Ruins

While watching olympic coverage, several things have popped into my head. Pride, concern, intrigue, and enjoyment have all been feelings ellicited by the games. It's just always great to see competition.

One thing that has struck me as silly/odd is the announcers continually jumping on the greek gods bandwagon. The most recent occurance was during the women's mountain biking final. The commentator was talking about the lead rider from Norway and said that she must be praying to all the greek gods that they'll see her through. It may be silly of me to take offence, especially over a perhaps only hypothetical situation, but I know that I'd certainly rather not have someone associate me with or insinuate I might be praying to any mythical gods for strength or success.
It's granted the games are being held in its country of origin, it's granted that they did worship those gods back in the day, but I find it over-indulgent of our announcers to just jump into the mythology as much as they have been.
It gets my head spinning, starts me thinking about benchmarks and similarities between the United States and the Greek and Roman empires. It always strikes me when people delve into a culture of polytheism that went to ruins, giving credit to gods whose temples lay in ruin. I can't help but wonder when the great "western civilization empire's" time will come to a close. There are signs, moral uncertainty, plateaus and oversights, complacency, and human nature's effect with time. I only wish I could lay it all out, my memory and intellect don't serve me quite that well just yet. I need practice, instruction and guidance.
The point remains, based on personal and historical observations.
What is our place in history? Will the current world order stay? If so, for how long? What might replace it? Will there be a transfer of technological, political, and military power? What effect does magnetic, burning fuels, electric, and other somewhat delicate, depletable, or potentially volatile energy and technology mediums have and what might happen if those mediums are taken away? There are a million different questions. Tons of fun discussion...

3-Sided Commentaries

Until I get more articles written and up, here's a link to some political commentary that a friend of mine is now writing for.
http://www.watchblog.com/
Enjoy. :)

The Book of Ecclesiastes

I had read Ecclesiastes before and had the incination to check it out again this morning. I was not disappointed. It is a book that covers the broad aspects of life and provides a number of timelessly relatable examples and references. Wisdom, foolishness, wealth, povery, health, happiness, pleasure, pain, death, relationships, government and ambition are all included.

The translation I just read was the New Living Translation (metal edition). It seems to use more modern phrasology and consequently interprets more easily. All 12 chapters are more than worth the time to read and effort to look into. I would say it is best read from start to finish in order to really get the full perspective and get a good idea of how the author's mind seems to be working.

Going into specifics is something I'll leave for another time and perhaps another medium. Just have a look, there is much truth and wisdom in those words. There were certainly numerous thought-provoking assertions about life and manner of living, some of which seem quite contrary to what western culture preaches, some of it suprisingly close.

Ecclesiaste 1:9-11 (New Living Translation)
"9 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. 10 What can you point to that is new? How do you know it didn't already exist long ago? 11 We don't remember what happened in those former times. And in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now."