise; perhaps that’s why they claim that more research needs to be done. The website is a coalition of various “Right to Life” groups from across Canada.

A quick glance at the research last night and this morning shows that there has been lots of inquiry done into the matter, and that there has been no causal link found between induced abortion and breast cancer.

When it comes to cancer, I think I will believe the American and Canadian Cancer Societies, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the National Cancer Institute, the World Health Organization, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

Nothing like threatening women with breast cancer to stop them from doing something you don’t like though. Class act!

So if you pass by this billboard, and check out the site it lists… remember it is FUD. There is no science here.

Today is Louis Riel Day in Manitoba.

He is now widely considered the Father of Manitoba, although it wasn’t always this way. Not too long ago it was taught in schools that Riel was a traitor to Canada and that his execution at Regina was justified.

Some people will call it revisionist history, but my feeling is that the re-examination of the facts with a less racist view has resulted in a story closer to the truth being told.

I personally do not think that Riel was necessarily a saint, few leaders are. To become a leader of people you often need some ruthless qualities to your personality. I do however believe that he was truly fighting for his people and their well being when he led the “rebellions” that he did. His labelling as a traitor seems to have been the work of a government that didn’t want to deal with The West.

What I find most ironic about Louis Riel Day is that the people here that are most opposed to the holiday being named as such, are also the most likely to resent the way that politics take place today in Ottawa and how they feel that the western provinces do not get a fair shake.

Riel was the original Reformer. The West wanted in on her own terms, not on those being forced by Ottawa politicians.

He is a man that helped build this country, and I am proud that my province has decided to honour him, warts and all.