Reflections

Les Miserables is one of my favorite musicals with beautiful music, impressive staging and a moving story line adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo. If the previous post whetted your curiosity, you can listen to the whole arrangement of “I Dreamed a Dream” in this video.

“Fantine” sings of dreams gone by. Abandoned by the man she once loved, the father of her daughter Cosette, she is unemployed and destitute and trying to provide for her daughter. Read more about her character in this Wikipedia article.

And as long as I’m at it, here’s “A Little Fall of Rain” which Eponine, mortally wounded at the barricade, sings with Marius as she dies in his arms.

Watch this wonderful video from the TV show, “Britain’s Got Talent”. 47 year old Susan Boyle, an unemployed contestant, surprises and wows the judges.

The song she sings is from the wonderful musical Les Miserables.

I love it when stuff like this happens. It reminds me of this wonderful moment on the same show.

A news report tonight talked about parents who use software to read all the text messages that their children send and receive with their mobile phones. The children in the news report are aware that their parents monitor their messages.

Why do parents do this? Lots of reasons. One is the incentive it gives children to be more careful about what they send by text message.

The software parents are using is from SMobile Systems.

It’s bad. It attacks Windows computers.  (Mac’s are safe from this particular worm.)

Go here to download and run Microsoft’s most recent Malicious Software Removal Tool:

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/worms/conficker.mspx 

Yes, I do like the burritos at Chipotle. But how many calories are there in my favorite burrito? I did a quick Google search and found the Chipotle Nutrition Calculator at ChipotleFan.com. Just put check marks in the boxes and watch the Nutrition Facts section add up the calories, fat grams, sodium, and other nutritional information.

I started with my favorite barbacoa burrito in a bol (the bowl itself adds no calories unless, for some odd reason, you like to eat the plastic bowl). With rice, black beans, and green salsa, my burrito has 435 calories, 11 grams of fat and 1140 mg of sodium (see above). Not too bad.

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How happy are the people in your state and how does it compare to other states?

Utah, Hawaii, Wyoming, Colorado, and Minnesota are happiest states. Except for the state of Nevada, all of the states in the Rocky Mountain west are in the top 20 or top 40% of the happiest states (see the map at the end of this post).

West Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, and Arkansas are the unhappiest states.

Based on extensive polling, Gallup ranked states and congressional districts by a number of categories which range from how happy people are about their life and their work, to their physical and mental health. These were combined to create a “Well-Being Index”.

The top 20 states with their well-being index and their rank out of 50

According to the Gallup-Healthways web site: “The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™ has been developed to provide the official measure for health and well-being. It’s the voice of Americans and the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to measure what people believe constitutes a good life.”

“Over the next 25 years, the Well-Being Index will collect and measure the daily pulse of the nation’s well-being and provide best-in-class solutions for a healthier world. By helping Americans understand how work impacts life and health and conversely how life affects work and health, we can work together to improve well-being for a better way of life.”

I have lived in two of the 20 happiest states (Colorado and Nebraska) and four out of the 10 unhappiest states (Missouri, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Ohio). I wonder what that means?!

The bottom 10 states, ranked from 41 to 50

Seeing these lists reminded me of a life expectancy study. The 7 counties in the United States with the highest life expectancy are all in Colorado. Over half of the 25 counties with the highest life expectancy are in the west. If you are curious, of the 25 counties in the United States with the lowest life expectancy, 5 are in Mississippi, 2 are in West Virginia, and 2 are in Arkansas.

What is it about the west that makes people happier and live longer? Maybe John Soule and Horace Greeley are right: “Go west young man”.

All 50 states from the top 20% to the bottom 20%

You can create a report for all 50 states by going here and using the “Quick Report Builder”.

More information is at the Gallup-Healthways web site.

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government : of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

- The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

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Want to stay younger looking? Read this article about some plastic surgeons that studied faces of identical twins at the Annual Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio.

To see photos from the festival, go here.

Snow glistens in the last light of dusk.
Distant clouds glow with the fading light from the sun, long since set.

A chill fills the calm night air.
Stars twinkle in the deepening winter sky.

The crunch, crunch, crunch of gravel on the path.
Lights come on in the distance. Warm and inviting.

Home. Family. Friends. Dinner and the opening of gifts.

Christmas!

News outlets today are reporting that a serious security flaw in Internet Explorer (versions IE5 through IE8) makes it possible for hackers to steal the online passwords that you use on the internet. Virtually all security experts are urging users of Internet Explorer are urged to use a different web browser. Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari are recommended as alternatives. Please read the whole story here.

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The recent capture of an oil tanker three football fields long and holding $100 million in oil has drawn attention to a long standing problem – piracy on the high seas. Who would have thought? I think of piracy as something perpetrated centuries ago by characters like Blackbeard. Ships, crews, and cargo are held for ransom. It is a lucrative business and takes place more often than you would think.

You can view a Live Piracy Map provided by ICC Commercial Crime Services. You can zoom in on any area of the map and view the details of each hijacking incident.

Several financial experts have been interviewed on CNBC about the bailout of the Big 3 automakers.

It will take about $30 billion to bailout the Big 3. It will stave off devastating shockwaves to the economy.

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An AP article, posted a little over an hour ago, reports on the Senate’s failure to bail out the U.S. auto industry. Even if your job is not directly related to the U.S. auto industry, what happens can have a big impact on your economic future and your retirement account. For more information about that, read the post just below this one.

The Democratic leaders in the Senate are reluctant to back any plans to bail out the auto industry, despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s support for helping the ailing auto industry.

A few Senators are getting this right. . . . .
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. . .  the collapse of the Big 3 Automakers, at least according to Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC’s popular show MAD Money.

This is important – the retirement account you save could be your own.  If the government doesn’t take action soon, retirement accounts could drop another 20-30% in value from where they are right now.

Read on . . .

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For serving our country in the past, the present, or the future – we give you thanks.

Remember Me  (large screen version) by Lizzie Palmer.

Remember Me  (small screen version) by Lizzie Palmer.

Lizzie Palmer was 15 years old when her video was broadcast on FOX News, June 10, 2007.

Both!  “McCain and Obama accuse each other of falsehoods, and both have good reason.” (source)

Everything you need to know is at the highly respected web site, Fact Check.org.

The Senate missed their chance three years ago to head off the sub-prime mortgage crisis at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Had the Senate done their job, we would be in better shape now. Shame on the U.S. Senators who did nothing.

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Look into it.

A year ago today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 14,164.53, a new all time high. Today the DOW closed at 8,579.19, a drop of nearly 40% in one year and the lowest close in five years. The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ are down by similar amounts. If you had $10,000 in the market a year ago and haven’t done anything since then, you lost $4,000. If you had $100,000 in the market a year ago and left it there, you lost $40,000 over the last year (at least on paper). That’s tough to take if you are heavily invested in stocks.

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