Everything

Of course they are moving forward! The gas pedal sticks to the floors.
Does anyone else think that their motto is ironic and funny now?

Sort of a man vs. nature thriller. Here is my idea.
Did you know that one of the largest active volcanoes on earth is pretty much all of Yellowstone national park? It’s true! (Here is the wikipedia entry on super volcanos) This is what causes Yellowstone to be such an amazing place.
Last time it blew, it blanketed everything west of the Mississippi under several FEET of ash. The volcano is still active, and it blows, on average, every 600,000 years. It last erupted about 600,000 years ago.
I want to write a story starting with that event. It’ll follow two groups of people for a few months, and will be filled with interesting events like the earthquakes the eruption will cause, massive fires, the effect of ash inhalation, the distruction of our environment, and other terrible things. It will NOT have a happy ending.
What do you think?

The Fedex guy that just dropped off a package has a speech impediment. He said “H-h-h-h-h-h-h-i. Ih-ih-ih-ih-ih-ih-is th-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-is 24 No-or-or-or-or-orth Ma-in?”
I didn’t pick on him or anything, but now I feel bad because I got impatient waiting for him to finish. It took a REALLY long time.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
He said, “Since you are all such good customers, I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.”
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men — the paying customers?
How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his “fair share”? They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.
But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay! And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”
“That’s true!!”shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2 ? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

adribradley:

Conclusions:

All pictures were taken with a Nokia 5800, and they came out bad. I need to purchase a good camera or Nokia needs to include a 10 MP camera with its phones.

Budapest is way prettier architecturally than Vienna. Vienna was harder to navigate and had a lot of creepy people at the subway (U). I didn’t feel safe and I didn’t see any police around. But I noticed there are cameras everywhere in both cities, which means that we were kind of safe.

And it was cold. I am sure no one can control the weather and heat up the city a bit for a nice walking tour:)

Shopping is good both places.

The N97 is supposed to have a really incredible camera. I wish I got to travel half as much as you do…