THE
BLUE BOX (Recycled Ideas)
by Don Cox
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Here it is Thanksgiving weekend, time to get the garden
to bed, and finish putting the firewood in the basement.
No need to clean up the yard though, the snow will cover
it soon enough. One less job to do, we can be thankful for
that. I've noticed that people make a big fuss this time
of year about all the big serious things we have to be thankful
for. I don't think these count for half as much as the small
things. We have an endless number of small things to be
thankful for, and I would rather concentrate on them. Forget
the national debt, and national crime rate that are both
slowly decreasing, and be thankful instead that you don't
have to clean the yard. Want another example? Look at our
Prime Minister, not the best in the world maybe, but just
compare him to the Russian Prime Minister, Mr. Putin. What
a terrible name! How would you like it if our county was
being run by someone who was named after a Quebec junk food.
Just imagine how it would sound, "And now here is our Prime
Minister, the Right Honourable M. Poutine, and the Fisheries
Minister, M. Barbotte." I don't even want to think about
it.
A few weeks ago the Nobel Prizes were awarded, and last
week the Ig Nobel winners were announced. These prizes are
sponsored by the Journal of Irreproducible Results and are
awarded for scientific work "that cannot or should not be
reproduced." I once submitted a learned paper to this Journal
and it was greeted with acclaim. We can be thankful I didn't
win one of the prizes however, or I would be at the presentation
ceremonies and there wouldn't be a column this week. For
those of you sceptics who doubt that I was a runner-up,
and would like to see a copy of my article, please submit
a request via my email address, and I'll send it to you.
It will take a few weeks, I need a scanner to get the graphs
into digital form and haven't got one yet. You can be thankful
for that.
I read in the Globe recently that Americans now spend
more than $1 trillion a year on their pursuit of leisure.
This is far more than they spend on health care, or on cars
and trucks, or on housing. We Canadians can be thankful
our incomes are lower than in the U.S., and that our dollar
is still around 68 cents American. This means that we spend
much more sensibly on real necessities instead of on self
indulgent luxuries. Let's be thankful for this, and thankful
too that this column has finally and mercifully come to
an end.
Bluebox ©2001 Don Cox
Website ©2001 OttawaWEB
