Everybody thinks they're smart, nobody thinks they're stupid. Everybody thinks they're right, nobody thinks they're wrong. This is the human condition.

Merlin Mann, Back to Work episode 83

Bruce Cockburn is one of my heroes. If pressed to nominate a favourite song, I would claim one of his. He’s in Belfast, tonight, singing in Fitzroy Presbyterian — presumably right now, as I type this. Circumstances have kept me away. So here, instead, is his performance of one of his more famous songs at the Canadian Live8 concert.

He’s got the words, and he’s got the hands.

I have a story about the time a missiology lecturer played this song to a class in a Bible college in Glasgow, but I’ll save it for another time. For now, listen, watch, enjoy.

The Games of the XXX Olympiad (an unfortunate number in this age of the web) are in full swing, broadcasting to us all 24 gloriously crisp channels of the highest physical achievements of our species; faster, higher, stronger, indeed. It’s been heartening to witness all but the most very cynical getting into the spirit of what probably is the biggest show around, cheering on competitors young and old, new and experienced.

This morning, the Curiosity rover was dropped onto Mars and started sending back little greyscale images of the alien surface around it. They don’t look impressive, but their very existence is a tremendously big deal. What comes next, up there?

These are both astonishing events, and they’re both a long way from my kitchen table. But each is a glimpse of what people can do: just people. I keep thinking about all the things I want to do, could do, hope for, dream… My wife and I, we talk and we hope and we dream. Friends and I, too, talk, hope, dream.

The thing is, I’m looking at the TV today and reading the news, and they keep showing me dreams becoming real.