What Caught My Eye Today

Federal Budget - You may have recently heard that President Barack Obama submitted his budget proposal for 2010 complete with a mind boggling price tag of $3.55 trillion. The creative folks at Newsweek came up with a way for us ordinary folks to get our hands around this number. What can you buy with the 2010 federal budget?

• Everything produced in Italy in 2008 - $2.399 trillion
• All the oil in Saudi Arabia - $781 billion
• An electric car for every 16- and 17-year old in America - $146.2 billion
• The International Space Station - $130.2 billion
• A refund for everyone defrauded by Bernie Madoff - $65 billion
• The Big Dig, Boston's urban-infrastructure project - $22 billion
• Full funding for the Krasnow Institute's project to map the human brain - $4 billion
• All the tea in China - $1.84 billion
• The treasures of King Tut's tomb - $507 million
• A 99 cent MP3 download from iTunes for everyone in America - $301 million

All that and you'd still have close to $20 million...you know, for incidentals.

Cuba - Indulge me for a moment while I go off on a bit of a tangent. The California Supreme Court ruled today to uphold Proposition 8, a constitution ban on same sex marriage. Five state legislatures have decided to legalize same sex marriage, and to that list we might be adding a rather unexpected entry--Cuba. Mariela Castro, daughter of President Raul Castro, led hundreds of Cubans in a street dance last week to promote gay rights. Remind you of anyone here in the States? I'll give you the answer at the end. Mariela is an outspoken advocate for gay and transgender issues who has worked to change Cuban attitudes toward homosexuality. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1979, although discrimination is still widespread. What is it about "daddy's little girl" that drives fathers to an early grave? Any guesses? You have to go back to 2002, when this daddy's girl joined the Republican gay-straight alliance and said sexual orientation should be a "non-issue for the Republican Party." At the risk of stating the obvious, Mary Cheney was in the minority on that issue. She certainly didn't have much influence on her father, Dick.

Canada - 9,000 Americans studied at Canadian universities in 2008, up from 2,300 in 1996. Many Canadian schools said applications from U.S. citizens are up sharply. Some universities report that Americans make up over 10% of this year's freshman class. Even though foreign students must pay higher tuition fees than Canadians do, a year of college in Canada costs about one-third as much as it does in the United States. Ah yes. It's an age old dilemma. Is the typical American student willing to spend a third of the money to get three times the amount of education? A very tough call, indeed.

China - Here's another entry for the "So Bizarre It Must Be True" file. China's first theme park devoted to sex has been demolished, weeks before it was due to open. "Love Land" (I swear I'm not making this up) was going to feature giant models of genitals, workshops on sex techniques, and educational displays about condom use. Here in America have something similar to what these guys were trying to do with this theme park, only we have a slightly different term for it--porn. The developer of the facility said he got the idea for the venture after visiting a popular sex park in South Korea. Locals began complaining when they saw the naked statues going up. Go figure.

Daydreaming - Daydreaming is often viewed as a sign of laziness or a lack of seriousness, but a new study says that's a bad rap. Neuroscientists found that when a person begins daydreaming, there's a lot of activity in regions of gray matter dedicated to high-level thought and complex problem-solving. Ah ha! I thought so. Check this out. I was in this staff meeting and my summer holiday was just around the corner. I started reminiscing about this trip I took to the South Pacific back in college. There was that time when the locals in Fiji introduced us to the local brew, Fiji Bitter. Dude, I got so toasted. Then there was that bar in New Zealand. There was this hot girl that talked me into signing up for that jelly wrestling and I totally...umm...So where was I? Daydreaming, right? Supposed to stimulate the brain? Works for me.