The Canadian prairies- the land that God forgot!

Here is a quote by John Ruskin. I will try to keep it in mind when the temperature on the prairies drops below minus 30 degrees celsius!!

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”

From "The Madman" by Kahlil Gibran

A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said “I will have a camel for lunch today.”
And all morning he went looking for camels.
But at noon he saw his shadow again – and he said “ A mouse will do.”

When Good Men Do Nothing

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
So much of the history of the struggle between good and evil can be explained by Edmund Burke's observation. Time and again those who profess to be good seem to clearly outnumber those who are evil, yet those who are evil seem to prevail far too often. Seldom is it the numbers that determine the outcome, but whether those who claim to be good men are willing to stand up and fight for what they know to be right. There are numerous examples of this sad and awful scenario being played out over and over again throughout history.

Some chilling statistics...


Afghanistan Health Stats
Infant mortality rate:
Total: 154.67 deaths/1,000 live births
Male: 158.88 deaths/1,000 live births
Female: 150.24 deaths/1,000 live births

Life expectancy at birth:
Total population: 44.21 years
Male: 44.04 years
Female: 44.39 years

Birth rate:
45.82 births/1,000 population

Death rate:
19.56 deaths/1,000 population

Total fertility rate:
6.58 children born/woman
Every 30 minutes, an Afghan woman dies during childbirth

Major infectious diseases:
degree of risk: high food or waterborne diseases: bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever vectorborne disease: malaria animal contact disease: rabies note: highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza has been identified in Afghanistan.

From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ...

"The Moving Finger writes:

and, having writ, Moves on:

nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back

to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

Origin of the word Afghan:
There are different theories about the origin of the word Afghan, its age, and its meaning. Some believe that "Afghan" is formed from "Apagân". The Pashtuns began using the term Afghan as a name for themselves from at least the Islamic period and onwards. According to several scholars, The word Afghan first appears in history in the Hudud-al-Alam in 982 AD.

Meaning and origin of the name "Afghanistan"
The last part of the name, -stān, is an Iranian suffix for "place", prominent in many languages of the region.The term "Afghanistan," meaning the "Land of Afghans," was mentioned by the sixteenth century Mughal Emperor Babur in his memoirs, referring to the territories south of Kabul that were inhabited by Pashtuns .Until the 19th century the name was only used for the traditional lands of the Pashtuns, while the kingdom as a whole was known as the Kingdom of Kabul, as mentioned by the British statesman and historian Mountstuart Elphinstone. Other parts of the country were at certain periods recognized as independent kingdoms, such as the Kingdom of Balkh in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

With the expansion and centralization of the country, Afghan authorities adopted and extended the name "Afghanistan" to the entire kingdom, after its English translation, "Afghanland", had already appeared in various treaties between British Raj and Qajarid Persia, referring to the lands that were subject to the Pashtun Barakzai Dynasty of Kabul. "Afghanistan" became the official name when the country was recognized by the world community in 1919, after regaining its full independence from the British, and was confirmed as such in the nation's 1923 constitution.