What Caught My Eye Today

Armageddon - You may have noticed that I have more than a passing fascination with the end of the world. It's not that I'm a pessimist or anything like that. But if the end is near, I'm going to think twice about making my next mortgage payment on time. New Year's Eve 1999 was filled with lots of apocalyptic anxiety. That was nothing. The real doomsday jitters will arrive in 2012. No, it's not the next Presidential election. On December 21, 2012, the 5,125-year cycle that makes up the Mayan calendar system officially comes to a close. Some have predicted that an enormous comet or meteor will destroy the Earth during that fateful year. Coincidentally, the next peak in the sunspot cycle is due in 2012 and is expected to set records for the number and intensity of solar storms pummeling the Earth with radiation and igniting natural calamities such as earthquakes, volcanoes and hurricanes. The precise time the Mayan calendar comes to its conclusion is December 21, 2012 at 11:11p.m. Universal Time. So consider yourselves warned. Mental note to self--open that really good bottle of wine on December 20, 2012; it might not get to age much more after that.

Divorce - A New York man is suing his wife for the return of his kidney. Say what? The man was happy to donate the organ to his wife back in 2001 when she needed a transplant, but now that they are in the midst of an ugly divorce he would like it back (that seems a bit harsh) or its cash equivalent, which he estimates at $1.5 million (ah, now I see where this nut job is going with this). Medical ethicists predict that the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed as his donation of the kidney was clearly a gift. I don't know about that. As far as I know medical ethicists don't hold much sway in the legal system. Now if there was a legal ethicist then...I'm sorry. It just occurred to me how far-fetched that last statement was. Legal ethicist? Yeah, right.

Fund Raising - A high school math teacher has been raising funds by selling ad space on his test papers. Really? I wonder who he got as sponsors. The ads have helped cover the cost of printing tests--which often comes out of teachers' own pockets. That's just plain sad. As if teachers don't have enough to worry about. Now they have to reach into their own pockets in order to teach.

Potpourri - Sound bites continue to be dominated by depressing economic news, with one notably exception.

• Over the eight years of the Bush Administration, the number of jobs in the nation increase by 2%--the weakest job growth in the seven decades this statistic has been compiled
  Somebody has to be at the bottom, right? And Bush does seem to have a knack at hitting low percentages.
• The U.S. spends twice the percentage of its gross domestic product, 16%, as virtually every other developed country. It also spends roughly double the amount of those same countries on higher education.
  And what do we get for all that investment? Twice as many people without health insurance and students half as smart as their international counterparts. Money well-spent, wouldn't you say?
• The size of new homes is shrinking for the first time in over a decade. The average size of new homes built in the third quarter of 2008 was 2,438 square feet, down from 2,629 in the second quarter.
  Any chance that signals a possible shrinking in the waistline of the average American? If so, then maybe those narrower hallways will hardly be noticeable.
• For the first time since commercial aviation became popular, not a single passenger has died in a crash of a U.S. airliner for two consecutive years (2007 and 2008).
  And thanks to Sully, 2009 is off to a pretty good start as well.