GENERATION Y

In its January 22, 2008 edition, the Quebec City, Canada, newspaper,
Le Soleil, had a topic about generations by age group.

Generations are grouped as follows:

The Silent generation, people born before 1945.
The Baby Boomers, people born between 1945 and 1961.
Generation X, people born between 1962 and 1976.
Generation Y, people born between 1977 and 1989.
Why do we call the last one generation Y. I did not know, but
A caricaturist explains it eloquently below...Learned something new!

SOME WHERE OVER THE RAINBOW IS ANOTHER RAINBOW

Holly sent me this shot of a double rainbow over the space shuttle launch site. We see them quite often here but this is really impressive. You can just barely see the second rainbow.

Trip to South America and Christmas

I am planning to count off a couple of the 100 things to do before I die list in December. I'm going to South America and cruising throug the straight of Magellan and around the southern most tip of South America (Cape Horn), thats a picture of the cape above. From what I've read I also should be able to see the Southern Cross along the way. This photo reminds me of our relative insignificance in the universe.


We fly to Valparaiso, Chile from Orlando. The stops are Punta Arenas, Chile; Tierra Del Fuego Argentina; Cape Horn; Pt. Stanley Falkland Islands; Montevideo, Uruguay;Buenos Aires, Argentina and Rio De Janeiro Brazil.

I'm so looking forward to the trip! I leave on the 7th of December and don't return until the 23rd. I will miss most of the Christmas preparations (the part of Christmas I enjoy the most) but I think this trip is worth it.

Today I was driving down the road and saw a sad, sad thing. Someone was displaying the American flag at half mast. The flag was faded and ripped and I could hardly tell what the colors were. Not a block down the road a bright, colorful flag flew at the top of the flag pole and the sun was shining on it. It was waving in the wind and it seemed to glow. There's no life lesson here, just observation. I get a thrill every time I see a flag displayed although I don't display one. Maybe there is a story behind the dull, ragged flag I saw; or maybe it was just carelessness. Whatever happened it reminded me that I love America.

In another awareness experience I discovered that Brownie (Kelly's miniature Daschund - is that how you spell that?) has been pooping in the cat litter. There has been a sort of passive/aggressive battle since Brownie got here. Brownie has gotten to sleep in Holly's bed where the cat usually sleeps and now Brownie has messed up her bathroom. To add insult to injury, somehow the cat was left outside for 3 or 4 hours while Brownie got to be in the house. Now the cat is not speaking to anybody in the family. I would think that a dog as smart as the one in the picture (that's Brownie) couldn't plan passive aggressive behavior.

Politics

I continue to be frustrated with this whole campaign. Both sides have said things that were false, partially false/true, and true. They've given words taken out of context, stretched the truth, and twisted the truth. Here are two sites that report the real situation one of the politicians has referred to. Who the heck knows how many times McCain or Obama voted on something or whether they have "flipped" in their stance on an issue. Interesting sites.

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/ and http://factcheck.org/

And here is the Saturday Nigt Live parody of the vice presidential debate.

SOMEONE CAN'T DIVIDE! IS IT ME????

The numbers sent by the guy who wanted to share the wealth instead of having a bailout were wrong. Here are the corrected numbers using the proposed $700 million. It took me a while to find how many zeros are in a billion but the division was easy. I'm still angry about considering a bailout but I definitely dont need screwed up statistics fueling my anger. Here are the numbers based on the proposed $700 million.

The $700,000,000,000 bailout (yes there are nine zeros in 1 billion, I looked it up)
If that $700,000,000,000 was given to every U. S. Citizen over 18 years old (divided equally among us) what would we have?

Assume there are 200,000,000 U.S. Citizens over 18 yoa. (our population is around 301,000,000 if you count every man, woman and child.)

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $700 billon that equals $3500 - a huge difference from what that guy was talking about.

Give $3500 to every person 18+
it would NOT be tax free of course.
So let's assume a tax rate of 30%.

Every individual 18+ has to pay $1050 in taxes.

That sends $210,000,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.

Every adult 18+ has $2000 in their pocket.

A husband and wife team would have $4000

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRADY

Happy birthday to my wonderful son. I'm so very proud of him. By the way I couldn't find many pictures without his finger in his nose. It was years before we ever got a good shot. As soon as he thought he was in the view of the camera he'd stick his finger in his nose. He is a great father and a great son.