PSoTD

Looking for a Beatific vision?

If you're looking for more Hot Pocket material...

When I was a little boy, I was given this book, and I read it and read it and read it. It's a classic tale of a good brother and a bad brother, and the maturation of a son intent on saving his family. Of course, until last night I didn't really remember the plot too well, except there was a good and bad brother and a son that hid a sword in a tree.

I gave this book to my daughter at some point, and the past few days she read it - and really liked it. And she asked me questions about it, and some of the things she asked me about I couldn't remember. So I read it last night, and it was an enjoyable revisit to my childhood reading experiences. It was a bit strange, reading a book that was intended for 6-10 year olds, almost like sitting in a child's chair, but brought back memories of laying in the top bunk of bunk beds my brother and I slept in, reading this and other books on winter evenings.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you're looking for an interesting experience, re-read one of your childhood favorite books now.

Color me doubtful. These kinds of stories pop up about California from time to time, and the population keeps growing there, too...

For the first time in 30 years, United Van Lines Inc. says it moved more people out of Florida than in, and analysts see that as a sign that consumers are looking elsewhere for a cheaper slice of life.

The nation's largest moving company reported 16,212 inbound shipments to Florida last year and 17,019 outbound shipments. United moved more people to Florida in each year from 1999 to 2004, but the number of inbound moves fell in 2005, spokeswoman Jennifer Bonham said.

The study isn't scientific, but it does underscore a recent trend in which fed-up Floridians are moving to other parts of the country, in part to escape rising property taxes and insurance rates.

The housing boom brought more people to the Sunshine State at the start of the decade, but the run-up in home values during the past five years sent property-tax rates soaring. Many residents now say they can't afford to move elsewhere in Florida because of the huge hit they'd take on taxes.

What's more, busy hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005 led to massive rate hikes from the state's largest home insurance companies.

"It all just pushed us past the breaking point," David Levin, a Delray Beach-based housing consultant, said Wednesday.

Practically anywhere in the country is a great place to live if you have what you need there to make you happy. It's a personal choice based on personal needs, an eye of the beholder thing, and I'm not one to argue that living in North Dakota or Mississippi or Delaware or any other state isn't preferable for folks, because they all have their plusses. I know people who don't think highly of living in Central Pennsylvania, and I appreciate it, because I like living here and I know that living in a high population density is something I don't like - so let that viewpoint continue.

That being said, Florida can be nice, but I don't see it being closer to paradise than many other places I've been in the United States. Of course, I've never been to Hawaii...

or an author to define what we call this decade. From the Smyrna/Clayton Sun Times:

After the sounds from the clinking of champagne glasses and the singing of "Auld Lang Syne" have faded, our decade-now seven years old-still does not have a universally accepted name.

Names like "the twenties" and "the thirties" easily defined the decades from the 1920s to the 1990s, but naming the first decade of a century is more difficult.

Some refer to the decade as the "two thousands," but confusion arises when the same phrase is used to describe the 21st century, or even the third millennium.

The decade can be written as the "'00s," but lacks the same feel as "the '80s" or "the '50s" or the lighthearted feel of nicknames like the "Roaring Twenties."

The United Nations General Assembly declared the current decade as the "International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World," but that's quite a mouthful.

In a search for something a bit more succinct, we investigated what people did 100 years ago, in the first decade of the 1900s.

Some historians allege that the decade didn't have a name at the time. Instead, people simply called it the "first decade," the "early years," the "beginning of the century" or the "turn of the century."

Especially with our political leadership so far, I lean towards calling this decade "the zeros". But we're far enough into this decade, there's a very good opportunity for a musical group, author, moviemaker - somebody creative - to come up with the defining term we associate with this decade.

I was thinking the same thing the other day - dying is a major pain in the ass, for everyone involved. I'm not talking just about the emotions. I'm talking about every bit of energy expended in the process of dying on a result few really want and none of us can avoid.

And there's very little any of us can do about spending that energy. We're going to do it.

About Pat Robertson.