What Caught My Eye Today

Budget Deficits - These numbers are enough to make your head spin. The U.S. federal budget deficit will hit a record-high $482 billion in the next fiscal year (beginning October 1). Officials blamed inflation, declining tax revenues from slow economic growth, and tax rebates that drained billions from the Treasury. Funny how the billions that we've spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan don't seem to factor into the equation. The Bush administration claims that this year's tax rebate busted the budget. Interesting claim, what with the tax rebate being their idea in the first place. John McCain and Barack Obama claim that they will balance the budget but are vague on details. McCain promises that he won't raise taxes while Obama's budget plan includes $344 billion in new spending. Okay, I finally figured out why being a politician is so awesome. The laws of reality apparently don't apply to them. How cool is that?

Uganda - The head of Uganda's state development agency is urging Ugandans to hold funerals on weekends only. Seems like a rather odd request, doesn't it? Because of widespread HIV infection, Uganda has one of the world's highest death rates, and government officials are finding that workers are spending too many of their working hours attending funerals. That's just downright depressing.

Olympics - Let the Games begin. As we gear up for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, I thought it would be nice to whet your appetite with some factoids that you can dazzle your friends with.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will take in more than $3 billion in revenue from this year's event, with half coming from broadcast rights, estimated at $1.7 billion. Of revenue generated, the IOC re-distributes 92% to national Olympic committees, teams and athletes. Not bad, when you think about it. I wish some other charitable organizations could manage the same thing.

Ticket prices for some of the main events:

• Opening Ceremony: $729
• Closing Ceremony: $438
• Basketball: $146 (are folks interested in watching Team USA capture the gold or imploding...again?
• Swimming: $117 (Team USA vs. Team Australia--gimme Phelps and the stars and stripes)
• Table Tennis: $117 (well, it's big in China)
• Tennis: $88 (a bargain compared to most tennis tournaments)
• Badminton: $73 (I got nothing on this one)
• Gymnastics: $58 (seriously, badminton is a bigger ticket than gymnastics?)
• Archery: $15 (well, they need to have something to broadcast on MSNBC)
• Shooting: $7 (you'd have to put a gun to my head to show up to this

One more...

The average age of America's Olympic athletes is now about 27, up from 24 a generation ago. And if you got rid of the women's gymnastics team, I bet the average age would be even higher. 21 members of the U.S. are 40 or older.

Potpourri - Every once and awhile, I stumble upon some tidbits that rather fascinating.

• China now has 253 million citizens with Internet access, compared to 223.1 million in the U.S. That might be true, but as a percentage of total population, the U.S. still has a narrow lead over China (74.4% to 15.8%).
• Over the course of a lifetime, the average American stands a 1 in 5,552 chance of dying in a plane crash. The lifetime odds of dying in a car wreck are 1 in 247. In Los Angeles, the odds are stated in a slightly different manner--lifetime odds of not being involved in a road rage incident, something like 1 in a billion.