On the Road Again

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment
On The Road AgainMe in Last Years Ride

Me in last year's R2CC.

Well, tonight I picked up my bicycle from Speed River Bicycle, where it was in having it’s yearly overhaul, and so today marks the start of my 2012 cycling season. I take it there because; a) that’s where I bought it 5 years ago, and b) they do very good work at a fairly reasonable price.

I usually start riding on the weekend of the change to Daylight Saving Time (which is this weekend by the way) and ride at least until DST ends in the fall, which this year will be November 4th. Sometimes the weather will shorten the season some, but I am hoping this year it will be a long one.

As I rode home after leaving downtown it took mere moments for the activity to have it’s usual affect on my system. With each passing moment I felt better and better as the cycling motion and nearly effortless motion turned back the clock. When I ride I feel 16 instead of nearly 60. Riding a bicycle just makes me feel younger. If it had been any warmer out I might have ridden further taking a more circuitous route home, but the 6 km I did ride was typical for a first time out.

This is the 5th year for the Ride and in celebration of such there are a few extras going on that haven’t happened in previous years. One I’m really looking forward to is that everyone who has participated all five years will receive a special edition Golden Bike Helmet. It won’t be real gold of course but even so, it will be kinda cool. Last year there were only a little over 400 of us who had been in all 4 rides out of 4610 people. So if I get all my funding and make it into the Ride this year I will be in a fairly select group of riders.

Which of course means I’m going to ask you once again to click on the banner to the left and donate to my effort in The Ride this year. If you are planning to help me with this but haven’t yet, then I would ask you to do so this month. You see there is another promotion tied to this years fundraising. During the month of March reaching certain Fundraising goals will earn you a ballot in a draw for a $1000 Voucher towards a new Norco Bike. If I raise $500 this month I get 1 ballot, $750 gets me 2, and $1000 raised between now and March 31 will get 3 ballots. No idea what the odds are, but hey! a new bike would be great and a shot is a shot right? and three shots would be even more so. Details on the promotion are HERE.

So as I said, if you are intending to donate please do so this month and not only help in the fight against cancer, but help me get three shots at a brand new bike as well. Click the banner on the left or HERE to donate.

Till next time…  Shalom.

Cancer Free!

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

One year ago this week I underwent the last of 35 radiation treatments following surgery to remove a cancerous tumour from my throat. It was the first time since being diagnosed that I heard the words, “Cancer Free!” It took another three weeks for the swelling to go down enough that an MRI would confirm my oncologist assessment. But I will always think of this that last treatment as the day the ordeal ended.

One year later and the words still apply; Cancer Free! It feels good. I feel good, and I want others to feel the same sensation when they hear the same words – Cancer Free!  That’s why, once again, I am writing dear readers, to ask you all to support me in the Enbridge Ride to Conquer Cancer. Help me to bless others the way I have been blessed.

Once again as well, I will be co-captain of a great group of people called Team Kortright. This year 11 people have signed onto Team Kortright and I am thrilled to tell you that one of those people is my brother Alex.

This is the fifth year for the Ride and many of you will remember that Alex was one of the main motivations behind my attending the first Ride to Conquer Cancer back in 2008. Alex lost an arm to cancer his last year of high school and I have always been grateful that, unlike my father, he is still here with us. He, and myself, are cancer survivors because down through the years people at places like The Campbell Family Institute at The Princess Margaret have been working hard to defeat this devastating disease in our lifetime.

If you have already donated to the 2012 campaign then I thank you, with all my heart!

If not then Please click on the link at left and help make the words Cancer Free a reality for many more people; maybe someone you know!

Thank You!

The Truth about Knowledge

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“I think the Net generation is beginning to see knowledge in a way that is closer to the truth about knowledge — a truth we’ve long known but couldn’t instantiate. My generation, and the many generations before mine, have thought about knowledge as being the collected set of trusted content, typically expressed in libraries full of books. Our tradition has taken the trans-generational project of building this Library of Knowledge book by book as our God-given task as humans. Yet, for the coming generation, knowing looks less like capturing truths in books than engaging in never-settled networks of discussion and argument. That social activity — collaborative and contentious, often at the same time — is a more accurate reflection of our condition as imperfect social creatures trying to understand a world that is too big and too complex for even the biggest-headed expert.

“This new topology of knowledge reflects the topology of the Net. The Net (and especially the Web) is constructed quite literally out of links, each of which expresses some human interest. If I link to a site, it’s because I think it matters in some way, and I want it to matter that way to you. The result is a World Wide Web with billions of pages and probably trillions of links that is a direct reflection of what matters to us humans, for better or worse. The knowledge networks that live in this new ecosystem share in that property; they are built out of, and reflect, human interest. Like our collective interests, the Web and the knowledge that resides there is at odds and linked in conversation. That’s why the Internet, for all its weirdness, feels so familiar and comfortable to so many of us. And that’s the sense in which I think networked knowledge is more “natural.” ”

– “What the Internet Means for How We Think About the World” by Rebecca J. Rosen, January 5, 2012.

First published by The Atlantic.

via Google Reader.

The Scientific Foreknowledge of the Jewish Sages

/ Dennis A. Gray / 1 Comment

There’s a new book out by Israeli professor of engineering at Ben Gurion University, Haim Shore, called “Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew” that I think I’m going to see if I can get a digital download for my reader. In it Shore examines a number of remarkable instances of ancient Jewish sages contemplating notions passed down through their scriptures and traditions that lead them to some remarkably accurate scientific conclusions. And they did it all without experimentation or even clinical observation hundreds and even thousands of years before scientific discipline caught up with them.

Author Adam Jacobs give an intriguing review of the book in the following article for The Algemeiner. You can check out Jacobs’ review at the following link…

The Scientific Foreknowledge of the Jewish Sages.

My thanks to Dr. Claude Mariottini for bringing the article to my attention.

What Would MLK Do? Christians and Climate Change

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

In Canada, Martin Luther King Day is all but ignored. Oh, it is mentioned on talk radio and on the news; but it is rarely forefront in our collective consciousness because it is, after all, a U.S. holiday. With it falling on a Sunday this year, yesterday I barely noticed it, being wrapped up in my duties surrounding two morning services at Kortright Church.

I am grateful then for this article by Jarrod McKenna on Tony Campolo’s Red Letter Christians blog. It is my hope that I will be deeply considering his message for some time to come.

Red Letter Christians » What Would MLK Do? Christians and Climate Change.