The View from Conestogo

The group called Boney M. had a hit with “By the Rivers of Babylon” back in 1978. This arrangement almost has a polka feel, and is great fun. I’ve given you several keys, and the guitar part is easy in all of them. This is a great song to practice your strumming technique. Have fun!

Guitarband.org is a project I’ve been working on for a few months, and it’s almost time to go public. Like most web projects this one has evolved as I’ve worked on it. My first thoughts were to create instructional videos for new guitar players, using animation. I’ve seen a lot of videos with a guy

Learning the notes on the guitar fretboard is not easy, so if you are going to tackle it, you’d better make a serious effort. Many guitar players – a lot of good ones and most not-so-good ones – will argue that it is not worth the time and energy it takes, especially if you don’t

I just discovered Julia Sweeney, a comedian and author who grew up a Catholic and gradually lost her belief. This is not your typical argumentative intellectual atheist diatribe. Julia is very sympathetic to the feelings and attitudes of normal religious people. Related Posts:No Related Posts

The philosophical rejection of the notion of Free Will comes first and foremost out of the scientific belief in determinism: that all events, attitudes, background conditions, have a cause, and that therefore it does not make sense to take “credit” or “blame” for our attitudes, our level of intelligence, or, in the extreme, our actions.

The most interesting technology developments of the last decade or so, at least from the perspective of the average consumer, have been in computer, internet and telecommunications. These areas of development have come together with great fanfare and significant impact in the development of mobile networks and powerful “smartphones” – essentially portable computers. I follow

In his book Breaking The Spell, philosopher and noted atheist Daniel Dennett discusses (at some length) the difference between “belief in God” and “belief in belief in God”. This may sound like some philosopher’s tedious exercise in hair-splitting, but the fact is, this is actually an interesting and important distinction. Over the years I have

I live just down the street from a major Blackberry office complex, and Blackberry employs thousands of people in this local (Waterloo) area, so I have a natural interest in how the company is trying to resurrect itself. If Blackberry succeeds in remaking itself it will be because they finally adopted a realistic, workable strategy.

Let’s pretend organized religion fell seriously out of favour and there were no churches. Would we be missing anything? I suspect there are many people who would be nostalgic for some of the things we get from religion. But it is more than nostalgia. I’m sure church provides members with practical benefits as well. What

Some things I’ve been reading recently have led me to look again at my previous posts about morality (here and here) and attempt to clarify some of the ideas presented there. “Morality” is a confusing topic, debated for centuries by philosophers and theologians, (and not seriously thought about by me for the last thirty years)