My World At Eight

FTLComm - Tisdale - January 11, 2000
As the CBC Radio "World At Eight" began this is what it looked like from my kitchen window. The cold arctic air of January was here and with it a cloudless barren sky awaiting the arrival of the sun. Russian Generals are lamenting that things are not going as they planned in their efforts to destroy Chetnia, the leader of Indonesia is condemning religious militants for wanting a holy war against Christians, some protestant group has murdered another protestant fellow in Northern Ireland, three bodies of migrants were found in a container from Hong Kong and the Japanese can't find anything big enough to merge with to rival the massive combination of Time Warner and America Online yesterday. To add to the confusion Preston Manning claims he will resign if the United Alternative project fails which immediately leads a bunch of Reform members to seek the leadership of the party because everyone knows the United Alternative is stillborn.

Looking out my window at the peaceful chilly -32 celcius morning and hearing the babble that passes for news makes one seriously wonder if reality is less and less real. Fifty percent of US homes have Internet connections while only eleven percent of Japanese are connected. Stock markets world wide are into a buy, buy frenzie and a bunch of coal miners are staging a hunger strike in a mine at Sydney Nova Scotia because the government has sold the money losing project and Nova Scotia's electrical utility is warning that it may run out of coal for electrical power generation. Yestereday the big news was a fourteen or fifteen year old sort of Deli Lama had slipped into India and the Chinese are in a flap.

Perhaps it is true that the more you know or find out the less and less likely you are to understand any of it. It may also be true that "ignorance is bliss" and is a pretty attractive idea.