I’m all over this.
The Bible Experience is a fully-dramatized and symphonic-orchestrated reading of the New Testament performed by an unprecedented ensemble of distinguished African-American actors such as Denzel Washington, Blair Underwood, Angela Bassett, Juanita Bynum, Shirley Caesar, Samuel L. Jackson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Kirk Franklin, Dule Hill and many more. Visit www.zondervan.com/TheBibleExperience or Inspiredby.com for more info.
Also listen to the NPR story.
Yup, you read it right. It was announced this week that the war in Iraq has cost the U.S. taxpayers $1.2 Trillion a year.
According to the Pentagon before the war began, the estimated cost for the war was in the neighborhood of $50 billion.
David Leonhardt writes in the International Herald Tribune that Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed with the estimate. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President George W. Bush fired him in part for saying so.
To put it into perspective, it would be like getting a $500 estimate for car repairs and then getting a bill for $120,000.
But what is $1.2 Trillion? Let’s write it out: $1,200,000,000,000 or 10 to the 12th power. That’s 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point. A trillion is a million million dollars.
One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.
Click here to see another visual image.
Here’s another thought, let’s count to a billion. But first, let’s see how long that will take. I can count pretty fast for a while. I mumble a little, like “sev-sen” for “seventy-seven.” After a while (in the 100,000’s), it takes me a lot longer than a second for each number. If it takes me a second for each number (which is a little unrealistic), then it would take me about 24 hours to count to 86,400. I can count to a million in less than half a month. It will take me more than 30 years to count to a billion (not a trillion mind you).
At a minimum wage of $5.75, $1.2 trillion would pay the salaries of 100,334,448 Americans for a year.
The National Cancer Institutes budget is $6 billion a year. $1.2 trillion would pay that budget for the next 200 years.
On today’s market a barrel of oil (42 U.S. gallons) costs $52. Not bad but think of all the oil you could purchase with $1.2 trillion – more than 23,076,923,076.
It’s estimated that the U.S. consumes roughly 20 million barrels a day. So with that knowledge, $1.2 trillion would purchase enough oil for the U.S. to survive on for 1,153 days or 3 years at the current rate of consumption.
According to David Leonhardt, universal preschool would probably cost $50 billion a year. So would a treatment program for heart disease and diabetes.
So that estimated $20 million for 20,000 additional troops in Iraq doesn’t sound that bad now does it? How much is your protection worth?
You can now track your family tree and watch it grow online as your family adds to their tree/network.
Geni has several impressive features, like collaborative family tree building and editing. If you add a new branch to your tree and include an email address, that person can visit your tree and build branches directly related to them. Geni is flash-based, so all of the tree-building is done dynamically with a really nice drag-drop-and-zoom interface for moving around your branches.
Check out the software here: http://www.geni.com/tree/start
Via Lifehacker
Luckily I don’t have to wear a suit for work. I am asked to wear a collared shirt anytime I’m going out any public. Not a big deal, you have to wear that to play golf in many places.
But suits? Mark Cuban feels their unnecessary as well.
Someone had once told me that you wear to work what your customers wear to work. That seemed to make sense to me, so I followed it, and expected those who worked for me to follow it as well.
After I sold MicroSolutions I decided that I never would wear a suit again. I was able to hold true to that while I was making a lot of money trading stocks for the next 5 years, but then Todd and I started AudioNet which would morph into Broadcast.com.
With our new business, I decided that I would have to wear a suit, but would modify the rule so that I would only wear a suit when someone I was selling to was wearing a suit. If they were selling to me, I didn’t care if they were wearing a tux. I was going to go comfortable and not wear a suit.
When Broadcast.com was sold, the suit went out the window completely. I vowed to never wear one again other than weddings and funerals, and only then because it wasn’t worth the hassle to deal with people asking why you didn’t wear a suit. I’m certain the people getting married dint care, and I don’t think anyone is going to be looking down at me wondering why I showed up at their funeral without a suit. Suits make no sense whatsoever.
Cuban suggest employers give their employees a raise and let them come to work with no suits required. Thoughts, comments?
Reid Slaughter at Frontburner suggests meteorologists may have the easiest job in the world. I think he’s right.
Consider the following: to be a TV weatherman,
1. You do not have to have any knowledge or opinions of your own. All you do is wake up in the morning and log on here and download your forecast from the experts. Let your fancy graphics do the rest.
2. You do not have to be good-looking, unless you’re a woman (in which case it helps to be a smokin’ hot babe).
3. You certainly don’t need much personality, or a good wardrobe.
4. You get to be wrong ALL THE TIME and still keep your job.
Cuban and the team he owns have created MavsWiki, an interactive site between the Mavericks and their fans, and akin to Wikipedia. It is the first such site in the NBA. Co-oool. Cuban says not only will fans be able to construct the Mavs’ history, but they can “share their Mavs experiences with us and other fans.”
Via Frontburner
What would a Wiki[insert church name here] look like? What history and stories would people share about your church?