"I am a man: I count nothing human that is foreign to me" (Terence)

.....I was thinking of JR, my son, the other day and wondering why he doesn't retire. If my math is correct, then he was 61 in March.  He's worked pretty hard all his life and so has Barbara.  I believe it's time for both to retire.  Whenever I get the chance, I tell my offspring to put away as much money as they can before they retire because they will need more money retired than they do working.  And the same goes for anyone else.  When you retire you eat out more, go to the movies more, travel more, go to shows more, go to casinos possibly, gift money to grandchildren at their weddings or bar mitzvahs, and generally spend a lot of money on things you don't do during your working days.  Social Security is not going to do it. And in these days you can't find a bank that will give you at least 1% interest in your savings and CD accounts.  You want to avoid risking your retirement money in the stock market.  If you lose it you will have to stand at the exits to the turnpike with a cardboard sign that states "Homeless. Will work for food."  If you think you have enough saved to retire, you probably don't.  So, live sparingly first--then retire and treat yourself royally in the life you have remaining.

 

.....Charles Darwin in 1859 wrote "On the Origin of Species" and one specie is the human specie whom I believe has not yet fully evolved from our origins. The billions of our specie's brains that exist  on Earth are still primordial. Take, for example, the parents in Kentucky who presented their 5 year old son with a rifle for a birthday gift with which he accidentally killed his sister.  Or the tragedy in Newtown where a kid whose brain had not yet evolved from an apish state; or the bombing in the Boston Marathon; or all the wars which you cannot count on your fingers and your toes, or the holocaust!  It's madness for me to continue with examples of beings who have not yet evolved into fully evolved Darwinian humans. They're apparently still Neanderthals with Neanderthal brains. And take the gurus in the NRA who go bonkers when there is talk of legislation to ban automatic or military weapons that did not exist when the Second Amendment was adopted.  But who talks about militias now? Just imagine how Washington, Jefferson, Adams, or even Ben Franklin would have to say about these weapons which many NRAs suck on for comfort as a baby sucks on it's blanket.  I wonder what our species will be a hundred years from now?