A Timely Thought For The Day

As registered Floridian voters head to the polls to vote for their favorite Republican today, I bring you this very wise observation from George Bernard Shaw:

He knows nothing, and he thinks he knows everything. 

That points clearly to a political career. 

Friends in Florida report they've had to run screaming from their TV sets over the past week or two, suffering from political ad overload. Unfortunately, Michigan's turn is coming at month-end—I can't wait!

The Final Check

We've been doing some house cleaning lately, taking advantage of the mild winter weather and going through lots of boxes and areas that don't normally get much attention, hidden away down in the basement.

A couple of those boxes contained records from my father, who left us four years ago. Tax returns, legal papers of every sort, some photos, work-related keepsakes...those things that can form the outline for one's life experiences. I also found a number of boxes containing unused bank checks, originally to be used to pay assorted expenses and fund those activities Dad enjoyed.

Going through those things was a rather grim task. So many things that we feel have all-important value to the living, take on a much different meaning after death. I felt as though I was closing a final chapter by disposing of those things, and it brought a great sadness to my heart. How could I possibly destroy all those things that had such importance for so long?

Due to the sensitive nature of those items, most had to be shredded or burned to insure no one could use them for illegal purposes. Thankfully, seeing how I felt, my wife offered to start a campfire in the back yard and destroy the items, everything except the one item she held back and presented to me...Dad's last printed check, still in its shiny shipping box.

That one was sent—slowly and reluctantly—through our paper shredder, in what was quite probably my last duty as the executor of his estate.

Decisions Decisions

Have you picked your guy for President yet ("guy" now that Bachman dropped out)? I haven't, but maybe the coolest bumper sticker will help steer each of us in the right direction. I'm not sure that's a worse method than listening to and believing in campaign promises.

late addendum:  I'll have to close my eyes and hold my nose to vote for either of the Repub front-runners, but I just read the following on PJ Media and it gives me reason to keep thinking—it is a long time until November 6th after all and maybe it's the best path to follow, because:

Whatever Romney is, in his heart of hearts, 

here's what he isn't:  he isn't Barack Obama. 

It's B-a-a-a-a-c-k

We've had a very enjoyable, spoiling reprieve from our normal winter weather for the past few weeks. Beautiful sunshine and deep blue skies and temps reaching into the 50s. It was hard to remember this is Michigan and this is January.

Well...she's back! It was terrific while it lasted, but this morning we woke up to the results of the Winter Weather Advisory the National Weather Service has been warning us with for the past three days or so. Only a couple inches of snow fell here, but yesterday's rain-changing-to-snow created icy conditions that caused all area schools to close for the day.

Still, every passing day meant we were that much closer to spring's arrival, so we have no reason to complain.

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Do you ever contemplate the size of our universe? I have and it makes my head hurt. I mean, it goes on forever, right? How can you possibly fathom such a concept?

What it does for me is to help me understand how really insignificant our spaceship Earth really is when compared to the entire scheme of things out there. We sometimes believe we're the center of everything, the only life-sustaining chunk of matter in this entire, massive collection of millions of other chunks of matter. Hmmm, a pretty bold thought.

Consider some of the measurements described here:

Click HERE to see the full photo essay in larger format. 

I just cannot get my head around "20,000 light years", can you?

Our Mind-Boggling Internet

I'm told there are over 2 billion users of the Internet world-wide. That's nearly one-third of the world's population! Pretty incredible. Never before has the world been so connected. Of course, that brings on good and bad, but it is very amazing nonetheless.

I came across this infographic, noting the most popular major operations occurring on the Internet each minute:

Click to enlarge this graphic to a more readable size.
Graphic courtesy of Media Bistro.

Nearly 100,000 Twitter tweets each minute?!!!!? How did we ever make it through life without tweeting...and tweeting often? Half a million Facebook comments? Ya gotta be kidding me!

The Ruins of Detroit

As I was perusing the myriad of articles showcasing "The Best of ________ in 2011" I came across a photo essay on TwistedSifter via the iPad app Flipboard. See the full post here:  http://twistedsifter.com/2011/02/ruins-of-detroit-yves-marchand-romain-meffre/ The article states, "Parisian photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre took a trip to Detroit to capture the urban decay of a once-thriving city. In their book, The Ruins of Detroit, Yves and Romain photograph abandoned buildings, offering a chilling look into a city in decline."

This example of the once beautiful, proud and unique architecture that abounds in Detroit vividly shows what it has crumbled to today:

Photo courtesy MarchandAndMeffre.com 

The images shown saddened me deeply. Having grown up in the Detroit suburb of Centerline, just two miles from the Detroit city limits which began at 8 Mile Road, I have wonderful childhood memories of that once great and magnificent city. To see what it has decayed into and been stripped of is sad indeed.

My mother worked downtown at the J.L. Hudson Department Store. My father worked close-by in Highland Park. As a teen, I road my bike to 8 Mile Road and boarded the Van Dyke/Lafayette DSR (Detroit Dept. of Streets and Railways) bus to take me into the heart of the city...with no worries.

Today, I wouldn't consider doing it for a moment. Still, I've been back numerous times over the years, most recently with my son, Greg, to make a weekend of attending a Detroit Tiger game, enjoying a Greek lunch (including a shared Saganaki, of course...Ooopah!), enjoying a ride around downtown on the People Mover monorail and losing some money at one of the casinos.

Oh, I could go off on a tirade about the rampant corruption of city officials like Mayors Coleman Young, Kwame Kilpatrick and others that sucked this wonderful city dry. Or get on my soapbox to preach about the failure of program after program of entitlement (read: handouts which kill personal ambition). But not here; not in this post.

This post is for bidding adieu to a once-sparkling gem, now brought to its knees. What a shame.