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Big numbers have become part of our lives. We hear about the hundreds of billions that are being spent in Iraq. The numbers of dollars that the U.S. is in debt is staggering. A $100 million contract for a professional athlete has become commonplace. We’ve all seen big numbers when we’ve filled our gas tanks. But, this might help us put the words million and billion in perspective. There are a million seconds in a little over 11.5 days. the question of the week is, How long would it take for one billion seconds to pass? Keep reading. The answer will appear.

It’s tough to be a Minnesota sports fan right now. Friday night, a 2-1 loss to the Calgary Flames officially ended the Wild’s chances for a playoff spot. The U of M women’s basketball team was doing pretty well, until the last eight games of the season.

It was at that point that a losing streak in Big 10 play preceded a total meltdown that we saw when scholarship players started leaving faster than lake ice in April. Someone said that the Gophers had given a new meaning to “Final Four” - guard Kelly Roysland and three recruits.

We’re rooting for the Timberwolves to lose as many of their final games as possible, so they don’t have to give up their draft choice as a part of an earlier trade. Although, I’m not sure we should be too excited about the prospect of a T-Wolves lottery pick. After all, the Target Center braintrust has made Paul Grant, Isaiah Rider, Ndudi Ebi and a couple of guys with unspellable names who played in Balkan countries first draft choices in the past.

We were assured that the Twin’s pitching staff would keep them in the hunt. Even if the offense continued the ineptitude shown in 2005, the pitching staff would give us a chance. After the first four games of the 2006 campaign, the offense has produced an average of seven runs per game. Still, the team has managed to win only once.

All the more incentive to go out and watch one of our local high school or other amateur teams. ...Seating Available!!

I heard an interesting ad on the radio recently. It was promoting an “affordable, high quality digital camera.” The pitchman said the product was, “Bigger than other cameras of the same size.”

It seems that our “addiction to oil” is finally starting to cost us. We are told that a big reason for increasing energy prices is the growing demand created by the burgeoning industrial economies of China and India. I used to tell my students, “Just wait until India and China get cars and air conditioning!” I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly.

Harley-Davidson is planning to open a plant in China. The Chinese have built a new Shanghai to Beijing railroad line. It runs on non-traditional rails. The rails a magnetic and the trains travel at 260 mph.

India has been a functioning democracy since 1947, when it gained independence from the United Kingdom. It has a two house legislature with a prime minister. The gov’t is patterned on the British model. It also has a population of 550 million - under the age of 25.

An Indian filmmaker is making a movie about the life of Mother Teresa. Among those being considered for the title role is the saintly Paris Hilton.

andnowashortvocabularylesson

Offal is Awful....Offal is what the the butcher usually throws away. Not in England. It is composed of heads and tails and everything in between. Such things as kidneys, lungs, spleens, bone marrow and brains are included and sold and eaten.

Boycott. Charles Cunningham Boycott was a land agent and ex-serviceman in County Mayo, Ireland. In the 1870’s and 80’s he strongly opposed demands for agrarian reform. As a result, peasants refused to work for him. As a result, “Boycott” came to mean to isolate an individual, organization or country socially or commercially. As a child, I boycotted canned spinach. I remain true to my conviction.

The difference between a million and a billion? A million seconds is 11.5 days. A billion seconds would take 33.7 years.

Seventy percent of the cars in Brazil run on ethanol. Most of the fuel is made from sugar cane. Just a thought - we’ve been subsidizing sugar cane growers in the Mississippi delta for decades. With that region devastated by hurricanes, maybe area farmers could produce cane that could be turned into ethanol.

In 1973, the average new construction American house was 1600 square feet. Today it’s 2300 square feet, despite the fact that average family sizes have declined by one member.

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